October 14, 2013

Against th'law

... it's against th'law to gamble
it's against th'law to roam
it's against th'law to organize
or try to build a home
it's against th'law to sing
it's against th'law to dance
it's against th'law to tell you
th'trouble on my hands

everthing in winston-salem is against th'law
I'm a low pay daddy singin th'high price blues

October 14, 2013

First Arkansas Marching Song

... we have done with hoeing cotton
we have done with hoeing corn
we are colored yankee soliders now
as sure as you are born;
when the masters hear us yelling
they'll think it's Gabriel's horn
as we go marching on ...

October 14, 2013

Faded Coat of Blue

My brave lad sleeps in his faded coat of blue
In a lonely grave unknown lies the heart that beat so true
He sank faint and hungry among the famished brave
and they laid him sad and lonely within his nameless grave ...

October 10, 2013

Hokoyo!

Thomas Tafirenyika Mapfumo ... called his new style of music Chimurenga. In Shona it means "struggle", and was the name of a previous revolutionary movement in the late 19th century. His songs openly called for the violent overthrow of the government, with lyrics like "Mothers, send your sons to war." But since the white government did not understand Shona, they did not realize how radical it was. Eventually they caught on, though. The climax came with a song called "Hokoyo!", which means "Watch out!" The government banned the record from the state-controlled radio and threw him into a prison camp without charges in 1979 ...

October 10, 2013

Chelsea's Guardian Statement (David Coombs)

09 October 2013

... a story was published ... regarding Chelsea Manning's reaction to receiving the 2013 Sean MacBride Peace Award. In this letter, Chelsea stated that she was not informed that she had received the award or that Col. Ann Wright was accepting the award on her behalf ...

I had a phone call with Chelsea ... We discussed the letter that she sent to the Guardian. I reminded her that we spoke about the Sean MacBride Peace Award on three separate occasions: once when she received the award; once prior to Col. Wright accepting the award on her behalf; and once when the award was delivered into my physical possession and I informed her that the medal was made out of disarmed and recycled nuclear weapons systems. After being reminded of these conversations, Chelsea indicated that she did, in fact, remember the award and our discussions about it. She told me that she got confused ...

Chelsea stated in her letter that any "official" statements would come from her through a signed letter or release. I discussed with Chelsea the logistical difficulties of her decision given that it is often necessary to respond to an issue in a timely manner. Chelsea understood my concern and is reconsidering her position on this issue. For now, I will continue to provide updates and statements by Chelsea on the issues that impact her ...

http://www.armycourtmartialdefense.info/2013/10/chelseas-guardian-statement.html

October 9, 2013

Manning: I’m Not a Pacifist

... “I accept that there may be ‘peaceful’ or ‘anti-war’ implications to my actions—but this is purely based on your subjective interpretation of the primary source documents released in 2010-11” ...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2013/10/09/manning-i-m-not-a-pacifist.html

... Manning’s concerns relate to the 2013 Sean MacBride peace award which was granted to the former army private last month by the International Peace Bureau in recognition of her “outstanding work for peace” in “revealing information about US war crimes”. The award was accepted on Manning’s behalf by Ann Wright, a retired US army colonel ... Manning says she had no idea she had been given the award, let alone accepted it. The first she heard about it was when people wrote to her in prison quoting from Wright’s acceptance speech ... Wright suggested that Manning was “overwhelmed” that the Sean MacBride award had recognized “her actions as actions for peace.” Yet the former soldier insists that she has never perceived her actions in transmitting more than 700,000 classified US classified documents to WikiLeaks in 2010-11 as an act for peace ...
Chelsea Manning rejects 'pacifist' label in first statement since sentencing
Read Chelsea Manning's full statement
Exclusive: In first public remarks since guilty verdict, WikiLeaks source expresses intense upset at public presentation of her
Ed Pilkington in New York
theguardian.com, Wednesday 9 October 2013 12.45 EDT

October 1, 2013

Es war in Schanghai (Jean Jülich)

Es war in Shanghai gehört zu den vier Liedern, die uns Jean Jülich, bekennender, bekannter und überaus aktiver Kölner Edelweißpirat, als Aufnahme zur Verfügung gestellt hat, um jungen Musikerinnen und Musikern einen ersten und sehr lebendigen Eindruck von der damaligen Musikkultur zu vermitteln ...

"It was in Shanghai," is one of the four songs from the Cologne Edelweiss Pirates made known by Jean Jülich ...



... ”It was not a political song, but it addresses the desire for foreign countries, fellowship and independence. The Nazis did not sing this song because it was not consistent with their ideology” ...

... Israel commemorates the Edelweiss Pirates at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, honoring them as “Righteous Among the Nations” ...

October 1, 2013

Die Gedanken Sind Frei

... Kein Mensch kann sie wissen,
kein Jäger sie schießen mit pulver und blei,
Die Gedanken sind frei.
Ich denk was ich will und was mich begluecket ...

Mein Wunsch und Begehren kann niemand verwehren,
es bleibet dabei:
Die Gedanken sind frei.

.. No man can know them,
no hunter can shoot them with powder and lead,
Thoughts are free.
I think what I want and what makes me happy ...

My wish and desire no one can deny,
it remains this way: thoughts are free.

... In 1942, Sophie Scholl, a member of the White Rose resistance group, played the song on her flute outside the walls of Ulm prison, where her father Robert had been detained for calling the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler a "scourge of God" ...

September 19, 2013

I'll let you track down the SCMP links yourself; in my experience, their website is very slow

and some of this was months ago now. But the stories did appear there, sometimes with an indication that the interviews on which they were based had occurred weeks before publication

... May 20: Edward Snowden, 29, arrives in Hong Kong, just after taking leave from his National Security Agency contracting firm Booz Allen Hamilton ...
Edward Snowden timeline of events
By ASSOCIATED PRESS | 8/1/13 11:29 AM EDT
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/edward-snowden-timeline-of-events-95057.html

... Revelations of U.S. government surveillance programs had threatened to complicate the first-time summit between the two. Obama and his aides grappled with questions about the surveillance as the president headed to Rancho Mirage for the summit, where he planned to raise U.S. complaints about Chinese spying ...
By Lesley Clark
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Spying hangs over U.S.-China summit
Posted on Friday, June 7, 2013
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/07/193355/spying-hangs-over-us-china-summit.html

... Mr. Xi said Friday that his country is also a victim of cyber attacks ...
Obama and Xi conclude summit discussions
Mark Knoller
CBS News
June 8, 2013, 9:19 PM
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57588341/obama-and-xi-conclude-summit-discussions/

... June 12: The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong says it interviewed Snowden at a secret location ...
Edward Snowden timeline of events
By ASSOCIATED PRESS | 8/1/13 11:29 AM EDT
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/edward-snowden-timeline-of-events-95057.html

... Among some 61,000 reported targets of the National Security Agency, Snowden said, are hundreds of computers in China ... The Morning Post said it had seen documents provided by Snowden but was unable to verify their authenticity ...
NSA hacks China, leaker Snowden claims
By Jethro Mullen and Chelsea J. Carter, CNN
updated 5:32 AM EDT, Thu June 13, 2013

... June 23: Snowden leaves Hong Kong on an Aeroflot flight to Moscow ...
Edward Snowden timeline of events
By ASSOCIATED PRESS | 8/1/13 11:29 AM EDT
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/edward-snowden-timeline-of-events-95057.html

Edward Snowden, the former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who has been leaking information on U.S. intelligence operations, has revealed to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post that the NSA has run extensive operations in recent years against China's Tsinghua University and mobile phone companies ...
Snowden: US Spies On China’s Universities and Mobile Firms
By Zachary Keck
June 23, 2013

HONG KONG (AP) — A former National Security Agency contractor says that U.S. hacking targets in China included the nation's mobile-phone companies and two universities hosting extensive Internet traffic hubs in the latest allegations as Washington pushes Hong Kong to extradite the ex-contractor ...
June 23, 2013 3:31 AM
Snowden says US targets included China cell phones
http://news.yahoo.com/snowden-says-us-targets-included-china-cell-phones-073119007.html

September 17, 2013

My Name is Lisa Kalvelage

... i must have been asked a 100 times where i was, what i did
in those years when hitler ruled our state

i said i was a child, or at most a teenager
but that only continued the questioning
they'd ask where were my parents, my father, my mother
and to this i could not answer a thing ...

perhaps i can tell it to my children 6
and later on, their own children
and at least in the future they need not be silent
when they're asked, where was your mother when

my name is lisa kalvelage
(i wonder, where was my mother then)



... The Cupertino mother of five daughters is best remembered in a song by legendary folk singer Pete Seeger that she inspired. "My Name is Lisa Kalvelage" evolved from her 1966 act of civil disobedience, when Kalvelage and three other housewives parked themselves in front of a forklift loading shipments of napalm bombs headed from Alviso to Vietnam. Donning Sunday dresses, gloves and heels, the quartet entered the storage yard by climbing a fence, an act that would lead them to the county jail, where they were strip-searched ...
Longtime South Bay peace activist Lisa Kalvelage dies at 85
By Karen de Sá
Mercury News
Posted: 03/12/2009 07:43:30 PM PDT
Updated: 03/14/2009 09:37:56 AM PDT