For everyone celebrating Mother’s Day today safe and sound here in America, take a moment to think about the mothers around the world who are without children today due to injustices carried out by our government with our tax dollars.
Let’s hope the government’s New Year’s resolution is to stop killing innocent people… now that’s just wishful thinking.
Trying to rationalize a completely irrational act can be an exercise in futility. It’s best to just step back and put it into perspective. For instance, tragedies such as this one are exhibited the world over every day, this one just happens to hit a lot closer to home. It’s estimated 10 times as many children have been killed by US drone strikes, each one signed off on by President Obama, who today appeared to shed some tears over the tragedy in Connecticut.
It’s the nationalist hypocrisy that sickens me more than anything about this country, as well as the willful ignorance. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children have died as a result of US aggression - even before the invasion, economic sanctions ravaged what had previously been a prosperous state. Palestinian children die on the way to school thanks to Israeli bullets and bombs, sold to them by the US government, and restocked after every atrocity.
Every day in this country, parents are separated from their children, either through immigration enforcement, or the cataclysmic failure which is the War on Drugs. In no way does any of this minimize the tragedy that unfolded yesterday, but it does illustrate the selective attention of Americans to tragedies, and makes you scratch your head at how the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children all over the world at the hands of our government and funded through our tax dollars doesn’t illicit some kind of national discussion, but like you pointed out, the “gun control” debate is surely going to kick-up in the next few days, as it already has begun.
Like all prohibitive measures, gun control is destined to fail. Look at the prohibition on alcohol in the 20s (repealed after the largest surge in organized crime in history), the War on Drugs since the 70s (the US has the highest prison population per capita and I’m pretty sure the drugs are still around), and the prohibition on prostitution since forever (clearly not stopping anybody). All miserable failures, some still ongoing. Criminals don’t follow laws, by definition. As evidenced by the recent mass shooting in Norway, where it is only legal to own guns for sport, an individual managed to acquire an illegal arsenal and commit acts of pure evil. And in China, a monstrously authoritarian state where a civilian cannot legally own a gun, individuals find other means to conduct atrocities.
Why do we abhor violence at home but celebrate or otherwise ignore it elsewhere? As a human species, I think we collectively need to evolve beyond the immoral use of force. It’s sewn into the flag of every nation with an imperial past (or present), embedded in the cultures of post-colonial states, and reinforced every day by state acts of war. As I said previously, you will always have individuals who for whatever reason act in ways which defy understanding. But when you have national entities which engage in the same acts, and then somehow manage to escape the same scrutiny applied to individuals, it doesn’t bode well for the future of our species.
Double Amputee Shooting: Matthew Jacob Marin, Houston Officer, Kills Man In Wheelchair, Police Say
HOUSTON — A Houston police officer shot and killed a one-armed, one-legged man in a wheelchair Saturday inside a group home after police say the double amputee threatened the officer and aggressively waved a metal object that turned out to be a pen.
Police spokeswoman Jodi Silva said the man cornered the officer in his wheelchair and was making threats while trying to stab the officer with the pen. At the time, the officer did not know what the metal object was that the man was waving, Silva said.
She said the man came “within inches to a foot” of the officer and did not follow instructions to calm down and remain still.
“Fearing for his partner’s safety and his own safety, he discharged his weapon,” Silva told The Associated Press.
Police did not immediately release the name of the man who was killed. They had been called to the home after a caretaker there called and reported that the man in wheelchair was causing a disturbance.
The owner of the group home, John Garcia, told the Houston Chronicle that the man had a history of mental illness and had been living at the house about 18 months. Garcia said the man had told him that he lost a leg above the knee and all of one arm when he was hit by a train.
“He sometimes would go off a bit, but you just ignore it,” Garcia told the newspaper.
Silva identified the officer as Matthew Jacob Marin, a five-year veteran of the department. He was immediately placed on three-day administrative leave, which is standard in all shootings involving officers.
Houston police records indicate that Marin also fatally shot a suspect in 2009. Investigators at the time said Marin came upon a man stabbing his neighbor to death at an apartment complex and opened fired when the suspect refused to drop the knife.
On Saturday, Marin and his partner arrived at the group home around 2:30 a.m. Silva said there were several people at the house at the time. The caretaker who called police waited on the porch while the officers went inside, she said.
“It was close quarters in the area of the house,” Silva said. “The officer was forced into an area where he had no way to get out.”
Seriously though, how the fuck do you, on two legs, get cornered by a guy in a wheel chair? Let alone a guy that only has one fucking arm to operate said wheelchair. This story is so full of holes - how does a guy with one arm corner you in a wheelchair while simultaneously wielding a pen? Moreover, how, when cornered by this man wielding a pen, are you unable to discern that the “weapon” the man is wielding is actually a pen? What kind of range are we talking about here, that you are so close to the guy you can’t possibly escape, yet you are still far enough away that you can’t quite make out what is in his one hand?
If I shot a guy in a wheelchair wielding a pen, I’m fairly confident I would serve 20 years to life. Watch this fucking asshole get paid administrative leave for 2 weeks, and then go back to his life of welfare, living off other people’s tax dollars, and protecting and serving the shit out of more citizens by murdering them.
In the car, on the way to work, listening to NPR. Since 2004, the 300+ US drone strikes on the Afghan/Pakistan border killed 70% “militants” (people that say no to US imperialism and allegedly have taken up arms). In other words, 30% of drone assassination victims were non-militants (people who may or may not say no to US imperialism and have not taken up arms). 30% innocent men, women, and children. How do you think the friends and families of the murdered innocent feel? Lives ruined by missiles fired from remote controlled US assassination machines. Is this a war on terror or a war of terror? If for every “militant” we kill, we inspire others to hate everything the US stands for and thus create more enemies to US imperialism, imagine how many more we create by murdering innocents and writing it off as collateral damage. Hey, remember that 16 year old US citizen our government drones assassinated in Yemen last fall? Yeah, that happened, too.
Fuck war. Fuck capitalism. Fuck states. Fuck religion. Fuck money. I hope the world explodes.
Sean Hannity on evil in the world vs. US sponsored terrorism
The other day I was listening to Hannity rant about good vs. evil (he got on to the topic by discussing Rick Santorum’s 2008 speech regarding Satan as the driving force behind moral degradation in America). Hannity pointed to only two events in world history which, for him, confirm that evil in the world exists: Nazi Germany/the Holocaust, and 9/11. He also tied into this discussion the situation with Iran/Israel.
I would like to take a moment and point out a few instances which I feel could have strengthened Hannity’s argument for evil existing in the world:
US sponsored murder of Indians, 1776-1973: Low estimate 10 million deaths, high estimate 114 million deaths
US invasions/occupations during the Banana Wars, 1898-1934: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico
US drops 2 nuclear bombs on Japan, killing to-date 395,000 men, women, and children
1947-49 - U.S. helps command extreme-right Greece party in Civil War.
Death toll: about 70,000 contributed by US-backed forces
1948-54 - CIA directs war against Huk Rebellion in Philippines.
Death toll: about 11,000
1950 - Independence movement crushed in Ponce, Puerto Rico
Death toll: conservative historians estimated about 8,000 peasants
1950-53 - Korean War
Death toll: about 1,776,000
1952 - CIA overthrows Democracy in Iran, installs Shah
Death toll: about 20,000
1954 - CIA directs invasion of Guatemala after new Democracy there nationalized U.S.-occupied lands
Death toll: about 140,000 missing and dead
1958 - In Lebanon, marine occupation against rebels
Death toll: about 2,000
1960-75+ - Vietnam War including Cambodia and Laos
Death toll: about 4,502,000 including civilians and resulting famines (conservative estimates)
1961 - Cuba’s Bay of Pigs Invasion fails
Death toll: about 4,000
1963 - In Iraq, CIA organizes coup against President and agrees to back formerly exiled Saddam
Death toll: about 7,000 including civilians
1964 - In Panama, troops kill protesters against US-owned canal
Death toll: about 1,000
1965 - CIA assists Indonesian coup
Death toll: about 900,000
1966 - Troops and bombers threaten pro-communist parties in Dominican Republic
Death toll: about 3,000
1966-96 - Green berets in Guatemala against rebels, US backs pro-American forces in country until 1996
Death toll: about 200,000
1970 - Directs marine invasion of Oman
Death toll: about 2,000
1973 - CIA directs coup to oust elected Marxist president in Chile
Death toll: 30,000… 3,000 later disappeared under US-installed dictator
1976-92 - CIA assists South-African rebels in Angola
Death toll: median estimate at 550,000
1981-90 - CIA directs Contra invasions in Nicaragua
Death toll: median estimate at 30,000
1982-84 - Marines expel Lebanese rebels, aided by Israel
Death toll: 40,000
1987-88 - US intervenes for Iraq against Iran
Death toll: about 150,000 during time-frame, 100,000 during Desert Storm, 350,000 from resulting famine
1989 - US invades to oust CIA-installed Panamanian government gone rouge
Death toll: 2,000
1992-94 - US-led occupation of Somalia during civil war
Death toll: 50,000 in combat, 300,000 by starvation
2001+ - US Occupies Afghanistan
Death toll: 120,000 including civilians and combatants and resulting Opium Wars
2003+ - Iraqi War
Death toll: 665,000 also by starvation, displacement
2004- Present - US drones assassinate 1,700 - 2,700 individuals in the Middle East
This does not include classified events, POWs, torture, Guantanamo Bay, etc. I wonder why Hannity overlooked these events?
(sources: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_Native_Americans_were_killed_by_the_US_government, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081217214603AA4Ev5m)
For this year’s superbowl, I’m rooting for all the brown people our government is trying to murder around the world. For the half time show, maybe we’ll get the Syrian dictatorship to stop indiscriminately shelling residential areas. With my luck, it will just be the Black Eyed Peas again.
US drones murdered 9 people in Yemen last night. But it’s ok, because they were suspected of being terrorists. Suspected, so they were executed. Whether or not they were a threat to you or I is unclear. What is clear is that they were murdered by missiles paid for by our tax dollars. Happy Tuesday, we’re all serial killers.
