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Virginia Lawmakers Threaten 2-A Sanctuaries with National Guard

Posted by M. C. on December 14, 2019

Will Jefferson recognize Virginia…or not?

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/virginia-lawmakers-threaten-2nd-amendment-sanctuaries-with-national-guard/

by Daisy Luther

Virginia is the new battleground of the Second Amendment. After the most recent election, the state’s House and Senate are both Democrat majorities and they haven’t wasted a moment in attempting to gut the gun laws in what has historically been a permissive state.

What are these new gun laws?

The so-called “assault weapon ban” is SB16 and has that perilously vague wording we all know to be incredibly dangerous. In some interpretations, this law, if it passes, could make illegal the ownership or transportation of any semi-automatic gun because extendable magazines are available for it – and you don’t even have to have the extendable mags.

The Virginia Mercury reports:

The new Democratic majorities are expected to pass a variety of gun restrictions, including universal background checks, red flag laws that would allow authorities to take guns from people deemed dangerous and reinstatement of a one-handgun-a-month law…

…But the proposed ban on particular types of firearms — and the prospect of criminal charges for gun owners who didn’t give them up — seemed to stoke the strongest outrage in the 40-plus rural localities that have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries within the past few weeks. Of the dozens of bills already filed for the session that begins in January, Saslaw’s assault weapon bill was the most-read, according to the state’s online legislative system. (source)

Since the above article was written, it should be noted that 2nd Amendment Sanctuary Counties are at 80 and counting. One sheriff has even vowed to deputize citizens should these unconstitutional laws pass.

After the public outcry, Governor Northam has said a provision will be added for current gun owners.

“In this case, the governor’s assault weapons ban will include a grandfather clause for individuals who already own assault weapons, with the requirement they register their weapons before the end of a designated grace period,” Northam spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky said in a statement Monday evening. (source)

Good try, but no cigar.

Gun owners aren’t going to take this lying down.

We’ve written before about Second Amendment sanctuaries popping up across the nation, and now Virginia is joining the fight. According to Gun Rights Watch, practically the entire state is saying NO.

Check out this map.

Map from Gun Rights Watch as of 12/11/19

Watch this article which is being updated regularly with the sanctuary movement.

These counties have passed resolutions vowing not to enforce unconstitutional gun laws. USA Today’s report refers to them as “publicity stunts” and “political statements.”

Richard Schragger, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, who focuses on the intersection of the Constitution and local law, told USA Today:

Rather than challenging an existing statute, the resolutions are “mostly expressive and symbolic” declarations, he said.

“In Virginia, state law supersedes local law. Citizens and local officials have to comply with state law even if a county declares itself to be a Second Amendment sanctuary,” Schragger added. (source)

It seems they may be underestimating the force of thousands of clearly well-armed and outraged Virginians if they think it’s just a publicity stunt. I’m pretty sure that the Virginians I know mean business.

Now the state legislature is threatening the sanctuary counties and officials.

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring says that the gun owners are “being ginned up by the gun lobby” and had a few words to say about the rebellion.

“The resolutions that are being passed are being ginned up by the gun lobby to try to scare people. What we’re talking about here are laws that will make our communities and our streets safer. We’re talking about universal background checks, finally, maybe, Virginia will pass universal background checks to make sure that people who are dangerous, who are criminals and who aren’t permitted to buy guns, won’t be able to buy guns,” said Herring. “So, when Virginia passes these gun safety laws that they will be followed, they will be enforced.” (source)

How exactly do they plan to enforce those laws?

One representative hopes that the law enforcement officers will just resign.

“I would hope they either resign in good conscience, because they cannot uphold the law which they are sworn to uphold, or they’re prosecuted for failure to fulfill their oath,” Democratic Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly told the Washington Examiner of local county police who may refuse to enforce future gun control measures. “The law is the law. If that becomes the law, you don’t have a choice, not if you’re a sworn officer of the law.” (source)

I’m 99.9% sure that any sheriff who has supported such a motion is not going to say, “Oh, it’s the law. My bad, Gerry.”

Rep. Donald McEachin believes cutting off state funds would do the trick, and if that doesn’t work he has another suggestion that is far more drastic.

McEachin also noted that Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam could call the National Guard, if necessary.

“And ultimately, I’m not the governor, but the governor may have to nationalize the National Guard to enforce the law,” he said. “That’s his call, because I don’t know how serious these counties are and how severe the violations of law will be. But that’s obviously an option he has.” (source)

Bringing in the National Guard to confiscate guns or override sanctuaries could only end one way: in bloodshed. Although, one must wonder whether the National Guard members would comply with the governor over their friends, families, and neighbors.

It’s going to get ugly fast. As serious as these legislators are about “getting guns off the street,” Virginians are equally serious about defending their right to bear arms.

It’s the ultimate game of chicken. It looks like we really have reached the point of “out of my cold, dead hands.”

Virginia gun owners, myself included, have no intention whatsoever of complying with this gun grab, and no conciliatory “you can keep them but you have to register them” gesture is going to suffice.

The only question remaining is, who’s ready to die on this hill?

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Appomattox Virginia now a 2A Sanctuary, Protecting Your ...

 

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Cost of America’s Social-Justice Crusade: Beauty, Sublimity, and Wit.

Posted by M. C. on December 14, 2019

Of course, many people on college campuses today are still “condemned to silence”—not out of any respect for faculty authority but because they disagree with the premises of victim politics. Conservative Harvard law students, a professor there recently told me, refrain from challenging the regnant dogmas in class, terrified that their remarks may end up on social media and thus jeopardize their careers.

https://www.city-journal.org/social-justice-ideology

Heather Mac Donald

Social-justice ideology is turning higher education into an engine of progressive political advocacy, according to a new report by the National Association of Scholars. Left-wing activists, masquerading as professors, are infiltrating traditional academic departments or creating new ones—departments such as “Solidarity and Social Justice”—to advance their cause. They are entering the highest rung of college administration, from which perch they require students to take social-justice courses, such as “Native Sexualities and Queer Discourse” or “Hip-hop Workshop,” and attend social-justice events—such as a Reparations, Repatriation, and Redress Symposium or a Power and Privilege Symposium—in order to graduate.

But social-justice education is merely a symptom of an even deeper perversion of academic values: the cult of race and gender victimology, otherwise known as “diversity.” The diversity cult is destroying the very foundations of our civilization. It is worth first exploring, however, why social-justice education is an oxymoron.

Why shouldn’t an academic aspire to correcting perceived social ills? The nineteenth-century American land-grant universities and the European research universities were founded, after all, on the premise that knowledge helps society progress. But social justice is a different beast entirely. When a university pursues social justice, it puts aside its traditional claim to authority: the disinterested search for knowledge. We accord universities enormous privileges. Their denizens are sheltered from the hurly-burly of the marketplace on the assumption that they will pursue truth wherever it will take them, unaffected by political or economic pressures. The definition of social justice, however, is deeply political, entailing a large number of contestable claims about the causes of socioeconomic inequality. Social-justice proponents believe that those claims are settled, and woe to anyone who challenges them on a college campus. There are, however, alternative explanations—besides oppression and illegitimate power—for ongoing inequalities, taboo though they may be in academia.

A social-justice agenda, therefore, is a political commitment, and politics is not disinterested. Indeed, it is often tribal. Such tribalism caricatures political opponents and whitewashes political leaders, ignoring facts along the way, as shown both by the frenzied hostility to Donald Trump on the left and by his elevation to status of wise statesman and paragon of truth-telling by his most enthusiastic supporters, including in the conservative intelligentsia.

In his 1918 lecture, “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber criticized the conflation of intellectual work with political action: “Whenever the man of science introduces his personal value judgment, a full understanding of the facts ceases.” The primary task of a teacher, Weber said, is to help his students recognize what Weber called “inconvenient” facts—inconvenient, that is, to the students’ party opinions. And for every party opinion, Weber observed, some facts are extremely inconvenient. Our political understanding of the world is partial; we will emphasize certain aspects of reality that buttress our values and deemphasize other aspects that contradict those values. According to Weber, when an academic pronounces on how one should act, he becomes a prophet or demagogue, neither of whom belong on the academic platform. Read the rest of this entry »

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Putting the ‘Christ’ Back in Christmas | The American Spectator

Posted by M. C. on December 14, 2019

A little later, Scrooge’s poor clerk Bob Cratchit desperately praises his invalid son, Tiny Tim: “He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember, upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.” But it is Tiny Tim himself, and Dickens, who speak for all during this wonderful holy season, clear enough for even Hollywood to hear, “God bless us, every one!”

https://spectator.org/putting-the-christ-back-in-christmas/

by

President Donald Trump added a radical twist to the annual National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony last Friday by invoking the divinity of Jesus Christ. You would think revering the season’s central figure would be expected, but you’d be wrong. Although his predecessor, Barack Obama, mentioned the Nativity in general terms as “the story of a child born far from home … who’d ultimately spread a message that has endured for more than 2,000 years,” the more direct Trump went right to the sacred heart of the matter.

“As the Bible tells us, when the wise men had come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and worshipped him. Christians give thanks that the Son of God came down to save humanity,” Trump said. In fulfilling his promise to renormalize the greeting “Merry Christmas” away from the deliberately vague “happy holidays,” Trump venerated the Yuletide’s raison d’être. Hollywood didn’t get the memo, though. That’s no surprise; the industry has long had a problem with religiosity.

Last week, ABC re-broadcast the perennial classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas, on its 54th network run. By now almost everybody has seen the Peanuts holiday special, along with its show-stopping climax. Right after Charlie Brown, depressed by the commerciality of his Christmas, cries, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?,” Linus calmly responds, “Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about.” He climbs onto the school stage, gets spotlighted, and proclaims the Gospel according to Luke, King James Version, verbatim on national television:

And there were, in the same country, shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them. The glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not, for behold I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there were with the angel a multitude of Heavenly hosts praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace and goodwill toward men.”

This scene would be anathema to any contemporary Hollywood production, and it was controversial even in 1965. Rookie animation producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez actually argued against it, afraid it would kill their big break. They were already on thin ice for two revolutionary decisions on a kids’ show: the adult jazz score by little-known composer Vince Guaraldi, and having child non-actors voice the dialogue. A literal deus ex machina ending was suicidal, they thought. “There’s never been any animation that I know of from the Bible,” said Mendelson. “It’s kind of risky.” But the third man on the team disagreed and demanded they use it — Charles Schulz, the Peanuts creator. “If we’re going to do a Christmas special, we’ve really got to do it the right way and talk about what Christmas is all about,” said Schulz, a Sunday school teacher. “If we don’t do it, who will?”

When CBS executives saw the finished product, they balked. “You can’t read from the Bible on network television,” one of them declared. But they had an unbreakable commitment to the show’s sponsor, Coca-Cola, so the special aired on schedule, December 9, 1965. That night, A Charlie Brown Christmas drew 15 million viewers and a 45 percent share, coming in second for the week behind Bonanza. It has been an annual ratings winner every year since, and its overt Christian message has been welcomed the world over. I remember sitting in fifth grade at Little Flower Catholic School outside of Washington, D.C., the day after one showing, when old Sister Gabriel gushed about the Luke reading to my class. We kids accepted the Linus recitation as perfectly normal. Yet to the Hollywood powers that be, it remains an unfathomable enigma.

As late as 1977, the same CBS network ran one of the greatest films ever made, Ben Hur, minus its brilliant, beautiful pre-credits sequence — a depiction of the Nativity story. It starts with Joseph and Mary’s passage into Bethlehem, followed by a series of masterful painting-like shots. To a glorious score by Miklós Rózsa, we see a star-filled night sky, with one bright star traveling the screen left to right. It moves over Bethlehem, watched silently by villagers, by the three eastern kings on their camels, and then by shepherds in the field. The star flies past the city, stops, and shines a beam of light on a simple stable. More villagers stand, curious, outside the stable looking in, and they make room for the three kings bearing gifts. The royals kneel down in adoration before the inauspicious Joseph and Mary and her baby. One of the villagers steps back from the rest and blows a horn, signaling the occurrence of something momentous. Then the credits roll — which is where the CBS broadcast began. This must have been an easy decision for the network suits, deeming the sequence too time-wasting. Why should they have cared that the full title of the original book — the bestselling American novel of the 19th century — is Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ?

I just reread an even older novel, the most famous Christmas-themed fictional work of all time, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The timeless tale of a bitter misanthrope’s Yuletide-prompted redemption avoids overt religiosity while stressing the unique goodness of Christmas. It has non-clerical charity workers and spirits rather than angels. Yet Christianity permeates the work. Early in it, the accursed Marley’s ghost moans, “Why did I walk through crowds of fellow beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode?” A little later, Scrooge’s poor clerk Bob Cratchit desperately praises his invalid son, Tiny Tim: “He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember, upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.” But it is Tiny Tim himself, and Dickens, who speak for all during this wonderful holy season, clear enough for even Hollywood to hear, “God bless us, every one!”

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Two for One Holiday Special – Kunstler

Posted by M. C. on December 14, 2019

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/two-for-one-holiday-special/

James Howard Kunstler

Hillary Clinton sure got her money’s worth with the Fusion GPS deal: it induced a three-year psychotic break in the body politic, destroyed the legitimacy of federal law enforcement, turned a once-proud, free, and rational press into an infernal engine of bad faith, and is finally leading her Democratic Party to an ignominious suicide. And the damage is far from complete. It’s even possible that Mrs. Clinton will return to personally escort the party over the cliff when, as is rumored lately, she jumps into the primary contest and snatches the gonfalon of leadership from the ailing old man of the sclerotic status quo, Uncle Joe Biden.

The citizens of this foundering polity have been subjected to a stunning doubleheader of political spectacle clear through the week. On Monday, the Horowitz Report was briefly celebrated by the Left for claiming “no bias” and a “reasonable predicate” for the RussiaGate mess — until auditors actually got to read the 400-plus-page document and discovered that it was absolutely stuffed with incriminating details that Mr. Horowitz was too polite, too coy, or too faint-hearted to identify as acts worthy of referral for prosecution.

Mr. Barr, the attorney general, and US attorney John Durham immediately stepped up to set the record straight, namely, that this was hardly the end of the matter and that they were privy to fact-trains of evidence that would lead, by-and-by, to a quite different conclusion. This reality-test was greeted, of course, with shrieking for their dismissal from the Jacobin Left. But then at mid-week, Mr. Horowitz put in a personal appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee and left no doubt that entire RussiaGate extravaganza was spawned by Fusion GPS’s utterly false Steele dossier and the so-called “Intel Community’s” zeal for weaponizing it to overthrow the president…

The utter falsity of the Steele dossier seems not to have yet penetrated the minds of Dean Baquet and Martin Baron, editors of The New York Times and The Washington Post, the head cheerleaders for the seditious coup by the security state. Their obdurate mendacity can no longer be attributed to a simple quest for clicks and eyeballs. It speaks to a sickness of mind that has infected the whole thinking class of America as it succumbed to the ultimate smashing of boundaries: the one between what is real and what is not real (or what is true and what is not true.)…

A trial in the senate would be a ripe entertainment fer sure! Bring it on! For one thing, the procedure would ascertain finally that Mr. Eric Ciaramella does not qualify as a “whistleblower” but is rather a rogue CIA agent (from a rogue agency) helping to carry out a seditious conspiracy. The defense should call him to the stand, along with his enabler Michael Atkinson, the “Intel Community” Inspector General who flouted and altered the rules in the whistleblower ploy — and who, by the way, was formerly at the center of the RussiaGate mess when he worked as chief counsel to then assistant attorney general John P. Carlin, one of the instigators of the “Crossfire Hurricane” overture to RussiaGate. It could benefit the nation to hear testimony from shrinking violet Gina Haspel, the current CIA Director nobody has ever heard of. What does she know about Mr. Ciaramella’s role in this melodrama, who detailed him to the National Security Council, who supervised him, and who exactly were his associates?

And, of course, not a few fair-minded people would be interested to hear from Rep. Adam Schiff, who engineered the “whistleblower’s” entry into his concocted UkraineGate sequel to the now discredited RussiaGate ruse. Get Mr. Schiff under oath. He is almost certain to lie about his activities, and that will certainly get him expelled from congress in disgrace, along with losing his license to practice law. Bring in Hunter Biden and ask him to explain whether he was busted for crack cocaine in a rent-a-car before-or-after he was hired to serve on the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company. Bring in Lt. Col. Vindman, bring in Daniel Goldman, bring them all in and compel their testimony under penalty of perjury. This will eventually get America right in its weakened mind.

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Intelligence Agencies Make Their Living By Lying, But Now ...

 

 

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Google Marxism: Internet Ideology and the Academics Who Perpetuate It | Michael Rectenwald – YouTube

Posted by M. C. on December 14, 2019

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Be seeing you | The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan ...

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Report: Some ‘Smart Toys’ Have Huge Security Vulnerabilities

Posted by M. C. on December 13, 2019

Your kids. Easy targets.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/12/13/report-some-smart-toys-have-huge-security-vulnerabilities/#

by Lucas Nolan

A recent report alleges that a number of “smart toys” have glaring security vulnerabilities that could place children at risk. In some cases, weak bluetooth security could allow strangers to digitally eavesdrop on children as they play.

British consumer group Which has warned parents that a number of “smart toys” for children come with security issues that could place children at risk. The group tested a number of toys, including karaoke machines and walkie talkie devices.

Two karaoke toys tested include Singing Machine SMK250PP and a microphone sold by TENVA, both of which utilize Bluetooth technology but do not use authentication methods such as a PIN code to secure the devices, allowing anyone withing Bluetooth range to connect to the device. The toymakers, Singing Machine, allege that users need to manually enter Bluetooth pairing mode but Which argues that anyone can connect to the device when it’s turned on.

Another pair of walkie talkies manufactured by toymaker KidiGear comes with a pairing flaw allowing strangers to connect to them despite the manufacturer claiming that the devices use “encrypted digital communication” technology. “The pairing of KidiGear Walkie Talkies cannot be initiated by a single device. Both devices have to start pairing at the same time within a short 30 second window in order to connect,” the manufacturer explains.

Other toys including the Mattel FFB15 Bloxels, the Sphero Mini interactive toy, and Boxer all have their own major security flaws which could place children at risk, according to the report. The Mattel Bloxels toy, for instance, allows children to create and upload their own games to the web, but Which found no content moderation whatsoever in the games…

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zuckschumer-640x480

 

 

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been BLOCKED from seeing key evidence from US authorities who want to extradite him for ‘leaking sensitive military data’, court hears

Posted by M. C. on December 13, 2019

Belmarsh=British Guantanamo? Maybe.

UK = US sock puppet? Definitely.

Julian is dead. We just don’t know it yet.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7788673/WikiLeaks-founder-Julian-Assange-BLOCKED-seeing-key-evidence-authorities.html

By Terri-ann Williams For Mailonline

 

  • Julian Assange faces accusations of leaking United States’ military material
  • The 48-year-old appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court over video-link
  • Currently being held at HMP Belmarsh, one of the UK’s most notorious prisons

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is yet to be shown key evidence in the case brought against him by the American authorities, his extradition hearing was told today.

The 48-year-old, faces accusations of leaking sensitive United States’ military material between January and May 2010.

The Australian national appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court over video-link from HMP Belmarsh white haired and clean shaven with a grey jumper and spoke to confirm his identity.

The Americans want to extradite him to US soil so he can be prosecuted for conspiring with army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning for leaking classified documents…

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Julian Assange pictured as he is led out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in handcuffs following his sensational arrest by British police earlier this year

 

 

 

 

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UK’s Johnson claims Brexit mandate as Tories secure majority

Posted by M. C. on December 13, 2019

Wow! This shocks me.

Does this mean the unwashed masses want to throw off the EU yoke? I find that hard to believe.

Getting something other than a fake Brexit will still be difficult.

https://apnews.com/0980b30ccff3be31ca82d99072bfeb73

By JILL LAWLESS, DANICA KIRKA and MIKE CORDER

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has won a thumping majority of seats in Britain’s Parliament — a decisive outcome to a Brexit-dominated election that should allow Johnson to fulfill his plan to take the U.K. out of the European Union next month.

With 642 of the 650 results declared on Friday, the Conservatives had 358 seats and t he main opposition Labour Party 203.

Johnson said it looked like the Conservatives had “a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done.”

The victory makesJohnson the most electorally successful Conservative leader since Margaret Thatcher, another politician who was loved and loathed in almost equal measure. It was a disaster for left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who faced calls for his resignation even as the results rolled in.

Corbyn called the result “very disappointing” for his party and said he would not lead Labour into another election, though he resisted calls to quit immediately.

Results poured in early Friday showing a substantial shift in support to the Conservatives from Labour. In the last election in 2017, the Conservatives won 318 seats and Labour 262…

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Listen to his followers cheer. They did not vote for Boris.

Why do fellow countryman tolerate this? Makes me think Brexit still won’t be easy.

 

 

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Why Did the Saudis Kill U.S. Sailors While Three Others Filmed It? | The American Conservative

Posted by M. C. on December 13, 2019

University of Chicago’s Robert A. Pape found that terrorists almost always confronted foreign occupation. After studying more than 2,100 suicide attacks, he concluded that “overall, foreign military occupation accounts for 98.5 percent—and the deployment of American combat forces for 92 percent—of all the 1,833 suicide terrorist attacks around the world” between 2004 and 2009.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-did-the-saudis-kill-u-s-sailors-while-three-others-filmed-it/

We need to get over the old trope that they hate us because we are free.

The U.S. military is training Saudi Arabian pilots here in States, who later leave to slaughter Yemeni civilians thousands of miles away. Unfortunately, some of that violence was turned against us, when a Saudi trainee killed three American sailors at Pensacola Air Station on December 6.

In fact, a half dozen Saudis were arrested in the incident. Three of them apparently filmed the murders, presumably to post online. Yet afterward President Donald Trump spent more time justifying the Saudi royals than supporting the victims’ families.

Every time a terrorist commits murder and mayhem, Americans ask why? U.S. officials usually insist that it is because we are so “good.” If only.

Why terrorists kill should not be a mystery since they themselves tell us why. And none of them has said it is because the U.S. has the First Amendment, holds democratic elections, or leads the world in charitable giving.

Consider Mohammed Saeed al-Shamrani, the Saudi pilot-in-training at Pensacola. On Twitter he declared: “I’m against evil, and America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil.”…

Almost a decade ago Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born naturalized American citizen, attempted to set off a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square. Thankfully, he failed to set the timer properly. Then he waited two days to flee the country, giving authorities the time to identify and arrest him.

Ajani Marwat, the intelligence officer with the New York Police Department who investigated Shahzad, explained: “It’s simple. It’s American policies in his country. That’s it. Americans are so closed-minded. They have no idea what’s going on in the rest of the world. And he did know. Every time you turn on al-Jazeera, they show our people being killed.” A terrorist organizer in Pakistan told Marwat: “We don’t have to do anything to attract them. The Americans and the Pakistani government do our work for us. With the drone attacks targeting the innocents who live [here], the sympathies of most of the nation are always with us.”

At his September 2010 sentencing Shahzad declared himself to be “part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations. I’m avenging the attacks because the Americans only care about their people, but they don’t care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die.” He vowed that “until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims, and stops reporting the Muslims to its government, we will be attacking U.S.”

Federal  judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum made the obvious point that he targeted civilians. Shahzad responded that in a democracy it was civilians who “select the government.” How about children, asked Cedarbaum? Shahzad answered: “Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It’s a war, and in war, they kill people. They’re killing all Muslims.” …

Polls found that large majorities of Arabs and Muslims shared these criticisms of U.S. policy despite expressing admiration for American values and products. University of Chicago’s Robert A. Pape found that terrorists almost always confronted foreign occupation. After studying more than 2,100 suicide attacks, he concluded that “overall, foreign military occupation accounts for 98.5 percent—and the deployment of American combat forces for 92 percent—of all the 1,833 suicide terrorist attacks around the world” between 2004 and 2009. The solution? Said Pape: “By ending the perception that the United States and its allies are occupiers, we can cut the fuse to the suicide terrorism threat.”

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Libertarian case for open borders | Open Borders: The Case

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The US Government Lied About the Afghanistan War – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on December 13, 2019

“The Afghanistan Papers” is a bright, shining lie by omission. Yes, our military and civilian leaders lied to us about Afghanistan. But they could never have spread their murderous BS—thousands of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Afghans killed, trillions of dollars wasted—without media organizations like the Washington Post, which served as unquestioning government stenographers.

What was my reward for being right while everyone else was wrong? Hundreds of death threats. Getting fired by my client newspapers and magazines.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/12/no_author/the-u-s-government-lied-about-the-afghanistan-war/

By Ted Rall
Common Dreams

18 years and tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars too late, it’s nice to see the media finally shame these scumbags and their government handlers. But they ought to save a big portion of the blame for themselves.

“In ten years or so, we’ll leak the truth,” the Dead Kennedys sang. “But by then it’s only so much paper.”

But it might just score you a Pulitzer Prize.

Award bait and bragging rights are no doubt the principal goals of The Washington Post’s self-congratulatory data dump, “The Afghanistan Papers.” As the headline implies, the 2000 pages that a court ordered the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction to release to Jeff Bezos’ newspaper paints a Robert McNamara-esque portrait of not-so-best-or-bright Bush and Obama Administration bozos privately admitting what they knew all along—that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was always an unwinnable, counterproductive mistake—at the same time they were telling the American people that victory in the post-9/11 “good war” was right around the corner. All we had to win was win Afghan hearts and minds.

“The [I.G.] documents also contradict a long chorus of public statements from U.S. presidents, military commanders and diplomats who assured Americans year after year that they were making progress in Afghanistan and the war was worth fighting,” the Post reported. “Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public. They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul—and at the White House—to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.”

“The Afghanistan Papers” is a bright, shining lie by omission. Yes, our military and civilian leaders lied to us about Afghanistan. But they could never have spread their murderous BS—thousands of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Afghans killed, trillions of dollars wasted—without media organizations like the Washington Post, which served as unquestioning government stenographers.

Press outlets like the Post and New York Times weren’t merely idiots used to disseminate pro-war propaganda. They actively censored people who knew we never should have gone into Afghanistan and tried to tell American voters the truth.

People like me.

I was among the tiny minority of journalists and commentators who opposed the Afghanistan war from the very beginning. Nine days after 9/11, I published the first of my cartoons pointing out that Al Qaeda was in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, so there was no moral or legal justification for invading. As the war dragged on I pointed out that the men and women in charge of the war didn’t have a clue about Afghanistan or the Afghan people. According to “The Afghanistan Papers,” those men and women knew they were screwing up, wouldn’t admit their ignorance and refused to bring in experts.

I went to Afghanistan to check things out for myself. It was obvious the U.S. didn’t stand a chance there. “The principal goal of this adventure in imperialistic vengeance, it seems obvious, should be to install a friendly government in Kabul. But we’re winning neither hearts nor minds among either the commoners or the leadership of the current regime apparent,” I wrote from Afghanistan on December 11, 2001. “And so we’ve lost this war, not because they’re good or we’re not, but because of who we are. The American Empire can’t spend the bodies or the time or the cash to fix this crazyass place, because in the final analysis, election-year W. was right—we’re not nation builders…we ought to tally our dead, write up our losses, and count ourselves lucky to still be called a superpower.” My piece, for The Village Voice, was titled “How We Lost Afghanistan.”

It was published eighteen years ago. But not in the Post. They didn’t want to hear what lefties like me had to say.

They still don’t.

Afghanistan was not a passing fancy for me. I wrote hundreds of essays and drew hundreds of cartoons urging an end to the madness. It was lonely. Even Democrats liked the Afghan war; they called it the right war while Iraq was the dumb one.

I went back to the country, traveling independently as an unembedded reporter, several times. I wrote the first book about the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the only book about oil pipeline politics in that country, a book placing Afghanistan in the context of Central Asia, and yet another book comparing the state of Afghanistan when Obama said we were pulling out—another lie—with how it was at the start of the war.

What was my reward for being right while everyone else was wrong? Hundreds of death threats. Getting fired by my client newspapers and magazines. It’s hard to believe now but back in 2004 George W. Bush was popular and being compared to Winston Churchill; that was the year that the “liberal” New York Times and Washington Post stopped running my work.

Major news outlets and book reviewers ignored my books. Editors refused to hire me. Producers wouldn’t book me. Anyone opposed to the Afghanistan war was censored from U.S. corporate media.

Not that Afghanistan was ignored. It was the subject of countless analysis pieces and opinion articles in American newspapers—all of it pro-war propaganda. There were thousands of television and radio stories about the Afghan war on radio and television. Corporate media repeatedly trotted out the same retired generals, former CIA officers, and random right-wing warmongers for quotes and analysis. Never, ever did they invite critics or opponents of U.S. interventionism in Afghanistan to share their thoughts with readers, listeners and viewers.

Nothing has changed. Whenever there is a foreign policy “crisis,” you will never read or hear or see someone completely opposed to U.S. involvement given a voice in the media. Certainly not in the Post.

So, 18 years and tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars too late, it’s nice to see the media finally shame these scumbags and their government handlers. But they ought to save a big portion of the blame for themselves.

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