Monthly Archives: April 2013

Obama: US Tyranny Impossible Because ‘Government Is Us’

"The government is most assuredly not us – at least not all of us – which is why our system of government is designed to protect the rights of minorities while still allowing majorities to legislate without violating those rights. Obama’s defense to charges of incipient tyranny is that tyranny can never happen here. Which, of course, makes it more likely that tyranny will happen here. The second odd angle is Obama’s insistence that the Constitution constrains him. The natural inference seems to be that if it were not for the Constitution, Obama would indeed pursue a federal gun seizure." Continue reading →

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Americans Can Be Executed Without Charges — But Criminal Banks Can’t Be Prosecuted

"On the same day that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was filibustering the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA over the nominee’s involvement in lethal drone strikes, Attorney General Eric Holder defended arbitrary power before the Senate Judiciary Committee. As we noted earlier, Holder told the Committee that any Congressional action to restrict the targeted killing program would represent an unconstitutional limitation of presidential powers. In the same hearing, Holder said that some corrupt banks are simply too big to prosecute." Continue reading →

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Glenn Greenwald: Three Democratic myths used to demean the Paul filibuster

"For the first time since the 9/11 attack, even lowly cable news shows were forced to extensively discuss the government's extremist theories of power and to debate the need for checks and limits. All of this put Democrats - who spent eight years flamboyantly pretending to be champions of due process - in a very uncomfortable position. The politician who took such a unique stand in defense of these principles was not merely a Republican but a leading member of its dreaded Tea Party wing, while the actor most responsible for the extremist theories of power being protested was their own beloved leader and his political party." Continue reading →

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NATO air strike kills 10 children in Afghanistan

"A NATO air attack in eastern Afghanistan has killed 10 children, officials said Sunday, the latest case of civilian casualties which provoke great anger in the war-torn country. The children were killed during a joint Afghan-NATO operation in the Shigal district of restive Kunar province bordering Pakistan late on Saturday. An Afghan official involved in the operation who did not want to be named said air support was called in after local and coalition forces came under attack, resulting in the death of an American and injuries to several Afghan soldiers. The official said the force did not know there were women and children in the houses that were hit." Continue reading →

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‘Carrying the Future’ in Afghanistan

"The rest of the world does resist. It does not want our propagandistic textbooks, it does not want our drones, it does not want our support of radical Islamists, it does not want our soldiers, and it does not want our diplomats or NGOs engaging in all manner of manipulation of domestic affairs overseas. Sadly, until young Americans like this foreign service officer start to question the mythologies spouted by politicians and duly amplified by the corporate media about the indispensability of the US 'carrying the future,' there will be many more unnecessary deaths -- on all sides." Continue reading →

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The UN Declares War on Katanga — Again

"With the backing of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, UN military forces were deployed to Katanga, where they carried out bloody punitive actions that killed scores of innocent people and prompted a widespread international outcry. A British inquiry documented acts of rape, plunder, and terrorism committed by multinational Blue Helmet forces. Echoes of the UN’s war to suppress Katanga five decades ago were heard last week when the UN Security Council passed a Chapter Seven resolution – the world body’s equivalent of a declaration of war – authorizing the deployment of a multinational military brigade to disarm and “neutralize” rebel groups in Congo." Continue reading →

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“State Control”: What the UN Firearms Treaty is All About

"For more than fifty years, the United Nations, with the enthusiastic support of the U.S. government, has pursued a vision of 'general and complete disarmament' in which the world body, or its successor, would claim a monopoly on the 'legitimate' use of force. Within that global monopoly, each national government would have an exclusive territorial franchise. It was in pursuit of that formula that UN 'peacekeepers' were deployed in Rwanda in 1993. Despite that country’s history of bloody ethnic conflict, Rwandans were assured that they had nothing to fear from a UN-approved government that claimed a monopoly on weaponry." Continue reading →

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Yes, Gun Control is Racist

"In testimony offered as part of a class-action federal lawsuit, state senator Eric Adams, a former NYPD officer, testified that during a July 2010 meeting, Commissioner Kelly 'Stated that he targeted and focused on that group because he wanted to instill fear in them that every time that they left their homes they could be stopped by police.' When Adams pointed out that this is against the law, Kelly reportedly replied 'How else are we going to get rid of guns?' Over the past ten years, more than 5 million people have been subjected to warrantless street detention and searches, roughly 90 percent of them young Black or Latino men." Continue reading →

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Army’s $900 Million in Warehouses Full of Useless Vehicle Parts

"The Pentagon got caught by the Defense Department’s Inspector General’s office. Again. This time it was for a military vehicle called the Stryker. It has $900 million in spare parts in just one warehouse. It keeps thousands of these vehicles in warehouses around the nation. It has so many Strykers that it lost track of them. The gear is outdated. Example: $57 million in outdated infrared equipment. The Inspector General’s Office submitted a report. No one in the media read it until a small-town newspaper in Tacoma, Washington ran a story over the weekend." Continue reading →

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