Monday, April 28, 2014

qui tacet consentire videtur

He who is silent is taken to agree.

Conscientious objectors seem unwilling to keep quiet about things one may merely observe and conscientiously object.  Why not just shut up and let it go?  Because silence implies agreement, and to speak up and out is to be what you are, a conscientious objector.

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Friday, April 25, 2014

Guns!

There were loaded guns around the house I grew up in, readily accessible but somewhat hidden.  If I had to come out blasting after hiding in a closet, well no problem, big surprise for a bad guy.

I knew the book on the shelf hollowed out with a 38 Police Special inside.  I shot enough guns in my youth with the family in the mountains to have no problem opening the book, taking the safety off and blasting away.

Not all of us get called to conscientious objection, and I have no complaint about those who in "invincible ignorance" have no problem killing others who present a threat.  I believe those with invincible ignorance are what is necessary and sufficient to keep the rest of us safe from the bad guys.

I am not talking about me being a "free rider", I am talking about the natural disposition is distribution of people.  Crows clean up crap from streets.  That does not make me a "free rider."

"How come you killed that guy?"

"He needed killing.  He killed this other guy.  He was talking killing some more."

"But you know the rule is "thou shalt not kill.""

"That's right."

"But you emptied your Glock into his head!"

"He needed killing.  He killed this other guy.  He was talking killing some more."

That is invincible ignorance.

Speaking of Glock, they have an ad campaign.


You can check out their Oscar-quality vignettes.  I am all for anyone who wants a gun to have one, and no one else needs to know.  It keeps us all safe when no one, especially cops, knows who is armed.  I like that Glock is advertising guns in the context of training.  Good on Glock!  No one should carry a  gun who is not trained.

But my problem here is twofold - "confidence to live your life?"  That is projecting way too much benefit on a gun, and presumes a Glock is necessary and sufficient to "love your life."

The other is the ads smolder with manly man manliness.  I would not be surprised if the director of these films usually films gay porn, because he has sure hit the spot on man as sex object.  A gun does not make you a man.  Again, Glock goes to far.

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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Child Sacrifice and You

Wars are fought over rents, who gets the rents to be taken out of real estate.  The people in USA fomenting war with Russia right now know this, so they must give the people who will actually die in this war a reason to support it.

If you tell people if they sacrifice their children for "security" it is only human nature for people to revert to child sacrifice for that reason.  This is why we hear so much about "the ultimate sacrifice" and thank you for your service.  Some of the living believe the death of others makes their lives better.

Now I was at a conference on the holocaust where one of the professors threw out a statistic: in war zones, targeted populations die at a rate of some 70% adults and 90% children.  I ran some quick calculations:

Say we have a 100% population in a targeted group, by the above statistics let's say it is made up of 4 million adults and 6 million children.

So who dies?

70% of 4 million adults is 2.8 million dead.

90% of 6 million kids is 5.4 million dead.

So the total dead out of ten million is 8.2 million.

2.8 million dead adults is about 33% of the total dead.

5.4 million dead kids is about 66% of the total dead.

Kids die at a rate of two to one in war.  Child sacrifice is wildly popular among people who thirst for war, and believe it will bring a better lives for themselves.

It it any surprise that the children who leave as soldiers came back to such a high suicide rate, when they find out they were sacrificed to effect a 2-1 kill ratio on kids so the rich can get richer?  And their parents can feel more secure and proud?

There is a reason the rule is thou shalt not kill.

Soldiers asked John the Baptist about being a soldier.  The advice necessarily directed the soldiers to find other work:

Luke 3:14


And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.


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Wednesday, April 23, 2014

I Agree With Hillary

What does it matter?  A USA Ambassador gets himself whacked while gun-running to al-Qaeda.

'The United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures,' Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told MailOnline.She blamed the Obama administration for failing to stop half of a $1 billion United Arab Emirates arms shipment from reaching al-Qaeda-linked militants.

What?  He did not know gun-running to the enemy is risky business?   This was extremely marginal adventurism that does not pay off one way or another, and could not.  All the actors in a whimsical if lethal scam are now dead. So what does it matter?

You'd think an Ambassador would think it through: "What will happen if gun-running to al-Qaeda goes awry?"  He probably thought like Fast and Furious, nothing would happen.  Perhaps the State Department needs me to lecture on geopolitics.  Neither Russia nor China will tolerate regime change in Syria.  The team that whacked the Ambassador and company were pros.  USA Ambassadors need to be apprised of geopolitics before they are let out into the fields.  (Not to mention being personally involved in the movement of arms in gun-running operations. Now that's ambition!)

What is interesting is none of this is new, only that it is exposed.  How come?  To,  as the article states. "blame Obama?"  Maybe that is the whole point.

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Monday, April 21, 2014

Why Soldiers Kill Themselves

Did you know when the USA was formed, there was expectation there would be no standing army?

Did you know general officers must be nominated and approved by congress.  They are precisely political appointees?

When we have a "professional" military, we really have another welfare program for millions of people who would otherwise be productive in the free market.  A welfare program in which the Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff is the same rank and purpose as Kate Sibelius over at the Health and Human Services.

Now about 40% of Americans will tell you HHS is far more important than War, and another 40% will tell you War is far more important than HHS, the scholarships v battleships debate.  A false dilemma since we need neither as government-provisioned, since we can have both without the waste, fraud and abuse of democracy.

To maintain the "professional army" contrary to the design of our country, young people are encouraged to "join the fight for freedom" as if someone, somewhere, has the slightest interest in harming USA freedom.  Defend their countries against USA aggression, yes.  Curtail freedom in USA, no.

What happens is these people are sent out on missions in which they quickly realise the injustice of their work.  Decent people finding out they signed up for indecent work.

Suicide is at one end of a progression.  They are countless more people who are merely miserable, to some degree, depending on the degree they experienced the dissonance between promise and reality.

Bring the troops home, end the standing military.



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Saturday, April 19, 2014

Need to Kill

The essence of conscientious objection is "thou shalt not kill."

Killing is an understandable reaction after staring into the abyss and realizing the horrifying possibilities given free will.

People either prefer to live in a fantasy world denying that which the bastards are capable,  or accepting the realities on the ground in practice and imagine the only condign reaction is lethal violence.  Get a weapon and sort it out.

What if it is a bad as it is, but violence is an unnecessary response, killing the bastards is not necessary?

That is the heart of conscientious objection:  yes, it is that bad.  No it is not necessary to kill.

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Friday, April 11, 2014

Child Sacrifice

Child sacrifice is the execution of children by parents on the belief that "sacrifice" (just who does the dying?) will make life better for the people doing the killing.

The Bible goes through elaborate lessons on why this is forbidden, and eventually all partakers get wiped off the face of the earth.

That does not stop right-wing Christians, with neocon encouragement, from sacrificing their children to secure goods only God can provide: peace, security, justice, freedom.

The right wing Christians even say "thank you for your service" and blasphemously "if you have freedom, thank a veteran."  No, I thank God, and God.

If people putatively Christian want to blaspheme and claim their child-sacrifice benefits me, I have to say no, I disagree.  As long as they do not require I join them in their pagan right, all I can say is I am sorry you do not trust God.

I also complain their child-sacrifice spills over to others who do not share their blasphemy.

I think the preacher man should spend more time on this topic.

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Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Eight Active Campaigns, Advice for Recruits

Combat Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff talks about defending the US Constitution.



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Monday, April 7, 2014

Human Subjects Experiments


One would think the EPA, CDC, FDA would frown on this stuff, instead of perpetuating this stuff...

More horror stories of government experiments.  
 
 
Can be added to the;
 
Tuskegee Experiments
 
 
 
The Cincinatti Radiation Experiments
 
 
 
Or feeding radioactive Oatmeal to developmentally delayed children experiment
 
 
 
HUD funded   Let Children play in toxic waste and see how they do experiment
 
 
Spray an entire city with radioactive Cadmium experiment
 


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Saturday, April 5, 2014

Gandhi on Anarchy

Gandhi on Anarchy, in 1942:
 "Anarchy is the only way. Someone asked me if there would be anarchy after British rule. Yes, it will be there, but I tell the British to give us chaos."
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Thursday, April 3, 2014

USAID Destabilizing Cuba

One of the elements of just war is you do not attack someone whose system is worse than yours:
Documents show the U.S. government planned to build a subscriber base through "non-controversial content": news messages on soccer, music and hurricane updates. Later when the network reached a critical mass of subscribers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, operators would introduce political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize "smart mobs" — mass gatherings called at a moment's notice that might trigger a Cuban Spring, or, as one USAID document put it, "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society."
I wonder where in the US Constitution or where in USAID budget is the provision to destabilize Cuba, and bring Syria-style horrors to that country?
USAID's US$20 million Cuba program, authorized by a law calling for regime change in Cuba, 
Oh.  I guess it is what we call 'international development."

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Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Standing Military

Angela Jolie wants to make war less horrible.
"I was 14 and living with my grandmother when the war began," she says.
"I was captured and spent three years in a prison camp, where we were forced to do manual labour. Later, I was separated from the rest of the prisoners along with three other women and taken to a house.
"The soldiers would drink. We would have to serve them like slaves and they would rape us."
The radio version goes on to say they had knocked her teeth out too, and to this day she never had the money to get that fixed.  What a way to spend you teen years.  USA had a lot to do with what happened there.

Could it happen in USA?  Well, the USA military is already shot through with sexual abuse and criminality, which top people routinely escape any sanction.

The sentence was handed down days after Sinclair pleaded guilty to adultery and mistreating one of his accusers in a deal that saw the sexual assault and sodomy charges against him dropped, according to Sinclair's defense team.He had previously pleaded guilty to other charges in the court-martial, including committing adultery, engaging in inappropriate relationships with three women, conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and obstruction of justice.

Do you suppose he just had a bad day and made some mistakes, or was this a career long pattern?
A recent Pentagon report showed that there were estimated to be 26,000 incidents of sexual assault and unwanted sexual contact in 2012, and just over 10% of those were reported.
And this, from a case challenging soldiers disappearing citizens...
“The brief argues that the government reserves the right to use the military to detain and indefinitely hold journalists under this law, although the 2nd Circuit stated that the law did not apply to U.S. citizens,” Mayer told me Sunday. “We have already seen journalists such as [you] and Laura Poitras detained and denied access to a lawyer and due process. This law will make legal any such detentions. It will permit the military, on American soil, to throw journalists and activists in a military prison without trial or due process.”
 So if you disappear into a sex slave camp, hope it is not run by the USA military, where officers victimize their own troops.  Guess what would happen to you. You'll be lucky of it is only three years.

The USA was designed to have no standing military.  People had jobs and were otherwise productive.  We are not safe as long as we have a standing military.

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Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Erik Prince Confesses All Crimes at the Acton Institute

I've admired the Acton Institute, and was delighted when Fr. Sirico took apart a torture queen on the topic at one time, and many other initiatives.  I was a little surprised when I learned his institute featured Erik Prince, the mercenary CEO of Blackwater who was paid to do "work" US Soldiers would not.  But, OK, the bigger the sinner the more rejoicing in heaven, when there is repentance.

His book has odd the subtitle "unsung heroes of the war on terror"  You mean no one says "thank you for your service" enough?
Prince, who was raised in the Christian Reformed Church and converted to Roman Catholicism in college, put his faith front and center in his presentation.
What is it about Roman Catholicism that war criminals find so attractive? Newt Gingrich, Tony Blair, Richard Neuhaus, all flocked to RC.  And all of the top death dealers in Bush/Obama are Roman Catholics.  But, never mind, Erik Prince is going to repent and tell all. I like a truth commission.
“My faith has always played a great part in my life,” he said. “If you read the book, you know I’ve made some great mistakes along the way -- terrible mistakes. I’m thankful I have a faith that also includes forgiveness.”
True, true...  but not without repentance, even His Church cannot do that.    So in his confessional, reputation repairing session at the Institute, Erik Prince gets down to business:
Many of Prince’s remarks centered on his insider’s knowledge of the U.S. counter-terrorism effort and the role he played in it. He drew applause when he criticized the Obama Administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi in which the U.S. Ambassador to Libya was killed.
Oh.  Blame Obama.  Blame the black guy. "Bless me father, for I have sinned, Obama did it." Never mind no one ever heard of Obama, some shuck and jive community organizer when Erik Prince was doing his crimes, but that is the required doxology if you want right wing warmonger sympathy, "honestly, I blame the black guy."  And it sells books. Blaming the black guy brings down the house!
Prince, who estimated his company became the world’s largest employer of former special operations soldiers at its peak, defended the work his operatives performed in Iraq and Afghanistan on the behalf of the U.S. State Department.
Yes, in all things the USGovt policy is get big or get out. Given that is when and where the crimes occurred, and given that this was supposed to be a reputation restoring mea culpa, how did it come to pass the Acton Institute became the theatre where he affirms he has not repented, but instead blames Obama?
“In the Sioux warrior culture, they regard a warrior not by how far you could run or how hard you could throw a spear, they regarded by who your enemies were,” said Prince...
Don't blame your war crimes on the Sioux.  The Sioux were wiped out in a series of criminal campaigns by USA soldiers.  Erik Prince was doing to the Iraqis in their homes as what USA did to the Sioux in theirs.    Why bring them up when you are billing your talk as a confession?  What do the Sioux have to do with anything?
“If the Hezbollah, the Taliban, the Al-Qaeda and some left wing people like (U.S. Rep.) Henry Waxman are my enemies, I’m OK with that,” he said, drawing applause from the audience of 200. 
Ah So Henry Waxman, who wanted an inquiry into war crimes, is now in the same crew as al-Qaeda and the Taliban.  Anyone who wants an investigation into war crimes is the enemy.  A real crowd-pleaser, that line.  Wait a minute, that puts me in that crowd as well!
“I’m perfectly comfortable with the job we did and with who my detractors are.”
No doubt, since you were paid unspeakable amounts of money to exact criminal activity on innocent people, who could never defend themselves, you never were in any danger from al-Qaeda or the Taliban.  Some confession of wrongdoing. Your activities were the best recruiters for terrorists ever.  War crimes have that effect.

This is someone the Acton Institute featured?  Here is the Acton's Core Principles.

Acton Institute Core Principles

Integrating Judeo-Christian Truths with Free Market Principles
  1. Dignity of the Person
  2. Social Nature of the Person
  3. Importance of Social Institutions
  4. Human Action
  5. Sin
  6. Rule of Law and the Subsidiary Role of Government
  7. Creation of Wealth
  8. Economic Liberty
  9. Economic Value
  10. Priority of Culture
1. Dignity of persons.  This person?  Does her dignity matter?



Maybe Erik Prince did not set precisely this girl on fire, but Fallujah was set on fire after four of his mercenaries were killed by Iraqis defending their country.  Plenty of other little girls were set on fire.

The Church says whether the State goes to war is within the prudential judgment of the state, and offers a just cause and just war test for the benefit of warmakers' reflection.  Very neutral.  Next its loyal  institutes glorify war (see George Weigel and now Acton Institute) and creates a Archdiocese for the USA military.  Hardly neutral on this moral issue.  Do you think any of these people have been called in and instructed they ought not receive communion until they repent?

We have prophets who see what is coming, here Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago says...
I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.
Will the Church faithful be persecuted for not loving war enough?  Or do we love war too much, and having abandoned the teachings of Christ, we get condign punishment?  Is there more the Church can do to facilitate the wars?  The Prophet continues -
His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.
Just so.  Do we imagine this successors' first act will be to re-establish the military archdiocese?  No, it will be the cheering crowds at Acton who will be lighting the matches under an anti-war Archbishop.

How about we avoid all the bloodshed and go to truth commissions.  Give Erik Prince a chance to really repent, and if not, given what people know, let him deal with comes what may after the truth is outed.

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