The beginning of the Bomb

On July 16, 1945, the Atomic Age began, as the old cliché goes. Hundreds of modern alchemists journeyed to an occult gathering in the New Mexico desert to conjure up a fantastical, mysterious force in the early hours of the morning. The famously unclear origins of the code name for the project, “Trinity,” only adds to the lore.

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Preemptive Legitimate Defense: When a Movement of Your Body Can Kill You

From The Funambulist:

Whether we talk about the war in Iraq or the murder of Trayvon Martin, there seems to emerge a legal means of justification for a country to invade another or for a white man to kill a black boy. I call this means “preemptive legitimate defense” insisting on its oxymoronic character that demonstrates its ethical and legal absurdity. Such a claim is revealing the contradictions of our era, what Slavoj Zizek denounces in the marketing inventions of decaffeinated coffee and beer without alcohol and their geopolitical equivalent: wars for peace. These contradictions emerge from the necessity for a majority of people in the Western World to maintain their way of life and to obtain an ethical justification for their political positioning. The notion of legitimate is therefore important: it involves a narrative whose consistency should be sufficient to be self-persuasive (the kind that makes us say that we should not give money to a beggar because (s)he is probably part of a larger network that is abusing her or him). The notion of preemptive also implies a narrative: an anticipated one — and therefore a fictional or speculative one — that would retroactively justify the defense. We find the paradox of Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report here: if you know that someone is going to commit a crime you can arrest him (her) before (s)he commits it; yet, if you do arrest him (her) the crime has not been committed and therefore this person cannot be legitimately punished. The justification of a “preemptive legitimate defense” — of course, this is never presented that explicitely — is therefore always either hypocritical or delusional.

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Decolonial Strategies and Dialogue in the Human Rights Field

José-​Manuel Bar­reto, Critical Legal Thinking :

...A dog trained to attack the flesh, and tor­ture, kill, and gorge a man and a child in front of the mother con­nects Fernando Botero’s Abu Grahib with Bar­to­lomé de las Casas’ Short Account of the Destruc­tion of the Indies. In this scen­ario of colo­nial wars a dog is turned into a beast­—a tor­ture dog or a war dog—by the inhu­man­ity of con­quista­dors and invaders. The dog becomes a power­ful machine for ter­ror­iz­ing and des­troy­ing the body, and for dehu­man­iz­ing the col­on­ized—and the col­on­izer. Five hun­dred years apart these two images or stor­ies are bound together by their ori­gin: the his­tory of the advance of mod­ern imper­i­al­ism, and the sens­ib­il­ity of their authors for the suf­fer­ing of the vic­tims. The viol­ence and dread of these events res­on­ates in the global con­scious­ness and moral sen­ti­ment of our times

[ ... ]

Mod­ern­ity can­not be iden­ti­fied exclus­ively with eman­cip­a­tion, the Renais­sance and the Enlight­en­ment, but it is also his­tor­ic­ally evid­ent that colo­ni­al­ism was another of its cent­ral found­a­tions. The con­ven­tional con­cep­tion of mod­ern­ity needs to be revis­ited to accom­mod­ate the leg­acy of mod­ern imper­i­al­ism: the con­quest and col­on­iz­a­tion of the world—a vast enter­prise of dom­in­a­tion mar­shaled through wars of aggres­sion, gen­o­cides, slavery, plun­der and exploit­a­tion. 

[ ... ]

The his­tory of mod­ern ideas—mod­ern ration­al­ity itself, con­cep­tions of the state, even Marx­ist and other cri­tiques of cap­it­al­ism—runs inter­re­lated to the his­tory of mod­ern imper­i­al­ism. For a geo­pol­it­ical ana­lysis of know­ledge, the cul­tural col­on­iz­a­tion of world civil­iz­a­tions, ration­al­it­ies and intel­lec­tual dis­cip­lines ended in the cru­cial assump­tion accord­ing to which the ori­gin of legit­im­ate think­ing is con­fined to a cer­tain geo­pol­it­ical loc­a­tion, Europe, exclud­ing the exist­ence of other sites of know­ledge gen­er­a­tion...

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ABFFE Joins Campaign Against NSA Surveillance

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) has joined a number of other civil liberties organizations, including the ACLU, to protest the National Security Administration's surveillance of Americans' Internet activity and phone records. The recently revealed news of the NSA's actions spurred ABFFE and the other groups to write an open letter to members of Congress.

The letter says that the type of "blanket" spying the NSA has done "strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy." For booksellers and librarians in particular, the NSA's actions recall their fight against Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. 

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Authorities 'use analytics tool that recognises sarcasm'

Zoe Kleinman Technology reports for BBC News:

French company Spotter has developed an analytics tool that claims to be able to identify sarcastic comments posted online.
Spotter says its clients include the Home Office, EU Commission and Dubai Courts.
The algorithm-based analytics software generates reputation reports based on social and traditional media material.
However some experts say such tools are often inadequate because of the nuance of language.
A spokeswoman for the Home Office said she should not comment at this time.
Spotter's UK sales director Richard May said the company monitored material that was "publicly available".
Its proprietary software uses a combination of linguistics, semantics and heuristics to create algorithms that generate reports about online reputation. It says it is able to identify sentiment with up to an 80% accuracy rate.

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Federal Judge Parades Her Ignorance, Approves Torture of Guantanamo Prisoners

A U.S. District Judge not only doesn't know what torture is, she doesn't know her own history.
Judge Rosemary M. Collyer doesn't know what people have known for decades, if not centuries: force-feeding is torture. Force-feeding is torture. In fact, Judge Collyer wouldn't be sitting where she is today if dozens of American (and British) women hadn't been tortured in this way in their fight for the right to vote. Women were maimed and died because of force-feeding.

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Catch up on Circle of 13 posts

On Facebook.

Military Industry Employee 'Throws Down Rifle' for 'Good of the World'

A five-year employee at private defense contracting corporation General Dynamics publicly resigned Tuesday in protest of the company's arming of US-led wars, declaring: "I have always believed that if every foot soldier threw down his rifle war would end. I hereby throw mine down." 
Brandon Toy's General Dynamics employee badge (Photo: Brandon Toy)

Brandon Toy sent his resignation letter in an email to his immediate supervisors, coworkers, and the corporate chain of command, as well as to Common Dreams, who published the statement Tuesday.
The letter has since gone viral, racketing tens of thousands of views on social media sites as attention continues to climb.
Toy—who penned the letter in May and sat on it for months—says that when he pressed send and walked out of his office, he felt that a "giant weight had been lifted from [his] shoulders."
"I feel fantastic," he told Common Dreams. "I did the right thing. I am a little concerned about what I will do for work, but I know I will be working for the good of the world."

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A Tribute to Blacklisted Lyricist Yip Harburg: The Man Who Put the Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz

His name might not be familiar to many, but his songs are sung by millions around the world. Today, we take a journey through the life and work of Yip Harburg, the Broadway lyricist who wrote such hits as "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" and who put the music into The Wizard of Oz. Born into poverty on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Harburg always included a strong social and political component to his work, fighting racism and poverty. A lifelong socialist, Harburg was blacklisted and hounded throughout much of his life. We speak with Harburg’s son, Ernie Harburg, about the music and politics of his father. Then we take an in-depth look at The Wizard of Oz, and hear a medley of Harburg’s Broadway songs and the politics of the times in which they were created.

Democracy Now!

Anonymous Op4RedHack

Greetings Citizens of the world, this is Anonymous.

It has come to our attention that the Turkish government want to prosecute a hacker group called Redhack, they are accused of being a "terror organisation." Prosecutors will demand up to 24 years imprisonment for people who have no connection to Redhack.

They opposed and carried out actions against rapes, out of date milk distributed to school children, which resulted in 100's being poisoned, and the country being prostituted to the capitalists. They opposed child pornography, internet censorship, and brutal government opposition. Lately, they have been viciously attacked by the Fascist Turkish State because they share information which already belongs to the people. The most significant of these attacks is the one that has been levied against innocent people who have no link to Redhack. These people, who have shared information on social media about these actions, are now held for ransom, solely in order to demonise Redhack and cut their support.

Redhack openly declared that Duygu Kerimoglu, Ugur Cihan Okutulmus and AllaatinKaragenc are not their members. Nor are the seven others, on bail.

We implore the public to give their support to these innocent people. We call on all hacktivists, activists, freedom defenders, human rights organisation to demand an end to the restraints imposed on these three innocent people on remand, and the seven others on bail.

No matter how dark it may seem, no matter how alone and abandoned you may feel know that over 9 thousands of us in Anonymous are with you and working tirelessly around the clock to bring you every assistance. To the people of Turkey and Redhack, know that Anonymous stands with you in this fight.

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.

IRC: =[]= irc.anonops.com channel #Op4RedHack || WebChat http://webchat.anonops.com channel #Op4RedHack =[]=

For more intel: http://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/?p=7766
Paste: http://pastehtml.com/view/cjcuz1107.rtxt

Catch up on posts

Complete October-November post list here.

Americans in Pakistan Meet Families of Victims Obama Says Don't Exist

David Swanson reports for War Is A Crime.org:

Thirty-two U.S. peace activists, including 6 members of Veterans For Peace are taking part in a peace delegation to Pakistan organized by the anti-war group Code Pink.

See video: http://vimeo.com/50666774

Wednesday the delegation met with U.S. Charge d'Affaires Richard Hoagland.  U.S. peace activist Robert Naiman asked about reports of secondary attacks on rescuers of drone victims.  Ambassador Hoagland denied that rescuers are targeted, but not that strikes are launched on the same location just struck minutes before.

Hoagland also said that he agreed with President Obama that the number of civilian deaths was near zero, but later seemed to contradict himself when he said that number he believed was accurate was in "two digits."  When asked to be more specific as to whether that number was closer to 10 or 99, he declined.

VFP President Leah Bolger asked:  "Since you know exactly where we intend to go, presumably the CIA and the DoD know as well, so can you guarantee us that there will be no drone strikes in the area while we are there?"  He then gave a 100% guarantee that there would be no strikes on the group.  Bolger followed up with: "So if we just position Americans throughout the region, can we guarantee the safety of the Pakistanis as well?"  

He replied that most of the "militants" in the area are foreigners -- not Pakistanis -- and that they come in and take over.  He said that the local people would be very pleased to have them go.  

On Wednesday and Thursday the delegation met with drone victims, with more such meetings planned for Friday. The families of the victims related a very different story than that purported by the Charge.  

Karim Khan, described the deaths of his son and his brother in a 2009 drone attack, as well as the damaging psychological effects of having up to six drones circling overhead 24 hours a day.  Khan's story is featured in the book "Drone Warfare:  Killing by Remote Control," which was written by the delegation's leader, Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin. See also this article. And this one.

The Pakistan National Defense University (NDU) was the site on Wednesday for a presentation by retired U.S. Army colonel and former diplomat Ann Wright, a lead member of the Code Pink delegation against drones.  The delegation was invited to appear by the Dean of the Faculty of Contemporary Studies and was attended by an enthusiastic audience of NDU students as well as several high ranking officers.

Wright emphasized the illegality of the U.S. drone program which violates the sovereignty of other nations, and also allows President Obama to be the ‘judge, jury and executioner’ when he gives the go-ahead for extrajudicial signature drone attacks.

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A Briefing on Iran's Nuclear Program

A briefing on Iran's Nuclear Program. From the discovery of atom power, the utilization of this new science for the bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki and the resulting "nuclear dilemma." Covering the institutions created in answer to the nuclear dilemma: the United Nations (UN), the "Atoms for Peace" initiative, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). After this a look at the history of Iran's nuclear program and the current standoff: the West's demands that Iran cease enriching, and Iran's refusal citing its inalienable right to a peaceful nuclear program under the NPT. And finally a look at the intelligence about Iran's nuclear program, and a little rhetorical jab at the end.

 http://www.inceptionhouse.com

Mr. Velile Mafani Will Throw Three Stones Through the Window of the High Court in Grahamstown Tomorrow

Unemployed People’s Movement Press Statement

Our movement has been approached by Mr. Velile Ben Mafani. He informed us that tomorrow he will throw three stones, one white, one black, and one red, through the window of the High Court in Grahamstown. He will tie a letter stating his demands around the stones.

Mr Mafani was born in a shack settlement in Coega, just outside Port Elizabeth two days after Christmas in 1953. His parents worked on nearby farms, bought and sold produce from the farms and his mother worked in kitchens. The apartheid system did not want black people living in their own places in the cities and in the 1970s they were threatened with forced removal to the Ciskei Bantustan which was a human dumping ground. Mr Mafani formed an organisation called ‘Operation Go Nowhere’ and they organised against the forced removal. But Piet

Koornhof pressured them and their struggle was defeated. On the 15^th of April 1979 the police and the bulldozers came. Mr Mafani was the first to be put inside a police van. The door was closed. He couldn’t see anything but he heard the screams as the shacks were destroyed and were people loaded up on to trucks like animals to be dumped in the Ciskei. People were told that there was a Court Order from the Hight Court in Grahamstown ordering their eviction. They were shown the paper but they were not allowed to read it.

Three thousand people from Coega were dumped in Glenmore, near Peddie. Today it is more than two hours by car from Coega. They lost their work, their cattle and their homes. They lost everything. Soon after their arrival in Glenmore 140 people, mainly children and old people, died. There were no funeral parlours and they couldn’t afford coffins so the dead were just wrapped in blankets and buried on the banks of the Fish River.

Since then Mr Mafani has never stopped challenging and struggling for justice.

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See also:

 New twist in Mafani court saga

 Consultation with his ancestors prevented outspoken Glenmore activist Ben Mafani from attending a court hearing in Grahamstown Wednesday, the second time he has failed to appear in recent months.

[ ... ]

He said he went to the cemetery on the day he was due to appear in court. "I took some time to go to the graves of the activists who had fought with me during the forced removals, to have a conversation with them, Mafani said. It's a spiritual conversation now," he explained.

Wiki entry:  Ben Mafani

Former Supreme Court Justice Souter on The Danger of America's 'Pervasive Civic Ignorance'

Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter sat down with Margaret Warner and answered an audience question concerning the appropriate role of schools to produce civicly engaged students.

#S17 Occupy Arrests at West Street

See also: 

180+ arrests on Occupy Wall St. anniversary — in pictures

Pakistan: Center of the Grand Chessboard

WeAreChange presents a film by Saad Ali. Read the article that accompanies this short film at their website: http://wearechange.org/pakistan-center-of-the-grand-chessboard/

HACKED STRATFOR EMAILS: DEA Told To Back Off From The Brother Of Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Newly released internal emails from the U.S. private security firm Stratfor state that in 2007 the Bush Administration and CIA ordered the Drug Enforcement Agency to back off a major drug trafficking investigation of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half brother.

Pagans challenge occult-related crime training

A leaked internal police memo entitled “Investigation of Harmful Occult-Related Crimes: Investigation Support Capacity” is being circulated on the Internet.

The police document mentions that two detectives per province must be experts in dealing with occult crimes. The memo says these include muti murders, curses intended to cause harm, vampirism, spiritual intimidation including “astral coercion”,  rape by “tokoloshe spirits”, poltergeist phenomena, voodoo,  black magic and traditional healers involved in criminal activities.

“This newly envisioned scope of investigation must be viewed with suspicion and be of concern to anyone engaged in the practice of witchcraft, traditional African religion, and other occult spiritualities, including satanism,”  the  SA Pagan Rights Alliance (Sapra) said.

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Dead Guantanamo Prisoner On Why He Gave Up on Life

From The Archers of Okcular:

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout; Adapted: art makes me smile, jjay69, nitrodog, jfrancis)Adnan Latif was found dead in his cell on September 10th, 2012, just a day before the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. He was 32. Latif, a Yemeni citizen, had been detained at Guantanamo Bay for over a decade, despite a 2010 court ruling that ordered the Obama administration to "take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate Latif's release forthwith," due to lack of evidence that he had committed any crime. He suffered at the hands of the US government in ways that most people can't begin to comprehend, and his death should be a reminder that the national shame that is Guantanamo Bay lives on and now enjoys bipartisan support.

Reexamining a letter he wrote to his lawyer David Remes in December of 2010 shows the depths of his despair near the end of his life. His letter begins simply. The first paragraph is just one devastating sentence: "Do whatever you wish to do, the issue is over." He then goes on to describe Guantanamo as, "a prison that does not know humanity, and does not know [sic] except the language of power, oppression, and humiliation for whoever enters it."

"Anybody who is able to die," Latif writes, "will be able to achieve happiness for himself, he has no hope except that."

He continues:

"The requirement...is to leave this life which is no longer anymore [sic] called a life, instead it itself has become death and renewable torture. Ending it is a mercy and happiness for this soul. I will not allow any more of this and I will end it."

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