Category: The Regime

Fascism grows

~ susie

In an empty belly. Keep an eye on Greece, because this is some scary shit:

The Golden Dawn office in downtown Athens is open three evenings a week. Most of the visitors are middle-aged women with dull eyes and sunken cheeks, faces too old for their bodies, hardened, tired expressions. More than 50 come in an hour. Quietly, they ask the bouncers, “Are they giving out food inside?” “Third floor,” the bouncers say; but most of the women come out empty-handed save for a mauve piece of paper with the Golden Dawn logo on it. There’s only enough today for voters from this ward; they’ll announce the next distribution on a poster, in the papers, if you phone.


Away from the door, Maria Kirimi tells me she’s been locked out of her flat with all her things inside since 29 July; the family are crowded at her mother’s now, seven people surviving on €400 a month. “We’re the living dead,” she says. Isn’t she troubled by Golden Dawn’s violence? “The boys in the black shirts are the only ones I’m not scared of. I feel they’ll protect me.” I ask her mother, old enough to remember the junta, what she thinks of their far-right views. “I heard Michaloliakos say on TV that their sign isn’t Hitler’s sign but a patriotic one,” she says, and then looks down at her feet. “It does upset me a bit. But I haven’t heard of anyone else giving out food.”

The permanent war creates more enemies

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

B at Moon of Alabama:

Mass assassinations by drones, as the U.S. practices in Pakistan and in Yemen, have in both countries increased antipathy towards the U.S. and the number of people willing to actively fight against it. Currently U.S. drones also create new enemies in east Libya:

Locals considered the drones they now hear buzzing overhead “a form of occupation,” he said, and Libyans would wage “jihad” to force them out.
Obama and Brennen must know of this effect of their assassination campaign.


There is another danger in this war by drones. They are complicated machines and the software they use, which will make drones increasingly autonomous, is faulty and will always be so. As someone who has worked developing and implementing information technology this doesn’t surprise me at all:

In March 2011, a Predator parked at the camp started its engine without any human direction, even though the ignition had been turned off and the fuel lines closed. Technicians concluded that a software bug had infected the “brains” of the drone, but never pinpointed the problem.


Currently software is getting developed that automatically scans through drone reconnaissance videos to find the “signature” of “terrorist behavior”. That guy is loading the trunk of his car? Now that might be a car bomb. The visual recognition software will pick that out and when further bits of circumstantial “evidence” gets added it may well recommend the assassination of that person in a “signature strike”.
Aside from the incredible stupid believe in the existence of any “terrorist signature”, how many bugs will such a software have? Would their users even be able to identify a software mistake? Would they find its cause? Of course not.


No one with any bit of moral left in them should argue for the “permanent war” the Obama administration is implementing here. What it really creates is a permanent growing number of enemies and certain blowbacks to come. Drone assassinations and harassing drone critics create more terrorism. They are a problem, not a solution. As the people in the White House are not all stupid the must know this and their motivation to wage a permanent war must be a different one than the one they claim.

I’m so old

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

That I remember posting stories like this before we invaded Iraq!

LONDON (AP) — Britain is involved in military contingency planning with the United States over Iran and other potential flashpoints in the Middle East, officials said Friday — but they insisted the talks are not a prelude to a pre-emptive strike against Tehran’s nuclear program.


Prime Minister David Cameron’s office confirmed that routine military planning is being carried out with the U.S. and other allies on a range of scenarios, including on the potential use by American forces of British bases, some of which can act as staging posts for missions to the Middle East.


The Guardian newspaper reported in Friday’s editions that the U.S. had asked Britain to use its bases in Cyprus, and British territory in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean, to help build up forces in the Gulf. It reported that move was regarded as a contingency in case of the need for strikes to halt Tehran’s nuclear program.

Read more: http://pixel.newscred.com/px.gif?key=YXJ0aWNsZT01OTcxY2UzMWJlNzMxN2Q2NGRlNWQ3MWMyNWVjZTc3OCZvd25lcj1lOTllZDJiYjAxYjQzNmJkZWEyOWQ2NjAyYTg2NTY4NSZub25jZT05ZDg3MjQ0Ny1jMmNhLTRmNTYtYTQzYi0xMGZkMmYzMTAwMDEmcHVibGlzaGVyPThjMDBmYmVlNjFkNWJjZjBjNjA5MmQ4YjkyZWJiY2Ex#ixzz2AVYy3XoO

He should have chosen a better father

~ susie ~ 6 Comments


Robert Gibbs blames the death of a teenage American boy on his not choosing a better father.

I’m surprised at how many people I know who don’t have a problem with the U.S. relying on armed drones. “Hey, they save American lives,” one friend said. “If they kill a few other people, that’s too bad. So do regular bombs.” Would I be exaggerating to say that Americans are now largely desensitized to our video-game wars?

To me, this issue is no less than a fight for the heart and soul of America. Now, we certainly have gotten used to the erosion of due process and civil rights since 9/11, but it strikes me that we have largely ignored it for far too long, and that this is something worth fighting for.

I’m often accused by his fans of “hating” President Obama and attacking his policies out of some imagined spite. Really, it’s just that I remember the alarms raised by the progressive blogosphere when George W. Bush started the war on terror, and I simply can’t bring myself to excuse the same excesses of power and empire just because it’s a Democrat in the White House. We’ve switched from torture to assassination — is that supposed to be moral progress?

I am deeply and profoundly disturbed by the story of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone two weeks after his jihadist father was killed. It seems clear to me that this attack was meant as a symbolic warning. Why else would the United States of America blow up a 16-year-old American boy and then announce his death to the world as that of a military combatant? Why else was he targeted?

For the sins of his father?

Glenn Greenwald is right when he describes moral indifference toward drone attacks as sociopathic. And sadly, we won’t really cry out full-force against such depravity until it is a Republican president who’s ordering those deaths. And that Republican president will say, “But President Obama did it, and no one said a thing.”

A U.N. investigative group is set to examine whether the civilian casualties caused by America’s covert targeted killing campaign are violating international law, according to an official at the organization reported by the Guardian.
Continue reading “He should have chosen a better father” →

Agent who blew whistle on CIA torture gets jail time

~ odd man out ~ 2 Comments

What a country! Cheats and liars such as Lance Armstrong are lauded as heroes until damning evidence is presented. Real heroes are prosecuted for their good deeds:

Former CIA agent John Kiriakou pleaded guilty Tuesday morning to crimes related to blowing the whistle on the US government’s torture of suspected terrorists and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Kiriakou, 48, agreed to admit to one count of disclosing information identifying a covert agent early Tuesday, just hours after his attorney entered a change of plea in an Alexandria, Virginia courtroom outside of Washington, DC…

Gaza aid ship seized

~ susie

In the latest horrors:

New York, October 21, 3pm EDT – More than 24 hours after their illegal detention in international waters at 10 AM local time Saturday, Israeli authorities are still holding 21 passengers who were on board the Estelle which was sailing to Gaza when intercepted by Israeli forces, of whom three are Israeli and eighteen are internationals. There were originally 30 on board the boat from eight countries: Israel, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greece, and Spain. Six have been deported and at this writing three are in the process of being deported.


Passengers on the Estelle, including  Israeli combat veteran Yonatan Shapira, have reported that the passengers were tasered when Israeli forces commandeered the ship.


Israeli officials have claimed that there were no humanitarian goods onboard. In fact, the items in the cargo room of Estelle were: 2 olive trees; 41 tons of cement; wheelchairs; walkers; crutches; midwifery stethoscope; children’s books; toys; 300 footballs; musical instruments; theatrical equipment;  VHF radio (for a ship); 1 anchor (the last two items were for the Gaza’s Ark project.) The ship was inspected at many ports. A video of the cement being loaded onto the ship is here.

“We call on the U.S. to use its influence with the Israeli government to ensure the Estelle passengers and crew are treated with dignity, that their rights as non-violent protesters are respected and that they all be released immediately,” said Jane Hirschmann, organizer of the U.S. Boat to Gaza.


Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, said today: “It’s striking that while the Swedish Foreign Affairs Ministry has the moral clarity to say that it agrees with the Ship to Gaza that the border crossings must be opened and that the ship should have been allowed through, the U.S. State Department is silent about this gross violation of human rights and international humanitarian law.”