Military's Social Science Grants Raise Alarm

The Pentagon's $50 million Minerva Research Initiative, named after the Roman goddess of wisdom and warriors, will fund social science research deemed crucial to national security. Initial proposals were due July 25, and the first grants are expected to be awarded by year's end.

But the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, which includes professors from American and George Mason universities, said dependence on Pentagon funding could make universities an "instrument rather than a critic of war-making."

In a May 28 letter to federal officials, the American Anthropological Association said that it was of "paramount importance . . . to study the roots of terrorism and other forms of violence" but that its members are "deeply concerned that funding such research through the Pentagon may pose a potential conflict of interest."

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See also:

Social warfare

A news story in today’s Nature notes that the US military are pumping more money into social science research which is considered to be an important ‘game changing’ component of 21st century warfare.

Who Are the Top Social Scientists Consulting the US Military?

"Phantom Control": Israel's Secret Service and the Occupation

Yael Berda's new book The Bureaucracy of Occupation sheds light on Israel's more invisible control over the Palestinians.
www.therealnews.

Women of Togo call for nationwide sex strike

Women from the Let’s Save Togo coalition called Sunday on all females in the country to refrain from sex for a week to force Togolese men into backing the group during their demonstrations.

Let’s Save Togo is an umbrella organisation of nine civil society groups and seven opposition parties and movements that has rallied to demand political reforms ahead of parliamentary elections due in October.

“We call on all women to deprive their husbands of sex for a week from Monday,” Isabelle Ameganvi, a member of the group, told AFP.

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Time for Re-Education? Critics Take on China Labor Camp System

A controversial feature of China’s legal system that allows authorities to ship people off to labor camps without formal arrest or trial is coming under increasing fire inside the country.

In the latest development, 10 lawyers from different cities issued a call for reform of the laojiao — or “re-education through labor” –system in an open letter sent to the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Justice on Tuesday, warning that the punishment can result in abuses of power, according to local media.

More remarkable was the fact that among the newspapers to report on the lawyer’s letter was the state-run China Daily. The central government’s central English-language mouthpiece newspaper, China Daily rarely runs reports critical of sensitive domestic policies without the high-level approval.

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~ ~ ~

See also:

China Outsources to North Korean Labor Camps

China: Protesters Sent to Labor Camp

Vox Anonymii

Anonymous Project Mayhem 2012 - Leak it ALL! Call to Action


Anonymous\\ War to WARS


Anonymous Rap - Freedom

The Mystics are Gathering in the Streets - Rumi by Duncan Mackintosh

Two short poems from Rumi. Duncan Mackintosh is Britain's best reciter of Rumi!

Gramsci, Black Panthers and Revolutionary Hip Hop

http://blip.tv/brecht-forum-tv/watch

Challenging a Culture of Domination
Gramsci, The Blacks Panthers and Revolutionary Hip Hop
Harmony Goldberg, Donna Murch Shahid Stover

This panel discussion will build upon the Marxist notion of praxis (conscious political and creative active) as seen through the lens of Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, the development of the Black Panther Party and the creation of hip hop.

The three topics are interwoven by a need on the part of revolutionaries to develop a revolutionary cultire that can challenge the dominate practices of the US capitalist state. How do current organizing practices center culture? How do we connect in the era of Facebook to create new sensibilities for revolutionary practice.

The Flaming Lips: Supermoon Made Me Want To Pee

Goldie (feat Natalie Duncan) - Freedom

Burning Reel and Goldie collaborate to create the video for 'Freedom' - Metalheadz 100th release.

"Worldview Warfare" and The Science of Coercion

Christopher Simpson, Excerpts from The Science of Coercion, Oxford University Press, 1994 www.globalresearch.ca

During the second half of the 1930s, the Rockefeller Foundation underwrote much of the most innovative communication research then under way in the United States. There was virtually no federal support for the social sciences at the time, and corporate backing for the field usually remained limited to proprietary marketing studies. The foundation's administrators believed, however, that mass media constituted a uniquely powerful force in modem society, reports Brett Gary, 28 and financed a new project on content analysis for Harold Lasswell at the Library of Congress, Hadley Cantril's Public Opinion Research Project at Princeton University, the establishment of Public Opinion Quarterly at Princeton, Douglas Waples' newspaper and reading studies at the University of Chicago, Paul Lazarsfeld's Office of Radio Research at Columbia University, and other important programs.

As war approached, the Rockefeller Foundation clearly favored efforts designed to find a "democratic prophylaxis" that could immunize the United States' large immigrant population from the effects of Soviet and Axis propaganda. In 1939, the foundation organized a series of secret seminars with men it regarded as leading communication scholars to enlist them in an effort to consolidate public opinion in the United States in favor of war against Nazi Germany -- a controversial proposition opposed by many conservatives, religious leaders, and liberals at the time -- and to articulate a reasonably clear-cut set of ideological and methodological preconceptions for the emerging field of communication research. 29

Harold Lasswell, who had the ear of foundation administrator John Marshall at these gatherings, over the next two years won support for a theory that seemed to resolve the conflict between the democratic values that are said to guide U.S. society, on the one hand, and the manipulation and deceit that often lay at the heart of projects intended to engineer mass consent, on the other. Briefly, the elite of U.S. society ("those who have money to support research," as Lasswell bluntly put it) should systematically manipulate mass sentiment in order to preserve democracy from threats posed by authoritarian societies such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

One Rockefeller seminar participant, Donald Slesinger (former dean of the social science at the University of Chicago), blasted Lasswell's claims as using a democratic guise to tacitly accept the objectives and methods of a new form of authoritarianism. "We [the Rockefeller seminar] have been willing, without thought, to sacrifice both truth and human individuality in order to bring about given mass responses to war stimuli," Slesinger contended. "We have thought in terms of fighting dictatorships- by-force through the establishment of dictatorship-by-manipulation. 30 Slesinger's view enjoyed some support from other participants and from Rockefeller Foundation officers such as Joseph Willits, who criticized what he described as authoritarian or even fascist aspects of Lasswell's arguments. Despite this resistance, the social polarization created by the approaching war strongly favored Lasswell, and in the end he enjoyed substantial new funding and an expanded staff courtesy of the foundation. Slesinger, on the other hand, drifted away from the Rockefeller seminars and appears to have rapidly lost influence within the community of academic communication specialists.

World War II spurred the emergence of psychological warfare as a particularly promising new form of applied communication research. The personal, social, and scientific networks established in U.S. social sciences during World War II, particularly among communication researchers and social psychologists, later played a central role in the evolution (or "social construction") of U.S. sociology after the war. A detailed discussion of U.S. psychological operations during World War 11 is of course outside the scope of this book. There is a large literature on the subject, which is discussed briefly in the Bibliographic Essay at the end of this text. A few points are worth mentioning, however, to introduce some of the personalities and concepts that would later play a prominent role in psychological operations and communication studies after 1945.

The phrase "psychological warfare" is reported to have first entered English in 1941 as a translated mutation of the Nazi term Weltanschauungskrieg (literally, worldview warfare), meaning the purportedly scientific application of propaganda, terror, and state pressure as a means of securing an ideological victory over one's enemies. 31 William "Wild Bill" Donovan, then director of the newly established U.S. intelligence agency Office of Strategic Services (OSS), viewed an understanding of Nazi psychological tactics as a vital source of ideas for "Americanized" versions of many of the same stratagems. Use of the new term quickly became widespread throughout the U.S. intelligence community. For Donovan psychological warfare was destined to become a full arm of the U.S. military, equal in status to the army, navy, and air force. 32

Donovan was among the first in the United States to articulate a more or less unified theory of psychological warfare. As he saw it, the "engineering of consent" techniques used in peacetime propaganda campaigns could be quite effectively adapted to open warfare. Pro-Allied propaganda was essential to reorganizing the U.S. economy for war and for creating public support at home for intervention in Europe, Donovan believed. Fifth-column movements could be employed abroad as sources of intelligence and as morale-builders for populations under Axis control. He saw "special operations -- meaning sabotage, subversion, commando raids, and guerrilla movements -- as useful for softening up targets prior to conventional military assaults. "Donovan's concept of psychological warfare was all-encompassing," writes Colonel Alfred Paddock, who has specialized in this subject for the U.S. Army War College. "Donovan's visionary dream was to unify these functions in support of conventional (military) unit operations, thereby forging a 'new instrument of war.'" 33

Donovan, a prominent Wall Street lawyer and personal friend of Franklin Roosevelt, convinced FDR to establish a central, civilian intelligence agency that would gather foreign intelligence, coordinate analysis of information relevant to the war, and conduct propaganda and covert operations both at home and abroad. In July 1941 FDR created the aptly named Office of the Coordinator of Information, placing Donovan in charge.

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Ras Kass - Ordo Abchao (Order Out Of Chaos)

Anonymous Rap - Freedom

The Plan for a New World Order Stumbles on Geopolitical Realities

For four centuries, political leaders have tried to create an international order that governs relationships between nations and prevents wars.. While the principle of state sovereignty has yielded results, intergovernmental organizations have mainly reflected the prevailing balance of power. As for the ambitious U.S. New World Order, it is being shattered by new geopolitical realities.

Spain’s Crisis Reignites an Old Social Conflict

Three years into the crisis, the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has faced protests by miners, students, teachers, legions of jobless workers and any range of others unhappy with his austerity policies. But the protests here in rural Spain, which have tipped increasingly toward lawlessness and civil disobedience, contain the echoes of conflicts that have a special place in Spain’s history. As Spain’s biggest region and farming heartland, Andalusia was the site of many of the confrontations over land ownership leading up to the Spanish Civil War, when a landed elite resisted an agrarian reform meant to give farm hands better work conditions and job security.

“We’re not anarchists looking for conflict, but our claims are similar to those of the 1930s,” Mr. Cañamero said, referring to the war years, “because the land is, unfortunately, under the control now of even fewer people than at that time.”

José Luis Solana, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Jaén, said that even if some of the claims made by the farm unions were questionable or exaggerated, “an agrarian reform and proper land distribution in Andalusia is one of the missing elements of our transition to democracy” — both in terms of social justice and improved economic efficiency.

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Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance

1. If you work hard, and become successful, it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard, just as if you are tall with long hair it doesn’t mean you would be a midget if you were bald.

2. “Fortune” is a word for having a lot of money and for having a lot of luck, but that does not mean the word has two definitions.

3. Money is like a child—rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there.

4. People who say money doesn’t matter are like people who say cake doesn’t matter—it’s probably because they’ve already had a few slices.

5. There may not be a reason to share your cake. It is, after all, yours. You probably baked it yourself, in an oven of your own construction with ingredients you harvested yourself. It may be possible to keep your entire cake while explaining to any nearby hungry people just how reasonable you are.

6. Nobody wants to fall into a safety net, because it means the structure in which they’ve been living is in a state of collapse and they have no choice but to tumble downwards. However, it beats the alternative.

7. Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don’t tell them they aren’t. Sit with them and have a drink.

8. Don’t ask yourself if something is fair. Ask someone else—a stranger in the street, for example.

9. People gathering in the streets feeling wronged tend to be loud, as it is difficult to make oneself heard on the other side of an impressive edifice.

10. It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.

11. Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.

12. If you have a large crowd shouting outside your building, there might not be room for a safety net if you’re the one tumbling down when it collapses.

13. 99 percent is a very large percentage. For instance, easily 99 percent of people want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and the occasional slice of cake for dessert. Surely an arrangement can be made with that niggling 1 percent who disagree.

(via by Lemony Snicket | OccupyWriters.com)

Source

Anonymous - Prepare for Revolution

The government lies to you. Banks steal from you. Inform yourself. Prepare for the Revolution. Anonymous is not a group or an entity. Anonymous is an idea. Those who identify themselves with anon share the common idea of freedom. We believe that there can be a world free of oppression. Anything that stands between the people and these freedoms is target to severe scrutiny and activism. Many misconceptions of Anonymous have been fed to you by the mainstream media and governments around the world. Be assured, we are here to help. We are here to stand up against those who violate your rights as a human being, freedom of thought, speech, expression and the freedom to choose how to live your life. Anonymous is not a group of hackers, we are a collective who also share with hacktivists. The game has changed. Oppression and tyranny have become far too common in this world and we have risen to meet the challenge. Anonymous is everywhere, we are your neighbors, friends, colleagues, relatives; we are your mailmen, barbers, clerks and lawyers. In a world where corruption hides its face around every corner, Anonymous is there to meet it. The system is a tool to keep you oppressed and dependant. Anonymous is the key to your freedom. Join us as we carry out the plan, one year three phases. Strengthen yourself, become the resistance, be part of a freedom movement.

We are Anonymous, United as one, Divided by zero, Expect us.

See also:

Global TrapWire, INDECT protest planned Saturday, October 20

James Scott: The Art of Not Being Governed

The author of several books including Seeing Like a State, Professor Scott's research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of hegemony and resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations and anarchism. We talk with Professor Scott about his newest book, The Art of Not Being Governed. It is the first-ever examination of the volumes of literature on state-making that evaluates why people would deliberately remain stateless.

James Scott, is Sterling Professor of Political Science, Professor of Anthropology, and Co-director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University.

Source

PEDAL: 100 Days to Palestine

Part 1: An introduction to PEDAL and a few stories about food autonomy.

On the 21st of March 2011, a motley group of eighteen cyclists broke away from London’s edges and headed south, through the spring sunshine and soft shadows of Kent. It was the first day of a four month bicycle caravan that was to link projects and communities fighting for social and environmental justice from the UK to Palestine. The project had been many months in the making; the result of countless late night discussions, and early morning dreams.

We were a self-organised collective, working by consensus decision-making, and powered by a desire to support grassroots social movements and make explicit the threads that draw seemingly diverse struggles together. There were three broad narratives that guided our journey:

The first was to respond to the call out from Palestinian civil society in 2005 for a programme of boycotts, divestments and sanctions against companies who profit from or are complicit in the occupation of Palestine. The second was to work with groups who are organising around community control of food systems and fighting for access to land, seed and water. The third was to link communities fighting for social and environmental justice against corporate control and corrupt governments, sharing their stories and tactics across contexts. We sought to use our journey to celebrate the arts and cultures of resistance by sharing stories, skills and strategies for radical social change along our route. By building meta-national relationships of living and breathing solidarity we hoped to mutually support and strengthen grassroots social movements through Europe and into the Middle East.

The bicycle was an obvious tool for such a journey. It allowed us to move seamlessly through the landscape and visit communities whilst interacting with the cultures that flowed between them. The other tools we carried with us were our ‘seeds of solidarity’ seedbank and our methods of democratic group organising.

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The Revolution Will Be Televised Episode 1

BBC Three Satirical series featuring bite-sized comedy hits, from fictionalised characters to stunt-led sketches, which brings the corruption, greed and hypocrisy of politicians, multi-nationals and tax-shy billionaires to the fore and drags it to the court of public opinion. They have been taking the mickey out of the British public for years - now it's their turn to be outraged, deceived, inconvenienced and humiliated.

Dale Maily is at the Occupy movement in London to have a word with the hippies; the Foundation for the Glorification of Tony Blair are on a mission to make Tony Blair a saint; and James and Barnaby are meeting for the first time at the Liberal Democrat Party conference. Meanwhile, bankers, Topshop and the London foreign embassies feel some heat.

This series brings corruption, greed and hypocrisy to the fore and drags it to the court of public opinion.

Luka Lesson - Please Resist Me

Written and spoken by Luka Lesson
Produced by Icon Kinesis
In collaboration with The Centre for Poetics and Justice
Follow on Twitter: @lukalesson
www.facebook.com/lukaislesson
Album at www.lesson.bandcamp.com
www.lukalesson.com

Naked Ambition: Topless protests go global

A naked woman in a city's central square is bound to attract attention, which is exactly what Ukraine's Femen group is hoping for with a series of high-profile demonstrations against the abuse of women's rights which has made the news across Europe.

Sexy Mandarin draws flak from Singaporeans

How would you like to learn Mandarin from a bevy of lingerie clad models? Sexy Mandarin is a new website that promises just that. But are the raunchy videos actually effective? RazorTV hits the streets to find out what Singaporeans think.

Neo-Nazi music popular in US military

White supremacist and Neo Nazi rock music is flourishing worldwide. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, music sales are a primary source of income for racist groups and a rich recruiting ground for new members. The SPLC says the number of hate groups it monitors has exploded to over one thousand in the years since Barack Obama's election. Al Jazeera's Rob Reynolds reports from Los Angeles.

Greek police accused of stoking racist attacks

Human rights groups say hate crimes in Greece are rising and that police behaviour is making the situation worse.

They say in the past six months there have been hundreds of victims and that state crackdowns on illegal immigrants are encouraging nationalist sentiment.

Activists say it is not just the frequency of the attacks that has increased but also the ferocity.

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Police shoot homeless man 46 times

Video has surfaced of an altercation filmed earlier this year between six officers with the Saginaw, Michigan police department and a homeless man. The cops shot 49-year-old Milton Hall 46 times, killing him.

Authorities have released video footage of the July 1 encounter between Saginaw police officers and Hall, a homeless man they spotted wielding a knife in a local parking lot.

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From CNN [Warning: graphic video]

Belgian Police brutality in action! Warning- this is upsetting

I am already getting warnings to take down this video; So please mirror - in any case I have given a copy to the BBC political correspondent at the European Parliament; she said if she can't do anything with it she will pass it to other media colleagues; Thus if Youtube remove this vid, the story is not going away. Woken from my sleep by screams, I recorded an incident outside my flat; turns out I know the guy and his girlfriend from the neighourhood, nice decent folk. Some of the police involved... well you the jury of the world decide. This video will be personally shown by me to Members of the European Parliament. Belgium hosts the European institutions, I'm not sure this is the image Brussels wants the world to see. As an ex UN peacekeeping soldier I have seen too much of this in Brussels; coward armed police against unarmed and outnumbered civilians. Again you are the jury of the world; and you have seen the evidence- thumbs up for justice please. Feel free to mirror.

http://www.rtbf.be/video/v_intervention-policiere-musclee-a-montgomery?id=1753614&category=info

Crackdown Coaching: Bahrain's brutal British tactics

The pictures are familiar, regime forces cracking down on protesters, but this time they emanate from Bahrain. Activists trying to mark the one-year anniversary of a pro-democracy uprising were dispersed by heavily armed police. And as Ivor Bennet reports, the weapons, as well as the tactics, may have been imported from the UK.

Gang of Souls: A Generation of Beat Poets

Maria Beatty's engaging documentary exploring the insights and influences of the American Beat Poets. The film conveys their consciousness and sensibility through candid interviews with William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Diane Di Prima, among others. Designed as a tribute to them and to their spirit of artistic freedom, Gang of Souls also weaves in additional commentary from contemporary musicians, poets and writers such as Marianne Faithfull, Richard Hell, Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins. The film seeks to truly capture the magic of the Beat generation and its continuing legacy. It brilliantly expands upon how the poets reached new levels of creativity and inspired unprecedented social change.

Allen Ginsberg: "not quite a community, so much as a Gang of Souls, that liked each other (adored each other, actually) and saw a kind of star in each other's forehead."

Spain: Occupy Congress on September 25 - 25S/2012 - #SpanishRevolution #OcupaelCongreso

Madrid, around the House of Representatives on September 25.

Calling to citizens:

Warning: this may be the next and final mobilization of citizens from which to start the process of change that is left behind the current system and lay the foundations for real democracy.

The action is loud and clear:
On 25 September, we are going to Madrid will massively from everywhere of Spain, in order to surround the Congress of Deputies and stay there indefinitely, until the dissolution of the courts and the opening of a constitutional process to drafting a new constitution, this time, of a real democratic state.

All citizens are invited to participate, either individually or through assemblies, civic platforms, etc..
Change is necessary and will be led by the people.

Manifesto:
We, ordinary people are sick of suffering the consequences of a crisis that we have not created, we came together to write this manifesto and invite to everyone to join the claims that we claim.

We believe that the situation has gone beyond all tolerable limits and that we are victims of an unprecedented attack, that using the crisis as a pretext, is ruining our lives, and whose culprits are those who have configured as an untouchable oligarchy, with the complicity of all the political forces represented in parliament, manipulating all the powers of the state to maintain their privileges and excessive and illegal enrichment.

There is no way to hide that we live in a gigantic social fraud, with governments that systematically lie to us, doing exactly the opposite of its election commitments, and that there is any justice in the courts for bankers, politicians and business people to blame for the situation. We only see how this breed implements policies that destroy our rights and lives, and how we are victims of unwarranted repression when we demand a change in the situation.

We believe the problem is so huge that its solution does not pass through the usual mechanisms of the political system established, by them for us, to make us what they want, so we demand:

The resignation of the entire government, for misleading the country so inconceivable and lead the country to disaster, and the dissolution of the Parliament and call an immediate general election.

That these general elections will be for to convene a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution, with the participation of all political forces, because we do not recognize any validity to the current Constitution, drafted by a clique behind the village, and which enshrined the rule of the heirs of Francoism and who made a pact with them. It must be the people who determine the state model in which you want to live, which does not happen with the current, because we were given by the clique that responds exclusively to their interests.

An audit of public debt of Spain, with a moratorium on debt payments to be clearly delimited items that do not have to be paid by the nation, as they have served private interests who used the country for their own purposes and not of all Spanish citizens. We also demand the prosecution of all those who show suspicious of such maneuvers, and responsive to their property should be condemned.

The reform of the electoral law in order to truly represent the will of the sovereign people, which is not true in any way with the current.

The immediate repeal of all the reforms carried out by the Popular Party, because not only are a disaster for the country, but have been imposed on betrayal of the democratic will of the people.

A fair tax reform, to make pay more to those who have more. We also demand the repeal of the tax amnesty decreed by the government, whose injustice is a real mockery of honest taxpayers.

The abolition of all privileges of those exercising political responsibilities, and implementing strict control mechanisms on the performance of their duties.

The immediate cessation of all evictions, and commissioning cheap rate rental housing owned by the banks and has been aided by public funds.

The division of labor between all, it is a huge fallacy that has to work harder, fallacy supported by the greed of the big interests and contrary to the common people.

For these reasons we call on citizens on September 25, 2012 to appear indefinitely in the doors of Congress until the resignation of the government and the opening of a constitutional process, making it the call for unity of all fight for a fairer society.

We are the vast majority, we are the people, we are right, and not going to let you pass.

Obama Supported 'Syrian Rebels' Caught Engaging in War Crimes!

The BBC has sensationally censored a news story and a video showing Syrian rebels forcing a prisoner to become a suicide bomber, a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, presumably because it reflected badly on establishment media efforts to portray the FSA as glorious freedom fighters.

[forcing a prisoner to become a suicide bomber clip]
http://youtu.be/Fbxz6THXsf4
The video, a copy of which can be viewed above (the original BBC version was deleted), shows Free Syrian Army rebels preparing a bomb that is loaded onto the back of a truck to be detonated at a government checkpoint in the city of Aleppo.

The clip explains how the rebels have commandeered an apartment belonging to a Syrian police captain. The rebels are seen sneering at photos of the police captain's family while they proclaim, "Look at their freedom, look how good it is," while hypocritically enjoying the luxury of the man's swimming pool.

The video then shows a prisoner who the rebels claim belonged to a pro-government militia. Bruises from torture on the prisoner's body are explained away as having been metered out by the man's previous captors. The BBC commentary emphasizes how well the rebels are treating the man, showing them handing him a cigarette.

However, the man has been tricked into thinking he is part of a prisoner exchange program when in reality he is being set up as an unwitting suicide bomber. The prisoner is blindfolded and told to drive the truck towards a government checkpoint.

"What he doesn't know is that the truck is the one that's been rigged with a 300 kilo bomb," states the narrator.

The clip then shows rebels returning disappointed after it's revealed that the remote detonator failed and the bomb did not explode.

The BBC narrator admits that forcing prisoners to become suicide bombers "would certainly be considered a war crime."

New York Times reporters who shot the video claim they had no knowledge of the plot. A longer version of the clip is posted on the New York Times You Tube channel. The title of the clip glorifies the rebel fighters as "The Lions of Tawhid".

The Globalization of War: The "Military Roadmap" to World War III

The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest.

The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously. The concept of the “Long War” has characterized US military doctrine since the end of World War II. The broader objective of global military dominance in support of an imperial project was first formulated under the Truman administration in the late 1940s at the outset of the Cold War.

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This House believes pornography does a good public service

Video of the Cambridge Union Society debating the issue here.

The Weight of Chains - Težina lanaca (2010)

Boris Malagurski's award-winning Canadian film "The Weight of Chains", dealing with the breakup of Yugoslavia from a different angle.

Watch the film that has stirred controversy around the world, screened at cinemas across Australia, Canada and the US, as well as at film festivals in London (Raindance), Belgrade (Beldocs), Havana, Ann Arbor, Toronto, and many others.

If you thought you knew why Yugoslavia broke up, get ready for 2 hours of shocking facts that will shed a different light on Western intervention in the Balkans. Nicknamed the "Serbian Michael Moore" by the oldest daily newspaper in the Balkans, Malagurski will expose the root causes of the Yugoslav wars and explain that the goal was for the West to create economic and geopolitical colonies in that part of the world.

Who's in the film? Everyone from former "Economic Hitman" John Perkins, Retired Major General of the UN Army Lewis Mackenzie, Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky, Canadian journalist Scott Taylor, former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia James Bissett, humanitarian Vlade Divac and the list goes on!

This film was funded exclusively through donations, so please support the project by buying a DVD of the film through the film's website:

http://www.weightofchains.com/buy

Also! Please donate towards the next film that Boris Malagurski is working on: The Weight of Chains 2, which will continue the story where the first film ends! Watch the trailer and donate now at:

http://www.weightofchains.com/2

Interview with a Media Manipulator

This cranial smashing, world imploding Underground Interview with Ryan Holiday and Rebellious Truths is about the rise of online media manipulation and its devastating consequences. Holiday is the Director of Marketing for American Apparel and author of the new book Trust Me I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. TRAILER (http://youtu.be/q1e44JsecbE).

In his book and this interview, Holiday undoes the curtain of how online news and blogs are manipulated by people like him at the expense of the people. Many consider the internet to be the new great frontier of freedom for information, an oasis amidst a toxic sea of corporate media propaganda. But is it? Holiday blows forth a storm of insider info and shines a spotlight on how political candidates are manufactured online, human psychology is manipulated for page views, and how honest and integrity are all but lost in this digital debacle. No worries, it's not all gloom and doom as he provides many solutions and alternatives to get educated and stop the manipulation from happening to YOU!

http://www.rebellioustruths.org/

The Time for Revolution is Now 2009 - 2015

History and Surrealism

From A Cavalier History of Surrealism by Jules-François Dupuis [Raoul Vaneigem]

Surrealism belongs to one of the terminal phases in the crisis of culture. In unitary regimes, of which monarchy based on divine right is the best known example, the integrative power of myth concealed the separation between culture and social life. Artists, writers, scholars and philosophers, just like the peasants, the bourgeois, the wielders of power, and even the King himself, had to live out their contradictions within a hierarchical structure which was from top to bottom the work of a God, and unchangeable in its very essence.

The growth of the bourgeois class of merchants and manufacturers meant the moulding of human relationships to the rationality of exchange, the imposition of the quantifiable power of money with mechanistic certainty as to its concrete truth. This development was accompanied by an accelerating tendency toward secularization which destroyed the formerly idyllic relationship between masters and slaves. The reality of class struggle broke upon history with the same brutality as the reign of economics, which had suddenly emerged as the focus of all preoccupations.

Once the divine State, whose form constituted an obstacle to the development of capitalism, had been done away with, the exploitation of the proletariat, the forward march of capital, and the laws of the commodity, by everywhere bending beings and things to their will, became cumbersome realities susceptible neither to the authority of a divine providence nor to incorporation into the myth of a transcendent order: realities which the ruling class, if it was not to be borne away by the next revolutionary wave – already incontestably foreshadowed by the Enragés and Babouvists – was now obliged at all costs to conceal from the consciousness of the proletariat.

Out of the relics of myth, which were also the relics of God, the bourgeoisie sought to construct a new transcendent unity capable of using the force of illusion to dissolve the separations and contradictions that individuals deprived of religion (in the etymological sense of a collective bond with God) experienced within themselves and between each other. In the wake of the abortive cults of the Supreme Being and the Goddess of Reason, nationalism in its multifarious guises - from Bonaparte's Caesarism to the gamut of national socialisms - came to the fore as the necessary but increasingly inadequate ideology of the State (whether the State of private and monopolistic capitalism or the State of capitalism in its socialized form).

Indeed, the fall of Napoleon marked the end of any prospect of reinstituting a unitary myth founded on empire, on the prestige of arms or on the mystique of territorial power. All the same, there is one trait common to all the ideologies that evolved either from the memory of the divine myth, or out of the contradictions of the bourgeoisie (liberalism), or by way of the deformation of revolutionary theories (that is, theories thrown up by real struggles which feed back into those struggles and hasten the advent of a classless society by remaining necessarily opposed to all ideology). That common trait is the same dissimulation or distortion, the same deprecation or misapprehension, of the real movement that arises from human praxis.

The radical consciousness cannot be reconciled with ideology, whose only function is to mystify. What the acutest eighteenth-century consciousness perceived for the most part, in the void left behind by the ebb tide of divine consciousness, was the suffering of separation, isolation and alienation. Disenchantment (in the literal sense of the end of the spell cast by a unifying God) thus went hand in hand with an awareness of contradictions that had no chance of being resolved or transcended.

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'The city itself is always already a weapon'

From weaponised forms by Jad Baaklini, The State

While modern urban warfare has moved on from the simple symmetries of fighting off the enemy at the gates, today’s city is no less a war machine. Indeed, war has now seeped inwards, splintering the citadel a thousand ways.

In Cities Under Siege, Stephen Graham describes how a “new military urbanism” has turned “the everyday spaces, sites and infrastructures of cities [into] the main targets and threats within a limitless ‘battlespace’.” In his usual style, Graham unearths and amasses a plenum of techniques and tactics that have migrated from foreign battlefields, back to the Western Homeland to be used to pacify the enemy within.

But the city is at war in more subtle ways, too. When we consider that “a line is not an abstract thing,” the militancy of the more banal, everyday urbanism of the city planner becomes clear. History has taught us the horrors of the Haussmannian grid, itself a manifestation of the desire to pacify the populace (for more on the continuities of ‘old’ and ‘new military urbanism,’ see this post from dystopolitik), but what about the violence of the less visible CIAM grid?

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http://www.ted.com Joshua Prince-Ramus believes that if architects re-engineer their design process, the results can be spectacular. Speaking at TEDxSMU, Dallas, he walks us through his fantastic re-creation of the local Wyly Theater as a giant "theatrical machine" that reconfigures itself at the touch of a button.

Kenneth Rexroth: Who Is Alienated From What?

From libcom.org

A 1967 article examining the 'alienation' that the Situationists and other revolutionaries of the time were re-focusing on, as a driving force in modern life, as the irrationality of capitalism worked its way from impoverished communities to 'high culture'.

WhoIsAlienatedFromWhat.pdf [5.73 MB]

See also:

from 'Poetry And Jazz At The Blackhawk' LP (1959 - Fantasy Records 7008)

Kenneth Rexroth - poetry

backed by the Chamber Jazz Sextet:

Allyn Ferguson: piano, electric piano, french horn, percussion
Frank Leal: alto saxophone, bass clarinet
Modesto Briseno: tenor & baritone saxophones, clarinet
Robert Wilson: trumpet, percussion
Fred Dutton: bass, bassoon, contra-bassoon
Tom Reynolds: drums, tympani

Chatting with Chomsky

The linguistics professor, political theorist and activist discusses the Occupy movement, Obama’s first term and the economic crisis in Europe.

Honduras: Newest front in the US war on drugs in Latin America

The US has provided financial support for both the police and the military there in spite of its deep corruption issues.

Furthermore, members of both institutions have been linked to a range of killings. Political dissidents, human rights workers and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community have all been killed at alarming rates.

In May, a mission in the Moskitia region, which was led by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), left four innocent civilians killed and four others wounded. It was followed by two more incidents where a US DEA agent shot and killed an alleged drug trafficker. Local communities have demanded a thorough investigation but so far nothing has been done.

The US has a long and controversial history in Honduras. In the 1980s, the US built a base there and trained an elite Honduran military unit. That unit went on to carry out tortures, kidnappings and killings.

Who is responsible? What should be the role of the US in Honduras? And what happened that night in the Moskitia when a US raid ended up leaving innocent people dead?

Fault Lines travels to Honduras, the country with the highest homicide rate in the world, to find out.

Anonymous begin operation against ex-CIA “TrapWire” (USA)

From anarchistnews:

Greetings Citizens of the United States of America –

This weekend, it was disclosed by Wikileaks the details about a system known as “TrapWire” that uses facial recognition and other techniques including high-end artificial intelligence to track and monitor individuals using countless different closed-circuit cameras operated by cities and other institutions, including private businesses. This program also monitors all social media on the internet.

The software is billed as a method by which to prevent terrorism, but can of course also be used to provide unprecedented surveillance and data-mining capabilities to governments and corporations – including many with a history of using new technologies to violate the rights of citizens. TrapWire is already used in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Texas, DC, London, and other locales around the USA.

The ex-CIA agents who help run the firm are old friends of Stratfor vice president Fred Burton, whom they’ve briefed on their own capabilities in e-mails obtained by Anonymous hackers and provided to WikiLeaks. Stratfor has engaged in several surveillance operations against activists, such as those advocating for victims of the Bhopal disaster – on behalf of large U.S. corporations; Burton himself was revealed to have advocated “bankrupting” and “ruining the life” of activists like Julian Assange in e-mails to other friends. TrapWire is extremely expensive to maintain, and is usually done so at taxpayer expense; Los Angeles county alone has spent over $1.4 million dollars on the software’s use in a single three-month period of 2007.

Although most of the regions in which TrapWire operates don’t share information with each other, all of this is set to change; as Abraxas Applications president Dan Botsch told Burton via e-mail, “I think over time the different networks will begin to unite,” noting that several networks had already begun discussions on merging their information. Abraxas itself has always had the ability to “cross-network matches” from every region at their own office. By June 2011, Washington D.C. police were engaged in a pilot project under the Department of Homeland Security that’s likely to lead to more cities using TrapWire on a more integrated basis.

Abraxas, the firm whose spin-off Abraxas Applications developed TrapWire in 2007, has long been involved in a lesser-known practice known as persona management, which involves the use of fake online “people” to gather intelligence and/or disseminate disinformation. The firm Ntrepid, created by Abraxas owner Cubic Corporation, won a 2010 CENTCOM contract to provide such capabilities for use in foreign countries; several board members of Ntrepid also sit on Abraxas.

The more we learn about TrapWire and similar systems, it becomes absolutely clear that we must at all costs shut this system down and render it useless. A giant AI electronic brain able to monitor us through a combination of access to all the CCTV cameras as well as all the online social media feeds is monstrous and Orwellian in it’s implications and possibilities. The Peoples Liberation Front and Anonymous will now put forth a call to arms, and initiate the doom of this evil and misbegotten program. We will use the following tactics to accomplish this goal:

1) The PLF and Anonymous will work closely with WikiLeaks and Project PM to gather, collate, disclose and disseminate as much information as possible about TrapWire and it’s related technologies and programs. This was begun this weekend, and already much has been learned. And they are scared of this, already many sites and repositories of data on TrapWire are disappearing – being taken down by those who do not want you to know the truth about what they are doing. And WikiLeaks is at this writing enduring a massive and historic DdoS attack in an attempt to conceal this information from the public. We will do this not only to educate the general public regarding TrapWire, but to move them to pressure their representatives to shut down funding for this and similar programs of massive surveillance, and to pass laws outlawing the creation of future projects of this type.

2) ACTION ALERT – “Smash A Cam Saturday”: TrapWire has access to virtually all CCTV’s that have IP/internet connectivity. We have prepared an initial map/database of these cameras across the USA, and we will continue to expand this knowledge base.

http://bit.ly/PcByYJ

While this database is a good guide to high priority camera targets, we encourage everyone to target any camera with IP/internet connectivity. We are asking everyone to sabotage at least one CCTV per week on what we are calling “Smash A Cam Saturday”. We have provided this excellent manual of different tactics and strategies for disabling or destroying these “eyes of the beast”.

http://bit.ly/1Qjp

3) As stated above, this “monster” doesn’t just have eyes that need gouging out – it also has “ears”. TrapWire constantly monitors social media. In a strange twist of fate, the company that developed TrapWire also works on something called “sock-puppet” programs. These are projects designed to create thousands of fake personas on social media. We will turn this idea and software against them, creating thousands of phony accounts and use them to produce a deluge of false triggers for the TrapWire program – essentially drowning it in “white noise”.

4) Finally, the Peoples Liberation Front and Anonymous will do what we do best. We will find, hack – and destroy the servers where the AI “electronic brain” of this program is housed.

Operation TrapWire is a direct action of the over-arching Anonymous Operation USA. TrapWire is but one instance of how the government of the USA has turned against it’s own citizens, designating them as suspects and enemies. Now those citizens rise, and take back their country and their freedom. Welcome to the Second American Revolution.

We Are Anonymous

We Are Legion

We Never Forgive

We Never Forget

Government of the USA, it’s too late to EXPECT US.

Original link

Graphic:
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/80569118@N06/7766122174

More info:
https://publicintelligence.net/unravelling-trapwire/

Even more info:
http://storify.com/bendoernberg/test-post

Source

See also:

TrapWire tied to White House, Scotland Yard, MI5 and others, claims hacked Stratfor email

CYBER WAR. Russian botnet targets free speech

The Trial Of Ezra Pound

The Trial Of Ezra Pound - Presented by Sean Street - BBC Radio 3 - Sunday 20 July 2008

To mark 2008's 50th anniversary of his release, historian Sean Street investigates how Ezra Pound (1885-1972), one of the 20th century's most important poets, was accused of treason by the US Government and held for years in a mental hospital after he made a series of anti-American and anti-Semitic broadcasts in Italy.

The programme investigates the significance of the case today, asking whether he committed treason or inconveniently used his right to free speech. With contributions from Pound's daughter Mary de Rachewlitz, his biographer David Moody and the playwright Bernard Kops, who wrote a play about Pound, in order to find out how we should view the complex and controversial poet.

See also:

A Poet's Legacy: As Neo-Fascists Claim Ezra Pound, His Family Says, 'Hands Off'

Ecuador Grants Julian Assange Asylum; U.S. Seen as "Hidden Hand" Behind U.K. Threat to Raid Embassy

From Democracy NOW!


As Ecuador prepared to announce its decision on granting asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Britain threatened to raid the Ecuadorean embassy in London where Assange has taken refuge for the past two months. Britain told Ecuador that giving Julian Assange asylum would not change a thing and that it might still revoke the diplomatic status of Quito’s embassy in London to allow the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder to Sweden to face questioning over alleged sexual misconduct. We’re joined by Michael Ratner, an attorney for Julian Assange and president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and by Ben Griffin, an activist with Veterans for Peace UK, participating in a vigil in support of Assange outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London. "Is this really about the U.S. being the 'hidden hand' behind what the British are doing so that they can eventually get a hold of Julian Assange, try him for espionage and put him into a jail?" Ratner asks. "That’s what’s really going on here. Let’s not kid ourselves." [includes rush transcript]

Official Ecuadorian government statement granting Assange asylum.

Leader Of Anti-Semitic Party In Hungary Discovers He's Jewish

From NPR

One of the leaders of Hungary's Jobbik Party, which the Anti-Defamation League says is one of the few political parties in Europe to overtly campaign with anti-Semitic materials, has discovered that he is himself a Jew.

As the AP says, Csanad Szegedi had in the past railed about the "Jewishness" of the political class. According to the ADL, his party's presidential candidate referred to Israeli Jews as "lice-infested, dirty murderers."

For Szegedi all of this came to a screeching halt, when in 2010 a prisoner confronted him with evidence that he had Jewish roots. According to the AP, Szegedi tried to bribe the prisoner to keep him quiet, but rumors and innuendo reached a fever pitch by late last year and in June, Szegedi conceded that his mother was a Jew. According to Jewish law, that makes Szegedi Jewish, too.

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ALDOUS HUXLEY & JOHN C. LILLY: 20th CENTURY VISIONARIES (whose messages are more important now than ever)

From RENAVIGATING THE HUMAN PROCESS

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” ALDOUS HUXLEY















"In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true, or becomes true within certain limits to be learned by experience and experiment. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits." JOHN C. LILLY

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Musical Innerlube: Immortal Technique - Open your eyes

Predicting crime online and offline

Is intelligent threat detection the future of surveillance?


http://www.stopp-indect.info/

Arrest of 4 Mexican Generals linked to downed CIA drug plane

From Daniel Hopsicker, MadCow Morning News

The investigation and recent arrest of four prominent Generals in the Mexican Army on charges of protecting cocaine flights for Mexican drug cartels began with a series of seismic shifts in the drug trade that were set in motion more than five years ago by two American-registered planes from St Petersburg Florida —a DC9 airliner (N900SA) and a Gulfstream business jet(N987SA)—caught carrying almost 10 tens of cocaine on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

The four Generals, one of whom held the second highest position in the Defense Ministry, were caught up in an investigation which began after two drug traffickers agreed to cooperate with authorities.

Both admitted participating in the November 2007 murder of the Director of Civil Aviation in the Yucatan, Jose Luis Soladana Ortiz, gunned down for reneging on an agreement to allow drug flights from South America—like the Gulfstream business jet from St. Petersburg— to land at the international airport in the resort city of Cancun.

Soladana's action remains unexplained.

But the results were only too visible: the disappearance or murder of airport personnel, including three tortured bodies dumped alongside a road on the same day Soladana Ortiz was shot seven times at point blank range.

An American war, Mexican blood

The tangled story of the two busted American planes which would eventually lead to the indictment of the Mexican Generals is riddled with complicity at the highest levels of the governing elites in both Mexico and the U.S.

So far, however, only Mexicans have been charged with any crimes in the two massive drug moves.Also, so far, only Mexicans have been dying because of it.

The Mexican war on drugs, launched in 2006, has since left over 50,000 people dead. The army has gained sweeping new powers.

In Mexico the newly-indicted Generals are widely thought to be just the tip of an enormous iceberg of official complicity on the local, state, and federal level. General Angeles, the last to be detained, was a close aide to Guillermo Galvan, the current secretary of national defense.

Generals today…..Bankers tomorrow?

Moreover the drug trafficking conspiracy for which the Generals were indicted was aided by cronies of former Mexican President Vicente Fox, whose currency exchange, Casa de Cambio Puebla, laundered the drug money through American banks that was used to purchase both the Gulfstream, and the DC9 caught eighteen months earlier, carrying an astonishing 5.6 tons of cocaine.

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Anonymous - RE-Evolution Project Mayhem 2012

Imagine we leak it all...

How Commercials Mind Control People

Full List of Corrina Rachel Videos
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL544E863FFB3E437B

This video was produced by Psychetruth
http://www.psychetruth.net

See also:

Information Control For Social Manipulation

Chomsky: Bush disappeared and tortured those the US disliked, while the Obama administration simply "murders them"

From Chomsky on Obama by Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Appearing on Democracy Now this morning, Noam Chomsky said the following:

If the Bush administration didn’t like somebody, they’d kidnap them and send them to torture chambers.

If the Obama administration decides they don’t like somebody, they murder them.

Though a bit oversimpified — the Bush administration killed plenty of people, while the Obama administration makes use of kidnapping and torture chambers albeit by proxy; also, as this tweeter noted: it’s “unfair to say the Obama administration kills those it doesn’t like, since they claim power to kill people without even knowing who they are” – this concise comparison just about about sums it up. But it’s important to note that President Obama has progressivism in his heart and that makes all the difference in the world.

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Mae Brussell: Bebe Rebozo [was] Nixon's CIA babysitter

Originally broadcast October 29, 1973.

Watergate, Hughes, Nixon, Archibald Cox fired, Bebe Rebozo is Nixon's CIA babysitter, Bahamas. Fascism in California. Louis Tackwood, book, "The Glass House Tapes," U.S. Gestapo takeover. Daniel Del Solar article, Cambridge simulation game plan "Politica," Chile, Allende murder. Project "Camelot." ABT Assoc. Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). Bogus Edward J. Epstein article in Esquire Mag.

Leaked documents reveal US diplomats actually work for Monsanto

Biotech giant Monsanto has been genetically modifying the world’s food supply and subsequently breeding environmental devastation for years, but leaked documents now reveal that Monsanto has also deeply infiltrated the United States government. With leaked reports revealing how U.S. diplomats are actually working for Monsanto to push their agenda along with other key government officials, Monsanto’s grasp on international politics has never been clearer.

Amazingly, the information reveals that the massive corporation is also intensely involved in the passing and regulations concerning the very GM ingredients they are responsible for. In fact, the information released by WikiLeaks reveals just how much power Monsanto has thanks to key positions within the United States government and elsewhere. Not only was it exposed that the U.S. is threatening nations who oppose Monsanto with military-style trade wars, but that many U.S. diplomats actually work directly for Monsanto.

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Classified Life: Sibel Edmonds' Story

The following excerpt is the prologue to her book. -Peter Handel (a freelance writer based in the San Francisco Bay area).

Prologue

I threw my carry-on into the backseat. Once behind the wheel, I paused to take a mental inventory of what I would need: passport, check; traveler’s checks, check; cash in dollars and Turkish lira, check …

I looked at my watch: half past three. I gazed on our townhouse, reflecting; the third Christmas in a row with no jolly wreath on our door or festive lights decorating the trim. I had a little less than two and a half hours to get to the airport, which was less than fifteen minutes away, to purchase my tickets to JFK with a continuing flight to Istanbul, get on the plane, and take off. I couldn’t procrastinate any longer, so I started the engine, pulled out of our driveway, and headed north toward Reagan National Airport.

The gray, windy December day promised a heavy downpour, precisely mirroring my mood. I tightened my grip on the wheel to steady my shaking hands. I’d left a short note for my husband telling him it was time for me to go and face whatever awaited me there. I was not going to miss the chance to see my grandmother one last time. I would not let them erase me from my family’s map.

Until a few years earlier, before the dark journey began, we frequented the country at least once a year, and my family paid us annual visits. Then came the nightmare; changing everything, turning our life upside down.

I had plotted the trip in secrecy, something I had never done in all our years of marriage. I knew he would do everything he could to stop me from taking this trip. It was, after all, a matter of life and death.

I turned right into the airport entrance and squinted to make out the signs to long-term parking. My vision blurred, and I realized it was not poor visibility but tears. My determination, my will, began to melt with each passing second. I passed the parking entrance and continued on. I made two more turns around the airport, tears still falling, before I took the exit. Now I was crying out loud; sobbing. The pangs, pain, fear, rage and everything else I had bottled up in me for the past four years began to pour out; a floodtide of grief.

Yes, this was true acceptance, full acknowledgment. I could never ever go back. I would never see my extended family again. My past, my ties, my bonds and heritage all had been wiped out - completely and forever.

In my country of origin I have been branded as a spy for the United States of America. There I have been characterized as a "traitor against the country" and named as "the enemy of the state."

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