Remember folks:
(Image via Johnny Brainwash)
Tagfascism
The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.
“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”
The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.
“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”
It’s fascism whether it applies to people you like or not:
Sixteen people banned from entering the UK were “named and shamed” by the Home Office today.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to make public the names of 16 people banned since October so others could better understand what sort of behaviour Britain was not prepared to tolerate.
The list includes hate preachers, anti-gay protesters and a far- right US talk show host.
“I think it’s important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it’s a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won’t be welcome in this country,” Ms Smith told GMTV.
“Coming to this country is a privilege. If you can’t live by the rules that we live by, the standards and the values that we live by, we should exclude you from this country and, what’s more, now we will make public those people that we have excluded.
The Independent: Named and Shamed
The UK just gets more and more fascist.
Radley Balko summarizes the problem with militarizing our police force:
Once again, cops aren’t soldiers. American cities aren’t battlefields. And U.S. citizens aren’t potential combatants. This isn’t pedantry. It’s about the mentality with which police officers approach their job, and about what sort of relationship they’re going to have with the people whose rights they’re supposed to be protecting.
The Agitator: Part of the Problem
If you haven’t read it, Balko’s book/paper Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America is crucial reading for understanding contemporary America.
See also: US as Police State
Okay, the rampant Western media frenzy over Jackie Chan supposedly saying that “Chinese people still need to be controlled ” during a panel discussion at the Boao Forum in Hainan, China is…well, getting out of control. This is the kind of Western media bullshit that makes Westerners look like they’re frothing at the bits to use anything they can to paint China in a negative political light: “Oh look, even lovable kung-fu funny-man Jackie Chan has betrayed his own, selling out both himself and his kind to the evil Communist regime!” To which the Western masses reply in unison: “Gasp!”
The relevant excerpt from the Associated Press:
“I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not,” Chan said. “I’m really confused now. If you’re too free, you’re like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic.”
Chan added: “I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.”
And a Chinese report of what Jackie Chan said to foreign reporters:
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????“???????????”
He himself is now very conflicted with regards to whether freedom is better, or is not freedom is better, because if [people] are too free, it will be just like Taiwan and Hong Kong, which have become very disorderly. So, he has slowly come to feel/think that, “Chinese people still need to be regulated.”
Jackie Chan Said “Chinese Need To Be Controlled”, Or Did He?
I’m not sure what Chan said is much better than what he was reported as saying, but I’m far less sure of just what it is he actually said now.
(Thanks Sydney)
“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Army psychiatrist Maj. Paul Burney is quoted in the Senate report as saying about Guantánamo. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link … there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”
Apparently, one of the individuals applying pressure for results was then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, a major advocate of the Iraq invasion. Wolfowitz called the man in charge of Guantánamo at the time, Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey. Wolfowitz called “to express concerns about the insufficient intelligence production” at Guantánamo, the report says. Wolfowitz suggested the use of more aggressive interrogation techniques. The report cites the Guantánamo interrogation chief at that time, David Becker, as the source of this information about Wolfowitz. Dunlavey, however, told the Senate investigators he could not recall the Wolfowitz call.
The Agitator: Put Them in Prison. Really.
Balko writes:
So they tortured Gitmo detainees to get information, which turned out to be false, to build support for a war they had already made up their mind they would wage.
And keep in mind, these decisions were made by political appointees. Not JAGs, not military generals, not even veteran CIA agents (most people in all three positions actually opposed these policies). They were made by neocon warmongers with little to no actual military or interrogation experience who hadn’t the slightest idea what they were doing.
These people belong in a prison cell. To excuse them is to say that no abuse of power should be punishable so long as you can come up with some tortured justification about how you were only trying to protect the country.
I fully agree.
The actor told a forum on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, whose attendees included Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, he was not sure “freedom” was necessary.
Chan, 55, whose latest movie, Shinjuku incident, was banned in China, was asked about censorship and restriction on the mainland. He expanded his comments to discuss Chinese society in general.
“I’m not sure if it is good to have freedom or not,” he said. “I’m really confused now. If you are too free, you are like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic.”
He added: “I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we are not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.”
His comments were applauded by the Chinese audience, but triggered fury in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Telegraph: Jackie Chan says Chinese people need to be ‘controlled’
Update: Chan’s comments may have been intentionally or unintentionally mistranslated.
Two quotes on my mind tonight:
1. From The Job interviews with William S. Burroughs:
Q: Are they happy anywhere?
A: They’re certainly happier in Spain with all the poverty than they are in Sweden with all the prosperity and their high living standard.
Q: But then, Spain is a good example of a highly controlled country with a repressive government, a religious bugbear – just about everything…
A: Just about everything. They have all sorts of troubles. But you see, poverty keeps people busy. You see happiness there in the faces of the people on the streets that you do not see on Swedish streets.
This interview took place in the 70s when Spain was still under Franco. With regard to the question of “being busy” read this and consider what many (most?) of us are “busy” doing in modern post-industrial society.
2. Reality Sandwich interview with R.U. Sirius:
Q: It seems equally possible that we will be thrust into some kind of totalitarian technological hell in which our every movement is watched and our perceptions are closely monitored, a la A Scanner Darkly or 1984. It’s interesting to observe how a force as powerful as technology can simultaneously invoke great dread or great hope in people based on different perspectives of its usefulness in our lives.
A: Yeah, I think that’s actually more of a parallel vision than an opposite vision. These technologies could solve problems and not be disastrous in a physical sense, but they seem to almost inevitably bring on the death of the Western concept of privacy. The scenario could be hellish, considering the current political dynamics: authoritarian tendencies married to paranoias about security are at war with authoritarian outsider anti-imperialists who hate technology and modernity.
But I don’t think the scenario will necessarily be particularly hellish. It could easily resolve into a very liberal control system. In some interview during the ’80s, someone asked William Burroughs about Brave New World and he said (in that great Burroughs voice), “I think it would be an improvement.” I can imagine a very liberal society – pampered by machines – in which people are free to carry on wild festivities in the hippie/pagan/Burning Man traditions, or do just about whatever pleases them, and where the margins on behavior are set really wide, but if you slip over those margins, everybody immediately knows about it and your brain is instantly corrected so that you can’t do that taboo thing again. Instant rehab!
Which of course makes me think of the movie Zardoz
Out fucking rageous:
I received an email late last night from the Governor of Oregon.
I had written to Governor Ted Kulongoski asking him why the taxpayers of his state were subsidizing Wal-Mart with a $3.7 million tax break they didn’t deserve. “Thank you for sharing your ideas and concerns,” the Governor told me. “I believe citizen input is vital to a strong and healthy society and I urge your continued involvement.” […]
According to the Beaverton Valley Times, Wal-Mart received a fat subsidy at taxpayer’s expense by buying a tax credit from Solar World, a German company that makes photovoltaic solar panels. The city of Hillsborough, Oregon was able to attract this large solar production plant, and its 1,000 jobs, by offering a candy store of tax-subsidized incentives to the manufacturer. But some of the profits ended up in Wal-Mart’s pocket instead, because of a bizarre arrangement that allows manufacturers to sell their tax credits to companies who are doing nothing valuable for the environment, like Wal-Mart.
According to the Valley Times, Solar World was given an $11 million renewable energy tax credit. Solar World was then allowed to turn around and sell that credit to Wal-Mart for only $7.3 million, two-thirds of its real value. The full $11 million value of the credit was 51% more than what Wal-Mart paid for it. Wal-Mart can now use the full credit to reduce its corporate income taxes on profits owed to the state, earned at Wal-Mart’s 32 stores across Oregon. Wal-Mart can spread this $11 million tax credit over the next five years. Oregon taxpayers lose out on $11 million in income taxes that the corporation would have paid, and Wal-Mart makes $3.7 million for merely buying up the credit. […]
For Solar World, the tax credit had more value as a commodity to sell—than as a tax break, because Solar World only pays the state minimum tax of $10 per year. The tax credit was worth little to the company—unless they sold it. “A tax credit’s only good for those people who have a tax liability,” explained a representative of the Oregon Department of Energy.
Shortly after 9pm on Tuesday the 24th of March 2009, seven police officers in Dresden and four in Jena searched the homes of Theodor Reppe, who holds the domain registration for “wikileaks.de”, the German name for wikileaks.org. According to police documentation, the reason for the search was “distribution of pornographic material” and “discovery of evidence”. Police claim the raid was initiated due to Mr. Reppe’s position as the Wikileaks.de domain owner.
Police did not want to give any further information to Mr. Reppe and no contact was made with Wikileaks before or after the search. It is therefore not totally clear why the search was made, however Wikileaks, in its role as a defender of press freedoms, has published censorship lists for Australia, Thailand, Denmark and other countries. Included on the lists are references to sites containing pornography and no other material has been released by Wikileaks relating to the subject. […]
The raid appears to be related to a recent German social hysteria around child pornography and the controversial battle for a national censorship system by the German family minister Ursula von der Leyen. It comes just a few weeks after a member of parliament, SPD minister Joerg Tauss had his office and private house searched by police. German bloggers discussing the subject were similarly raided.
(via Cryptogon)
© 2025 Technoccult
Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑