Invincible Ignorance

There is a sort of flip-side to conscientious objection, and that would be invincible ignorance.  This is the person who well knows "Thou Shalt Not Kill" but will kill if killing needs be.  You can spot them, for they have killed and it bothers them not in the least.  Usually they are ex-soldiers, definitely few in number, who have killed and would not know from PTS.

Just as there is no virtue in being a conscientious objector, there is no condemnation for those who are invincibly ignorant and kill.  "You know killing is wrong, correct?"  "Sure."  "Then how come you killed that man?"  "He needed killing."

The kills are always within the bounds of law, either as soldiers or civilians in a mortal situation...  coming upon a robbery, and enemy in the field, etc.

Now we live in a world in which there is much conflict and crime.  We have experimented in the last 120 years of so with attempting to limit violence to state actors, the cops.  It has not worked out very well.  And when it works as designed, then malefactors end up in jail.  Later they are released back into society, often to offend again.  These people need killing.

Now that may sound harsh from a conscientious objector, and a bit hypocritical since I won't do the killing.  But I didn't create the conscientious objector and the invincibly ignorant.  They just are.  What we have with the invincibly ignorant, if left alone, what violence is necessary and sufficient to keep society relatively safe.  That's right, I have no objection to the invincibly ignorant killing.

Well, who decides when a killing is ok?  Now it is a jury or 12, following arbitrary rules.  Better a jury of 3000 or so, all of the people affected by a killing.  To what degree will they have truck with the killer?  Will the killer find he has no friends anymore, and can't find a store that will sell him food for the killing?  Or does everyone buy him drinks for eliminating a bad actor?

What about vendettas?  It's a problem.  That is why Moses established the sanctuary cities.  If there is a killing, and someone wants revenge, the killer makes it to a sanctuary city. There is a trial at the gates, freedom within until it blows over.  The city protects the killer, it is a kind of exile.  Or of course the killer may disappear, a kind of exile.

What about a tough problem.  Under Mosaic law you needed two witnesses, no trials at night, and no executions until the next day, and the two witnesses must cast the first stones if the penalty is death.   Right there is a whole lotta cooling off time before a killing.

And with an eye for an eye, a whole lotta settlements before an execution or the loss of an eye.  it is actually a brilliant legal system.

But what about the child molester?  Often no witnesses, except what a kid says.  Kids are notorious liars, but what if they tell the truth?  Who tries the case, no two witnesses, and is the kid going to cast the first stone if execution is indicated?  Tough one.

Welcome back the invincibly ignorant, who does the killing on behalf of a kids he believes.  Back to what the community thinks about the killing, a pitch perfect sentence.

We have alternatives, and our sysem is not very good, so we ought to review these systems.

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Charge Lt Gen Stephen Townsend with War Crimes

Amazing:

(CNN)In the most direct public warning to Moscow and Damascus to date, the new US commander of American troops in Iraq and Syria is vowing to defend US special operations forces in northern Syria if regime warplanes and artillery again attack in areas where troops are located.

This is so poorly worded.  Better: USA forces illegally in Syria will attack Syrian forces if Syrian forces defend their homeland, their country.  We have trespassed in someone's back yard, picked a fight, and will kill anyone who defends their home. You may not obey illegal orders.  For an American general to be conducting war inside a country with which we are not at war is a war crime.

"We've informed the Russians where we're at ... (they) tell us they've informed the Syrians, and I'd just say that we will defend ourselves if we feel threatened," Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend told CNN in a telephone interview Saturday from his Baghdad headquarters.

Clearly his job is to start WWIII, change the topic from failed economics to war.  He needs to be arrested a tried.

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The Afflecks Owned Slaves

Ben Affleck, from an old American family, has ancestors who owned slaves.

Oh.

And he asked for and received censroship of this fact.  W T F ?!!??

It is never the facts, it is always the cover-up.

Ben Affleck persuaded the producers of Finding Your Roots to edit out details of how his ancestors were slave owners even though it was a breach of PBS editorial rules.The new Batman star, who supports a number of liberal causes, objected to the ancestry TV show airing how his distant relations were racist, leaked Sony emails reveal.

So what?! If you are long term American, your family probably owned slaves, if you were the right people.  Here is a bill of sale for some slaves my ancestors auctioned off.  On Christmas Eve.



Hell, the Spiers were so tied up in slaves court cases got involved:

1808
Spiers v. Willison, 4 Cranch 398, 8 U.S. 398, 2 L.Ed. 659(U.S.Ky.,1808)(Rebecca Willison, claimed title to the slaves under her grandmother, and at the trial offered parol proof that the grandmother, while Kentucky was a part of Virginia, had given them to her by a deed, which  was lost. By the Virginia act of assembly, no gift of a slave was valid unless in writing and recorded. Court Held:  parol evidence may be given of the existence of a deed of gift to show the nature of possession which accompanied the deed.)
Ramsay v. Lee, 4Cranch 401 (Mem), 8 U.S.  401, 2 L.Ed. 660 (U.S.Dist.Col.,1808) In Virginia, in 1784, no gift of a slave was valid unless in writing and recorded, although possession accompanied the gift.

Back to that bill of sale...  the Spiers were rich and connected.  A man's sins unto the third and fourth generation...."  We were wiped out four generations after that.

I teach my kids two lessons:

1. Don't worry what crimes your ancestors committed that were "OK" at the time, what crimes are YOU committing now that are "OK" at the time?

2.   Don't fool yourself, all you gain will be lost if it is crime-based.

Update:

Affleck has not learned his lesson:

Affleck said he hopes that, if anything, the PBS controversy would keep the issue of slavery in the national spotlight.
“We deserve neither credit nor blame for our ancestors,” he wrote, “and the degree of interest in this story suggests that we are, as a nation, still grappling with the terrible legacy of slavery.”

Nice diversion, Ben.  The question is not slavery in your case, it is integrity.   The controversy is that you were given the censorship you requested. And now the brand is shot, knowing that the raison d'etre of the show is contrived.

Again, Ben, what crimes do you engage in today that are "OK" today, but will be appalling in the light of cold history?  Think ben, think!

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Irving Berlin Song about Bombing Berlin

In the good old days, they made no bones about taxes going to fund the escapades of the billionaires:



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Arab Armies Mobilize

In college I took an iconography course in which we learned to study symbols and their meanings.  Now that the Arab League is finally dealing with the problems in their back yard, they raise their flag.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_League

Green is a color reserved for heaven in some Moslem sects, but look at the device...  a laurel wreath, a Roman device, surrounding a chain, which encloses Arabic scripture and a crescent moon, a symbol for  Islam which was acquired from Christianity, a symbol for the Virgin, when Constantinople fell.

That is how a Christian would read it, I wonder how a Moslem would read the symbol.

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Dr. Randy Beckum

I wish I could hear a Catholic priest risk a sermon like this...


Interesting juxtaposition...  Martin Luther King up against terrorists and mad bombers and a sniper overseas... which represents Christianity, which accomplishes more good?

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Catholic Snipers: My Jesus is Bigger

I think of General Boykin who famously noted his God was bigger than Islam's God when I read the thoughts of pro-war Catholics.  The Jesus described I imagine to be a teentsy-weentsy Jesus, with a tiny, squeaky voice...  “Existential threat by Islam! Clash of cultures!” 

My Jesus is so much bigger, H U G E !  He healed the sick, overturned an economic system, raised the dead and when the Romans answered with shock and awe: Ecce Homo! INRI... he transformed life and the world in which we were once bound.  Raised himself from the dead!  Now we could be free!

My Jesus, who is so much bigger than the Jesus of the warmongers,  can also be so subtle.  When American Catholics are insensitive the the unceasing begging of prelates across the middle east NOT to attack their countries for the hell it will bring on them, Catholics in the commanding heights of the USA Wehrmacht soldiered on.  In light of this, Jesus raises up a pontiff named Francis, in memory of the Saint who got Islam relations right.

If the greatest Christian saint since the time of the apostles had opposed the Crusade and peacefully approached Muslims at a time when they were supposed to be mortal enemies, that action can inspire and instruct us today. So should the fact that al-Kamil, a great sultan of Egypt and a nephew of Saladin, was so tolerant of Christians that he allowed one of them to preach to him in the midst of a Crusade. The story of Francis of Assisi and Sultan Malik al-Kamil says there is a better way than resentment, suspicion and warfare. It opens the door to respect, trust and peace.It needs to be told anew.- Paul Moses

The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi's Mission of Peace

Note the many glowing reviews of this book. Note who has NOT reviewed the book.  The prominent National Catholic Register.

Now note the kinds of articles NCR does carry.  I am not making this up: Catholic and Killing for a Living.  A paean to snipers.  Read it for yourself, don’t trust me.  (Incidentally, with 74 comments highlighting weak anti-war vs strong pro-war comments, a tedious editorial tactic, my comment as a Vietnam era conscientious objector is not approved by the moderator.)

Update: My comment is now published and so are a lot of other push-back comments against this article.  Good to see.

Now here is the money shot, literally:

Get it?  Look at the banner ad above the masthead.  Ka-ching!  Military ads in a pro-life rag. Note the poverty draft pitch:  In a country that inherently disrespects black lives as of no matter, you can get respect by joining the army.  And see below, Catholics can be snipers!  And enough money to send you six free issues.

A service of EWTN.  Such content producers as “Sacred Heart Radio” And “Ave Maria Radio” rock the “existential Islamic threat” and “thank you for your service” tropes, and just seem to gain all of the ads.  And those other Catholic media languish for lack of advertising. Our government picks and chooses what media it favors, so why not Catholic media?   And why wouldn’t they eventually find people who want to be successful, measured in money, if not ratings?

About six years ago there was one Catholic business adviser program, where the host apologetically went over  Church teaching and USA actions in the middle east and plaintively begged his audience to call in and tell him where his reading of the facts was wrong, that the USA was the unjust aggressor in the middle east wars?  Crickets.  Not that audience.  I kept tuning in, but sadly, he whose name I no longer recall, was gone.

I know something of online advertising, usually those ads are targeted to the audience, and it is rather pointless to offer me a position as a pro-war chaplain: the gross exposure rate costs more for the advertiser.  These ads are what makes one publication more viable than another, and guess who gets such ads?  Pro-war Catholic press.

When EWTN talks about NFP and pro-life (anti-abortion) I could not agree more.  And the powers that be could care less.  Abortion is a marginal issue in American politics, and the Catholics who matter to the powers that be, politicians, are all solidly pro-abortion, bought and paid for.

Now, to the powers that be, war matters, and there is a solid Catholic anti-war ethic latent that must be starved for oxygen.

Yes, EWTN is putatively pro-life (on the narrow abortion question) but there is no seamless garment...  even on the question of torture, when the Pope expressly condemned it, Al Kreska allowed that among the panickers after 9-11, it was understandable to employ torture, not questioning whether we should have a system where panickers make the decisions.   Further, he will not extend the same flexibility to a young woman in a panic who has an abortion.  The former is no sin in Kreska's world, the latter must be confessed or to hell you go, in the milieu well funded by the hegemon.

Such hypocrisy dissuades people of good will, who want to hear a seamless garment argument on pro-life to keep looking, since prominent Catholic media is not about to offer it.

A Patrick Coffin on his show was interviewing the new director of gay whatever, a former marine, who in reply to Coffin’s direct question on whether torture is ever warranted, his guest noted they were convicted, and punishment may be laid on convicts.

This non-sequitor was allowed to pass by Mr. Coffin, but then, he is clearly uneasy about Church teaching, this the host of Catholic answers (Cafeteria Catholic answers?)  And oddly, Coffin had announced that for this segment, no call-in questions would be taken.  A unique arrangement for a call-in show.

When it comes to ratings, proof of popularity, his website offers:

Patrick Coffin is the host of our flagship radio broadcast, Catholic Answers Live, voted Best Catholic Radio Show in America by the readers of About.com.

Wait, who? Ah yes, that arbiter of Catholic excellence, the self-selected group of those who avail themselves of about.com.  Where no doubt a dozen likes gets you into the winners circle.

My experience is you can tune in just about anytime to EWTN and get a good dose of anti-Muslim blood slander.

I was in the audience at St Monica's Church on Mercer Island, Washington circa 2006 when Fr. Mitch Pacwa, a eastern Jesuit fluent in various Semitic languages was peppered with questions  regarding “ is Islam inherently evil” “Can Muslims be good citizens?”  Oddly the lecture was given in the Church proper, so I refrained from asking Fr. Pacwa if Christians can be good citizens.  Prudence dictated I not introduce contradiction in the sanctuary.  But I think I observed a change in Fr. Pacwa, to what you hear now from him on EWTN.

If Jesus wanted to advocate war in the clash of cultures, never before or since in history did anyone have a better chance for an attentive audience.  Indeed, he was betrayed and abandoned by those who expected to prevail by the sword.  Just as in USA today.

Now back to this Pope named Francis. Not only would it be a rebuke to the American Catholic Church, or the Church of America, at the same time such a Pope would be an inspiration to the vast swathes of Catholics worldwide who are appalled by USA actions, and assume Catholics are a witness to the truth, not players in the violence.

Saint Pope John Paul II issued a controversial vade mecum in which he cautioned confessors not to convert penitents from informal sin (say artificial birth control)  to formal sin (actively rejecting church teaching on same) if in the discernment of the shrive, the penitent is not well catechized enough to embrace the truth.  Bring them along easy, over time, toward the truth.

I wonder if pro-war catholics would remain Catholic if the bishops named USA war crimes for what they were.  Pre-emptive strike is a named war crime, not a matter of prudential judgment.  Sure, Weigel et al can claim it as such, but no, it is a mortal sin.  Would Weigel and others leave the Church, as surely as a Biden or a Pelosi, if told in no uncertain terms that certain actions are mortal sins?

Glad I am not a Bishop, as are countless others.  I'd push it, and not worry about the cross.  

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Fomenting Class Warfare

The USA is a capitalist economy, which means debt (accumulation of credit) is paramount.  By this powerful mechanism, winners and losers in the economic game can be centrally planned.  Among those picked and dissed, there is a conflict, a class warfare.

If you are amassing exceptional wealth in the USA, you are smart enough to know that you were picked to be a winner, and you are in essence a welfare queen, getting direct subsidies and having rules to stymie your competition.  Your natural enemy is anyone else who is also a welfare queen, for they are tapping into the same limited pool as you are.

The 1%, and down to the 47% elite who live off taxpayers, live in dread of the other 47% who live off taxpayers.  There is only so much free stuff the productive six per cent can afford.  The fight is existential.

So in this video, there are two victims.  The murdered African homeless man, and the African-american cop who apparently did the shooting.  We don't need welfare and class warfare.  And it is doubly cruel to get the Afro-american to kill the African.

Warning: bad language.


Also, note, a few minutes in, on the stanchion, is a notice stating "Jesus Saves."  Just so.

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How Was ISIS Created?

We trained and funded ISIS?



Time to get out now.

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Ukrainian Selective Service

After investing $5 billion to destabilize a peaceful country and its democratically elected government, the USA is investing another $40 billion to finish it off, via the IMF, whose leaders enjoy sex orgies at taxpayers expense.

Note the brave woman who takes the microphone from the soldier, but also note the soldier lets her go on.   The soldiers don't want this war either.  But it is existential for the USA welfare/warfare regime. When we can no longer steal, we cannot make our payments, then it is over for the banksters/military industrial complex.  Swith on the translation to see what the Ukrainian woman has to say in English...


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The Pledge of Allegiance

A meditation on the pledge of allegiance,

Daniel Sharp Ford, the owner of a magazine, called Youth’s Companion, was on a mission to sell American flags for every classroom nationwide.  The 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus provided him with an opportunity to solicit more sales. He announced that a salute to the flag would be taking place to commemorate the Columbus Day celebration and was part of theofficial program for schools all over America. He then commissioned Francis Bellamy, who wrote and published the Pledge. Ford attended the national meeting of school superintendents and implemented the pledge/salute nationwide.

Well worth a read, manufactured patriotism.

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USA Training the "Enemy"

Yet another "moderate Islamist" force trained and armed by the USA has defected to ISIS.

The Hazzm Movement, associated with the Free Syrian Army, is a secular Syrian insurgent group backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. It was one of the last of the non-jihadist opposition groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in northern Syria.
Its leadership has decided to join the Islamist coalition of the Levant Front fighting around the key Syrian city of Aleppo, according to Arab news sources, including NOW Lebanon.

Unmitigated madness.  Then Buchanan says this in passing:

While Reagan sent weapons to anti-Communist rebels in Angola, Nicaragua and Afghanistan, to the heroic Poles of Gdansk he sent only mimeograph machines.

Yes.  Where you send weapons, horrors.  Where you don't,  peaceful improvements.

If you google "moderate usa trained defect to isis" you'll see this has been going on for years.  Are we just stupid, or evil, meaning this is on purpose, to give Big War a steady income?

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Paul V Cheney

Genesis, from historian Rozeff, Motivation -

“God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the towers. But after the situation became unbearable and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed — when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the U.S. 6th Fleet.
“In those difficult moments, many emotions came over me that are hard to describe, but that produced an overwhelming feeling to reject injustice and a strong determination to punish the unjust.
“As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the unjust the same way [and] to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and stop killing our children and women.”

Then the first attack on the WTC, then the second, 9-11.

Ron Paul:

“We believe bin Laden when he takes credit for an attack on the West, & we believe him when he warns us of an impending attack. But we refuse to listen to his explanations of why he & his allies are at war with us.
“Bin Laden’s claims are straightforward The US defiles Islam with military bases on holy land in Saudi Arabia, its initiation of war against Iraq, and its dollars and weapons being used against the Palestinians as the Palestinian territory shrinks and Israel’s occupation expands. There will be no peace for the next 50 years or longer if we refuse to believe why those who are attacking are doing it.
“To dismiss terrorism as the result of Muslims hating us because we’re free is one of the greatest foreign-policy frauds ever perpetuated. Because the media and government have restated it so many times, the majority now accept it at face value. And the administration gets the political cover it needs to pursue a holy war for democracy against the infidels who hate us for our goodness.”

Dick Cheney:

In 2011, Cheney wrote

“The president and I were determined to do all we could to prevent another attack, and our resolution was made stronger by the awareness that a future attack could be even more devastating. The terrorists of 9/11 were armed with airplane tickets and box cutters. The next wave might bring chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.
“When we looked around the world in those first months after 9/11, there was no place more likely to be a nexus between terrorism and WMD capability than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. With the benefit of hindsight–even taking into account that some of the intelligence we received was wrong–that assessment still holds true. We could not ignore the threat or wish it away, hoping naively that the crumbling sanctions regime would contain Saddam. The security of our nation and of our friends and allies required that we act. And so we did.”

And in 2014 Iraq still is a nexus of terror and WMD, USA provisioned.  Or we could have pulled out, like the Reagan did, and have 20 years of peace instead of 20 years of war. How are our policies working out? Why not ask why we are being attacked? Do we not want to know it is a counter-attack? When you are doing something wrong, first, just stop.

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Theocon Murders Mount

Here is a pro-war movie from WWII that opens with the Japanese bombing a wedding...  what could be so low?



Catholic Warvangelical Theocons George Weigel and Michael Novak have worked very hard to distort Catholic teaching on just cause and just war to include lie-based pre-emptive strikes as acts of charity.  They both have the temerity to claim to be backed by various popes, but cannot support their claims.  They have done extremely well financially for this service to the war profiteers.

One central claim of the Theocons is surgical strikes make war more acceptable.  Since they have made that claim, like the Japanese bad guys in the movies, USA has murdered hundreds in drone attacks on weddings alone. They continue to this day.

Stop it.


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USA and Iraq

My confirmation the USA was lying about the reasons for invading Iraq was when Colin Powell made his presentation to the United nations.  He led the lying about the My Lai massacre, where he was first noticed  as reliable, and then later about "no POWS left behind in Vietnam when in fact some were actually getting out into the 1980s, and so when he was trotted out to make the case, it was rock solid USA was lying.

The title of Powell's autobiography is "It Worked For Me."  No kidding.

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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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Eight Active Campaigns, Advice for Recruits

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



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Gates on Obama

Gary North gets it right:

"There are limits to what even the strongest and greatest nation on Earth can do--and not every outrage, act of aggression, oppression or crisis should elicit a U.S. military response." 

Quite true. Gates signed up to oversee a pair of them.

"But my years at the Pentagon left me even more skeptical of systems analysis, computer models, game theories or doctrines that suggest that war is anything other than tragic, inefficient and uncertain."

Really? Then why didn't he quit, and then go public when he still had some influence?

If they quit, they quit quietly. They never say a word. Then they may write a tell-all book. They do not acknowledge what should be obvious: The time to tell all is when you're in power. The second best time to tell all is just after you are fired for having told all. You go public.

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USA Foreign Policy

Here is a famous quote by George Kennan, an elder Statesman of the USA, after WWII:

we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. ... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity 

Ouch.  Reading what our top leaders say can be harsh.  This is proven to be taken somewhat out of context and the fuller quote is less damning, but to star with the facts is useful.  And here is a clarification...

So when you read the original it is a little less bad, but still pretty bad.  and being a thinking person, Kennan evolved in his thinking...  but once you've released a 1000 braves hard to call them back.

The real problem here with the misquote is it is damned awful. it is abjectly evil and invites total condemnation.  Better to quote the original (read at the link) and thena rgue against what the man actually said.

The error is his premise that envy is the natural result of 50% v 6%, and that this is something to be maintained.  Really?  How?  Why?  To what end?

So on the one hand we have the low-circulation insider marching orders, and on the other side we have the mis-quote, neither serves us well.  What is really going on needs to get wide circulation, and then wide discussion.  What we have is even more secrecy and more spying.

Do we want that?

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Widening Drone Death Zones

I was thinking about the Church's teaching on Just Cause and how the Catechism presently gives a cutaway for the bishop's inasmuch as whether to go to war is ultimately up to the "prudential judgment" of the civil authorities.  Since we do in fact go into every war we contemplate, it is pretty clear "judgment" is never a part of the process, it is simply "war?" "Go!"

Catholic writers were saying a decade ago with the new super precise weapons Just War had gotten a lot easier since we go do precision killing of bad guys.  But in fact not so precise, plus they keep loosening the rules:

The 2009 version directs military personnel to take reasonable precautions to ensure that civilians are not targeted in attacks; the 2012 version says service members should “avoid targeting” civilians.
“A requirement to ‘ensure’ that civilians are not the subject of attacks is changed to an admonishment to ‘avoid targeting’ civilians,” Mr. Haynes said.

This sure undercuts the arguments the theocons make defending the War Machine.

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