Category: The Regime

An American dream: My 9/11 fantasy

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

In my dream, I’m suddenly the queen of the United States, and I’d order people to stop dwelling on 9/11.

I’d tell them what happened at the World Trade Center made some crazy people ever crazier — and unfortunately for us, many of them were in charge when it happened.

I’d give a speech about the freedom of thought, speech and movement that made us America and inspired so many to come here, and what a mistake it was to let all that slip through our fingers in the name of “security.”

I’d ban the use of the word “homeland” on anything official. “We’re not fucking Nazis,” I’d proclaim. “We are not the ‘homeland,’ we are a free people and we’re going to stay that way.”

Whether it was through policies, covert actions or material support, the U.S. has inflicted serious harm on nations around the world, and by the laws of karma, it was just our turn.

The NSA? They’d have to work out of the White House basement (or palace, I’m not sure where I’d live), so I can drop in and keep an eye on them.

I would demand that on September 11th every year, news stations stop showing those damned videos of the World Trade Center towers being struck by the planes — in real time, no less. “War pornography,” I’d rail. “A blatant attempt to stoke the fires of division. We should have found who did this, arrested them and thrown them in jail. We didn’t need to inflict collective punishment on some other country’s civilians to avenge this crime, because that made us as bad as the people who did this.”

And I’d tell Americans they weren’t the first country in the world to suffer through a terrorist attack, so “put on your big boy pants and get over it.” Yes, it’s sad. Yes, it was a shock. But we did not invent victimhood, although you might think so, from the way the media plays it up. (When I was a reporter, we used to joke in the newsroom: “Plane Crash Kills 2 Americans, 187 Others.”)
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The shell game

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

So even if Syria gives up their chemical weapons, we have to bomb them anyway because Iran!

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States needs to strike Syria in part to send a message to its ally Iran over its nuclear program, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser said Monday.

Susan Rice, joining a major public effort by Obama to persuade a skeptical Congress, said the United States was morally bound to respond to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons.

Rice said that US action on Syria was also critical for the broader influence of the United States, which has joined Israel and European nations in warning Iran against developing nuclear weapons.

“We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” Rice said at the New America Foundation, a think tank.

So now what?

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

http://youtu.be/tkF2MRhksDg

UPDATE: Syria says it welcomes Russia’s offer.

After John Kerry gives Syria one week to turn over its chemical weapons, the Russians come back with this. We don’t know if this is enough to deter the U.S. from bombing Syria, but it certainly offers a respectable out to Obama:

MOSCOW — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that his country has asked Syria to transfer control of its chemical weapons to international monitors in order to prevent a U.S. military strike.

Lavrov also called on Syria to sign and ratify the Convention on Chemical Weapons, which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons, including the nerve gas that the government of President Bashar al-Assad is accused of deploying outside Damascus last month, killing more than 1,400 civilians.

“We do not know whether Syria will agree to this, but if the establishment of international control over chemical weapons in that country will avoid strikes, we will immediately begin working with Damascus,” Lavrov said. “We call on the Syrian leadership not only to agree on a statement of storage of chemical weapons under international supervision, but also to their subsequent destruction.”

Lavrov spoke after meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem in Moscow, and presenting him with the proposal. “We look forward to a quick and hopefully positive response,” Lavrov said.

Hours earlier, in London, Secretary of State John F. Kerry sketched out a similar scenario after being asked by a reporter whether there was anything that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could do to avoid an attack. “Sure, he could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay,” Kerry said. “But he isn’t about to.”

Suppressing the press

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Put aside the rest of his character defects. The fact remains, if found guilty, this journalist-activist is going to serve more time FOR POSTING A LINK TO HACKED MATERIAL than the guy who actually did the hacking.

Hope and fucking change, everyone!

Because Mr. Brown has been closely aligned with Anonymous and various other online groups, some of whom view sowing mayhem as very much a part of their work, his version of journalism is tougher to pin down and, sometimes, tougher to defend.

But keep in mind that no one has accused Mr. Brown of playing a role in the actual stealing of the data, only of posting a link to the trove of documents.

Journalists from other news organizations link to stolen information frequently. Just last week, The New York Times, The Guardian and ProPublica collaborated on a significant article about the National Security Agency’s effort to defeat encryption technologies. The article was based on, and linked to, documents that were stolen by Edward J. Snowden, a private contractor working for the government who this summer leaked millions of pages of documents to the reporter Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian along with Barton Gellman of The Washington Post.

By trying to criminalize linking, the federal authorities in the Northern District of Texas — Mr. Brown lives in Dallas — are suggesting that to share information online is the same as possessing it or even stealing it. In the news release announcing the indictment, the United States attorney’s office explained, “By transferring and posting the hyperlink, Brown caused the data to be made available to other persons online, without the knowledge and authorization of Stratfor and the card holders.”

And the magnitude of the charges is confounding. Jeremy Hammond, a Chicago man who pleaded guilty to participating in the actual hacking of Stratfor in the first place, is facing a sentence of 10 years.

Strike could lengthen war

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Patrick Regan is a professor of peace studies and political science at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, who studies violent armed conflict and its resolution:

A significant amount of research, including my own, demonstrates that military interventions from outside states lengthen and make bloodier civil wars. Much of this evidence is the result of statistical modeling of all civil wars and any associated interventions. The data include roughly 1,000 interventions into 100 civil wars over the last 60 years, with research carried out by multiple research teams.

The results point to patterns in what happens when states intervene to try to help their preferred actor, and the results are strong and consistent that interventions rarely work to promote peace or reduce violence. For example, my own research has shown that the likelihood of a civil war lasting for four years without an intervention is 37%, but if there is an intervention the likelihood that it lasts for four years is 60%. The intervention accounts for the 50% increase in the length of the war.

Longer wars are generally bloodier. Examples might include the Nicaraguan war in the 1980s, and the Syrian war up to this point. The meager support for the rebels has allowed them to push harder against the government, and whether or not we support the government, the killing and the war’s duration has only increased.

[…] Even if a U.S. missile strike reflects inadvertent help for the rebels, history does not point to a good outcome for U.S. policy.
The only pathway by which external interventions consistently make for shorter or less bloody wars is through diplomatic efforts to broker a peace agreement. The same modeling evidence suggests that the war in Angola, 1975-1991, could have been shortened by nearly 10 years with well-timed diplomatic interventions.

Viral

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

http://youtu.be/Yi-96CCjo_I

So this NYTimes video is making quite a splash across the internets. I don’t understand why anyone’s surprised.

Didn’t they see the video of the Syrian rebel eating the heart of a Syrian soldier he killed? Or the many execution videos they’ve been posting for the past year or so? This is what war is. Once a war begins, the line between “good guys” and “bad guys” becomes very, very blurred. That’s why it’s important to be as cautious as possible before getting involved — because as we’ve so often learned (although apparently not often enough), the cure may be much worse than the situation we’re attempting to remedy:

The Syrian rebels posed casually, standing over their prisoners with firearms pointed down at the shirtless and terrified men.

“If they regard anyone associated with the old regime as evil, one can only imagine what they will do if they come to power.”

The prisoners, seven in all, were captured Syrian soldiers. Five were trussed, their backs marked with red welts. They kept their faces pressed to the dirt as the rebels’ commander recited a bitter revolutionary verse.

“For fifty years, they are companions to corruption,” he said. “We swear to the Lord of the Throne, that this is our oath: We will take revenge.”

The moment the poem ended, the commander, known as “the Uncle,” fired a bullet into the back of the first prisoner’s head. His gunmen followed suit, promptly killing all the men at their feet.

This scene, documented in a video smuggled out of Syria a few days ago by a former rebel who grew disgusted by the killings, offers a dark insight into how many rebels have adopted some of the same brutal and ruthless tactics as the regime they are trying to overthrow.

The Assad regime is just as brutal — maybe more. And injecting ourselves into this mess solves what, exactly?

‘What does AIPAC pressure feel like?’

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

M.J. Rosenberg on the AIPAC push to strike Syria:

So what does AIPAC pressure feel like? How does it work?

I called a friend who is a foreign policy aide to a House member and, after I promised not to identify him in any form, he told me this.

First come the phone calls from constituents who are AIPAC members. They know the Congressman and are nice and friendly and just tell him, or whichever staffer the constituent knows, just how important this vote is to him and his friends back in the district.

Then the donors call. The folks who have hosted fundraisers. They are usually not only from the district but from New York or LA or Chicago. They repeat the message: this vote is very important.

Contrary to what you might expect, they do not mention campaign money. They don’t have to.  Because these callers are people who only know the Congressman through their checks, the threat not to write any more of them is implicit. Like the constituents, the donors are using AIPAC talking points which are simple and forceful. You can argue with them but they keep going back to the script. Did I mention the rabbis?  We only have a few in our district but we get calls from all of them and from other rabbis from around the state.

Then there are the AIPAC lobbyists, the professional staffers. They come in, with or without appointments. If the Congressman is in, they expect to see him immediately. If not, they will see a staffer. If they don’t like what they hear, they will keep coming back. They are very aggressive, no other lobby comes close, They expect to see the Member, not mere staff.
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