If you think nursery rhymes are safe to ingrain in children’s rote memory, think again. Hidden within the seemingly innocuous and humorous lines are images and concepts even adults will cringe over. Most nursery rhymes run the gamut of insane to inane.

Ring Around The Rosie is about the stench carried by the rashes of bubonic plague that killed million of people who had to be cremated. It is said that Mary in the rhyme Mary, Mary Quite Contrary refers to Bloody Mary or Queen Mary I, the daughter of King Henry VIII, who was a staunch Catholic and was infamous for her persecution of Protestants. The ‘silver bells and cockle shells were instruments of torture and the maiden was a device used to behead people.’ The garden is a cemetery filled with Protestants.

Three Blind Mice is again about Bloody Mary. After three Protestant bishops were convicted of plotting against her, she had them blinded, dismembered, and then burnt at the stake.

One look at the thoughts provoked by Rock-a-Bye, Baby and Humpty Dumpty and one will glean images of painful death.  Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater is a warning about infidelity, and that Peter solves his problem by killing his harlot wife and hiding her body in a giant pumpkin shell.

Jack and Jill is about the beheading of King Louis XVI and the eventual fall of Queen Marie Antoinette. London Bridge is about the ‘rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII of England. Boleyn was accused of adultery and incest and was ultimately executed for treason.’

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Via brainz

Bagram’s ‘King of Torture’ says, “I opened up Abu Ghraib.” He was also sometimes called ‘Monster.’ Damien Corsetti, in charge of interrogation operations, gives a first-person testimony of torture. In simple parlance, his job was to torture some detainees in those CIA secret prisons.

Bagram is a US military base in Afghanistan that is long suspected of being a CIA secret prison. As for Abu Ghraib, various pictures have leaked into public information, graphically showing that what went on in that US prison in Iraq was not ‘normal procedure.’

As part of his job, Corsetti interviewed hundreds of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also participated in 8 sessions of secret interrogation of senior Al Qaeda officials. After nearly six months as an interrogator at Bagram in Afghanistan and in Iraq, Corsetti was tried in a military court. He was accused, among other things, of using torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners in their charge. After only half an hour of deliberation, the military court declared him innocent.

But Corsetti did tell stories of first-hand experience. Some of these stories are, in fact, worse than the reports that have reached US President Barack Obama.

Corsetti took hundreds of photos of the naked body of a detainee who had bruises and cuts all over his body. It was also common to put a water-soaked hood on a prisoner and put him under a lamp. The feeling is akin to asphyxiation. The practice of waterboarding (simulated drowning) is confirmed. Sensory deprivation was done by plugging a prisoner’s ears with headphones, covering his eyes with sunglasses, and hanging him to the ceiling by the wrists. In this position, a person can become insane within a few hours.

Al Qaeda detainees spent weeks naked, hung from the ceiling – defecating, urinating, and vomiting right on the spot. They were unchained only when moved to interrogation sessions which usually consisted of beatings, simulated drowning, and some other more sophisticated techniques such as the use of light that temporarily blinds.

Via Washington Square News Online

Werner Herzog’s film Aguirre, the Wrath of God (made in 1972) will always be counted among one of the finest and magnificent films ever made. The theme of the film and characterization of Aguirre will find a special mention for time immemorial in the history of film-making. 

Amazingly this film on greed and ambition of a man for wealth, fame and power and ultimate descent of man into self-destruction, brutality and total insanity in his mad pursuit of the same is so relevant even this day. This film has no wings of human fantasy. The expedition which goes in search of El Dorado, the land of gold and to spread word of God looks so similar to many undertaken in the human history for years. Wars have been waged, battles have been won, and man has conquered Land and Nature by simple brute force fuelled by mad ambition to rule. Also Nature too has humbled man by equal force, if not more. Another subtle important truth that comes across in the film is that religion cannot tame human greed but rather can become a manipulative tool for the strong in the ultimate conquest.

On the last day of the year 2008 when world is sinking deeper into financial crisis due to ever-dominating trait of greed and ambition of human beings, this film indeed is a must-watch for all those who want to deconstruct darkness and brutal aspects of human soul.