I have a bit of a different outlook on those troops, as many of you know.

A child's life CHANGED forever, thanks to America's brave soldiers. Bala Baluk district, Farah province, Afghanistan, 5 May 2009. Photo via the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, www.rawa.org

I set out today to put forward a Memorial Day post to remember, a real shocker, if you will.

But I found myself surveying endless sets of photos of the horrors of war. Children missing limbs. Hideously mutated stillborn babies, courtesy of “depleted” uranium munitions. Battlefield trauma surgery. Burn victims. Executions. Murder, mutilation, death.

And my will faltered. I find I don’t have much to say. Or, perhaps I do, but digging deeply enough to put the words together is hurting me, and so I must back away.

So, instead, I leave you with the photo at right, and with simple linkage to my two pieces from around this time last year: Fuck the troops! and A Memorial Day tribute to police state supporters. And also with a few words from fellow anarcho-blogger Cork, in “A memorial day we can all get behind“:

Some anarchists will tell you that the troops died for nothing. But that’s not exactly true.

They died to butcher women and children. They died to make life miserable and unbearable for people all across the globe. They died to strengthen the police state. They died to take away our liberties. They died to enrich the military industrial complex. They died to make the world safe for US-style corporatist capitalism. They died to strengthen dictators and tyrants. They died to ensure US hegemony over the entire world, and to enslave the innocent. They died to destroy and steal from foreign countries. They died to worsen the economy and harm the poor. They died to end habeas corpus and protect torture.

In a nutshell: they died to make the world a far worse, far more despicable, and far more dangerous place. And they did so knowing exactly what they were doing.

Audio, direct from Radio Slovakia International, unedited, 12.3MB, 26min 52sec (my segment begins around 15:00): streaming MP3 — downloadable MP3 (no longer available)

Google Video, trimmed to just my segment (11min 2sec):

TRANSCRIPT

Commentator: On the eighth of December, 2008, there was a press release that was different from the rest. A 36-year-old American, Mike Gogulski, started a process to become a stateless person and renounced his American passport and citizenship. This is not an everyday thing, so we talked to him on his feelings about the US and soon being a person of no state. Christopher George met him in our studio.

Christopher George: Before the interview, I must state that Radio Slovakia International, as an institution, does not share the ideas and ideology of Mr. Gogulski, but feel he has the right to express his own opinion via our broadcasts.

Mike Gogulski: My name is Mike Gogulski, I’m 36, a former American living here in Bratislava.

CG: How long have you been here?

MG: I’ve been legally resident for about two and a half years, and I’ve been visiting the country since about 2004… mid-2004.

CG: When did you start the process of becoming a person of no state?

MG: Well, in very real terms, the process only began a couple of weeks ago when I first visited the American embassy here in Bratislava…

CG: A few weeks ago?

MG: Two weeks ago, to actually start filing the paperwork. The mental process is one that started quite a long time ago… I suppose — really about ten years — when I first had this idea that said, “I want to leave America, go live somewhere else.”

CG: What is your idea of the US government… or the US in general, as an American?

MG: Well, the …

CG: …as an ex-American…

MG: …as an ex-American? Well, like every government, the United States government in my view is a criminal organization, it just happens to be one of the most powerful ones in existence today. So, where I see American politicians talking loudly about ideas of freedom and democracy and free markets, the reality, I think, is rather different.

CG: Do you believe in the system? Do you believe in American politicians when they go electioneering and so on? Do you believe that … they’re a politician and they have a set of beliefs that they will follow?

MG: With respect to politicians there’s a couple of important things that I believe. The first is that the desire for power over other human beings really ought to be considered a sort of mental illness. The other is that politicians, especially at the national level… they don’t hold the real power in the system. The real power is held by what you could call plutocratic interests… the politicians are the instruments for the implementation of their policy.

CG: Do you think this is problematic in the system in that most politicians are sponsored by various companies and lobbyists and so on before they even get into office, and when they are, they…?

MG: Well, yes, sure, there are any number of cases that you could look back on and see politicians taking campaign contributions from certain industries or from certain companies then later repay the favor by sponsoring or signing on to legislation that favors those entities, even when those acts of government are contrary to the interests of the people. So, sure.

CG: Your attempt to become a person of no state in relation to Slovakia… is this a place where it is possible and easy to fulfill this goal?

MG: From my reading of the law and the treaties regarding statelessness and stateless persons, I believe that in Slovakia it is possible to become a stateless person, if one thinks that’s desirable. Is it easy? I don’t know yet. I’m just beginning a bureaucratic process with the Interior Ministry, by way of the Aliens’ Police, to become documented as a stateless person. Slovakia is signatory to one UN treaty on the status of refugees and two on the treatment of stateless persons which set up a number of conditions that give congruent rights to stateless people legally in the territory as are enjoyed by citizens and legal residents with citizenship.

CG: I have here in front of me a scan of your trvalý pobyt, which means your residence permit…

MG: My residence permit.

CG: And it says that it expires on the 21st of the fifth [sic], 2010…

MG: Correct.

CG: Do you see this as problematic? What is the process? You’ll have to go there and renew it, of course…

MG: My understanding right now is that… I’ve sent a letter to the Foreign Police saying I forfeited my American passport, which contained my povolenie na trvalý pobyt… na prechodný pobyt, actually, it’s temporary, not permanent…

CG: Oh, it’s not even trvalý…

MG: Yeah. My understanding is that my legal residence here is tied to my person, not to my citizenship. So, I’m still a legal resident by virtue of a file entry having been made at the Foreign Police office. I’m applying now for them to issue a 1954 Convention Travel Document for me as a stateless person and then re-issue the visa sticker.

CG: So, do you see any problems in the future with extending your residency permit?

MG: If the Slovak government decides that I am “undesirable”, for whatever reason, and makes a notation in my residency file with the Foreign Police, the Foreign Police have broad discretion to refuse to renew or grant a residence permit. So it is possible that they would refuse to renew it. What position would that put me in? I’m not exactly certain. I would be a stateless person now no longer legally present in the Slovak Republic. Would I be deportable to America? I’m not quite sure.

CG: And with regards to your application, do you see it being just a formality, and it’ll be accepted?

MG: I hope so. That’s certainly the impression that I got from a letter that I received from the Foreign Police in response to an inquiry about applying for a Stateless Person’s Travel Document, and in which I mentioned that I would renounce my American citizenship. Of course, you know, the bureaucracy likes to answer questions directly, so there may be other factors that come into play when I actually face the application and approval process. But I don’t expect anything dramatic.

CG: So your application went in on the 8th of December, if I remember, right?

MG: Well this was my application to renounce my US citizenship. I haven’t yet filed the application for these other documents from the Slovak government because I am waiting for a certificate from the American government certifying that I’ve actually lost my citizenship.

CG: How have the few days since then been? Has it been a normal average day, normal average week?

MG: Normal average days, normal average week… I go to the grocery store and I buy food and nobody asks me for ID. I go to the bank machine and withdraw cash and there’s no problem. I ride the bus and eat in restaurants and do my work. [ed: my final comment here, stating that my cat doesn't even realize anything has changed, was edited out of the broadcast.]

CG: Do you see this being a long, drawn-out process?

MG: I hope not. What I’ve been led to expect by the American embassy is there will be a period of up to 30 days while they process my application to renounce. By the end of that period I should either receive the Certificate of Loss of Nationality or receive a letter stating that my application has been rejected for some reason, together with my passport returned to me. After that, I will apply immediately to the Foreign Police for this Travel Document and my new visa… my replacement visa. That’s a process which can take up to three months. So, there’s a possibility that it might be March 8 or April 8 before I’m documented again.

CG: So, you obviously don’t see yourself going back to America.

MG: No plans…

CG: And, Slovakia? Are you interested in staying here?

MG: Well, I’ve been here for some time already and I feel quite at home here. My professional work as a translator is connected directly to the Slovak language. I have a small community of friends here. I don’t have any real desire to leave or to go anywhere else.

CG: And to other people, would you suggest this as something to do if they feel that they are against, or that they clash with the system?

MG: Well, it’s a terribly dangerous and risky kind of step to take, I think. I wouldn’t go out preaching that Americans ought to renounce their citizenship as a means of protest. However, if there are some who think they might want to do that, well, they’re certainly welcome to contact me through my website and ask me about my own experience. But there are limitations and restrictions that anybody doing that is going to have to accept.

CG: What about the current change that has been happening in America? Where do you see this, where do you see the new presidency going?

MG: There was a comedian back in the 1980s named Bobcat Goldthwait who once had a great line in one of his stand-up routines that said, “Blaming Ronald Reagan for how screwed up the country is is a little bit like blaming Ronald McDonald when you get a bad cheeseburger. Neither of them really run the show.” Barack Obama, a very charismatic politician who has rode himself into office kind of on a wave of messianic fervor, is already being revealed as a tool of the plutocratic elite that really controls American politics and American policy. So, as far as “change”? Maybe they’ll move some soldiers from Iraq to Afghanistan instead.

CG: So no administrative problems, really? Because it seems you have letters from most … embassy, and banks, and … I guess the list goes on. People and institutions that are happy with the situation, really.

MG: There were two main concerns for me in renouncing my citizenship. One is with respect to the identification function that a state passport provides. So, for example, if I walk into Tatra banka, where I’m a client, and ask to withdraw money in cash from my account, they want to see my passport. At the moment I don’t have a passport or a stateless person’s Travel Document, so what I have for this interim period while I’m undocumented, in order to manage the ID function, is, one, this notarized copy of my passport and visa. The second is I executed a power of attorney designating a friend of mine as being able to sign for all legal acts in my name. So, if I needed to withdraw cash from the bank, I would take her along to the bank branch and she would present her ID and sign for me, based on the power of attorney.

The other function of the passport, obviously, was to hold the residence permit sticker. Right now I don’t have that, so I could have a real problem if I were stopped by the police.

CG: If anyone out there wants to visit, or to find out more information about yourself, could you please give them the link?

MG: My personal blog, my website, is www.nostate.com, just n-o-s-t-a-t-e-dot-com.

David Gross of The Picket Line submits an exploration of ethical reductionism in the context of political theory: Does political philosophy reduce to ethical philosophy?

[This] is what makes the liberal political theories and their justifications difficult for me to swallow. They seem to have this backwards. According to them, some behavior at the ethical level switches from unethical to ethical based on the description it is given at the political level, rather than its description at the political level being based on an analysis of it at the ethical level. Whereas it seems to me that whether a particular action is ethical or not should not depend on what political system you’re operating under or what role the people involved play in that system; rather, whether the system is reasonable and coherent should depend on whether the individuals enacting their roles in that system behave ethically in so doing.

With his submission, he says: “Some anarchists and libertarians seem to believe that political philosophy reduces to ethical philosophy, the same way some scientists believe that chemistry ultimately reduces to physics. Is this part of the appeal of anarchism, and does it make sense?” I for one do believe that the political ought to reduce to the ethical, that this does make sense and that it is part of anarchism’s appeal. My own posting on the clown suit defense makes this point, though a bit obliquely.

Mike Billy of Reflections from a Rotting Nation writes of another incident in what seems to be a new trend driven by both advances in technology and some rather insane law in Teen Girl Charged With Sex Offense For Sending Nude Pictures of Herself.

The girl may receive a punishment of several years in a juvenile detention center and forced registration as a sex offender. This new status could prevent her from living within a specified radius of any school, church, or park for the rest of her life. It may also force her to inform all of her neighbors that she is a sex offender when she moves.

So now, not only does she have nude pictures of herself floating around, but she also has the stigma of being labeled a sex offender hanging over her head. But hey, that is the law and ignorance is no excuse.

The ABC News story linked to in the post has comments attached which present both many defenses of the girl’s action as well as a catalogue of what passes for sexual “morality” in America, especially as connected to children: “Satan on the loose”, “She doesn’t need jail, she needs therapy”, “What the hell are kids thinking these days!”

The blog post I never wrote reacting to this incident and to some of the ABC News commenters was going to bear the title, “Shocking news! Teen girls enjoy fucking”.

Mike also brings us The Financial Crisis is Not a Market Failure:

No, the financial crisis is not a failure of the free market, it is a failure of fascism. Allowing one unchecked overarching organization known as the Federal Reserve to control the money supply and thus the interest rates has caused the failure.

And how do they propose to fix it? By having that same organization create even more money to bail out these banks.

Like a fly repeatedly striking a glass window, more of the same will not solve our problems. It is time to end the Fed.

The economics lemurs at nostate.com agree wholeheartedly.

Commenting on a resurgence of the Taliban and the displacement of the anemic, imperialist-funded state in Afghanistan, Darian Worden, author of Bring a Gun to School Day (worth reading, and promoting!), says, “Revolutionaries, Take Note“:

When desired goods and services are provided in a revolutionary context, the consumers then join entrepreneurs in building revolution. A revolution based on libertarian principles ought to build liberty outside of the system. It is not enough simply to tell people that the free market can do things better. They must be shown that we will make it do things better. Agorism and other left libertarian philosophies provide ideas for such action.

Pity the Taliban aren’t agorists, or anarchists of any stripe.

Francois Tremblay of the Check Your Premises blog submits a controversial article entitled “Why hierarchies are immoral“. He writes:

Anarchy, as a position on social organization, forces us to rethink the purpose of society itself. What is the goal of social action? While mainstream political ideologies disagree on various issues, there is one thing they all agree on: they universally elevate economic and technological progress as an ultimate, unimpeachable goal, and that the only disagreement is how to effect it and how fast. But this goal is driven by hierarchies that concentrate power and seek to expand that power by all means necessary. Anarchists are the only people who pipe up and say “hey, maybe this whole idea of limitless progress at all costs isn’t so great- maybe the costs are greater than we’re ready to accept.”

This post provoked a great deal of response, in my view, some of which can be found here, here, here, here and here, as well as in the comments to all those posts. One needn’t agree with Tremblay’s definition of hierarchy or with what he derives from it in order to find valuable explorations of social theory here.

Francois continues to push boundaries in his second submission, “I know what’s best for people”:

The Anarchist view is that our institutions and rules must be grounded in the individual’s values: that social morality, like everything else in society, must be a bottom-up system. In contrast, the ruling class imposes the concept of “law” in order to justify its coercive control over society.

An extremely important point, and one which ought to be shouted constantly at those who would seize control of whatever illegitimate coercive apparatus is at hand in order to try to impose their own vision of a “shining city on a hill” upon the rest of us. Looking at this from an agorist perspective, we might say that there is a tendency where if the values forced upon people do not comport with those of the individuals subjected to them, then the power of black and gray markets will increase. Or, as Princess Leia told the Governor: “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

Hosting the carnival gives me a little bit of power, which of course begs to be abused. In that spirit, I present also two things that I wrote this past month: Agorism and ancap panarchy – a response to an Obama voter, and The Golden Rule is insufficient.

Enjoy, and thanks for visiting!

Even more important now than then. You know that’s true, both because I said so and because I’m older than you are.

I’m looking forward, sadly, to a day when YouTube — and that is to say, Google — caves to pressure from some group or another to take this video and all other versions of this song off the intertube forever. Perhaps then people will wake the fuck up. Save your copy to encrypted storage today!

Last call for alcohol.
Last call for your freedom of speech.
Drink up. Happy hour is now enforced by law.
Don’t forget our house special, it’s called a Trickie Dickie Screwdriver.
It’s got one part Jack Daniels, two parts purple Kool-Aid,
and a jigger of formaldehyde
from the jar with Hitler’s brain in it we got in the back.
Happy trails to you. Happy trails to you.

I am Emperor Ronald Reagan
Born again with fascist cravings
Still, you made me president

Human rights will soon go ‘way
I am now your Shah today
Now I command all of you
Now you’re going to pray in school
I’ll make sure they’re Christian too

California Uber alles
Uber alles California

Ku Klux Klan will control you
Still you think it’s natural
Nigger knockin’ for the master race
Still you wear the happy face

You closed your eyes, can’t happen here
Alexander Haig is near
Vietnam won’t come back you say
Join the army or you will pay

California Uber alles
Uber alles California

Yeah, that’s it. Just relax.
Have another drink, few more pretzels, little more MSG.
Turn on those Dallas Cowboys on your TV.
Lock your doors. Close your mind.
It’s time for the two-minute warning.

Welcome to 1984
Are you ready for the third world war?!?
You too will meet the secret police
They’ll draft you and they’ll jail your niece

You’ll go quietly to boot camp
They’ll shoot you dead, make you a man
Don’t you worry, it’s for a cause
Feeding global corporations’ claws

Die on our brand new poison gas
El Salvador or Afghanistan
Making money for President Reagan
And all the friends of President Reagan

California Uber alles
Uber alles California

YES, I am anti-American.

But let’s clarify a few things. I don’t think that the words “I” or “am” or the prefix “anti-” need any clarification. What does need to be cleared up is what is meant by the word “American”.

“American” means many different things. Let’s take them in turn.

• “America” the country — This, ultimately, is a set of lines drawn on a map, a geographical segment of the world. Do I oppose drawing lines on maps? Hardly. Marking roads, towns and rivers is useful. Even marking places where one might be subject to arbitrary violence is useful. But am I “anti-” the particular lines drawn to separate “America” from “the rest of the world”? YES. And I’m against all the other national and sub-national lines as well.

• “America” the land — Is it possible to hate a land? Perhaps, but I don’t. Mind you, there are plenty of places within those artificial map lines that I’d never recommend anyone to go, but there is nothing wrong with the land itself, the place, the landscape or its features. Do I hate the Grand Canyon, the central plains, the Adirondacks, or the Jersey shore? Not in the slightest. There are some southeastern swamp areas I wouldn’t recommend, but that doesn’t mean I hate those places any more than I could hate the moon.

• “America” the people — First of all, I don’t know these people. Sweeping generalizations about “a people” are often wrong and sometimes used to make the most horrifying collective judgements. As with any set, there are some people within the “American” boundaries who are good and some who are evil, some who are thoughtful and some who are mindless, some who are kind and some who are cruel. I can’t hate the “American people” any more than I can hate the “Congolese people” or the “Finnish people”. Mashing large numbers of human beings into collectives in order to pass judgement on them is ultimately a futile exercise.

• “America” the ideal — Ah, now we’re getting closer. America has a great mythology attached to it. A nation of migrants fleeing downtrodden lives in the old world settle a new, vast and fertile territory, bringing with them the finest ideals of liberal society and a vision of a bright tomorrow, and eventually giving birth to a society of freedom and prosperity. Gosh that sounds great, until you look at the history. The ideal is beautiful. Waving the ideal around today as some sort of excuse for what America has become is rank hypocrisy. And I really hate hypocrisy.

• “America” the historical national entity — From the extermination of native tribes through slavery, the “Civil” War, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, all the other bogus wars of the 20th century, the War on (Some) Drugs, Jim Crow apartheid, the US-led global abandonment of sound money in favor of fiat currency and predatory central bankers, McCarthyism, New Deal socialism and the entire narrative of American exceptionalism up to the present three wars (Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia) and the endless bullying of the American state on the world stage, I hate America.

• “America” the system of government — “Democracy, hooray!” This one’s easy; I hate all existing systems of government.

• “America” the state, comprised of people currently running around in clown suits, their masters in the political class, the plutocrats who own the political class, plus the bureaucracy and the shareholders, employees and managers of all those corporations that exist for little reason other than to serve the aforementioned filth — Well, let’s just say I won’t miss you when you’re gone.

So, am I anti-American? Yes and no. On balance, and for the sake of argument, let’s say yes, yes I am anti-American. And I believe my heart — and my hate — are in the right place.

– Arundhati Roy, “War is Peace”, in The Algebra of Infinite Justice

First of all, and let me be very clear, I love you guys (and girls).

Around 8:30am Pacific Time on September 11, 2001, after my girlfriend and I had watched — shocked, horrified, and barely awake — mass murder in our bedroom as the second World Trade Center tower collapsed , her prior boyfriend sent out a message on a local Santa Cruz, California-based chat and messaging system that predates the modern internet.

What he said exactly, I don’t remember. But the essence of it was this: “This is the end of America. Martial law is coming. The last barriers have fallen today.”

I recognized the truth of this immediately. The thought was my own, though he found a voice for it first. He’s at least one more standard deviation away from the human average intelligence than I am, so it was no surprise that he’d get through the shock to the most important conclusion more rapidly than I could.

He was right of course. We both were. The USA PATRIOT Act, the Global War on Terror, Military Commissions Act, FISA, fusion centers, national security letters, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, FOX NEWS, stormtroopers on the streets, gleeful embrace of the new American authoritarianism, mothers forced to publicly consume their own bottled breast milk at the airport, the Imperial Presidency, $400 million for construction of large-scale detention centers inside the US, no impeachment no matter how great the lies, the rise of a modern Stasi culture in the land of the “free” and home of the “brave”, all set to the stirring anthems of American exceptionalism and slogans evoking bygone days when things like words and principles and logic actually meant something.

No matter what you think is the truth of 9/11, no matter what you’ve heard or read or thought or said, you do have to watch the video. I’ll explain why in a moment.

What do I believe, you ask? I am really not sure what to believe. I’ve watched and read and listened to probably every substantive argument made, every investigative dissection and every crackpot, jackass theory about the events of 9/11. I’ve seen all the movies, I’ve watched all the YouTube videos. I’ve read the manifestos, the scientific probes and the loony fringe theories.

What falls out of all this, so many years later, is that there does not exist a preponderance of evidence  — nay, not even so weak a standard as probable cause — to believe that the official story of the events of that day is substantially in accordance with the truth. Some ancient cultures believed such rubbish as that the Earth was flat and carried on the back of great elephants who stood on the backs of cosmic turtles who rested atop more elephants and further turtles, ad inifinitum. At least the ancients chose such solid, believable creatures as elephants and turtles. What we are asked to believe today is that the modern reality of Western civilization is a world, donut-shaped, resting atop a house of cards supported by toothpicks and propped up by tissue-paper origami.

The 9/11 Chronicles: Truth Rising is a landmark film. The actors are nothing special, the audio mixing is often sub-par, the cinematography is uninspiring and there is no plot to speak of. Even the subject matter, at times — and especially for the uninitiated — may fail to connect and evoke the emotional response necessary for cinema to be an effective medium for human expression.

Also available in higher quality via BitTorrent download and from infowars.com on DVD.

What you are watching, though, isn’t an entertainment production. It’s not even really a documentary in the traditional sense. But what occurs, powerfully and over and over again is a profound conflict, a human story of several extraordinarily passionate serfs confronting their masters with their own hypocrisy, and refusing to back down in the face of overwhelming force. Whatever you believe about 9/11, whatever you believe about “Islamofascists” and “Axes of Evil”, even the most benighted and deluded of you should recognize — in what they do, what they say, and how they act — the human spirit. The indomitable, courageous and unyielding force of a being strong and brave enough to stand up to his master and say: “WHAT THE FUCK?” and “NO MORE!” and “HOW CAN YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT, AND STILL CALL YOURSELVES HUMAN?”

And again, and again, and again and again, the response comes back, oh so clearly, from those they challenge, those who have sold their souls and their humanity — be it for mere money, for status, for power or just for the chance to be on the team they feel is winning. The response is nearly uniform in its contempt, in its disgust that these mere peons would dare to question their masters. It is entirely uniform, though, in the self-abnegation, the servility displayed by those so-called “humans” who would defend that donut-shaped earth atop that house of cards supported by those toothpicks resting on that tissue-paper origami.

For showing this clearly, the authors of the film have won my endless praise. The bravery and dedication necessary to do this is no trifling matter. These people face death threats, harassment, physical assault, ridicule and legal action everywhere they go.

The fundamental analysis of the 9/11 truth movement is simple: the global elite — whoever they are — using their governmental tools either caused the attacks to happen or let them happen in order to profit from them. Those responsible are criminals of the highest order, and must be brought to justice.

If you accept that analysis, however, you must imagine that this elite is both very powerful and completely divorced from the morality of the common people.

Yet the 9/11 truth movement has adopted a rather strange posture in response. The call goes out over and over again to “demand a new investigation”. Who is going to carry out this investigation? Who shall be charged with carrying out the mechanics of bringing the criminals to justice? Why, the state, of course! That very institution which the fundamental analysis of 9/11 truth puts forward as being the instrument of the attacks. That very institution which is the tool of the elite who wanted the attack to happen. A great many of the people in the movement believe that the state was culpable in producing the destruction and terror of 9/11, yet they persist in appealing to the state to discipline itself.

This is madness! If the fundamental analysis of 9/11 truth is correct, what you are doing is the equivalent of asking a group of war criminals, the darkest evil in their hearts, heavily armed and with the support of millions, to simply turn themselves in. Why on earth would they do that? Why would they take any action whatsoever to disadvantage themselves? And do you really think that trying to shame those responsible will have any effect whatever? If they are responsible, they set aside such petty human concerns as shame, guilt and empathy long, long ago. You might as well approach the rabid dog that just tore your child’s throat out and ask, “now, puppy, don’t you feel ashamed for what you’ve done?”

If the 9/11 truth movement’s cause is just and if it is to succeed in bringing justice, a change of strategy and tactics is required. The state will never deliver justice if it itself is culpable.

US ‘killed 47 Afghan civilians’

A US air strike in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday killed 47 civilians, 39 of them women and children, an Afghan government investigating team says.

Wups, our bad. Haditha, anyone?

McClatchy yesterday kicked off a series of reports on the people held at the US Guantánamo Bay military prison and elsewhere, saying:

An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.

"Guantamo Graffiti" by burge5000 @ flickr.com

From Sunday’s article, We got the wrong guys: America’s prison for terrorists often held the wrong men,

Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo’s Camp Four who hissed “infidel” and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn’t: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.

And from today’s, ‘I guess you can call it torture’: U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases:

American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, the kind that’s used to corral livestock.

The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.

[...]

The brutality at Bagram peaked in December 2002, when U.S. soldiers beat two Afghan detainees, Habibullah and Dilawar, to death as they hung by their wrists.

Dilawar died on Dec. 10, seven days after Habibullah died. He’d been hit in his leg so many times that the tissue was “falling apart” and had “basically been pulpified,” said then-Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the Air Force medical examiner who performed the autopsy on him.

Had Dilawar lived, Rouse said in sworn testimony, “I believe the injury to the legs are so extensive that it would have required amputation.”

Britain, E.U. Plan Iran Sanctions

16 June 2008

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday announced plans for new sanctions against Iran and a small increase in troops for Afghanistan, handing President Bush a symbolic boost on the last day of his weeklong farewell trip to Europe.

Brown, appearing with Bush at a 10 Downing Street news conference, said Britain and the European Union are expected to act to freeze the assets of Iran’s largest bank, Bank Melli, in response to Tehran’s refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

[...]

European action against Bank Melli comes on top of restrictions imposed in October 2007 when the U.S. Treasury Department froze bank assets and halted transactions as part of a broader package of sanctions against state-owned Iranian financial institutions. Bank Melli allegedly sent $100 million to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups from 2002 to 2006, according to Treasury officials.

Treasury has also cut off another major Iranian bank, Bank Saderat, from the U.S. financial system.

“This has been a good trip,” President Bush said at the news conference.

Meanwhile, Israeli sabre-rattling ratchets up another notch, as Der Spiegel reports:

‘MISSION DOABLE’: Israeli Ministers Mull Plans for Military Strike against Iran

The Israeli government no longer believes that sanctions can prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons. A broad consensus in favor of a military strike against Tehran’s nuclear facilities — without the Americans, if necessary — is beginning to take shape.

UPDATE from Reuters via Cryptogon:

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran has withdrawn around $75 billion from Europe to prevent the assets from being blocked under threatened new sanctions over Tehran’s disputed nuclear ambitions, an Iranian weekly said.