Rory Fanning, author of Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of the Military and Across America, writes a letter to a young Army Ranger.
Read it: Tomgram: Rory Fanning, Unpacking the War on Terror | TomDispatch.
The Year in Killer Drones
Charles Pierson reports.
“2014 was a good year for US killer drones. In October, the US celebrated (if that is the word) its 400th drone strike on Pakistan. Unable to attend the festivities were the 2,379 Pakistanis killed by US drones since 2004. Of these, only 12% of the victims who have been identified have been linked to militant organizations, this according to a report from the British-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.”
Read the full article: The Year in Drones » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.
FBI Expands Domestic Spy Role
In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The New York Times, the Justice Department has partially declassified a report about the F.B.I.’s involvement in administering the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the FISA Amendments Act. When the report was completed in September 2012, it was entirely classified and the department announced only that it existed.
Read the report here: Justice Department Declassifies 2012 Inspector General Report on FBI Activities Under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – NYTimes.com.
You can also read the Times’ story concerning the report here: F.B.I. is Broadening Surveillance Role, Report Shows – NYTimes.com.
A Muslim Reflects on Charlie
Food Blogger Sadia Jabeen writes about what it is like to be Muslim in the wake of the Paris attack.
“When I first heard the news about the events in Paris this week I felt a real sadness at the loss of life. Nobody should expect to be gunned down in their place of work. Again I felt that sense of dread and worry. Who was going to be made to pay for the crimes of the people they had never met or had anything to do with? Were we going to see a further rise of racism and Islamophobia? Where will it end? Unfortunately I wasn’t wrong…”
Read the full essay: I have been very quiet online since the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices and here’s why | Make Tea & Cake, Not War.
To The Most Dangerous Woman in America
No Time For Austerity
A nasty strain of austerity capitalism has taken over Europe, leaving broken lives in its wake. Researchers Servaas Storm and C.W.M. Naastepad, senior lecturers in economics at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, consider how things got so bad, what role economists and misguided policy-makers have played, and how to change course. According to them, most everybody is getting the story about Europe dead wrong.
via How Parasitic Capitalism and Flawed Economics Turned Europe into the Hunger Games | Alternet.
From Posh to Poverty in SoMa
Sylvia takes a walk South of Market in San Francisco.
“Under the freeway was a line of shopping carts ballooning with black plastic garbage bags. And on a dirt embankment across the street I saw shapes of people hanging out, talking and smoking in what seemed like a convivial atmosphere, much like a street fair. A few blocks north, the scene completely changed as new million-dollar condos popped up, and their denizens and designer pets strolled the glittery streets.”
Read the full essay: Berkeley Blog: Air-to-Earth Bnb: From Posh to Poverty in SF’s SoMa.
March for “Shut Up, Slave”
Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie
Perhaps the best thing I have read on the murders in Paris (and their aftermath) – from Scott Long:
Nothing is quick, nothing is easy. No solidarity is secure. I support free speech. I oppose all censors. I abhor the killings. I mourn the dead. I am not Charlie.
Read the full essay: Why I am not Charlie | a paper bird.
On American Soil
The United States had Marxists in the past, it is true, but they were a strange type of Marxist, or rather, three strange types. In the first place, there were the émigrés cast out of Europe, who did what they could but could not find any response; in the second place, isolated American groups, like the De Leonists, who in the course of events, and because of their own mistakes, turned themselves into sects; in the third place, dilettantes attracted by the October Revolution and sympathetic to Marxism as an exotic teaching that had little to do with the United States. Their day is over. Now dawns the new epoch of an independent class movement of the proletariat and at the same time of genuine Marxism. In this, too, America will in a few jumps catch up with Europe and outdistance it. Advanced technology and an advanced social structure will pave their own way in the sphere of doctrine. The best theoreticians of Marxism will appear on American soil. Marx will become the mentor of the advanced American workers. To them this abridged exposition of the first volume will become only an initial step toward the complete Marx.
– Leon Trotsky