The Demonization of Dissent in the United States (tags)
On Oct. 3rd, 2012 Wired.Com’s (or Wired Magazine’s) Danger Room came out with Spencer Ackerman’s story of a leaked although unclassified U.S. Army “chart” that lists indicators and behaviors for identifying people who are supposedly becoming radicalized to terrorist potential. But what is so startling about this Army’s presumptively rational analysis (more like propagandic analysis) is its broad categorization of symptoms for identifying those thought alienated enough to become potential terrorist material.
Waging Total War on Islam (tags)
anti-war
Drones: A slam-dunk weapons system or our ticket to hell? (tags)
"Whatever the short-term gains from introducing drone warfare in these past years, we are now locked into the 24/7 assassination trade - with the US's own set of non-suicide bombers on the job into eternity. This may pass for sanity in Washington, but it's surely helping to pave the road to hell. Haven't any of these folks ever seen a sci-fi film? Are none of them Terminator fans? Are they sure they want to open the way to unlimited robot war, keeping in mind that, if this is the latest game in town, it won't remain mainly an American one for long. And just wait until the first Iranian drone takes out the first Balochi guerrilla supported by American funds somewhere in Pakistan. Then let's see just what we think about the right of any nation to summarily execute its enemies - and anyone else in the vicinity - by drone. Is this actually what we Americans want to be known for? And if we let this happen, and General Atomics is working double or triple shifts to turn out ever more, ever-newer generations of robot warriors, while the nation suffers 10.2% unemployment, who exactly will think about shutting them down?