Bad Luck Brian can't catch a break

Henry Hazlitt: "The first thing that happens, for example, when a law is passed that no one shall be paid less than $106 for a forty-hour week is that no one who is not worth $106 a week to an employer will be employed at all. You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage you substitute unemployment. You do harm all around, with no comparable compensation."

Oh, Barack--you slay me

Gene Healy: "For three years now, thanks to Obama administration leaks, we've known that the president claims the right to summarily execute American citizens far from any battlefield. He even joked about it at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner in 2010, telling the Jonas Brothers to stay away from his daughters: "Two words for you: 'predator drones.' You will never see it coming." (Oh, Barack—you slay me.)"

http://reason.com/archives/2013/02/12/obamas-executive-death-warrants

Human sympathy

Elihu Burritt: "If there is one sentiment that more than another marks the civilization of the present day, it is the interest felt in human life. Sympathy with human suffering is the most distinctive characteristic of our age. Never before in the world's history were there such associated efforts to diminish or prevent suffering. The societies organized for this purpose are almost innumerable. Great calamities by fire, pestilence, or famine are almost drowned by the flood of benevolence thus brought to bear upon them...A shipwreck, a railway accident, or any other catastrophe which destroys human life, produces the same feeling in the community. Sometimes a single life put in peril will fill a nation's heart with anxiety and grief.

"...Now compare the feeling with which the community hears of the loss or peril of a few human lives by these accidents with the feelings with which the news of the death or mutilation of thousands of men, equally precious, on the field of battle is received. How different is the valuation! How different in universal sympathy! War seems to reverse our best and boasted civilization, to carry back human society to the dark ages of barbarism, to cheapen the public appreciation of human life almost to the standard of brute beasts. This has always seemed to me one of war's worst works, because it destroys also the sense of the ruin and misery which the sword makes in the world."

The sword

"The warning that "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword" goes not only for individuals but for entire societies. It is a warning to all of us. A country or a society that lives with the violence of pre-emptive war in fact self-destructs."

http://the-free-foundation.org/tst2-11-2013.html

Guilt

Jacob Hornberger: "However, the problem is that the military can never acknowledge the veteran’s feelings of guilt because that would imply that the U.S. government was wrong to send the troops into Iraq. That’s just not going to happen. The government has to continue maintaining its official line — that it was right to invade the country and Iraq was wrong to defend against the invasion.

How can a person be healed of guilt when he’s being told that he didn’t do anything wrong and that he’s really just suffering from combat stress? Doesn’t relief from guilt require an acknowledgement that the person has done something wrong, as compared to something stressful? Unlike combat stress, doesn’t guilt require confession, repentance, and forgiveness?"

http://fff.org/2013/02/05/guilt-not-ptsd-is-what-afflicts-iraq-war-veterans/

Drone resources

Below is an email I sent to my dad in response to his request for articles backing up what I had been talking about regarding the use of drones.

Dad,

I'll link the articles about Obama's drone war you requested in a minute, but I just wanted to write a couple thoughts.

It is possible to love your country as your home and think it's a beautiful place with all of your family, friends, roots, and familiar surroundings, and to simultaneously hate the government that rules you, tramples on your natural rights, and carries out incredible evils both at home and abroad in your name and with your money (I believe we agree on this, but I am just reiterating). In fact, this is the spirit with which this country was born. If we love our home, we should hate the gang that claims dominion over our home, steals ever-increasing amounts our money, and prevents us from living as free individuals. To add insult to injury, this gang pats itself on the back for its "service" and builds statues and monuments to glorify itself. It's sickening.

Further, I hate the State because of how it has steadily and deliberately chipped away at an essential part of our humanity and caused us to become callous and indifferent, and even supportive at times, of the killing of other innocent human beings (always for the benefit of the State, although it lies and says it does so for our safety). Just the first few things that come to mind are:

- We've been taught to justify the only nuclear attack in history, carried out by our own government against two cities in Japan with over 200,000 deaths--the vast majority of whom were innocent men, women and children. 

- We've been taught that the price "is worth it" for the Clinton administration to starve to death half a million children in Iraq in order to achieve the foreign policy objectives of the U.S. government. 

- We've been taught that the enemy of our enemy is our friend, as that Joseph Stalin admirer--Franklin D. Roosevelt--teamed with the ultra-murderous Soviet Union to defeat its enemy, the also ultra-murderous Nazi Germany, thus empowering Communist rule for several decades and resulting in the deaths of tens of more millions of innocent human beings (some victory WWII was!) 

- We've been mercilessly propagandized and brainwashed to believe that it has been worth trillions spent, precious liberties trampled upon and lost, thousands of soldiers dead and many magnitudes more innocent lives vaporized to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here"....which has primarily meant occupying other sovereign countries and killing people who try to defend their home from foreign invaders. 

- We've been convinced that it is ok for our government to use methods that are quite obviously terrorism and torture to try to get the "bad guys". Sadly and shamefully, the U.S. government has killed far, far more innocent people than Al Qaeda could ever dream of killing!

- We've been taught to revere power, to cheer that we always "win" wars, to love that our country has the strongest and biggest government in the history of the world and that it can dispense crushing force against anyone it chooses for any reason (of course, without thinking that a government this powerful is a direct threat to each and every one of us)

Anyway, here are some articles on Obama's drone war, some with select quotes that I had pulled out for other postings or emails from previous times.

AMERICA’S DRONE TERRORISM - The Future of Freedom Foundation

"U.S. drone strike policies cause considerable and under-accounted-for harm to the daily lives of ordinary civilians, beyond death and physical injury. Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves.

The U.S. practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims. Some community members shy away from gathering in groups."

In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats - The Guardian - UK

"It must follow that what applies to the children murdered [in Newtown] by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as important, just as real, just as deserving of the world's concern. Yet there are no presidential speeches or presidential tears for them, no pictures on the front pages of the world's newspapers, no interviews with grieving relatives, no minute analysis of what happened and why." 

America's deadly double tap drone attacks are 'killing 49 people for every known terrorist in Pakistan' - The Daily Mail - UK

"Just one in 50 victims of America’s deadly drone strikes in Pakistan are terrorists – while the rest are innocent civilians, a new report claimed today.

The authoritative joint study, by Stanford and New York Universities, concludes that men, women and children are being terrorised by the operations ’24 hours-a-day’.

And the authors lay much of the blame on the use of the ‘double-tap’ strike where a drone fires one missile – and then a second as rescuers try to drag victims from the rubble. One aid agency said they had a six-hour delay before going to the scene." 

The authoritative joint study, by Stanford and New York Universities, concludes that men, women and children are being terrorised by the operations ’24 hours-a-day’.

And the authors lay much of the blame on the use of the ‘double-tap’ strike where a drone fires one missile – and then a second as rescuers try to drag victims from the rubble. One aid agency said they had a six-hour delay before going to the scene."

PRIVATE MURDERS VERSUS GOVERNMENT MURDERS - The Future of Freedom Foundation

The December 14 murder of 20 children and 6 women at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, has garnered vast media attention and caused countless people with no connection to the victims to grieve for them. This is not a new phenomenon: nearly all mass murders carried out by civilians generate the same type of coverage and response.

But what of the far more numerous incidents of government murder of innocents? Most of them hardly make the news at all; fewer still produce widespread outpourings of sympathy.

US drone strikes target rescuers in Pakistan – and the west stays silent - The Guardian - UK

Attacking rescuers – a tactic long deemed by the US a hallmark of terrorism – is now routinely used by the Obama administration

“Militants”: media propaganda - Salon

To avoid counting civilian deaths, Obama re-defined "militant" to mean "all military-age males in a strike zone"

U.S. drones targeting rescuers and mourners - Salon

A new amply documented report demonstrates the use of American tactics that are almost certainly war crimes

How Team Obama Justifies the Killing of a 16-Year-Old American - The Atlantic

Asked about the strike that killed him, a senior adviser to the president's campaign suggests he should've "had a more responsible father."

Obama victory infuriates Pakistani drone victims - Reuters

"The 28-year-old Pakistani accuses the president of robbing him of his father, three brothers and a nephew, all killed in a U.S. drone aircraft attack a month after Obama first took office.

The same person who attacked my home has gotten re-elected," he told Reuters in the capital, Islamabad, where he fled after the attack on his village in South Waziristan, one of several ethnic Pashtun tribal areas on the Afghan border.

"Since yesterday, the pressure on my brain has increased. I remember all of the pain again."

How Drones Help Al Qaeda - NY Times

"Unfortunately, liberal voices in the United States are largely ignoring, if not condoning, civilian deaths and extrajudicial killings in Yemen — including the assassination of three American citizens in September 2011, including a 16-year-old. During George W. Bush’s presidency, the rage would have been tremendous. But today there is little outcry, even though what is happening is in many ways an escalation of Mr. Bush’s policies.

Defenders of human rights must speak out. America’s counterterrorism policy here is not only making Yemen less safe by strengthening support for A.Q.A.P., but it could also ultimately endanger the United States and the entire world."

New Stanford/NYU study documents the civilian terror from Obama's drones - The Guardian - UK

New research shows the terrorizing impact of drones in Pakistan, false statements from US officials, and how it increases the terror threat

LEGAL AND MORAL DILEMMAS OF DRONE STRIKES IN A FREE SOCIETY - Young Americans for Liberty

President Obama: Warrior in Chief -  NY Times

The real definition of Terrorism - Salon

Obama escalates in Yemen – again - Salon

The killing of Awlaki’s 16-year-old son - Salon

Inauguration day

Today is MLK day--a day recognizing a man who said, "When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men.” Today is also inauguration day--a day that a man who is killing and terrorizing innocent civilians with armed, flying, remote control robots will give a nice speech.

http://original.antiwar.com/solomon/2013/01/16/king-i-have-a-dream-obama-i-have-a-drone/

"Gun control"

I do not doubt that many people supporting more "gun control" in the wake of horrific tragedies do so with sincere concern and good intentions. However, I think it is important to consider what "gun control" actually means. Laws will be written by politicians, and then obedience will be coerced with the threat of gun violence by men and women in government uniforms. That means further aggression against people equally as innocent as the victims in Newtown.

The solution to this problem requires a radical change of hearts and minds. Until we as a society flatly reject the initiation of force, the vicious cycle will continue.

Did you know...?

1. Violent crime -- including violent crime using guns -- has dropped massively over the past 20 years.
2. Mass shootings have not increased in recent years.
3. Schools are getting safer.
4. There Are More Guns in Circulation Than Ever Before.
5. "Assault Weapons Bans" Are Generally Ineffective.