American Drones Ignite New Arms Race From Gaza To Iran To China

I saw Hearts and Minds again last night, a documentary film that recounts the history and attitudes of the opposing sides of the Vietnam War using archival news footage as well as its own film and interviews.

A key theme is how attitudes of American racism and self-righteous militarism helped create and prolong this bloody conflict. The film also endeavors to give voice to the Vietnamese people themselves as to how the war has affected them and their reasons why they fought the United States and other western powers while showing the basic humanity of the people that US propaganda tried to dismiss.

Two quotes from the film stand out:

Gen. William Westmoreland: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient."

Daniel Ellsberg: "We weren't on the wrong side. We were the wrong side."

What keeps us developing these killing machines and foreign policies of aggression never changes.  
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American Drones Ignite New Arms Race From Gaza To Iran To China

I watched Hearts and Minds again last night, and I was struck by how we continue to learn nothing from our history.  We're as susceptible to being lied into war by our government as ever.  Our leaders play on our fears to create the means of our destruction many times over, in order to increase their own riches.  
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Reappraising Obama

Did you know that we could pretty much keep all Americans safe from terrorists if we revoked all Constitutional rights, eavesdropped on all communications, kept Americans in small, policed neighborhoods like prison communities?  It then becomes a really easy task.  Look at N. Korea, with bugged housing, and Singapore with Draconian laws that have eliminated just about all crime - Even bubble-gum chewing!  

They are humorless and obedient cultures, lacking innovation and sheer joy or genius.

The trick in the US is to solve our problems without impeding Constitutional rights.  Both Democrats and Republicans take the easy way out (ending our rights), not for the good of the people, not to keep Americans safe, but for the further fleecing of Americans by the corporations.  

You keep touting Obama's insurance bonanza bill ("already cut Medicare costs by 50%") when I keep telling you that there's a way to do it without Americans giving up their right of privacy (that's what IT for Medicare reporting has done - It's ended Americans' medical privacy).  

There is a very real price paid when we lose our privacy, when we open our lives to clandestine surveillance by the government and strangers.  The danger is not only in the misuse of our information, but the effect of being watched has on innovation and other aspects of culture.
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Dick Durbin: Social Security Should Be Off The Fiscal Cliff Table

IT IS NOT A ENTITLEMEN­T IT IS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR

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That's why it's an entitlemen­t -- It's been bought and paid for.

That's what 'entitleme­nt' means.  

But the only thing that Republican­s could do with the word, with the concept of 'entitleme­nt', was to try to change people's attitude about the word itself, conflate it with a common parlance of the word used to describe people who are 'putting on airs' --  "Look at her, all high and mighty, as if she were entitled."

The first step is recognizin­g the tricks of the trade (political pin, weasel-spe­ak, and Democrats do it, too), and reclaiming the language.
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