#Obama is an enemy combatant

[dosesofcommonsense]

[papasmoke]

Israel automatically labeling every man and boy over 15 an enemy combatant and counting them towards the non-civilian death toll (which is in my mind undoubtedly how they came up with the recent 5k dead enemy combatants figure, up from 1-2k days before) is something they've been doing for a long time and a strategy they have in common with the Bush Jr, Obama, and Trump administrations.

[mariacallous]

The Israeli attack on a humanitarian convoy in Gaza in early April that killed seven aid workers with the U.S.-based aid group World Central Kitchen has ignited a fierce global backlash against Israel’s policies of engagement in the territory. The attack involved the successive firing of three missiles at three vehicles, driven by suspicions of a Hamas combatant’s presence within the convoy, according to reports.

In Israel, the event is being portrayed as an accident, “a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification, errors in decision-making, and an attack contrary to the Standard Operating Procedures,” as the Israeli military’s investigation team concluded. In humanitarian circles, it is seen as evidence of a culture that “treats Gaza as a free-fire zone with total impunity for gross attacks on civilians,” as Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International who served in both the Obama and Biden administrations, has suggested.

But for the discussion to be useful, it should progress beyond these immediate interpretations to examine the deeper cultural patterns underlying such incidents. Most crucially, it must scrutinize the shift in military policy and ethos that can be traced back to the Elor Azaria affair of 2016-17. Azaria was an Israeli conscript who was captured on video executing a wounded and immobilized Palestinian assailant in Hebron. The Israeli military prosecuted Azaria for manslaughter and sentenced him to 18 months in prison.

While the case demonstrated the military’s commitment to its own ethical codes, it also sparked widespread protests from right-wing factions and a general backlash against military procedures. The army was accused of failing to support Azaria and creating a culture in which soldiers would hesitate to use force against Palestinian militants. To counter this claim, and from that point forward, the military began to announce the number of Palestinian fighters killed in its operations, demonstrating that its forces did not hesitate to engage.

Under the leadership of the military’s chief of staff, Aviv Kochavi, from 2019 to 2023, the killing-based criteria were reinforced. Kochavi’s goal was to remake the army into a “lethal, efficient, and innovative” fighting force—in other words, a death-generating army. He promoted this vision by enhancing the precision of weapon systems, improving the coordination between forces and intelligence, and increasing the rate of fire.

Kochavi’s directive for field commanders to assess, at the end of each combat phase, the number of enemy forces killed and objectives destroyed—rather than solely focusing on territorial conquest—signified a shift toward necrotactics, where the primary goal of military engagement is killing the enemy. Killing becomes not just an outcome of warfare but its principal aim.

The approach of using body counts as a metric of success has notably intensified during the current war. Soon after the Oct. 7 attack, the Israeli military began consistently reporting the number of Hamas fighters killed, echoing the way U.S. generals announced enemy fatalities during the Vietnam War—a scenario where traditional metrics for evaluating combat success are elusive, thus making the body count, rather than the strategic objectives achieved, the primary indicator of success. This was particularly evident as the Israeli death toll ticked up and the stated objective of dismantling Hamas appeared increasingly unattainable.

In fact, the military appears to have established a quantitative goal from the outset. According to the journalist Yuval Abraham in +972 Magazine, the Israeli army developed an artificial intelligence-based program named Lavender, designed to identify targets for assassination. This system tagged approximately 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza as suspected militants, marking their residences (and therefore their families as well) for potential airstrikes. The deployment of Lavender contributed to the deaths of around 15,000 Palestinians in the war’s first six weeks, according to the report.

By setting a numerical target, the Israeli military shifted from viewing outcomes as a measure of progress—like neutralizing the threat posed to Israel from Gaza—to making body counts the main standard. The trend has been reinforced by a pervasive adoption of the language of killing among military commanders. “Now we will go forward and kill them all,” Brig. Gen. Roman Goffman was quoted as saying just before the ground operation in Gaza began, in just one prominent example.

As Israel faces an impasse in Gaza, lacking a politically articulated exit strategy, the reliance on killing and its quantification as a metric for success becomes increasingly pronounced, leading to the erosion of operational constraints. This shift was evident in the recent raid at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which inflicted extensive damage to Gaza’s most crucial health care infrastructure. The hunt for Hamas members has, to a significant degree, become an end in itself, complicating the dynamics of the conflict and placing military objectives above political resolutions.

This shift provides some context for the tragic killing of the aid convoy team—though it makes it no less disturbing. Once one or two armed individuals were spotted in the convoy, their neutralization became a top priority, apparently eclipsing overarching strategic considerations—factors that should have been incorporated at the tactical level. Fundamentally, such a situation warranted an approach aimed at preventing civilian casualties, especially along a deconflicted route designated for humanitarian aid delivery and when no direct threat was posed to Israeli troops. Moreover, the overarching political rationale should have prioritized safeguarding humanitarian missions, given the potential repercussions for Israel’s global standing amid the crisis in Gaza.

Yet the events unfolded with a seeming obsession for lethal action, as vividly illustrated by reporting in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: Upon spotting a gunman or two, Israeli forces targeted three successive vehicles from the air. After the first one was hit, passengers moved to a second vehicle, which was then struck by a missile. And when the wounded were transferred to a third vehicle, it too was fired on. This appears to be a case of obsessive kill confirmation, overshadowing the principles of necessity, proportionality, and the sanctity of civilian life.

Hence, the fundamental issue extends beyond merely revising the rules of engagement or monitoring their application more closely, as such measures alone would prove inadequate to prevent future incidents. The problem also transcends the flawed assumption that every part of Gaza can be considered a free-fire zone where engaging Palestinian militants indiscriminately is justified. What is crucial is dismantling the prevailing culture that equates killing with military success.

Yagil Levy is a professor of political sociology and public policy at the Open University of Israel. His most recent book in English is: Whose Life Is Worth More? Hierarchies of Risk and Death in Contemporary Wars.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

After Iranian-financed-and-trained Hamas terrorists – together with Palestinian Authority and civilian Gazan terrorists – murdered, gang-raped, gouged, mutilated, dis-limbed, beheaded, burned and tortured over 1,200 Jewish Israeli babies, children, men and women (including dozens of Americans), wounded over 5,000 more and took another 250 more hostage on October 7th, President Biden correctly declared that Hamas’ atrocities were “pure, unadulterated evil.”

Yet now, the Biden/Blinken/shadow-Obama administration is deliberately siding with and defending pure, unadulterated evil. This is sinister. During Biden’s April 4, 2024 phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden threatened Israel and demanded an immediate Israeli ceasefire, aligning the U.S. with Arab terrorist Hamas’ demands. (On the same day, Hamas launched a series of rockets into Israel’s civilian areas. So how on earth can Biden be demanding an Israeli ceasefire?) Biden threatened surely hostile-to-Israel policy changes if Israel doesn’t accede to U.S. demands.

If Israel succumbs to Biden’s immediate ceasefire demand, this would leave the remaining hostages subject to Hamas’ continuing rape and torture indefinitely; leave Israel with no negotiating leverage or military options for obtaining the hostages’ release; and would enable Hamas to emerge victorious, regroup, rebuild, and murder and torture Israelis again and again and again in the future, as Hamas leaders have promised. Biden’s demand thus calls for Israel to lose the war against Arab terrorist organization Hamas, a proxy of our arch enemy, the evil terrorist Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Moreover, on the same day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken falsely, sickeningly and outrageously suggested that Israel is at risk of becoming indistinguishable from Hamas if Israel loses its reverence for protecting every human life – but ignored Israel’s real, extraordinary efforts and record of protecting Gazan civilians. As Colonel Richard Kemp, former British Commander in Afghanistan explained, Israel has the world’s most moral army and takes risks to protect civilians that no other army in the world has ever taken – while Hamas’ official policy is committing war crimes. Similarly, the Chair of West Point’s Modern War Institute, Major (ret.) John Spencer, and human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky noted that “accusing Israel of intentionally targeting civilians . . . is a malicious distortion of truth,” and that in fact “The IDF has gone to unprecedented lengths, not seen in the history of modern warfare, to abide by the laws of war and avoid harm to civilians, even when doing so puts the IDF’s own soldiers at risk.” Israel has the lowest ratio of civilian-to-combatant terrorist deaths in history.

From this U.S. administration’s outset, it has pursued policies deliberately designed to weaken, harm and endanger Israel and empower Iran and Iranian proxies bent on destroying Israel. Upon taking office, Biden immediately stopped enforcing maximum sanctions – and enabled Iran to advance from near-bankruptcy of $4 billion in reserves to $100 billion in reserves, rescuing Iran’s ability to fund its proxies Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli civilians and armed forces. Biden also immediately resumed funding UNRWA (which is full of Hamas terrorists, hides Hamas weapons and control centers, and teaches children to murder Jews); and resumed funding Palestinian Authority government functions (enabling the PA to continue its $400 million per year of pay-to-slay payments to Arab terrorists to murder Jews).

And virtually every person Biden appointed to an important post is hostile to Israel or Jews, or both.

In May 2021, when Hamas launched 4,500 rockets at Israel in 10 days, Biden demanded that Israel agree to an early ceasefire that enabled Hamas to regroup, rebuild and prepare for October 7th.

In October 2022, the administration pressured Israel to surrender 330 square miles of natural-gas-rich maritime territory to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, thereby enriching Iranian terror-proxy Hezbollah with billions of dollars, and weakening Israel. Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israel in recent months have displaced some 80,000 Israelis.

Biden imposed a boycott on Israeli scientific and academic cooperation over the artificial “green line.” And the Biden administration initiated a Negev Forum that transformed the Abraham Accords from a Sunni-Israeli alliance against Iran into a Sunni-U.S. alliance against Israel. The entire basis of the Abraham Accords was to end the Palestinian Arab veto over Middle East peace; but Biden and Blinken reversed this.

During the past six months, the administration has intentionally ratcheted up harmful-to-Israel actions and anti-Israel propaganda. The administration released $26 billion to Iran – while Iran is financing Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s terror wars against Israel. The administration also repeatedly falsely accused Israel of not doing enough to protect Gazan civilians – despite Israel’s extraordinary record of protecting civilians while fighting vicious terrorists; demanded “pauses” and other forms of ceasefires; demanded that Israel cannot leave a buffer zone in Gaza to prevent future October 7ths; and tied legislation to aid Israel to unpopular unrelated legislation – which would prevent or hamper the aid to Israel from being enacted.

The administration also repeatedly betrayed Israel (and Israeli and American hostages) at the United Nations Security Council. On November 14, 2023 (the same day that 300,000 Jews demonstrated support for Israel in Washington, D.C.) the Biden administration enabled the passage of UNSC Resolution 2712 (2023) calling for days-long “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip.” On December 22, 2023, the Biden administration enabled passage of UNSC Resolution 2720 (2023), which helped Hamas obtain supplies to continue its war crimes and called for urgent measures towards stopping the destruction of the Hamas terrorist evil. And on March 25, 2024, the administration enabled passage of UNSC Resolution 2728 (2024) calling for an immediate ceasefire – without making the ceasefire conditional on releasing the hostages.

The administration also used the occasion of Israel fighting for its life to repeatedly demand that Palestinian terrorists must be rewarded with a Palestinian Arab terror state; and to try to undermine Israel’s binding legal rights to Judea/Samaria and Jerusalem. In February 2024, the administration falsely declared that Jews building homes in Judea/Samaria is illegal (reversing the “Pompeo Doctrine” which confirmed that Jewish communities in Judea/Samaria are legal). And on February 1, 2024, Biden issued an antisemitic executive order, accompanied by a coordinated State Department announcement, imposing sanctions on Jews in Judea/Samaria, while ignoring rampant Arab terrorism in and stemming from Judea/Samaria, incited by the Palestinian Authority’s Nazi-like “pay-to-slay” rewards to terrorists to murder Jews.

Biden also falsely condemned Israel for “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza and an “over the top campaign.” Such false charges are hardly the statements of a true friend and ally. And Biden/Blinken’s latest condemnation of Israel unintentionally killing members of a food convoy, when Biden/Blinken knows that these tragic mistakes happen in any war – including in America’s wars against Iraq and Afghanistan – again shows the U.S. attempting to weaken the U.S.-Israel alliance. 

In addition, Biden’s March 7, 2024 State of the Union address was the most hostile, anti-Israel SOTU address ever: Biden demanded a Palestinian state “solution” that imperils Israel’s very existence; overstated displaced Gazans and never mentioned the 200,000 Jews still displaced by Hezbollah’s bombardments in the north and Hamas’ destruction of southern Israeli communities; wrongly demanded that Israel must make protecting Gazan civilians Israel’s “first priority (not defeating Hamas and recovering the hostages); parroted Hamas’ unverified and surely false propaganda casualty numbers; falsely intimated that Israel is using humanitarian aid as a “bargaining chip” and isn’t “doing its part” – while completely ignoring that Hamas steals the massive humanitarian aid that Israel has facilitated into Gaza; spoke of working for an immediate ceasefire; and omitted Iran’s role in Gaza, Lebanon, and the October 7th massacre.

Unfortunately, the horrors listed above are only a partial list of the Biden/Blinken/Obama shadow administration’s deliberate acts to weaken Israel and strengthen the terrorists that are trying to destroy Israel. For instance, see more here, here and here.

It is deeply disturbing that our nation’s administration is intentionally siding with the forces of pure unadulterated evil against our human-rights-loving ally, the democratic Jewish State of Israel.

It is painful for us to say this, but all of the evidence indicates that the Biden/Blinken/Obama policies are not mere attempts at misguided appeasement, or the results of stupidity or ignorance or false hope. But, in fact, these anti-Israel policies are made with full understanding of their dangerous import. All the evidence indicates that this is a conscious attempt to weaken Israel, or worse.  

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Mark Goldfeder, Eugene Kontorovich

Published: Dec 17, 2024

Amnesty International, an organization with a long history of anti-Israeli activism, recently released a report accusing the Jewish state of committing genocide, with Human Rights Watch jumping on the bandwagon with its own report to be released Thursday. These baseless claims are yet another example of organizations redefining legal terms to suit their accusations against Israel.

Like its previous unfounded claims, Amnesty’s genocide accusation distorts both the facts and the law for the sake of sensational headlines. Consider the prevailing definition of “genocidal intent” in international law. In 2007, the International Court of Justice found in Bosnia v. Serbia that such intent can only be established when it is the only plausible inference to be drawn from a nation’s pattern of conduct; the court reaffirmed this standard in Croatia v. Serbia (2015). No reasonable observer could argue that Israel’s military actions—directed against Hamas, a terrorist organization explicitly dedicated to the Jewish state’s destruction—constitute genocide under this prevailing standard.

But Amnesty had pre-determined that Israel was guilty, so it simply dismissed international law. “Amnesty International considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence,” the report notes, “and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict.”

The real reason the ICJ’s definition precludes a finding of genocide in Israel’s armed conflict is because there is in reality no genocide. One need not look all the way back to the Holocaust to see that there can be a genocide in the context of an armed conflict. In the early 2000s, for example, the Sudanese government armed Arab militia groups to help them ethnically cleanse African groups in the Darfur region through a campaign of mass murder, rape, pillaging, displacement, and persecution, based on the victims’ race, ethnicity, and religion. Contrast this with Israel, which possesses the military capability to destroy Gaza entirely but has taken extraordinary measures to minimize harm to civilians, even as it fights an enemy that deliberately endangers its own people.

Amnesty also fails to substantively engage with the well-established doctrines of military necessity, proportionality, and deterrence, which govern legitimate actions during armed conflict. The law of war was not designed for armchair quarterbacks writing a report a year later, recounting events and critiquing decisions. It is given to commanders in the field to make good-faith judgment calls, in real time, based on available information. Unlike Amnesty, legal analysis of the international war code considers factors such as technological limitations, available staff, and situational nuances in combat.

Amnesty feebly tries to hide Israel’s obvious lack of genocidal intent by cobbling together an assortment of distorted and out-of-context statements allegedly made by Israeli politicians. For example, the report cites Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reference to the biblical commandment to eradicate Amalek as an example of Israel’s genocidal motives. But the authors disregard a previous sentence, in which Netanyahu explicitly referred to “destroying Hamas.” Israel’s official stance, repeated ad nauseum by the prime minister, the president, the defense minister, and the IDF spokesman—is that this “war is against Hamas – not the people of Gaza.”

Heated rhetoric does not constitute evidence of genocidal intent. According to United Nations jurisprudence, incitement to genocide cannot be “a mere vague or indirect suggestion.” The United States did not commit genocide when it destroyed ISIS, even though President Barack Obama spoke of the war as “eradicating a cancer.” And though Netanyahu has described the battle in Gaza as between “the children of light and the children of darkness”— a quote that Amnesty deems “dehumanizing”—the prime minister’s remarks are similar with those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in 1941 spoke of “victory of justice and righteousness over the forces of savagery and barbarism.” 

While Amnesty’s bases its genocide charge on the casualties in Gaza, only approximately half of those have been civilian. Moreover, civilian casualties are not, in themselves, evidence of genocide, and can be an unfortunate feature of urban warfare. The civilian-combatant ratio in this conflict compares favorably with that in every Western ground operation since World War II, despite Hamas’s purposeful use of the Gazan population as human shields. Indeed, leading military experts and officers have praised Israel’s conduct of hostilities as a model of caution and protection of civilian life.

As for HRW, they claim Israel is committing “genocide” by depriving Gazans of water—despite the fact that some 90 percent of the territory’s water supply comes from its own aquifer, with which Israel has not interfered. All wars cause distress to civilians. From World War II to the U.S invasion of Iraq, disruptions to health services and sanitation have led to “all cause” mortality far in excess of combat fatalities—but no reasonable person believes America committed genocide in those conflicts.

The rapid-fire release of Amnesty and HRW’s reports is yet another example of the rhetorical arms race against the Jewish state. When the “occupation” smear was inadequate to discredit Israel, NGOs in concert shifted to the “apartheid” libel. When that did not stick, they pivoted to “genocide.” These accusations are not intended to persuade, but to defame and shift the Overton Window. Casual observers may doubt the genocide claim, but mistakenly assume that a nearly 300-page report—only a third of which actually discusses Israel’s actions in Gaza, and which uses a large-font, capacious layout—has at least some merit.

The genocide accusation against Israel does not just distort facts; it abuses the language of international law and cheapens the horrors of genocide. Americans who care about the state of Israel—and the integrity of language—should reject it.

--

The UN are corrupt clowns.

https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286

As the war raged on, Israel began giving out its military maps to civilians so they could conduct localized evacuations. This, too, has never been done in war. During my recent visit to Khan Yunis, Gaza, and the IDF civilian harm mitigation unit in southern Israel, I observed as the army began using these maps to communicate each day where the IDF would be operating so civilians in other areas would stay out of harm's way.

I saw that the IDF even tracked the population in real time down to a few-block radius using drone and satellite imagery and cell phone presence and building damage assessments to avoid hitting civilians. The New York Times reported in January that the daily civilian death toll had more than halved in the previous month and was down almost two-thirds from its peak.

Of course, the true number of Gaza civilian deaths is unknown. The current Hamas-supplied estimate of over 31,000 does not acknowledge a single combatant death (nor any deaths due to the misfiring of its own rockets or other friendly fire). The IDF estimates it has killed about 13,000 Hamas operatives, a number I believe credible partly because I believe the armed forces of a democratic American ally over a terrorist regime, but also because of the size of Hamas fighters assigned to areas that were cleared and having observed the weapons used, the state of Hamas' tunnels and other aspects of the combat.

That would mean some 18,000 civilians have died in Gaza, a ratio of roughly 1 combatant to 1.5 civilians. Given Hamas' likely inflation of the death count, the real figure could be closer to 1 to 1. Either way, the number would be historically low for modern urban warfare.

The UN, EU and other sources estimate that civilians usually account for 80 percent to 90 percent of casualties, or a 1:9 ratio, in modern war (though this does mix all types of wars). In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a battle supervised by the U.S. that used the world's most powerful airpower resources, some 10,000 civilians were killed compared to roughly 4,000 ISIS terrorists.

--

https://www.wsj.com/articles/rafah-evacuation-israel-biden-administration-antony-blinken-jake-sullivan-hamas-3e3c85f7

Remember Rafah? For months, the Biden Administration bitterly opposed an Israeli invasion of Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza. The mantra was that Israel had “no credible plan” to evacuate the city’s 1.3 million civilians. Yet the Israelis went ahead anyway, and two weeks later they have safely evacuated an estimated 950,000 people.

==

There is categorically, definitionally no "genocide."

Except for the one Hamas wants to perpetrate, of course.

[queenwendy]

It’s October 7th. I know I post a lot of pro Palestinian stuff and am vocally anti Zionist, but it seems wrong not to say something. A year ago, Hamas attacked Israel and killed over 1200 people and took 251 more hostage. 97 are still in captivity, with the rest freed or rescued. Of the 97 remaining, 33 are thought to be dead. That’s horrible. It’s awful. Hamas’s attack has rightfully been called barbaric.

So has Israel’s response. 41,788 people in Gaza dead, including over 16,000 children, and other figures report most of that 41,788 are civilian women (I never see figures on civilian men. Which eerily echoes Obama saying “enemy combatants” in my mind). Over 60% of Gaza is just ash now. And Gaza isn’t that big; only 139 mi^2, and crammed full of over 590,000 people back in 2017 (Israel, by comparison, is made up of 9,900,000 people, though I think that includes the 21.1% of arabs). That’s a far cry from proportionate, and I fail to see how bombing civilians and reducing schools and hospitals to ash saves hostages. Unless the argument is that it will scare Hamas into surrendering, in which case at best that’s total war and at worst state sponsored terrorism.

Now Israel is engaged in escalations with Lebanon and Iran. I don’t pretend to know any of the history there, so all I’ll say on that matter is that it’s scary. Very scary. I imagine it’s scary for Israelis, who don’t know when their families will be saved and see enemies on all sides. I imagine it’s terrifying for Palestinians, who have to watch their entire community be destroyed because a terrorist organization claiming to represent them committed an act of terrorism.

The whole situation is, as I alluded earlier, disturbingly similar to the USA’s war on terror. On 9/11 Al Qaeda killed 2,977 people. In response, the United States and her allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and we didn’t leave until 2021. Fucking 20 years. And the Taliban still won. 46,319 civilians were killed, and the US committed innumerable war crimes. Plus, the US killed Bin Laden in 2011, so we went on for another fucking decade after we got the guy. And that’s not to mention the Iraq War (2003-2011) where anywhere from 100,000 to 1,000,000 people died, because Bush lied about WMDs and Saddam Hussein.

Keep in mind, in Afghanistan alone the US killed just a few thousand more civilians than Israel has in 20 years; Israel has had just 1 year. And remember that this conflict didn’t start in 2023; it started in the 1940s when Israel became a state*

9/11 and October 7th were both awful tragedies committed by terrorist organizations. Israel and the United States are also both colonialist states that are more than happy to bomb the shit out of civilians under the justification of counter terrorism. October 7th was awful. The Hostages should be brought home and Hamas has to be stopped. But don’t let anyone fool you today that the Israeli government is somehow in the right because of that. We’ve seen similar countries pull the same shit for the last twenty years. Don’t be fooled.

The war has to stop. Not because I love islam (I don’t) or I hate jews (I don’t), but because civilians shouldn’t fucking suffer like that. Hostages have to be returned, bombs have to stop, and someone more fucking capable than me or Netanyahu or Yahya Sinwar or fucking Biden needs to get a god damn peace agreement through that will actually last.

A lot of my numbers on the current war in Gaza are from this very good article ny NBC. My figures on the US war on terror are from Wikipedia.

*Yeah I know a Zionist Israel only was able to come about because of WWII and the holocaust, and yes I know that only happened because of WWI and antisemitism, and that only happened because of centuries of antisemitism in Europe because of Christianity and the Roman Empire, and yes I know that’s an oversimplification and the chain of events goes back further. My point is that this whole history is a bloody nightmare of a political knot, but that even then the mass death of 16,000 children is fucking inexcusable, even when in response to the also inexcusable capture of 251 people. This isn’t a matter of who’s in the wrong, it’s a matter of degree of wrongness.

[figural]

"Theorist Grégoire Chamayou has described the contemporary paradigm of drone warfare as having instigated a “crisis in military ethos,” transforming the terms and terrain of engagement altogether as it proposes an unstable approach to acceptable targets. In an era of the global war against terror, Chamayou writes:

Armed violence has lost its traditional limits: indefinite in time, it is also indefinite in space. The whole world, it is said, is a battlefield. But it would probably be more accurate to call it a hunting ground. For if the scope of armed violence has now become global, it is because the imperatives of hunting demand it.

In this description, the remote killing characteristic of drone warfare is not just a safe or expedient means of carrying out war as before—this technical innovation corresponds to a new and rapidly shifting geographical model, where violence is no longer limited to demarcated combat zones but simply licensed by the presence of an enemy prey, “who carries with it its own little mobile zone of hostility.” State sovereignty and territorial integrity are contingent features of this model of warfare, and can be violated at will by an imperial hunter whose technical power and jurisdiction operates vertically.

The geopolitical layers of this methodology are many and complex: for example, the MQ-9 Reaper drone that killed Soleimani was likely launched from Qatar, but operated from Clark County, Nevada, where self-proclaimed “hunter” pilots proceeded to attack a diplomatically protected target visiting a third country with whom they were not at war—at least nominally. At the very least, this is novel; but the legal ramifications must be known.

As noted, Israel’s assassination of Arouri strikingly coincides with the anniversary of the Trump administration’s killing of Soleimani, which was justified in turn with reference to Bush Jr.’s extralegal innovations. But these Republican presidencies flank the drastic expansion of jurisdictionally ambiguous drone warfare under President Obama, whose office presumed authority to use lethal force outside of legally defined combat zones on an unprecedented scale during a “global” war on terror. These policies drew heavy criticism from international legal observers, as the Obama administration authorized more than 500 drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and beyond—locations where the situation, however grave, could hardly be described as one of armed conflict between organized groups. Lacking such criteria, the years of drone attacks around the world appear not only deadly, but illegal.

Even so, lawyers love an ignoble cause; and this remote assassin’s paradigm keeps many of them entertained. Legal scholar Michael W. Lewis argues that the application of international humanitarian law to the transnational deployment of drones constitutes an unacceptable constraint, where “it would effectively grant sanctuary to and confer an important strategic advantage upon unprivileged belligerents,” themselves apparently excepted from the protections of the Geneva Convention.

These are the sticking points of any legal theory of the drone, and the cause for which apologists must seek a portable state of exception, adhering to individual targets as they move about the world. Jonathan Horowitz and Naz Modirzadeh describe the seemingly contradictory situation of a “transnational non-international armed conflict,” where the law of armed conflict is analogized to a cloud, hovering above the head of an itinerant prey."

– cam scott, "israel's drone age"

[bureau-of-mines]

The Obama administration has designated your fursona as an enemy combatant.

[tomorrowusa]

I thought I'd heard just about every bizarre far right conspiracy theory.

The goofiest was probably the one about Obama storing 30,000 guillotines in Montana and Georgia to be used in FEMA concentration camps after Sharia Law is introduced in the US.

The recent unfortunate incident regarding Titanic tourism brought to the surface a wacko contention about the Federal Reserve System.

Far-right conspiracy theorist Stew Peters is pushing a conspiracy theory that the OceanGate submarine was purposely sunk “to keep people from visiting the Titanic wreckage” because doing so would supposedly reveal that the Titanic “was sunk by a newly created” Rothschilds-connected Federal Reserve and not an iceberg. Numerous Republican politicians and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have appeared on Peters’ program.   Peters is a white nationalist who frequently encourages violence against his perceived enemies. He has pushed a multitude of conspiracy theories, including those related to QAnon, COVID-19, Pizzagate, flat Earth, the moon landing, and the Uvalde and Sandy Hook mass shootings.  Despite his toxic history, numerous politicians have appeared on his program, including Reps. Paul Gosar, Bob Good, Pete Sessions, and Andy Biggs; and Kennedy.  Peters is now pushing the bizarre conspiracy theory that the Titanic was actually sunk by the Rothschilds-connected Federal Reserve — not an iceberg — and the OceanGate submarine was sunk to discourage people from ever visiting the Titanic to find out the truth.

Yep, the Fed will stop at nothing to hide its diabolical secrets! 😂😱

There is a major chronological problem with this particular conspiracy theory. The RMS Titanic sunk on 15 April 1912 while the Federal Reserve System wasn't founded until 23 December 1913. But conspiracy theorists never let the facts get in the way of their derangement.

Conspiracy theories have been around for ages. But the internet makes them easier to circulate and to draw unlikely connections between totally unrelated events.

And the conspiracy nuts are seldom content believing in just one. Stew Peters is all over the genre with QAnon, vaccines, the Apollo moon landings, and topically the Fed/Titanic. He's a waterfall of far right fabulism. And his racism and antisemitism don't prevent extremist Republicans and RFK Jr. from kissing up to him.

People like that are often close to the psychological spot where deep gullibility and paranoia intersect. Though some know it's all a load of bullshit but continue to spew it for personal or political gain.

People like Stew Peters give us a good reason why nobody should get a high school diploma without first passing a course in baloney detection.

Use Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit" to Combat Fake News

[gender-apathy]

The good old obama method of "designate every corpse as an enemy combatant you can report zero civilian casualties"

Edit: IM SO FUCKING TIRED OF IGNORANCE

[sunmoonmac]

FYI

Patriann Tsaum

I’ve been critical of a Trump presidency for more than a decade now, and am growing ever more exhausted from the experience.

But to be fair, President Trump wasn’t that bad, other than when he incited an insurrection against the government,

Mismanaged a pandemic that killed over a million Americans,

Called neo-Nazis “very fine people,”

Separated children from their families,

Lost those children in the bureaucracy,

Tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a bible in front of a church,

Tried to block all Muslims from entering the country,

Got impeached,

Got impeached again,

Had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history,

Pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden,

Fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia,

Bragged about firing the FBI director on TV,

Took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community,

Diverted military funding to build his wall,

Caused the longest government shutdown in US history,

Called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,”

Lied over 30,000 times,

Banned transgender people from serving in the military,

Ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions,

Vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers,

Refused to release his tax returns,

Increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion,

Had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history,

Called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers,

Coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist,

Refused to concede the 2020 election,

Hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House,

Walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl,

Suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID,

Abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey,

Pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans,

Incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic,

Withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords,

Withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal,

Withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances,

Insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter,

Pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op,

Failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies,

Called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries,

Called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,”

Claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere,

Forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader,

Believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,

Berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe,

Suggested the US should buy Greenland,

Colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices, after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges,

Repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,”

Claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases,

Violated the emoluments clause,

Thought that Nambia was a country,

Told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public,

Called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution,

Nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet,

Nominated a corrupt head of the EPA,

Nominated a corrupt head of HHS,

Nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department,

Nominated a corrupt head of the USDA,

Praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies,

Refused to allow the presidential transition to begin,

Insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death,

Spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president,

Falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote,

Called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,”

Falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year,

Considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions,

Mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID,

Locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones,

Used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,”

Hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser,

Pardoned several of his shady associates,

Gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his bat shit crazy conspiracy theories,

Got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!),

Had a Secretary of State who called him a moron,

Forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history,

Botched the COVID vaccine rollout,

Tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him,

Charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties,

Constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate,

Claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear,

Called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,”

Used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise,

Opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling,

Got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers,

Claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US,

Ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings,

Blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining,

Redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle,

Got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,”

Threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution,

Botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico,

Threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them,

Pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes,

Thought that the Virgin islands had a President,

Drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane,

Allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing,

Rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos,

Pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID,

Rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers,

Held blatant campaign rallies at the White House,

Tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man,

Refused to attend his successors’ inauguration,

Nominated the worst Education Secretary in history,

Threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted,

Attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci,

Promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t),

Allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues,

Struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble,

Called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,”

Threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders,

Went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic,

Claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”

Seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution,

Demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director,

Praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles,

Completely gutted the Voice of America,

Placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service,

Claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower,

Suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country,

Suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public,

Overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported,

Reduced the number of refugees the US accepts,

Insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames,

Gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address,

Named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties,

Eliminated the White House office of pandemic response,

Used soldiers as campaign props,

Fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him,

Demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade,

Hired a shit ton of white nationalists,

Politicized the civil service,

Did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government,

Falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts,

Claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won,

Insulted reporters of color,

Insulted women reporters, insulted women reporters of color,

Suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs,

Attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him,

Summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House, to pressure them to overturn the election,

Spent countless hours every day watching Fox News,

Refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas,

Hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer,

Tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him,

Acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney,

Attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault,

Held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present,

Didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media,

Stopped holding press briefings for months at a time,

“Ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power,

Led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform,

Claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers,

Tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course,

Suggested that the government nuke hurricanes,

Suggested that wind turbines cause cancer,

Said that he had a special aptitude for science,

Fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure,

Blurted out classified information to Russian officials,

Tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida,

Fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban,

Hired Stephen Miller,

Openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them,

Interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel,

Abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war,

Tried to get Russia back into the G7,

Held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden,

Seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive,

Lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated,

Falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t,

Shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies,

Still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan,

Still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,”

Forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID,

Told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”

Screwed up the Census wording,

Withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic,

Did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule: “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,”

Allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act,

Seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican,

Stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win,

Constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president, (which presumably includes four that were assassinated, and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump),

Claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened,

Said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake,

Claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him,

Claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,

Created a commission to whitewash American history,

Retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain,

Claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there,

Hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent "Bowling Green Massacre" as a reason to ban Muslims,

Had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others,

Bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties,

Apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House,

Stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians,

Falsely claimed Biden wanted to de-fund the police,

Said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about,

Tried to rescind protection from DREAMers,

Gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic,

Tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax,

Said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states,

Deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented,

Claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln,

Touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile, which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile, or may not exist at all,

Retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile,

Forced through security clearances for his family,

Suggested that police officers should rough up suspects,

Suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs,

Tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender identification,

Suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher,

Nominated a climate change skeptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy,

Retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event,

Hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags,

Accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address,

Claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter,

because they were “spending too much time” on Russia,

Mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault,

Obsessed over low-flow toilets,

Ordered the re-release of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release,

Called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek),

Hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech,

Took advice from the MyPillow guy,

Claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists,

Said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure,

Never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign,

Falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent, though he, (himself), votes by mail.

Announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest,

Insulted the leader of Canada,

Insulted the leader of France,

Insulted the leader of Britain,

Insulted the leader of Germany,

Insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!),

Falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues,

Blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually,

Continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,

Said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked,

Left a NATO summit early in a huff,

Stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that,

Called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary,

Refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise,

and a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.

All documented - - I welcome anyone to show me proof that any one of these did not happen and I will, without argument, correct The Record Book of What Trump Did!

[eton75]

# Zelenskyy’s Rise and Fall: A Predictable Betrayal by the U.S.

For three years, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was celebrated in the West, hailed as a hero and compared to historical figures like Churchill. He was even deemed braver than Alexander the Great, while Vladimir Putin was cast as the ultimate villain. We watched as Zelenskyy traveled the globe, securing billions in aid and receiving royal treatment at every stop. Meanwhile, President Biden seemed all too aware of the financial flow back into corrupt hands.

Now, the narrative has shifted dramatically. Zelenskyy is labeled “the Mad King,” a puppet with diminishing value. The turning point? His refusal to concede Ukraine’s mineral rights to Trump. I had long predicted that the U.S. would eventually turn against Zelenskyy, as they do with allies who cease to be useful. I even placed a bet that he would either flee Kyiv with his ill-gotten gains or face the prospect of assassination approved by the White House.

The signs were evident from the beginning. After the collapse of Afghanistan, when its puppet president absconded to the UAE with cash, I sensed Zelenskyy was next. The U.S. has a well-known playbook: elevate a frontman, enrich him, then orchestrate his downfall. Saddam Hussein was once their ally, empowered to wage war against Iran, only to be tricked into invading Kuwait. Once he outlived his usefulness, the U.S. invaded Iraq and executed him. Osama bin Laden, initially a CIA asset trained to combat the Soviets, was labeled enemy number one once he no longer served American interests. Gaddafi, despite complying with U.S. demands, was ultimately killed by Clinton and Obama for daring to challenge the dollar.

This pattern is consistent. The Shah of Iran was abandoned when the U.S. knew he was terminally ill, paving the way for Khomeini. Patrice Lumumba was assassinated with CIA support, and Salvador Allende was removed in a U.S.-sponsored coup. Mobutu was propped up only to be discarded later. The list goes on.

Now, Zelenskyy reveals that of the $177 billion sent by Biden, only $77 billion actually reached Ukraine. The question remains: where did the rest go? Few seem to ask, as much of it appears to have been funneled back to the U.S.—to the White House, the military-industrial complex, and corrupt politicians across the aisle. Ironically, Elon Musk, the so-called champion of free speech, has remained silent on this issue.

I predict that soon enough, we’ll turn on the news to find that Zelenskyy has either been ousted or has fled. If he continues to speak out, Trump might just give Putin the green light to eliminate him. This is the reality of the game. But how much longer can the U.S. engage in these underhanded tactics while their own nation faces turmoil? Not much longer. This reality is a relief for many leaders in Africa and South America who fear ending up like Lumumba, Allende, or Gaddafi.

I knew my bet was a safe one.

#Zelenskyy #USBetrayal #PoliticalCorruption #RegimeChange #FollowTheMoney

[charlenthetical]

This is a wild justification to provide for the Obama administration's objective wanton slaughter of innocents. To be fair, just about every president is guilty of it to one extent or another, but to justify it due to a posthumous declaration that children and civilians were enemy combatants is fucking absurd.

Lick the boot some more, why don't you?

Reddit moment

[uncleweed]

Why is the Obama Administration Blocking the Release of the Innocent Uighurs at Guantánamo?

By Andy Worthington, AlterNet. Posted June 1, 2009.

Obama needs to find the courage to resist the shrill opportunism of some of his least principled colleagues, and to order the Uighurs' release.

On Friday, court-watchers received some deeply depressing news -- 33 pages of unconstitutional hogwash directed at the Supreme Court by President Obama’s Justice Department (PDF), in which no stone of dubious legality was left unturned in the administration’s desperate and unprincipled attempts to mimic its predecessors by preventing 17 Uighurs at Guantánamo from being resettled in the United States.  

This is a long-running saga, which I have reported at length over the last year, but it centers on two conflicting court rulings. The first, a great day for U.S. justice, took place last October, when the U.S. government had given up all pretense that the Uighurs were “enemy combatants.” This occurred after the government had suffering a withering court defeat in June, when a group of admirable judges compared its attempts to marshal evidence to a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, and last October, in the District Court in Washington D.C., Judge Ricardo Urbina followed up on this historic decision by ruling that, because the Uighurs’ continued detention in Guantánamo was unconstitutional, because they were at risk of torture if returned to China, and because no other country had been found that was prepared to risk the wrath of the People’s Republic by emulating Albania, which accepted five other Uighurs in 2006, they were to be moved to the United States, where communities in Washington D.C. and Tallahassee, Florida, had prepared detailed plans for their resettlement. 

The second ruling, on a day as bleak as Urbina’s was inspiring, was delivered, in response to a groundless appeal by the Bush administration’s Justice Department, by two appeals court judges, A. Raymond Randolph and Karen LeCraft Henderson, who reversed Judge Urbina’s ruling three months ago. Noticeably, both Henderson and Randolph (who has the dubious distinction of having supported every position maintained by the Bush administration regarding Guantánamo that was later overturned by the Supreme Court) ignored the dissent of the third judge, Judith W. Rogers, who argued that the government’s case “misstates the law,” because “the Supreme Court has made clear that, in at least some instances, a habeas court can order an alien released with conditions into the country despite the wish of the Executive to detain him indefinitely.” Judge Rogers also maintained that, in Boumediene v. Bush (last June’s ruling that granted the Guantánamo prisoners habeas rights), the Supreme Court not only granted the prisoners “the privilege of habeas corpus to challenge the legality of their detention,” but also held that “a court’s power under the writ must include ‘authority to … issue … an order directing the prisoner’s release.’”

[rest of article not available – link is archived link via Wayback machine]

[pashterlengkap]

Project 2025 would make workplace discrimination a lot easier

This article first appeared on Mother Jones. It has been republished with the publication’s permission. Only some 40 percent of disabled people are employed. But even that low figure is buoyed by federal laws against employment discrimination—a target of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for a right-wing transformation of government by a second Trump White House. A key institution for the just treatment of disabled workers is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal bans on workplace discrimination. Viewed with distaste by many on the right since its founding through the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the EEOC obtained nearly $4 million in 2023 for disabled workers subjected to employment discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Related Biden administration releases new Title VII rules protecting trans employees The agency’s new guidelines expressly prohibit misgendering, denial of bathroom access, and more. Insights for the LGBTQ+ community Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Discrimination plays a significant role, according to Stetson University College of Law professor Robyn Powell, in unemployment among disabled people, who experience it at a rate about double that of people without disabilities. In response to substantiated complaints, the EEOC can sue companies for discrimination on the basis of disability—among other categories, including race, gender, and age—and may reach a consent decree, where companies agree to changes in policy and practice, sometimes with financial settlements to the affected workers. “Consent decrees occur when there is a big employer where we’re seeing systematic examples of discrimination,” Powell said. “If we can open up employment opportunities by tackling discrimination, it helps everyone.” The decrees are quicker, cheaper, and sometimes more effective than lawsuits in combating workplace prejudice. But they have a notable enemy in the Heritage Foundation’s pet project. Jonathan Berry, who was the chief counsel of Trump’s 2016 transition team and held multiple jobs in his administration, writes in Project 2025 that EEOC “should disclaim power to enter into consent decrees that require employer actions” not already explicitly required by law. Back in 2012, during the Obama administration, a Heritage Foundation employee testified before Congress that federal agencies habitually abuse consent decrees—a viewpoint still clear in Project 2025.  “When we look at [Project 2025’s] specifics around the EEOC and consent decrees,” Powell told Mother Jones, “we can see that they really are trying to attack and decimate disability rights.”  The EEOC and DOJ “have really been critical in protecting the rights of people with disabilities,” says Shira Wakschlag, general counsel and senior director of legal advocacy at The Arc, which serves people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. “Consent decrees are really critical in any kind of civil rights monitoring or systemic action.” Anti-discrimination consent decrees tend to emphasize reform and accountability, with modest settlements compared to potential legal damages. In one representative case, a government contractor that did not provide accommodations to Deaf and hard-of-hearing employees, and that fired workers on medical leave, agreed to a $1 million settlement with updates to policies on medical leave, reasonable accommodation, and managerial training on the Americans with Disabilities Act, including five years’ monitoring for compliance. Other types of Justice Department consent decrees also come under attack in Project 2025. Wakschlag says that’s very concerning for disability rights—federal consent decrees are used to fight the continuing institutionalization of disabled people, which violates both the ADA and the Supreme Court’s Olmstead ruling.  Conservative attacks on… http://dlvr.it/TCgYHc

[hcaballeros]

Trump as a Mercenary Defender: Navigating the Evangelical-Trump Nexus: A Personal Reflection

In the intricate tapestry of American politics, few phenomena are as perplexing as the unwavering support extended by numerous Evangelicals to Donald Trump. How did a man seemingly at odds with traditional Christian values become the chosen champion of the Evangelical community?

Allow me to share a personal perspective. As a lifelong Christian, my identity has been shaped by my connection to the Christian community. However, upon moving to the US during Trump's presidency, I witnessed a pronounced shift in values and priorities. While a gradual transition from Bible-oriented churches to a more market-oriented approach had been underway for years, this change was distinctly political in nature. It was a shift toward associating the concept of leadership from a pastor to President Trump, and I found it challenging to comprehend.

Initially, I grappled with the apparent contradiction between Trump's behavior and the principles of faith, humility, and piety. The success of the Republican Party's branding, portraying the Democratic Party as "satanic," played a significant role in shaping perceptions. Trump took this polarization to an extreme, leaving me questioning whether I, as a Christian, could genuinely support him.

Examining Trump's actions, such as multiple divorces, extramarital affairs, lack of humility, absence of compassion, and an unwillingness to forgive, highlighted a misalignment with Christian values. Despite these concerns, the Evangelical community continued to rally behind him.

After much contemplation, discussions, and even losing acquaintances over this issue, I stumbled upon a partial answer. The timing of Trump's rise to power proved crucial in understanding this alliance. The post-9/11 era created an atmosphere of fear, pessimism, and distrust, sentiments that deeply resonated within the Evangelical community. Feeling that their culture and country were slipping away, Evangelicals sought a savior who could guide them back to what they perceived as a more secure and familiar past.

This period introduced an "Armageddon complex" within the Evangelical movement, fostering a belief that drastic measures were necessary to reclaim a nation slipping away from its grasp. The Obama presidency, marked by economic turmoil and sweeping demographic changes, heightened this fear and discontent. Evangelicals, grappling with the challenges of adapting to a rapidly changing world, found solace in Trump's unapologetic, confrontational, and aggressive approach.

The conversation delves into the profound fear experienced by those born in the 1950s and 1960s, witnessing a cultural transformation challenging their conservative values. The rapid acceptance of same-sex marriage, for instance, felt like an unwelcome intrusion into their worldview. In their pursuit of a defender against perceived threats, Trump emerged as an unconventional yet appealing choice.

Evangelicals embraced Trump as a mercenary defender, someone unbound by the moral norms they felt obligated to follow. Trump's divergence from Christian principles allowed them to justify their support, creating cognitive dissonance within the community. The paradoxical nature of this support is not despite Trump's controversial behavior but rather because of it.

In this line of thought, Trump becomes a feature rather than a bug for Evangelicals. His brash rhetoric and disruptive behavior are perceived as tools to combat perceived enemies at the gates. Evangelicals, in embracing Trump, find an ally who doesn't adhere to the same rules of engagement they feel bound by, enabling them to rationalize their alliance.

This mercenary relationship is the consistent thread in the Evangelical-Trump connection. It offers a distinctive perspective on why, despite Trump's divisive behavior, many Evangelicals not only stick with him but actively support him. The Evangelical-Trump alliance, as discussed, provides a nuanced understanding of the complex interplay between politics, fear, and faith in contemporary American society.

Do I find it sad? Yes, very much. But rather than that, I find it alarming. This "blinding" devotion, fueled by the powerful influence of social networks and their capacity to channel people into their own beliefs, makes Evangelicals susceptible prey.

Allow me to finish with an example: I recently spoke with a Christian leader who accepted to me “almost blind loyalty” (his actual words) to Trump, and that he believed Trump was the solution to a country on the brink of disaster. When I inquired why he held this view, he cited job scarcity, economic downturn, open borders, and cultural decay. Seeking an open dialogue, I countered with facts—job openings were up nearly 25%, economic growth had increased by 2.5%, and apprehensions at the US-Mexico border had risen by 300%. Yet, despite presenting these facts, he remained unswayed, brushing them aside as inconsequential. This encounter exposed a concerning trend of blind loyalty, a refusal to engage in due diligence, or question prevailing beliefs. It reflects a troubling mindset akin to blind faith, reminiscent of what one might find in religious leaders.

This kind of unwavering allegiance, devoid of critical thinking, is both troubling and saddening. I believe we may be too late, and we will be witnessing the consequences of this phenomenon within the Christian community, with the potential for this demographic group to lose relevance in society. The impacts of this trend might only become fully apparent decades from now, and I am concerned that we, as a group, will look back at this time with profound sadness.