armnotsigns:

Imagine (by nwoisnow)

take a few seconds to consider this reality.

Reality. 

(via priceofliberty)

America’s state of denial. 
This is the conversation that sprung up when I put up a picture of dead children who were killed by drones. 
They were “offended”, not by the fact that we are droning innocent children to death, but by the fact that I put up a picture of it…
This is the America we live in. Out of sight, out of mind.
As Mark Twain once uttered the words that have come to be my favorite quote of his, ”It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

America’s state of denial. 

This is the conversation that sprung up when I put up a picture of dead children who were killed by drones. 

They were “offended”, not by the fact that we are droning innocent children to death, but by the fact that I put up a picture of it…

This is the America we live in. Out of sight, out of mind.

As Mark Twain once uttered the words that have come to be my favorite quote of his, ”It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

loaded-for-bear reblogged your post: We still have a military draft in America

I am from a middle class family. My parents could easily have paid for my education. I joined the Army instead. Now the government is paying for my education. At a very prestigious school I might add.

You may think we don’t have a choice in the matter, but we do. To say that Americans were forced to join the military is a logical fallacy. There are plenty of other options to cure desperate situations. Why do you think they turn to robbing liquor stores? 

In the end, it wasn’t a trap. In fact, I am better off now than I was when I graduated high school. And don’t make it sound so terrible. The military is a great institution. You take a kid off the streets and instantly he is surrounded by role models. People that he can relate to.

And you think we join because we don’t have another way to work or pay for school? I don’t think you realize how patriotic service-members are. It sounds like the only ones you know probably came from IVAW or Operation Winter Soldier.

Suicide mission? Really? You talk like we’re back in WW1 charging trenches. The blue to red KIA ratio is entirely disproportionate.

Last thing, I don’t want your sympathy. I may not have known what I was getting myself into, but I knew where I would end up. And believe it or not, I am ok with that.

Cool, but your circumstances don’t refute the overall fact that the poor are targeted as recruits: http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/newspaper/vol-6-no-10/the-economic-draft-and-the.html

And I never said no one has a choice, everyone has a choice, it just so happens that the choice of joining the military is the most attractive to many. There is no logical fallacy here, it’s simple economics, the gains from joining the military (free college, above average pay) is more attractive than the alternative for many 17 and 18 year olds who are just coming out of high school (some of which who don’t have the grades, money or connivance of going to college).

You take a kid off the streets and instantly he is surrounded by role models.” No, he’s surrounded by power hungry authoritarians that spend months breaking your will and turning you into an obedient organic weapon and telling you that you are better for it. They rewire your brain function to not question and to only obey. You are not taught to think freely, you are taught to think intelligently within their bandwidth. 

I don’t doubt that many are patriotic, I’m patriotic, too. I just don’t advocate mindlessly doing the bidding of others and killing people simply because someone else told me I should kill them. Murder is not patriotic. 

Can you even give me a justification for why we are in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc? You really think those people are a threat to America? You sound like you’ve been there, tell me, do they have the means of attacking and invading America? They live in clay huts, farm goats, smoke drugs and pray all day. Some of them don’t even know what 9/11 is. We aren’t there for “justice”. If you think that’s the case, you’re delusional. 

Yes, it’s a suicide mission. You are willingly entering a War Zone where people are actively shooting at you. There have been 2,000+ deaths in Afghanistan and 4,000+ deaths in Iraq. That’s over 6,000 dead soldiers in 10 years. I don’t know about you, but when’s the last time an accountant died from punching in numbers? Military service is a hazardous occupation, to deny as much is idiotic not patriotic. 

image alamoejones reblogged your photo: The notion that if we cut our defense budget by as…

Can we also get the idea out there that Russia and China are in no way threats to our country?! China needs us for our trade and debt and Russia is nowhere near as powerful as it was during the Cold War. The U.S. is not under threat from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc. They either don’t have the capability to attack us or don’t have the desire. These are huge misconceptions!

I agree on North Korea. But Iran is an economic and logistical threat. Why?

Trade Routes and Drug Trafficking:

Opium production in Afghanistan has spiked since the US took out the Taliban because the Taliban had suppressed opium farming in the region. Both production and prices have skyrocketed.  

Afghans have various ways of moving the product and one of those ways is through Iran. And Iran isn’t very happy about this. In fact, they are furious. If you don’t know, opium use is a major problem in Russia, China and Iran (coincidence?) America profits vastly from this in two ways, #1, we profit immensely from drug trafficking and #2 we weaken the social fabric of other nations who we view as a threat. 

Then there is the geographical location of Iran and how it’s a gateway to Pakistan and India from The M&E and Africa. Iran is a goldmine for pipeline builders. It happens to be very wealthy in terms of oil and it also happens to have access to the sea, the Middle East and Asia and is a quick ship ride away from Africa. Just look at this pipeline map and you’ll know why American Oil is salivating at the thought of controlling Iran’s government. 

Oil & The US Dollar’s Strength:

Which brings us to Oil.

Iran has oil and they want to stop selling it in US Dollars. More over they want to sell it to Russia and China in alternative currencies like Gold and Yuan. Why does this bother us? Because if oil isn’t sold in Dollars, the Petrodollar becomes obsolete and the Federal Reserve no long profits from thin air on every single oil and trade transaction on the planet. Yes, this is true. This is how our Foreign Policy is dictated. Not on “terrorists” or on bomb threats or war ships, but on how a countries actions impact the value of our dollar. 

Quick notes: 

Watch this: The Petrodollar & War Machine

How does the reserve currency work? Countries only trade in Dollars so they are forced to always keep dollars in reserve for exchange or to essentially purchase dollars from us to use in trade. The US and the Federal Reserve profit from simply existing and being the (forced) choice of other nations. We get some nations, like OPEC nations, to agree to this by providing them will endless military protection and also giving the royal families of the region billions in kick-backs. Once you have an essential good like oil on the dollar system, others will be forced to follow. Since countries hold and tangle their own currency with the dollar, the value of the dollar still remains important. A loss in value of the dollar means that a country lost value in the reserves that they hold. So long as the dollar is stable, countries don’t worry. But if the dollar’s value becomes unstable, due to high debt, low income or a loss in confidence, countries will begin to move off the dollar. That’s what we are seeing now. 

We didn’t go into Iraq because of WMDs, we went in because Saddam wanted to sell oil in Euros instead of dollars. This happened in 2000, we had plans to invade as early as 1999. 

We didn’t go into Libya to “free the oppressed” people. We went in because Muammar al-Gaddafi championed the idea of a United States of Africa, with it’s own central bank and it’s own reserve currency. This would remove all dollar-based trade transactions and replace it with their own currency. 

Now we want to go into Iran because they won’t cooperate and they want to also move off the Dollar and trade oil in other currency formats. 

China

China has been building up their military, buying gold, holding less dollars and less US debt, buying oil, buying up Africa and making alliances with all the other top countries, sans America. They are doing everything conceivable to tell us that they no longer want to associate with us and in fact, they want to surpass us and replace us

I think I’ve gone in to enough detail on my tumblr and there’s more than enough information on the web to back this up. 

Russia

We’ve been in a proxy war with Russia for over 6 decades. Nothing has really changed. Russia plays nice on the surface but goes on with their ways. They have jumped aboard with China. Ask yourself which country has been more vocal than opposing the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran? Then Google which country supplied weapons and supplies to the opposition in all of those countries. 

It’s very, very simple. Russia isn’t over the idea of being a superpower. They still view themselves as strong and capable and they are. Russia covers a lot of land, is very rich in natural resources, capable of going fully independent and surviving. They also have a lot of human capital.

Again, a simple Google search on Russian military practices, BRICS, Russia’s gold standard or any quote from Putin is right at your fingertips. And Russia is the one country you never, ever, want to go to war with. Ever heard of the “Russian winter”? 

thevocalibertarian:

Ben Swann Reality Check asks President Obama about U.S. foreign policy that seems to fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan but support al Qaeda in Syria.

Watch and learn…

antigovernmentextremist:

talkstraight:

enemyofthestatist:

Free speech is as illusory as the “just enforcement” of the “laws” of this country. Murder is murder. Period.

When was Bradley Manning ever tortured?  If anyone actually believes that I have a bridge to sell you.

Solitary confinement for 7 months and I heard reports that he was forced to be naked for much of that. I also read that they forced him to be strip searched regularly by female officers to humiliate him (because he’s gay).

From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement.  For 23 out of 24 hours every day — for seven straight months and counting — he sits completely alone in his cell.  Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he’s barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions.  For reasons that appear completely punitive, he’s being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch).  For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs.  Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not “like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole,” but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.
Just by itself, the type of prolonged solitary confinement to which Manning has been subjected for many months is widely viewed around the world as highly injurious, inhumane, punitive, and arguably even a form of torture.  In his widely praised March, 2009 New Yorker article — entitled “Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture?” — the surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande assembled expert opinion and personal anecdotes to demonstrate that, as he put it, “all human beings experience isolation as torture.”  By itself, prolonged solitary confinement routinely destroys a person’s mind and drives them into insanity.  A March, 2010 article in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law explains that“solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture.”

And remember he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet.

People are both blind and bias. America is us and Afghans are them, the terrorists. I can understand that, to a degree. I just don’t get the blind defense of someone who clearly lost it and killed multiple people as opposed to condemning another for realesing info in the hopes of ending an illegal war. 

antigovernmentextremist:

talkstraight:

enemyofthestatist:

Free speech is as illusory as the “just enforcement” of the “laws” of this country. Murder is murder. Period.

When was Bradley Manning ever tortured?  If anyone actually believes that I have a bridge to sell you.

Solitary confinement for 7 months and I heard reports that he was forced to be naked for much of that. I also read that they forced him to be strip searched regularly by female officers to humiliate him (because he’s gay).

From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement.  For 23 out of 24 hours every day — for seven straight months and counting — he sits completely alone in his cell.  Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he’s barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions.  For reasons that appear completely punitive, he’s being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch).  For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs.  Lt. Villiard protested that the conditions are not “like jail movies where someone gets thrown into the hole,” but confirmed that he is in solitary confinement, entirely alone in his cell except for the one hour per day he is taken out.

Just by itself, the type of prolonged solitary confinement to which Manning has been subjected for many months is widely viewed around the world as highly injurious, inhumane, punitive, and arguably even a form of torture.  In his widely praised March, 2009 New Yorker article — entitled “Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture?” — the surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande assembled expert opinion and personal anecdotes to demonstrate that, as he put it, “all human beings experience isolation as torture.”  By itself, prolonged solitary confinement routinely destroys a person’s mind and drives them into insanity.  A March, 2010 article in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law explains that“solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture.”

And remember he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet.

People are both blind and bias. America is us and Afghans are them, the terrorists. I can understand that, to a degree. I just don’t get the blind defense of someone who clearly lost it and killed multiple people as opposed to condemning another for realesing info in the hopes of ending an illegal war. 

Lone wolf. 
plausible-deniability:

A French Special Forces sniper scans the Afghan countryside from his concealed firing position. 

Lone wolf. 

plausible-deniability:

A French Special Forces sniper scans the Afghan countryside from his concealed firing position.