Jeremy Sapienza - Antiwar.com Blog

HuffPo Sad Hackers Don’t Want to Work for Government

This Huffington Post article on the government seeking to recruit hackers into its ranks to “defend [the] nation in cyberspace” — their title — has a creepy, banally approving tone. In it, we see the US government wants to spark another “Manhattan Project”-style initiative — again, their words — which makes one wince in blinding light of the recent anniversary of the nuking of Nagasaki.

America’s bumbling spies also seek to attract adoring loyal employees them when they’re young — just like North Korea does, the article points out unironically.

The article also seems to lament that most hackers naturally distrust the government, what with jailing them all the time and the fact that they tend to be arrested anyway because they have attacked the state for some other reason related to justice.

Pentagon Claims to Kill Very Man Who Shot Chinook

CNN-watching pays off every day. Every day there is something so utterly insane and unbelievable about the war or the economy that I can’t help but stare in disbelief at the screen, or just laugh my ass off. This morning, it was that second thing.

Anchor Don Lemon cut into his newsreading timeline to announce that the Pentagon was saying that it had killed the man who shot down that Chinook on Saturday in Afghanistan.

Yes, the VERY man holding the grenade launcher, whose projectile struck the chopper and took it down. Forgive them for at first not knowing what exactly was used to take it down. Forget that the presence of this anonymous man wasn’t even known by the very elite units that were killed in the crash. We’re supposed to believe that the same people who couldn’t find Osama bin Laden for ten years, a man whose identity, among many other facts, we knew inside and out, somehow found some rag-clothed fighter with a shoulder-fired thing and successfully KILLED HIM? And can say so with such certainty they could report it to news agencies?

Yes, ok.

Government is a fiction in so many ways, not least of all in how it literally just spins utter lies for the consumption of its useful rubes. Just think that for each of us who raised an eyebrow in disbelief — or total bemusement that they could think anyone would believe such a good-vs-evil fairytale so obviously crafted for the consumption of above rubes — there are 10 others going “America! F*ck Yeah!”

Update: More clarification comes this afternoon, with the Pentagon claiming that “intelligence gained on the ground” helped them find and kill the specific Taliban fighters. This is in a valley that was just shown to LOATHE the occupation more than the Taliban. And so, what, JSOC troops just sauntered around kissing the hands of the tribal leaders who hate their guts? And the locals just helpfully pointed in the direction of the hiding place of this shooter, whom they also witnessed actually shoot the Chinook down? Uh-huh.

CNN Allows Fantasy Novelist to Seriously Blame Iran for Afghanistan Chopper Shootdown

Imperial cheerleaders have a habit of blaming Iran for everything bad that happens to a US occupation, so I have come to accept they will pull that boogeyman out any chance they get. And yet I was still surprised when CNN contributor and Bush regime mouthpiece Frances Townshend and Brad Thor, a political thriller novel author, started saying Iran was probably responsible for this weekend’s shootdown of a US chopper that killed 30 American military personnel, including members of the SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden.

Townshend is a former Homeland Security Adviser to President Bush and is still an adviser for DHS and the CIA, whatever her merits. But who is this Brad Thor character? He was never in the military, and claims with no official verification to have “shadowed” a Black ops team in Afghanistan to research a novel. He was a regular contributor on the show of retired Fox News nutbag bawler Glenn Beck, and is for some reason a member of the Heritage Foundation. He also claims — again with no official verification — to have been invited by Homeland Security to come up with imaginary terrorist scenarios.

Townshend expressed alarm that the Taliban were able to act so close to the capital of their own country, where “our troops” are supposed to be shoring up the corrupt Karzai regime — something she sees as a good thing. She used the shootdown to illustrate how “fragile” American “gains” are in the country and that we shouldn’t pull out our troops “too quickly.” So far, pretty typical.

CNN host John King then asked Thor if the Afghan government was ready to take on security after the foreigners leave. No, he said, “the Afghan government is completely corrupt — and it’s riddled with Iranian spies! There’s a lot about the killing, the terrible tragedy of these SEALs being killed that is very, very disturbing, John.”

That’s when I stared at the screen in disbelief. Really, he just dragged Iran into this? Hey, why not? Everyone hates Iran.

And then Townshend backed Thor up. “We have seen an increasing amount of Iranian involvement and support in Afghanistan… and oh, by the way, they’ve been spoilers, inserting themselves into Afghanistan and undermining US efforts. The Iranians don’t always come in the front door,” she continued, saying they use proxies. Those dastardly Muslims are always doing that.

She went on to say the Iranians act as “spoilers” all over the world just to mess with America. “And it made sense in Iraq, a neighbor… but we see it as well in Afghanistan.” She didn’t say who “we” are, exactly, but who needs citations on a mere news program?

This is all still very typical, vaguely blaming the enemy of the day. But it got out of hand when the fiction novelist, speaking with the authority of an official in the know, started saying “we” have word that the type of weapon used to down the chopper is the same as seen used by “Shi’ite extremists” in Iraq, which “had Iranian fingerprints all over them.” These “fingerprints” are merely the fact that the materials that make up these weapons are possibly manufactured in Iran. The US government has unsuccessfully proved that the Iranian government itself ever had anything to do with the supply of militia weapons in Iraq over the last several years. In fact, as Jason Ditz recently pointed out, Iran has a good relationship with the Iraqi government and would not likely seek to undermine it.

“We don’t have confirmation” for what exactly took down the Chinook, Thor said, but if we simply refer back… here, right! to the thing he said earlier about Iranians in the Afghan government, it would seem to almost… prove? sure! that Iran gave weapons to the Taliban to do a terrible, awful, evil, oriental thing like attack an invading military force. Because really, Thor persisted, we’re supposed to believe monkeys like the Taliban could point a thing and shoot it at another thing!? I mean come on, amirite?

We’re back to believing Iran, fighting its own extremely violent US-backed Sunni terrorist attacks on its own turf, would support another Sunni extremist movement in a neighboring country? Not to mention Karzai himself has admitted to receiving “large sacks of cash” from the Iranian government!

Why was this Thor person on CNN, or any other news shows? Because he writes some Tom Clancyesque novels? And because of this he’s allowed to spread random, baseless anti-Iran propaganda with a “yeah!” from another so-called “expert”? Seriously?

CNN shouldn’t have fantasy novelists like Brad Thor on their news programs anymore unless they want their own reporting to continue to read a lot more like fiction.

To Party Hack Rep. Nydia Velázquez, War and Liberties Are Political Weapons

Many times as editor of my local newspaper, The Bushwick News, I have tried to get our local representative in the House, Nydia Velázquez, to give her opinions on WikiLeaks and whistleblower Bradley Manning. It didn’t seem a reach to try to elicit some response on the international issue for our very local publication, for a few reasons.

Many of Rep. Velázquez’s constituents are strongly progressive and politically active — a large contingent of Barack Obama’s youth campaign leaders lives here in Bushwick and nearby Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They support the kind of dissent Manning engaged in and WikiLeaks facilitated, and they oppose the wars America has started in the Middle East. Just like the representative herself, who is on record vocally opposing the wars and civil liberties erosion. She is a member of the Out of Iraq and the Progressive Caucuses. One would think she’d have some opinion, and one that would actually make her more popular with her own constituency.

But this isn’t all. Just a few miles away in Long Island is the district of Peter King, the viciously anti-Muslim-American, yet pro-Irish terrorist, representative who called for WikiLeaks to be declared a terror organization. America summarily murders members and leaders of such organizations. And Senator Chuck Schumer, who represents New York and lives in Brooklyn, has declared WikiLeaks’ whistleblowing and journalism to be unworthy of protection under media laws. He also supported the Iraq War and votes often with Republicans on foreign policy and security issues. He even sponsored a bill similar to the Patriot Act in 1995. Shouldn’t Velázquez seek to distance herself from such colleagues, and curry favor with her progressive district?

No, one of her staff members told me. “We won’t be commenting.” He didn’t even want his name mentioned. Strange? Maybe not, if you’re just a party hack.

After all, Velázquez has been silent on foreign policy since January 2009 — when Barack Obama took office. All her foreign-policy comments and activity took place during the Bush years. Though Obama has continued and strengthened everything Bush did in the foreign-policy realm, she has raised not a finger in dissent. It’s true she voted for the Kucinich bill to order US forces out of Libya. Yet back in 1995, she voted in favor of the very similar Kosovo War under Clinton. What does it mean? Who knows? Soft spot for Gadhafi?

The fact that even now, her comments on war are tucked into an attack on the recent debt-ceiling deal is telling.

“It is clear that the era of debts and deficits must come to an end. However, in addressing this problem, we must look at what got us here. It wasn’t overspending on low-income housing, job training or education — which all stand at historically-low levels. It was two unfunded wars and the Bush tax cuts which keep on giving to America’s wealthiest.”

The two wars — not to mention a few others — are still going on under the current Democratic president, in office now for more than half his term, and Velázquez can’t bring herself to name him. But she’s quick to note the tax cuts belong to Bush — though Obama just extended them in 2010. This is no slip-up. She’s a party hack. A cynical player of politics who cares more that her team wins, and her local community scores some extra cheap housing units, than that her country is better off or that innocents abroad aren’t murdered. Her leader must not be humiliated, damn the consequences. With this evident, should the fact that Mr. Transparency‘s administration tortured a revolution-sparking whistleblower really move the representative from Brooklyn? One might even be forgiven for thinking she applauds the treatment of Bradley Manning, and curses WikiLeaks for terrorizing the Democratic government with the truth.

Is she at least helping her community from DC? It’s hard to say. The poorest areas of her district remain so, and were quite hard-hit in the foreclosure crisis. Her record as chair of the Small Business Committee is less than stellar — The Bushwick News found most of the locally targeted federal spending she advocates actually went to huge corporations.

Instead of taking up space that could be occupied by a truly activist progressive representative of Congress who could push American foreign policy in a direction North Brooklynites would like to see — that is, toward peace — Velázquez might better serve us by using her considerable intelligence and connections to start or bolster local mutual-aid organizations that more directly and successfully help the disadvantaged of our community.

If Nydia Velázquez is truly only interested in local issues of welfare spending, should she be a Congress member — or a social worker?

French Military Stretched Too Thin? Horrors!

It turns out such activities as overthrowing Ivory Coast’s recalcitrant dictator, miring itself in Libya, propping up Chad’s leader is a strain on France’s military.

Africans who seek a liberal society might be forgiven for spying a glimmer of hope in the news. After all, France has spent decades brutalizing them, slaughtering their democratic leaders, propping up their vicious dictators, watching on location with blasé disinterest as Rwanda was hacked to bits, defending slavery in Central African Republic, and much more. All this after colonialism “ended.”

And with Sarkozy threatening to sloppily meddle across the globe at whim using the thus-far disastrous Libya model, can we help but smirk at the idea that France’s army is overstretched?

The headline reads that “some” worry. None of those some are people interested in a more just and peaceful world.

Obama Doesn’t Quite Hate Freedom Enough for Some Republicans

Every time I see these unfortunately ambiguous wire story headlines — “Key US lawmakers assail Obama on detainees” — I think some American lawmakers are finally standing up to the executive-run torture-state and its gulags. A closer look is always disappointing. They’re not attacking Obama for his attacks on our liberties, they’re bitching that he isn’t stealing and undercutting them enough.

The representatives, all Republican, are upset that Somali national Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, imprisoned for months on a US Navy ship “somewhere in the Gulf region,” could be given a real criminal trial in New York. Warsame is accused of belong to militant Muslim organizations deemed “terrorists” by the United States. Increasingly, the GOP expresses its dislike of the ancient Anglo-Saxon legal concept of habeas corpus as well as its utter lack of faith in the ability of the American system of justice to operate competently. They don’t even want terror suspects to touch American soil to be tried.

In a recent breathtaking admission, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell unironically proclaimed that the trial of Casey Anthony, a mother who probably accidentally killed her daughter but was found not guilty of premeditation and walked free, is evidence our justice system isn’t fit to try terror suspects. McConnell, and many other Americans lately, seem to think intimation — she like, totally did it, come on, duh — can be admitted as actual evidence used to convict someone of murder.

What they’re saying is that the courts don’t produce enough guilty verdicts. Do we need to point to other countries that decided to “remedy” this “problem”?

Antiwar.com of course agrees Warsame shouldn’t be tried in the United States. Or by the United States. His alleged “crimes” — “providing material support,” a nearly meaningless charge that can include giving someone a ride or buying textbooks for children in “enemy” madrassas — had nothing at all to do with this country. Al-Shabaab are a Somali problem (caused by previous US intervention), and “al-Qaeda” in Yemen is also a local issue America’s military nonetheless loves to bring home. Warsame should be immediately released, compensated for his suffering, and his kidnapping should be considered an international crime.

And these lawmakers should be immediately removed from office for willful violation of American bedrock civilizational concepts.