I think so too: http://monthlyreview.org/2001/12/01/imperialism-and-empire/
The United States of Atrocity
Tue, 2015-09-15 15:07
#302
Tue, 2015-09-15 15:35
#303
I certainly don't disagree. But I disagree with "campism". You seem to think I'm soft on US imperialism, which is absolutely not the case.
Tue, 2015-09-15 15:36
#304
ikosmos
from lagatta's link to J B Foster's piece at MR ...
By any objective standard, the United States is the most destructive nation on earth. It has killed and terrorized more populations around the globe than any other nation since the Second World War. Its power for destruction is seemingly unlimited, armed as it is with every conceivable weapon. Its imperial interests, aimed at global hegemony, are virtually without limits. In response to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the U.S. government now has declared war on terrorists that it says reside in more than sixty countries as well as threatening military action against the governments that harbor them. In what is presented as merely the first stage in a long struggle it has unleashed its war machine in Afghanistan, already taking a frightful human toll, including those who are perishing for want of food.How are we to view these developments except as the growth of imperialism, barbarism and terrorism—each feeding on the other—in an age in which capitalism seems to have reached the limits of its historic ascendance? What remaining hope there is for humanity, under these circumstances, lies with the rebuilding of socialism and, more immediately, with the emergence of a popular struggle centered within the United States—to prevent Washington from continuing its deadly game of Samson in the temple of humanity. Never have the words “socialism or barbarism,” once eloquently raised by Rosa Luxemburg, taken on more global urgency than in the present day.
People who put International Relations in simple, interpersonal ethical or moral terms make the mistake of using [the single number from] a ruler to describe a 3-dimensional object. It's the wrong yardstick. Nevertheless, I really don't have any problem with calling the USA what it is: the Great Satan, Moloch, and Washington for all intents and purposes is Barad-dûr. What the late Hugo Chavez did, in mockingly making reference to the smell of sulphur at the UN rostrum is perfectly apt. Such things should be said. If our heroes cannot speak truth to power then what hope have the rest of us? Not everyone has the ability, or time, to understand more complicated arguements about how the world really works.
It's important to understand this horrific threat to humanity, to name this great evil, and to challenge it.
Tue, 2015-09-15 15:46
#305
@ ikosmos
Codswallop.
They only got that title when they inherited it from Britain, who inherited it from Spain, who inherited it from France, who inherited it from Rome, who inherited it from Greece.
In short, they are all devils, of you want to call them that, and if this one gets knocked down there are plenty more waiting in the wings.
In fact, it is hard to say if they hold the balance of power even now.
If you think there is something extra devilish about the Americans you might want to read a bit more history.
Name this great evil? Give me a break. Do you honestly think no one has noticed?
Tue, 2015-09-15 15:54
#306
ikosmos
Foster, in quoting Istvan M. , clearly makes the point that the single hegemon is critical to identify as such. Colourful language is just a bonus.
Tue, 2015-09-15 16:08
#307
In other words, the Kremlin is INNOCENT!!!!
Rosa Luxemburg would be rolling over in her grave, if she had one.
This crap is utterly counter to revolutionary internationalism.
Tue, 2015-09-15 16:28
#308
Speaking of language, some people clearly make the point that grammar crime is critical to identify as such.
Me, I think we can form our own opinions about that, and current affairs, without pointing to some fellow with a piece of paper (quoting some other fellow with a fancy name) as the final word.
Tue, 2015-09-15 17:00
#309
swallow
The US is not a single hegemon any more, though. Empire is a multi-headed hydra. (Just trying to use colourful language.)
Tue, 2015-09-15 17:18
#310
[color=blue]There[/color] [color=red]are[/color] [color=green]other[/color] [color=orange]ways[/color].
Tue, 2015-09-15 17:42
#311
The thing about critiquing the policies of the US or Canada, more than Russia/China/Venezuela or whatever, is that the latter structures have not yet claimed global leadership over us all, or in the name of an exclusive 'international community.' So it's not that one flavour tastes better than another. It's that one flavour is constantly making this claim in a rather baldfaced sort of way, and when we highlight the obvious cracks in the ridiculous yarn they keep peddling, that too many people seem to internalize as the truth, almost on cue a rush of Hasbara-esque defenders appear out of the woodwork telling us to 'look over there at what they're doing.'
Tue, 2015-09-15 18:00
#312
But ikosmos DID just say that the U.S. was a special kind of great Satan, and that we can only have one.
And we were also told that American exceptionalism is something completely distinct in the world, and that we don't think like that here in Canada (except for us American wannabees in Saskatchewan).
Personally, my first objection was not so much to pointing out U.S. crimes, but reducing those atrocities to pornography.
Tue, 2015-09-15 18:18
#313
I believe it was Iran that coined the term 'little satan,' to refer to it's former neighbor, the USSR. At the time I didn't see anything to contend in that assessment. I figured that a brutal theocracy like Iran should at least have some insight as to what constitutes Satan like characteristics. Anyway, I'm sure you don't require an invitation to carry on with your deflections on behalf of the 'lidless eye.'
Tue, 2015-09-15 18:39
#314
Indeed, and continue your important work in service of the Lord of the Rings fan and fantasy club.
Tue, 2015-09-15 21:22
#315
ikosmos
This hobbit will be happy to see Barad-dur collapse. Others can speak for themselves, or they have already.
Tue, 2015-09-15 21:37
#316
How many countries are currently (or in the past, for that matter) using drone aircraft to kill people in other countries?
Tue, 2015-09-15 21:39
#317
This hobbit will be happy to see Barad-dur collapse.
I'm not familiar with this "Barad-dur" fellow. But I do know Sauron! Why not go with Sauron??
As an added bonus, he's one-dimensional, so he CAN be easily measured with a ruler.
Wed, 2015-09-16 14:50
#318
ikosmos
But ikosmos DID just say that the U.S. was a special kind of great Satan, and that we can only have one.
The US regime is the world gendarme, the hegemon, unlike any other regime in policy and action, aiming at permanent global domination and willing to risk global annihilation to achieve that goal. That's quite exceptional.
Well, maybe the Third Reich was similar. We all know how that ended.
PS. Magoo. Barad-dur is Sauron's HQ. Maybe like those citadels of imperialism - Washington, NY, etc. - only more critical and on a smaller scale.
Wed, 2015-09-16 16:00
#319
The US regime is the world gendarme, the hegemon, unlike any other regime in policy and action, aiming at permanent global domination and willing to risk global annihilation to achieve that goal. That's quite exceptional.
World cowboy, maybe.
As for actual domination, it has barely been 100 years since they eclipsed the British, and they have yet to match them in political control at the height of their empire - one third of the land, and one fifth of the people.
Fifty years into their supposed "hegemony" they got their asses kicked by one of the poorest nations in the world.
And if one believes the chatter around here their whole house is falling to pieces.
That is exceptional? How? Because they have robots? So if Guernica had been committed with drones it would have been more of an atrocity?
And if we want to talk being willing to risk annhilation, we should probably also consider the empire which built the largest nuclear bomb ever made.
Wed, 2015-09-16 21:10
#320
swallow
If they are the invincible hegemon, would they be panicking in immiment desperate fear of Russia's alternative world order? I'm confused.
Wed, 2015-09-16 22:06
#321
If they are the invincible hegemon, would they be panicking in immiment desperate fear of Russia's alternative world order? I'm confused.
Russia has nuclear weapons, which are pretty much invincible themself.
Wed, 2015-09-16 22:10
#322
Invincible?
Sun, 2015-09-20 20:56
#323
ikosmos
9 years ago today, the late, great Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, from the rostrom of the United Nations noted that the place still smelled of sulphur .... because the Devil, the US President, had just been there.
Don't think for one second that the US Empire didn't immediately hire a dozen assassins to murder the heroic Venezuelan President. In fact, some say that's exactly what they did.
"The Devil came here yesterday. The Devil was here, in this very place. It still smells of sulphur."
When the evil Empire, the Great Satan, the juggernaut of death, the Land of the Unfree and the home of Sniveling Cowards finally implodes, may Hugo Chavez be remembered, may his words be treasured, and may whomever is in the Oval Office be fumigated.
Sun, 2015-09-20 22:05
#324
Don't think for one second that the US Empire didn't immediately hire a dozen assassins to murder the heroic Venezuelan President. In fact, some say that's exactly what they did.
Are you that "some", or have they sworn you to secrecy?
Tue, 2015-09-22 16:26
#325
US Must Not Lecture World on International Behavior: Journalist (and vid)
http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/09/22/430316/US-military-power-occupa...
"The US lecturing world powers on international behavior is an offense to the entire human race, a political commentator and journalist, Don DeBar in New York, says..."
Mon, 2015-09-28 13:39
#326
Brainless in Washington - by Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/28/brainless-in-washington/
"Washington's IQ follows the Fed's interest rate - it is negative. Washington's failures are everywhere visible..."
Thu, 2015-10-01 00:49
#327
ikosmos
The Curse of Totalitarianism and the challenge of an insurrectional pedagogy
In the United States, the extreme right in both political parties no longer needs the comfort of a counterfeit ideology in which appeals are made to the common good, human decency, and democratic values. On the contrary, power is now concentrated in the hands of relatively few people and corporations while power is global and free from the limited politics of the democratic state. In fact, the state for all intent and purposes has become the corporate state. Dominant power is now all too visible and the policies, practices, and wrecking ball it has imposed on society appear to be largely unchecked. Any compromising notion of ideology has been replaced by a discourse of command and certainty backed up by the militarization of local police forces, the surveillance state, and all of the resources brought to bear by a culture of fear and a punishing state aligned with the permanent war on terror.
Moloch. Pure and simple.
Following Arendt, a dark cloud of political and ethical ignorance has descended on the United States creating both a crisis of memory and agency.[4] Thoughtlessness has become something that now occupies a privileged, if not celebrated, place in the political landscape and the mainstream cultural apparatuses. A new kind of infantilism and culture of ignorance now shapes daily life as agency devolves into a kind of anti-intellectual cretinism evident in the babble of banality produced by Fox News, celebrity culture, schools modeled after prisons, and politicians who support creationism, argue against climate change, and denounce almost any form of reason. Education is no longer viewed as a public good but a private right, just as critical thinking is devalued as a fundamental necessity for creating an engaged and socially responsible citizenship.
Politics has become an extension of war, just as systemic economic uncertainty and state sponsored violence increasingly find legitimation in the discourses of privatization and demonization which promote anxiety, moral panics, fear and undermine any sense of communal responsibility for the well-being of others. Too many people today learn quickly that their fate is solely a matter of individual responsibility, irrespective of wider structural forces. This is a much promoted hyper-competitive ideology whose message is that surviving in a society demands reducing social relations to forms of social combat. People today are expected to inhabit a set of relations in which the only obligation is to live for one’s own self-interest and to reduce the responsibilities of citizenship to the demands of a consumer culture. Yet, there is more at work here than a flight from social responsibility, if not politics itself. Also lost is the importance of those social bonds, modes of collective reasoning, public spheres and cultural apparatuses crucial to the formation of a sustainable democratic society.
Thu, 2015-10-01 02:03
#328
Amused
Truly... were you really surprised? America is violent nation. When diplomacy fails violence is always "Plan B" and their version of diplomacy has always been ultimatums and sanctions. God bless Canada!
Thu, 2015-10-01 14:53
#329
swallow
Canada is also "violent nation."
Sat, 2015-10-24 22:09
#330
The Saker Interviews Cynthia McKinney
http://thesaker.is/the-saker-interviews-cynthia-mckinney/
"It is imperative that we make a stand at this moment with the people and for the people."
Tue, 2015-10-27 15:17
#331
ikosmos
On the same day, the US regime has sent warships to the South China Sea for some sabre-rattling against China AND US Defense Secretary A.Carter announced ground invasion of sovereign #Syria in further brazen violation of international law.
In other news, the UN General Assembly voted 191-2 (US and its attack dog, Israel, voted against the motion) to end the 50/60 year old blockade/sanctions against sovereign Cuba.
Truly, a contemptible regime. One that Canada, nevertheless - even under the "progressive" Trudeau administration - has the most intimate military and political alliance with.
Tue, 2015-10-27 15:23
#332
alan smithee
Brace yourselves for a President Trump or (God forbid) Carson.
America is on the road to fascism,literally not figuratively. And your average American thinks that is just peachy.
What does this mean for Canada? Not sure. But take a moment to picture things with Ben Carson in Washington and Stephen Harper in Canada.
Push the button already for crying out loud!
Tue, 2015-10-27 15:59
#333
ikosmos
There's always resistance to Empire. And even with the MIC, the battle of ideas is important. Just showing that the Emperor has no clothes is a worthwhile and even noble undertaking. Because it makes the Empire more difficult to manage. And that's a good thing.
Henry Giroux, if you can stomach it, writes from Hamilton (McMaster) about the descent of US society into the "inverted totalitarianism" that other academics coined as a description of that society. It makes for sobering, even overwhelming, reading.
Then we have Chris Hedges travelling the land like an incipient John the Baptist, preaching the absolutely true gospel that only revolution, and something like socialism, will save that country.
Even in the belly of the beast, there are voices that challenge the Moloch. The United States has over 1,000 military bases around the world, carrying out its violent rule with impunity. It also has those noted above, and intellects like Amy Goodman, and Noam Chomsky, J B Foster at Monthly Review, and we have our own: Naomi Klein, and D Suzuki, and many others.
After all, David defeated Goliath with a slingshot.
Tue, 2015-10-27 16:22
#334
Brace yourselves for a President Trump or (God forbid) Carson.
I suppose anything's possible, but I'm not exactly betting on either of them winning the election.
And meanwhile, it's amusing to see such contrast between the Republican frontrunners and the Democrat frontrunners. Who can say, with a straight face, that there's no difference between Ben Carson and Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders?
Tue, 2015-10-27 17:02
#335
Not substantially for the vast majority of the people who live on this planet no, says this straight face. Sanders and Clinton are imperialist swine like the rest of them. Sanders is just the latest con artist that the hopey change idiots will invest their support with once again.
Tue, 2015-10-27 17:28
#336
alan smithee
Comparing Sanders to Carson or Trump?
Someone's been eating handfuls of acid.
Tue, 2015-10-27 17:31
#337
Not "someone" -- "the vast majority of the people who live on this planet", evidently.
Tue, 2015-10-27 17:58
#338
alan smithee
As you said Magoo. Who could compare Carson and TRump to Hillary and Bernie with a straight face? It's ridiculous.
Bernie Sanders wants to break up the big banks. What is Slumbrerjack waiting for? A candidate that will literally burn them to the ground? You'd have to be tripping real hard.
Tue, 2015-10-27 18:16
#339
I think that this all comes down to foreign policy, and in particular one country. And maybe here at babble, two countries.
If neither of two candidates promises to sever all ties with that one country (or two countries) then they are effectively "indistinguishable".
Because of course nothing else matters. Domestic policy? The economy? The environment? Immigration? Whatevs.
It's like saying that dogs don't fly and squid don't fly, so dogs and squid are basically the same thing... small differences, if you want to niggle about it, but no meaningful differences.
Tue, 2015-10-27 18:17
#340
ikosmos
To some degree the US President is a hood ornament. The juggernaut carries out its brutal atrocities across the globe whatever Ahab is strapped to the whale. And that's just as important a truth as the truth that there are differences between the hood ornaments.
Tue, 2015-10-27 18:40
#341
I would agree that an America under Bernie Sanders isn't any more likely to beat their swords into ploughshares, or give trillions to the rest of the world in humble restitution for the past, but I really can't imagine that President Sanders would be just as bellicose as President Trump.
And, I note, again the obsession with foreign policy to the exclusion of anything else. Perhaps, since we're a foreign country, this might seem germane to us, but I would expect that U.S. voters who actually live in the U.S. might have *some* other concerns besides "will we bomb Eye-rak again?" And even moreso if both candidates say "Hell YA we will".
Tue, 2015-10-27 19:18
#342
ikosmos
The dominance of the MIC over domestic politics is well known. It perverts the local stuff; the military production, and related jobs, gets fought over by state vs state, etc., it influences the local politics, so that you have the tail, to some degree, wagging the dog.
The whole issue of US foreign policy out of whack with domestic politics, with the best interests of the US, comes up all the time with AIPAC, or whatever the Israeli lobby is called, and the obstinate support of brutal Israeli policies against the indigenous Palestinians.
Also: there are plenty of observers, sympathetic to Bernie Sanders, who have pointed out that while he has some radical differences domestically from his right wing rivals, his differences in foreign policy are much smaller or even not significant.
You're looking at all this wrong-headed in any case. What the voters "decide" is one thing. How Americans are mobilized, whoever gets "elected", is something just as important. When the revolution comes in the USA, they won't be slowing down to do a poll. Bet on it.
supplemental: I've found the latest by Henry Giroux. It's tough slogging, but worth it. A few quotes follow.
Tue, 2015-10-27 19:20
#343
Also: there are plenty of observers, sympathetic to Bernie Sanders, who have pointed out that while he has some radical differences domestically from his right wing rivals, his differences in foreign policy are much smaller or even not significant.
Which is pretty much exactly what I'm saying.
Two things are more-or-less the same in one regard, but radically different in another regard, so they're "the same"??
Only if you're obsessed with that one regard.
Tue, 2015-10-27 19:37
#344
ikosmos
... a dark cloud of political and ethical ignorance has descended upon the United States. (1) Thoughtlessness, a primary condition of authoritarian rule, now occupies a privileged, if not celebrated, place in the political landscape and the mainstream cultural apparatuses. A new kind of infantilism now shapes daily life as adults gleefully take on the role of unthinking children, while children are pushed to be adults, stripped of their innocence and subject to a range of disciplinary pressures that saddle them with debt and cripple their ability to be imaginative. (2)Under such circumstances, agency devolves into a mind-numbing anti-intellectualism evident in the banalities produced by Fox News infotainment and celebrity culture, and in the blinding rage produced by populist politicians who support creationism, argue against climate change and rail against immigration, the rights of women, public service workers, gay people and countless others. There is more at work here than a lethal form of intellectual, political and emotional infantilism. There is also a catastrophe of indifference and inattentiveness that breeds flirtations with irrationality, fuels the spectacle of violence, creates an embodied incapacity and promotes the withering of public life.
" an overwhelming catalogue of evidence has come into view that indicates that nation-states organized by neoliberal priorities have implicitly declared war on their children, offering a disturbing index of societies in the midst of a deep moral and political catastrophe.... Young people, especially low-income and poor people of color, are now viewed as trouble rather than being seen as facing troubles. As such, they are increasingly subject to the dictates of the criminal legal system rather than subject to assistance from social programs that could address their most basic needs.... "Youth is no longer considered the world's future, but as a threat to its present."
Welcome to the morally depraved world of late capitalism, unwilling and unable to provide for its youth. Today's capitalism ... eats its young. Literally.
People who were once viewed as facing dire problems and in need of social protection are now seen as a problem threatening society. This becomes clear when the war on poverty is transformed into a war against the poor, when the plight of the homeless is defined less as a political and economic issue in need of social reform than as a matter of law and order or when government budgets for prison construction eclipse funds for higher education.
"The war on youth is spreading out across the United States. How else might we explain the United States' turning of schools into training centers, modeling many after prisons, or promoting the rise of pedagogies of repression such as teaching to the test and high-stakes testing, all in the name of educational reform? What is the role of education in a democracy when a society burdens an entire generation with high tuition costs and student loans? I think David Graeber is right in arguing, "Student loans are destroying the imagination of youth. If there's a way of a society committing mass suicide, what better way than to take all the youngest, most energetic, creative, joyous people in your society and saddle them with, like $50,000 of debt so they have to be slaves? There goes your music. There goes your culture.... We're a society that has lost any ability to incorporate the interesting, creative and eccentric people." (19) What he does not say is that many young people are also being depoliticized because they are struggling just to survive, not only materially but also existentially."
I am the United States of America. Look at me and despair.
Tue, 2015-10-27 19:40
#345
ikosmos
look, magoo, if foreign policy drives domestic policy, [and the Israeli example is an important one] in an upside down sort of way, then Sanders isn't going to be able to make any difference without a big push behind him. He will be swamped. Which is sort of the critique of the NDPs obstinate antipathy to the social movements in this country.
Tue, 2015-10-27 20:12
#346
if foreign policy drives domestic policy
Does it?
You can't end the "War on Drugs" if you also support Israel, for example?
Tue, 2015-10-27 23:27
#347
ikosmos
More pearls from Henry Giroux ...
And then there was one.Somalia last week deposited its instrument of ratification of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), leaving the United States as the world’s only country that has not done so. And it doesn’t look like the U.S. will join the club any time soon.
Yes, America insists on the right to eat its young. With knife and fork, and plenty of relish.
As Nicholas Kristof points out: It's not just occasional mass shootings like the one at an Oregon college ... but a continuous deluge of gun deaths, an average of 92 every day in America. Since 1970, more Americans have died from guns than died in all US wars going back to the American Revolution. If that doesn't make you flinch, consider this: In America, more preschoolers are shot dead each year (82 in 2013) than police officers are in the line of duty (27 in 2013), according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI...
Yeah, that's right; more preschoolers are shot dead each year than police officers in the line of duty.
Because freedom! hoo rah!
The Rights of the Child? Not in the USA.
USA: more preschoolers shot dead ... that police officers.
Oh yeah ... some more links ...
36. Rene Lynch, "Kindergartner Throws Tantruym at School, Is Handcuffed by Police," Los Angeles Times (April 17, 2012), Online: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/17/nation/la-na-nn-six-year-old-handcuffed-20120417; and Antoinette Campbell, "Police Handcuff 6-year-old Student in Georgia," CNN.com (April 17, 2012), Online: http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/17/justice/georgia-student-handcuffed/index.html. See also Robert Winnett, "Californian 5-year-old Handcuffed and Charged with Battery," The Telegraph (November 25, 2011). Online: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8914514/Californian-5-year-old-handcuffed-and-charged-with-battery.html
37. The Associated Press, "Officers Suspended after Using Taser on 10-year-old," CBC News (April 1, 2010), Online: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2010/04/01/police-indiana-taser-daycare.html. More recently, see The Huffington Post, "Boy 'Recklessly' Tasered by Police Officer During Career Day, Lawsuit Says," October 31, 2012, Online: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/31/10-year-old-tasered-new-mexico_n_2050463.html
38. Quoted in Carly Everson, "Ind. Officer Uses Stun Gun on Unruly 10-Year old," The Associated Press (April 3, 2010). Online: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POLICE_SHOCK_CHILD?SITE=FLPLA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
USA! USA! How many kids did you kill today?!
Wed, 2015-10-28 08:10
#348
You can't end the "War on Drugs" if you also support Israel, for example?
The war on drugs is one of the manifestations of the term 'enemies, foreign or domestic.' It really becomes seamless in a schizophrenic police state like Amerika, similar to the way they've expanded their internal police state and associated laws to encompass the entire world. The corporate establishment just hasn't commenced taking out their domestic enemies with drones yet, but that is coming as sure as winter will arrive. A fascist order like that is not about to put itself out of work by ending anything. Any talk about the US ending any of it's violence around the world seems like a marijuana infused pipe dream these days. The legacy of all of the US military bases around the world attests to that. In fact, they refuse to pack up and go home even when the involuntary host populations rises up to demand it, like in Okinawa and Cuba. One could end this or that if one were in command of one's faculties, but the history of the US represents one long and dangerous psychotic episode on a national scale. The characters it puts up as leadership candidates suggests that collectively, this is truly a state that more resembles a mental patient that has never been committed for treatment, and where the extended human family is having to deal with the consequences. It's the rest of us who should be in group therapy.
Tue, 2015-11-03 13:59
#349
ikosmos
America: The Punishment Society. “Violence is the Defining Hallmark of the US”
Once upon a time, a dental or medical exam was an opportunity to read a book. No more. The TV blares. It was talking heads discussing whether a football player had been sufficiently punished. The offense was unclear. The question was whether the lashes were sufficient.It brought to mind that punishment has become a primary feature of American, indeed Western, society. A baker in Colorado was punished because he would not bake a wedding cake for a homosexual marriage. A county or state clerk was punished because she would not issue a marriage license for a homosexual marriage. University professors are punished because they criticize Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians. Whistleblowers are punished—despite their protection under federal law—for revealing crimes of the US government. And children are punished for being children.
But not by their parents. Police can slam children around and seriously injure them. But parents must not lay a hand on a child. If a child gets spanked, as everyone in my generation was, in comes the Child Protective Services Gestapo. The child is seized, put into “protective custody,” and the parents are arrested. The CPS Gestapo receives a federal bonus for every child that they seize, and they want the money....
"17,000 American public schools have a police presence. All common sense has long departed.
Five and six year-olds who get into a shoving match are arrested and carried off in handcuffs. Police issue tickets and fines to students for what was ordinary behavior in my school days. Suspensions result as do police records that hamper a child’s prospect of success.
The violence that Ben Fields used against Shakara is routine. Mother Jones reports that a Louisville goon thug, Jonathan Hardin punched a 13-year old in the face for cutting into the cafeteria line and of holding another 13-year old in a chokehold until the student became unconscious. A dispute over cell phone use resulted in a Houston student being hit 18 times with a police weapon.
The police violence extends beyond the schools. Any American unfortunate enough to have a police encounter risks being tasered, beaten, arrested, and even murdered.
Protesters, war and otherwise, are beaten, tear gassed, arrested. The American police state is working hard to criminalize all criticism of itself. Violence has become the defining hallmark of the United States. It is even the basis of US foreign policy. In the 21st century millions of peoples have been killed and displaced by American violence against the world."
Awash in blood, violence and death.
Every day in the USA is Hallow'een. But it's no trick or treat. It's just a bloody axe through the head.
Wed, 2015-11-04 19:59
#350
The Pentagon's Law of War Manual: Part 2
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/11/04/laws-n04.html
"A recipe for total war and military dictatorship. This is the second of four articles analyzing the new US Department of Defense Law of War Manual. The first article was posted Nov 3."
Wed, 2015-11-11 21:46
#351
ikosmos
Julian Assange notes the US Empire's fatwa against Wikileaks (academic journals in foreign policy but not other subjects censor references to Wikileaks, prohibit scholars from making reference to the shocking revelations, etc. ) and outlines, rather calmly and without rancour, the really horrendous and monstrous attributes of the US Empire and its foreign policy ... of death in a wide ranging interview on Going Underground.
US media, mind you, have nothing to say. As usual.
Julian Assange on the US Empire, their long term plans to overthrow the Assad gov in Syria, etc.
One thing that Assange does quite brilliantly is to outline how, in pincer formation (his words), the barbarous US regime brings together military, economic, international institutional, diplomatic, trans-national corporate and other influences to crush and destroy targetted nations. He gives Afghanistan and Nicaragua as examples. This alone makes the interview worth listening to (in the 2nd part).
Julian Assange: "When the US decides to do something, it brings together the various arms of American power ... military .... intelligence ... financial ... commercial ...informational ...diplomatic ... to push on a country to get the country to do what the US wants a country to do. ... What I find interesting about the convergence of these (arms) powers ... you have different theories of government, etc. ... (claims of) various rivals (in government and out of government proper, etc. ) ... are pushed together, in pincer formation, on a country to achieve a result. "
(note this is from last September)