Old-school depiction of how military contractors operate.
Source: Dealers in Death: The Story of the War Racket (1934)
What a country! I can call the military scum and not go to jail for saying so. That doesn't change the fact that these are the worst people in the world.
Now these cretins are whining because Julian Assange of Wikileaks continues to expose their murdering of civilians and attempts to cover it up.
According to The Guardian,
The White House "strongly" criticised the leaks in a statement, which it said, "could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security". It said that Wikileaks had made no effort to contact US security services, but insisted that what it called the "irresponsible leaks" would not "impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people".Why should anyone care about alleged damage to the bloated, selfish, dare I say satanic U.S. military? They are the problem. They are the ones who are destroying the planet. They do need to be continually exposed and charged with war crimes.
From Tampa Bay Online,
Assange told reporters in London that he believed that "thousands" of U.S. attacks in Afghanistan could be investigated for evidence of war crimes, although he acknowledged that such claims would have to be tested in court.The Defense Department is full of shit. They abhor American values. All they want is for their industry to grow. World peace would put them out of business. They don't care about innocent lives destroyed and the wholesale destruction of vast territories. They only make money, if the bloodletting continues.
Assange pointed in particular to a deadly missile strike ordered by Taskforce 373, a unit allegedly charged with hunting down and killing senior Taliban targets. He said there was also evidence of cover-ups when civilians were killed, including what he called a suspiciously high number of casualties that U.S. forces attributed to ricochet wounds.
The Defense Department declined to respond to specifics contained in the documents, citing security reasons.
Everyone knows the police have their code of silence. The military in turn also feels it is above the law and uses so-called national security claims to bury the truth of their criminal activities. Assange is a hero. He has given them a well-deserved smack in the face. He doesn't think these new leaks will end the war. Yet, he does have hope that they will help swing political opinion.
link
SPIEGEL: Do you think that the publication of this data will influence political decision-makers?
Assange: Yes. This material shines light on the everyday brutality and squalor of war. The archive will change public opinion and it will change the opinion of people in positions of political and diplomatic influence.
SPIEGEL: Aren't you expecting a little too much?
Assange: There is a mood to end the war in Afghanistan. This information won't do it alone, but it will shift political will in a significant manner.
The documents are available here.
According to Wikileaks,
The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves. The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism. Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.Or to go back to the Spiegel interview to really put this all in perspective,
SPIEGEL: Is there anything that you consider to be a legitimate state secret?
Assange: There is a legitimate role for secrecy, and there is a legitimate role for openness. Unfortunately, those who commit abuses against humanity or against the law find abusing legitimate secrecy to conceal their abuse all too easy. People of good conscience have always revealed abuses by ignoring abusive strictures. It is not WikiLeaks that decides to reveal something. It is a whistleblower or a dissident who decides to reveal it. Our job is to make sure that these individuals are protected, the public is informed and the historical record is not denied.
In regards to Obama, this is now his war. It's on him. The President is considered the Chief Executive Officer of the Military. Obama thinks Martin Luther King paved the way for himself becoming President. However, Sherwood Ross of L.A. Progressive said last year that MLK would not have been pleased with Obama's warmongering.
Painting himself as the beneficiary of the NAACP’s work, Obama cited historical figures from W.E.B. DuBois to Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr. to Emmet Till, to explain how the path to the presidency was cleared by visionaries,” Associated Press reported. All that is true, of course.
And Obama brought the NAACP audience to its feet when he spoke about his vision for their children: “I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers, doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers,” Obama said. “I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court justice. I want them aspiring to be president of the United States.”
But there are disturbing reports of escalating civilian casualties emerging from Afghanistan, a war that is now very much Obama’s War, and distressing photos being displayed of Afghan children lying in hospitals with burned faces and bandaged limbs. We might well ask, “What about their futures?”
Civilian deaths in Afghanistan jumped 24% over 2008, according to the United Nations, CNN reported July 31st. There were 1,013 civilian deaths in the first six months of this year and 30% of the slain were killed by Western military air strikes. The UN said the air strikes “remain responsible for the largest percentage of civilian deaths” attributed to foreign troops in Afghanistan.
Not surprisingly, Afghan President Hamid Karzai pleaded months ago “for the U.S. to halt air strikes in his country, following attacks that Afghan officials said killed 147 people,” Reuters reported.
But President Obama isn’t listening to the president of Afghanistan. Neither is he listening to the swelling chorus of Americans who regard the attack on Afghanistan as “a mistake” and who believe, says Gallup Poll, that by a two to one margin the U.S. is spending “too much” on defense. Apparently, some Americans are painfully aware that dollars spent to conquer Afghanistan will never fund education or retraining in America.
Donkeytale makes good sense when he speaks of how there is nothing new under the sun, that we are repeating stupid cycles. It's true. That's why a song by Black Sabbath performed in 1970 is just as relevant to today's situation. The U.S. Military is full of scum. The war pigs need to have their toys taken away. Innocent people are getting hurt. The U.S. economic infrastructure is struggling due to the overall idiocy which is a war economy. Even The Washington Post has come out recently with a report called Top Secret America, basically a schtick on what's up with the spy factories. I've a great cliche to use to wrap up this diatribe of a blog post. Enough is enough.
Black Sabbath War Pigs Lyrics
Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death's construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh lord yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait 'til their judgement day comes
Yeah!
Now in darkness world stops turning
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees the war pig's crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing spreads his wings
Oh lord yeah!
6 comments:
I don't like the idea of the octopus thing. What's wrong with octopuses? Octopi? ha
the point is the system - not the recognition of the network of interests which operate? the issue is that networks of narrow interest operate - within this system - and they represent what they do - and have the power to look after those interests. It doesn't matter who the people are, or what the network is, necessarily, it's what they hold true (or rather what they do) that really matters? Liberalism or socialism can easily be portrayed as a octopus, and they regularly are. But any information system will seem like this? Human culture is octopus-like? Indoctrination is important. Indoctrination into what (and how) is the issue imo. We're all octopus - but doing what?
I don't hold any great shakes for the US military. But.....what if they stand between the past, present and future being something much worse? That's quite a grounding idea, isn't it? Maybe it's true too? As much as they're a force against something better, they're at least a force against something much worse, maybe. A lot of western thought on everyone else in the globe is probably wide of the mark. Maybe the US military position - if there is one - is right and the bleeding hearts (like me) are wrong? How do we tell?
I'm essentially incredibly pacifist. I shock myself how pacifist I am sometimes. Yet existential threat is something else, and I wonder "why sacrifice all the good stuff for the clerical whims of a load of absolutist religious rubbish?" There's no question where I fall on that divide, and if opposed by violence, then violence is just about the only retort available to extreme violence, apart from an effective mass surrender/suicide.
Maybe the leftwing analysis and prescription is completely wrong, and the US military is closer to being right?
Islam seems like an unreconstructed Christianity to me. The Enlightenment never happened - or rather it did, and it just hasn't taken hold and instead must be crushed. Islamic land, and all that. WTF?
US military has to be seen in light of all this stuff.
You want a Taliban USA? To the extent it prevents that, at least, the US military isn't scum?
Trotsky led the Red Army, and the Red Army killed a lot of people. If they hadn't of killed people they'd have been killed themselves and the USSR would have died stillborn.
I don't know that there's a guilt-free option - one that leaves no stains.
Not that I support the US military through everything, of course. But who could oppose killing Nazis? It had to be done? As pacifist as I am generally, I'd like to think I would sign-up to fight Nazis, if it came to it. Kill or be killed. At its ultimate, the US army should represent that? And it does? They go too far, without doubt, for illegitimate cause too. But....the idea and the material force isn't necessarily "scum"? It's highly valuable - to a degree - and from a certain perspective?
My Leninist slant?
;)
He certainly wouldn't have blanched at forming an army.
For instance, Lenin wrote about Odessa uprising and the Battleship Potemkin :
"By spreading throughout Europe the report that the Potemkin had surrendered and that the tsar had ordered the revolutionary armoured cruiser to be sunk, the autocratic government only completed its disgrace in the eyes of the entire world.
The sailors are also rising in Libau and in Kronstadt; clashes with the troops are becoming more frequent; sailors and workers are fighting the troops on the barricades (in Libau). The foreign press reports mutinies on a number of other warships (the Minin, the Alexander II, and others). The tsarist government finds itself without a navy. The most that it has been able to achieve so far is to hold back the fleet from actively going over to the side of the revolution. Meanwhile, the armoured cruiser Potemkin remains an unconquered territory of the revolution, and what ever its fate may be, the undoubted fact and the point of highest significance is that here we have the attempt to form the nucleus of a revolutionary army.
The siding of the army with the revolution has impressed itself as a fact upon the whole of Russia and the entire world. The events in the Black Sea Fleet will inevitably be followed by further and still more energetic attempts to form a revolutionary army. It is our task now to give the utmost support to these efforts, to explain to the broadest masses of the proletariat and the peasantry the nation-wide significance of a revolutionary army in the struggle for freedom, to assist various units of this army to unfurl the popular banner of freedom, the banner capable of attracting the masses and rallying the forces that will crush the tsarist autocracy.
------
It's pretty ugly?
This is better (Lenin, again):
"Outbreaks— demonstrations—street fighting—units of a revolutionary army—such are the stages in the development of the popular uprising. Now at last we have reached the final stage. This does not mean, of course, that the movement in its entirety has advanced to this new and higher stage. No, there is still a good deal of backwardness in the movement; in the Odessa events there are unmistakable signs of old-time rioting. But it does mean that the advance waves of the elemental flood have already reached the very threshold of the absolutist “stronghold”. It does mean that the advanced representatives of the popular masses have themselves arrived, not as a result of theoretical reasoning, but under the impact of the growing movement, at new and higher tasks of the struggle, the final struggle against the enemy of the Russian people. The autocracy has done everything to prepare this struggle. For years it has provoked the people to an armed struggle with its troops, and now it is reaping what it sowed. The units of the revolutionary army are springing up out of the army itself."
Thanks for your thoughtful posts.
The image of 'the octopus' is striking, for there is an internet, conspiracy theorist affinity towards promoting Danny Casolaro's idea of an octopus. This is a somewhat, awkward coincidence, one that has been exacerbated by people such as Rachel Begley not being aware of how goofy she has come across through her various associations.
If one wants people to take to heart claims of strange but true allegations, one must be very careful to separate wheat from chaff.
I see your point. The Nazis were out for world conquest, and the US confronted that specific evil. My problem is with the ratio of the US military to the overall budget. It's "beyond the beyond" too big.
It's like a mafia. How else can one describe it? Even Eisenhower warned against the Military-Industrial Complex. And conspiracy theory nutjobs like that one. It's a true story, however, despite the "Patriot Movement" becoming co-opting that story for their own purposes.
I think there are many different levels to all this. Yeah, we as individuals share some blame for the way the world is. Wilhelm Reich said it's the social-psychology of the masses which forms the bedrock of totalitarianism. Problem is he ventured off into delusions of orgone. I think you should give him a chance. I think I told you my college story about this. I asked one of my professors wtf. He kind of hush hushed it. He didn't know what to say. He stood behind what Reich wrote about everything but the orgone part. I'm talking about one of the few professors working social theory in Ireland. The orgone part is an embarrassment.
This is my take on the military. Please keep in mind that I used the word scum here just like I did with the Thomas Jefferson 4th of July essay. It's a word meant to stir up the juices, nothing more nothing less. It's my form of yellow journalism. Look at the real Socrates, the one from Athens. I forget the exact wording, but he used to tell people in positions of power that they basically sucked shit. The real Socrates, imho, invented speaking truth to power. We Yanks love to spill our guts in a similar fashion. Sometimes we are obnoxious. Sometimes we display a unique form of bravery.
People who work in government jobs should not get a free ride. They shouldn't be rewarded for doing what's right. In other words, it shouldn't come as a shock if they're good. Firefighters are the most adored public servants in America. It's because they risk their lives going into fires to save others. They don't toot their own horns. They don't beat up or kill anyone. They just do it, same as the best of the best teachers.
Military and police are something completely different. They break laws, and since they are the final say in the law, they get away with it. But yes there is a higher law, and it's up to the regular people to stand up for what's right. Perhaps the military, police, politicians, et al are mirror images of society as a whole, that perhaps if people were better, these institutions would be too. I'm not so sure. It's a head scratcher. It's a nuanced debate. Most of us simply have no power.
I use the word scum because I am sick of the "Gentlemen's Agreement" giving undeserved kudos to military, police, courts, politicians, corporations, et al. If many individuals from those institutions are not going to be held accountable for their massive transgressions, we will always be up the creek without a paddle.
I deleted a few posts from the donkeytale troll. I'm going to repost the part where he responds to your USA anti-Taliban point. I agree with most of what he wrote. I don't agree with his inability to sign in with his username like everyone else does. I don't appreciate his writing I'm menstruating. That's not only trollish but also sexist. I don't get why he just doesn't go away. He calls me juvenile, but he's the guy who deliberately misspells words. He may think it's no big deal, but to this day and always it will trouble me that he thinks it's good when adult men have sexual relations with older teenagera. That's disgusting, and I'd rather this person go somewhere else.
He wrote, "TLNL---yeah, but.......there is an immediate point where the comparison between the Nazis, who wielded a state of the art, world class fighting machine in the centre of Europe bent on annihilation and world conquest with the backward Islamic jihadis just doesnt rise to a level of realism.
If there were a true comparison, an urgent need to battle, would our military response be soooo, uhm, casually extravagant?
Now, I understand where Obama was going with his focus on Afghanistan and the Taliban. I pointed it out to the fake lefties back during the 2008 campaign.
Its the threat of nukular Armageddon emanating from Pakistan! The Taliban arent all that far from from the trigger! And the ISI is helping them. Very sinister stuff.
But, still, is this the most effective way to go about protecting the world from nukular jihad? Or is it mere knee jerk reaction against "Terror" in the name of making a buck for the MIC?
Europe and especially the US are in the process of bankrupting ourselves fighting this 15th century horde, all the while the MIC is using the issue to ungodly enrich themselves at the taxpayer expense, while the GOP snickers because Obama is playing into their hands.
Wouldnt it be a lot cheaper just to buy off the pakistani military and/or concentrate inordinate diplomatic efforts on Pakistan and India?
Read this for an account of how our tax dollars are being wasted in "war". The air-conditioned war?"
The poster named donkeytale is scum. I feel ashamed I didn't ban him once I read him make the following comments at My Left Wing. I have no excuses. Somehow I let it slide. I shouldn't have. Donkeytale, you are scum, and everything you post from here on out will be deleted. Bet on it shithead.
donkeytale aka Josephkkk: I've had this discussion with friendz of mine, all dudez, who have had similar experiences. (3.67 / 3)
Your mistaking a 13 yr old boy for a child. A thirteen yr old boy is a sexual being. A horn dog, in fact. And curious as shit with no recourse (hopefully) to check it out with 13 yr old grrls. In fact, you should be quite glad for the grrls that the boyz are often willing to check it out with each other, instead....
Most boyz have had gay sex with other boys or men before they are 13.
Altho, I wouldnt know...just what I heard from others.
[:oO
Anyway, our roundtable consensus is that early teen gay sexual experiences are not generally traumatic for boyz, unless they become confused about their sexual id as a result. And even then, they are only experiencing the same confusion they would later have experienced anyway, perhaps more traumatically....
One of the duez, older by several years, now about 70, meaning he reached (4.00 / 2)
teenage in the early fifties, kept us in stitches with his story about growing up dirt poor in rural Oklahoma. There was a gay dude in the little town there who used to service the teen age boyz regularly....and never demanded reciprocation.
Or so he claimed....
by: Joseph KKK @ Fri Jun 26, 2009 at 22:08:19 PM CDT
This guy said he kept visiting the gay man regularly, maybe even increasingly, as (4.00 / 2)
he began to date grrls.
Who among us males doesnt remember the particular agony of unrelieved adolescent blueballz on a Saturday nite?
Well, this friend of mine knew where to find his relief in the Oklahoma panhandle.
Bet on it.....
My own first experiences were at 12 were with a longtime neighborhood friend who was 15.
And I believe that if its a problem, its going to be discovered. If its undiscovered (as is most male sex among heterosexual males) its not a problem....
In the case of my Okie friend, he was the pursuer of gratfication from an adult when he was a minor.
Your mind set leads inexorably to bad law and criminalizes victimless activity.
This scumbag is no longer welcome on this website.
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