An Iraq War veteran has been arrested and charged with threatening to kill his officers after recording a violent rap protest song and sending it to the Pentagon.
Marc Hall, a infantry soldier, wrote the song in protest at the US Army’s unpopular policy of involuntarily extending soldiers’ service and forcing them to return to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Hall completed a 14-month spell in Iraq last year, expecting to be discharged next month, but was told he would have to go back to Iraq under the policy known as stop-loss.
The song includes lines saying the Army “fucked me over,” and a warning that he would shoot his officers and “watch all the bodies hit the floor.”
The Army has charged Hall with threatening to “go on a rampage” and has ordered him to be held in a military prison in Georgia to await trial.
But Hall’s civilian lawyer, James Klimaski, said Hall was using the hip-hop genre, which often includes violent lyrics, to legitimately voice disgruntlement among troops at stop-loss.
The policy has forced 185,000 personnel to stay in the military beyond their contracts.
“These lyrics don’t mean anything. Gangsta rap songs are always talking about killing people. If you listen to what the song’s about, not the specific lines, it’s against stop-loss. And it’s the anger of troops who go over and come back and go over again and come back in an unending war,” Klimaski said.
Hall, who sings under the name Marc Watercus, directs his anger at officers. The song suggests he will round up the officers and put them against a wall.
Hall has issued a statement from prison, saying he had explained that the song “was a free expression of how people feel ... it was just hip-hop.”
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS