According to the Washington Post, 5,807 U.S. service members have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq as of November 28, 2010.
According to the tally kept at the link in the title of this post, as of August 10, 2010, at least:
10,816 people involved on the U.S. side in the war in Afghanistan (soldiers, contractors, journalists) have been killed, and 33,925 have been seriously injured.
8,813 Afghan civilians have been killed and 15,863 seriously injured.
31,393 people involved on the U.S. side in the war in Iraq (soldiers, contractors, journalists) have been killed and 134,747 seriously injured.
864,531 Iraqi civilians have been killed and 1,556,156 seriously injured.
Julian Assange and Wikileaks have a lot to answer for!
December 4, 2010
Freedom vs. secrecy
"In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble."
— Ron Paul
December 3, 2010
Fiscalized speech
Julian Assange writes in The Guardian (click the title of this post for more):
The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.
The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.
December 1, 2010
Wikileaks as projective test
Dallas Darling writes at World News (click the title of this post to read the entire piece):
A story is told of a psychologist who was administering a projective test. (A projective test presents subjects with ambiguous stimuli and then interprets the meaning of such stimuli. The assumption is that the subject's inner needs, feelings, desires, and perception of the world will be "projected" onto the stimuli.) The man being tested saw every one of the inkblots as either someone engaged in exploiting others, or people committing violent and aggressive acts. After the last inkblot (stimulus) was administered, the psychologist declared, "I've never in my entire career seen anyone so obsessed with exploitation and violence as you seem to be." The man responded indignantly and self-righteously, "What do you mean, I'm obsessed with exploitation and violence? You're the one with all the exploitative and violent pictures!" ...
WikiLeaks' revelations exposes an empire that projects its own concealed and unconscious aggression, violent anxieties, paranoid fears, and anger onto other nations. Unable to cope with its own violent past and its manipulative and hurtful political and economic realities, this empire utilizes projection as a defense mechanism. Unconsciously ashamed and embarrassed, it falsely sees its own depraved traits in other nations. ...
A story is told of a psychologist who was administering a projective test. (A projective test presents subjects with ambiguous stimuli and then interprets the meaning of such stimuli. The assumption is that the subject's inner needs, feelings, desires, and perception of the world will be "projected" onto the stimuli.) The man being tested saw every one of the inkblots as either someone engaged in exploiting others, or people committing violent and aggressive acts. After the last inkblot (stimulus) was administered, the psychologist declared, "I've never in my entire career seen anyone so obsessed with exploitation and violence as you seem to be." The man responded indignantly and self-righteously, "What do you mean, I'm obsessed with exploitation and violence? You're the one with all the exploitative and violent pictures!" ...
WikiLeaks' revelations exposes an empire that projects its own concealed and unconscious aggression, violent anxieties, paranoid fears, and anger onto other nations. Unable to cope with its own violent past and its manipulative and hurtful political and economic realities, this empire utilizes projection as a defense mechanism. Unconsciously ashamed and embarrassed, it falsely sees its own depraved traits in other nations. ...
November 30, 2010
Fabricating Terror
Paul Craig Roberts writes in Counterpunch (click the title of this post to read the entire piece):
The [Associated Press] story [about the fake car-bomb plot in Portland, Oregon] arrives at its Kafka-esque highpoint when President Obama thanks the FBI for its diligence in saving us from the fake plot the FBI had fabricated. ...
The FBI did a year’s work in order to convince two people to participate in fake plots. ... When the US government has to go to such lengths to create “terrorists” out of hapless people, an undeclared agenda is being served. What could this agenda be?
The answer is many agendas. One agenda is to justify wars of aggression that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard created by the US government itself. One way to avoid war crimes charges is to create acts of terrorism that justify the naked aggressions against “terrorist countries.”
Another agenda is to create a police state. A police state can control people who object to their impoverishment for the benefit of the superrich much more easily than can a democracy endowed with constitutional civil liberties.
Another agenda is to get rich. Terror plots, whether real or orchestrated, have created a market for security. Dual Israeli citizen Michael Chertoff, former head of US Homeland Security, is the lobbyist who represents Rapiscan, the company that manufactures the full body porno-scanners that, following the “underwear bomber” event, are now filling up US airports. Homeland Security has announced that they are going to purchase the porno-scanners for trains, buses, subways, court houses, and sports events. How can shopping malls and roads escape? ...
What is it really all about? Could it be that the US government needs terrorist events in order to completely destroy the US Constitution? On November 24, National Public Radio broadcast a report by Dina Temple-Raston: “Administration officials are looking at the possibility of codifying detention without trial and are awaiting legislation that is supposed to come out of Congress early next year.” Of course, the legislation will not come out of Congress. It will be written by Homeland Security and the Justice [sic] Department. The impotent Congress will merely rubber-stamp it.
The obliteration of habeas corpus, the most necessary and important protection of liberty ever institutionalized in law and governing constitution, has become necessary for the US government, because a jury might acquit an alleged or mock “terrorist” or framed person whom the US government has declared prior to the trial will be held forever in indefinite detention even if acquitted in a US court of law. The attorney general of the United States has declared that any “terrorist” that he puts on trial who is acquitted by a jury will remain in detention regardless of the verdict. Such an event would reveal the total lawlessness of American “justice.”
The [Associated Press] story [about the fake car-bomb plot in Portland, Oregon] arrives at its Kafka-esque highpoint when President Obama thanks the FBI for its diligence in saving us from the fake plot the FBI had fabricated. ...
The FBI did a year’s work in order to convince two people to participate in fake plots. ... When the US government has to go to such lengths to create “terrorists” out of hapless people, an undeclared agenda is being served. What could this agenda be?
The answer is many agendas. One agenda is to justify wars of aggression that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard created by the US government itself. One way to avoid war crimes charges is to create acts of terrorism that justify the naked aggressions against “terrorist countries.”
Another agenda is to create a police state. A police state can control people who object to their impoverishment for the benefit of the superrich much more easily than can a democracy endowed with constitutional civil liberties.
Another agenda is to get rich. Terror plots, whether real or orchestrated, have created a market for security. Dual Israeli citizen Michael Chertoff, former head of US Homeland Security, is the lobbyist who represents Rapiscan, the company that manufactures the full body porno-scanners that, following the “underwear bomber” event, are now filling up US airports. Homeland Security has announced that they are going to purchase the porno-scanners for trains, buses, subways, court houses, and sports events. How can shopping malls and roads escape? ...
What is it really all about? Could it be that the US government needs terrorist events in order to completely destroy the US Constitution? On November 24, National Public Radio broadcast a report by Dina Temple-Raston: “Administration officials are looking at the possibility of codifying detention without trial and are awaiting legislation that is supposed to come out of Congress early next year.” Of course, the legislation will not come out of Congress. It will be written by Homeland Security and the Justice [sic] Department. The impotent Congress will merely rubber-stamp it.
The obliteration of habeas corpus, the most necessary and important protection of liberty ever institutionalized in law and governing constitution, has become necessary for the US government, because a jury might acquit an alleged or mock “terrorist” or framed person whom the US government has declared prior to the trial will be held forever in indefinite detention even if acquitted in a US court of law. The attorney general of the United States has declared that any “terrorist” that he puts on trial who is acquitted by a jury will remain in detention regardless of the verdict. Such an event would reveal the total lawlessness of American “justice.”
November 29, 2010
News Quiz
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November 13, 2010
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