no third solution

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Category Archives: World Politics

This is What a Police State Looks Like

September 28th, 2009

Last week in Pittsburgh, the Group of 20 discussed, among other things, reforming the IMF (Providing liquidity to dictators and tyrants since 1944!) and resolved itself as the permanent world council for international economic cooperation, which is newspeak for the preservation of international economic oppression.

Whatever objective brings together the most powerful people from the most powerful nations in the world, is not wholesome. They do not have the people’s interests in mind because the their interests are not the people’s. So it is no wonder that a relatively diverse crowd showed up to protest the gathering darkness in Pittsburgh last week, where the Group of 20 met to discuss, among other things, reforming the IMF (Providing liquidity.

The powers that be do not like dissent. In particular, they do not like vocal, public displays of dissent which threaten to reveal their fraud. So thousands of hired guns, bought paid for with the people’s money were brought in to Pittsburgh last week to secure “order” and to silence the people’s voice of opposition.

The protesters, and many of the students at University of Pittsburgh saw firsthand what a police state looks like:

unidentified police officers pose for a "trophy" photo with captive

The photo (taken from the video on YouTube) shows a group of heavily armed police officers posing for a group photo with one of their trophies captives.  The purpose of staging such a photograph with someone who is “innocent until proven guilty” is psychological warfare. It is meant to intimidate, debase, and to humiliate the opposition. It is the exercise of physical strength and brute force. The motivation is pure malice, the sort of cream which rises to the top of the State’s violence gangs.

Right out loud, the students and protesters learned (if they hadn’t learned already) that the police were not there to protect them. The police arrived in Pittsburgh in their professional capacities as soldiers of fortune, hired guns and goons…  After all, four thousand heavily armed and armored men do not storm in to your city and tear gas you for your own safety. They were not there to protect Pittsburgh from the G20, they were there to protect the G20 from Pittsburgh.

h/t: iwitness video

Afghanistan Has Not Been Liberated (Part 2 of ??)

May 15th, 2009

In the wake of a bombing raid in Afghanistan last week, which took the lives of perhaps 100 civilians a confirmed 150 civilians, at least 95 of whom were children, I mentioned in passing that, unfortunately it was not the first of such raids. For penance,

The Pentagon … promised to launch a joint investigation with the Afghan government…

Whatever they concluded, it appears that the investigation will not culminate in an end to the mass-murder of innocent civilians

President Karzai has demanded a halt to Washington’s airstrikes in his country following the deadly incident.

Washington says it will not stop airstrikes in Afghanistan which have frequently led to civilian casualties across the violence-wracked country.

And if it couldn’t get any worse, questions are now being raised about the use of white phosphorous, a particularly nasty incendiary weapon, which as far as I’m aware is banned by the Geneva Convention as an anti-personnel weapon.

Despite the fact that the company line says that the U.S. has already “won”, and that Afghanistan has already been “liberated”, Washington, however, has no intention of stopping any time soon, which means we get to read more about how the Commander-in-Chief very much regrets these “accidents”.

A hundred and fifty innocents, half children, is not an accident. Most people, most of the time, take reasonable precautions to prevent accidents. They don’t spit in the faces of their victims, declaring no end to the indiscriminate practices which cause so much death and destruction. A hundred and fifty kids is three or four classrooms full of kids. In many elementary schools in the U.S., that would be an entire grade-level, or two.

And it’s not “collateral damage” (as if that euphemism absolves guilt!), it’s mass-fucking-murder.

…And people wonder why they hate us.

Afghanistan Has Not Been Liberated

May 6th, 2009

Although I agree with the official policy, that U.S. soldiers shouldn’t be proselytizing, didn’t they “liberate” Afghanistan?

U.S. Central Command’s General Order Number 1 forbids troops on active duty — including all those based in Iraq and Afghanistan — from trying to convert people to another religion. Trying to convert Muslims to another faith is a crime in Afghanistan. [Yahoo!]

In light of this fact alone, I would say “no, Afghanistan has not been liberated.” But the U.S. military has far more important things to worry about than whether one rogue soldier plans on distributing Pashtun-translations of the Bible to Afghani people.

For example, dozens — perhaps a hundred Afghan civilians are dead as a result of a bombing raid carried out by the U.S. on Monday night, this is not the first one of its kind. That said, pretending to have the Afghani citizens’ interests at heart while discussing Bible-Study is just a little bit disingenuous. But I digress: back to the topic of “liberation”.

It’s clearly not just “proselytizing” that’s at issue here:

An Afghan man who converted to Christianity was sentenced to death for apostasy in 2006 but was allowed to leave the country after an international uproar. [Y!]

Although the condition of the Afghani people may have generally tended to improve in recent years, they’re still well on the wrong side of the line between liberty and tyranny. That they’ve overthrown and replaced one violent band of criminals who would, e.g., stone to death the victims of gang-rape, or kill you for professing another faith, etc., with another violent band of criminals who promises not to execute rape-victims, but will still execute you for the onerous crime of “not being Muslim”, can barely be interpreted as a step in the right direction; after all, it was  religious fanaticism and intolerance which enabled the previous abomination.

I could almost overlook a law which merely aimed to keep missionaries (e.g.) from going door to door to spread their faith. But to punish a man at all for converting to another creed, which may occur with or without an instigating proselytizer, let alone sentencing that man to death, is about a million miles from reasonable, and any government which carries out, enables, encourages, or apologizes for these measures is worthy of nothing but scorn and derision.

Talk about “survivor-bias,” it’s not freedom, and it’s not a fucking “democracy” if you kill off everyone with an opposing viewpoint.

no third solution

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