VIOLENCE is not exceptionally popular only in the fantasy world manufactured and glorified by Hollywood; a lot of it gets embedded in US culture by introducing children to guns (mostly toy guns) at a very young age. It is hardly surprising that excessive use of force and police brutality in US police forces are easier to find than in many other Western countries (see new examples like [1-2]). In a culture of plutocrats-driven outsourcing there is little left to produce and actually export from the US other than patents (one-sided treaties) and arms. US planes are merely assembled in the US and actually made in China for the most part. Even the debris of the World Trade Centre got shipped to China for material reuse. Speaking of the World Trade Centre, let's recall the 9/11 events from 40 years ago [3,4]. The CIA took down democracy and helps dethrone a legitimate government, killing many people in the process. If this is what "helping (or spreading) democracy" is all about, Syria has much to fear. Given the CIA's interest not in national security but in all sorts of turf wars (like the Drug War [5], usually for corporate interests) it is clear that we must look past the BBC's constant propaganda (e.g. demonisation by proxy/association [6]) and recall who benefits from war in Syria. Iraq gives us many answers because there's a bit of a rerun here, even if the parallels are limited and the narration varies. There are disputes over who caused the chemical weapons incident [7,8] and it's a bit similar to/reminiscent of the "weapons of mass destruction" pretext (joined by rhetoric and bogus association between Saddam Hussein and 9/11). Last year in daily links I have shown few articles about CIA support for so-called 'rebels' in Syria (there are still reports on this [9]). Some of the articles about this evidently got deleted from news sites (people speculate over why this happened) and earlier this year many more reports about this appeared, some based on leaks from CIA agents who quietly occupied a US Consulate in Libya -- a so-called 'consulate' from which weapons got funnelled into 'rebel' hands in Syria. Months ago there were reports saying that the US would try to invade Syria in August; these were mostly correct, except the international community put too much of a veto power that even war-mongering 'democrat' and Nobel Peace Prize winner Barrack Hussein Obama could not ignore and do what he truly wanted (war!). Don't let Mr. Obama fool you on chemical weapons; he would be a hypocrite to do so as no nation ever used chemical weapons as viciously as the US did, not to mention the US' support for other countries use of chemical weapons when it suited US agenda [10,11]. Contempt for democracy is when one ignores one's own voters' appeals against war and contempt for peace is choice of war when peaceful resolutions are on the table.
"We need to take charge of the Internet, the computer code in widespread use, and thus -- ultimately -- encourage open and free communication."This is true, especially after the Iraq invasion and occupation that never ended.
This should be noted along with the claim that the bloodbath in Syria is currently driven, at least partially, by world powers that view Syria as somewhat of a proxy war where Syrian citizens are mere pawns or collateral damage. Osama Bin Laden, the celebrity terrorist which Obama wants us to be so utterly terrified of, once served the CIA by attacking the Soviets far from his home country, which happens to be a strong US ally (many 9/11 attackers came from there also). Need it be mentioned that US imperialism -- not purely the principles of Islam -- motivated his attacks on the US? He viewed US based in Saudi Arabia as violation of sovereignty and judging by illegal (and secret) drone strikes from flying robots stationed in Saudi Arabia, the CIA hardly wants to end terror but rather to fuel it with more "blowback" and more hatred towards the West. Who benefits? The CIA. Just look at its growing black budget [15]. There is always enough money for more wars, but never for health, education, etc.
The bottom line is, we need to support leaks, whistleblowers, and generally truth-telling if we are ever to stop the war machine that justifies wars using lies and kills people for private monetary gain. Privacy is clearly a necessity and a majority of the secret branches of government, including the NSA, certainly wants to put an end to privacy. They crave total control. Privacy necessitates software freedom and therein lies the relevance to our causes. Free software is important. It's "Linux vs. Bullshit", to quote a new headline from Linux Journal [16]. With secret code we will never know what's true. We need to take charge of the Internet, the computer code in widespread use, and thus -- ultimately -- encourage open and free communication. A society that cannot communicate securely is an oppressed society and someone (the oppressor) will continue to covertly control it, assassinating some messengers if profiling requires it and intimidating others who challenge "necessary" lies. ⬆
Related/contextual items from the news:
A 107-year-old Arkansas man was shot and killed by SWAT officers after allegedly provoking a shootout on Saturday night, according to police.
The Pine Bluff Police Department got a call about an aggravated assault at a home early on Saturday evening, according to Pine Bluff Lt. David Price.
When officers arrived, they were told by two people at the residence that Monroe Isadore, 107, had threatened them with a gun, Price said.
A Texas officer has been caught on camera beating up several members of a family. According to KHOU.com, Harris County Deputy Jimmy Drummond followed the son home for allegedly speeding, then attacked members of his family when they approached him. The altercation was recorded on a dash cam.
I am able to tell the story of the Chilean coup of Sept. 11, 1973
How the drama and repression developed as a US-backed coup overthrew Allende's government on 11 September 1973
Narco-Trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero Knows Where All the Skeletons Are Buried in the US’ Dirty Drug War
The intelligence gathered against Syria’s Assad was manufactured by elements within the spy community in order to mislead the US President to take punitive action, Ray McGovern, a veteran CIA analyst, told RT.
The Obama Administration’s intelligence report on Syria was a rehash of Iraq. “There are lots of things that aren’t spelled out” in the four-page document, according to Richard Guthrie, the former project head of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. One piece of evidence is the alleged interception of Syrian government communications, but no transcripts were provided.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, the head of the Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based pro-opposition NGO, said that 1,500 fighters of the al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front and the Qalamon Liberation Front stormed the village after fierce fighting with the regular Syrian army on Sunday. Last Wednesday the Islamists had attacked Maaloula for the first time but were driven out by the Syrian army after it received reinforcements from the capital Damascus.
How can the US proclamation that it intends to intervene militarily in Syria to protect civilians from chemical warfare be taken seriously, when the US has slaughtered and poisoned hundreds of thousands with chemical weapons itself, in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere?
As of this writing, America is planning military action against Syria under the pretext that the Syrian government allegedly used chemical weapons in an attack in a Damascus suburb on August 21. Leading figures in the Obama administration can be heard referring to chemical weapons as a “moral obscenity,” such that the United States has a “moral obligation” to punish the country that uses them.
I was in Germany for Chaos Congress 2009, a hacker conference, and after attending a series of talks I was headed back to my hotel when I spotted Julian Assange. This predated my working as a project manager at DARPA as a hacker-in-residence, if you will. It was also before Wikileaks released the video “Collateral Murder” and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, the Swedish rape allegations, and Julian ending up a virtual prisoner, holed up in Ecuador’s diplomatic mission in London.
Every president who wants to launch another war can't abide whistleblowers. They might interfere with the careful omissions, distortions and outright lies of war propaganda, which requires that truth be held in a kind of preventative detention.
We have no moral authority. We have no legal or international credibility.
Linux doesn't lie, any more than gravity lies, or geology lies, or atmosphere lies.