Anarchoblogs

To better manufacture consent, U.S. Army soldiers are embedded as intern and fellows at local TV affiliates, along with previously reported newspapers and national outlets.

3 Oct 2010 | InfoShop News

The U.S. Army installs soldiers at local media affiliates to train them for psychological operations (PSYOPS), John Cook reported Friday at Yahoo! News’ blog “The Upshot” (h/t: Daniel Tencer):

The U.S. Army has used local television stations in the U.S. as training posts for some of its psychological-operations personnel, The Upshot has learned. Since at least 2001, both WRAL, a CBS affiliate in Raleigh, N.C., and WTOC, a CBS affiliate in Savannah, Ga., have regularly hosted active-duty soldiers from the Army’s 4th Psychological Operations group as part of the Army’s Training With Industry program. Training With Industry is designed to offer career soldiers a chance to pick up skills through internships and fellowships with private businesses. The PSYOPS soldiers used WRAL and WTOC to learn broadcasting and communications expertise that they could apply in their mission, as the Army describes it, of “influenc[ing] the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign audiences.”

WRAL claims to have not hosted PSOPS personnel since 2007, but WTOC currently has one soldier training in their newsroom, Mr. Cook reported.

The CBS affiliates were on a list of participants of the Army’s “Training With Industry” (T.W.I.) program obtained as a result of an “Upshot” Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The local affiliates add to the list of the Pentagon’s PSYOPS programs, which places military personnel directly in the media apparatus.

In 2008, it was discovered that retired generals working with the Pentagon were being portrayed as independent “analysts” by CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX in their interviews with them through David Barstow’s Pulitzer-winning investigative report at The New York Times. In October, the Pentagon would not comment as to whether or not the Bush Administration’s covert propaganda effort by the Pentagon was still a part of their PSYOPS policy during the Obama Administration.

Records obtained by “The Upshot” in August confirmed the T.W.I. program didn’t only include military personnel working in the military-industrial complex of weapons manufacturers, private security contractors and consulting, but also as “reverse embeds” in the media:

Much has been made of the media’s practice of “embedding” reporters in military units, allowing them to file immersive reports on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while under the total care and control of the U.S. military. But a less widely known practice is the Pentagon’s occasional “reverse embed,” which permits active-duty service personnel to serve as interns in major media companies—sometimes in an editorial capacity—gleaning insights and intelligence into how media organizations operate, and perhaps helping to shape the way they cover the military. According to military records obtained by “The Upshot” under the Freedom of Information Act, in recent years CNN, the Chicago Tribune, and a smattering of other smaller news outlets have all hosted active-duty military personnel as part of a Pentagon program designed to offer service members experience in the corporate world.

Though CNN admitted the relationship was inappropriate, “The Upshot” confirmed that if the program was ever ended, it was reactivated, Mr Cook reported:

The T.W.I. operation achieved some notoriety in 2000, when Dutch and French media reported that CNN had invited U.S. Army psychological operations soldiers into its newsroom to serve as interns. Embarrassed at having hosted military disinformation specialists,  the network acknowledged that it was a mistake and said in a statement that “the intern program was terminated as soon as the leadership of CNN learned of it.”

Now, however, the program appears to have been reactivated—at CNN and elsewhere.

The Chicago Tribune, according to Mr. Cook’s report, has not participated in the program since 2004.

The Pentagon spent almost $5bn specifically for public opinion related expenditures in 2009, Daniel Tencer at The Raw Story yesterday added:

Last year, the Associated Press reported on a mushrooming military budget for public opinion operations, with the budget for such operations hitting $4.7 billion in 2009 — “almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006.” Some $489 million of that went to psychological operations.

Filed under: International Affairs, National News, Political Science Tagged: ABC, Af-Pak War, Bush Administration, CBS, Chicago Tribune, CNN, David Barstow, Defense Department, FOIA, FOX News, Iraq War, John Cook, military industrial media complex, MSNBC, Newspeak, Obama Administration, PSYOPS, US, US Army, War, War on Terror, WRAL, WTOC

Ivan Eland sat with RT to discuss the astronomical political clout held by the welfare queens of the military-industrial complex that will thwart any translation of the Pentagon’s rhetoric into actual policy (7:04):

There is no plan to significantly cut military spending. Ivan Eland of The Independent Institute adequately compares it to a shell game.

The rhetoric is weak in itself—claiming aims to cut $100m from a war chest of well over a half-trillion dollars per year. A handful of recent actions are tell the true path of the Pentagon:

• Boeing yesterday received another contract from the Pentagon, guaranteeing it $12bn over the next eight years, and continues to play a “pivotal role” in Washington’s never-ending drone war in Afghanistan and Pakistan—though the E.U. recently found at least $10bn of the company’s welfare benefits is illegal under already loose restrictions;
• Lockheed Martin’s set to receive $2.75bn from the U.S. military to manufacture and ship 20 fighter jets to the State of Israel, recently received a $300m contract from the Pentagon for anti-tank missiles, and regaining a $5bn contract to supply Washington ‘kill or capture’ raid policies—after posting a 12% profit-jump through July of this year;
• ITT recently received a $260.5m contract from the U.S. Army for nightvison goggles.

These deals were all in the last couple of months. How many people have given up looking for work or lost their homes since then?

More importantly, how many Afghan and Paki civilians have been slaughtered and terrorized by Washington’s destruction-driven economy?

Filed under: Af-Pak War, National News, Political Science Tagged: Afghanistan, airstrikes, Boeing, drones, extrajudicial assassination, Israel, Ivan Eland, Lockheed MArtin, military industrial complex, military welfare, Obama Administration, Pakistan, Pentagon, Robert Gates, War on Terror, war spending

Yes, people videotaped it and Al Jazeera broke the story (2:26):

The story isn’t the obvious expectation that Afghanistan’s elections are rigged. We wouldn’t expect them to be performed in any other manner.

But, apparently the Afghans are like our dads in the early-1980s—so impressed with the VHS motion picture thingamabob—that everything must be videotaped, especially ‘Fixing Elections Day’.

The video was first aired on Al Jazeera English and obtained by McClatchy shows three men, surrounded by armed guards, frantically filling in stacks of ballots and stuffing them into the boxes. Dion Nissenbaum’s McClatchy report cites an unnamed Afghan politician as the source of the video, which can been seen raw at the top of his article:

Video obtained by McClatchy shows a man in an Afghan border police uniform standing watch while three men appear to be stuffing votes into a ballot box.

The one-minute clip, which couldn’t be independently authenticated, is one of thousands of cases that could tilt the balance of legislative races as elections officials examine the complaints and prepare to release full results in a few weeks.

The video, obtained from an Afghan politician who asked not to be identified for safety reasons, shows three men sitting on the floor filling out ballot after ballot and then stuffing them into the nearby ballot box. It shows a man in a border police uniform standing with a Kalashnikov rifle and keeping guard over the apparent ballot stuffing.

The not-yet authenticated video, according to the source, “was shot in Spin Boldak, a scrappy town along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border that’s controlled by Abdel Razek, a feared border police commander dubbed ‘the Master of Spin Boldak’ “, according to Mr. Nissenbaum’s report, which added:

It was impossible, however, to determine who was the beneficiary of the apparent ballot stuffing.

Elections officials said Monday that they’re investigating more than 3,600 complaints from the Sept. 18 election to select 249 members of the elected house of the country’s bicameral parliament.

Filed under: Af-Pak War Tagged: Afghan elections, Afghanistan, Al Jazeera, Ballot stuffing, Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy, Spin Boldak, Warfare and Conflict

Taped interrogations of four soldiers charged in theatrically slaying numerous Afghan civilians were obtained by CNN and ABC. CNN’s report includes the soldiers’ rampant drug abuse and a before unreported case of staging the murder of an Afghan civilian (5:52):

Monday, U.S. Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 22, “one of five American soldiers accused by Army investigators of taking part in the murders of three Afghan civilians this year, appeared at a hearing to determine the formal charges against him”, Robert Mackey reported at his New York Times (NYT) blog, “The Lede”.

The 11 other soldiers “invoked their constitutional right not to testify in the case”, Reuters reported (via the NYT). Nine of them are among the 12 charged from the 5th Stryker Brigade, out of Washington state, charged with crimes relating to their activities while deployed to the Kandahar province of Afghanistan. Nicholas Riccardi of the Los Angeles Times reported from the base, “Of the 18 witnesses listed for Monday’s hearing, 14 invoked their 5th amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying, including the lieutenant of the platoon.”

The CNN report as well as Mr. Mackey’s—and another at the NYT by William Yardley—point toward abuse of prescription drugs and hash as influencing the staged brutal murders and trophy-collecting. Mr. Yardley’s report adds of another story where the soldiers staged a murder by planting a grenade near a defenseless civilian:

Some of the soldiers have said in court documents that they were forced to participate in the killings by a supervisor, Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, who is also accused in the killings. All five defendants have said they are not guilty.

In one incident, Specialist Morlock recounted in the video, he described Sergeant Gibbs identifying for no apparent reason an Afghan civilian in a village, then directing Specialist Morlock and another soldier to fire on the man after Sergeant Gibbs lobbed a grenade in his direction.

“He kind of placed me and Winfield off over here so we had a clean line of sight for this guy and, you know, he pulled out one of his grenades, an American grenade, popped it, throws the grenade, and tells me and Winfield: ‘All right, wax this guy. Kill this guy, kill this guy,’ ” Specialist Morlock said in the video.

Referring to the Afghan, the investigator asked: “Did you see him present any weapons? Was he aggressive toward you at all?”

Specialist Morlock replied: “No, not at all. Nothing. He wasn’t a threat.”

As Monday’s hearing was getting under way, CNN and ABC News broadcast the video. In the CNN clip and the ABC clip, Specialist Morlock, speaking in a near monotone, looks like a teenager recounting a story to his parents.

Spc. Morlock’s attorney, Michael Waddington, is attempting to refute the confession because of his client’s drug use, Mr. Mackey added, citing Hal Berton at The Seattle Times.

Questioning Army investigators in Afghanistan, Mr. Yardley reported, “Mr. Waddington repeatedly asked whether they found Specialist Morlock to be under the influence of medication in the interviews.”

The taped interrogations were not intended to be publicized and access to the seized photographs are limited to the soldiers’ lawyers, his report added:

A memo circulated by a military defense lawyer the previous week described an inadvertent release of photographs, including three that show American soldiers holding up the heads of dead Afghans. It was unclear whether all of the pictures showed soldiers in the cases, though military prosecutors said Monday that Specialist Morlock was in at least one image, apparently with a dead Afghan.

Photographic evidence could play an important role in the Army’s case, as will statements from soldiers. No bodies have been recovered, and a military investigator testified on Monday that the nature of the areas where the crimes occurred, including religious views of residents and potential danger to American soldiers, prevented them from conducting crime scene investigations.

The dozen soldiers are charged with crimes relating to incidents in January, February, and May of this year.

Lawyers attributed the tragedies to Washington’s “failed policy” in the Afghan region.

Filed under: Political Science Tagged: Af-Pak War, Afghanistan, Calvin Gibbs, civilian casualties, Jeremy Morlock, Kandahar Province, Michael Waddington, military tribunals, Obama Administration, Robert Mackey, US Army, US military, war crimes, William Yardley

Locals of the Laghman Province claim civilians were killed in a NATO raid, contrary to NATO claims, and that they are not “insurgents”, but people defending their home against NATO’s ‘broken promises’ to not raid their village (2:00):

The Kabul government has sent a “delegation” to Afghanistan’s eastern Laghman Province to investigate villagers’ claims that civilians were killed in a Saturday night raid by NATO, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday, Reuters reported (via The New York Times).

At least 30 were killed in the “assault” and NATO claims that all were “insurgents”—a clever word to use because it only means that those who died were fighting back against the NATO raid. Even finding that non-combatants may have been killed would not tell the whole story.

NATO cannot prove that people with connections to the Haqqani or Quetta Shura Networks were killed and until they can, it’s most reasonable to assume, like most reports, that all casualties were civilians. And, as the report continues, the clever language-crafting still can’t prevent the rise of civilian casualties—as the U.S.-led coalition narrowly classifies “civilians”:

Civilian casualties caused by foreign forces hunting militants have long been a major source of tension between Karzai and the Western nations whose troops help support his government in the face of a growing insurgency.

A mid-year United Nations report painted a dark picture of security in Afghanistan in the first half of 2010, with violent civilian deaths jumping 31 percent, although the total number caused by aerial attacks fell 64 percent.

These are war crimes, along with the C.I.A. “drastically” increasing the frequency of drone strikes in Pakistan over the last month. Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt reported yesterday at The New York Times:

The 20 C.I.A. drone attacks in September represent the most intense bombardment by the spy agency since January, when the C.I.A. carried out 11 strikes after a suicide bomber killed seven agency operatives at a remote base in eastern Afghanistan.

According to one Pakistani intelligence official, the recent drone attacks have not killed any senior Taliban or Qaeda leaders. Many senior operatives have already fled North Waziristan, he said, to escape the C.I.A. drone campaign.

Over all the spy agency has carried out 74 drone attacks this year, according to the Web site The Long War Journal, which tracks the strikes. A vast majority of the attacks—which usually involve several drones firing multiple missiles or bombs—have taken place in North Waziristan.

The Obama administration has enthusiastically embraced the C.I.A.’s drone program, an ambitious and historically unusual war campaign by American spies. According to The Long War Journal, the spy agency in 2009 and 2010 has launched nearly four times as many attacks as it did during the final year of the Bush administration.

These include the deadly strikes over the weekend.

Filed under: Af-Pak War Tagged: Afghanistan, airstrikes, CIA, civilian casualties, COIN, CT, drone, extrajudicial assassination, FATA, Hamid Karzai, Haqqani Network, Laghman Province, NATO, night raids, North Waziristan, NWFP, Pakistan, Quetta Shura, War on Terror

Die in a drone strike.

Being classified in the press as a “suspected militant” admittedly has nothing to do with actually being a militant, let alone a terrorist, let alone an international terrorist.

Jason Ditz at AntiWar News notes the media focus on 50 “militants” killed during a NATO airstrike on Pakistan—and the becoming-ridiculous Pakistani government posturing as if it doesn’t consent—is ignorant to this:

In fact, a series of attacks over the past three days has killed at least 15 people, none of whom has been conclusively identified but all of whom officials felt comfortable labeling “suspected militants” simply by virtue that they got hit with a C.I.A. missile.

Though the drone strikes in Pakistan began under President Bush, since taking office President Obama has dramatically increased the number of attacks and well over 1,000 have been killed. Of those, only a handful were ever conclusively linked to any militant group and well over 700 civilians were killed. Hundreds of others in more recent attacks remain unidentified, and as the Pakistani government does not generally allow media into the region, their identities will likely remain shrouded in mystery.

Officially the Pakistani government has criticized the drone strikes and the military incursions, though U.S. officials maintain that privately agreements exist allowing both. The Zardari government has been quite deceptive about the drone program, loudly taking credit on the rare occasions the drones actually kill somebody notable and feigning ignorance on the many, many occasions when they kill random tribesmen.

Remember when every brown person who died in Iraq or Afghanistan was “Al Qaeda”.

Then, they were all “terrorists”.

Then, they were all “insurgents”.

Then, they were all “militants”.

Now, they’re “suspected militants”.

Why? Because before a burden of proof is met, the classification is all suspect and the label used to justify such acts like kidnapping and killing are little more than authoritative assertion. (See Anwar al-Awlaki.)

The defense for targeting Mr. al-Awlaki is that he’s a suspect. Consent for the strikes on Afghans and Pakis coincides with manufacturing consent for the arbitrary extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens.

The War on Terror is a war of the few in the state apparatus against every human being on Earth with consent to remove from it.

Yes, when the C.I.A. and NATO drop 500-lb. bombs on villages in Pakistan and tell everyone that the burden of proof is on everyone else to show the dead weren’t militants, the war is against you.

When they get away with assassinating “suspected militants” after designating everyone as a suspect, you’re in the middle of the bulls-eye.

Filed under: Af-Pak War, International Affairs, Political Science Tagged: Af-Pak War, Afghanistan, airstrikes, Bush Administration, CIA, drones, extrajudicial assassination, Iraq War, ISAF, Jason Ditz, libertarian, NATO, Newspeak, NWFP, Obama Administration, Pakistan, War on Terror, Warfare and Conflict, Zardari

Monday, the first of 12 soldiers charged with murder of civilians faced military tribunal.

The U.S. soldiers to face military tribunals for killing Afghan civilians didn’t only slaughter the people, according to the charges against them, but kept trophies ranging from photographs to body parts.

Spencer Ackerman at Wired added: “And if the Army gets its way, that gruesome evidence won’t be public.”

Reuters reported today (via The New York Times):

Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 22, from Wasilla, Alaska, is charged with premeditated murder in the deaths of three Afghan civilians, assaulting a fellow soldier and “wrongfully photographing and possessing visual images of human casualties.”

The case of Morlock and his co-defendants could become the grimmest investigation of alleged atrocities by U.S. military personnel during almost nine years of war in Afghanistan.

Reports of grisly photos of Afghan bodies being posed for photos by American troops could be among the more inflammatory revelations to emerge from the case, echoing worldwide outrage stirred by pictures of nude Iraqi prisoners of war taken by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The photos referred to in the charging documents “have not been released … as yet to the public,” Army spokeswoman Major Kathleen Turner told Reuters Sunday.

The troops from the 5th Stryker Brigade based in Washington state deployed to Kandahar province a year ago, and the murders occurred between January and March, according to charges by army prosecutors made public this month.

In two of the slayings, fragmentary grenades were thrown at the victims and they were shot, according to charging documents. The third victim also was shot.

Morlock was the first of five soldiers initially charged in June with the murders. Seven others have been charged since then with various other crimes stemming from the investigation, including conspiracy to cover up the slayings.

Four of the soldiers have been charged with keeping body parts, including finger bones, a skull, leg bones and a human tooth.

The sickness isn’t the post-traumatic stress disorder upon returning to everyday life, but the programming of the U.S. military of human beings to dehumanize themselves to further dehumanize others.

Case and point: if the public heard of soldiers treating dogs and cats this way, they’d actually be outraged.

Filed under: Af-Pak War Tagged: Af-Pak War, Afghanistan, civilian casualties, Jeremy Morlock, military tribunals, United States armed forces

News and views from around the web posted to the Wonderland Wire:

• US group releases West Bank settlements iPhone app | AFP 21 September 2010
• Afghanistan says over 3,000 complaints about vote | AFP 21 September 2010
• Judge upholds Guantanamo detention in rare government win – Carol Rosenberg | McClatchy 21 September 2010
• U.S. Air War Soars in ‘Post-Combat’ Iraq – Noah Shachtman | Wired.com 21 September 2010
• Feds: Privacy Does Not Exist in ‘Public Places’ – David Kravets | Wired.com 21 September 2010
• CUBA: Black Women Face Double Discrimination, Half Century After Revolution – Patricia Grogg | IPS 21 September 2010
• U.S.: FBI Chastised for Spying on Activists – William Fisher | IPS 21 September 2010
• IRAQ: After False Promises, the Heat Is On – Abdu Rahman and Dahr Jamail | IPS 21 September 2010
• Great Recession ended in June 2009, but who knew? | McClatchy 21 September 2010
• One and a Half Cheers for American Decline: The Future’s Not Ours and That’s Good News – Tom Engelhardt | Truthout 21 September 2010
• Wisdom of the Terrorist’s Son – Chris Hedges | Truthdig 21 September 2010
• Gold Hits Record, 2-Year Yield at All-Time Low on Fed Statement | Bloomberg 21 September 2010
• Somali prime minister resigns | The Guardian 21 September 2010
• Gulf States Order $123 Billion of U.S. Weaponry to Counter Iran, FT Says | Bloomberg 21 September 2010
• ACLU Sues Pittsburgh Police Over post-G-20 Conduct | AP 21 September 2010
• Picturing War’s Wounded and Dead – C.J.Chivers | NY Times 21 September 2010
• China Launches First Cross-Border Air Strike Drill | AP 21 September 2010
• Ga. Execution Delayed After Suicide Attempt | AP 21 September 2010
• Officials – US Drones Kill 6 Militants in Pakistan | AP 21 September 2010
• Kyrgyz leader seeks to bar U.S. contractors from supplying fuel to American base | WaPo 21 September 2010
• Brazil quickly becoming a player in the global economy | WaPo 21 September 2010
• FBI misled Justice about spying on peace group – Jeff Stein | WaPo 21 September 2010
• The New Saudi Arms Deal – Stephen M. Walt | Foreign Policy 21 September 2010
• Secret Police Stage More ‘Terrorism’ | LewRockwell.com Blog 21 September 2010
• Grayson Sends Letter Demanding Halt Of Illegal Foreclosures, Calls Out “Largest Seizure Of Private Property Ever Attempted By Banks And Government” | zero hedge 21 September 2010
• Omar Khadr is 24 Today: He Has Lost One-Third of His Life in US Custody | Andy Worthington 21 September 2010
• Fed Injects Record $5 Billion Into Stock Market With Today’s POMO | zero hedge 21 September 2010
• I can print more money than you can – Buttonwood Blog | The Economist 21 September 2010
• An Awesome MSM Clip on Iran – Eric Garris | Antiwar.com Blog 21 September 2010
• Jason Ditz on Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton 21 September 2010
• Israel Floats Idea of Swapping Settlement Freeze for US Spy | Antiwar.com 21 September 2010
• Helicopter Crash Makes 2010 Deadliest Of Afghan War | NY Times 21 September 2010
• They Died for Iran – Sheldon Richman | FFF 19 September 2010
• Reality check: Iran is not a nuclear threat – Scott Horton | CSMonitor.com 19 September 2010
• Israel’s settlements key to peace talk progress | AP 17 September 2010
• Lockheed Martin gets role in $2.8B IT contract | AP 17 September 2010
• Non-Aligned Movement backs Iran – Kaveh L Afrasiabi | Asia Times 17 September 2010
• Minority Rules – Paul O’Mahony | Foreign Policy 17 September 2010

Filed under: Daily Briefing Tagged: Abdu Rahman, ACLU, Af-Pak War, airstrikes, Andy Worthington, antiwar activism, arms trading, Brazil, C.J. Chivers, Carol Rosenberg, China, Chris Hedges, Dahr Jamail, Death Penalty, domestic surveillance, domestic terrorism, drones, electoral politics, Eric Garris, false flag operation, FBI, Federal Reserve, fiat money, FOREX, Glenn Greenwald, gold, Great Recesseion, Guantanamo Bay, Iran, Israel, Jason Ditz, Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, Kyrgyzstan, Lockheed MArtin, Middle East, Middle East peace process, military industrial complex, NAM, Noah Shachtman, Obama Administration, Omar Khadr, Pakistan, Paul O'Mahoney, Peace Now, Pittsburgh G-20 Summit, privacy rights, racism, Saudi Arabia, Scott Horton, settlement expansion, Sheldon Richman, Somalia, Stephen Walt, Sweden, Tom Engelhardt, UAE, Wall Street, war games, Warfare and Conflict, West Bank, William Fisher

Kevin Carson on the most evil PSYOPS of statism: accepting the murder of the state.

21 Sept 2010 | C4SS

Steve Biko had a saying: “The oppressor’s most powerful weapon is the mind of the oppressed.” The state’s ideological indoctrination is far from perfect. But all too many people are still successfully conditioned by the state’s legitimizing ideology not to see certain internal contradictions in the state’s claims, or to ask questions that would seem obvious to anyone not trained to suppress certain kinds of logical connections.

One example of a question that’s not asked, a logical connection that’s not made, is the tendency to judge the state by the professed intentions of its spokesmen rather than by its actions. Closely associated with it is the tendency to judge the state by its professed intentions, while judging private actors by their actions.

For instance, Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers recently argued that U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning should be considered guilty of murder: “We know for a fact that people will likely be killed because of this information being disclosed.”

You don’t think anyone “knew for a fact” that people would be killed when Bush initiated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? So why isn’t an American President guilty of murder when he commits troops to a war?

Lots of public figures have argued that the idiot preacher from Florida who wanted to burn the Quran on 9-11 would be responsible for increased bloodshed. Glenn Greenwald asks at his Salon blog, in response, whether “establishment-serving, power-worshipping” commentators “would ever in a million years use language like that to condemn American officials who have actually spilled enormous amounts of blood?”

As Alexander Berkman pointed out in Now and After: The ABC of Anarchism (1929) in response to people who wrung their hands over anarchists’ alleged bomb-throwing and violence: “When a citizen puts on a soldier’s uniform, he may have to throw bombs and use violence.” The commands of the state, by their very nature, depend on force and violence. If the state was not, as Poul Anderson put it, the agency that reserves the right to kill anyone who disobeys it, why — its commands would be mere suggestions.

It follows, Berkman argued, that “we are so steeped in the spirit of violence that we never stop to ask whether violence is right or wrong. We only ask if it is legal, whether the law permits it. You don’t question the right of the government to kill, to confiscate and imprison. If a private person should be guilty of the things the government is doing all the time, you’d brand him a murderer, thief, and scoundrel. ”

Critics of anarchism demonize a hypothetical stateless society on the grounds that it will be unable to completely stamp out violence and crime—implicitly assuming that the state is fully successful in stamping out those things.

No, sad to say, voluntary associations in a stateless society wouldn’t be able to prevent a hundred percent of murders, robberies, and rapes. Unlike the state we live under now, which guarantees 100% effective crime prevention or your money back. Seriously, if you call 911 to report that a guy with a hockey mask and a hook for a hand is fiddling around with your back window screens, the state is under absolutely no legal obligation to get cops to your house before he eviscerates you and hangs you in the freezer. It’s not like you’re the customer or anything.

Never mind, as we saw above, that the state itself actively engages in murder, robbery and rape.

And this doesn’t just refer to those other, bad states, the official enemies of the good guys in the United States government—as bad as their death tolls have been. After WWII, the U.S. government itself was the world’s biggest job retraining program for Nazi war criminals. Left-wing resistance movements throughout the European and Pacific theaters were divested of the ground they held at the end of the war, and in many cases former Axis collaborators were put in control of provisional governments installed by the Allies. In the ensuing decades, the U.S. has been an overflowing source of fraternal aid and assistance to right-wing death squads and military dictators all over the world. In Central America alone, the death toll from military regimes installed by the U.S. and death squads trained by the U.S. extends into the millions. Under Operation Condor in South America, a series of coups—starting with Brazil—extended over most of the continent. And then there’s Mobutu, Suharto …

We need to start judging the state by its actions, not its words. And we need to judge the actions of the state by the same standards we use to judge everyone else.

Kevin Carson is a research associate at the Center for a Stateless Society, contemporary mutualist author and individualist anarchist whose written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy and Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective. Mr. Carson has also written for a variety of internet-based journals and blogs, including Just Things, The Art of the Possible, the P2P Foundation and his own Mutualist Blog.

Filed under: Philosophy, Political Science Tagged: Af-Pak War, anarchism, anti-Statism, Bradley Manning, history, Iraq War, Kevin Carson, law, libertarian, Mike Rogers, morality, Philosophy, US, war crimes, Warfare and Conflict

News and views from around the web posted to the Wonderland Wire:

• Report: $2.75bn U.S. Fighter Jet Welfare to Israel Approved While One in Seven Americans Live in Poverty – Sayyid | Little Alex in Wonderland 16 September 2010
• Israel decides to buy F-35 fighter jets, despite row over cost of deal | Haaretz 16 September 2010
• U.S. urges Arab countries to leave Israel off the agenda at IAEA conference | Haaretz 16 September 2010
• U.S.: Forget ‘Ground Zero Mosque’, It’s the Great Sharia Conspiracy – Daniel Luban | IPS 16 September 2010
• U.S.: Rights Groups Leery of Surge in Wartime Contractors – William Fisher | IPS 16 September 2010
• US puts no timeline on Japan base resolution | AFP 16 September 2010
• Venezuela’s economy: Disappearing dollars | The Economist 16 September 2010
• U.S. transfers 2 more Guantanamo detainees — to Germany – Carol Rosenberg | McClatchy 16 September 2010
• 15 Die in Somalia as Parliament Demands Gov’t Vote | AP 16 September 2010
• Senate Passes Bill to Aid Small Businesses | NY Times 16 September 2010
• One in seven Americans is living in poverty, Census shows | WaPo 16 September 2010
• DNA Evidence Clears Two Men Who Served 30 Years Each For Rape | ABC News 16 September 2010
• Taxing American Competitiveness – Jacob F. Kirkegaard and Arvind Subramanian | Foreign Policy 16 September 2010
• Did Ban just hire the first female Secretary General? | Turtle Bay 16 September 2010
• NATO troops shoot armed protester in South Afghanistan | Reuters 16 September 2010
• Israel bombs Gaza tunnels as leaders talk peace | BBC News 16 September 2010
• Report: U.S. suggests 3-month extension to settlement freeze | Haaretz 16 September 2010
• US ‘open to talks with North Korea’ | AJ English 16 September 2010
• US homes lost to foreclosure up 25 pct on year | AP 16 September 2010
• US jobless claims fall faster than expected | AFP 16 September 2010
• Under IAEA Pressure, Syria And Iran Point to Israel | Reuters 16 September 2010
• Nuclear detectors a $4 billion bust, GAO says – Jeff Stein | WaPo 16 September 2010
• Public opinion and the war in Afghanistan – Glenn Greenwald | Salon.com 16 September 2010
• Gold Takes Out All Stops As It Hits New Record, Approaches $1,280 | zero hedge 16 September 2010
• Real IRA threatens attacks on banks | AJ English 16 September 2010
• Afghan progress like ‘watching grass grow’: Petraeus | AFP 16 September 2010
• IMF approves 451-million-dollar loan for flood-hit Pakistan | AFP 16 September 2010
• Administration vows to get tough with China | AP 16 September 2010

Filed under: Daily Briefing Tagged: AEA, Af-Pak War, Afghanistan, Arab League, China, civil liberties, criminal justice system, Daniel Luban, DPRK, Futenma, Gaza, Glenn Greenwald, Guantanamo Bay, home foreclosures, IAEA, IMF, IRA, Iran, Israel, Japan, military aid, military industrial complex, NATO, North Korea, NPT, Pakistan, poverty, settlement expansion, Somalia, Syria, terrorism, UN, USDCNY, Venezuela, Warfare and Conflict, William Fisher