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From Chris Floyd we learn the obvious (again and again):
In the category of "the sky is blue," "fire is hot" and "the sun rises in the east," the Guardian reports on a new study showing that Washington's murderous drone killing campaign in Pakistan is "counterproductive."Read on for the full story.
The sarcasm above is not meant to cast aspersions on the report itself -- which is detailed, devastating, and very productive -- but on the prevailing mindset in the ruling circles of the West (the self-proclaimed "defenders of civilization") that makes such a study even necessary, much less 'controversial.'
For of course even the denizens of the many secret services and black-op armies and intelligence agencies that make up America's world-straddling security apparat have said, repeatedly, that Washington's policy of murdering, torturing, renditioning and indefinitely detaining innocent people all over the world -- day after day, week after week, year after year -- is in fact creating the very extremism and anti-Americanism the policy purports to combat.
Thus the new report, by the law schools of New York University and Stanford (a famously if not notoriously conservative institution) should be, in a sane and rational world, a case of carrying coals to Newscastle or selling ice to the Inuit: an exercise in redunancy.
But instead, sadly, the report, "Living Under Drones," is a very, very rare instance of speaking truth to the power that is waging a hideous campaign of terror -- there is no other word for it -- against innocent people all over the world.
The personal testimonies gathered by the researchers -- on the ground, in Pakistan -- are shattering ... at least for those who actually believe that these swarthy foreigner are actually human beings, with "hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions .. fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is." You can be sure -- you can be damned sure -- that the Nobel Peace Laureate in the White House has never and will never read these stories of the ones he is terrorizing, night and day. These testimonies will never appear beside the scraps of rumor, conjecture and brutal prejudice that constitute the "reports" he sees each Tuesday -- "Terror Tuesday" -- when he meets in the Oval Office with his death squad team to decide who will be assassinated that week.
The Guardian gives a good overview of the report.
And on another favorite "oh why?" front:
Oh why can't we all get a job doing this fraudulent "good" (okayed by the IRS as religious) work? Oh, wait. We can, but it takes Tom Cruise-level balls. (Or would you believe, the exposed fraud L. Ron Hubbard-sized balls? And I have no idea what that means.) Just ask Oprah and all those other Cruise-nonsense purveyors.
If only. (I mean, he's got a high school degree and all, so why possibly would he have a dating problem?)
Both men had humble beginnings. Cruise, who is 50, came from a broken family and was on his own by the age of 18. He joined Scientology in 1986, when he was 24, and he credits its study methods with helping him overcome dyslexia. He has gone on to make more than 30 films and reign as one of Hollywood’s top stars for nearly three decades. His films over the years have grossed almost $7 billion worldwide, and his last one, Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, brought in $700 million on its own. This year he was listed by Forbes as Hollywood’s highest-paid actor, with earnings of $75 million.
Miscavige, two years older and a couple of inches shorter than Cruise, began working with L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, as an assistant cameraman in 1977, when he was 17. Neither Cruise nor Miscavige attended college; Miscavige was a high-school dropout. By 1982, Miscavige was Hubbard’s top aide, and in 1987, the year after Hubbard’s death, he became the leader of the whole organization. Scientology has claimed to have eight million adherents around the world. Many question that figure, some putting it as low as 40,000.
In October 1993, during the first year of the Clinton administration, Scientology received its disputed status as a tax-exempt church. In the years leading up to that, thousands of Scientologists had sued the I.R.S., claiming discrimination after the government began to audit their tax returns. The organization employed the services of a former deputy assistant attorney general, Gerald Feffer, then a member of Washington’s well-connected Williams & Connolly law firm. Feffer’s wife, Monique Yingling, is still a top lawyer for Scientology.
Perhaps the most notable joint public appearance of Cruise and Miscavige occurred weeks after the opening in Madrid, when Miscavige conferred the organization’s Freedom Medal of Valor—an award created specially for Cruise—on the star at a black-tie ceremony outside London. Cruise appeared both in person and on a bizarre videotape—wearing a black turtleneck and extolling Scientology—that subsequently went up on the Internet.
What Katie Didn’t Know
Click here to see original photo.
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