Buncrana Together - 2016 - an elegy of evil

Buncrana Together commemorates 2016 as a year of attrocities afflicted by war and warmongers on innocent men woman and children In the Middle East.  We condemn Ireland's role in this by not speaking out, by allowing the use of Shannon Airport to transport US military,  of extraordinary rendition of detainees and not least awarding John Kerry, US Secretary of State,  the Tipperary Peace Prize. 

Through the graphic video and eyewitness's account of the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 1945  and accompanied by lyrics and music from Chris Floyd's 'Wish The Devil wasn't Real',  it is hoped to focus attention on the evils of war happening all over the world, the menace and proliferation of nuclear weapons and the build up of US and NATO military forces surrounding China and Russia.  As John Pilger said in his latest documentary 'The Coming War on China', can we really afford to be silent?

"Hiroshima city was a red ocean, fire burning, whole entire city burning.  I heard a baby screaming.  I still remember very clearly the mother was bleeding all over and tried to nurse the baby and the baby was so......  When I remember that part of it, I just can't take it.  People themselves just horrible looking, the hari was ashes, and kinked up "


Wish the Devil

I get up in the morning
my eyes are scalded red
I get up in the morning
my eyes are scalded red
All night long there's been a battle in my head
Like invading armies
tormenting thoughts do rage
Like invading armies
tormenting thoughts do rage
At their head a Captain
The Prince of this dark age

Chorus:
Well, I lost my faith in Jesus
No god out there that I can feel
But when the pain comes how I wish
That the devil wasn't real

I bow my head in prayer
just like so long ago
I fold my hands in fervent prayer
like so many years ago
When God was in the garden
walking softly to and fro
My words rise up like eagles
then fall down with a crash
My words soar up like eagles
then fall down dead with a crash
And that empty space where God was,
The devil's filling it with trash

When the evening breeze is blowing
I feel joy on the wing
When the evening breeze is blowing
I feel joy on the wing
The future starts unfolding
like a flower in the spring
Then he comes round with his poison
that blossom withers on the stem
He comes round with his dram of evil
that flower's blasted on the stem
The whole world becomes a dungeon
Nobody there but me and him

'Last battle': On Contact visits Standing Rock resistance in North Dakota

Environmental activists and Native Americans from 200 tribes are waging a determined last-ditch battle to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Chris Hedges, host of RT America’s On Contact, visited the water protectors’ resistance camp.

Thousands of protesters are camping out near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, facing off against police, private security contractors, and the Army Corps of Engineers. The company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) intends to run the pipes under Lake Oahe, an artificial lake created by the Army on the Missouri River – and the Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s sole source of drinking water.

“Go back to when we were put on reservations,” Kandi Mossett, an activist with the Indigenous Environmental Network, told Hedges. “The Standing Rock tribe never ceded this land.”

Among the many Native American banners, several upside-down US flags are flying over the encampment. Mossett explained they symbolized the Natives’ distress.

“We have been in distress out here ever since we’ve been attacked by the police and the military for simply saying, ‘No, we do not want a pipeline underneath our drinking water source,’ and on our unceded treaty territory,” she said.

North Dakota Native Americans have been fighting hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, since 2008, when drilling began at Bakken shale fields. The oil boom brought thousands of workers to the state, disrupting local communities. Women and children no longer feel safe, because of the oil workers who live in “man camps,” Mossett said.

The land has suffered, too. An oil spill of over a million gallons in July of 2014 contaminated the upper flow of the Missouri. “Nothing is growing there, whatever that water touched,” Mossett says.

The Standing Rock Nation and its allies worry that when Dakota Access ruptures – not if, but when – it will affect not just the waters of Lake Oahe, but up to 80 million Americans living downstream.

The $3.8 billion pipeline, which is being constructed by Energy Transfer Partners, would transport 470,000 barrels of crude oil from the Bakken fields through three other states to a refinery in Illinois.

“It seems like what they want to do is just get the pipe in the ground and deal with whatever later,” Mossett said.

Native Americans and environmental activists have been building broad alliance against Dakota Access, seeking to replicate the success of the fight against the TransCanada Keystone XL, another pipeline endangering indigenous reservations.

Racism is a “powerful instrument that is being used to divide people,” Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network told Hedges. To counter this, the activists built a “Cowboy-Indian alliance” against Keystone, partnering with the farmers and ranchers in Nebraska.

The struggle in North Dakota has become “a model of resistance that will be replicated throughout the US, especially under a Trump presidency, against the hegemonic power of corporations and a democratic system that has become too anemic to carry out reforms – especially environmental reforms – that will protect the planet,” said Hedges.

“This is the last battle in the struggle against colonization – not only of people, but of the Earth. It is a battle indigenous communities have been fighting for over four centuries,” Hedges added. “If they lose, we all lose. If they win, we make possible life itself.”

Source: RT, Nov 28

Kingdom of the Unjust : Behind the U.S. - Saudi Connection

Chris Hedges explores why Saudi Arabia remains one of the U.S.’ closest allies in the Middle East with Medea Benjamin, author of “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection” . They examine why the U.S. overlooks the Saudi’s treatment of women, public

Saudi Arabia has become by far the number one purchaser of US weapons, with $115 billion deals under the Obama administration alone. Congress has just rubber-stamped every single one, says author and activist Medea Benjamin.

Saudi Arabia carried out 158 executions, 63 for non-violent drug crimes last year, often through public beheadings. Early this year, it executed 47 men for terrorism-related offenses, including the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. It practices gender apartheid against women, who are not allowed to drive, are banned from most jobs, and are controlled by male guardians. It prohibits freedom of expression, including freedom of religion. Homosexuals can be put to death.

It promotes a fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam throughout the Muslim world known as Wahhabism, which sanctifies violence against those considered infidels or apostates, including Sufis and Shiites. The autocratic Saudi royal family, whose wealth is estimated at 1.4 trillion dollars, lives in unimaginable extravagance, and often decadence. Yet Saudi Arabia is considered one of the US’ closest allies in the Middle East.

On this week's episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges explores why Saudi Arabia remains one of the U.S.' closest allies in the Middle East with Medea Benjamin, author of "Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection" . They examine why the U.S.

CH: Let's talk about this special relationship with Saudi Arabia, especially in light of the fact, as you point out in the book, the US now takes only 13 percent of Saudi oil…

Medea Benjamin: Yes, certainly the relationship was started out on the basis of oil when the Saudi Kingdom was first established in 1932, then oil was discovered in the 1930s, and then for 12 different administrations, Republican and Democrat, a close relationship with the Saudis based on oil. But as the years went by, the US produced more of its own oil, imported more from Canada, and so oil is not as important as it was. The US wants to be able to control where that oil goes to other countries. But the relationship has really started to shift in terms of what is the big focus, and I think the big focus is now that they have become the number one purchaser of US weapons by far. $115 billion over the last eight years – that is just under the Obama administration alone. It is a staggering sum, and it is amazing that it has been 43 different deals just under the Obama administration, and Congress has just rubber-stamped every single one.

CH: What about Saudi society? Give us a profile what Saudi Arabia is like.

MB: One of the most repressive countries in the world, where there is no freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, no political parties, no unions allowed, where dissentis treated as treason. You can be beheaded for insulting Islam, for insulting the King, for spreading atheism, for being convicted of being a homosexual, for sorcery. There is discrimination against entire groups of people like women who are not only forced to fully cover in public, it is the only country where women aren't allowed to drive. A guardianship system where women have to have a male legal guardian from the day they're born to the day they die. It is the most sex-segregated society in the world. Immigrant population, which is huge – of a 30 million population, 10 million are migrant workers, many of whom are coming from some of the poorest countries in the world and are treated like indentured servants.

CH: Let’s talk about how they are treated.

MB: First, let's say slavery was only eliminated in 1962 in Saudi Arabia, and with this huge oil money that has flooded the country, many people, including middle-class Saudis, have used the money to bring in foreign workers and it is a sponsorship program. You can't just say: “I'm from the poor country in Bangladesh, I am going to go try my luck in Saudi Arabia.”. You have to have a sponsor, and the sponsor then becomes like your owner – you couldn't even leave the country if you don't get permission from your employer. And you're treated like an indentured servant. You have no redress, you have no ability to fight back, the only thing you can do is try to contact your embassy, and good luck if they're going to come to your town...