Realitista

In Libya, the Captors Have Become the Captive

Really interesting read about the post revolution landscape.

Libya has no army. It has no government. These things exist on paper, but in practice, Libya has yet to recover from the long maelstrom of Qaddafi’s rule. The country’s oil is being pumped again, but there are still no lawmakers, no provincial governors, no unions and almost no police. Streetlights in Tripoli blink red and green and are universally ignored. Residents cart their garbage to Qaddafi’s ruined stronghold, Bab al-Aziziya, and dump it on piles that have grown mountainous, their stench overpowering. Even such basic issues as property ownership are in a state of profound confusion. Qaddafi nationalized much of the private property in Libya starting in 1978, and now the old owners, some of them returning after decades abroad, are clamoring for the apartments and villas and factories that belonged to their grandparents. I met Libyans brandishing faded documents in Turkish and Italian, threatening to take up arms if their ancestral tracts of land were not returned.

What Libya does have is militias, more than 60 of them, manned by rebels who had little or no military or police training when the revolution broke out less than 15 months ago. They prefer to be called katibas, or brigades, and their members are universally known as thuwar, or revolutionaries. Each brigade exercises unfettered authority over its turf, with “revolutionary legitimacy” as its only warrant. Inside their barracks — usually repurposed schools, police stations or security centers — a vast experiment in role reversal is being carried out: the guards have become the prisoners and the prisoners have become the guards. There are no rules, and each katiba is left to deal in its own way with the captives, who range from common criminals to Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, the deposed leader’s son and onetime heir apparent. Some have simply replicated the worst tortures that were carried out under the old regime. More have exercised restraint. Almost all of them have offered victims a chance to confront their former torturers face to face, to test their instincts, to balance the desire for revenge against the will to make Libya into something more than a madman’s playground.

Drone strike in Afghanistan kills five children. Greenwald: "If one of the relatives of the children just killed in Afghanistan decided to attack the U.S., what would they be called by the U.S. media? Terrorists. Primitive, irrational, religious fanatics beyond human decency."

This happens over and over and over again, and there are several points worth making here beyond the obvious horror:

1) To the extent these type of incidents are discussed at all — and in American establishment media venues, they are most typically ignored — there are certain unbending rules that must be observed in order to retain Seriousness credentials. No matter how many times the U.S. kills innocent people in the world, it never reflects on our national character or that of our leaders. Indeed, none of these incidents convey any meaning at all. They are mere accidents, quasi-acts of nature which contain no moral information (in fact, the NYT article on these civilian deaths, out of nowhere, weirdly mentioned that “in northern Afghanistan, 23 members of a wedding celebration drowned in severe flash flooding” — as though that’s comparable to the U.S.’s dropping bombs on innocent people). We’ve all been trained, like good little soldiers, that the phrase “collateral damage” cleanses and justifies this and washes it all way: yes, it’s quite terrible, but innocent people die in wars; that’s just how it is. It’s all grounded in America’s central religious belief that the country has the right to commit violence anywhere in the world, at any time, for any cause.

At some point — and more than a decade would certainly qualify — the act of continuously killing innocent people, countless children, in the Muslim world most certainly does reflect upon, and even alters, the moral character of a country, especially its leaders. You can’t just spend year after year piling up the corpses of children and credibly insist that it has no bearing on who you are.

Continued here

TSA Unable To Detect 33% Of Land Mines Sent Through Security

A mechanical engineer from the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey was stopped by TSA officers at Newark Airport after they found two Claymore mines in her bag. This would be a victory for the TSA had they not just let the woman’s co-worker through with a similar mine in their checked baggage.

Which government agency deserves your scorn, the one whose employees tried to bring anti-personnel mines (even inert ones) on a plane or the one whose employees didn’t detect a third of them?

Adbusters Co-Founder: "Maybe the real job is to launch a third political party in America that is initiated on the Internet, gets million of signatures, and then has a convention. Maybe the task of changing the political landscape of America with a third party is a way smarter move than what the Tea Party did with the Republicans"

The trick for the political Left is to think deeper. Instead of thinking, “Hey, let’s pass a law that legislates the Robin Hood tax,” let’s change the political landscape. Take, for example, the idea we launched last year. In the general assemblies we have a microcosm of a democratic process that’s magical and beautiful. It works and this is a metaphor for how America should work. Eventually, I agree, we will have to pass laws and do all that stuff you are talking about, but there is a lot of deep-down rabble-rousing that needs to happen before we get to that point.

Rand Paul has a quick fix for TSA: Pull the plug

Now here’s something we can all get behind, right? Let’s end this charade.

Rand Paul has a reform plan for the Transportation Security Administration: Scrap the whole thing.

A personal message from Paul (R-Ky.) came atop emails this week from the Campaign for Liberty Vice President Matt Hawes, asking for readers to sign a petition in support of Paul’s “End the TSA” bill. A Paul spokeswoman said that legislation is being finalized next week.

“Every inch of our person has become fair game for government thugs posing as ‘security’ as we travel around the country. Senator Rand Paul has a plan to do away with the TSA for good, but he needs our help,” reads the petition, which also asks signers to “chip in a contribution to help C4L mobilize liberty activists across America to turn the heat up on Congress and end the TSA’s abuse of our rights.”

In the last 100 years, only 2 countries have made it illegal for Jews and non-Jews to marry. Israel and Nazi Germany.

Interesting fact..