A former soldier has just confirmed that Berta Cáceres, the environmental activist, who was murdered earlier this year, appeared on a hitlist that was distributed to the US-trained special forces units of the Honduran military months before her death.“If I went home, they’d kill me. Ten of my former colleagues are missing. I’m 100% certain that Berta Cáceres was killed by the army.”
Death, death, death!
OpenTheBooks Oversight Report - The Militarization Of America
Here's a summary of some key findings.
KEY FINDINGS (FY2006-FY2014) – THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICA
"We quantified $1.4 billion in non-military federal agencies purchase of guns, ammunition and military-style equipment during the last nine years. We estimate that federal non-military agencies now employ more officers with arrest and firearm authorization than there are U.S. Marines. There are 182,000 U.S. Marines and over 200,000 plus officers employed within the rank-and-file federal agencies."
Darn guvn'ment! I told you they was out to get us!
California is openly balancing the state budget on the backs of prison slave labor.Given that low income minorities comprise the great majority of California’s prison population – for circumstances largely beyond their control – this policy clearly violates the UN Convention on Human Rights (which forbids slavery and involuntary servitude).
Involuntary Servitude: Prisoners Fight California Wildfires
USA! USA! We're Number One!
Minnesota Police Kill Black Man Pulled Over for Broken Tail Light (Video)
One day after cops killed Alton Sterling, a black man in Baton Rouge, La., video appeared online appearing to show the aftermath of a fatal police shooting of Philando Castile, 32 and black, at a traffic stop in Minnesota.
The highly distressing footage appears ...
Driving while black. It's a criminal offence, punishable by death, in the good old USA!
Dallas was reeling a day after at least four gunmen opened fire last night, killing five police officers and injuring nine other people.
Dallas police officers gunned down
Violence on top of violence on top of violence. Is the USA a failed state?
...Violence on top of violence on top of violence. Is the USA a failed state?
The US is a rogue state.
The response of the Dallas police ... was to use a robot to kill one of the suspects. This is erasing the line between policing and warfare.
Bomb Robot’ Takes Down Dallas Gunman, but Raises Enforcement Questions
The Dallas police ended a standoff with the gunman suspected of killing five officers with a tactic that by all accounts appears to be unprecedented: It blew him up using a robot....
“The further we remove the officer from the use of force and the consequences that come with it, the easier it becomes to use that tactic,” said Rick Nelson, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former counterterrorism official on the National Security Council. “It’s what we have done with drones in warfare.”
“In warfare, your object is to kill,” he added. “Law enforcement has a different mission.”
USA! USA! We're number one!
Neoliberalism, like all utopian ideologies, requires the banishment of empathy. The inability to feel empathy is the portal to an evil often carried out in the name of progress. A world without empathy rejects as an absurdity the call to love your neighbor as yourself. It elevates the cult of the self. It divides the world into winners and losers. It celebrates power and wealth. Those who are discarded by the corporate state, especially poor people of color, are viewed as life unworthy of life. They are denied the dignity of work and financial autonomy. They are denied an education and proper medical care, meaning many die from preventable illnesses. They are criminalized. They are trapped from birth to death in squalid police states. And they are blamed for their own misery.
Capitalism is death. It must be destroyed before it destroys the citizenry.
Aw shucks! Violence is as "American" as apple pie!
The Baffler: Reflections on Violence in the United States (1970)
UAE, Bahamas and New Zealand issue Warnings for people travelling to the USA.
"Young males should exercise extreme caution interacting with the police."
"Do not be confrontational - cooperate."
"Do not get involved in demonstrations under any circumstances."
"Avoid crowded places if possible."
Even tiny Bahrain, which jails citizens for unapproved Tweets, has issued a caution about travelling to the US ...
Reading about the South China Sea conflict between the US regime and China, some fascinating information about the US role in the Pacific region emerged.
Firstly, without a single Filipino on the Filipino legal team, the US regime, as usual, likes to lecture others on obeying international law. Not that the US accepts such law. For example, while insisting on China respecting the UNCLOS (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) the US regime signed, but never ratified this Convention. Obeying the Convention is for others.
And plenty of global citizens know all about US "respect" for international law. Only Americans and useful idiots elsewhere are fooled by "international law" arguments made by the barbarous US regimes. Those civilians who have been butchered and slaughtered by US drone strikes - Afghan wedding parties and blushing brides blown to fucking smithereens by the "freedom-loving" USA, for example - know very well the contempt with which the USA treats international law.
But other aspects come to light. The 1,000 US military bases that encircle the world also encircle China. And they've done so for decades and decades. While the NY Times provides military supplied interactive maps of tiny islands in the South China Sea, and what the "dastardly" Chinese have been doing, one has to go outside MSM in the US to find a map of these 1,000 or more US military bases encircling the Globe. But China has always been the enemy. China was the first country whose citizens were prohibited from entry to the USA in the late 19th century. But let's not dwell on the distant past? How about the present? Let's not mention that tiny Laos - 40 years after the US "left" that country - as a result of barbarous carpet bombing and the like - has rendered 1/3 of that country unihabitable and unfarmable. Sidewalks in that country are colour-coded so that citizens don't leave the trail ... and get a leg blown off. In this case, it is unexploded ordinance ... The astonishing history, of unrelenting venom, passes over the blissful ignorance of Americans about the role of their own country undisturbed ...
[an imaginary conversation at a State Department briefing ...]
Canadian reporter: "The U.S. has repeatedly sent warships and reconnaissance planes through the region to emphasize its commitment to freedom of navigation there."
"Thank you for that. Our good friends in Canada can always be relied upon." Turning back towards the podium, he continued. "The United States strongly supports the rule of law,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. "“The United States expresses its hope and expectation that both parties will comply with their obligations.”
"Is that so?" says a voice. "Does the US government expect China to "comply with their obligations" when they themselves neither acknowledge the authority of the Convention on the Law of the Sea nor have bothered to ratify it? Why should China obey "laws" that your government thumbs its nose at?"
"Ah, yes, the RT reporter," Kirby remarked. Quietly, the State Department spokesperson reached for his sidearm. "When I hear a question from an unfriendly reporter," he said, "I always release the safety on my Walther PPK."
State Department staffer: (Whispering quietly) "You idiot. That's not your sidearm. It's your cell phone. See if you can do something helpful for a change. Try tweeting CHexit and maybe the useful idiots will think it's cool or something. Now wrap things up, you moron!"
Kirby: "ahem. That will be all for today. Thank you for coming."
....................................................................................................................................
The orgy of police violence, the impunity with which the police kill unarmed African-Americans in particular, is now being matched by a gruesome death toll of police officers shot and killed by violence-crazed, outraged, Americans... perhaps vets suffering from untreated PTSD after service overseas in one of the many imperial "adventures" of the Empire.
Five police officers in Dallas, three in Baton Rouge, on and on . Awash in death.
The US President addresses the issue and his remarks seem like helpless arm-waving.
Like a big, stupid bully, the US cannot help itself. The Empire is eating itself after having devoured great swaths of humanity.
Company of US-backed Somoza Dictatorship Sucked Nicaraguan Blood – Literally...
While Nicaragua suffered scores of human rights abuses under the decades-long Somoza dictatorship in the leadup to the Sandinista Revolution in 1979, the Somoza family was also simultaneously involved in a little-known but shocking business venture exploiting poor Nicaraguan people: literally sucking their blood to sell for hefty profits in the United States.
According to an article at The Intercept, the FBI has been protecting the homeland again. This time, they've charged a mentally challenged 18 year old man with terrorism after a years long sting operation. Excerpt:
But due to the level of Khan’s psychological impairment, it is questionable whether he was actually capable of acting on any of these statements. His documented history of mental illness and young age (he was legally a minor when the investigation against him started) suggest he may have been more well suited to psychiatric treatment than an elaborate sting operation. The national headlines trumpeting the case as a thwarted instance of homegrown terrorism seem to diverge from the reality of Khan’s reduced mental circumstances.“Mahin is 18 but mentally he is like a child,” his father, Atif Khan, said. “He doesn’t even have a drivers license because he can’t pass his test, he can’t even tie his shoes or take care of himself in the most basic ways. We didn’t let him have a phone because we didn’t trust him with one, but now we have found out that he had been using a phone given to him by the FBI.”
Court documents indicate the formal investigation began as early as February. On June 18, Khan turned 18 and was arrested shortly afterwards. “They waited until two weeks after his 18th birthday to arrest him, but even now he doesn’t understand the gravity of the things going on around him,” his father said.
Had authorities arrested him beforehand, Khan would have potentially faced less punitive legal consequences as a minor. Shortly after he was taken into custody, Khan was assaulted by other inmates in the local jail. He has since been placed in segregated confinement.
...
“The FBI knew all along that he was not a real threat on his own,” Khan’s father said, adding that the government had allowed him to board a flight to Minnesota to see family members during the same period he had been conversing with their informant.
“They were meeting with us and saying they were there to help him, but meanwhile they were trying to trap him at the same time,” Khan’s father said.
The abuse of power in this case is so stunning, I can scarcely believe it, even of the fucking FBI.
