Look, mon, it’s a dolly house in the sky! Let’s dance a little Calypso at Carnival and call the whole controversy off.
Tag Archives: military
Two data points for today
- Navy SEALs rescue – reminds me of the history when the U.S. attacked the Barbary pirates.
- Act of Valor movie — is it live or is it Memorexplainable?
Related, timely or mere coincidence? You decide.
Quick! Someone just killed your family. How do you seek “justice?”
from the Washington Post:
10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free
By Jonathan Turley, Published: January 13
Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?
These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.
The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.
Assassination of U.S. citizens
President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)
Indefinite detention
Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism. While the administration claims that this provision only codified existing law, experts widely contest this view, and the administration has opposed efforts to challenge such authority in federal courts. The government continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion. (China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for “prolonged detention.”)
Arbitrary justice
The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections. Bush claimed this authority in 2001, and Obama has continued the practice. (Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.)
The president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens’ finances, communications and associations. Bush acquired this sweeping power under the Patriot Act in 2001, and in 2011, Obama extended the power, including searches of everything from business documents to library records. The government can use “national security letters” to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens — and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party. (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance.)
Secret evidence
The government now routinely uses secret evidence to detain individuals and employs secret evidence in federal and military courts. It also forces the dismissal of cases against the United States by simply filing declarations that the cases would make the government reveal classified information that would harm national security — a claim made in a variety of privacy lawsuits and largely accepted by federal judges without question. Even legal opinions, cited as the basis for the government’s actions under the Bush and Obama administrations, have been classified. This allows the government to claim secret legal arguments to support secret proceedings using secret evidence. In addition, some cases never make it to court at all. The federal courts routinely deny constitutional challenges to policies and programs under a narrow definition of standing to bring a case.
War crimes
The world clamored for prosecutions of those responsible for waterboarding terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, but the Obama administration said in 2009 that it would not allow CIA employees to be investigated or prosecuted for such actions. This gutted not just treaty obligations but the Nuremberg principles of international law. When courts in countries such as Spain moved to investigate Bush officials for war crimes, the Obama administration reportedly urged foreign officials not to allow such cases to proceed, despite the fact that the United States has long claimed the same authority with regard to alleged war criminals in other countries. (Various nations have resisted investigations of officials accused of war crimes and torture. Some, such as Serbia and Chile, eventually relented to comply with international law; countries that have denied independent investigations include Iran, Syria and China.)
Secret court
The government has increased its use of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has expanded its secret warrants to include individuals deemed to be aiding or abetting hostile foreign governments or organizations. In 2011, Obama renewed these powers, including allowing secret searches of individuals who are not part of an identifiable terrorist group. The administration has asserted the right to ignore congressional limits on such surveillance. (Pakistan places national security surveillance under the unchecked powers of the military or intelligence services.)
Immunity from judicial review
Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has successfully pushed for immunity for companies that assist in warrantless surveillance of citizens, blocking the ability of citizens to challenge the violation of privacy. (Similarly, China has maintained sweeping immunity claims both inside and outside the country and routinely blocks lawsuits against private companies.)
The Obama administration has successfully defended its claim that it can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review. (Saudi Arabia has installed massive public surveillance systems, while Cuba is notorious for active monitoring of selected citizens.)
Extraordinary renditions
The government now has the ability to transfer both citizens and noncitizens to another country under a system known as extraordinary rendition, which has been denounced as using other countries, such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, to torture suspects. The Obama administration says it is not continuing the abuses of this practice under Bush, but it insists on the unfettered right to order such transfers — including the possible transfer of U.S. citizens.
These new laws have come with an infusion of money into an expanded security system on the state and federal levels, including more public surveillance cameras, tens of thousands of security personnel and a massive expansion of a terrorist-chasing bureaucracy.
Some politicians shrug and say these increased powers are merely a response to the times we live in. Thus, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) could declare in an interview last spring without objection that “free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” Of course, terrorism will never “surrender” and end this particular “war.”
Other politicians rationalize that, while such powers may exist, it really comes down to how they are used. This is a common response by liberals who cannot bring themselves to denounce Obama as they did Bush. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), for instance, has insisted that Congress is not making any decision on indefinite detention: “That is a decision which we leave where it belongs — in the executive branch.”
And in a signing statement with the defense authorization bill, Obama said he does not intend to use the latest power to indefinitely imprison citizens. Yet, he still accepted the power as a sort of regretful autocrat.
An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will.
The framers lived under autocratic rule and understood this danger better than we do. James Madison famously warned that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Benjamin Franklin was more direct. In 1787, a Mrs. Powel confronted Franklin after the signing of the Constitution and asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?” His response was a bit chilling: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
Since 9/11, we have created the very government the framers feared: a government with sweeping and largely unchecked powers resting on the hope that they will be used wisely.
The indefinite-detention provision in the defense authorization bill seemed to many civil libertarians like a betrayal by Obama. While the president had promised to veto the law over that provision, Levin, a sponsor of the bill, disclosed on the Senate floor that it was in fact the White House that approved the removal of any exception for citizens from indefinite detention.
Dishonesty from politicians is nothing new for Americans. The real question is whether we are lying to ourselves when we call this country the land of the free.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University.
Read more from Outlook, including:
“Imagining a world without Gitmo,” by Karen J. Greenberg.
“A world without 9/11: No President Obama, more China trouble, same debt crisis,” by Michael Lind.
“Five myths about Dick Cheney,” by Stephen F. Hayes.
To think, Old MacDonald Had a Farm, GI, GI Joe
The 1% of 1%, we don’t see the world in geographic political boundaries.
Of course, as you know, we pretend the boundaries exist, telling you stuff like “Look out for that country over there — it’s against us this year,” and “Our strategic partnership with these countries is the only thing keeping your economic livelihood stable.”
Now that more than 50% of our species lives in sub/urban areas, “free” of the bind to land-based [subsistence] living, you are all our virtual slaves, depending on our virtual chess game results to tell you what to do next.
Two steps forward, one step to the left/right, please.
And then, as previous chapters have told you, there is the Committee, which also manages the lives of the 1% of the 1%.
Finally, there is the universe itself, spinning off little eddies of atoms and molecules that collect and replicate their patterns.
You should have in your thought patterns by now the full understanding that the universe as we know it is simply revealed by a 360-degree searchlight from the point of our planet/solar system, reaching a finite boundary and creating the illusion of a symmetrical sphere in which we are the center.
Feel free to comprehend our ignorance, vast as it is and will continue to be, ad infinitum.
There is just so much that I, the individual, can bother to talk about here while supervising the construction of the interwebs of interwebs tying you to your personal supercomputers tied to everyone else’s supercomputers tied, as if all of that is a single node, to the Internet of the Next Big Things to Come.
So, to me, all military actions, no matter how we label them in nationalistic or terror group or lone wolf terms, are all one.
For instance, I don’t see an Iranian nuclear scientist killed by the CIA or Mossad. I see us managing to control ourselves by killing ourselves.
Same for sports and other categories of diverting ourselves from our primary tasks of eating and breathing.
Let us move on to more important matters.
Details in the next chapter of the story of our lives seen from the vantage point of 1000 years from now.
Happiness and humour — share them endlessly.
Honestly
While the LSU and Alabama [semipro] college football teams prepare to battle for a win in Snooze Fest 2.0 (aka the BCS National Football Championship (at least it’s not named a “World” title in usual American fashion)), rumour has it that the creators/financiers of the film “Drag0nheart” have settled for 50% of all earnings, both past and future, from the estate of J.K Rowling and the creators/financiers of the Harry Potter films and associated merchandising/memorabilia for obvious ripoffs of Dragonheart’s storyline and characters.
Iran denies it has the strength of China behind it in threatening to close down Hormuz and the U.S. denies that the people onboard the ship they rescued from pirates were high-ranked members of the Iranian government seeking to escape from a country getting choked on its own oil reserves and hoping to get their hands on offshore bank accounts.
Meanwhile, the people of Bolivia have expressed strong interest in swapping places with the people of Belize and the people of New Zealand have expressed an even stronger interest in not swapping places with the people of Australia.
Miners and other of the extracting persuasion are happy to give up their operations in the bitter cold of Antarctica in exchange for developing a pipeline of extraction in the area commonly known as the country of Afghanistan.
Kurds eating their curds and whey are on their way there, too, tired of dealing with the genocidal maniacs who claim allegiance to a political entity called Turkey (which, incidentally, is full of turkey and well-stuffed with good Armenian cooks…cooked stories about Armenian natural disappearances, that is).
And no, these two news items are not related, aren’t they? [where’s a good triple-negative when you need one?]:
- Reorganisation of war management capabilities.
- Exposé on the war.
A nod to Ada Byron and the women of ENIAC, brainiacs who changed the world.
Is 4.74 Degrees Cold or Warm?
A reader sent me a sheaf of pencil shavings, asking me if I’d apply my divination skills to discerning the future from the bundle.
Whoa, woe is me, weary and wornout, beset with warts and all manner of worrisome wheretofores.
Last night, I took apart the battery pack attached to this notebook computer to see what’s inside.
Six cells, labeled “LGEP218650,” glued and soldered together, with some circuitry tucked in beside.
A set of Li-ion energy packs whose roar is less trustworthy for long stints away from AC power sources.
Same for the pencil shavings.
How long ago were they made? The wood I can figure out. The graphite source is easy to trace.
But the patterns…hmm…
If I read them correctly, there is a secret executive order, approved by the World Court, that says, because everyone is less than six degrees of separation from anyone who claims association with al Qaeda or similar officially designated terrorist organisations, all members of our species are subject to unlawful seizure and indefinite imprisonment by those in military/police uniform but, most especially, useful as free labour in the New Corporate World Order profitmaking schemes.
And now, let the racial accusations fly (or at least hear politicians running for [re]election take claim for such): whites will fear retribution by nonwhites, nonwhites will fear retribution by whites and native Americans will moan, saying “Here we go again!”
I’m shaking in my boots. Wait, I’m not wearing boots. I’m wearing leather moccasins! That means, yes, that I now have PETA on my tail and an association with native American fashion to contend with.
Where can I go? Where can I hide my hide?
That’s what I get for telling readers not to send nude photos of themselves to me via post or email. It just opens up all the other possible permutations and combinations of things that CAN be sent to me.
All I wanted to do was sit in my cabin in the woods and meditate on the meaning of the nothingness of meaning.
Instead, I have delivery trucks stopping by my house both night and day, dropping off packages carefully wrapped by those who hold the belief that I divine the future because I don’t care about the future and thus can tell the truth about what’s going to happen next in the collision of waveforms in the nearby sections of the known universe.
I lift my cup of tea, put in a drop or two of humour, doubt and disbelief, stir in a bit of sarcasm and happiness, and take a slow sip.
It is a good day.
The rhythm of lines of water dripping from the broken gutter forms quickly moving bars and stanzas of translucent sheet music following gravity’s trail from sky to ground, thanks to the condensed moisture (i.e., rain) heavy enough to be attracted to Earth’s core.
Time to investigate more about the subculture of the lilypad Arduino and its future effect upon us all…
…and wonder why facebook discourages making connections with complete strangers. Aren’t we all connectable? How else are we to reach out and get to know as many of our fellow seven billion as we can before we die? Other than the unencumbered/uncensored Internet, that is.
Imagine an interconnected army of Elmos invading your children’s hearts and thought sets. Wait, it already happened! 😉
Cause and effect: pebbles in a pond
Are these two news items related? You decide:
Keeping my conspiracy theory readers happy…
I get a number of readers who like what I post, a few who allow themselves to be categorised as conspiracy theorists.
Me, I have no conspiracies. Either the facts tell it like it is or there is no “is” worth writing about.
However, sometimes I skim over user comments and user forums to gauge the mood of people after major news events.
In other words, how does an event act like a pebble in a pond.
Take the following news item, for instance — DEA agents apparently admit laundering money to see how cartels launder money.
Well, the user comments and forum entries filled up quickly about that one.
My favourite:
The government finally admits laundering money to Mexican cartels! Haven’t we said that all along? The gov’t launders money to the gangs in exchange for the cartels murdering potential immigrants trying to enter the U.S., serving as an unofficial deterrent method because the U.S. can’t get caught murdering people crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S. and the border fence, as we all know, is a joke! Those are the kind of death squads, not nat’l health insurance committees, that the gov’t is keeping us from knowing about.
Interesting idea, I guess. We don’t need missile defense shields against a country that is barely under the control of a central government, let alone capable of launching missiles across the southern border of the U.S. Save the missile defense systems for real threats elsewhere.
Enough about conspiracy theories, readers. Let’s move on to a different view of the future, one where facts are projections, not conjectures.
A Look Back, Translatable
Today, from the future, I take a look back at this moment and ones to come.
First of all, the missile defense shield installed in Myanmar has gone a long way toward re-establishing the balance of power.
Of course, the law of unintended consequences means that tactical flanking maneuvers allowed the continued tit-for-tat politically-correct statements for which politicians are mostly famous (excluding the usually superfluous occasional foot-in-mouth faux pas).
Freedom in appearance for popular citizens is, as always, given first priority.
The person on the street is subject to the regular forgotten and misused characteristics that a person who does not care to climb the ladder of social success succumbs.
Those who claim membership in the 99% do not realise that the 99% is a mix of conformists and nonconformists along a broad range of political affiliations and apathetic nonaffiliations.
So, with that said, let us move on to the next chapter, which, unfortunately, is indirectly translatable, but we’ll give you the best we can from 1000 years later.
Take nothing for granted, granite included
If I knew that our solar system was packed with living things (at least in the way we choose to define the term “living”), would I feel as compelled as I do to encourage us to devote xx.xx% of our resources toward populating the cosmos with living things from Earth?
The WordPress front page displayed a link to a blog entry titled, “Off the Couch and Into the Streets.” Rarely do I feel compelled to comment on a blog entry but I added one to Coleen’s:
Your blog entry popped up on the front page of WordPress, and the title “Off the couch and into the streets” caught my attention because I’m looking for a fun way to lose some extra weight. Thus, my expectations were different than you might have expected when you wrote this blog entry.
The Occupy [your locale] movement, Arab Spring, and any/all protestations against the common/established social structure are perennial, which usually fall under the label “counterculture.” I encourage you to feel and act differently, supporting your subcultural beliefs no matter how much you may feel crushed/oppressed by the common culture under which you live and socialise.
Having grown up during the 1960s global counterculture movement, my perspective, as a child at the tailend of the Baby Boomer generation, has taught and continues to teach me that those who protest will encourage others to act in less obvious, newsworthy manners, to effect longterm change.
I’m glad you have a job which gave you the flexibility and courage to join those who wanted to voice their displeasure with the current state of our common culture [one] day on the streets of Denver. Hopefully, through your job and with your friends, you can be the change you want to see today and into the future.
How do we express ourselves daily? In other words, do we carefully consider the words we use in social exchanges?
Saying I am the “99%” or I am the “1%” or any other label automatically establishes an artificial barrier.
Reminds me of taking the Myers-Briggs personality profile test as a requirement of working in a certain department at a company full of a variety of personality types, including conformists and nonconformists. After taking the test and, with another person who had gotten the same personality profile, saying that the test results were bogus, was informed that those who received that particular personality profile were prone to say the test results were bogus.
I feel the same way about the Occupy movement. The participants brag about how diverse and unlabelable they are — yet, they quickly chant about the “99%” and the “1%” without blinking a self-conscious inner eye.
Another commenter said, “It’s like telling a child “You just like to argue” and the child keeps saying “Nuh uh!”.” The same goes for those who are being labeled by the diverse Occupy movement participants.
To be frank, when I hear the Occupy movement chants through mass media soundbites, all I can think is, “Well, what if I’m one of the 1%? So what? Didn’t I earn my place in this financial position by saving (using the old adage of “pay yourself first”) and spending wisely? Sure, some of my Nike shoes or my wife’s Kathy Lee Gifford designer clothes were made using kids paid ‘slave wages’ but I stopped buying those items after I found out about their manufacturing sources. The University of Oregon and Stanford University, home to some students who have protested, didn’t refuse Phil Knight’s donations nor did the students refuse to attend those universities. Regis Philbin, a person apparently beloved by many, didn’t stop being Kathy Lee Gifford’s friend. I don’t have all the time in the world to investigate the raw material source and manufacturing location of every item I buy but will make reasonable changes when I find out. Some parts of me are just as susceptible to instant gratification and buyer remorse as anyone else in the 1% or 99% (i.e., all seven billion of us).”
That’s why using or not using labels is important to me. Also why I lump us all together into the label of “seven billion of us.” We’re in this thing as one. One planet, one global infrastructure, one solar ecosystem.
How do we train ourselves and one another to seek rewarding goals that limit destructive and detrimental effects on others, regardless of our entrenched differences?
This time of year, I look out the window and bare trees expose the view of row after row of shingled suburban rooftops.
The mortgage on my house has been paid off. The majority of mortgages for the rooftops out there are probably still being paid for.
Shall I blame or thank the finance/banking industry for suburban sprawl that makes my skin crawl?
Shall I adjust my view to show myself the people occupying those suburban boxes are paying taxes that support the roads that allow me to drive to unoccupied parks and forests set aside for my enjoyment via local/state/national proclamation and financial support?
If, as one person said, the rich have enough money to pay for half the population to control/kill the other half, where does that put me?
Well, I know where it puts where I want to be. I want to be one of the rich and when I get there, I don’t want to have to redistribute my wealth unnecessarily. I admit I like having the total population of my species at my control. I want to be Phil Knight and say, “Yeah, so what if my products have been made in sweat shops? My personally-directed donations are creating a whole new crop of those who will rule from the top”. If I’m going to be labeled as part of the 1%, I want to be Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Pierre Omidyar or Vladimir Putin, not a homeless person as part of the poorest 1%.
Tiny leaves float through the air outside the window. A woodpecker hops up and down tree limbs, presumably looking for hidden insects to munch upon.
Both public and private money has given me the time to sit here and make these comments. It’ll take 100% of us to improve our conditions, if we so choose.
Yes, our global economy is not perfect and never will be perfect. It displays characteristics of both an open and a closed-loop system, subject to the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Can we show how unselfish we are and share our wealth, of knowledge and financial gains, accordingly, while some of us compete against each other in the chess game of life to make things better for our descendants?
Live happily in the fact that today’s 1% will not be tomorrow’s 1% nor will today’s 99% be tomorrow’s.
If you don’t like what’s going on, take the opportunity to change it. If you don’t like accumulating massive debt to pay for a college education, find a company that’ll hire you for your current skills/talents despite the lack of a diploma. I did. But I eventually got around to completing a bachelor’s degree just to prove I can (and got my company to foot the bill – hey, I wasn’t born yesterday – which set me up for a career ladder promotion that wasn’t interesting to me, but that’s another story).
Nothing is set in stone, except perhaps your date of death, and even that fades with time and exposure to the elements.
Think the members of the U.S. Congress who sit on a supercommittee can cut over $1T from the U.S. government budget and make everyone happy? Wanna make a bet?
If it was me, I’d spread the cuts proportionally to those who are expected NOT to vote in the next election. Hey, it’s only fair, is it not? The U.S. is a democratic republic where lawful citizens have the right to participate in electing legislative, executive and some judicial representatives. Those who choose not to participate, or vote, get less of the government pie to eat – isn’t that one of the tales we learned in kindergarten?
We’ll see what we see when the time comes…
treetrunkdings 