On June 5, Glenn Greenwald published an article detailing the NSA's unprecedented surveillance on millions of Verizon phones. This exact same thing happened during the Bush presidency, except it was AT&T, so you can bet other phone companies are doing it too. What this means is all data, for almost every cell phone in the country, is being collected and stored by the United States government. They have your phone number, everyone you call, the duration of your calls, and your location. The only thing not being collected, as far as we know, is the actual conversation taking place. No one is apparently being wiretapped.
The way the media reacted in the days following these revelations was the one of the most baffling things I've ever witnessed. People were shocked. I was fucking ecstatic, because people were finally talking about these things, and they were outraged. The floodgates had been opened. I remember the top story of Huffington Post, a liberal website, was a picture of Obama's and Bush's faces mashed together with the headline, "George W. Obama". The media, and the American people, were against the government for once.
And then all the outrage disappeared without explanation. Republicans started going on TV calling Snowden a "traitor" and a "Chinese spy." I thought they were going to get laughed at. Then Democrats piled on. Then almost overnight, the media shifted gears and stopped being so angry. They went back into "objectivity" mode, which means they unquestionably repeat whatever the White House press releases tell them.
Then the conversation shifted away from the largest and most pervasive surveillance apparatus in the history of the world, and became about the personal life of Edward Snowden. "Journalists" started focusing on how he "abandoned" his girlfriend, who they proceeded slut-shame by constantly pointing out that she was a dancer. Liberals found it necessary to mention that he was a Ron Paul supporter. News outlets have been mocking things he said when he was 17. They made it into a personality show, and they're talking about everything except what the government is doing.
This Mediaite article basically sums up what liberals have all been saying over the last week or two:
"...we’ve learned [Snowden] fled to a nation with far more restrictive rights;
coldly ditched his girlfriend; suffers from what even his supporters
have diagnosed as a case of grandiose delusions; and revealed
information on foreign espionage efforts, which falls well outside the
parameters of his initial objection to the surveillance programs.
(Breaking: countries spy on each other!)"
In a completely laughable display of propaganda, a white person dismissed this as a "white people problem," attempting to shame people into stop talking about it because of privilege? Or something?
"Just as those Stop and Frisk stats have everything to do with the
cultural biases of the power structure, so does the mainstream media’s
disproportionate interest in the NSA scandal over other, far more
alarming injustices... Abuses like Stop and Frisk have been occurring for centuries, and have a
lot more in common with J. Edgar Hoover than Barack Obama does. While
we’re busy having the conversation about what the government might do
with Prism, maybe we could make some room for what it’s already doing to
millions of innocent citizens."
Nevermind the surveillance and stalking of New York's Muslim community by the NYPD. I mean, I'm usually more than willing to stop and question myself if someone taps me on the shoulder and calls out my privilege. But this is nothing more than an attempt by a coward to shut down the conversation. Black Agenda Report has been all over this. Here's Margaret Kimberley. And Gary Younge. And Glen Ford. Bruce Dixon even drew comparisons to other fugitives like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown. Believe it or not, people who are not white have also been furious about the government storing nearly every social interaction in their lives in a database. It's fucking absurd that anyone could think to write something like this.
A common argument I'm seeing is that Snowden shouldn't be considered a "whistleblower," and these revelations aren't important. Because they're "nothing new" and "everyone" already knew about them. If that's true, then how did he commit "treason" if everything he revealed was already in the public record? Why does he need to be in prison? You can't have both.
The most embarrassing argument I've seen is that these revelations have somehow damaged national security. As Greenwald has been pointing out over and over again in almost every interview I've seen with him, terrorists already knew the U.S government was spying on them. None of this is new to al-Qaeda. The Taliban doesn't use fucking Gmail. You know how al-Qaeda sends messages? They don't even have phones. They use runners who carry hand-written messages. They've been doing this for as long as we've been hunting them. These surveillance programs aren't meant to target terrorists. They target us, the government's real enemy.
Gregory: To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his
current movements, why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a
crime?
Greenwald: I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call
themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other
journalists should be charged with felonies. The assumption in your
question, David, is completely without evidence — the idea that I’ve
aided and abetted him in any way. The scandal that arose in Washington before our stories began was
about the fact that the Obama administration is trying to criminalize
investigative journalism by going through the emails and records of AP
reporters, accusing a Fox News journalist of the theory that you just
embraced, being co-conspirator in felonies for working with sources. If
you want to embrace that theory, it means that every investigative
journalist in the United States who works with their sources, who
receives classified information, is a criminal. And it’s precisely those theories and precisely that climate that has
become so menacing in the United States. It’s why the New Yorker’s Jane
Mayer said investigative reporting has come to a standstill — her word —
as a result of the theories that you just referenced.
Gregory's defenders have been saying that they're "only questions," and Greenwald's outrage was uncalled for. But the way the question was phrased is important -- "why aren't you a criminal?" First of all, Gregory did outright accuse Greenwald of aiding and abetting. Read it over again. Right out of the gate, it immediately puts Greenwald on the defensive. He has to defend himself against the accusation of "aiding and abetting" a "traitor." It wasn't anything like, "What do you have to say about those who accuse you of committing a crime?" It was, "Convince me you're not a traitor."
There seems to be this widespread media campaign to discredit Greenwald and rebrand him as an "activist" or a "blogger" -- something that's not a journalist. The Washington Post wrote,"Glenn Greenwald isn’t your typical journalist. Actually, he’s not your
typical anything. A lawyer, columnist, reporter and constitutional
liberties advocate, Greenwald blurs a number of lines in an age in which
anyone can report the news." Even Gregory, immediately after Greenwald's answer, replied with, "Well, the question of who's a journalist may be up to a debate, with regard to what you are doing."
Journalists are protected if they reveal government crimes. But "activists" aren't. These hacks are trying to make up rules about journalism and say that in order to be a journalist, you can't have opinions. The problem is that objectivity in journalism doesn't exist. If you only report what the government says, without any sort of critical eye, then you're simply a mouthpiece for the government. You're already biased by default. Even not reporting certain information is still spin. Objective journalism is impossible. What Greenwald is doing is reporting things without asking for permission -- what journalism is supposed to be about.
Redefining "journalism" is exactly how the government can go after Wikileaks with impunity. There is literally zero difference between what Wikileaks is doing and what Glenn Greenwald just did. Wikileaks is considered an "enemy of the state," which is the same classification reserved for al-Qaeda. The reason this can happen is because the people behind Wikileaks are considered "activists," not journalists. Nixon tried to criminalize the New York Times when they published the Pentagon Papers, so don't be surprised if this campaign to take down Greenwald is ramped up in the coming months.
A lot of liberals have also been saying that nothing revealed actually violates the law. First of all, it did violate the law when Bush did it. The only difference now is that the FISA court is so corrupt and stacked that it simply rubber stamps everything without question. Jim Crow was "legal." Japanese internment camps were "legal." Everything the Nazis did was "legal." The kidnapping and enslavement of millions of human beings was "legal." Saying something is okay because criminals have entered power and "legalized" it isn't valid.
And besides, it isn't legal. The Fourth Amendment says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated..." These programs violate the Constitution of the United States. Full stop.
As World Socialist Web Site brilliantly reminded us, these are "the same types of arguments that were used in the 1930s to defend the fascist dictatorships of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler." Obama partisans have clearly positioned themselves as authoritarian enemies of democracy, just as Bush partisans did a decade ago. And they should be treated as such -- with open hatred, and without respect. Fuck these traitors.
On Monday, two bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. 3 people are dead, and 183 are injured. People often overlook the injured figure like it isn't important, but that number matters too. That 8-year-old boy who was killed? His sister lost a leg and his mother underwent brain surgery. People lost limbs. There's going to be post-traumatic stress. The survivors are going to have to deal with this for the rest of their lives. The three victims who lost their lives are: Lu Lingzi, a brilliant 23-year-old mathematician from China going to Boston University; Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old general manager of the Summer Shack restaurant in Hingham, Mass., who had been standing at the finish line cheering on her boyfriend; and Martin Richard, an 8-year-old boy, a Red Sox fan and young athlete himself, who loved playing baseball, soccer, and hockey. May they all rest in peace.
Patton Oswalt brilliantly reminded us: "You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out... We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago."
We can see this in action with Carlos Arredondo. Better known as "that guy in the hat," Carlos's selfless display of heroism on Monday has turned him into a media sensation. There's a famous photo of him circulating around, but the bottom half is usually cropped out. I kept it small because it's really fucking gruesome, but click on it if you want to see what was happening. I've seen conflicting reports of that thing in Carlos's hand being either a tourniquet or that guy's artery. I'm still not sure.
(If anyone's curious, that guy in the wheelchair is going to be fine. Carlos kept talking to him to make sure he stayed awake, and he was rational and coherent and brave the whole time. He's 27, only a couple years older than me.)
Arredondo's story is incredible. His son was killed by a sniper in Iraq in 2004. When the marines came to his door to bring him the news, he understandably flipped his shit.
"I just screamed," he said. "I said ‘No, no! It can't be my son.'"
Mr. Arredondo said he "lost it." He ran to his garage and grabbed a gallon of gasoline and a propane torch.
He took a sledgehammer and smashed the government van's windshield and hopped inside. As the officers tried to calm him, Mr. Arredondo doused himself and the van with gasoline and lit the torch.
There was an explosion, and the officers dragged Mr. Arredondo to safety. He suffered second- and third-degree burns over 20 percent of his body.
"I went to my son's funeral on a stretcher," he said.
In 2011, his other son killed himself because he still couldn't quite deal with his brother's death. Carlos has been traveling around the country as passionate anti-war activist since his son's death. He's a certified first responder, so when he ran towards the bomb blasts, he knew what he was doing. Everyone should check out his interview on Democracy Now from yesterday morning.
I don't know what I would've done, had I been there. In all likelihood, my knees probably would've stopped supporting me as I shat my pants. But looking at those photos of Carlos, and watching his interview and learning his story, it's hard not to sit there and not feel inspired and humbled. I want to be him. In the last couple days, I've seriously contemplated getting some serious first aid training, or maybe eventually getting certified as a first responder. At the very least, I'd like to get more involved in activism like him. I really hope I get motivated enough to these things someday, and I hope Carlos's actions inspire others in similar ways as well.
In the wake of the attack in Boston, Americans have shown that 9/11 has affected them in permanent and terrifying ways. The racism we're seeing is hardly a surprise. America has a long history of slavery, genocide, and executive orders demanding internment camps based on one's race -- all of which had widespread support in their time -- so racism is naturally going to be embedded into our culture. In a racist culture like ours, racism is like a cancer -- you don't always know it's inside you. So it's a very bad thing when an event like this happens, because the fear pushes all that shit out into the open.
Case in point: racism reared its head, not just before the smoke cleared, but even as the bombs were going off. Within moments of the bombing, a bystander tackled an injured student from Saudi Arabia who was caught in the blast. He had been running away, like everyone. I won't post his name here, because he didn't do anything. The FBI, desperate and with no leads, decided to racially profile and harass him in his hospital bed. He was the so-called "Saudi national," the "suspect" the media had been raving about after the attack occurred. The FBI visited his apartment and harassed his roommate, also a student.
"He was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his wounds, had his apartment searched in “a startling show of force,” as his fellow-tenants described it to the Boston Herald, with a “phalanx” of officers and agents and two K9 units. He was the one whose belongings were carried out in paper bags as his neighbors watched; whose roommate, also a student, was questioned for five hours (“I was scared”) before coming out to say that he didn’t think his friend was someone who’d plant a bomb—that he was a nice guy who liked sports. “Let me go to school, dude,” the roommate said later in the day, covering his face with his hands and almost crying, as a Fox News producer followed him and asked him, again and again, if he was sure he hadn’t been living with a killer."
I mean, just think about this. Carlos Arredondo is from Puerto Rico. He was an illegal immigrant until 2004, and only made a citizen after his son was killed in Iraq. What if someone decided to tackle Carlos? What if he had been detained by the FBI, and all the people whose lives he saved left there to die? This is a god damn outrage.
Just as predictably as racists used this as an excuse to vent their hatred of people of color, partisan Democrat types went and pushed equally baseless conspiracy theories of their own.
Hey, you know what else falls on April 15? The fucking Boston marathon.
I've seen both gun rights advocates and gun control advocates somehow try to morph this thing to support their own agenda. It's either, "See, mass killings happen whether there are guns or not, banning guns wouldn't do anything!" or "See, nothing would've changed even if more people had been armed to stop the guy!" It's really weird, but more than anything, pretty fucking gross.
In one of the most hilarious displays of dumbfuckery in recent memory, a "reporter" from Alex Jones' Infowars managed to kick off a press conference from the governor on the day of the attack. With a question about - get this - "false flags." There's a video here if you wanna check it out. It was with that usual "I'm-important-get-out-of-my-way" air that straight white men always strut around with, which makes it doubly funny. It's hard to make out anything he's saying, so it's like, "blah blah blah FALSE FLAG blah blah FALSE FLAG blah blah blooop FALSE FLAG?" The governor just responds with a quick "No." and moves on to the next question. This part isn't in the video, but as the governor was leaving the room after the conference ended, the guy went on and shouted, "False flag, gentlemen!" for the whole room to hear. It was one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. FALSE FLAG, GENTLEMEN!
It's probably wrong to condemn an entire nation, just because a few fucktards don't know how to react to this. In fact, in my own experience, every person I know has been treating this cautiously and with sanity. I don't know if that's because I live in a little bubble of cool people and I don't see what the country's really like, but that's just what I've seen personally. Almost everyone I know is calling out and shaming racists. And it's incredible. I'm seriously so proud of everyone in my life right now.
At the time of this writing, there's almost no information about the the identity of the bomber(s) or their motives. The trail almost looks cold. Earlier today, CNN broke that a suspect had been "arrested." It was a "dark skinned male." Turns out, that turned out to be complete bullshit, racism and all. The FBI quickly denied it, but for an hour, literally every news site I went to had "SUSPECT ARRESTED" plastered all over their front pages. CNN cited a single anonymous source, and nobody bothered to double check anything. It's pretty hilarious watching all the news outlets now trying to condemn CNN for irresponsible reporting, and not a single one of them bothers to mention their own complacency in the whole mess.
At this time, I'm pretty sure there is a suspect right now. Maybe two. There's a lot of conflicting stuff. There was supposed to be a press conference tonight, but then it was postponed, and finally cancelled outright. So nobody knows what the fuck is going on. I just hope the guy/people are caught soon, tried (with evidence!), and quickly executed so we can move on with our lives. But most of all, I just hope it's a white guy so this racism won't get even worse.
On January 9, CNN ran this on their web site in an article about Alex Jones and conspiracy theories: "Bankers pull the strings on world governments to solidify their power. Companies are harming you and ducking responsibility. Antidepressants are "suicide mass murder pills." President Barack Obama is using drones against Americans. And the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, was engineered by the government."
One month later, a white paper was leaked to NBC that briefly described the White House's legal arguments for assassinating American citizens with drones. Civil libertarians have been screaming their heads off about this for two full years, but it's only when this memo leaked to a major news corporation that anyone pays attention. One minute, major news corporations outright denied that Obama's disposition matrix existed, and lambasted anyone who mentioned it as "conspiracy theorists." Then once it's shoved in their faces, mainstream partisans -- on the left -- pound their chests in a pathetic attempt defend it. Given that this is how most Americans get their news, it's not terribly surprising that we're all so fucking stupid.
George Orwell faced censorship in England when he tried to get Animal Farm published. It was a novel critical of the Soviet Union, which was a British ally at the time. He wrote this for the preface of the novel. When he finally did find a publisher, only as the war was winding down, the preface was censored and left out of the book.
"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
Any kind of viewpoint that contradicts the dominant narrative is now labeled as "conspiracy theory," so that it can be more easily shut out and dismissed without any kind of serious discussion. One of my favorite subreddits, /r/endlesswar, made it to /r/bestof earlier. EndlessWar is an anti-war subreddit, but war has been so ingrained into our society over the last decade that simply being "anti-war" will get you labeled you as conspiratorial. Here's the post from EndlessWar that made it into BestOf:
---
"a few people with no means to actually hurt America"
911 only happened due to incredible incompetence by the Federal government. The plan for 911, including hijacking with box cutters was found on Ramzi Yousef's computer in the Philippines in 1995 by the CIA. They gave that information to the FBI who never considered that it might be a good idea to tell the FAA to review their airline crew training, or perhaps think about putting a real door in cockpits. The government had the plan for six effing years and did NOTHING to protect Americans.
"There is no enemy"
The people in Yemen and Pakistan, in Mali and Libya have no way to hurt America. If they attack a US embassy, that is a crime, not an act of war because they do not act on the behalf of a state. There are criminals that should be dealt with through international police work and through the police services in the countries that they live in. They should not be used as an excuse for the American military domination of the world.
"There is no war"
There is no war, there is an American military presence in various countries that is killing people, and not surprisingly suffering some casualties in return. But it is not a war. The Taliban for instance doesn't field any weapon more sophisticated than an RPG against the military might of the most expensive army in the history of the world. If you call that a war, then please concede that the US military is clearly the most pathetic organization to ever put on a uniform. They have lost every single operation that they have been involved in since WWII with the exception of Grenada. You should be ashamed to think that the US is losing wars against illiterate, poorly armed, and outnumbered tribesmen.
But the reality is that it is not war. It is police work done with an army. That is why it doesn't work. Police work needs to be done with police methods and personnel. That is hard for Americans to understand in today's world because the American police have also become militarized.
"There is no international terror network"
Al Qaeda has ceased to exist as an international organization. There are numerous new salafist organizations that want to hurt the US, punish US stooges and attack Israel for the simple reason that the US has been killing thousands of Muslims a year for many years and because Israel has stolen the Palestinians land and their future.
But there is no international organization. Aiman al Zawahiri is not controlling these different groups from some bomb shelter in the mountains of Yemen.
"Imperial expansion and unending wars"
Please tell me that the US is not engaged in unending wars. Please try to explain how "international military area access" does not constitute Empire.
"911 was planned in Germany and the USA"
Do you dispute this? Are you that ignorant of how 911 came together? This is not truther stuff. The principle architects of 911 met and planned the attack in an apartment in Hamburg Germany, then they sent the hijackers to the US, where they trained for the Attack.
Wow. Just wow. I have no words that could possible address this sort of antipathetic reality you choose to live in. "that the citizens' rights trump everything else"
Wow, just wow, you think that the citizens' rights should be trumped by a phony war. You are not a real American, sir. You are a coward.
---
There is nothing controversial about anything said in this post. The only mistake is that the poster didn't cite any sources, which I guess is understandable since this was said in the heat of conversation without knowing it would be posted to /r/bestof. And the sources could all be easily found if one cared to look. I've literally read so many articles about these things over the last few years that they all seem like common knowledge to me at this point -- which is a bad thing, because it's easy to forget that most people simply don't give a fuck about our endless slaughter around the globe, don't bother to read about any of it, and simply remain unaware that this stuff is happening. /r/bestof was livid.
"This subreddit has really gone to shit."
That thread is embarrassing. I'm so flustered by how profoundly wrong it all is I can't even imagine where I'd start if I had the time or motivation to try and undo the knot of bullshit woven by this teenage know-nothing.
Blind, unashamed twaddle at its most concentrated.
This is conspiratard bullshit. Who upvotes this?
Are you fucking kidding me? This isn't the "best of" anything except ignorant angst.
This is the shittiest post I have ever seen in this sub. The people who upvote this should be ashamed.
They're too busy high-fiving themselves for being "informed" and "not sheeple" who have "woken up" and their "eyes are open to the truth" and they cannot be "controlled by the media". Any other ones I missed?
There is nothing in the post that is even remotely conspiratorial. No one used the words "inside job." No one used the word "sheeple." It was a post arguing against war. The BestOf thread was an embarrassing display of endless ad hominem attacks towards positions that didn't actually exist. I saw one or two people halfheartedly try to address what was actually said, but for the most part it was a "lol look at how dumb they are" circlejerk. This collective mass ignorance towards facts, and hatred towards those who preach them, is not uncommon throughout history. Chris Hedges wrote an article the other day about when this happened to a much greater extent in Nazi Germany:
Although history has vindicated resistance groups such as the White Rose and plotters such as von dem Bussche, they were desperately alone, reviled by the wider public and forced to defy the law, their oaths of national allegiance, and public opinion. The resisters, once exposed, were condemned in vitriolic terms by most of the German public, and their lopsided trials were state-choreographed lynchings. Von dem Bussche said that even after the war he was spat upon as he walked down a city street. He and those like him who made a moral choice to physically defy evil teach us something extremely important about rebellion. It is, when it begins, not safe, comfortable or popular. Those rare individuals who have the moral and physical courage to resist must accept that they will be pariahs. They must live outside the law. And they must be prepared to be condemned.
This problem of labeling valid critics as "conspiracy theorists" hits home for me. Numerous times, I've had conversations with people who have literally denied that the government is illegally wiretapping law-abiding citizens, and I was then branded as a "conspiracy theorist" and the conversation ground to a halt. The Patriot Act was once considered controversial and illegal; now many don't know it exists, and get angry and confused if you dare mention it. The FBI's COINTELPRO program illegally monitored, infiltrated, blackmailed, framed, and assassinated law-abiding activists throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This fact is in the public record, and it is not a "conspiracy theory." There were hearings over COINTELPRO once it came out. It was illegal. The FBI was reprimanded. Now? Now post-9/11 laws such as the Patriot Act, the NDAA, and Obama's disposition matrix made all of these things legal. And they're still being used to target activists. The FBI infiltrated Occupy. The NYPD is stalking innocent people for being Muslim. Aaron Swartz was illegally spied on for his activism -- before he committed any crime. These are facts.
In 1975, Sen. Walter Mondale made these comments as he opened up hearings into the COINTELPRO revelations:
Yesterday, this committee heard some of the most disturbing testimony that can be imagined in a free society. We heard evidence that for decades the institutions designed to enforce the laws and Constitution of our country have been engaging in conduct that violates the law and the Constitution. We heard that the FBI, which is part of the Department of Justice, took justice into its own hands by seeking to punish those with unpopular ideas. We learned that the chief law enforcement agency in the federal Government decided that it did not need laws to investigate and suppress the peaceful and constitutional activities of those whom it disapproved.
Then on the floor of the Senate:
We heard testimony that the FBI, to protect the country against those it believed had totalitarian political views, employed the tactics of totalitarian societies against American citizens. We heard that the FBI attempted to destroy one of our greatest leaders in the field of civil rights [referring to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.], and then replace him with someone of the FBI's choosing.
In 1976, the U.S. Congress issued its Final Select Committee report, which stated:
"We have seen segments of our Government adopt tactics unworthy of a democracy and occasionally reminiscent of the tactics of totalitarian regimes. ... [T]he chief investigative branch of the federal government [FBI], which was charged by law with investigating crimes and preventing criminal conduct, itself engaged in lawless tactics and responded to deep-seated social problems by fomenting violence and unrest."
Harry Truman said of the FBI:
"We want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail...Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him."
It's understandable if you were a little put off when I quoted that Chris Hedges article, comparing the current American political climate to a lesser version of Nazi Germany. Maybe you should reconsider your position when the president who defeated Nazi Germany is comparing American law enforcement to Nazi Germany.
The FBI had been wiretapping King for over a year by then, and Bureau chief J. Edgar Hoover made no secret of his loathing for the civil rights leader. The suicide package was prepared by Hoover deputy William Sullivan, an Assistant Director of the Bureau and the head of its Domestic Intelligence Division.
When you teach American history, as I do, you get asked about conspiracies a lot. As it happens, I’m skeptical about some of the biggest conspiracy theories out there — unlike nearly all of my students, for instance, I think it’s highly likely that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
But I’m not one to ridicule such theories, either, and I find the smug dismissal with which they’re so often greeted deeply obnoxious. Because forty-six years ago one of America’s highest ranking law enforcement agents launched a secret campaign intended to blackmail the country’s most prominent civil rights activist into committing suicide.
That’s not a theory, it’s a fact. And once you know that, it gets a lot harder to dismiss other people’s stories of shadowy government goings-on.
Skepticism is the highest form of thought, and it should always be embraced over every idea. But there is a big difference between healthy skepticism and "smug dismissal" -- that kind of attitude accomplishes the exact opposite of what skepticism is supposed to do, and instead closes your mind off to every idea that's contradictory to your own worldview. This widespread smug dismissal is dangerous, because it makes people overlook real conspiracies that have actually happened. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a conspiracy. The American government fed the public a manufactured incident that never happened in order to spark a war in Vietnam. The Business Plot was a conspiracy. Wealthy American corporatists conspired to overthrow FDR and install a fascist dictatorship. The political assassination of activist Fred Hampton was a conspiracy. An FBI informant drugged Hampton at a party, so he would not wake when police broke down his door and murdered him in his bed as he slept next to his pregnant girlfriend -- literally tactics straight from the Gestapo, in every sense. The other day, former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went on TV and said that the White House told him to flatout deny that the drone program even exists. That's also a conspiracy. The big ones like the JFK assassination, the 9/11 truthers, the fake moon landing, etc., are obvious rubbish -- not just because the very idea of these things happening are so laughable, but simply because this government is full of incompetent dumbshits who couldn't even cover up something as easy as Watergate. Hell, they couldn't even cover up all this shit I just mentioned. But political conspiracies have happened, and perhaps there would be more of an outcry to change things if more people knew it.
Consider this for a moment: If you had to decide the one absolute most dangerous power any national leader can claim, what would it be?
I don't know about you, but claiming to have the authority to assassinate any citizen at any place on earth, for any reason, without due process, is pretty high up on my list. Since day one in office, that fascist power is exactly what Barack Obama has claimed to have. Not only has he claimed to have it, but he has acted on it. Numerous times.
Let's talk about Abdulrahman al-Alwaki for a second.
Abdulrahman could've been that dorky kid you sat next to in high school. He was just that for somebody, because he was born and raised in Denver, and was just as much of an American as you or me. In 2011, he was visiting family in Yemen. On October 11, as he and his friends were barbecuing outside, a missile shot from a drone blew his body apart into a bloody mess. I'm being descriptive because "strike" doesn't do justice to what actually happens when a missile hits you. Pieces and bones of Abdulrahman were blown across the sand in a bloody mess. He wasn't "struck."
He was 16.
A number of Abdulrahman's friends -- also innocent teenagers -- were killed as well. But they don't get the spotlight, because they weren't born within our borders and therefore have no basic human rights.
Abdulrahman's father was Anwar al-Awlaki, another American who was assassinated without due process. He was likely an al-Qaeda propagandist, but he did preach nonviolence in the past. He was certainly not a "mastermind" and he was never involved in the actual "plotting" of terrorist attacks. We'll never know what exactly he was up to, because the Obama administration felt the need to murder him without charging him with any crimes. Cowards who defend this policy often make comparisons to police work. If a dangerous lunatic is running around in public waving a gun at people, or even taking hostages, the police certainly have a right to use deadly force against that person. However, that doesn't apply to any of these situations, because of none of the four known Americans who have been assassinated by drones so far were an imminent threat to anyone at the time of their deaths. If they committed any crimes, then bring them to trial and try them. There was this thing called the "Magna Carta," written about 800 years ago, which is the basis for all Anglo-American law. It made the wild assertion that a government can't just fucking murder you whenever it wants.
When Abdulrahman was first killed, the Obama administration initially lied and said he was 21. His family had to present a birth certificate to prove his real age. A few months back, an independent journalist cornered former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and asked him about Abdulrahman. Asked about the murder of a child, Gibbs instead talks about how evil his father was, and avoids the question entirely. It's fucking disgusting. This is literally the only comment anyone close to the Obama administration has ever made on the death of this boy. No one knows to this day whether Abdulrahman himself was the target of the missile.
Last night, NBC released a leaked 16-page memo from the Department of Justice that attempts to legally justify why the Obama administration thinks it can do this. It had to be leaked, because the administration refuses to publicly say how it legally justifies murdering Americans without due process. You can read it here.
I'm not going to get much into it actual contents, because you can read if yourself and the kinds of things I'd have to say about it are pretty obvious. And Glenn Greenwald does a much better job at it than I could, anyway. Democracy Now also talked about it this morning. Summed up -- George Bush's legacy was the Bush Doctrine, which made the entire planet a battlefield. All countries and all borders are fair game for the "war on terror" -- even inside the United States. Obama has continued the Bush Doctrine. With the NDAA, he has the authority to lock up any American at any place (including within our own borders) without charges, indefinitely. With his "disposition matrix," he can assassinate Americans on American soil, not just overseas. And the memo's vague wording, "al-Qaeda" or "associated forces", means that literally anything can justify your assassination. It really is the absolute worst-case scenario. Even if you trust Obama with this kind of power (in which case you're an absolute lunatic), he just handed this to literally every future president we will ever have. Think about the implications of this. Julian Assange of Wikileaks is classified as an enemy of the state. That's the same status given to al-Qaeda. The executive branch has the legal authority to assassinate journalists and whistleblowers in their homes on American soil.
This is not new or even remotely surprising. Civil libertarians on both the right and the left have been screaming our heads off about this shit for the last couple years. After being continuously dismissed and berated as Alex Jones conspiracy theorists (literally), the truth has finally hit mainstream with the release of this memo. It's the top story on MSNBC's web site right now. Rachel Maddow was talking about it. Drudge Report -- fucking Drudge Report -- mentioned Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.
I. Am. Elated.
That's a pretty horrible reaction to a topic like this, but I really can't describe it any other way. I am in such an arrogant I-FUCKING-TOLD-YOU-SO mood right now. And I fucking deserve it, dammit. This is finally breaking through into mainstream press. A lot of Obama supporters were often annoyed with me if I dared bring it up during the election, and many didn't even believe me at all. So, seriously -- fuck all of you.
One of the saddest and most predictable things about mainstream politics is that the "left" and "right" (those words are essentially meaningless) always descend into their little partisan dickwaving over every fucking issue. This won't be any different. In the coming days, Republicans will pretend to be outraged without seeing the slightest bit of hypocrisy about advocating torture. Many Obama supporters will do the same, in reverse, defending this policy without seeing the hypocrisy in opposing George Bush at some other obscure point in their sad lives. Then there will be the racist right-wing conspiracy theorists who will whine some more about being victims, moving beyond "Obama orchestrated Sandy Hook to take away guns" into "Obama wants to assassinate Republicans." I doubt there will be much serious discussion, and Obama will continue to assassinate Americans whether we like it or not.
I'm actually extremely happy, because I'm seeing a lot more outrage on the left than I expected. But there are still idiots. The propaganda wing of the Democratic party on MSNBC has been especially hilarious.
This is the face of America's establishment "left." They have become so disillusioned and seduced that they are defending the most terrifying claim to power that any president has made in our entire history -- extrajudicially murdering any person, for any reason, at any place. America's "left" is to the right of Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush, slightly to the left of Augusto Pinochet. Congratulations, lesser-of-two-evil voters. You got everything you voted for: evil.
President Obama has nominated John Brennan as his next director of the CIA. On Monday, Obama said, "He has worked to embed our efforts in a strong legal framework. He understands we are a nation of laws. In moments of debate and decision, he asks the tough question and he insists on high and rigorous standards."
This is Obama's second attempt to nominate Brennan as head of the CIA. He tried to do so in 2009, but was met with backlash among Democrats because of who John Brennan is. John Brennan served as chief of staff to CIA Director George Tenet during the Bush administration. He was complicit in Bush's torture and rendition programs. Obama stepped off after the backlash, and instead named Brennan as his counterterrorism chief, where over the last four years, he has possessed just as much influence as he would've as CIA director, if not more. Brennan was chair of the "Terror Tuesday" sessions at the White House, put together lists of people for Obama to assassinate without due process, and spearheaded Obama's drone program, which is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people, many of them children.
As Andrew Sullivan said in 2008, "if Obama picks [Brennan], it will be a vindication of the kind of ambivalence and institutional moral cowardice that made America a torturing nation. It would be an unforgivable betrayal of his supporters and his ideals." Like the rest of America's establishment liberals, Sullivan has once again abandoned whatever the hell he pretended to stand for in 2008. He said on Monday, "I'm not as inclined to oppose him this time around, in part because torture has ended, and in part because he is increasingly one of the good guys on the drone program... People change. If Brennan has Obama's trust in restricting and managing drone strikes with much less lee-way for the CIA, he's performing a vital service in morally re-callibrating the war against the remnants of al Qaeda." Sullivan is wrong, the United States is still kidnapping and torturing people under this president.
Did you know there are still Nazi war criminals alive, in hiding, to this very day? A few are arrested every year. Well, according to Andrew Sullivan, these Nazis are completely forgiven. In fact, they were vindicated of all wrongdoing just a couple years after the fall of Third Reich, simply by the passage of time. Because hey, people change, you know? As long as my comforting figurehead trusts torturers and war criminals, who am I to have an opinion of my own?
"By blocking any form of criminal and civil accountability for these acts, President Obama has transformed what were once universally unspeakable and taboo beliefs into little more than respectable, garden-variety political disagreements. The president's nomination on Monday of John O. Brennan, a Bush-era C.I.A. official, to head the C.I.A. illustrates how complete this disturbing process now is. In late 2008, when Brennan was rumored to be Obama's leading choice as C.I.A. director, a major controversy erupted because of Brennan's overt support for Bush's programs of rendition and torture... Yet just a little over four years later, Obama obviously believes that Brennan's involvement in and/or support for these programs is no bar to his confirmation as C.I.A. director.
"That's because, following Obama's lead, the country has decided to ignore the fact that it committed grievous crimes as part of the "War on Terror." Obama's Orwellian decree that we must "look forward, not backward" has convinced huge numbers of citizens to sweep this all under the rug and pretend it never happened. That is what explains how Brennan went from radioactive and unconfirmable in 2008 to uncontroversial in 2013."
Last Sunday, Barack Obama signed the 2013 NDAA into law. It wastes a horrific $633 billion dollars for Washington's worldwide pointless military operations, in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. This should be outrageous enough, but also included in this act is an amendment that effectively overturns the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. This act barred the U.S. government from disseminating propaganda on the American people. The NDAA also suspended habeas corpus. NDAA 2012 had this as well, so we've had no right to trial for a year now -- but once again, Obama signed a law that allows the government to lock up any American they want, for as long as they want, without any charge or trial. An amendment was actually added to NDAA 2013, which passed unanimously by the Senate, that would've given limited protections to American citizens. It would've only protected citizens who were abducted within U.S. borders. However, the amendment was stripped from the legislation without any explanation.
And curiously, the controversy surrounding this year's NDAA doesn't even revolve around the indefinite detention, like it did last year. It's about shutting down Guantanamo Bay Prison Camp, which NDAA 2013 makes virtually impossible. That whole issue is irrelevant though, and it's incredibly sad to see so many people focusing on it, when there are much more terrible things the NDAA did. So what if Guantanamo Bay is shut down? That doesn't do anything for the prisoners being kept there -- the vast majority of them for over a decade without being charged with a single thing, and over half of whom have been cleared for release. If Guantanamo Bay is shut down, they'll just be transferred to other prisons on American soil. That's why Obama couldn't shut it down the first time he tried -- not because Congress loves Guantanamo, but because both dems and republicans didn't want those prisoners on American soil. "Guantanamo" is just a silly political buzzword, and shutting it down wouldn't do a damn thing, when everything that made it infamous is still in place.
Additionally, Barack Obama isn't ending the war in Afghanistan in 2014, and this fact has been out there for close a year now. Every time Obama said he was ending the war in 2014 on the campaign trail was an outright lie. The New York Times reported that the top American commander in Afghanistan has just submitted three proposals for a post-2014 Afghanistan. All of them require American boots on the ground. The worst would leave 20,000 troops until 2024. I doubt Obama's most ardent supporters will care very much, since they still seem to cling onto the lie that Obama "ended" the war in Iraq -- in spite of the facts that he simply followed Bush's pullout deal, that he tried to break it and keep thousands of troops there, and that we still have a heavy presence of private contractor mercenaries.
There was a lot of speculation before the election that, once Obama won, he could stop playing politics and really start getting things done. It's okay, just vote for him, because we're about to see the real Obama. As the Nation magazine put it last month, "With re-election safely behind him, we hope Obama will be bolder in his second term. He should diversify his inner circle of economic advisers and cabinet appointees to include more progressive voices."
Obama decided to nominate a Bush-era war criminal to head the CIA even with "re-election safely behind him," so it should be pretty god damn obvious by now that the "real" Obama isn't coming to save us. There isn't going to be a resurrection of FDR or Abraham Lincoln in a superhero outfit. What we're going to see over the next four years is more painful austerity, more social security and welfare cuts, more union busting, more free trade and outsourcing, more drilling and pipelines and fracking, possibly a war or two in Syria or Iran, more police state policies and erosions of civil liberties, and laying the groundwork for decades of neocolonialism in Afghanistan. That's what voting for the "lesser of two evils" has accomplished -- the exact same things if you had voted for a Republican.
Reluctant Obama voters don't seem to have any concept of how political leverage works. If you want the president to stop doing illegal things and taking away your rights, you're not supposed to say outright that you're going to vote for him no matter what, and proceed to cross your fingers and beg. You put your foot down and refuse to give him your vote until he answers to you. If he doesn't answer to you, then you vote for someone who does. That's supposed to be what a democracy is -- dêmos, "people" and kratos, "power". In our extremely undemocratic political process, elections are the only time the people ever have any semblance of power. After an election is over with, we have absolutely no say whatsoever in what a politician does, until the next election cycle. We can sign petitions, we can pout and complain, we can stand in street and hold a sign, but they're the ones who write laws and decide policy at the end of the day -- not us. Obama's supporters may understand that the president suspended habeas corpus, that he assassinates American citizens -- or as they always painfully put it, the president "isn't perfect" -- but whenever the time comes to put some bite into their bark, they never fail to check the box without question. In the end, it really makes no difference whether they agree with Obama's totalitarian policies or not, because their consistent vote gives him permission to continue building them up and putting them in place.
And he will continue to do so. The election is over, he doesn't have to answer to voters anymore, so who's going to stop him? Four years ago, Andrew Sullivan said, "if Obama picks [Brennan], it will be a vindication of the kind of ambivalence and institutional moral cowardice that made America a torturing nation." Two days ago, an intelligent person like Sullivan began a sentence with: "If Brennan has Obama's trust..." That, more than anything else, defines Obama's legacy. His biggest accomplishment was shifting the Democratic party into Bush-era Republicans. If it makes you uncomfortable that your government has suspended habeas corpus, that it's torturing human beings in secret black sites, that it's abusing anti-"terror" legislation to monitor law-abiding activists, protestors, and journalists without warrants, then hey -- rest easy by putting your unwavering trust in a tough, swaggering brand name who you could see yourself having a beer with.
"This business of making people conscious of what is happening outside their own small circle is one of the major problems of our time, and a new literary technique will have to be evolved to meet it. Considering that the people of this country are not having a very comfortable time, you can't perhaps, blame them for being somewhat callous about suffering elsewhere, but the remarkable thing is the extent to which they manage to be unaware of it. Tales of starvation, ruined cities, concentration camps, mass deportations, homeless refugees, persecuted Jews — all this is received with a sort of incurious surprise, as though such things had never been heard of but at the same time were not particularly interesting. The now-familiar photographs of skeleton-like children make very little impression. As time goes on and the horrors pile up, the mind seems to secrete a sort of self-protecting ignorance which needs a harder and harder shock to pierce it, just as the body will become immunised to a drug and require bigger and bigger doses."
George Orwell
Details are still coming out about the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school earlier. 27 are confirmed dead so far, 18 young children. The media circus acted like it always does, and named the wrong person as the shooter on national television. Just like how this always plays out, pundits will turn this into a gun debate, Obama will shed a few tears and not do anything, and everything will go back to normal in a month or two.
In the early hours of March 11, an American soldier in Afghanistan named Robert Bales left his post at Camp Belamby, in Kandahar Province. He went to two nearby villages that night, and massacred 16 people in their homes. 11 of the victims were from a single family, and 9 of the victims were children.
"We are children! We are children!" was one victim's last phrase before being killed.
[...]
The youngest witness was a thirteen-year-old Sadiquallah. He described being awakened by loud screams that an American had "killed our men." He then went to hide in a storage room with another boy, ditching behind the curtain. A bullet ricocheted off his head, fracturing his skull.
"I was hiding behind the curtains. A bullet hit me," Sadiquallah told the court. He also said the killer had a gun and a light, but he could not identify the man.
His friend was shot in the thigh and also survived. He is to testify later.
[...]
Khamal Adin, a witness from the second massacre site, the village of Najiban, told the judge how he came to his cousin’s house on the morning after the rampage and found bodies piled together and burned.
Adin said he found an aunt dead in a doorway with a gunshot wound to her head. Inside, he found the bodies of six of his cousin's seven children, his wife, and other relatives. The fire that burned the bodies was out by then, but he said he could still smell smoke.
When Adin began presenting his testimony, Bales moved from his seat to be closer to the monitor. Neither at that time or at any other moment of the hearing did he give any discernible reaction to the stories he heard.
The court then asked Adin to describe the injuries. He said: "Everybody was shot on the head… I didn't pay attention to the rest of the wounds."
A drone operator describes how war dehumanizes the people who are killed:
Drones are becoming the preferred instruments of vengeance, and their core purpose is analogous to the changing relationship between civil society and warfare, in which the latter is conducted remotely and at a safe distance so that implementing death and murder becomes increasingly palatable.
[...]
I fear the folly in which I took part will never end, and society will be irreversibly enmeshed in what George Orwell's 1984 warned of: constant wars against the Other, in order to forge false unity and fealty to the state.
It's very easy to kill if you don't view the target as a person. When I went to Iraq as a tank commander in 2004, the fire orders I gave the gunner acknowledged some legitimacy of personhood: "Coax man, 100 meters front." Five years later in Afghanistan, the linguistic corruption that always attends war meant we'd refer to "hot spots", "multiple pax on the ground" and "prosecuting a target", or "maximising the kill chain".
An American reporter recently visited Iraq and took questions from ordinary people:
An impassioned young woman from the middle of the lecture hall spoke up. It was obviously not easy for her. “It is not,” she said, “about lack of water and electricity [something I had mentioned]. You have destroyed everything. You have destroyed our country. You have destroyed what is inside of us! You have destroyed our ancient civilization. You have taken our smiles from us. You have
taken our dreams!”
Someone asked, “Why did you this? What did we do to you that you would do this to us?”
“Iraqis cannot forget what Americans have done here,” said another. “They destroyed the childhood. You don’t destroy everything and then say ‘We’re sorry.’ “You don’t commit crimes and then say ‘Sorry.’”
“To bomb us and then send teams to do investigations on the effects of the bombs…No, it will not be forgotten. It is not written on our hearts, it is carved in our hearts.”
We are happy to make bridges between people, said the president of the college, but we will not forget. What can you do? In Fallujah 30% of the babies are born deformed.” What can you do?
He spoke of how he’d met an American soldier in the airport. He was part of the Special Forces in Iraq. The soldier told him “The bible tells us not to kill. But we were taught to kill, to kill for nothing. Just kill. I am so sorry.”
“Build bridges? the president repeated. Apologize? he said. What can you do?” There was no rancor in his tone or demeanor, only anger and deep pain.
It's obvious that Americans are not unsympathetic or callous, because we can see the outpouring of sympathy, and the heartbreak towards the shooting that just happened. American donations to Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake exceeded $709 million. But there's a reason Americans are sympathetic to some problems, and ignore others: propaganda. We need to bring this word back, and use it seriously again. When Americans are made aware of problems, we're usually kind and gentle and generous. But the sort of propaganda we're subjected to is extremely clever: instead of pushing misinformation, it simply omits facts, enabling a whole new narrative to be developed. For example, the Obama administration is giving weapons to regime in Bahrain, which is shooting its people in the streets. But Syria has diplomatic ties to Russia, so that's the regime we have to condemn. When the Egyptian revolution first kicked off, the American media narrative pretended that we've always been on the side of "freedom" and "democracy," without ever mentioning that the Mubarak regime had been bolstered by the U.S. for decades. They were (and still are) a top buyer of American weapons and munitions, exceeded only by Israel.
All the innocent people we slaughter in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Palestine, ad infinitum, don't matter to us because that's not the media narrative. Americans are ignorant of the circumstances surrounding these events, they feel too powerless to educate themselves, and so the slaughter continues unopposed. There is an often overlooked aspect to all this that's essential to upholding this narrative: racism. Ever since American imperialism was in its infancy, overt racism has been a key tool in justifying it. And it's still with us -- it's not something white people can easily notice or see with our own eyes, it's an invisible presence in our hearts that must be constantly called out and checked. It is the culture in which we grew up, and we are all embedded into it.
As President William Howard Taft observed, "the day is not far distant [when] the whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our race, it already is ours morally." President Wilson noted that Latin Americans are, "naughty children who are exercising all the privileges and rights of grown-ups" and require "a stiff hand, an authoritative hand." However, it may be useful to occasionally "pat them a little bit and make them think that you are fond of them," Secretary of State John Foster Dulles advised President Eisenhower. Wilson regarded the Italians as "children [who] must be [led] and assisted more than almost any other nation." This policy prevailed among the U.S. oligarchy all the way up to the 1930s, when Mussolini's "fine young revolution" destroyed any hope for democracy among Italians who "hunger for strong leadership and... enjoy being dramatically governed." This attitude was revived immediately after the war, when in 1948, the U.S. bullied the Italian people into voting for who they wanted by withholding food from starving people, and restoring the fascist police. Haitians were "little more than primitive savages," according to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As Richard Nixon observed, concerning his progressive policy on abortion rights, "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape." Speaking to Henry Kissinger on the Vietnam War, "The only place where you and I disagree... is with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about civilians and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care." This nonchalance towards hundreds of thousands of deaths can also be seen when Nixon suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Vietnam: "The nuclear bomb? Does that both you? I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ's sake!" A nuclear attack, of course, would be a public relations disaster. It's a good thing, then, that our strategies with shock and awe bombings and brutal sanctions have become so effective, that they can inflict a similar amount of calamitous suffering as any nuclear attack. The Bush administration were all Nixon men.
It's fairly easy to understand why most Americans think "our" children are the only ones who matter, when one acknowledges this mass imperial racism in which they're raised. It's a good thing that Americans are so heartstricken by what happened in Connecticut. It means that we can still feel, in spite of everything that points to the contrary. However, it would do Americans a lot of good to understand that their tax dollars directly fund massacres just like this, every single day -- in countries they can't pronounce, towards people they will never meet, who are exactly like them and the schoolchildren who were killed in Connecticut today.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is extremely complex and has a very long history, so I don't necessarily blame people for wanting to sit out the debate, when they see so many people getting so fucking angry over it. But as the way things look now, we are getting extremely close to an all-out genocide -- so it is very important for people to listen the fuck up and pay attention to what is happening.
There was a new "war" that just opened up a few days ago. Before I get into this, I'll go ahead and explain the history a little bit for those who are only vaguely familiar with what this is all about.
The state of Israel was formed in 1948, on the winds of a movement called Zionism. Zionism is the belief that Jews have a right to their own state, defined as Israel. Zionism and Judaism are two separate things. There are many prominent rabbis out there who are adamant anti-Zionists, many proclaiming that it actually defies the Torah.
The movement for the creation of Israel didn't start in 1948, it goes all the way back to the late 1800s. It started to pick up steam in the 20th century, was then put on a temporary hold during World War II, and subsequently kicked into overdrive following the holocaust. The UN, with a huge push from Britain, established the state of Israel in 1948, as a home for the Jewish people, who just suffered one of the most horrific genocides in human history.
There was a pretty significant problem with this -- there were already people living there. In 1922, Palestine was carved out of the former Ottoman Empire, which crumbled following World War I. There had already been Jewish immigrants living here among Arabs, often peacefully, and often with violence. But when Israel was formed in 1948, it set off a fucking shitstorm. Most Arabs felt (with some degree of accuracy) that Zionism was just another form of imperialism. They had just managed to break free of imperialist rule, and now here's this fucking Israel dragging them back down.
Immediately upon Israel's creation, five separate Arab nations allied themselves with Palestine, and initiated war. Israel shocked the world by handing their asses to them completely on its own.
There were many other conflicts I should probably talk about, but I'm going to skip all of it and talk about the catalyst -- the Six Day War of 1967. Nearly everything we need to know about the modern Middle East originates with this war. By this time, Arab nationalism was a behemoth. Most of the Arab world -- nations like Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia -- felt like they were one people, who only became divided thanks western imperialism. And the embodiment of western imperialism -- Israel -- was not only existing where it shouldn't, but it also displaced and humiliated their fellow Arabs, the Palestinians.
As much as I sympathize with the Palestinian cause, the Arab leaders during this time were really driven by a very dangerous extremism. They spread around racist anti-Semitic propaganda stoking the flames, and gave frightening speeches about literally annihilating the Israelis. We'll never know if they sought out a completely new genocide, since they never got the chance, but the danger was certainly there. However, a lot of this rhetoric was just for show, for politics. A few of the Arab leaders, Nasser in Egypt particularly, often struck secret deals with Israel and kept relations open behind close doors. Underlying this effort to free the Palestinians was the constant need to appease their people -- and with military coups happening every other year, the people needed to be appeased.
Tensions between Israel and its neighbors got so high that another war became inevitable. This happened in 1967, when virtually the entire Arab world declared war on Israel all at once. Their humiliations in the 1948 war, and then in the Suez Crisis in 1956, were seen merely as temporary ceasefires in their effort to liberate the Palestinians. By this time, Israel had been cozying up to Cold War politics, and had been receiving substantial military aid from the United States. Once again, Israel absolutely demolished the Arabs. It only took six days.
I don't take sides when reading about these old wars, because it's sort of hard to. Both "sides" were just assholes. You can sympathize with the Israelis because they didn't want to be utterly annihilated from the face of the earth, and you can sympathize with the Arabs because what the Israelis did to the Palestinians fit the definition of ethnic cleansing. It just depends on which ethnic cleansing you preferred -- that of Palestinians, or that of Israelis.
It's extremely important to understand what Israel did after this victory in 1967. They were in total control, and could do whatever the fuck they wanted.
There was this stretch of land on the west bank of the Dead Sea, on the eastern side of Israel. Since 1948, Jordan possessed this land. In 1967, Israel took it -- along with the 600,000 Palestinian refugees who lived there. Israel never annexed this land, so it's not technically part of Israel -- it's only a "territory.". Since 1967 to this very day, the West Bank Palestinians have been living under Israeli military occupation.
On the western side of Israel was another stretch of land, part of Egypt, called Gaza. Israel acquired this too. The United Nations Security Council soon passed Resolution 252, which demanded that Israel withdraw "from territories occupied" in 1967 and "the termination of all claims or states of belligerency," which Israel has yet to abide by.
Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Since their withdrawal, Hamas -- considered a terrorist organization by western powers -- was democratically elected, and currently holds power in Gaza.
Though Israeli troops withdrew, a naval blockade was put into place. This has forced the Gazans to dig smuggling tunnels beneath the border with Egypt to receive vital supplies for basic survival.
In my opinion, the creation of Israel was one of the worst mistakes of the 20th century. I am an anti-Zionist, and I do not believe the state of Israel has a right to exist. However, if we want a solution to this, that obviously isn't going to work, we need to be realistic. Israel was created generations ago, there are people and families living there who know no other home. Therefore, the two-state solution is the only possible option -- give Palestine full statehood. Some who advocate this position demand that Israel abide the border agreements set up by the UN in 1947, but others are more forgiving, and simply want the borders to return to 1967. If you ask me, after everything that's happened, the Palestinians deserve much more. Plus reparations.
---
There. History done. Here's where I throw objectivity out the window and start yelling at shit. For all the abuses and crimes Israel has committed throughout its history, it has at the very least been open to discussion through all of it. There were some considerable strides made in the 90s (and there would've been more if Israel and the U.S. hadn't sabotaged it every step of the way). But as things stand now, Israeli politics is completely dominated by right-wing extremists, and they need to be stopped. There will never be any hope for peace in the Middle East as long as these racists and fascists are running Israel.
Without any notice, Israeli soldiers will force Palestinians out of their homes, which are then demolished to make way for Israeli "settlements." According to the United Nations, the settlements are entirely illegal. These settlements have been encroaching into Palestinian lands for decades, systematically shoving these people away from water and farmland. More than any other single factor, water is what determines Israel's policy.
This is unquestionably ethnic cleansing, which is the "policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to purposely remove by violent and terror-inspiring means as well as deportation and killing the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas." Many argue that it's an outright genocide. Whatever the case, ethnic cleansing is definitely a step towards genocide. Here's the opinion of a woman named Suzanne Weiss:
I am a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust, the Nazis’ mass murder of Europe’s Jews. The tragic experience of my family and community under Hitler makes me alert to the suffering of other peoples denied their human rights today — including the Palestinians.
True, Hitler’s Holocaust was unique. The Palestinians are victims of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Hitler started with that, but went on to extermination. In my family’s city in Poland, Piotrkow, 99 per cent of the Jews perished.
Yet for me, the Israeli government’s actions toward the Palestinians awaken horrific memories of my family’s experiences under Hitlerism: the inhuman walls, the checkpoints, the daily humiliations, killings, diseases, the systematic deprivation. There’s no escaping the fact that Israel has occupied the entire country of Palestine, and taken most of the land, while the Palestinians have been expelled, walled off, and deprived of human rights and human dignity.
Documentary filmmaker John Pilger has a film called "Palestine is Still the Issue." He talks to Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, along with many Israelis who oppose what their government is doing. If you want any understanding of what the Palestinians go through under military occupation -- humiliation, death, racist apartheid -- you should watch this. It's up on youtube.
The Palestinian resistance have every right to fire back at Israeli soldiers, in the same way that the uprising in Warsaw had the right to fire back at their Nazi occupiers. Which is why it makes me so nervous to see Hamas in power in Gaza, who don't seem to have any problem with firing at civilians. But it's important to remember that these are incredibly desperate acts of people who have had everything taken from them. The brutality of the occupation itself created Hamas. It's also important not to confuse Hamas with Gaza, like what the racists in Israel have done. The election that brought Hamas into power was actually fairly close, and a good portion of Gazans did not vote for them. It's similar to why the Taliban has so much popular support in Pakistan. No one has any great love for the Taliban or their fascist philosophy, it's just that they're the only group that's organized enough to fight back against imperialists bombing their homes.
Israel attacked Gaza only four years ago, with Operation Cast Lead. This was in response to rockets being fired into Israel, which Hamas said was done to lift the naval blockade. Israel hasn't yet led a ground invasion into Gaza in the recent outbreak of violence, but they did during Cast Lead. 1,400 Palestinians were killed in Cast Lead -- one thousand of these were civilians. 13 Israelis were killed. 4 of these were from friendly fire. Cast Lead was a fucking massacre, and countless war crimes were committed by Israel. Wikipedia:
On March 24, a report from the UN team responsible for the protection of children in war zones was released, it found "hundreds" of violations of the rights of children and accused Israeli soldiers of using children as human shields, bulldozing a home with a woman and child still inside, and shelling a building they had ordered civilians into a day earlier. One case involved using an 11-year-old boy as a human shield, by forcing him to enter suspected buildings first and also inspect bags. The report also mentioned the boy was used as a shield when Israeli soldiers came under fire. The Guardian has also received testimony from three Palestinian brothers aged 14, 15, and 16, who all claimed to have been used as human shields.
The Israelis also used white phosphorus munitions, which is a war crime. Israel claimed they were only used as "smoke screens."
In 2010, activists from around the world boarded six ships full of humanitarian aid, and attempted to break the blockade. The Israeli Navy responded by boarding the ships and murdering nine activists.
Throughout all these atrocities, America has stood virtually alone defending Israel, as the rest of the world looked on in horror. And the war that Israel just instigated is no different.
Five days ago, Israel began yet another senseless assault on Gaza, Operation Pillar of Cloud. Every explanation Israel has been feeding the media to justify this atrocity are complete lies, and it is driving me absolutely insane to see these fascists repeating them over and over and over again without being questioned.
Israel says this was to prevent Hamas from launching rockets into their territory. This makes no sense, because there had been no rockets launched into their territory for two full days before they started this war, and Hamas had just agreed to a truce.
This whole thing started when Israeli soldiers murdered two innocent Palestinians. On November 5th, Israeli border guards shot and killed a 23-year-old mentally challenged man when he approached their fence. On November 8, eight tanks and four bulldozers invaded southern Gaza. A 13-year-old boy playing football was shot to death.
Hamas retaliated. They attacked a military truck, and a number of Israeli soldiers were wounded. Then they started launching rockets into Israel, none of which hit anything because all the rockets they have are shit.
Then a ceasefire was called. There were talks. Ahmed Jabari, second-in-command to Hamas' military wing, received the draft to a more permanent truce, and it appeared he was going to sign it. Jabari was a very cautious person, and he would not have been outside travelling around if a ceasefire had not been called. A few hours after he received the draft, Israel pinpointed his car and assassinated him, breaking the ceasefire, and instigating the war. The Israeli negotiator who had been mediating between the two parties has come out and said these things himself.
Over and over again, I see Israel and the US push these lies about Israel's "right to defend itself." This is not a war of defense. Israel broke the ceasefire and started the war. Chomsky:
"When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend itself against the population they are crushing... You can’t defend yourself when you’re militarily occupying someone else’s land. That’s not defense. Call it what you like, it’s not defense."
This is utter insanity. Gaza is not some secret terrorist moon base out to conquer the planet and kill all the Jews. It is a mass of 1.6 million refugees crammed into a 25 mile long strip of land. It is one of the most densely populated areas on earth. Over half of the people living there are under the age of eighteen. To purposefully initiate war and mass bombings on such an area is a genocide. Gaza is not a nation. It does not have any sort of organized army, or any means to defend itself. It is nothing more than a massive open-air prison -- arguably a concentration camp. Israel possesses the 4th most powerful army on the planet, and it is backed by the 1st. In only five days, the death toll in Gaza is at 75, a full third of them children. Six hundred people have suffered injuries -- nearly half of them children. The hospitals are reaching their breaking points, and since Israel bombed the smuggling tunnels and closed off the border, they have no means to get resupplied. According to Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, the goal is not to "defend" Israel against anything, the "goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages." The Nazis also thought they were the "chosen people." They also started wars for "defense."
I have been unable to turn away from my computer screen since this massacre began. I've found a guy named Harry Fear, and he's gone viral. He's a reporter living in Gaza, and he's been feeding the world constant updates about Israel's crimes. I've watched his follower count rise from a couple thousand, when this first started, to 19,000 right now. If you're interested, his live feed is here, and his twitter is here.
When Harry sleeps, he leaves the audio of his feed on, so that you can tune in and listen to the sounds of the massacre. It is a never-ending buzz of drones constantly flying overhead. Occasionally a bomb explodes. Gazans are unable to leave their homes, as the Israelis drop bombs on everything that moves around in the streets. These are the conditions in which people have had to live for the past few days -- they are stranded in whatever shelter they can find, endlessly tormented by the nonstop buzzing of low-flying drones. The sound is still in my head, and I can't get it out.
Last night, around 3 or 4 am Gaza time, I was listening to these gutwrenching sounds as I followed the #GazaUnderAttack tag on twitter. The Israel Defense Force initiated the heaviest bombardment that has yet happened in the last five days, and I got to listen to it and see the reactions of Gazans on twitter, in real time. It was one of the most horrifying experiences of my entire life.
Remember: I was listening to this whole attack take place. I couldn't stop shaking. I'm still jittery, all these hours later. I felt a weird mix of helplessness and uncontrollable fury. I wanted to be there so I could fight with them. I wished the Israeli army would somehow be smashed so this slaughter would end. Above everything, I didn't want to feel so useless. I sat there crying, and it was all I could do to prevent myself from losing control and breaking down altogether. I think all these sounds and emotions flooding in at once may have triggered my fight or flight instinct. I have the luxury of being completely safe behind a computer screen. I can turn it off whenever I want. Palestinians live with this constantly. And I don't know how.
You get these smug idiots pretending to be above the fray, endlessly exclaiming that "both sides" need to calm down. This is basically an admission of their ignorance about what's happening. Israel started the war. Israel is massacring people. The Palestinian resistance is fighting in defense, it couldn't be more clear who the aggressor is. But it's even worse when some stupid fuck actually tries to defend Israel. I want to grab them and shake them and yell in their stupid fucking faces. Why are they acting like they know what's going? They don't know. They have absolutely no idea what's happening.
Israel's propaganda war has been flawless. They've really been hitting twitter.
The Israeli people are bombarded with a nonstop message of fear, and it's working. The last poll of Israelis I saw showed that around 90% of them supported the war, and 75% wishes for it to continue. IDF propaganda is reminiscent of the Cold War.
I tried to watch CNN earlier. The anchor was interviewing one of the few antiwar members of Israel's parliament, and I couldn't pay attention anymore after about five seconds in -- the anchor referred to the Gaza Strip as Israel's "neighbor." That is the word she used. I was floored. Everything else said afterwards was just white noise. This is the context in which the Israel-Palestinian conflict is brought into American homes -- no mention of Israel's brutal 45-year military occupation. No mention of the blockade. No mention of the demolition of homes. No mention Israel's or America's nonstop blocking of Palestine's UN request for statehood, year after year after year. Gaza and Israel are "neighbors." That's all we need to know. The end.
Israel is completely dominating the propaganda war. I mention Chomsky's "propaganda model" from Manufacturing Consent sometimes in this blog, and what we're seeing here couldn't be a better example of his premise -- there is a set narrative that the media is supposed to stick to. For days, the media shouted about the three Israelis that were killed -- a tragedy, to be sure -- and one or two rockets that were harmlessly shot out of the sky by Israel's Iron Dome over Tel Aviv. Nobody talked about the attack I just described. No one's talking about the sheer terror that's engulfing the people of Gaza, or how disproportionate Israel's use of force actually is. Israel is the eternal victim.
Literally every foreign policy expert I've seen talk about this (note: I do not watch cable news) has been openly wondering about what Israel's real goals are. Not a single one of them is taking Israel's narrative seriously. A lot of people are saying it has to do with Iran. Hamas is allied with the Irani regime, which gives Israel a pretext to kill them. They've been calling Gaza Iran's "front line." There's also the fact that elections are coming up, and war never fails to shift the entire country to the right -- a coalition Israel will need if it wishes to pursue a war on Iran.
Norman Finkelstein, who is probably the most important voice alive on this conflict, doubts that there will be a ground invasion. Harry Fear has been saying on his feed that this is exactly how Cast Lead started, and that a ground invasion is imminent. Nobody knows what's going to happen because nobody can tell what the fuck Israel is doing.
If you ask me to speculate, the whole operation almost looks like practice. Iran is the most powerful nation in the region after Israel, and no one is seriously contemplating a major ground invasion. If there's going to be a war, it will be from the air. This assault on Gaza has been almost entirely air raids. It almost seems like Israel is giving its military some practice. American and Israeli armed forces just completed the largest joint drilling exercise ever. It "ended" just a single day before Israel began its assault on Gaza.
But even this needs to be taken with a grain of salt, because it was very clear in the leadup to the election that the Pentagon did not want a war with Iran. Whether they wanted it at all, or they just thought was bad timing, remains open to speculation. But as Netanyahu has made clear in the past (when he didn't know he was being recorded), he really doesn't give a shit what America thinks, or the United Nations for that matter. This video is years ago.
"America won't get in our way. It's easily moved."
It's easy to see why the U.S. and Israel are such strong allies, and why both are universally hated by every other nation on the planet. It's because our government acts exactly like this. America, like Israel, has no "friends." Only interests.
Whatever Israel's reasons for doing this, they did it knowing they're going to be in it for the long haul. Ahmed Jabari, the man Israel assassinated, was one of the few people who could keep all the different militant factions in Gaza in line. With him dead (and with his death brought about in such a cowardly way), there is no hope whatsoever for peace in the near future. And Israel was well aware of this.
I am furious. I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe the world is sitting back and watching another western power commit yet another genocide in the year 2012. I can't believe how much racist support this genocide has around the globe. This cannot continue. The United Nations was formed to prevent this from happening again, and if it doesn't step up and do something, there is a very real risk of an all-out Hitler-esque genocide in the coming decades. Chris Hedges' words about Operation Cast Lead a few years ago couldn't possibly be more relevant right now. Please take a few moments to watch this.
