Terror against US regime is a reprisal

The Blog

What the media try to describe as unprovoked terrorist attacks against Americans are actually reprisals against a barbaric and warlike US regime that has left a trail of death and destruction across the world. The US is the world's most dangerous terrorist state, massacring civilians on a daily basis, and pretends to be shocked that anyone would try to retaliate.

This was the tone of antistatist writer Chad Nelson, writing recently at the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) market anarchist think tank based in the US. Highlighting the secrecy under which President Obama's drone wars thrive in order to protect his sensitive image as a dove rather than a hawk, Nelson offered the following commentary on how Americans are tricked about why they are targeted by terrorists:

When retaliation for these actions arrives at our shores or against Americans abroad, as it inevitably does, the American public is shocked and appalled, wondering what could possibly prompt such heinous actions. Hungry for answers, Americans are then fed simple explanations by politicians, such as, “they hate our way of life,” or “their religion commands them to commit such acts.” Never are we provided the context in which such reprisals occur.

Americans go on to tolerate a monstrous, intrusive police state which invades their own lives supposedly to hunt down the militants who are only reacting to the same undemocratic regime's aggression around the world. Americans are subjected to 24/7 surveillance and the bulk collection of all their correspondence, and have no guarantees that they too won't be arbitrarily detained or assassinated by their criminal regime in Washington without trial.

In Afghanistan, the US-led NATO aggression has reached its most sordid and illegitimate scale, with children confined to home and unable to go to school for fear of being hit by Obama's criminal drone attacks. As a result of this, the remote-controlled aggression goes beyond merely creating resentment among the people affected by them, but can even inflame regional or global resentment of the United States for its endless aggression.

Obama will never be remembered as a man of peace, Nelson argues, because he has escalated his drone program to a scale ten times greater than George W. Bush. It is worth noting that none of the current leading candidates for the 2016 Presidential election in the US opposes drone strikes, and even Bernie Sanders has called merely for the strikes to be conducted with more caution, despite their record of failure.

The #MontOrder sees through #Ukraine's war crimes and illegitimacy. http://t.co/nUnNWmplbq pic.twitter.com/faryjV0oCQ

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) September 13, 2015

The Blog

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Read More »

I Don’t Love #America Either, Rudy

@cnels43.

Wear this defiant symbol in the form of the L'Ordre Dissident Apparel

In his ongoing quest to remain relevant, Rudy Giuliani recently accused president Barack Obama of not loving America. In the ensuing outrage, Giuliani quickly backpedaled, clarifying that he doesn’t doubt Obama’s love of country, but instead believes Obama’s policies are wrongheaded, representative of someone who doesn’t know what’s in America’s best interests, as set forth in the Rudy Giuliani Handbook for Patriotism.

I Don’t Love America Either, Rudy » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names http://t.co/cwOLsnXkC3
— Chad Nelson (@cnels43) February 28, 2015

I must confess to Giuliani and all of the other nationalists in government: I don’t love America either. For starters, it’s worth quoting eminent scholar and semanticist Alfred Korzybski: “The map is not the territory.” What Korzybski meant is that no linguistic construct or model used to describe an existential “thing” should be confused for the thing itself. Attempts to substitute the map for the territory fail for many different reasons, not the least of which is that people will always interpret the map as representing different things, in accordance with their own subjective experiences.

When Rudy Giuliani declares that someone doesn’t love America, he defines America like most other hyperstatists — America as a political entity. The America that you can literally point to on a map, and whose borders have grown in proportion to the American military state’s aggression and brutality. The America Giuliani loves is the one made up of, first and foremost, its government, which Giuliani and his fellow American exceptionalists claim have “allowed” for the greatest freedom and prosperity in mankind’s history. Giuliani and his ilk love the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, the court system which Giuliani once worked the levers of, and all the American state’s arbitrarily drawn political sub-entities (states and cities) — one of which he ruled with an iron fist for many years. Love of America, for Giuliani, means love of its political infrastructure. No number of pictures of Giuliani at Yankees games will convince me otherwise.

Giuliani’s definition of America is a far cry from the one most Americans envision, myself included. I don’t love the American government. I have no reverence for the Constitution, nor for any part of the state machinery, which to me, doesn’t represent America at all. The things that Giuliani loves about America are irrelevant to the freedom and prosperity Americans have so often enjoyed, good fortune which Giuliani wrongly attributes to the state.

I love food, music, books, movies, language, ideas and innovations, especially those molded by some of the people who live in the region Giuliani calls America. But I love those things regardless of where they’ve came from, be it America, Canada, Africa, or the Middle East. In short, I love the human ingenuity that is the driving force behind those things. And I am in awe of the process (not thing) called culture that serves as a kiln in which many of those creations have been formed.

So while we’re on this debate about who does and doesn’t love America, count me as a no vote so long as tyrants like Giuliani are setting the bounds of the debate.

Citations to this article

• Chad Nelson, I Don’t Love America Either, Rudy, CounterPunch, 02/27/15

Chad Nelson | More articles by Chad Nelson

Originally published at C4SS on 25 February 2015
CC0 1.1

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Read More »

Selective Hearing in the War on #Terror

@cnels43.

Territories that the so-called Islamic State group intends to conquer.

Watching Fox News’s recent coverage of the Islamic State’s Twitter-hack left me shaking my head in disbelief, as usual. The latest act alleged to have been carried out by IS is the group’s takeover of several Twitter accounts belonging to the wives of US military servicemen. Among the threatening tweets issued by IS through the hacked accounts were comments like: “You think you’re safe but you’re not,” “IS is already here,” and “We’re watching you” (issued specifically to Michelle Obama).

The IS tweet receiving the least attention from American media outlets appears to be the most substantive: “While your president and your husband are killing our brothers in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan we’re coming for you.” In fact, it is the only tweet in this series including content beyond ambiguous threats. Despicable as it is to those of us who abhor violence, the comment is revealing and deserves the close attention of American policymakers. Yet, it got no such attention from the American government or media. They preferred to speculate on whether IS really might be around the corner.

The tweet is crucial in that it reveals one of the Islamic State’s main motivations — their desire to drive American military forces from their positions in nearly every Arab country. It’s the latest in a long line of such declarations from various Islamic factions offering the same rationale.

Michael Scheuer, Former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden Unit, said about bin Laden: “[he] is remarkably eager for Americans to know why he doesn’t like us, what he intends to do about it and then following up and doing something about it in terms of military actions.” Bin Laden laid out his motivations directly to the American public in a letter. He cited, among other reasons for fighting, the US government’s continuing support of Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Palestine, the US government’s wars in Muslim lands like Somalia and Iraq, and the US government’s repression of Muslims via Middle East puppet regimes. Notice a recurring theme here? Bin Laden’s grievances were with the US government.

Yes, bin Laden does attribute some responsibility to American taxpayers for making “their” government’s actions possible. This should not come as a shocking revelation. In any government war, the enemy’s source of funding is a primary target. For this very reason, the US government has made it a crime to provide financial support to those it deems terrorists. So it should come as no surprise that al Qaeda or IS would play by the same rules of war, declaring the US government’s piggy bank fair game. Disturbing, yes. Surprising, no.

There is no denying that the American way of life also motivates the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and their brethren. In bin Laden’s letter, he also cites western culture’s repugnance to his perverted brand of Islam as a motivating factor. Unfortunately, in an effort to avoid blame, the US government and its mouthpiece media present only this factor. It is absolutely taboo to mention the murder and mayhem committed by US forces in Muslim lands as a contributing factor. As Scheuer said, trying to do so is like “yelling into a closet. The American people, God bless ‘em, are just so badly educated and unaware of how duplicitous their leaders are …” Time to listen and learn.

Chad Nelson | More articles by Chad Nelson

Originally published at C4SS on 18 February 2015
CC0 1.1

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Read More »

#Elite's War on #Immigrants a "Diversion"

@cnels43.

As Loretta Lynch’s US Senate confirmation hearings for her nomination to the office of Attorney General opened on January 28, Republicans were dying to ask her just how friendly she might be to the class of people government defines as “illegal aliens.”

In an exchange with immigration scrooge Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Sessions wondered who Lynch believes has the right to work in America. Specifically, he asked, who has “more right”: A lawful immigrant, a citizen, or a person who entered the country unlawfully? Lynch wisely opted to dodge Sessions’s silly multiple choice question, instead responding that if a person is here unlawfully, she’d prefer it be as a participant in America’s workforce.

Sessions’s line of questioning — and the answer he was fishing for — reveals much about the political class’s warped thinking. The bipartisan immigration-bashing contingent in Washington believes, as Sheldon Richman notes, “permission to work is theirs to bestow.” Unfortunately, that belief is the law of the land. Today, who may work is a question decided largely by Washington bureaucrats and special interests jockeying to buy legal monopolies on their services. While you may think yourself free to pursue work of your choosing, the countless prerequisites and riders imposed by government drastically narrow your choices. If you’re fortunate enough to overcome those obstacles, your ability to remain effective at your craft is often curtailed as you’re forced to wade through a morass of government-mandated compliance.

Politicians rely on this hugely important power to maintain a stranglehold on their subjects. The right to bestow work upon their subjects, and all of the ancillary terms and conditions that come with granting work as privilege, allow the parasitic political class to fill its pockets in the most efficient way possible. If work — whether that of an illegal immigrant or an American black market laborer — is re-routed through unregulated marketplaces, politicians lose the ability to track it and extort tribute. Failure to comply with their tangled web of tax, labor, and administrative law, not to mention licensing schemes laid over entire professions, risks having your livelihood pulled out from under you. The whole complex structure is falsely sold as protecting producers and consumers alike.

Illegal immigration itself is not what scares bureaucrats. Their fear is loss of control over the income streams that result from unregulated immigrant labor. Sessions and his fellow border guards in Congress couch their fear in terms of “us vs. them” rhetoric, a brilliant stage act serving important political purposes. With this sleight of hand, politicians lead you to believe their fears are not for the loss of taxpayer loot, but for “your” jobs, “your” Medicare, and “your” Social Security. Those here legally and working lawfully (and paying taxes), are said to serve a patriotic function. The state’s skimming of their paychecks is not to be abhorred, but welcomed as a vital contribution to everyone else’s well-being. Those who work without permission are the enemy, undoing the noble work of the lawfully employed. “You” are good and “they” are bad. Politically powerless undocumented immigrants make an easy target for Washington, putting a false human face on politicians’ fake hysteria. Madison Avenue couldn’t have designed a better ruse.

It’s also worth recognizing the immigration scare’s target audience: 1) Unemployed and unsecure American workers, and 2) retirees. The “us vs. them” mantra becomes more potent when you’re told something tangible may be taken from you if immigration is not stemmed. Those already secure, successful and relatively independent of the state concern themselves less with others’ work and pay arrangements. Furthermore, older Americans, many themselves immigrants or descendants of immigrants, are generally less tolerant of the new wave of brown-skinned immigrants. This otherization is an easier sell to older Americans who have less experience and interaction with them and are told that their presence leads to the disintegration of American culture.

The real source of worker insecurity, cultural ruin and general predation on honest, hard-working people is the state. Poking holes in the politicians’ immigration story and lifting the veil on their real motives, all while recognizing the humanity of our supposed enemies, is a solid first step on the road to real liberty.

Citations to this article:

• Chad Nelson, GOP immigration issue just a distraction, University of New MexicoDaily Lobo, p. 4, 01/30/15
• Chad Nelson, The Political Class’s War on Immigrants is a Diversion, Before It’s News, 01/30/15

Chad Nelson | More articles by Chad Nelson

Originally published at C4SS on 30 January 2015

Republished under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication

Image via ClubOfINFO Circulation

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Read More »

Challenging the Motives Behind War

. @cnels43. #NoMoreWAR. #Iraq. #Obama. #IS.

American criminal law takes a nuanced view of murder, creating several punishable degrees of it. First degree murder is generally defined as premeditated. The murderer has a plan to kill and takes sufficient time to map out his crime. Second degree murder involves the killer who hasn’t necessarily taken the time to plan out his crime, but nonetheless has an “evil mind” and intends to kill. Another variety of second degree murder involves the killer who engages in conduct so depraved that the law says he should have known that his behavior would likely result in death. Then there’s manslaughter, sometimes referred to as “negligent homicide,” wherein the killer behaved negligently and someone died as a result. These are age-old American legal traditions.

Somehow, American war culture manages to turn a blind eye to these longstanding, basic legal principles when it comes to its government’s wars. Americans brook no nuance when it comes to war. A war with massive civilian casualties is the same as a war with no civilian casualties, as long it meets some vague government objective. For anyone who doubts this lack of distinction, simply look at the body of historical work surrounding “The Good War” – World War II.

War is hell, they say. War is a dirty business. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. The countless despicable metaphors used to describe war are intended to distract people from what war really is: Non-punishable mass murder.

Unfortunately, no matter how reckless, depraved, ill-informed or misconceived American war-making becomes, the war-makers are never held to the same standards as run-of-the-mill murderers. Neither George W. Bush nor any other American president, were he tried in a criminal court of law (loud laughter), would escape conviction for first degree murder.

But in war, all the war-making murderer needs is a place where he or she claims bad people exist. To hell with other details or circumstances. The rest of the war-making murderer’s conduct gets blanket immunity so long as that low threshold requirement is met. Most of the time even that part can later be found false or mistaken. The actual execution of war never matters. Its implementation always ends up being reckless, depraved, and of such a nature that even a toddler would recognize it as guaranteed to lead to the murder of innocents. Yet presidents and congressman always get away with behavior that would land any ordinary person behind bars, probably on death row.

Many critics of the American War Machine give their opponents the benefit of doubt by acknowledging supposedly good intentions. This is a grave mistake. It becomes a mantra that gets tossed out prior to challenging any war: “I know you mean well, but …” It’s time to drop that preface. Just as criminal law cuts the negligent killer no break, so too should serious war critics drop the forgiving aspect of their engagement with government killers.

Remember this when Barack Obama or any future president speaks to you in an effort to outline his or her war strategy. It doesn’t matter whether he or his clan of humanitarian killers are able to come up with some cockamamie excuse for dropping bombs. Their behavior is going to end innocent lives, pure and simple.

By Chad Nelson – More articles by Chad Nelson

Republished under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication.

Originally published at the Center for a Stateless Society on 17 September 2014

Send us your email address to get all ClubOfINFO articles delivered for free.


Delivered by FeedBurner

Read More »