Politics
photo: Richard Harris
Glenn Greenwald:
"...Second, it's crucial to understand this causation because it's often asked "what can we do to stop Terrorism?" The answer is right in front of our faces: we could stop embracing the polices in that part of the world which fuel anti-American hatred and trigger the desire for vengeance and return violence. Yesterday at a Senate hearing on drones, a young Yemeni citizen whose village was bombed by US drones last week (despite the fact that the targets could easily have been arrested), Farea Al-Muslimi, testified. Al-Muslimi has always been pro-American in the extreme, having spent a year in the US due to a State Department award, but he was brilliant in explaining these key points:
"Just six days ago, my village was struck by a drone, in an attack that terrified thousands of simple, poor farmers. The drone strike and its impact tore my heart, much as the tragic bombings in Boston last week tore your hearts and also mine.
"What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village one drone strike accomplished in an instant: there is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America."
He added that anti-American hatred is now so high as a result of this drone strike that "I personally don't even know if it is safe for me to go back to Wessab because I am someone who people in my village associate with America and its values." And he said that whereas he never knew any Yemenis who were sympathetic to al-Qaida before the drone attacks, now:
"AQAP's power and influence has never been based on the number of members in its ranks. AQAP recruits and retains power through its ideology, which relies in large part on the Yemeni people believing that America is at war with them" . . .
"I have to say that the drone strikes and the targeted killing program have made my passion and mission in support of America almost impossible in Yemen. In some areas of Yemen, the anger against America that results from the strikes makes it dangerous for me to even acknowledge having visited America, much less testify how much my life changed thanks to the State Department scholarships. It's sometimes too dangerous to even admit that I have American friends."
He added that drone strikes in Yemen "make people fear the US more than al-Qaida".
There seems to be this pervasive belief in the US that we can invade, bomb, drone, kill, occupy, and tyrannize whomever we want, and that they will never respond. That isn't how human affairs function and it never has been. If you believe all that militarism and aggression are justified, then fine: make that argument. But don't walk around acting surprised and bewildered and confounded (why do they hate us??) when violence is brought to US soil as well. It's the inevitable outcome of these choices, and that's not because Islam is some sort of bizarre or intrinsically violent and uncivilized religion. It's because no group in the world is willing to sit by and be targeted with violence and aggression of that sort without also engaging in it (just look at the massive and ongoing violence unleashed by the US in response to a single one-day attack on its soil 12 years ago: imagine how Americans would react to a series of relentless attacks on US soil over the course of more than a decade, to say nothing of having their children put in prison indefinitely with no charges, tortured, kidnapped, and otherwise brutalized by a foreign power).
Being targeted with violence is a major cost of war and aggression. It's a reason not do it. If one consciously decides to incur that cost, then that's one thing. But pretending that this is all due to some primitive and irrational religious response and not our own actions is dangerously self-flattering and self-delusional. Just listen to what the people who are doing these attacks are saying about why they are doing them. Or listen to the people who live in the places devastated by US violence about the results. None of it is unclear, and it's long past time that we stop pretending that all this evidence does not exist..."
Click here for the rest of the article.
Glenn Greenwald:
"...Second, it's crucial to understand this causation because it's often asked "what can we do to stop Terrorism?" The answer is right in front of our faces: we could stop embracing the polices in that part of the world which fuel anti-American hatred and trigger the desire for vengeance and return violence. Yesterday at a Senate hearing on drones, a young Yemeni citizen whose village was bombed by US drones last week (despite the fact that the targets could easily have been arrested), Farea Al-Muslimi, testified. Al-Muslimi has always been pro-American in the extreme, having spent a year in the US due to a State Department award, but he was brilliant in explaining these key points:
"Just six days ago, my village was struck by a drone, in an attack that terrified thousands of simple, poor farmers. The drone strike and its impact tore my heart, much as the tragic bombings in Boston last week tore your hearts and also mine.
"What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village one drone strike accomplished in an instant: there is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America."
He added that anti-American hatred is now so high as a result of this drone strike that "I personally don't even know if it is safe for me to go back to Wessab because I am someone who people in my village associate with America and its values." And he said that whereas he never knew any Yemenis who were sympathetic to al-Qaida before the drone attacks, now:
"AQAP's power and influence has never been based on the number of members in its ranks. AQAP recruits and retains power through its ideology, which relies in large part on the Yemeni people believing that America is at war with them" . . .
"I have to say that the drone strikes and the targeted killing program have made my passion and mission in support of America almost impossible in Yemen. In some areas of Yemen, the anger against America that results from the strikes makes it dangerous for me to even acknowledge having visited America, much less testify how much my life changed thanks to the State Department scholarships. It's sometimes too dangerous to even admit that I have American friends."
He added that drone strikes in Yemen "make people fear the US more than al-Qaida".
There seems to be this pervasive belief in the US that we can invade, bomb, drone, kill, occupy, and tyrannize whomever we want, and that they will never respond. That isn't how human affairs function and it never has been. If you believe all that militarism and aggression are justified, then fine: make that argument. But don't walk around acting surprised and bewildered and confounded (why do they hate us??) when violence is brought to US soil as well. It's the inevitable outcome of these choices, and that's not because Islam is some sort of bizarre or intrinsically violent and uncivilized religion. It's because no group in the world is willing to sit by and be targeted with violence and aggression of that sort without also engaging in it (just look at the massive and ongoing violence unleashed by the US in response to a single one-day attack on its soil 12 years ago: imagine how Americans would react to a series of relentless attacks on US soil over the course of more than a decade, to say nothing of having their children put in prison indefinitely with no charges, tortured, kidnapped, and otherwise brutalized by a foreign power).
Being targeted with violence is a major cost of war and aggression. It's a reason not do it. If one consciously decides to incur that cost, then that's one thing. But pretending that this is all due to some primitive and irrational religious response and not our own actions is dangerously self-flattering and self-delusional. Just listen to what the people who are doing these attacks are saying about why they are doing them. Or listen to the people who live in the places devastated by US violence about the results. None of it is unclear, and it's long past time that we stop pretending that all this evidence does not exist..."
Click here for the rest of the article.
photo: Richard Harris
From Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian: Everything you need to know about domestic drones:
"The use of drones by domestic US law enforcement agencies is growing rapidly, both in terms of numbers and types of usage. As a result, civil liberties and privacy groups led by the ACLU - while accepting that domestic drones are inevitable - have been devoting increasing efforts to publicizing their unique dangers and agitating for statutory limits. These efforts are being impeded by those who mock the idea that domestic drones pose unique dangers (often the same people who mock concern over their usage on foreign soil). This dismissive posture is grounded not only in soft authoritarianism (a religious-type faith in the Goodness of US political leaders and state power generally) but also ignorance over current drone capabilities, the ways drones are now being developed and marketed for domestic use, and the activities of the increasingly powerful domestic drone lobby. So it's quite worthwhile to lay out the key under-discussed facts shaping this issue..."
Click here for the whole article.
From Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian: Everything you need to know about domestic drones:
"The use of drones by domestic US law enforcement agencies is growing rapidly, both in terms of numbers and types of usage. As a result, civil liberties and privacy groups led by the ACLU - while accepting that domestic drones are inevitable - have been devoting increasing efforts to publicizing their unique dangers and agitating for statutory limits. These efforts are being impeded by those who mock the idea that domestic drones pose unique dangers (often the same people who mock concern over their usage on foreign soil). This dismissive posture is grounded not only in soft authoritarianism (a religious-type faith in the Goodness of US political leaders and state power generally) but also ignorance over current drone capabilities, the ways drones are now being developed and marketed for domestic use, and the activities of the increasingly powerful domestic drone lobby. So it's quite worthwhile to lay out the key under-discussed facts shaping this issue..."
Click here for the whole article.
photo: Richard Harris
A current piece by Glenn Greenwald covers the new US cyber war build-up. An excerpt:
"... According to the Sanger's report, Obama himself understood the significance of the US decision to be the first to use serious and aggressive cyber-warfare:
"Mr. Obama, according to participants in the many Situation Room meetings on Olympic Games, was acutely aware that with every attack he was pushing the United States into new territory, much as his predecessors had with the first use of atomic weapons in the 1940s, of intercontinental missiles in the 1950s and of drones in the past decade. He repeatedly expressed concerns that any American acknowledgment that it was using cyberweapons - even under the most careful and limited circumstances - could enable other countries, terrorists or hackers to justify their own attacks."
The US isn't the vulnerable victim of cyber-attacks. It's the leading perpetrator of those attacks. As Columbia Professor and cyber expert Misha Glenny wrote in the NYT last June: Obama's cyber-attack on Iran "marked a significant and dangerous turning point in the gradual militarization of the Internet."
Indeed, exactly as Obama knew would happen, revelations that it was the US which became the first country to use cyber-warfare against a sovereign country - just as it was the first to use the atomic bomb and then drones - would make it impossible for it to claim with any credibility (except among its own media and foreign policy community) that it was in a defensive posture when it came to cyber-warfare. As Professor Glenny wrote: "by introducing such pernicious viruses as Stuxnet and Flame, America has severely undermined its moral and political credibility." That's why, as the Post reported yesterday, the DOJ is engaged in such a frantic and invasive effort to root out Sanger's source: because it reveals the obvious truth that the US is the leading aggressor in the world when it comes to cyber-weapons.
This significant expansion under the Orwellian rubric of "cyber-security" is thus a perfect microcosm of US military spending generally. It's all justified under by the claim that the US must defend itself from threats from Bad, Aggressive Actors, when the reality is the exact opposite: the new program is devoted to ensuring that the US remains the primary offensive threat to the rest of the world. It's the same way the US develops offensive biological weapons under the guise of developing defenses against such weapons (such as the 2001 anthrax that the US government itself says came from a US Army lab). It's how the US government generally convinces its citizens that it is a peaceful victim of aggression by others when the reality is that the US builds more weapons, sells more arms and bombs more countries than virtually the rest of the world combined.
Threats to Privacy and Internet Freedom
Beyond the aggressive threat to other nations posed by the Pentagon's "cyber-security" programs, there is the profound threat to privacy, internet freedom, and the ability to communicate freely for US citizens and foreign nationals alike. The US government has long viewed these "cyber-security" programs as a means of monitoring and controlling the internet and disseminating propaganda. The fact that this is all being done under the auspices of the NSA and the Pentagon means, by definition, that there will be no transparency and no meaningful oversight..."
A current piece by Glenn Greenwald covers the new US cyber war build-up. An excerpt:
"... According to the Sanger's report, Obama himself understood the significance of the US decision to be the first to use serious and aggressive cyber-warfare:
"Mr. Obama, according to participants in the many Situation Room meetings on Olympic Games, was acutely aware that with every attack he was pushing the United States into new territory, much as his predecessors had with the first use of atomic weapons in the 1940s, of intercontinental missiles in the 1950s and of drones in the past decade. He repeatedly expressed concerns that any American acknowledgment that it was using cyberweapons - even under the most careful and limited circumstances - could enable other countries, terrorists or hackers to justify their own attacks."
The US isn't the vulnerable victim of cyber-attacks. It's the leading perpetrator of those attacks. As Columbia Professor and cyber expert Misha Glenny wrote in the NYT last June: Obama's cyber-attack on Iran "marked a significant and dangerous turning point in the gradual militarization of the Internet."
Indeed, exactly as Obama knew would happen, revelations that it was the US which became the first country to use cyber-warfare against a sovereign country - just as it was the first to use the atomic bomb and then drones - would make it impossible for it to claim with any credibility (except among its own media and foreign policy community) that it was in a defensive posture when it came to cyber-warfare. As Professor Glenny wrote: "by introducing such pernicious viruses as Stuxnet and Flame, America has severely undermined its moral and political credibility." That's why, as the Post reported yesterday, the DOJ is engaged in such a frantic and invasive effort to root out Sanger's source: because it reveals the obvious truth that the US is the leading aggressor in the world when it comes to cyber-weapons.
This significant expansion under the Orwellian rubric of "cyber-security" is thus a perfect microcosm of US military spending generally. It's all justified under by the claim that the US must defend itself from threats from Bad, Aggressive Actors, when the reality is the exact opposite: the new program is devoted to ensuring that the US remains the primary offensive threat to the rest of the world. It's the same way the US develops offensive biological weapons under the guise of developing defenses against such weapons (such as the 2001 anthrax that the US government itself says came from a US Army lab). It's how the US government generally convinces its citizens that it is a peaceful victim of aggression by others when the reality is that the US builds more weapons, sells more arms and bombs more countries than virtually the rest of the world combined.
Threats to Privacy and Internet Freedom
Beyond the aggressive threat to other nations posed by the Pentagon's "cyber-security" programs, there is the profound threat to privacy, internet freedom, and the ability to communicate freely for US citizens and foreign nationals alike. The US government has long viewed these "cyber-security" programs as a means of monitoring and controlling the internet and disseminating propaganda. The fact that this is all being done under the auspices of the NSA and the Pentagon means, by definition, that there will be no transparency and no meaningful oversight..."
photo: Richard Harris
The Israeli government has finally admitted to the charges that Ethiopian Jewish women were forced to accept Depo-Provera injections when they emigrated to Israel and continually afterwards. This has resulted in a 50% decrease in the birth rate.
"An Israeli government official has acknowledged that a number of Ethiopian women who were immigrating to Israel were injected with a long-acting contraceptive without understanding the consequences of the treatment.
Reports of forced birth control shots have been around for years, but government officials had always denied the practice. A documentary that aired in December on Israel's Educational Network also shed new light on the reports.
Haaretz wrote in December that 35 Ethiopian women who immigrated to Israel eight years ago claimed on the show "Vacuum" that, as they understood, they would not be allowed to move to Israel unless they agreed to the Depo-Provera shots.
"We said we won't have the shot," recounted one of the women, according to Haaretz. "They told us, if you don't you won't go to Israel. And also you won't be allowed into the Joint (American Joint Distribution Committee) office, you won't get aid or medical care. We were afraid ... We didn't have a choice. Without them and their aid we couldn't leave there. So we accepted the injection. It was only with their permission that we were allowed to leave."
Some of the women didn't know the shots contained contraceptives, the Times of Israel added, but instead thought they were vaccinations. Others said they kept receving the shots once in Israel, even after reporting side effects such as headaches and abdominal pains.
Efrat Yardai explains in an op-ed for Haaretz that Depo-Provera is an extremely intrusive drug and is usually prescribed for "women who are institutionalized or developmentally disabled."
"This is about reducing the number of births in a community that is black and mostly poor," Hevda Eyal, author of the report "By Women to Women," told The National, referring to the birth control shots.
According to a 2010 report, a majority of the prescriptions of Depra-Provera written by Israeli doctors over the past few years were for Ethiopian women. "Figures show that 57 percent of Depo Provera users in Israel are Ethiopian, even though the community accounts for less than two percent of the total population," The National explains.
The Times of Israel details a nurse -- captured by a hidden camera in a health clinic -- telling an Ethiopian woman that the shot is given to Ethiopian immigrants because, "they forget, they don’t understand, and it’s hard to explain to them, so it’s best that they receive a shot once every three months … basically they don’t understand anything.""
Being Jews they have the "Right of Return" but it seems that the Jewish State wanted to be sure that they wouldn't be fruitful and multiply.
The US has its own Depo Provera scandals including a Georgia study:
"...the injections were given to women between 1967 and 1978 as part of an experiment that took place in the U.S. state of Georgia on 13,000 impoverished women, half of whom were black. Many of them were unaware that the injections were part of an experiment being conducted on their bodies. Some of the women became sick and a few even died during the experiment."
The Israeli government has finally admitted to the charges that Ethiopian Jewish women were forced to accept Depo-Provera injections when they emigrated to Israel and continually afterwards. This has resulted in a 50% decrease in the birth rate.
"An Israeli government official has acknowledged that a number of Ethiopian women who were immigrating to Israel were injected with a long-acting contraceptive without understanding the consequences of the treatment.
Reports of forced birth control shots have been around for years, but government officials had always denied the practice. A documentary that aired in December on Israel's Educational Network also shed new light on the reports.
Haaretz wrote in December that 35 Ethiopian women who immigrated to Israel eight years ago claimed on the show "Vacuum" that, as they understood, they would not be allowed to move to Israel unless they agreed to the Depo-Provera shots.
"We said we won't have the shot," recounted one of the women, according to Haaretz. "They told us, if you don't you won't go to Israel. And also you won't be allowed into the Joint (American Joint Distribution Committee) office, you won't get aid or medical care. We were afraid ... We didn't have a choice. Without them and their aid we couldn't leave there. So we accepted the injection. It was only with their permission that we were allowed to leave."
Some of the women didn't know the shots contained contraceptives, the Times of Israel added, but instead thought they were vaccinations. Others said they kept receving the shots once in Israel, even after reporting side effects such as headaches and abdominal pains.
Efrat Yardai explains in an op-ed for Haaretz that Depo-Provera is an extremely intrusive drug and is usually prescribed for "women who are institutionalized or developmentally disabled."
"This is about reducing the number of births in a community that is black and mostly poor," Hevda Eyal, author of the report "By Women to Women," told The National, referring to the birth control shots.
According to a 2010 report, a majority of the prescriptions of Depra-Provera written by Israeli doctors over the past few years were for Ethiopian women. "Figures show that 57 percent of Depo Provera users in Israel are Ethiopian, even though the community accounts for less than two percent of the total population," The National explains.
The Times of Israel details a nurse -- captured by a hidden camera in a health clinic -- telling an Ethiopian woman that the shot is given to Ethiopian immigrants because, "they forget, they don’t understand, and it’s hard to explain to them, so it’s best that they receive a shot once every three months … basically they don’t understand anything.""
Being Jews they have the "Right of Return" but it seems that the Jewish State wanted to be sure that they wouldn't be fruitful and multiply.
The US has its own Depo Provera scandals including a Georgia study:
"...the injections were given to women between 1967 and 1978 as part of an experiment that took place in the U.S. state of Georgia on 13,000 impoverished women, half of whom were black. Many of them were unaware that the injections were part of an experiment being conducted on their bodies. Some of the women became sick and a few even died during the experiment."
President Barack Obama will be adding a Bible once owned by Martin Luther King jr to the Inauguration Ceremony.