2011 A Banner Year For US Arms Trafficking

Once again, the NYT reports the news and obfuscates it at the same time. Persian Gulf countries are not seriously concerned about Iran; if the regimes of those countries are worried about anything, it is (as with the U.S. government) the democratic aspirations of their populations. What truly lies behind the buying spree is the fact that the U.S. economy is built around militarism--we have a war-based economy. If we don't sell this stuff (at undoubtedly inflated prices to regimes that have no real need for it), our economy, which is already anemic at best, will head into further decline. The Persian Gulf regimes are simply "scratching our back" so that, when the next popular uprising occurs within their own borders, they can be assured that the U.S. government will "scratch theirs."

It is anti-democratic corruption all around.

Revolt Is All We Have Left

Truthout Interviews Chris Hedges About Why Revolt Is All We Have Left

Dangerous Extremist (part three)

I had gathered a big bouquet of various flowers and was walking home, when I noticed in a ditch, in full bloom, a wonderful crimson thistle of the kind which is known among us as a "Tartar" and is carefully mowed around, and, when accidentally mowed down, is removed from the hay by the mowers, so that it will not prick their hands. I took it into my head to pick this thistle and put it in the center of the bouquet. I got down into the ditch and, having chased away a hairy bumblebee that had stuck itself into the center of the flower and sweetly and lazily fallen asleep there, I set about picking the flower. But it was very difficult: not only was the stem prickly on all sides, even through the handkerchief I had wrapped around my hand, but it was so terribly tough that I struggled with it for some five minutes, tearing the fibers one by one. When I finally tore off the flower, the stem was all ragged, and the flower no longer seemed so fresh and beautiful. Besides, in its coarseness and gaudiness it did not fit in with the delicate flowers of the bouquet. I was sorry that I had vainly destroyed and thrown away a flower that had been beautiful in its place. "But what energy and life force," I thought, remembering the effort it had cost me to tear off the flower. "How staunchly it defended itself, and how dearly it sold its life" ... And I remembered an old story from the Caucasus, part of which I saw, part of which I heard from witnesses, and part of which I imagined to myself...

Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat (Pevear and Volokhonsky translation), 375.

Notes On The Victory March...

The US debacle in Afghanistan

Dangerous Extremist (part two)

Cochise.

Dangerous Extremist

"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right...A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, private, powder-monkeys and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to wars, against their wills, aye, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? Or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts, a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments..."

--Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience.