A hard rule in American journalism is you can trash an amorphous group, just don't target an individual.
Moyers bravely does this as he burnishes his fascist credentials.
Back when Charlton Heston made that defiant boast at the NRA convention -- that gun control advocates would have to pry his rifle from his cold dead hands -- he must have thought he was back in the fantasy world of Hollywood, re-living his roles as those famous Indian killers Andrew Jackson and Buffalo Bill Cody, whose Wild West, as he called it, courses through the bloodstream of American mythology. For sure, Heston was not channeling his most famous role as Moses striding down from Mount Sinai with a tablet of stone inscribed with God's blueprint for a civilized society, including the commandment: "Thou Shalt Not Kill." It helps, Bill, if you ignore the egregious encroachment of government in privates lives, which has accelerated since 2001, so the straw man of Hollywood fantasy works. Otherwise it's just as old and tired as the notion that the government protects everyone with the draconian guns law we have on the books.
Rant on.
Oh. My. God. Mr. Moyers, as I recall, is "The Power of Myth" man. As such, it behooves him to get it right more than the rest of those bleating about "Thou shalt not kill." What it says in the original Hebrew, my dear pseudo-intellectual, is, "No murdering." To murder, since you seem to be having difficulties with your native tongue, is to kill unlawfully. There are plenty of Hebrew Bible laws requiring lawful killing, such as the waging of war, the punishment of certain crimes, and even the occasional case of taking revenge. You probably don't recall that Judith, in the time of the Judges of the Israelites -- she was a judge in good standing, as it happens, an early example of the standing of women in the Jewish tradition, as it happens -- invited an enemy general to her tent for dinner, fed him, then killed him by pounding a tent peg through his skull as he slept. Not murder, and therefore highly approved.
/Rant
But the good lord seems not to have anticipated the National Rifle Association. Its conscience as cold and dead as Charlton Heston's grip on his gun, the NRA has become the armed bully of American politics, the enabler of the gunfighter nation, whose exceptionalism includes a high tolerance for the slaughter of the innocent. "Mother Jones" magazine reports that at least 194 children have been shot to death since Newtown. 127 of them died in their own homes and dozens more in the homes of friends, neighbors, and relatives, not strangers. 72 pulled the trigger themselves or were shot by another youngster. Terrible. No excuse for poor firearms handling and for killing of victims outside of self defense.
And I didn't know Bill Moyers was a Christian. Cool! We can reliably expect him to STFU about guns any moment now.
My native state of Texas leads the country in the number of young ones killed by guns. While some states passed tougher firearms legislation after Newtown, Texas enacted ten new laws against sane restrictions on guns.
That's "sane", sirrah. Though why anything known to be ineffective in its design would be considered sane is beyond me.
Which is partly why last month, four women had lunch at a restaurant just outside Dallas. It was a planning meeting for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, that's a group started after Newtown that describes itself as the "Mothers Against Drunk Driving of gun reform." Oh, good. Another group created to massage government statistics in order to direct public policy, and further reinforce a state monopoly on armed violence. It is called using the armed might of the state as your personal agenda-enforcing army. You know that morality thing, Bill, you know, the Lord? Something not quite moral about attacking your citizens using the power of the state. I don't think that is what He had in mind.
As the four women ate and talked, about 40 members of a pro-gun group called Open Carry Texas -- champions of guns anywhere and everywhere -- gathered outside the restaurant, many of them with their firearms. They said they were there not to intimidate but to make a point. Sure, as if real men need guns to make a point. Moyers is writing about a false event; I know, surprising for a liberal, right?. The event with the open carry folks was planned weeks before this incident, and as far as I know, none of the two groups interacted, so there was no, as in zero intimidation. And if there was, there's a simple solution. Get a gun.
So it goes. "Thou Shalt Not Kill,"
See rant, above.
but if you do, hide behind the Second Amendment, made holier and more sacrosanct by the NRA than God's own commandment. I said it before: With something north of 150 million firearms int the US, the peace that that has brought is a testament to undoing our firearms laws.
#1
Such a terrible thing the Constitution is, right Bill. Now if we can all be gentlemen and just agree to do away with it to impose our will without regard to being stuck with something a bunch of old white men composed over two hundred years ago (as opposed to all those successful autocracies in say, Africa or Asia that didn't depended upon the racist Enlightenment as a guide in governance)./sarc off
From the man who made his millions on the dole of the American tax payer. Certainly a captain of the Plantation House system.
#2
Funny, after Sandyhook NRA said that they should have armed folks in schools. Recent events had a shooter and an armed guard and the event ended with minimal tragedy. Seems Moyer should be rethinking the NRA, perhaps they have a few ideas worth considering..
#3
Moyers doesn't mention the government's role in gunwalking. He doesn't mention the crimes committed by the thugocracy in this country. Leave the NRA alone--they support the vets, they support our Constitution, and they support gun rights and legally armed citizens. Moyers, go find some other group to target or do a hit piece on. You could write a travel piece or something on cooking.
#4
If that were true you wouldn't dare say so. The fact that a coward like you feels comfortable repeating such drivel is proof positive that no one anywhere feels threatened by the NRA.
He started his journalism career at sixteen as a cub reporter at the Marshall News Messenger in Marshall, Texas. In college, he studied journalism at the North Texas State College in Denton, Texas. In 1954, then-U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson employed him as a summer intern and eventually promoted him to manage Johnson's personal mail. Moyers transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, where he wrote for The Daily Texan newspaper. In 1956, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism. While in Austin, Moyers served as assistant news editor for KTBC radio and television stationsowned by Lady Bird Johnson... During Senator Johnson's unsuccessful bid for the 1960 Democratic U.S. presidential nomination, Moyers served as a top aide, and in the general campaign he acted as liaison between Democratic vice-presidential candidate Johnson and the Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy.
During the Kennedy Administration, Moyers was first appointed as associate director of public affairs for the newly created Peace Corps [and] served as Deputy Director from 1962 to 1963. When Lyndon B. Johnson took office after the Kennedy assassination, Moyers became a special assistant to Johnson [and] played a key role in organizing and supervising the 1964 Great Society legislative task forces and was a principal architect of Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign. Moyers acted as the President's informal chief of staff from October 1964 until 1966... [H]e also served as White House press secretary. After the resignation of White House Chief of Staff Walter Jenkins because of a sexual misdemeanor in the run up to the 1964 election, President Lyndon B. Johnson, alarmed that the opposition was framing the issue as a security breach, ordered Moyers to request FBI name checks on 15 members of Goldwater's staff to find "derogatory" material on their personal lives. The Church Committee stated in 1975 that "Moyers has publicly recounted his role in the incident, and his account is confirmed by FBI documents." Moyers also sought information from the FBI on the sexual preferences of White House staff members, most notably Jack Valenti. Moyers indicated his memory was unclear on why Johnson directed him to request such information, "but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover." Moyers approved the infamous "Daisy Ad" against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign.
In a 2003 interview with BuzzFlash.com, Moyers said, "The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they've won." He added that as "the corporate and governing elites are helping themselves to the spoils of victory," access to political power has become "who gets what and who pays for it." Meanwhile, the public has failed to react because it is, in his words, "distracted by the media circus and news has been neutered or politicized for partisan purposes... As Eric Alterman reports in his recent booka book that I'm proud to have helped make happenpart of the red meat strategy is to attack mainstream media relentlessly, knowing that if the press is effectively intimidated, either by the accusation of liberal bias or by a reporter's own mistaken belief in the charge's validity, the institutions that conservatives reverecorporate America, the military, organized religion, and their own ideological bastions of influencewill be able to escape scrutiny and increase their influence over American public life with relatively no challenge."
#9
My native state of Texas leads the country in the number of young ones killed by guns.
An interesting statistic, but what does it actually mean?
First, gun deaths is an aggregate that includes suicides, accidents and murder. For suicide, guns are matter of convenience - getting rid of guns won't change the suicide rate.
So let's look at murders, specifically the murder rate, since total murders is misleading (although nice for statistical hysteria!). 2010 data from Wikipedia (I know!) says the state with the highest gun murder rate at 16.5 per 100,000 is Washington, DC. Not Texas. But we'll give Bill a pass since DC is not really a state. Next is Louisiana at 7.7, followed by Missouri (5.4), Maryland (5.1), and South Carolina (4.5). Texas? They are at 3.2 murders per 100,000.
You might conclude that Mr. Moyers is trying to mislead you. But don't worry, it's for your own good!
#10
Meyers is a dipshit who is deliberately misleading with that statistic. Texas is on of the largest states, so it will have more of everything. That's why people use per capita, as above. Raw number in this context are a sign of the extremely dishonest or terminally stupid (or both)
[BBC.CO.UK] 1. Monarchies weather the storm
The royal families of the Middle East have had a pretty good Arab Spring so far - rather better than some of them might have feared. That's been as true in Jordan and Morocco as it's been in the Gulf. The governments that have collapsed or wobbled were more or less modelled on Soviet-style one-party states propped up by powerful security establishments.
There's no one single reason for this of course. Bahrain has shown itself ready to use heavy-handed security tactics while others have deployed subtler measures - Qatar hiked public sector salaries in the first months of upheaval. And of course the Gulf Kingdoms effectively have exportable discontent - most lower-paid jobs are done by migrant workers and if they start chafing about conditions of work or political rights they can be sent home.
[Pak Daily Times] The killing of Shias continues. A heavily guarded Imambargah ...since they're religiously correct™, Shia Moslems in Pakistain can't call their houses of worship 'mosques,' which are reserved for Sunnis. It's not clear if imambargahs are used for explosives storage like mosques are... in Rawalpindi was attacked by a jacket wallah that killed three people and injured several on Tuesday. In another roadside kabooming, three people belonging to the Shia community have been killed in Kurram Agency ...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora... . The spate of sectarian violence has erupted with full force in the country since Muharram. The pattern is tit-for-tat killings almost every week. For the Shias it is less about Dire Revenge™ and more about self-defence. Although the slow genocidal killing of Shias in the country has kept up momentum, the current streak of madness since Muharram is the modus operandi of a typical sectarian faith-based group.
[Pak Daily Times] The first meeting of the Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS), the more powerful forum that has supplanted the erstwhile advisory body, the Cabinet Committee on Defence, turned out to be somewhat of a damp squib. So many months of government talk about a new national security policy (which has still to see the light of day) and when the CCNS finally meets, what emerges is an exercise in illusion, if not delusion. The official statement issued after the meeting ruled out military action against the Taliban and promised to pursue peace only through talks. Use of 'other options', it was stated, would only be the 'last resort'. Chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... and comprising the top civilian and military leadership of the country, the CCNS focused on three issues: formulation of a national security strategy, internal security strategy, and relations with Afghanistan. The CCNS deliberated upon the government's strategy to engage various groups of the Taliban. It is being claimed in media reports that contrary to the widespread public perception that there are no talks afoot with any Taliban group, the government is playing its cards close to the chest and has opened channels for dialogue with discrete groups of hard boys. In this context, although the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) has immediately rejected any efforts by the government to hold talks since it says this too is a dollar-hungry client government of the US and is preparing to attack the TTP, media reports speak of a sense of disillusionment on the part of the newly anointed leader of the TTP, Mullah Fazlullah ...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan... , at some of his colleagues being prepared for or even actually engaging in talks with the authorities. He has as a result reportedly cut short his stay in North Wazoo and returned across the border to his safe haven in Kunar province ... which is right down the road from Chitral. Kunar is Haqqani country..... . Now that the CCNS is also seized of the issue of security on the western border, an eye should be kept on the threat from cross-border forays (as in the past) by Mullah Fazlullah's forces. The CCNS envisages development is critical for the fight against terrorism, especially for FATA.
It is a sad comment on the state of our polity that we are unable to see the wood for the trees as far as the struggle against terrorism is concerned. Even if it is conceded that the government's position on dialogue with the Taliban may be a purely tactical one, accompanied by the belief that the TTP will not negotiate and the path will thereby be cleared for a military operation, it is the unrelenting emphasis in every statement by the government on peace through dialogue that may have the unintended effect of sapping whatever morale and will is still left for the fight. The suspicion cannot be lightly dismissed therefore that the politicianship does not appear to have the stomach for what will inevitably be a protracted struggle against terrorism. The military on the other hand appears to be shielding behind the contention that without political ownership of the struggle, the army cannot conduct meaningful operations on the scale required against the terrorists. Some critics alarmingly argue that the Taliban infection has travelled to within the ranks of the security services, which makes any struggle against them risky in terms of internal cohesion. Even if this is dismissed as too alarmist a prognosis, the ease with which some prisons were broken in the recent past and terrorist prisoners in the hundreds released without a shot being fired is a worrying symptom of all not being well inside the security corridors of the state. If the politicians are unwilling, the military reluctant for reasons of political ownership and internal issues, no military operation is likely to take place, much less succeed. Even if the TTP refuses to come to the table, and some factions do talk to the government, in the absence of a concerted military strategy against the terrorists, the most likely scenario is that things will remain pretty much the same: muddling through, hoping against hope, and getting bogged down in wishful thinking. Not exactly a recipe for a successful finish to what has by now been clearly defined as an existential internal threat. Despite all this, the 'last resort' may still assert itself despite all this lack of necessary political will.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/19/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[Pak Daily Times] Hakeemullah Mehsud, the iron-fisted chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) is dead but before departing, his soul drenched Pakistain in a cold sweat. On November 1, 2013, a drone strike hit him in his luxurious farmhouse right under military cannons. However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... rampant confusion about the legitimacy of his death turned this news from euphoria into a quandary. For a country that believes in talks and talks alone, his death untapped another debate about martyrdom and liquidation. The worst came from the cricketer-cum-politician Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who ain't the sharpest bulb on the national tree... , who is always looking at any situation through the establishment's binoculars. He was enraged by the timing of this drone strike, which, he feels, was a plan by the US to drown the peace talks. As a result, he threw down his gauntlet to stop the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... supplies that pass through Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... where his party is ruling the roost. As a matter of fact, the dispute is not about the effectiveness of the drone strikes but their origin. Both the US and Pakistain declared a bounty on this notorious terrorist's head but his obituary was drafted in sharp variance at home. Drones, no doubt, create fear and uncertainty amongst terrorists, deter snuffies from engaging in further violence and deliver precision. Nevertheless, drones remain a conundrum for Pakistain.
Drone strikes remain an enigma for both countries, especially for Pak citizens. Both the B.O. regime and Pak authorities are silent about this issue. The Pak authorities clearly denounce these automaton strikes because they are overtly against Pakistain's already lacerated illusory sovereignty and counterproductive. According to a US diplomatic cable by Wikileaks in May 2009, in a meeting with a US congressional delegation led by Senator Patrick Leahy ...Democrat Senator-for-Life from Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, source of more leaks than a plumber could keep up with... , chairman of the appropriations sub-committee of state, foreign operations and related programmes, President Asif Ali Ten Percent Zardari ... husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who has been singularly lacking in curiosity about who done her in ... reportedly said, "Give me the drones so that my forces can take out the gunnies ourselves and not be criticised by the media or anyone else for the action our army takes to protect our illusory sovereignty."
The rustics acknowledge that there seems to be a degree of intelligence sharing between the CIA and ISI for drone attacks on bad turbans' positions in FATA. To prove their point, they refer to the killing of Tahir Yaldeshov, the Uzbek bad turban commander, in a drone attack.
The CIA seems to have its own intelligence on the ground and often kills gunnies in drone attacks whom the Pak establishment might not even approve of. Both these countries blame each other for the dubious role played by them in the war on terrorism. This trust cleavage was further widened by the Osama episode. Here starts the ISI and CIA power play, and this is the reason why media protagonists in the Pak establishment damn the drone.
The loudest animadversion on drones is the loss of innocent civilian lives. The Pak media has made it a point to spread distorted, baseless and off-the-wall information about FATA, serving pro-establishment designs. Unfortunately, due to the poor security situation, international media and researchers do not have independent access to FATA's rough terrain. They rely on the Pak media for information without investigating its veracity and uncritically accepting it in the ready form. However, the hip bone's connected to the leg bone... this reliance is for a reason. It is said that after every drone attack the gunnies cordon off the area and no one, including the local villagers, is allowed to come anywhere near the targeted place. The gunnies themselves collect the carcasses, perform the burial and then issue statements mourning the toll of casualties. This propaganda strategy manifests its support in the media circles to mould public opinion. This crucially accounts for the unreliable estimates about civilian casualties in the drone attacks and the dilemmas ensued.
A humanitarian perspective from the point of view of the tribal people would make it easier to understand why they might welcome drone attacks. Unlike the wider society in Pakistain, the Taliban and al Qaeda forces of Evil control large parts of tribal society in FATA. I asked a Mehsud IDP about drones and he clearly said that these flying bombs are a blessing. He explained that the first thing the Taliban did was crush their tribal code. They started killing their elders, especially the jirga experts. More than 200 Maliks and Khans were killed in the first spate of violence by the Taliban in collaboration with our invisible establishment. Tears rolled out of his eyes and he further said that the most important institution in a Pashtun society was its jirga; if that too was snatched by bad turbans, whom they are no match for, then there was no option but drones. Narrating the woes of life, he confessed that a worker on his farm who later became a local Taliban leader always threatened him with land encroachment. Finally, he had to undertake heavy-hearted migration.
Hence, some people in Wazoo compare drones with the Koran's "ababeel" (the holy sparrows sent by God to avenge Abraham, the intended conqueror of the Kaaba, the holiest Moslem site in Mecca, Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... ). Many people in Waziristan call the drone strikes an "airborne justice delivery system" because they believe the strikes are precisely killing the forces of Evil who have imposed a reign of terror on the people. Since drones reduce the likelihood of casualties, as compared to carpet-bombing, they may increase the freedom of political and military commanders to use drones in combat operations and help the hapless. It is thus amply clear that the military does not oppose drones but seeks control over their use, or at least to leverage the debate to obtain more say over target selection.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/19/2013 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Drones are not evil. They just need love and understanding.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Kurram Agency
...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...
Nawaz Sharif
President Asif Ali 
Wazoo
