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"The collectivism of war is one of the most wicked forms of tribalism in our time. Most Americans..."

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 11:16:19 -0500

“The collectivism of war is one of the most wicked forms of tribalism in our time. Most Americans recognise that Muslim terrorists are guilty of regarding innocent people as a disposable means to an end. But they are not alone. US and Israeli leaders do this too. The United States deliberately killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians through sanctions in the 1990s. Today, Israeli politicians and important public figures use crazed language calling on the government to ‘flatten Gaza’ or ‘send it back to the Middle Ages.’”

- Anthony Gregory (via anarchei)

US Military Says Killing Afghan Children Is Fair Game

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 14:03:07 -0500

US Military Says Killing Afghan Children Is Fair Game:

moralanarchism:

This is just sick.

In October, the US launched an airstrike in Afghanistan that killed three children – ages 8, 10, and 12 -while they were gathering firewood (or by some accounts, dung to burn as fuel). NATO issued its usual dismissive statement, admitting it may have “accidentally killed three innocent Afghan civilians.”

But now, according to the Military Times, the US military includes children on their list of who they’re allowed to murder with impunity.

…a Marine official here raised questions about whether the children were “innocent.” Before calling for the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System mission in mid-October, Marines observed the children digging a hole in a dirt road in Nawa district, the official said, and the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission.

So digging holes in Afghanistan is now grounds for getting bombed? The children’s relatives and local tribal elders had confirmed at the time that they were not Taliban recruits and were not planting any roadside bombs.

That’s apparently not enough for the US military to simply admit that killing innocent children is wrong. Instead, they invent Orwellian rationales for why these poor children were worthy enemy combatants.

“It kind of opens our aperture,” said Army Lt. Col. Marion “Ced” Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. “In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent.”

There you have it. The US military is now looking for “military-age males” and “children” to kill in Afghanistan.

Israeli Soldiers Fail to Cease Firing

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 14:01:59 -0500

Israeli Soldiers Fail to Cease Firing:

“It was the first day of the ceasefire. An Israeli soldier shot once in the air and within seconds shot me in the leg. He was only a few meters away.” Haithem Abu Dagga, 26, an electrician and farm laborer, will not be able to work for as many months as it takes his right leg to heal. The bullet exited his leg but fractured his shin bone.

The Nov. 21 Gaza ceasefire stipulates that, among other things, the Israeli army will not launch incursions into Palestinian land, air, and sea, and Israel will not target Palestinians in the border regions of Gaza.

As of the first day of the ceasefire, Israel had already violated these provisions. From the evening of Nov. 21 and throughout the following days, Israeli drones and F-16s have continued to dominate Gaza’s airspace.

In the days following the ceasefire Israeli military bulldozers entered Palestinian land under what an Israeli army spokesperson called “routine activity,” and Israeli soldiers shot at unarmed Palestinian farmers and civilians in border regions.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) reports that in the period Nov. 22-29, Israeli soldiers killed one Palestinian civilian and injured “42 civilians, including seven children” in the border areas of Gaza.

Abu Dagga, a farm laborer from the rural agricultural region of Abassan, was among a number of Palestinians who hoped that the Israeli army would abide by the ceasefire. When they walked on land which most had not accessed for a decade, they did so believing that they no longer had to fear being shot at by Israeli soldiers.

Since just over a decade ago, the Israeli-imposed “buffer zone” has been unilaterally extended by Israeli authorities from the initial 50 meters to the current 300-meter “no-go zone.”

According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the 300 meters off-limits area extends at places to more than 1.5 km. PCHR has documented the Israeli army targeting Palestinian civilians as far as two kilometers from the border.

The area annexed by the no-go zone and extended high-risk areas equates to 35 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land. Formerly known for its lush fruit, olive and nut tree growth, the border regions are some of the most fertile areas in the Gaza Strip and formerly produced a wide variety of vegetables, grains, and pulses.

Under the recent Israel-Gaza ceasefire agreement, the no-go region should have ceased with the ceasefire.

Rethinking Immigration Assumptions

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:52:20 -0500

Rethinking Immigration Assumptions:

Compared with native-born Americans, immigrants are more likely to start a business, more likely to launch a hugely successful one, more likely to work, and less likely to commit crime. They’re also willing to take jobs many Americans refuse to do. …

Americans who resent having to compete with immigrants for jobs suffer from a double delusion. First, they assume the supply of jobs is fixed and that we would all be better off with a smaller population. That’s flatly wrong. Immigrants are not just employees; they are also employers and consumers. Second, talk of immigrants taking “our” jobs implies some people have prior claims to jobs they have not yet been hired for. The term for that is “entitlement mentality.”

But aren’t immigrants driving up crime rates? Nope. Take Arizona, the Ground Zero of anti-immigration sentiment. As a 2010 piece in The Washington Times noted, “In the past decade, as illegal immigrants were drawn in record numbers by the housing boom, the rate of violent crimes in Phoenix and the entire state fell by more than 20 percent, a steeper drop than in the overall U.S. crime rate.” As Arizona goes, so goes the nation: A 2007 study found that “for every ethnic group, without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants.” The Immigration Policy Center, which produced that report, elsewhere has said that “a century’s worth of research has demonstrated that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes … than the native-born.”

New DVR will use camera and microphone to target advertisements based on recordings of users

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:51:49 -0500

New DVR will use camera and microphone to target advertisements based on recordings of users:

roxygen:

thefreelioness:

(Yahoo) “It won’t be long before our televisions are watching us.

You don’t have to be paranoid or even a privacy expert to find this development a little creepy. Verizon has filed a patent on a new DVR technology that works by filming and recording viewers in order to send them targeted ads through their TV’s.

“If detection facility detects one or more words spoken by a user (e.g., while talking to another user within the same room or on the telephone), advertising facility may utilize the one or more words spoken by the user to search for and/or select an advertisement associated with the one or more words,” Verizon states in its application,which was first reported by Fierce Cable.”

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Iraq all over again as anonymous officials from Obama administration claims Syria has WMDs

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:50:14 -0500

Iraq all over again as anonymous officials from Obama administration claims Syria has WMDs

"Frustrations for small business owners begin at a young age these days. Last year in Coralville, Iowa, police shut down a lemonade stand run by four-year-old Abigail Krutsinger. Abigail had set out her stand for the benefit of riders taking part in a cross-state bicycle race. However, such stands are not permitted unless the operator first applies for a vendor’s permit from the city government and then submits to a health inspection—formidable obstacles for a toddler no matter how entrepreneurial she may be."

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:43:31 -0500

"Frustrations for small business owners begin at a young age these days. Last year in Coralville, Iowa, police shut down a lemonade stand run by four-year-old Abigail Krutsinger. Abigail had set out her stand for the benefit of riders taking part in a cross-state bicycle race. However, such stands are not permitted unless the operator first applies for a vendor’s permit from the city government and then submits to a health inspection—formidable obstacles for a toddler no matter how entrepreneurial she may be."

logicallypositive: latinegro: 56 U.S. Military Interventions...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:25:05 -0500

logicallypositive:

latinegro:

56 U.S. Military Interventions in Latin America

this is very pertinent to that wall of text i wrote about the militarist cultural hegemony

Decade of US 'War on Terror' Yields More 'Terrorism'

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:15:23 -0500

Decade of US 'War on Terror' Yields More 'Terrorism':

becauseithinktoomuch:

After more than eleven years of the US waging wars abroad in the name of “fighting terrorism” a new report released Tuesday shows that the number of global terror attacks has dramatically increased during the post-9/11 era, not decreased.

The new Global Terrorism Index (GTI) found that while the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere generated huge spikes in terrorist activity and civilian deaths in those countries, it is North America which has been most insulated from the growth in violence.

Produced by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) the GTI is the first index to rank countries on the impact of terrorism and analyses the associated economic and social dimensions. The index is based on data from the Global Terrorism Database, which is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), headquartered at the University of Maryland.

“After 9/11, terrorist activity fell back to pre-2000 levels until after the Iraq invasion, and has since escalated dramatically,” Steve Killelea, founder and executive chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace, told Reuters in an e-mail interview.

“Iraq accounts for about a third of all terrorist deaths over the last decade, and Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan account for over 50 percent of fatalities.”

The glaring fault of the study, which demands note, is that it employs a very narrow definition of the term “terrorism”—a word that Glenn Greenwald says “simultaneously means nothing and justifies everything.” Within the scope of GTI report, the term excludes the violence of state or government-based actors like the US armed forces or NATO’s military regime.

As Reuters notes:

The researchers used the University of Maryland definition of “terrorism”: “the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation”.

It did not include casualties from government-backed action such as aerial bombing or other killings.

Long a critique of the “global war on terrorism” is that the definition of the word “terrorism” is meant to connotate violence perpetrated by less powerful, though committed, militant networks and not the politically motivated violence of powerful nations, such as the United States or others.

As Greenwald argued at Salon.com in 2011:

This topic is so vital because this meaningless, definition-free word — Terrorism — drives so many of our political debates and policies. Virtually every debate in which I ever participate quickly and prominently includes defenders of government policy invoking the word as some sort of debate-ending, magical elixir: of course President Obama has to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process: they’re Terrorists; of course we have to stay in Afghanistan: we have to stop The Terrorists; President Obama is not only right to kill people (including civilians) using drones, but is justified in boasting and even joking about it, because they’re Terrorists; of course some people should be held in prison without charges: they’re Terrorists, etc. etc.

And as the linguistics professor and author Noam Chomsky, commenting on the death of innocent people throughout the US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, said: “Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.”

Despite the flaws of the definition used in the report, its value remains in the close examination of the last decade and tells a stark story about the nature non-state terrorism since 2001.

One of the key lessons of the report, as Killelea told Reuters, is that foreign powers should think twice before intervening militarily in regions like Yemen and Syria (or anywhere for that matter), as the mere presence of foreign armies simply adds to the grievances and anger of local people.

Other key findings include:

The number of terrorist incidents and the number of successful attacks has steadily increased over the last decade.

In 2011, 91% of terrorist attacks were successful.

From 2002 to 2011 over one third of all victims killed in terrorist attacks were Iraqi.

In 2011 there were 4564 terrorist incidents globally, resulting in 7473 deaths and 13961 injuries.

Most terrorist attacks occur in the context of a wider conflict situation.

Whilst religious terrorism often gets widespread coverage, there is a significant level of terrorism from non-religious groups.

Western Europe experiences many more terrorist incidents than the U.S. having also suffered 19 times more fatalities than the U.S.

Over the period 2002-2011, terrorists were most likely to target private citizens and property, government, police, and business. The trends for these attacks have been increasing as a percentage for all targets since 2002. Military installations and personnel were only targeted in 4% of incidents.

Global incidents, fatalities and injuries are dominated by events in lower middle income countries. Seven of the ten countries most affected by terrorism are from the lower middle income bracket.

Low income countries are much less likely to suffer from terrorism than lower middle income countries. This suggests that poverty is not a prime driver of terrorism.

The majority of global incidents, fatalities and injuries occur in countries with hybrid regimes1 and account for 46% of incidents, 54% of fatalities and 60% of all injuries.

Terrorism correlates with low political stability, low intergroup cohesion, human rights violations and with high levels of group grievances.

From 2002 to 2011, North America was the least likely region to suffer from a terrorist attack, followed by Western Europe.

"NPR has a report this morning on how rarely the Federal Bureau of Prisons allows the early release..."

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 10:12:39 -0500

“

NPR has a report this morning on how rarely the Federal Bureau of Prisons allows the early release of inmates under the “compasionate release” program. However, the NPR report misses the heart of the issue.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons’s budget is directly related to the number of prisoners they have incarcerated. In Washington, the size of your budget is directly related to your agency’s power. And every agency wants more power and thus more money.

Problems like this are just another symptom of the problem of big of a government, a government driven to constantly grow and spend more. Perhaps NPR should look at the BOP’s nearly $7 billion dollar budget, the fact that the BOP spends nearly $31,000 per inmate. Maybe then they would discover the BOP’s incentive to keep as many people as possible locked up.

Then NPR should look at every other government agency and discover just how they play the exact same game, get more more, get more power, and never give it back. Maybe then they would understand why people want less government not more.

”

- The Advocates for Self Government (via thinksquad)

"Law enforcement officers have often described [marijuana] arrests as a way of reining in criminals..."

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 10:14:41 -0500

“

Law enforcement officers have often described [marijuana] arrests as a way of reining in criminals whose other, more serious activities present a danger to the public. But state statistics show that of the nearly 12,000 teenagers arrested last year, nearly 94 percent had no prior convictions and nearly half had never been arrested.

Now a new study by Human Rights Watch further debunks the main premise of New York City’s “broken windows” law enforcement campaign, which holds that clamping down on small offenses like simple marijuana possession prevents serious crime and gets hard-core criminals off the streets.

The study tracked about 30,000 people arrested for marijuana possession in 2003-4 — none of whom had prior convictions — for periods of six-and-a-half to eight-and-a-half years. The study found that about only 1,000 of them had a subsequent violent felony conviction. Some had misdemeanor or felony drug convictions, but more than 90 percent of the study group had no felony convictions whatsoever. The report concluded that the Police Department was sweeping “large numbers of people into New York City’s criminal justice system — particularly young people of color — who do not subsequently engage in violent crime.” This wastes millions of dollars and unfairly puts people through the criminal system.

”

- NYT Editorial: An Ineffective Way to Fight Crime (via letterstomycountry)

"In the Second World War, there was indeed a strong moral imperative, which still resonates among..."

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 10:11:50 -0500

“

In the Second World War, there was indeed a strong moral imperative, which still resonates among most people in this country and which maintains the reputation of World War II as “the good war.” There was a need to defeat the monstrosity of fascism. It was that belief that drove me to enlist in the Air Force and fly bombing missions over Europe.

Only after the war did I begin to question the purity of the moral crusade. Dropping bombs from five miles high, I had seen no human beings, heard no screams, seen no children dismembered. But now I had to think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden, the deaths of 600,000 civilians in Japan, and a similar number in Germany.

I came to a conclusion about the psychology of myself and other warriors: Once we decided, at the start, that our side was the good side and the other side was evil, once we had made that simple and simplistic calculation, we did not have to think anymore. Then we could commit unspeakable crimes and it was all right.

”

- Howard Zinn (via thinksquad)

thinksquad: How can a 375% education spending increase over...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 21:02:39 -0500

thinksquad:

How can a 375% education spending increase over four decades result in flat-lined reading, math and science scores? Because all that largesse feeds a bureaucratic monster sheltered from competition.

President Obama calls on audiences to “tell Congress to pass this bill and put teachers back in the classroom where they belong.” But Federal education spending is bad for kids and bad for the economy — a big reason being that much of the spending goes not to real teachers or principals — but to those holding an array of bureaucratic “support” positions.

This is not the kind of problem that can be fixed by government spending at all.
-Peter Bromberg

In Ohio, Obamacare to Increase Individual Insurance Premiums by 55-85% | Forbes

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 20:44:05 -0500

In Ohio, Obamacare to Increase Individual Insurance Premiums by 55-85% | Forbes:

antigovernmentextremist:

thevocalibertarian:

You get what you vote for.

Fuuuuuuuck.

"I was on campus today (in Pakistan - yes, we have universities! Isn’t that crazy?! I know, right!)..."

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 22:26:03 -0500

“I was on campus today (in Pakistan - yes, we have universities! Isn’t that crazy?! I know, right!) and I was inside one of our very large auditoriums where at least more than 300 hundred students were sitting for a lecture by a guest speaker today. Before the seminar began and while everyone was sitting in the auditorium - young men and women - a lecturer took the mic and casually asked, “Tou phir kia banay ga inn Amreeki siyasi intikhabaat ka? (Translation: So what’s going to happen in the US Elections?)” And I kid you not: Everyone in the auditorium laughed. Yes, they laughed. They laughed and shook their heads. These were students from the tribal areas (where Bush/Obama issued drone strikes), these were students from other provinces, students from all classes (academic and social), majoring in all sorts of subjects and they were laughing together. Then one girl stood up and everyone paid attention and she said: “Koi tabdeeli nahi aati. Aap fiqr na karain. (Nothing changes. Don’t worry.)” Try telling that to a zealous American voter today and they’ll try strangling you.”

- Mehreen Kasana (via disobey)

"And I was so looking forward to war being wrong again for four years."

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 22:12:02 -0500

“And I was so looking forward to war being wrong again for four years.”

- John Caruso (via disobey)

yourmaj3sty: Obama’s election marks the 899th day of detention without trial of Bradley Manning

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 22:09:07 -0500

yourmaj3sty:

Obama’s election marks the 899th day of detention without trial of Bradley Manning

DEA Responds to Legal Weed in Colorado and Washington: "Enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged"

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 22:05:54 -0500

DEA Responds to Legal Weed in Colorado and Washington: "Enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged":

hipsterlibertarian:

tumbldeeznuts1st:

hipsterlibertarian:

In other words, the federal government will still come after you if you smoke pot in Colorado or Washington.

I needn’t remind you, of course, that the DEA is ultimately under the control of the President.

No shit but you don’t see the dea busting dispensaries and medical marijuana user the dea ain’t gunna do shit

Oh yeah, the DEA has never gone after medical marijuana dispensaries:

One Day After DEA Raids 71 Medical Marijuana Dispensaries, CNN Declares Drug War Is Over

DEA Quietly Raids 2 Medical Marijuana Dispensaries

DEA Tells Washington Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Near Schools To Shut Down

Medical Marijuana Advocates To Appeals Court: Drug Enforcement Administration ‘Acted Arbitrarily’

DEA tells 23 medical marijuana storefronts to shut down

DEA digging into San Francisco’s medical marijuana dispensaries

Do your research before you post completely wrong things on the internet.

Are US drone strikes a war crime?

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:58:44 -0500

Are US drone strikes a war crime? :

mehreenkasana:

political-linguaphile:

How is this even still a question.

Because this sure sounds like a war crime to me:

[x]

This should not be a question.

Millions Without Power Following Election, The Onion Reports

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:57:50 -0500

Millions Without Power Following Election, The Onion Reports:

letterstomycountry:

WASHINGTON—According to widespread reports, roughly 314 million Americans across the country have been left without any power following Tuesday’s devastating presidential election.

As many struggle to cope amidst the continued outage, experts have predicted that due to the severity of the presidential contest, which cut a wide swath of carnage throughout the entire United States, it’s very possible that power won’t be fully restored to the general public for at least another four years, if ever.

I see what you did there, Onion. Clever girl…