Special US commandos are deployed in about 75 countries around the world – and that number is expected to grow.

open quoteBorn of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.

Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialised helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialised and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes US citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal “kill/capture” campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine”.

This assassination programme has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.close quote (Read more from english.aljazeera.net)

A message circulating about the London Riots

If you’re down for making money, we’re about to go hard in east london tonight, yes tonight!! I don’t care what ends you’re from, we’re personally inviting you to come and get it in. Police have taken the piss for too long and to be honest I don’t know why its taken so long for us make this happen. We need a minimum of 200 hungry people. We’re not broke, but who says no to free stuff. Doesn’t matter if the police arrive cos we’ll just chase dem out because as you’ve seen on the news, they are NOT ON DIS TING. Everyone meet at 7 at stratford park and let’s get rich. After stratford we hit plaistow and surrounding streets taking them all out and then finally moving on to east ham. Finders keepers and we all look after each other so if you see someone getting grab by feds then make sure we help stamp out that fuking PIG. M.O.B money over bobbies =D broadcast this to everyone you know and let’s get paid!!

Israelis Sick and Tired – but of What?

open quoteThe protesters do not want peace. In fact, one of the common posters in Rothschild imitates the very font, color, and design of “Peace Now” and replaces it with “Welfare State Now.” This is what makes Israelis take to the street: the exorbitant cost of living in Israel. With average wages considerably lower than in Europe or North America, prices in Israel are often much higher.

Obviously, life in Israel is economically much better than in neighboring countries. Why do Israelis expect more? Why do they compare themselves to Europe and North America, not to Egypt or Turkey? Because that’s what the Israeli state (all Israeli governments from the mid-1980s on have had precisely the same policy) has persuaded us to do. The Israeli ruling right wing (call it Labor, Likud, or Kadima; they’re all the same) has persuaded Israel’s middle class that peace is unnecessary: we can both run the occupation and have a Western standard of living. As evidence, they point at Israel’s membership in the OECD, the exclusive club of the world’s richest economies, or at Israel’s prosperous high-tech industry.

The idea sounds perfect: the regime knows that the Israeli middle class would refuse to pay for the occupation. The regime is unwilling to give up the occupation, so it convinces the masses that the occupation has no economic price for them. We don’t need peace: we can go on like this and have a good life. (Convincing Israelis that the other side does not want peace is another component of the same ideology.)

But to keep this lie alive, they have to deliver. And the Israeli governments cannot deliver. The middle class hears the promises of the good life and reads reports on diminishing unemployment rates and strong growth, but it sees a different reality: it gets poorer all the time. I see it all around me: hard-working parents cannot raise their children — let alone buy a flat — without massive aid from their own parents. “Grandparents are not an ATM,” as some protesters write on their posters.

Aims and Distractions

The rage of the protesters is not aimed especially at the occupation. Some of the protesters are blind to the occupation’s economic significance; some of them fear a split in the protest if this becomes the focus. Indeed, the occupation is in my eyes Israel’s greatest sin, but not its only one. The protesters implicitly target the unfulfilled promises of the good life. They target regressive taxation, and they target the few Israeli tycoons who, because of the interdependence between politics and big money, have monopolized almost every branch of the small, isolated Israeli economy and turned the entire people into their captive market.close quote (Read more from )

Victims of Government: The FDA’s War Against Products of Nature

I think the FDA kills more people than the U.S. Army, though it might be a toss-up.

In a nutshell: Drug companies modify progesterone so that they can patent it. Synthetic progesterone kills and hurts many many women who are trying to prevent cancer. They then attempt to criminalize natural progesterone. You can still buy it, but there are severe restrictions on labeling and marketing — you can’t call it progesterone, even though that’s what it is.

National Institute of Health halted a study of synthetic progesterone because too many women were dying.

Planet Moron: Historic Deficit Cutting Deal Q&A

open quoteGiven the historic nature of this week’s historic agreement to cut federal spending historically, we thought it would be useful to provide you with a FAQ on the deal:

. . . .

Q: Yes, but how severe?
A: So severe, you could even say they were sharp.

Q: Could you put a number on that?
A: Sure, the initial cuts amount to $917 billion!

Q: Well, that’s not too bad, but we’d still run a deficit next year.
A: That’s not $917 billion next year, that’s $917 billion over ten years.

Q: That’s barely $90 billion for 2012, then.
A: More like $22 billion next year. The really historic, sharp, severe cuts take place much later.

Q: This doesn’t sound very convincing.
A: Just take a look at this chart and you’ll understand.
Projected Spending Cap of 2011 Budget Deal

Q: I thought you said there were cuts.
A: There are! Look at them. We’re not sure how we’re supposed to run a government with cuts like these.

close quote (Read more from planetmoron.typepad.com)