Riga, Latvia — Latvia is a fiercely independent nation with a people and culture dating back thousands of years, their language is based on Sanskrit and they predate even the Muscovites. Their children are incredibly beautiful and their courage in the face of overwhelming adversity unmatched. They are a tiny county with only about 1 million Latvians dwarfed by their huge neighbor, Russia. They refuse to be amalgamated or subsumed as the following videos of their festivals celebrating their identity makes abundantly clear.
2013
25th Latvian Nationwide Song and 15th Dance Celebration, Final Concert – “Līgo!” 7-7-13
If only you believe like I believe, baby (If only you believe like I believe) We’d get by If only you believe in miracles, baby (If only you believe in miracles) So would I If only you believe like I believe, baby (If only you believe like I believe) We’d get by If only you believe in miracles, baby (If only you believe in miracles) So would I
I might have to move heaven and earth To prove it to you, baby (Baby) So we’re makin’ love And you feel the power And I feel the power Then there’s really nothing we can’t do (You know we could, you know we could) If we wanted to, baby (You know we could, you know we could) We could exist on the stars It’d be so easy
Now, baby All we gotta do (Baby, baby, baby, oh, baby) Is get a little faith in you (Baby, baby) Oh, I’ve been so many places I’ve seen some things (Yes, I have) I know love is the answer (Yes, it is) Keeps holding this world together, yeah Ain’t nothing better Ain’t nothing better (Nothing’s better) And all the answers to our prayers Hell, it’s the same everywheres, baby (Just the same now) Nothing ever breaks up the heart (Love’s a game now) Only tears give you away (Ain’t it a shame now?)
Then you’re right where I found ya (Oh, baby) With my arms around ya (Oh, baby) O-o-o-o-o-o-oh, baby Baby, baby Love is a magic word, ooh, yeah (Baby) Few ever find in a lifetime But from that very first look in your eyes I knew you and I had but one heart (Baby) Only our bodies were apart (It’s making me crazy) That was so easy (Baby) So easy (Oh, baby) I had a taste of the real world (Didn’t waste a drop of it) When I went down on you, girl
Oh, if only you believe like I believe, baby (If only you believe like I believe) We’d get by If only you believe in miracles, baby (If only you believe in miracles) So would I If only you believe like I believe, baby (If only you believe like I believe) We’d get by If only you believe in miracles, baby (If only you believe in miracles) So would I
I can hear windmills and rainbows Whenever you’re talkin’ to me (Never say never) I feel like swirling and dancin’ Whenever you’re walking with me (Whenever you’re walking with me) You ripple like a river when I touch you (Let me touch you) When I pluck your body like a string (Show you what I mean) When I start dancin’ inside ya (Oh, baby) You make me wanna sing (I love you so) Yeah (I love you so) Baby (I love you so) Baby (I love you so) Baby (I love you so) Baby (Oh)
Oh, yeah (Oh, yeah) All right (All right) Baby, we’re sure doin’ it tonight (Baby, we’re sure doin’ it) Every time you come by, let me try (Come on by) Pretty please with sugar on it That’s how I like it, ooh I can’t even believe it with you It’s like having every dream I ever wanted come true (Dream of a lifetime) I picked up your vibes You know, it opened my eyes (Dream of a lifetime) But I’m still dreamin’, yeah (Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, oh) And you’re right where I found ya (Oh, baby) With my arms around ya (Oh, baby)
Oh, if only you believe like I believe, baby (If only you believe like I believe) We’d get by If only you believe in miracles, baby (If only you believe in miracles) So would I If only you believe like I believe, baby (If only you believe like I believe) We’d get by If only you believe in miracles, baby (If only you believe in miracles) So would I So would I So would I
Oh, if only you believe like I believe, baby (If only you believe like I believe) We’d get by If only you believe in miracles, baby (If only you believe in miracles) So would I If only you believe like I believe, baby (If only you believe like I believe) We’d get by If only you believe in miracles, baby (If only you believe in miracles) So would I
What ‘cultural cleansing’ looks like under the Islamic State
Woodbridge, VA — A 17-year-old student from Woodbridge, Virginia, is in federal custody after allegedly helping an 18-year-old travel to Syria to join ISIS.
The arrest of a suburban Washington, D.C., teenager allegedly willing to help ISIS is becoming a familiar scenario — a young person radicalized by Internet propaganda?
Yet Americans have traditionally cherished the right to travel, to leave a country (including this one) along with the right to hold their own opinions about who the ‘good guys’ vs. the ‘bad guys’ are. The U.S. doesn’t exactly have clean hands. Nor has Congress declared war on Syria or any faction within it. There may be federal laws against ‘aiding and abetting the “enemy”‘, yet defining the term according to administrative fiat rather than due process undermines Constitutional principles. Americans have always felt at liberty, under those circumstances, to determine who is an ‘enemy’ according to their own lights. Nor are all enemies foreign, the U.S. Constitution mentions our right to defend against domestic ones.
Just who gets to decide who/what is an ‘enemy’ of America seems critical when federal authorities are throwing children into prison for nothing more than assisting the travel plans of a friend/acquaintance. Indeed, the present circumstances appear to be cut from the warp and weave of ‘thought crime’! The U.S. Administration itself seems to be confused about just who it’s friend/allies vs. ‘enemies’ in the middle eastern conflict are. That confusion should not be allowed to translate to criminal liability for idealistic children. Here, internet activities alone (or thoughts expressed in public communications there) were deemed sufficient to stigmatize and criminalize young people in the throes of sorting out their own identities.
The Osbourn Park High School student from Woodbridge, Virginia, is in custody, accused of helping another young man travel to Syria to join ISIS. Little has been made public about this latest arrest because the suspect is 17 and being treated as a juvenile while the prosecution seeks to have him tried in adult court.
Authorities say the person whom the teen helped travel to Syria will soon be charged with material support to a terrorist organization. [It’s oft been said one man’s ‘terrorist’ is another man’s ‘freedom fighter’. The British categorized American minute men as ‘terrorists’ during our war of independence.] That person’s identity wasn’t released, but he’s believed to be not much older than the high school student. Officials say the student, who is Muslim, used the Internet to help make travel arrangements for the other young man to get to Syria and to find contacts there.
In one of their regular advisories to local law enforcement, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security said the case is another demonstration that young people are using social media for jihadist ends. [What happened to the Constitutional right of ‘freedom of association’?–or ‘expression’ for that matter. Short of a declaration of war, Americans have the legal and inalienable right to choose their own ‘friends’, as well as ‘enemies’! They could hardly do worse, in that regard, than the U.S. Administration itself.]
The Prince William County Schools said Wednesday that they were not aware of any security threats surrounding the arrested teen. “There is no indication that our students are being specifically targeted to support extremist causes,” the statement said.
[“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. Moderation in the protection of liberty is no virtue; extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice.” -Barry Goldwater-]
Prime Minister Tony Abbott Proposes Stripping Citizenship
EXTRAORDINARY powers to strip citizenship from Australians supporting terrorist groups are set to get cross-party support in Parliament.
Australia (2-22-15) — 1984 is beginning to look like the good ol’ days. Torture (“We had to know what they were THINKING!” -G. Bush-) and extraordinary rendition are no longer enough in our march toward collateral damage and LOVE for Big Brother. Obedience in insufficient. Now, even LOVE is insufficient. We must rid ourselves of those pesky double-ungoodthinkful thoughts that so disturb our leaders because they are now defacto crimes and are being treated as such by the ‘authorities’ who, naturally, want to protect us from ‘terrorists’…this would include those who haven’t actually DONE anything visibly illegal, but are suspected of ‘wanting’ to or at least sympathizing with those who do. Buying an airline ticket or announcing a pending wedding date to a suspect groom is now enough to land you in prison to do hard time…even in America where 1st Amendment principles (in theory) are held sacred and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Conceivably, Bin Laden’s shoe shine boy could end up doing hard time–or worse.
Admittedly, there are some pretty bad actors out there–even in Australia. They relish shocking the world’s conscience, alarming all and antagonizing virtually every sentient human being. Unfortunately, management by crisis historically has not brought out the best in American sensibilities or its allies. Witness the WWII interment of Japanese-Americans (complete with the looting of their property, home, and bank accounts) or the McCarthy hearings of the early 50’s. Mischief is once again afoot in the guise of totalitarian midnight door knocks/battering and the monitoring of every communication, transaction, purchase, movement.
Enter Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister seeking to bring safety/security to his homeland at the expense of civil rights and fundamental liberties. Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s security statement, centered on the threat of the IS “death cult” today carefully avoided wrecking the bipartisan stance with Labor on measures to fight terrorists. Apparently, in an era of state sponsored terrorism, extraordinary renditions, and collateral damage, ordinary governments bridle at the competition. Saudia Arabia can behead miscreants with abandon, American drones can destroy entire wedding parties, U.S. helicopters can cut down photojournalists with 50-caliber machine gun fire while sneering at the victim’s dead/wounded children. Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, etc. can strap down the condemned for real time experiments in how to clinically terminate their lives with injected but questionable poisons as they writhe, sometimes gasping for breath for over 40 minutes. Water boarding is defended as a ‘humane’ form of torture, or at least “effective”. But now that the bad guys are using the internet to proselytize/recruit–well, the velvet gloves are coming off!
“We have seen on our TV screens and in our newspapers the evidence of the new dark age that has settled over much of Syria and Iraq,” said Mr Abbott, standing in front of six Australian flags at the Australian Federal Police headquarters in Canberra.
He said: “There is no grievance here that can be addressed; there is no cause here that can be satisfied; it is the demand to submit — or die.” [The irony here just won’t quit!]
The Prime Minister reproduced the thoughts of many Australians who believe citizenship “is not a one-way street” and said Australians battling with Islamic State forces “have sided against their country and should be treated accordingly”, though it’s not certain where such boundaries (if any) lie. Presumably, since even helping set up a website or remonstrating over the grievances many Islamic people harbor is enough to get you thrown into an American prison, even the hint/suspicion of insufficient love for Big Brother will result in our Australian cousins being stripped of either their citizenship or their right to be acknowledged as having it.
“Those who come here must be as open and accepting of their adopted country, as we are of them. Those who live here must be as tolerant of others as we are of them,” opined the Prime Minister. The irony of such ‘acceptance’ appears to have eluded the Prime Minister. “No one should live in our country while denying our values and rejecting the very idea of a free and open society,” he said. i.e. Terrorists should not reject our ‘values’, but we, ourselves, may accomplish the same end by government fiat. We may condone, collectively, what we condemn individually. The imprimatur of government washes away all sins–even the stain of torture. The question of what the point was in beating the Nazis only to become just like them is never asked. Any good Nazi of that era would have argued they too were fighting ‘terrorists’ (or Jews according to them…another Semitic people).
Mr Abbott said amendments to the Australian Citizenship Act would revoke or suspend Australian citizenship in the case of dual nationals.
Australian nationals could be denied “some of the privileges of citizenship” if they are “individuals involved in terrorism”.
These could include restricting the ability to leave or return to Australia, and access to consular services overseas, as well as access to welfare payments. The Prime Minister argued these measures would prevent possible ‘terrorists’ getting the benefit of the doubt. These measures include the legislation for the storage of metadata — material taken from the private communications of individuals — for two years, a move urged by intelligence agencies. Mr Abbott said (referencing killerMan Haron Monis) : “It’s clear that in too many instances the threshold for action was set too high — and the only beneficiary of that was the Martin Place murderer himself.”
“For too long, we have given those who might be a threat to our country the benefit of the doubt. The perpetrator was given the benefit of the doubt when he applied for a visa. He was given the benefit of the doubt for residency and citizenship. He was given the benefit of the doubt at Centrelink. He was given the benefit of the doubt when he applied for legal aid. And in the courts, there has been bail, when there should have been jail,” Abbott continued.
The Prime Minister ended with a pledge to the public: “I can’t promise that terrorist atrocities won’t ever again take place on Australian soil. But let me give you this assurance: My Government will never underestimate the threat. We will make the difficult decisions that must be taken to keep you and your family safe.”
That’s right–a country with the strictest gun control laws in the world now is destined to become a giant concentration camp for its own citizens (with the U.S. and Britain following close on its heels in this regard) if they reject or are insufficiently sympathetic to its “values”. What’s truly at work here is akin to the mystery alien object beneath the sea in a movie that starred Dustin Hoffman–THE SPHERE. ISIS and its minions has become a malevolent mirror reflecting our own fears, aggression, violence, injustice and state sponsored terrorism. The more we target it, the stronger it becomes and the greater our own peril. We must leave 20th century thinking (e.g. MAD: the Mutually Assured Destruction of the nuclear arms race in the cold war) behind. We are NOT going to be able to kill our way out of this war. We are not going to prevail by being the more powerful terrorist. ISIS understands this and has beaten us at our own game. Our leaders, unfortunately, are engrossed–as most generals are–in fighting the last war. The enemy we must defeat is not without, but within.
Shelton, WA (2-12-15) — Detective Christopher N. Kostad is a lucky man married to a beautiful, charming wife (Nicole K. Kostad) and her stunningly precocious daughter, McKenna. The problem is officer Kostad exhibits a pattern of poor judgment and gratuitous violence in his capacity as a police officer. Continue reading →
Pasco, WA (2-12-15) — Police in Washington state shot a man to death who threw rocks at them, officials said on Wednesday, as a video published online appearing to show the incident drew criticism of the officers’ actions.
The police shooting in Pasco, Washington comes amid heightened tension across the country in the wake of high-profile police killings of unarmed minorities, particularly in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City.
Officers Ryan Flanagan, Adam Wright, and Adrian Alaniz arrived at the parking lot of a Fiesta Foods grocery store around 5 p.m. local time on Tuesday, where suspect Antonio Zambrano-Montes threw rocks at them, Pasco Police Chief Bob Metzger said in a statement.
The officers attempted to use a stun gun to incapacitate Zambrano-Montes after he would not obey commands to surrender, before they opened fire and killed him, the statement said.
A video of the incident posted on YouTube and cited by local media showed the man running away from the three officers before he was killed.
In the 22-second video, the man moves across the street from the pursuing policemen. He turns to face them briefly, lifting his right arm as if to throw another object, when they open fire, according to the video.
Pasco Police Captain Ken Roske said when reached by Reuters on Wednesday night that the department had reviewed videos of the incident, but could not confirm their authenticity.
“They certainly look like the right intersections,” he said, adding that the Tri-City Special Investigation Unit would conduct a full probe into the shooting.
The Seattle Times, which linked to the video on its website, reported that a few dozen people gathered outside Pasco City Hall in protest of the shooting on Wednesday.
In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Washington called the incident “very disturbing,” the paper said.
“Fleeing from police and not following an officer’s command should not be sufficient for a person to get shot,” ACLU of Washington Director Kathleen Taylor said in a statement, according to the Seattle Times.
Two officers were hit by rocks in the incident, police said. They were treated at the scene, and the extent of their injuries was not provided.
The officers were placed on administrative leave, as per department policy, the statement said.
Police investigate the scene after officers shot a man to death in Pasco, Wash.
James Queally reports:
A Washington state man shot and killed by police this month in an incident captured on video was struck at least five times by bullets, investigators said Wednesday.
The deadly clash Feb. 10 in a Pasco, Wash., parking lot took place after police confronted Antonio Zambrano-Montes, 35, following reports that he was hurling rocks at vehicles. Police fired 17 rounds at Zambrano-Montes, according to Sgt. Ken Lattin, public information officer for the Tri-Cities Special Investigations Unit, which is reviewing the shooting.
On Wednesday, Lattin said police had determined that Zambrano-Montes was not shot in the back. A final analysis by the state medical examiner’s office may not be completed until March, he said.
Lattin said further questions would be fielded by city officials and the Franklin County prosecutor or coroner.
Investigators’ initial findings were released a day after the attorney who represented the family of Michael Brown, Benjamin Crump, announced he would be representing Zambrano-Montes’ parents. The police killing of Brown in Ferguson, Mo., last year spurred intense protests and questions about police use of force.
In the Washington shooting, authorities said Pasco police sent to the parking lot ordered Zambrano-Montes to stop throwing rocks several times, and tried to subdue him with a stun gun after he struck two officers with rocks.
In a statement released shortly after the shooting, police said they shot Zambrano-Montes several times and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
A video posted to YouTube, however, appears to show Zambrano-Montes exiting the parking lot, and then running away down a side street with the officers in pursuit.
Near the end of the clip, Zambrano-Montes briefly turns toward the officers. He then falls to the ground as the officers raise their weapons. It was unclear whether all three officers fired at him.
The shooting is under investigation by several agencies. While the Tri-Cities Special Investigation Unit has been handling media requests and is reviewing the circumstances of the shooting, Franklin County Coroner Dan Blasdell has also called for a special coroner’s office inquest into the deadly clash.
While the coroner’s inquest cannot result in the filing of criminal charges, the findings of the panel can be reviewed by local prosecutors, Blasdell previously told the Los Angeles Times.
Pasco, about 200 miles southeast of Seattle near the Oregon border, is part of the Tri-Cities area that also includes Kennewick and Richland.
Crump’s entry into the case is the latest in a series of legal maneuvers that have followed the shooting.
Zambrano-Montes’ widow and daughters filed a $25-million wrongful-death claim against the police department this month, according to the Seattle Times, but it remains unclear if they had legal standing to do so.
Adner Marcelin, speaking on behalf of Crump, told the Los Angeles Times that the pair may not have been legally married. Zambrano-Montes’ parents, who both reside in Mexico, have asked Crump’s office to conduct a separate investigation of the shooting, Marcelin said.
Marcelin declined to comment on the pending claim by the woman identified as Zambrano-Montes’ widow, who is being represented by a seperate law firm.
Zambrano-Montes had been arrested last year on suspicion of assaulting a city police officer, and a warrant for his arrest was issued in early February after he failed to appear in court. He was last released from police custody the day before the shooting, court records show.
One of the Pasco officers involved in the shooting, Ryan Flanagan, had been named in an excessive-force lawsuit filed by Pasco resident Maria Davila-Marquez in 2009, according to court records. Davila-Marquez accused Flanagan of restraining her and pressing her against the hood of a police cruiser, which was “hot enough to burn human skin,” according to the lawsuit.
The city eventually reached a $100,000 settlement with the woman, according to a report in the Tri-City Herald. The lawsuit said the department did not discipline Flanagan for the incident, a police spokesman previously told The Times.
“If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, and give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they do now, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains around the necks of our fellow sufferers; And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on ’til the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering… And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” -Thomas Jefferson-
