Category: The Regime

War on women, Russian edition

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Sometimes I hate myself for reading the Daily Mail, but they really do find some crazy stories:

A pregnant journalist was recovering in hospital last night after a pro-Kremlin political leader in Russia told two male aides to ‘violently rape’ her.

Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky launched his extraordinary tirade after reporter Stella Dubovitskaya asked him an innocuous question about sanctions against Ukraine.

The 67-year-old MP’s outburst came before a deadly gunfight at a Ukraine checkpoint controlled by pro-Russian separatists tore apart an Easter truce.

[…] ‘Due to the disgusting incident in the state duma, after which our correspondent was hospitalised because of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s discourtesy, we have decided to use all legal options to punish Mr Zhirinovsky as severely as possible under the law, including by suing him,’ said general director Margareta Simonyan.

After Miss Dubovitskaya’s question, the founder of the far right Liberal Democratic Party began shouting before manhandling two young male aides towards the pregnant mother-of-one.

He then shouted to them: ‘When I say, you run to her and violently rape her.’

A male journalist told Zhirinovsky: ‘She is pregnant, why are you attacking her?’

Zhirinovsky then pushed two aides towards the journalist, who is six months pregnant, shouting: ‘Go and kiss her. Grab her.’

One physically touched Miss Dubovitskaya, to the shock of the watching press, with several female reporters recoiling.

At this point, another female reporter, Yulia Chuchalova from news agency Interfax, told Zhirinovsky: ‘This is derogatory, humiliating – what are you doing here?’

Zhirinovsky hit back: ‘What are you doing intervening here, you lesbian? Get out of here.’

He shouted: ‘This is no place for you if you’re pregnant. We need healthy people. Pregnant women should not show up at work. Sit at home and look after your child, got that?’

He then shouted ‘get out of here, you damned lesbians’.

Who’s doing what in Ukraine?

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

donestk-flyer-full-638x849

I get the feeling we’re about to be sucked into yet another war:

A flyer distributed in the eastern Ukrainian city Donestk is telling the city’s Jewish community that they need to “register” with the separatist government, but the head of the self-appointed new leadership in the region has denied involvement.

In a set of flyers handed out to Jewish Ukrainians leaving synagogue on Monday, members of the community over the age of 16 were allegedly ordered to register at the government’s main building, which is currently being occupied by pro-Russian gunmen and protesters. Additionally, they would be forced to pay a registration fee of $50 and list all pieces of property, including real estate and vehicles. “Evasion of registration will result in citizenship revoke and you will be forced outside the country with a confiscation of property,” a translation of the flyer reads.

The original report from Novosti Donbassa said that the leaflet was passed out by “three unidentified men wearing balaclavas and carrying the flag of the Russian Federation” with the aim of causing a conflict, then “to blame the attack on separatists.” The flyers were distributed in the name of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk,” the title that the pro-Russian separatists in the region have given themselves. They also bear the signature of Denis Pushilin, who has been referred to in reports from the region as the “people’s governor.”

In an interview with Ukrainian press, Pushilin confirmed that the flyers, marked with the emblem of his organization, were really distributed in Donetsk. But unlike various English translations, in the original interview with Ukrainian media, Pushilin not only rejected the content of the flyers, but also denied that his organization was behind their printing. “Some idiots yesterday were giving out these flyers in targeted areas,” he said, claiming that he had never himself used the “people’s governor” title the flyer bestows on him. Pushilin did not suggest who else may have been handing out the anti-Semetic flyers, but went on to criticize the original site for posting it online.

War crime is addictive

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Henry Kissinger

And Henry Kissinger couldn’t keep his hands out of it:

Only a few months ago, Henry Kissinger was dancing with Stephen Colbert in a funny bit on the latter’s Comedy Central show. But for years, the former secretary of state has sidestepped judgment for his complicity in horrific human rights abuses abroad, and a new memo has emerged that provides clear evidence that in 1976 Kissinger gave Argentina’s neo-fascist military junta the “green light” for the dirty war it was conducting against civilian and militant leftists that resulted in the disappearance—that is, deaths—of an estimated 30,000 people.

In April 1977, Patt Derian, a onetime civil rights activist whom President Jimmy Carter had recently appointed assistant secretary of state for human rights, met with the US ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert Hill. A memo recording that conversation has been unearthed by Martin Edwin Andersen, who in 1987 first reported that Kissinger had told the Argentine generals to proceed with their terror campaign against leftists (whom the junta routinely referred to as “terrorists”). The memo notes that Hill told Derian about a meeting Kissinger held with Argentine Foreign Minister Cesar Augusto Guzzetti the previous June. What the two men discussed was revealed in 2004 when the National Security Archive obtained and released the secret memorandum of conversation for that get-together. Guzzetti, according to that document, told Kissinger, “our main problem in Argentina is terrorism.” Kissinger replied, “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you must get back quickly to normal procedures.” In other words, go ahead with your killing crusade against the leftists.

The new document shows that Kissinger was even more explicit in encouraging the Argentine junta. The memo recounts Hill describing the Kissinger-Guzzetti discussion this way:

The Argentines were very worried that Kissinger would lecture to them on human rights. Guzzetti and Kissinger had a very long breakfast but the Secretary did not raise the subject. Finally Guzzetti did. Kissinger asked how long will it take you (the Argentines) to clean up the problem. Guzzetti replied that it would be done by the end of the year. Kissinger approved.

In other words, Ambassador Hill explained, Kissinger gave the Argentines the green light.

That’s a damning statement: a US ambassador saying a secretary of state had egged on a repressive regime that was engaged in a killing spree.

‘Not A Bug Splat’

~ susie

bugsplat

A stunning art project in Pakistan:

A new project, initiated by a collective of artists from around the world includingthe French JR, has tried to reach the people pulling the trigger in America’s drone wars—the drone operators themselves.

It’s called “Not A Bug Splat,” and its gets its name from the term drone operators use for a successful “kill,” because—in the pixelated grayscale of the drone camera—ending a human life looks like squashing a bug.

The collective created a huge poster of a child whom organizers say lost his family to drone strikes in the Pakistan’s heavily bombed province, Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa. “Now, when viewed by a drone camera, what an operator sees on his screen is not an anonymous dot on the landscape, but an innocent child victim’s face,” reads the project’s website.

In the last decade, drone operators have killed as many as 3,600 people in northwest Pakistan alone. Those people—they include as many as 951 civilians and 200 children—died without trial or jury. They were specks on the screen, and then they were dead.

Not a Bug Splat isn’t only for drone operators, though. It also addresses itself to other eyes in the sky:

The installation is also designed to be captured by satellites in order to make it a permanent part of the landscape on online mapping sites.

The torture will happen again and again

~ susie

Senators Wyden and Merkley discuss oil train safety

I like Ron Wyden, but what he says here is bullshit. Nothing will stop this from happening again if no one goes to prison over it — and I’d say the odds are really small:

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden explained today why he voted to declassify the Senate Intelligence Committee’s apparently scathing 6,200-page report on the CIA’s detention and brutal interrogation of overseas terrorism suspects.

“I believe the American people will be profoundly disturbed by the contents of this report,” the senior senator from Oregon wrote in a news release. “Though I can’t provide any details until that declassification process is finished, I can say that the American people will see that much of what CIA officials have said about the effectiveness of coercive interrogations was simply untrue.”

[…]”I have spoken about the intelligence leadership’s culture of misinformation before and it continues to be a problem to this day,” Wyden said in his news statement. “I have also been asking questions publicly for years about the role that outside contractors played in the interrogation program and I hope the American people will soon get some answers to those questions.”

[…]”It is going to make many people uncomfortable,” he wrote, “but getting the facts about torture out to the American people will keep these mistakes from being repeated and make our national intelligence agencies stronger and more effective in the long run.

Freedom!

~ susie ~ 6 Comments

NSA-photo-by-Trevor-Paglen

I remember when people argued with me over this at the other place, insisting I was accusing the administration of doing illegal things when they weren’t. Some people are really fucking naive:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration has conducted warrantless searches of Americans’ communications as part of the National Security Agency’s surveillance operations that target foreigners located outside of the U.S., the administration’s top intelligence official confirmed in a letter to Congress disclosed Tuesday.

These searches were authorized by a secret surveillance court in 2011, but it was unclear until Tuesday whether any such searches on Americans had been conducted.

The recent acknowledgement of warrantless searches on Americans offers more insight into U.S. government surveillance operations put in place after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The government has broadly interpreted these laws to allow for the collection of communications of innocent Americans, practices the Obama administration maintains are legal. But President Obama has promised to review some of these programs to determine whether the government should be conducting this type of surveillance at all.

“Senior officials have sometimes suggested that government agencies do not deliberately read Americans’ emails, monitor their online activity or listen to their phone calls without a warrant,” Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall said in a joint statement. “However, the facts show that those suggestions were misleading, and that intelligence agencies have indeed conducted warrantless searches for Americans’ communications.”

H/t David Benowitz.

Dear leader

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

KOREA-NORTH/KIM
Awesome!

North Korean Dear Leader/monster Kim Jong-Un is now requiring every man in the country to copy his exact haircut. The rule was reportedly introduced in Pyongyang two weeks ago.

Until now, there have been 28 government-approved hairstyles in North Korea—10 for men and 18 for women.

Long hair has been discouraged by North Korean state TV since 2005, when a campaign warned men that too much hair could consume vital nutrients, stunting brain development. The campaign recommended they schedule haircuts every 15 days.

Now the state is going a step further, reducing men’s hair options to one: Kim’s famous center-parted ‘do.

You’re on Candid Camera

~ susie

March 24, 2014 at 12:20PM

They are never, ever, EVER going to get rid of the data. Ever.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to figure out what the LAPD is doing with the mountains (and mountains) of license-plate data that they’re harvesting in the city’s streets without a warrant or judicial oversight. As part of the process, they’ve asked the LAPD for a week’s worth of the data they’re collecting, and in their reply brief, the LAPD argues that it can’t turn over any license-plate data because all the license-plates they collect are part of an “ongoing investigation,” because every car in Los Angeles is part of an ongoing criminal investigation, because some day, someone driving that car may commit a crime.

As EFF’s Jennifer Lynch says, “This argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there are some indicia of criminal activity.”

This reminds me of the NSA’s argument that they’re collecting “pieces of a puzzle” and Will Potter’s rebuttal: “The reality is that the NSA isn’t working with a mosaic or a puzzle. What the NSA is really advocating is the collection of millions of pieces from different, undefined puzzles in the hopes that sometime, someday, the government will be working on a puzzle and one of those pieces will fit.” The same thing could be said of the LAPD.