If not totally relevant to this particular case, the graphic reflects my basic philosophy regarding Islam.
Before morphing into my new persona, Teddy first made his appearance as my helper/protester in the insane case of "Muhammad the Bear." Have a scroll through, old Ted used to get about a bit in those days.
Ahmed Mansour Karni's birth certificate was presented after state security forces added his name to the list of accused.
So I think we can safely assume that the birth certificate carried the date of birth of the four year old felon and not, as is suggested in the comments, a case of mistaken identity.
A four-year-old boy has been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty on a murder charge. More
But then can we accuse the Egyptians, in what might still be a case of mistaken identity, of being any worse than the Americans?
Not at all at all, at least the Egyptians don't defer for a decade their petty vindictiveness before going to see: How Many Kids Lives Can We Destroy Today?Do read, it's a shocker.
Try this in Google/Google images if you want more. American school children in handcuffs
Immoral and Unacceptable: If Scalia Wanted Respect In Death, He Should Have Shown It To More People In Life
By Abby Zimet
February 16, 2016
In the wake of Antonin Scalia's timely death, officials announce he will lie in repose at the Supreme Court, Republicans scramble once again to obstruct the rule of law and conspiracy wingnuts declaim the need for another Warren Commission because obviously the "razor-thin savior of the traditional ways of America" was murdered by the "forces of Green gangsterism in the White House." Meanwhile, many struggle (or don't) to say something less toxic than the bigot and bully who was "a poison to the nation," who gave us Citizens United, fought tirelessly against equal rights, cavorted with and pandered to the powerful as the Junket King, exploited his own power while spending his ignominious career making the law inaccessible to most, exhibited a lack of compassion one critic dubs "a jaw-dropping imaginative absence," and famously declared that "mere factual innocence" was no reason not to execute someone. (R.I.P. Troy Davis.) So about that whole not speaking ill of the dead thing: As Scalia said after the Bush vs. Gore decision and its awful ramifications - its subsequent mayhem, suffering and innocent deaths - "Get over it.
Progressive powerhouse Elizabeth Warren was one of the first to step forward amidst instant GOP squawking there was no way that black Marxist Muslim bandit Obama can appoint a new Supreme Court Justice in an election year, even though that's already happened at least six times since 1900 and, duh, we already had an election to decide who gets to do that. Calmly citing the clear Constitutional mandate in Article II Section 2, Warren noted, "Senator McConnell is right that the American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice. In fact, they did - when President Obama won the 2012 election by five million votes...I can't find a clause that says '...except when there's a year left in the term of a Democratic President. Senate Republicans took an oath just like Senate Democrats did. Abandoning the duties they swore to uphold would threaten both the Constitution and our democracy itself. It would also prove that all the Republican talk about loving the Constitution is just that - empty talk."
An elected official, Warren kept things civil on the subject of Scalia - this, despite his rulings that marriage equality and abortion should be subject to state votes, that limitless corporate campaign spending is something “we should celebrate rather than condemn,” that vote-counting in Bush v. Gore should cease before causing mysterious “irreparable harm,” that protecting the right to vote is “racial entitlement” and that allowing local anti-discrimination laws to protect gays and lesbians is “special treatment of homosexuals.” Given his hateful, 30-year legacy of fighting against equal rights, argues Sara Benincasa, the call to civility rings false: "If he wanted respect in death, the man should’ve shown it to more people in life."
Alas, he didn't give it, and now isn't getting it. Apart from obligatory nods of condolence to his family - and alongside queries as to the whereabouts of Cheney in connection with another unfortunate hunting trip outcome - online comments and a multitude of memes have ranged from the truly angry to the gently comic in the vein of Mark Twain's, "I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." Samples: "I feel as bad for Scalia as he did for blacks, gays and people without health care....Antonin #Scalia requested cremation in his will, but millions of women will meet tomorrow to discuss if that's really best for his body...This would be an excellent day for Justice Clarence Thomas to continue his tradition of just doing whatever Justice Scalia does...My condolences to the Koch Brothers for their loss." Even the quails Scalia was hunting on yet another junket had their bittersweet say. “Sure, Scalia conveniently discarded his entire jurisprudential philosophy in Columbia v. Heller, when he mangled the Second Amendment to allow pretty much anyone with four fingers and a thumb to carry around a gun," noted one aggrieved quail. "On the other hand, that’s all we quail have EVER known. So, you know, welcome to our world, assholes.” Common Dreams
I don't possess a Scalia graphic, I'm sure you will afford me a little licence in the use of Clarence Thomas as a worthy substitute.
Hillary Clinton exhibits an appalling enthusiasm for United States wars not in self-defense, i.e., legalized murders on an industrial scale that create enemies while destroying our liberties and prosperity at home.
To William Tecumseh Sherman, war was "hell." To Abraham Lincoln, war was a "scourge." But to Hillary Clinton, war is a coveted instrument of foreign policy in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
If she is elected President, the United States will be fighting gratuitous wars every hour of every day of her presidency. That should give pause. Alexis de Tocqueville admonished in Democracy in America, "All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it." James Madison, the Albert Einstein of political philosophy, warned: "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
Despite such hallowed wisdom, Ms. Clinton has supported every war initiated by the United States not in self-defense for more than twenty three years since she first occupied the White House as First Lady: Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, ISIS, Al- Qaeda, Yemen, Somalia, and international terrorism generally.
In 2008, she promised if elected president to "obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel--even if the United States was unthreatened and Congress had not authorized war: "I want the Iranians to know, if I am the president, we will attack Iran... And I want them to understand that... we would be able to totally obliterate them [to retaliate for an attack on Israel]."
In 2011, then Secretary of State Clinton championed a "humanitarian" war against Libya to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi after he had abandoned WMD, Libya had been removed as a state sponsor of terrorism, he had handsomely compensated the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, and he posed no threat to the United States. She has fiercely defended the war as "smart power at its best."
That myopia could be analogized to Japanese Emperor Hirohito applauding World War II as a success by highlighting Pearl Harbor while leaving Hiroshima and Nagasaki unmentioned.
As unfolded in Afghanistan after we ousted the Soviet Union by supporting the fanatical mujahideen, Gaddafi's ouster regressed Libya towards state-of-nature lawlessness. Militias spawned along tribal and ethnic lines. An ISIS satellite emerged in Sirte. Gaddafi's conventional weapons fell into the hands of terrorists. No central government took root. Our Ambassador was assassinated in Benghazi in a terrorist assault. Refugees by the millions fled from Libya across the Mediterranean to destabilize the European Union.
Ms. Clinton's "humanitarian" war precedent invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Crimea professedly to protect Ukrainians of Russian ethnicity from persecution.
As a United States Senator, Ms. Clinton voted to authorize President Bush's gratuitous war against Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, who was a virtual cost-free Chinese wall against Iranian regional hegemony. She irresponsibly neglected to read the 90-page classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that wrongly concluded Saddam possessed WMD. She supports continuing United States military engagement in Iraq on behalf of a Shiite government which is beholden to Iran, repressive towards Sunnis and Kurds, and a catalyst for ISIS.
Ms. Clinton supports a reprise in Syria of her "smart" humanitarian war in Libya to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad through bombings and assistance to splintered Syrian rebels schooled in extremism, bigotry, repression, and violence.
She supports continued military engagement in Afghanistan as far as the eye can see and beyond to prop up a corrupt, tribal, unpopular government.
She supports the President's playing prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any American citizen whom intelligence gurus decree is an imminent threat based on secret evidence unshared outside the executive branch.
She supports presidential authority to invade the sovereignty of any foreign nation by using predator drones to kill persons suspected of complicity in international terrorism espied within its borders.
She supports confrontation with China over the South China Sea to assist erstwhile enemy Vietnam.
She supports unilateral presidential wars unauthorized by Congress in violation of the War Powers Resolution and Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution.
Since Libya under Gaddafi is her standard for initiating humanitarian wars, a President Clinton could be expected to attack North Korea to overthrow President Kim Jong-un before her inaugural address concluded.
If you want a Goddess of War in the White House who will destroy our liberties, freedom and solvency, vote for Hillary Clinton. Huffpo
No hype required, for what I must assume, is the definitive 9/11 investigative documentary.
All I will say, apart from mentioning the sheer hubris and audacity of the scheme, is that the "Debunkers" come across as extremely fervent and extremely well funded. But of their arguments? I shall leave you to draw your own conclusions.
And lastly, but still staying with the debunkers, Popular Mechanics is owned by the Hearst Corporation, if you get to wondering.
eta My original title was to be: "September 11 - The New Pearl Harbor" Facts Over Fiction But the term Fact leaves itself open to interpretation and to argument. But not so with our old friend Physics. Physics is fact, undeniable and unarguable.
View here, or view at source, where you will find an index of the film's contents.
The thing is lengthy, five hours in total, but in truth, the time flew by, it didn't seem five minutes, such was the quality of both research and content.
"September 11 - The New Pearl Harbor" is a 5 hour documentary that summarizes 12 years of public debate on 9/11. While aimed primarily at a general, uninformed audience, the film also contains some new findings that may be of interest to advanced researchers.
This film is intended as an educational, non-profit operation, and must remain so in order to fulfill all the requirements for the usage of copyrighted material. As such, the entire film is made available online for free from day one. Any purchase of the actual DVD will be considered as a form of donation to the author, in recognition of the time spent to put together this material. Free duplication and distribution of all DVDs is encouraged.
You can also purchase the 5-hour film in a 3 DVD set. Free duplication and distribution of all DVDs by Massimo Mazzucco is encouraged. Italian and French versions also available.To see the fully indexed film in one page go to luogocomune.net
Sometimes something comes along and you think, oh my! I've got the cream to go on those peaches.
The peach in this case, a fifteen minute video on the subject of US Exceptionalism and the American psyche.
Although the video is embedded below my chosen text, might I recommend you watch it first, in order that the true significance of the text can be truly appreciated.
Layla Anwar - Arab Woman Blues is an Iraqi blogger and she's pissed, mightily so in fact, and as you might imagine, she has every right to be.
I have featured Layla in the past, you will find her in the sidebar. But for the purposes of this post, it's not Layla Anwar per say that concerns us, but rather the comments of "American Woman" responding to one of Layla's articles. Two of which can be found at the link below.
The link for for the original, can be found here, for what, in actual fact, is a bit of a mega-post:
Behold: The U.S. God Of War. A Brief Statement of Hate and Hypocrisy Writ Large
Where you will find the relative article: God Bless America
American Woman said...
Awwwww you hate me Layla? That really breaks me up!!! Good God, how pathetic can you get? Let that hate consume you...go ahead, let that hate flow...do it for me.
You know, this blog entry should be the automatic response sent to every American who agrees with anything you have to say. You know, the ones who kiss your ass, begging for forgiveness of their sins. I am talking about the Americans who don't think they are included in your hate-speak - when, in fact, you have more contempt for them than anyone else. You make my skin crawl.
Hate me - I still have electricity
Hate me - I have running water
Hate me - I have a job & money
Hate me - I have law & order
Hate me - I don't spend my life stand in line
Hate me - I have Medicine & insurance
Hate me - I own a house
Hate me - I have a big family who love me & I love them
Hate me - I live in my own country Hate me - I am a Christian
Hate me - I can walk down the street without fear
Hate me - I am laughing at you
Hate me - IT'S AN HONOR!!!
Face it, Americans are far more innocent than Iraqies. Iraqies relate perfectly to their so called fearless leader, Saddam - a cold, indifferent murderer himself. What is so lovable about you? You are purple fingered traders, liars, cry-babies, backward shits, cowards, sectarian & tribal assholes, fundimentalist nuts, pedophile worshipers, crooks & criminals, rapists, pimps, whores & torturers.
I need to take a bath just thinking about you people....while you enjoy wrapping yourself up in that new American flag you invented....you sick fuck...
17/3/08 3:06 PM
How lovely.
How Exceptional Are You? by Scooter Rockets
No link as yet for Scooter Rockets, other than his debut Youtube video.
First of all, a message to English left-wing journalists and intellectuals generally: ‘Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for.
Forcing down Evo Morales's plane was an act of air piracy
Denying the Bolivian president air space was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world
By John Pilger
4 July 2013
President Morales arrives back in La Paz, Bolivia. ‘Imagine the response from Paris if the French president's plane was forced down in Latin America.’
Imagine the aircraft of the president of France being forced down in Latin America on "suspicion" that it was carrying a political refugee to safety – and not just any refugee but someone who has provided the people of the world with proof of criminal activity on an epic scale.
Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the "international community", as the governments of the west call themselves. To a chorus of baying indignation from Whitehall to Washington, Brussels to Madrid, heroic special forces would be dispatched to rescue their leader and, as sport, smash up the source of such flagrant international gangsterism. Editorials would cheer them on, perhaps reminding readers that this kind of piracy was exhibited by the German Reich in the 1930s.
The forcing down of Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane – denied airspace by France, Spain and Portugal, followed by his 14-hour confinement while Austrian officials demanded to "inspect" his aircraft for the "fugitive" Edward Snowden – was an act of air piracy and state terrorism. It was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world and the cowardice and hypocrisy of bystanders who dare not speak its name.
In Moscow, Morales had been asked about Snowden – who remains trapped in the city's airport. "If there were a request [for political asylum]," he said, "of course, we would be willing to debate and consider the idea." That was clearly enough provocation for the Godfather. "We have been in touch with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country," said a US state department official.
The French – having squealed about Washington spying on their every move, as revealed by Snowden – were first off the mark, followed by the Portuguese. The Spanish then did their bit by enforcing a flight ban of their airspace, giving the Godfather's Viennese hirelings enough time to find out if Snowden was indeed invoking article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."
Those paid to keep the record straight have played their part with a cat-and-mouse media game that reinforces the Godfather's lie that this heroic young man is running from a system of justice, rather than preordained, vindictive incarceration that amounts to torture – ask Bradley Manning and the living ghosts in Guantánamo.
Historians seem to agree that the rise of fascism in Europe might have been averted had the liberal or left political class understood the true nature of its enemy. The parallels today are very different, but the Damocles sword over Snowden, like the casual abduction of Bolivia's president, ought to stir us into recognising the true nature of the enemy.
Snowden's revelations are not merely about privacy, or civil liberty, or even mass spying. They are about the unmentionable: that the democratic facades of the US now barely conceal a systematic gangsterism historically identified with, if not necessarily the same as, fascism. On Tuesday, a US drone killed 16 people in North Waziristan, "where many of the world's most dangerous militants live", said the few paragraphs I read. That by far the world's most dangerous militants had hurled the drones was not a consideration. President Obama personally sends them every Tuesday.
In his acceptance of the 2005 Nobel prize in literature, Harold Pinter referred to "a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed". He asked why "the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities" of the Soviet Union were well known in the west while America's crimes were "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged". The most enduring silence of the modern era covered the extinction and dispossession of countless human beings by a rampant US and its agents. "But you wouldn't know it," said Pinter. "It never happened. Even while it was happening it never happened."
This hidden history – not really hidden, of course, but excluded from the consciousness of societies drilled in American myths and priorities – has never been more vulnerable to exposure. Snowden's whistleblowing, like that of Manning and Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, threatens to break the silence Pinter described. In revealing a vast Orwellian police state apparatus servicing history's greatest war-making machine, they illuminate the true extremism of the 21st century. Unprecedented, Germany's Der Spiegel has described the Obama administration as "soft totalitarianism". If the penny is falling, we might all look closer to home.
There aren't many right-wing writers who warrant their own tag on this here blog, in fact I would say Fred Reed is quite unique in that respect.
Three short essays, enjoy, no matter what your political persuasion.
The View from Abroad
The World is not Billy Bob's Rib Pit
March 10, 2013
The United States is the most hated country in the world, followed closely by Israel, and then by nobody. Why? Why not Ecuador? China? Russia? East Timor? The hostility puzzles many Americans, who genuinely believe their country to be a force for good, a pillar of democracy, a defender of human rights.
To the rest of the world, none of this is even close.
If you have lived abroad, as so very few Americans have, the explanation for the hatred is obvious: Meddling. Relentless, prideful, uncomprehending meddling, frequently military, often with horrendous death tolls. Americans, adroitly managed by a controlled press, historically illiterate, incurious, decreasingly educated, either have never heard of the American behavior that angers others, or believe it to have been inspired by virtuous motives. Nobody else thinks so. Add to unfamiliarity with the wider world the constantly inculcated assertion that America is the greatest, most wonderful nation ever to exist, a light to the world, a shining city on a hill, and you get a dangerously delusional state. Especially now. In the past, American economic and military supremacy were such that the US didn’t have to care what others thought. The times, they are a-changing.
It might be wise to compare briefly the view through American and foreign eyes. Consider Iraq. To most of the world, the war on Iraq was brutal, unprovoked, and murderous. More than a few, looking at the ruins of Fallujah, thought of Guernica—of which few in the States have ever heard.
Many Americans do not believe that we destroyed Iraq for oil, empire, and the Israel lobby, as was in fact the case. No. We wanted to topple an evil dictator and dispense the precious gift of democracy. It was a question of goodness. Many apparently still believe that Iraq had something to do with the attacks on New York. Again, controlled press, poor schooling, little curiosity.
Similarly, Americans tend to see the war on Afghanistan as having to do with ending Terror or sprouting democracy—not as the Great Game (“Hanh?”) redux, or the quest for the TAPI pipeline (“Say whuh?”) or Caspian hydrocarbons. (“Caspian? You mean the Friendly Ghost?”) To most of the world, Afghanistan is just another sorry spectacle of American fighter-bombers killing peasants, of gutted children and drone attacks on half-identified targets. This, the merciless use of overwhelming firepower against lightly armed campesinos, is what the world sees, over and over. Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan. It isn’t pretty.
I live in Mexico. In countless towns, probably in every city of any size, you see streets named Niños Heroes, Heroic Children. In Guadalajara there is a traffic circle with an imposing monument to them. These things commemorate the children who tried to fight the American soldiers invading Mexico City. In that (purely acquisitive) war Mexico lost half its territory. Yet how many gringos know that it ever happened, or when, or for that matter have ever heard of the bombardment of Veracruz or Pershing’s incursion?
Americans who have some grasp of history sometimes say of the Mexican-American War that Mexicans should “get over it.” Some might tell the Jews to get over the Holocaust, or Americans to get over 9/11. It is much easier to tell people to get over what you have done to them than to get over things they have done to you.
Then there is the War on Drugs. Americans believe this to be a campaign against Evil—best conducted, of course, in other people’s countries.
There are other views. Thoughtful Mexicans (all I know, but I haven’t taken a poll) do not see why drugs are Mexico’s problem. If gringos don’t want drugs, why do they buy them? Why don’t they solve their own problems? It is no secret internationally that American students in high school and universities use drugs. Why don’t the Americans put their college kids in jail? And, they say, probably correctly, that Washington, by sponsoring the elimination of big drug lords, caused the current fighting among littler lords to control the trade, thus creating carnage. Predictably, the flow of drugs northward was not affected.
Truculent patriots at Billy Bob’s Rib Pit know none of this. The combination of clueless ignorance and a sort of Walmart-parking-lot arrogance make mysterious to them much behavior of other countries. Consider their view of Iran, an evil Arab country, somewhere, that wants the Bomb so it can blow up Israel and New York. No explanation occurs to them for Iran’s hostility to the US, which wants regime change so Iranians can be democratic and have freedoms. Ask Billy Bobbers whether they have even heard of, much less been in, major Iranian cities like Tehran, Sulawesi, Sidon, or Tbilisi. No. Yet they are sure the inhabitants are dangerous and un-American.
Iranians may perhaps see things differently. They know that in 1953 the democratically electeed prime minister Mohammed Mossadeg (“Mossy what?” they ask in the Rib Pit.) was overthrown by the CIA leaving the Shah (“Is that, like, a person?”), a routinely ghastly dictator, in control. This had much to do with the occupation of the US embassy in 1979, which was sold in the US as evidence of the badness of Iranians.
Later, in 1988, the US Navy, in the form of the USS Vincennes, shot down an Iranian airliner and killed everyone aboard. Americans shrugged it off: Such things were doubtless necessary to stop terrorism. But imagine the outrage if the Iranian navy shot down a US airliner.
Nobody beyond the borders buys our song about spreading freedom and human rights. America has supported countless sordid dictators rulling by army and torture chamber (the Saudis being a current example). We have put many dictators on their thrones, such as Pniochet (“That little wooden guy, his nose got long when he told a lie, right?”) in Chile. (“Isn’t that Texmex soup with beans in it?”) Others notice that the only country that openly and proudly tortures prisoners is…us.
Always, the underlying problem is meddling. Bin Laden’s guys didn’t attack New York because it was a slow morning and they couldn’t think of anything else to do. They were furious at US meddling in Moslem lands. You may think, and I may think, that Islam is a primitive faith not well adapted to the modern world. Fine. I may think that hornets do not have an ideal social organization. But I know better than to poke their nest.
This is why they hate us—meddling, bombing, invading, droning, telling them how to run their countries. No, George, it is not because of our freedoms. Fred Reed
Machismo, Sort Of
Social Philosophy, and the Grape
March 3, 2013
I’m sitting on the veranda and drinking Padre Kino red and trying to figure out purdah. There is nothing like really awful red wine to inflame the wellsprings of cosmic insight, or engender criminally mixed metaphors. The dogs lie about, looking at me strangely. Why? I’m almost pathologically normal, I tell them.
Anyway, purdah is what useless rich Indians, rajahs and sultans and majarogers did with women, which was to keep them locked up in a forbidden part of the palace where they couldn’t ever do anything but play poker and maybe smoke dope and pray to Hindu gods, of whom there are about seven hundred. Purdah was a really dumb-ass idea. I mean, what was the point of having women around if you couldn’t go swing-dancing with them, or talk politics pointlessly because governments only get worse but at least it’s interesting, or lie on remote Mexican beaches and supervise the sunset? But I guess it was hard to get to Michoacan from Hyderabad.
It wasn’t just the Indians. Sultans in Istanbul and satraps or rattraps or whatever they were in Persia did the same thing, stuffing women into harems. What the hell was that for? And you see sort of the same thing today in places like Morocco. Mostly you don’t see women on the street, and when you do they are wrapped up in chadors or burgers or things about like sleeping bags and you can’t really be sure there’s anyone inside. There’s an eye slit at the top, like a World War Two pillbox, but that’s the only sign of life. I reckon Moslems haven’t figured out that the Thirteenth Century ran out a while back. These things can slip by if you aren’t alert.
Padre Kino, the Great Purple Father, may be the worst red wine in Christendom. Instead of grapes they probably ferment old boot soles. If it weren’t for its philosophic properties, I’d use it to poison roaches. more
Your Papers, Citizen
Gun Control and the Changing American Character
February 19, 2013
A staple of American self-esteem is that we Yanks are brave, free, independent, self-reliant, ruggedly individual, and disinclined to accept abuse from anyone. This was largely true in, say, 1930. People lived, a great many of them, on farms where they planted their own crops, built their own barns, repaired their own trucks, and protected their own property. They were literate but not educated, knew little of the world beyond the local, but in their homes and fields they were supreme.
If they wanted to swim buck nekkid in the creek, they swam buck nekkid. If whistle pigs were eating the corn, the family teenager would get his rifle and solve the problem. Government left them alone.
Even in the early Sixties, in rural King George County, Virginia, where I grew up, it was still mostly true. The country people built their own boats to crab in the Potomac, converted junked car engines to marine, made their own crab pots, planted corn and such, and hunted deer. There was very little contact with the government. One state trooper was the law, and he had precious little to do.
I say the following not as an old codger painting his youth in roseate hues that never were, but as serious sociology: We kids could get up on a summer morning, grab the .22 or .410, put it over our shoulder and go into the country store for ammunition, and no one looked twice. We could go by night to the dump to snap-shoot rats, and no one cared. We could get our fishing poles—I preferred a spinning reel and bait-casting tackle—and fish anywhere we pleased on Machodoc Creek or the Potomac. We could drive unwisely but joyously on winding wooded roads late at night and nobody cared.
Call it “freedom.” We were free, and so were the country folk on their farms and with their crabbing rigs. Because we were free, we felt free. It was a distinct psychology, though we didn’t know it.
Things then changed. The country increasingly urbanized. So much for rugged.
It became ever more a nation of employees. As Walmart and shopping centers and factories moved in, the farmers sold their land to real-estate developers at what they thought mind-boggling prices, and went to work as security guards and truck drivers. Employees are not free. They fear the boss, fear dismissal, and become prisoners of the retirement system. So much for Marlboro Man.
Self-reliance went. Few any longer can fix a car or the plumbing, grow food, hunt, bait a hook or install a new roof. Or defend themselves. To overstate barely, everyone depends on someone else, often the government, for everything. Thus we became the Hive.
Government came like a dust storm of fine choking powder . . . more
It was after watching a Democracy Now piece, back in January of this year, "Kill Anything That Moves": New Book Exposes Hidden Crimes of the War Kerry, Hagel Fought in Vietnam that I tried to write a follow up article. But for reasons I mention here,* it never got off the ground. However, not all is lost, for Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, has taken up the challenge and produced a much better and far more comprehensive report than I could ever hope to achieve.
Firstly, and before moving on to horrors and inhumanity that are describe in the article, let me offer up in Hedges' quite polite words, his observations of the American psyche. I say polite, because in normal circumstances, if it is I that writes about such things, I can't get much further than employing such words as Cant and Hypocrisy, not to mention the total indifference Americans have to the suffering of others. And not least, wrapping the whole thing in sugar-coated religious piety that I, and many Europeans alike, find truly nauseating; it is after all, the American way.
Turse’s book (Kill Anything That Moves) obliterates the image we have of ourselves as a good and virtuous nation. It mocks the popular belief that we have a right to impose our “virtues” on others by force. It exposes the soul of our military, which has achieved, through relentless propaganda and effective censorship, a level of public adulation that is terrifying. Turse reminds us who we are. And in an age of expanding wars in the Middle East, routine torture, murderous air and drone strikes and targeted assassinations, his book is not so much about the past as about the present. We have worked, consciously and unconsciously, to erase the terrible truth about Vietnam and ultimately about ourselves. This is a tragedy. For if we were able to remember who we were, if we knew what we were capable of doing to others, then we might be less prone to replicating the industrial slaughter of Vietnam in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
Should you wish, you can meet the author Nick Turse, "Kill Anything That Moves" in this Democracy Now clip, about fifteen minutes.
Don't Look Away: We Must Confront the Horrific Industrial Violence the American Military Is Capable of
Nick Turse's Vietnam War book, 'Kill Anything That Moves,' shows how the trauma that plagues most veterans is tied to the horrors they inflicted.
by Chris Hedges
March 14, 2013
Nick Turse’s “ Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam” is not only one of the most important books ever written about the Vietnam conflict but provides readers with an unflinching account of the nature of modern industrial warfare. It captures, as few books on war do, the utter depravity of industrial violence—what the sociologist James William Gibson calls “technowar.” It exposes the sickness of the hyper-masculine military culture, the intoxicating rush and addiction of violence, and the massive government spin machine that lies daily to a gullible public and uses tactics of intimidation, threats and smear campaigns to silence dissenters. Turse, finally, grasps that the trauma that plagues most combat veterans is a result not only of what they witnessed or endured, but what they did. This trauma, shame, guilt and self-revulsion push many combat veterans—whether from Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan—to escape into narcotic and alcoholic fogs or commit suicide. By the end of Turse’s book, you understand why.
This is not the book Turse set out to write. He was, when his research began in June 2001, a graduate student looking at post-traumatic stress disorder among Vietnam veterans. An archivist at the U.S. National Archives asked Turse whether he thought witnessing war crimes could cause PTSD. He steered Turse to yellowing reports amassed by the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group. The group, set up in the wake of the My Lai massacre, was designed to investigate the hundreds of reports of torture, rape, kidnapping, forced displacement, beatings, arson, mutilation, executions and massacres carried out by U.S. troops. But the object of the group was not to discipline or to halt the abuses. It was, as Turse writes, “to ensure that the army would never again be caught off-guard by a major war crimes scandal.” War crimes, for army investigators, were “an image management” problem. Those charged with war crimes were rarely punished. The numerous reports of atrocities collected by the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group were kept secret, and the eyewitnesses who reported war crimes were usually ignored, discredited or cowed into silence.
Turse used the secret Pentagon reports and documents to track down more than 100 veterans—including those who had reported witnessing atrocities to their superiors and others charged with carrying out atrocities—and traveled to Vietnam to interview survivors. A decade later he produced a masterpiece. Case after case in his book makes it painfully clear that soldiers and Marines deliberately maimed, abused, beat, tortured, raped, wounded or killed hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians, including children, with impunity. Troops engaged in routine acts of sadistic violence usually associated with demented Nazi concentration camp guards. And what Turse describes is a woefully incomplete portrait, since he found that “an astonishing number of marine court-martial records of the era have apparently been destroyed or gone missing,” and “most air force and navy criminal investigation files that may have existed seem to have met the same fate.”
The few incidents of wanton killing in Vietnam—and this is also true for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—that did become public, such as My Lai, were dismissed as an aberration, the result of a few soldiers or Marines gone bad. But, as Turse makes clear, such massacres were and are, in our current imperial adventures, commonplace. The slaughters “were the inevitable outcome of deliberate policies, dictated at the highest levels of the military,” he writes. They were carried out because the dominant tactic of the war, as conceived by our politicians and generals, was centered on the concept of “overkill.” And when troops on the ground could not kill fast enough, the gunships, helicopters, fighter jets and bombers came to their assistance. The U.S. Air Force contributed to the demented quest for “overkill”—eradicating so many of the enemy that recuperation was theoretically impossible—by dropping the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam, most actually falling on the south where our purported Vietnamese allies resided. And planes didn’t just drop bombs. They unloaded more than 70 million tons of herbicidal agents, 3 million white phosphorus rockets—white phosphorous will burn its way entirely through a body—and an estimated 400,000 tons of jellied incendiary napalm. “Thirty-five percent of the victims,” Turse writes, “died within fifteen to twenty minutes.” Death from the skies, like death on the ground, was often unleashed capriciously. “It was not out of the ordinary for U.S. troops in Vietnam to blast a whole village or bombard a wide area in an effort to kill a single sniper,” Turse writes.
Page 2
Murder is an integral part of war. And the most disturbing form of murder, because it is so intimate, is carried out by infantry troops. The god-like power that comes with the ability to destroy anything, including other human beings, along with the intoxicating firepower of industrial weapons, rapidly turns those who wield these weapons into beasts. Human beings are reduced to objects, toys to satiate a perverse desire to dominate, humiliate, control and kill. Corpses are trophies. Many of the Vietnamese who were murdered, Turse relates, were first subjected to degrading forms of public abuse, gang rape, torture and savage beatings. They were, Turse writes, when first detained “confined to tiny barbed wire ‘cow cages’ and sometimes jabbed with sharpened bamboo sticks while inside them.” Other detainees “were placed in large drums filled with water; the containers were then struck with great force, which caused internal injuries but left no scars.” Some were “suspended by ropes for hours on end or hung upside down and beaten, a practice called ‘the plane ride.’ ” Or they “were chained with their hands over their heads, arms fully extended, so their feet could barely touch the ground—a version of an age-old torture called the strappado. Untold numbers were subjected to electric shocks from crank-operated field telephones, battery-powered devices, or even cattle prods.” Soles of feet were beaten. Fingernails were ripped out. Fingers were dismembered. Detainees were slashed with knives, “suffocated, burned by cigarettes, or beaten with truncheons, clubs, sticks, bamboo flails, baseball bats, and other objects. Many were threatened with death or even subjected to mock executions.” Turse found that “detained civilians and captured guerrillas were often used as human mine detectors and regularly died in the process.” And while soldiers and Marines were engaged in daily acts of brutality and murder, the Central Intelligence Agency “organized, coordinated, and paid for” a clandestine program of targeted assassinations “of specific individuals without any attempt to capture them alive or any thought of a legal trial.”
“All that suffering,” Turse, writes, “was more or less ignored as it happened, and then written out of history even more thoroughly in the decades since.”
Turse, in one of many accounts, describes a string of atrocities committed in the Duc Pho/Mo Duc border region in spring 1967 by Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry under the command of Capt. James Lanning. A wounded detainee, Turse writes, was dumped into a boat and pushed into a rice paddy where he was riddled with bullets and finished off with a grenade. A wounded woman was covered with a straw mat and set on fire. Paul Halverson, a soldier and military combat correspondent who accompanied the unit, when asked about the total number of civilians killed by Lanning’s force, stated in the book: “The entire time I was over there—just by Charlie Company—I’d say it would be in the hundreds.”
Maj. Gordon Livingston, a regimental surgeon with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, in 1971 testified before Congress that he witnessed “a helicopter pilot who swooped down on two Vietnamese women riding bicycles and killed them with the helicopter skids.” The pilot, after being grounded briefly and investigated, was soon exonerated and allowed back in the air.
Soldiers and Marines, as is common in all wars, collected body parts of dead Vietnamese—heads, noses, scalps, breasts, teeth, ears, fingers, genitals—and displayed them or wore them in necklaces. “There was people in all the platoons with ears on cords,” Jimmie Busby, a member of the 75th Rangers during 1970-1971, told an Army criminal investigator. Corpses were dressed up and twisted into comic poses for photographs or gruesomely mutilated. Severed heads of Vietnamese were mounted on pikes or poles in Army camps. The dead were lashed onto Army vehicles—which at times ran over Vietnamese civilians for sport—and driven through villages.
* Were you to follow the link, a series of John Pilger "Outsider" interviews will be revealed. Interviewees include: Jessica Mitford, Wilfred Burchett, Martha Gellhorn and Costa-Gavras. Recommended.
I do like stories like this, it gives me something to point to when I get fuckwit visitors, leaving their fuckwit comments, extolling the Home of The Brave, Land of the Free, Greatest Nation on Earth nonsense.
Not to mention, One Nation Under Jackboots God.
Arkansas town enacts martial law
Officers with AR-15s will patrol Paragould, stopping everyone out walking for their IDs
By Natasha Lennard
Jan 29, 2013
Following a rise in violent crime in Paragould, an Arkansas town of around 26,000 residents, the mayor and police chief announced that starting this month police in SWAT gear carrying AR-15s would patrol the streets.
“If you’re out walking, we’re going to stop you, ask why you’re out walking, and check for your ID,” police chief Todd Stovall told a December town hall meeting. As if to render the implementation of a visible police state more palatable, Stovall assured residents that police stops would not be based on any profiling: “We’re going to do it to everybody,” he said.
Stovall also told residents he had not consulted an attorney before instituting the plan. HuffPo’s Radley Balko noted that Paragould is not the first town to bring in such measures:
Using SWAT teams for routine patrols isn’t uncommon. Fresno did this for several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The city sent its Violent Crimes Suppression Unit into poorer neighborhoods and stopped, confronted, questioned, and searched nearly everyone they encountered. “It’s a war,” one SWAT officer told Christian Parenti in a a report for The Naiton (not available online). Another said, “If you’re 21, male, living in one of these neighborhoods, and you’re not in our computer, then there’s something definitely wrong.”
Balko picked up on interesting detail in Stovall’s comments. The police chief said, “This fear is what’s given us the reason to do this. Once I have stats and people saying they’re scared, we can do this.” As Balko pointed out, although there was an uptick in violent crime in Paragould, “fear” of crime was used as the pretext to implement martial law — based on such troubling reasoning, there is never not fear in U.S. towns today and so there is never not a pretext to introduce patrolling SWAT teams. Salon
Just in. (and I must go and look for another pearl)
Police state gone wild: Couple facing 60 days in jail for rescuing injured baby deer
by Mike Adams
January 29, 2013
(NaturalNews) An Indiana couple saved a wounded baby deer and nursed it back to life, saving its life and giving it a home. They named it "Little Orphan Dani." When Indiana state officials got word of this courageous act of compassion, they ordered the deer euthanized. (Because government wants to kill everything you love.)
When the deer "escaped" right before it was schedule to be killed -- and yes, I think the couple probably set it free rather than have it killed -- the man and woman were charged with unlawful possession of a deer.
They now face $2,000 in fines and 60 days in jail.
This is yet another example of the government police state gone wild, and it's on top of seemingly countless other stories of similar police state insanity such as armed government raids on raw milk distributors.
I don't think I have read anything that quite justifies my loathing for America as does this catalogue, nay, this cesspit of corruption in that worst of all places, small town America.
The Steubenville Files
localleaks.blogs.ru/
January 1, 2013
On August 27, 2012 two members of the Big Red High School football team in Steubenville, Ohio – USA were arrested and charged with the rape and kidnapping of an out of town 16 year old girl that took place on August 11th. At the time of this gang rape, the girl was intoxicated and unconscious. The victim had been intentionally drugged with a “date rape” intoxicant. She was photographed and video was taken of her in this condition, and there is evidence that she was hauled in a comatose state to multiple parties – and almost certainly raped by more members of the local high school football team than just the two players who currently stand charged. There is even evidence that she was urinated upon during this hideous assault.
Despite all this, it looked as though a town rife with corruption, cronyism, illegal gambling and fixated upon their star high school football team (a major economic revenue engine) were prepared to orchestrate a major cover-up in order to sweep the entire affair under the rug. As this disclosure will document, this cover-up was perpetrated by people in the high school administration, local government and law enforcement.
– Enter Anonymous –
On December 23, 2012 a cell within Anonymous called “Knight Sec” took up the cause of giving a voice to the victim of this horrible crime, and began unraveling this conspiracy of silence designed to protect a group of these high school football players who had become well known to their fellow students as “The Rape Crew”. Fueled by intelligence they had received from many students at Big Red High School, they launched Operation RollRedRoll by releasing this video. Take careful note of the various screen capture images of pictures taken by these monsters of this poor defenseless girl, and note their many comments made in tweets and Facebook posts regarding their crime (now since deleted). More
"The Steubenville Files" UPDATE: We've just updated the info on what happened at Coach Belerdine's house. http://localleaks.blogs.ru/
Just to echo one point of many in the article, let's leave God out of the equation, because the sooner Americans face up to reality, the more chance they will have of addressing the countless ills that ail that unenviable country.
And a very good place to start is at the beginning. The country was not founded on Christian Judeo principals, it was founded on dispossession and genocide of the native population. Slavery and Robber Barons et al, can wait until another day.
God doesn't bless America, if there were a God, America would be the last country on earth that he would bless.
And another thing, the "let's take America back" (to the good old days!) brigade. Irrespective of whatever that is supposed to mean, it's not coming back. Nothing is coming back for any of us, Google the 'Arrow of Time' that, unlike your God, is the reality of this world. Update: See videos below.
Horror in Newtown
The editorial board
17 December 2012
The horrific massacre at a school in the small town of Newtown, Connecticut has sickened the entire country. Twenty-eight people lie dead, including twenty children between the ages of six and seven, who were shot multiple times. Six adults were also killed in Friday’s shooting spree before the gunman, Adam Lanza, took his own life. Earlier that morning, he shot and killed his mother.
The inhumanity of the crime is deeply unsettling. Beyond the individual motivations of the killer, the shooting at Newtown lays bare a brutality that pervades American society.
Friday’s mass killing is the latest in a long series of such incidents. The United States has historically seen repeated outbursts of violence. Yet the past two decades have been unusual, even by American standards. The frequency and scale of mass killings point to an underlying cause.
Among the most significant events have been the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 (168 killed, including 19 children); the Columbine, Colorado massacre in 1999 (14 dead); and the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 (34 dead). This year alone has seen massacres at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado (12 dead and 58 injured); a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin (6 dead); a sign business in Minneapolis, Minnesota (6 dead); a spa in Brookfield, Wisconsin (3 dead); and a mall six days ago in Portland, Oregon (3 dead).
The response of the American media and the political establishment to the latest shooting traces a well-worn path. There are the banal declarations of the incomprehensibility and senselessness of “evil.” To the extent any broader response is offered, it is focused on the need for a “national conversation” on gun control and empty promises to do more to address mental health (made by politicians doing their best to slash health care programs to the bone).
The American ruling class has lost the capacity for self-examination. It knows that any serious analysis of the roots of this and other tragedies points back to itself and the society it dominates.
The speech by President Obama at a memorial service in Newtown Sunday night was typical—a combination of stock phrases, play acting and invocations of religion. It would have been better if he said nothing, as he had nothing intelligent to say.
The ceremony was an exercise in religious obscurantism, in which the parents of the murdered children were told not to grieve or lose heart, for their sons and daughters were in heaven.
“God has called them all home,” Obama declared in concluding his speech. Such statements are not only insensitive to the families of those killed, they are insulting to the intelligence of the American people. One can understand a turn to religion as a source of solace by those who experience such unspeakable tragedy. In the hands of the state, however, it is a means of obfuscation to cover up the social and political roots of such events.
If the politicians insist on invoking religion, they would do better to ask themselves how Lincoln might have responded. In describing the carnage of the revolutionary war he led, the sixteenth president said that if God willed that “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,” then “the judgments of the Lord are righteous altogether.”
The tragedies of this world (the Civil War), Lincoln insisted, are products of worldly crimes (slavery).
For what deeds are tragedies such as Newtown the reckoning? Far from being incomprehensible, the crime is all too comprehensible. The roots are not hard to trace: a society of unprecedented inequality, a thoroughly backward official political ideology without an ounce of progressive content, and, above all, an incredible level of violence perpetrated by the state, accompanied by the brutalization of society as a whole.
The character of the mass killings bears witness to this connection. Certain features appear with regularity: the use of military-style weapons, assailants (such as Lanza) dressed in combat fatigues, the frequent involvement of former soldiers.
The past two decades have been years of unending war. Born in 1992, the 20-year old Lanza spent most of his life during the “war on terror”—one neocolonial occupation after another, drone attacks, torture, rendition, a relentless assault on democratic rights. He could not have been unaffected by the constant efforts to promote fear and paranoia—the sense that the “enemy” is just around the corner.
Obama himself is the first US president to openly assert the right to assassinate anyone, anywhere, including US citizens. He devotes a significant portion of his time to selecting the targets of drone killings, with the full knowledge that civilians—including women and children—will be killed as a result. By conservative estimates, 3,365 people have been killed by drone strikes in Pakistan alone, including 176 children.
The government and the media praise the killings perpetrated by the US military, and soldiers sent to invade and occupy nations are venerated as “heroes.” The Navy Seals and Special Ops forces who do the murderous dirty work of the US military are glorified.
Can one seriously believe this country can inflict violence all over the world and not suffer deadly consequences at home?
In the coming days, more information will emerge shedding light on the specific motives behind this latest mass killing. By all accounts, Lanza was a deeply troubled young man. It would be impossible to commit such a crime otherwise. Yet the individual psychosis and its particular expression is, ultimately, the product of a profound social disease. wsws.org
You may think it odd that I have added these two clips to a post of this nature, but I can think of no better way of highlighting the structure of the world and the fallibilities of man.
Until we can recognise true reality, the reality devoid of gods, superstition and self interest; self interest being equally harmful as any belief in the supernatural, we will never solve the problems that face us all as a species.
And one of those first realities is, that no person in any civilised society has the need to posses assault weapons of any description for any reason.
The Arrow of Time - Wonders of the Universe
Events always happen in the same order, they never go backwards. We are compelled to travel into the future, and that's because the arrow of time dictates that as each moment passes things change, and once these changes happen, they are never undone.
How a sandcastle reveals the end of all things - Wonders of the Universe
"The second law of Thermodynamics is able to explain why time only runs in one direction." - Brian Cox
Update: Nothing better could endorse my point, said he with a monumental groan.
'Affront to Almighty God' Right Wing Watch
Divided States of America
Notes on the Decline of a Great Nation
By SPIEGEL ONLINE Staff
11/05/2012
The United States is frittering away its role as a model for the rest of the world. The political system is plagued by an absurd level of hatred, the economy is stagnating and the infrastructure is falling into a miserable state of disrepair. On this election eve, many Americans are losing faith in their country's future.
The monumental National Mall in Washington, DC, 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) long and around 1,586 feet wide at its broadest point, is a place that showcases the United States of America is in its full glory as a world power. A walk along the magnificent swath of green space, between the white dome of the Capitol to the east and the Lincoln Memorial, a temple erected to honor former president Abraham Lincoln, at its western end, leads past men in bronze and stone, memorials for soldiers and conquerors, and the nearby White House. It's a walk that still creates an imperial impression today.
The Mall is lined with museums and landscaped gardens, in which America is on display as the kind of civil empire that promotes the arts and sciences. There are historic sites, and there are the famous steps of the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King once spoke of his dream, and of the dreams of a country to be a historic force, one that would serve the wellbeing of all of mankind. Put differently, the National Mall is an open-air museum for an America that, in 2012, is mostly a pleasant memory.
After a brilliant century and a terrible decade, the United States, in this important election year, has reached a point in its history when the obvious can no longer be denied: The reality of life in America so greatly contradicts the claim -- albeit one that has always been exaggerated -- to be the "greatest nation on earth," that even the most ardent patriots must be overcome with doubt.
This realization became only too apparent during and after Hurricane Sandy, the monster storm that ravaged America's East Coast last week, its effects made all the more devastating by the fact that its winds were whipping across an already weakened country. The infrastructure in New York, New Jersey and New England was already in trouble long before the storm made landfall near Atlantic City. The power lines in Brooklyn and Queens, on Long Island and in New Jersey, in one of the world's largest metropolitan areas, are not underground, but are still installed along a fragile and confusing above-ground network supported by utility poles, the way they are in developing countries. No System to Protect Against Storm Surges
Although parts of New York City, especially the island of Manhattan, are only a few meters above sea level, the city still has no extensive system to protect itself against storm surges, despite the fact that the sea level has been rising for years and the number of storms is increasing. In the case of Sandy, the weather forecasts were relatively reliable three or four days prior to its arrival, so that the time could have been used to at least make improvised preparations, which did not happen. The only effective walls of sandbags that were built in the city on a larger scale did not appear around power plants, hospitals or tunnel entrances, but around the skyscraper of the prescient investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Large parts of America's biggest city and millions of people along the East Coast could now be forced to survive for days, possibly even weeks, without electricity, water and heat. Many of the backup generators intended for such emergencies didn't work, so that large hospitals had to be evacuated. On the one hand, these consequences of the storm point to the uncontrollability of nature. On the other hand, they are signs that America is no longer the great, robust global power it once was.
Europeans who make such claims have always been accused of anti-Americanism. But now Americans themselves are joining the chorus of those declaring the country's decline. "I had to catch a train in Washington last week," New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, whose columns are read worldwide, wrote last April. "The paved street in the traffic circle around Union Station was in such poor condition that I felt as though I was on a roller coaster. I traveled on the Amtrak Acela, our sorry excuse for a fast train, on which I had so many dropped calls on my cellphone that you'd have thought I was on a remote desert island, not traveling from Washington to New York City. When I got back to Union Station, the escalator in the parking garage was broken. Maybe you've gotten used to all this and have stopped noticing. I haven't. Our country needs a renewal."
Such everyday observations are coalescing into a new, tarnished image of America. Screenwriter Aaron Sorken, the creator of many legendary television series, has come up with a new, brutal look at America. The 10-part drama, "The Newsroom," tells the story of a cynical news anchor who reinvents himself and vows to do everything right in the future. In the show's brilliant premiere, he is asked at a panel discussion to describe why America is the greatest country in the world. After a few tired jokes, the truth comes gushing out of him. "There's absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world," he ways. "We're seventh in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined."
A Land of Limited Opportunities
In the show, the audience reacts with shock, just as a real-life American audience would. But the truth is that America has transformed itself into a land of limited opportunities. In fact, that was the way SPIEGEL referred to the United States in a 1979 cover story, when the US economy had been hard-hit by the oil crisis.
But today's crisis is far more comprehensive, extending to the social, political and spiritual realms. The worst thing about it is that the country still refuses to engage in any debate over the reasons for its decline. It seems as if many Americans today no longer want to talk about how they can strengthen their union. Criticism is seen as a betrayal of America's greatness.
But that notion of greatness leaves much to be desired. Other numbers can be readily added to those rattled off by the protagonist in Sorkin's "The Newsroom," and the results are sobering. For instance, the United States is no longer among the world's top 10 countries when it comes to the state of its infrastructure. In fact, it spends less than Europe to maintain its roads and bridges, tunnels, train stations and airports.
According to the US Federal Highway Administration, one in four of the more than 600,000 bridges in the world's richest country are either "inadequate" or outdated. According to some studies, the United States would have to invest some $225 billion a year between now and 2050 to regain an adequate, modern infrastructure. That's 60 percent more than it invests today.
A Lack of Strength
It isn't hard to predict that this won't happen. The hatred of big government has reached a level in the United States that threatens the country's very existence. Americans everywhere may vow allegiance to the nation and its proud Stars and Stripes, but when it comes time to pay the bills and distribute costs, and when solidarity is needed, all sense of community evaporates.
Then the divides open up between Washington and the rest of the country, between the North and the South, between the East and the West, between cities and rural areas, and between states whose governors often sound as if the country were still embroiled in a civil war.
The country has forgotten the days when former President Franklin D. Roosevelt courageously told his fellow Americans that a collectively supported social welfare system didn't translate into socialism but freedom, a "New Deal" that would strengthen America in the long term. Gone are the days when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched bold government programs to cover a country 27 times the size of Germany with a network of interstate highways. Gone are the years when former President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty and enacted federal laws declaring that there could be no second- or third-class citizens, regardless of skin color. And gone is the spirit of renewal after former President John F. Kennedy's visionary promise to send Americans to the moon within a decade, a program that would cost taxpayers billions.
Today America lacks the financial strength, political courage and social will to embark on such large-scale, government-directed programs. The United States has long been drawing down its savings, writes Fareed Zakaria, another American critic of his own country and a respected columnist with Time. "What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies." Go to page two
And if you think my use of the term fascist is a bit strong; read on.
How a mere "procedural" decision blatantly shortchanges justice Herman Schwartz August 20, 2012
This past April, the five conservative Supreme Court Justices gave jail officials the right to strip and search every person arrested and jailed, even if the alleged offense is trivial and there is no reason to suspect danger of any kind. The ruling, in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, compounds the assault on human dignity committed by the Court in another 5-4 decision eleven years ago, in Atwater v. City of Lago Vista, when it authorized a full custodial arrest for even trivial “fine-only” offenses like a temporarily unbuckled seat belt. Our right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures has once again been undermined by a narrow conservative majority concerned more with protecting public officials than with the rights of ordinary Americans.
Florence grew out of a mistake. On March 3, 2005, Albert Florence, an African-American businessman, his pregnant wife and their 4-year-old son, were in the family BMW, when a New Jersey state trooper pulled them over. Florence’s wife was driving; no reason for the stop appears in the record and no citation was ever issued. The trooper ordered Florence, the owner, out of the car. A computer check disclosed that an arrest warrant for civil contempt had once been issued against him for nonpayment of a fine but failed to note that the fine had been paid and the warrant withdrawn.
Florence had been stopped several times before, which he attributed to his being an African-American driving an expensive car. He therefore carried a certificate attesting to the cancellation of the warrant, which he showed to the trooper. Nevertheless, he was handcuffed, arrested and taken to the Burlington County jail. The jail authorities conceded that they had no suspicion of any wrongdoing by Florence apart from the fine. Yet he was still forced to strip, shower with a delousing agent, open his mouth for inspection, hold out his arms and lift his genitals, and turn around so the officer could examine his buttocks.
After six days without appearing before a magistrate as required by law, Florence was transferred to the Essex County jail. There he was again strip-searched, again without any indication that he had done anything wrong, only this time he was required to squat and cough, and to undergo close examination of his ears, nose, mouth, scalp, armpits, inner thighs and other parts of his body. The next day Florence was brought before a judge who, “appalled” at his treatment, ordered his immediate release. Florence sued the two counties and was joined in a class-action by others subjected to the same treatment.
What happened to him could happen to anyone. Had the mother of three at the center of Atwater—who was handcuffed and jailed after she and her children were found to have unbuckled their seatbelts temporarily—been arrested today, she could have also been subjected to a strip search. This is because state penal and traffic codes are stuffed with a vast array of such minor and often trivial offenses for which an arrest can be made wholly at the discretion of police. Among those who joined the class-action lawsuit filed by Florence were people who had been charged with having a noisy muffler, an inoperable headlight, a bald tire, high beams on and a faulty windshield wiper. Others were charged with ignoring a stop sign, improperly backing up, crossing a double line, and parking in a no-parking zone, and two were charged with improperly riding a bicycle and riding without an audible bell. All were stripped and searched.
In DC, the lawsuit notes, a 12-year-old girl was arrested for eating a French fry in Metro station and a driver was arrested for “false pretenses” after backing out of a parking garage. In Kentucky, a woman was charged for failing to appear in traffic court when the judge provided her with the wrong appearance date.
People of color, like Florence, are especially vulnerable to such police tactics, for in many cases, the arrests and subsequent searches are really for the “offenses” of Driving While Black, being in the wrong neighborhood, or talking back to the police. Political protesters like the civil rights workers who marched in the South and the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, especially protesters and demonstrators in hostile settings, are also vulnerable to the abuses made possible by the Florence and Atwater decisions.
The Supreme Court justified both the Atwater and Florence decisions with the argument that police and jail officials need a “bright-line” rule so as not to be subject to personal liability for making an unnecessary arrest or search and not to be discouraged from taking such action when they should. But a bright-line rule for both such situations is readily available: Police should not be authorized to arrest or search someone for a minor fine-only violation except in extraordinary circumstances. The police are in no danger of personal liability if they make a good-faith mistake, because they are entitled to immunity for such mistakes.
No one can dispute a federal appellate court’s characterization of a strip search as “demeaning, dehumanizing, undignified, humiliating, terrifying, unpleasant, embarrassing, [and] repulsive, signifying degradation and submission.” Even the Supreme Court has said that a search that intrusive “demand[s] its own specific suspicions.” The shock and humiliation suffered by persons subjected to such arrests and searches is aggravated by the fact that they are almost always ordinary citizens who have never been in jail before. In one case a Chicago woman doctor who had been strip-searched afterward suffered paranoia, suicidal feelings and depression and would not undress anywhere but in a closet
The conservative majority in Florence stressed that jails are dangerous places, and therefore the actions of jail officials are entitled to judicial deference. Jails are dangerous—and drug smuggling is indeed a problem. But people like Florence don’t pose a threat, which is why the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the US Marshals Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs all forbid strip searches of minor offenders except upon reasonable suspicion. Similarly, standards defined by the American Correctional Association—the accrediting body for adult correctional facilities—require a reasonable belief or suspicion of contraband for a strip search.
The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official. The framers would be appalled. The Nation
I paid a visit to the blog of Alexander Higgins, looking for a Fukushima update, but came away with these three stories.
It all rather makes the $8 Billion (total) expenditure of the present US presidential elections somewhat of an oxymoron don't you think? Because that what is writ below, don't sound much like democracy to me.
And the pay-back from the successful candidate to big business that has fronted that kind of money, even less so.
Mind you, this democracy thing, all it has ever been is an illusion.
Congress Now Trying To Outlaw Reporting On Government Corruption Lawmakers are pushing legislation through Congress that will criminalize reporting on illegal activities and corruption in the US government. July 13, 2012
Just when you thought the United States government couldn’t sink any lower our beloved politicians in Washington have introduced legislation that will criminalize reporting on US government secrets.
What makes this new legislation shocking is that we have seen the US government repeatedly use the “State Secrets” and the “National InSecurity card to suspend the Constitution at will to commit a wide variety of heinous activities from torture and indefinite detention without trial to outright forced drugging of prisoners and even repeated assassination by the government, of people including US citizens, which is now being done on the direction of the United States’ first even assassination czar.
Keeping that in mind the fact that lawmakers are now trying to go after reporters that “publish government secrets” more
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Obama Gives DHS Authority To Seize ALL US Communications July 16, 2012
President Obama admits last weeks executive order gave the DHS authority to seize all public, private and commercial communication systems.
President Obama has taken the unprecedented step of handing the Department of Homeland Security the power to seize all communication systems in the United States — be they private, public or commercial — under any terms the government deems fit in another mind boggling executive order.
RT originally published a story last week reporting that EPIC and other organizations were crying foul because never in the history of the United States has the government ever been granted to seize private communication systems.
Feds Charge Man As Enemy Combatant Supporting Terrorism For Uploading Youtube Video
Feds Charge Man As Enemy Combatant Supporting Terrorism For Uploading YouTube Video, Subjecting Him To Permanent Imprisonment, Torture, And Lethal Beatings Without A Trial September 2, 2011
Take freedom of speech and other personal liberties — including protections against cruel and unusual punishment, right to face your accuser, and right to trial by jury — and throw them right out the window. All for the crime of uploading a YouTube.
That is what a 24 year old Virginia man, Jubair Ahmad, faces as the feds charge him with providing support for terrorism for allegedly uploading a propaganda video. The crime comes with the dubious distinction that the accused are treated as if they are actually terrorists or as the U.S. government labels them “enemies combatants”. With the declaration of being an enemy combatant the rights and protections engraved into the Constitution with the full force of our founding father’s very own flesh and blood are instantly nullified.
That’s right. The Department of Justice of the great United States of America has charged a Jubair Ahmad, a 24 year old Woodbridge, Virginia man, of providing support for terrorism because he allegedly uploaded a propaganda video to YouTube. The accusation alone instantly classifies the man as an ‘enemy combatant’ and ‘clear and present danger’. Such persons who are a ‘threat to national security’ have absolutely no rights. To make matters worse, businesses and nations aren’t allowed to do business with such so-called ‘terrorists’ or they will be declared a terrorist themselves. That means a lawyer who takes up his case can be charge with providing support for terrorism. That is if the United States government even decides to honor habeas corpus and give the man a trial in the first place. Our beloved supreme court has ruled that ‘enemy combatants’ can be abducted, tortured, assassinated, and even detained for ever without a trial because the constitution does not apply to them. Even worse, the lucky few who are released after being declared innocent have no right to legal recourse because revealing the details of their detention and torture is also a threat to national security.
This is what the ‘war on terror’ has escalated to, more
