And It Will Ever Be Thus

And [on this day] in 1971, NYPD officer Frank Serpico, who refused to take bribes and had testified against corrupt cops, was shot during a drug bust. Serpico was surprised to discover that his fellow officers weren’t backing him up — and later learned that they hadn’t even called for an ambulance. He recently wrote that, more than 40 years later, “I still get hate mail from active and retired police officers.”

  Bill Moyers

One of Al Pacino’s best roles.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan

The U.S. military decided it will no longer release facts and figures about America’s costly effort to assist Afghan security forces.

(As this goes online, the military has announced, having been called out, that it is backtracking* on parts of the classification)

[...]

Information that has been made public for the past 12 years is now classified. The fact that the information has generally made the military (and the State Department, who helps spend the money) look like fools may have something to do with the decision.

[...]

The now-classified data also hides the results of the $107.5 billion U.S. reconstruction program.

[...]

[...]

Despite a legal obligation for federal government agencies to provide requested information to the inspector general, “the State Department did not answer any of SIGAR’s questions on economic and social-development this quarter, and failed to respond to SIGAR’s attempts to follow up.”

[...]

Afghan war blog Sunny in Kabul (which, if you have any interest at all in events in Afghanistan you should be reading) says the military isn’t hiding money, it’s hiding people. Specifically, the lack of Afghan soldiers on the job.

[...]

”[N]early three quarters of the ANSF’s total force over the course of 31 months was lost

[...]

Basically, despite extraordinary sums of money being spent to train and equip the ANSF, they are quitting, deserting, getting killed or running away

[...]

Sunny in Kabul concludes “Based on the numbers publicly reported last fall, there won’t be an army left to fight the insurgency by the end of 2015. That’s not a metaphor or commentary on their professionalism. I mean there won’t be an army at all.”

[...]

And much, much more!

  Peter Van Buren

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

*

The watchdog Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) accused the U.S. military of depriving the American people of an essential tool to measure the success or failure of the U.S.-led rebuilding effort.

[...]

The U.S. watchdog had challenged the U.S. military's assertion that releasing data on topics ranging from recruitment of women to salaries and attrition could be of tactical benefit to Taliban insurgents, and called the decision to classify it "inexplicable".

[...]

"Resolute Support has informed SIGAR that a majority of the information has been declassified and we are in the process of reviewing it," a SIGAR spokesman said in an emailed statement.

[...]

A spokesman for the U.S. force said in a statement: "A large volume of the data requested by SIGAR, when viewed alone, is suitable for public release.

"USFOR-A has since gone back and separated data releasable to the public from classified ANSF readiness data based on the SIGAR’s request," the spokesman said.

  Reuters

We shall see.

Walmart's Cynical Slip Is Showing Again

An ongoing investigation of popular herbal supplements subjected to DNA testing has found numerous store brand supplements aren’t what their labels claim to be, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman said on Tuesday.

[...]

Overall, just 21% of the test results from store brand herbal supplements verified DNA from the plants listed on the labels. The retailer with the poorest showing was Walmart. Only 4% of the Walmart products tested showed DNA from the plants listed on the labels.

[...]

Contaminants identified include rice, beans, pine, citrus, asparagus, primrose, wheat, houseplant and wild carrot. In many cases, unlisted contaminants were the only plant material found in the product samples.

[...]

Walmart spokesman Brian Nick said the company is immediately reaching out to suppliers of the products and will take appropriate action.

  Guardian

Till next time.

Freedom!

As part of a global push to combat terrorism, airlines in the USA will now keep a register and record passenger information of those who request halal meals and EU will now ban certain facebook, twitter, and google from displaying results in order to curb radicalization.

  World Bulletin

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Close a Corporate Tax Loophole?

When pigs fly.

Major corporations such as Apple, Google and Microsoft have been avoiding the 35% corporation tax on earnings repatriated to America by stockpiling earnings overseas in low-tax jurisdictions such as Bermuda and Ireland.

[...]

Barack Obama will propose a major clampdown on US corporations with a one-off levy on an estimated $2tn of untaxed earnings being stashed overseas, using the windfall to rescue America’s crumbling road infrastructure.

The centrepiece of the White House budget, which will be unveiled on Monday but was shared in advance with the Guardian and other media, is a one-off 14% tax on untaxed foreign earnings multinational companies are shielding overseas.

  The Guardian

Yeah, good luck with that.

Republicans have signalled they are open to finding a way to tax earnings stored overseas by big corporations, and have explored similar ideas. They are also in favour of boosting money for road-building – one of the few areas of government spending they are willing to see increase.

We’ll see.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

There Are Still Unions in This Country

Workers at nine US oil refineries and chemical plants across four states, producing some 10 percent of the country’s fuel, went on strike after their union announced that negotiations on their salaries and safety concerns failed.

The mass walkout of refinery workers – the first since 1980 – took place on Sunday, after the United Steelworkers union (USW) rejected the fifth offer by the industry’s main negotiator, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, which in turn halted talks.

[...]

Refinery employees complain of working overtime with unsafe staffing levels and under dangerous work environments. The union has cited daily occurrences of fires, emissions, leaks, and explosions that threaten local communities.

  RT

Wimps every one. Screw unions! (Has anyone created a sarcasticon yet?)

“This industry is the richest in the world and can afford to make the changes we offered in bargaining.”

Yes, well, part of the reason they’re so rich is because they don’t pay you more. Helloooooo.

While strikes continue at nine facilities, the remaining USW refineries are operating under a rolling 24-hour contract extension.

Yeah. And if they can do it, then you can, too. Go back to work you lazy bums.  :s

Maybe it's not a sarcasticon I need.  A facetious, faux anger emoticon might be more proper here.

So Now, It's a Competition?

The world's most lethal military sniper is understood to be a British Royal Marine, who recorded most of his 173 confirmed kills during tours of Afghanistan in 2006/07.

The Briton, who has not been named, reportedly served in the Royal Navy's elite unit for more than a decade. He served both in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the Sun.

[...]

According to the Sun, the British sniper hit 90 Taliban fighters in one stronghold in just one day.

  RT

Take THAT, Chris Kyle, with your 160 confirmed kills.

A source told the newspaper, “He is not interested in scores or kill counts.

“He took no satisfaction in the job he had to do. Because he saw the enemy as humans he has not struggled emotionally or psychologically with what has happened.

"Not"?  Is that a typo?

Anyway, our hero Chris Kyle wasn’t a wimp about it. He took the credit; he was proud, and he would have gladly killed more. Besides, reports are that those 160 were just confirmed kills, not all of his kills - that 160 is a conservative estimate.  So he would have beat out the weenie Brit if we count them all.

Sources said the British marine's figure of 173 is “conservative,” with unconfirmed strikes believed to take his total even higher.

Oh, sure.

Vasily Zaitsev is known as the Soviet army’s deadliest sniper with some 400 kills. He reputedly killed 225 soldiers during the Battle of Stalingrad [in WWII].

Many reports claim that the deadliest sniper in history was Simo Häyhä, nicknamed ‘White Death’. The Finnish sniper allegedly killed at least 700 men in less than 100 days during World War II.

We’re gonna need a bigger war and a new hero.

Keeping the Peace Pace

UN peacekeepers captured the moment shells hit their position in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, the day their Spanish colleague was killed. The footage suggests Israeli artillery, retaliating against Hezbollah rocket attack, might be responsible.

[...]

The cell phone footage shows two United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeepers talking in their car next to a watchtower, as the whistling of the first artillery shell is heard in the background. Aiming the camera at the wall which separates Lebanon from Israeli territory, one of the soldiers says: “They're falling from Israel, man!”

“Hush, hush, let’s see...they’re falling from...How can that be? It cannot be that, huh?,” responds the other peacekeeper.

[...]

Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said it “most likely” came from Israel.

[...]

Spanish El Pas reported that the Israeli army warned the UNIFIL contingent of the retaliatory strikes, some 20 minutes before shells started falling from the sky. However, the Israeli army said its operation would target the area of the Shebaa Farms – but said nothing about shelling Ghajar village.

[...]

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, deployed since 1978, includes 600 Spanish soldiers out of a 10,000-strong force.

  RT

Really, I think we're into ironic notation territory here. Sort of like awarding Barack Obama (not to mention Henry Kissinger) the Nobel Peace Prize. We're calling these UN forces "peacekeepers." Don't we have to HAVE peace before we can keep it?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

 

It's Sunday

First Lady Michelle Obama got a very public thumbs up from Cruz on Twitter for not wearing a head scarf this week when she and Mr. Obama visited Saudi Arabia for a condolence visit following the death of King Abdullah.

[...]

Jon Alterman, the director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CBS News [...] there's pressure on American women traveling to Saudi Arabia on official business to let their hair be seen.

"Even if people don't mind covering, they would make it harder for women who do mind covering" he explained. "They feel it's important to maintain the right of other women not to cover."

  CBS

 Yes, but our good Catholic beliefs aren't as subjugating of women as your bad Islamic ones.

It's Sunday

One American sniper called Iraqi natives “savages,” compared them to American welfare recipients, and bragged about looting their homes after killing them. Another American sniper became so disgusted by what he had done that he started the first-ever antiwar blog, and is actively encouraging his fellow soldiers to use their First Amendment rights to speak out against what he calls an “illegal occupation” in Iraq. Guess which one had a blockbuster movie made about him, and which one got ignored?

  RSN

I guess Oliver Stone was busy.

While Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, who killed over 160 people during his time in Iraq, relished in pulling the trigger and wrote “I only wish I had killed more” in his memoir, [Kosovo and Iraqi veteran and third generation soldier Garett] Reppenhagen became increasingly more remorseful after each kill. “Every time I pulled the trigger, I had to really convince myself that I was saving a buddy of mine. And it got increasingly difficult,” Reppenhagen told an audience at Colorado College in May of 2011.

[...]

“It was the conduct of the war that really started turning me, and the fraudulent causes that sent me there that really put me over the edge,” Reppenhagen said. “There were no ties to 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction.” [...] Reppenhagen became the first active duty member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW).

[...]

“There are ways to resist this war within army regulations. You still obtain your rights as a citizen,” Reppenhagen said at a lecture in March of 2008. “You’re able to use those rights, and you should, since you’re the one sacrificing to protect those rights.”

[...]

“There’s a lot of pride in joining our army, our corps,” he continued. “We can fight for a cause that will change America and the world for the better and stop these occupations.”

Not very American, is he? American Sniper Chris Kyle, now THERE’s a REAL American.

According to Slate, Chris Kyle doesn’t refer to [ex-SEAL Jesse] Ventura by name in his autobiography. In a chapter titled “Punching Out Scruff Face,” he claims that he beat the living daylights out of a Navy SEAL (“Scruff Face”) who spoke ill of American soldiers in Iraq. During later interviews, Chris Kyle confirmed that Jesse Ventura was “Scruff Face.” He claimed that Jesse was a laughing stock when he attended a SEAL graduation with a black eye.

However, Ventura took Kyle to court to prove that his tall tale wasn’t true, and a jury awarded the former wrestler $500,000 for defamation and $1.345 million for unjust enrichment. The jury found that Kyle used his lies about Ventura to profit, and now Ventura has filed a similar unjust enrichment lawsuit against American Sniper publisher HarperCollins.

[...]

“It’s as authentic as Dirty Harry,” Jesse Ventura said of the film.

  Inquisitr

After all, it is a Clint Eastwood movie.

I have a feeling that the post-American Sniper jury will be less likely to award Ventura much of anything.

Jesse Ventura’s lawsuit against Chris Kyle isn’t addressed in the American Sniper movie, and the film also avoids tackling Kyle['s] other questionable claims, including a tall tale about using his sniper skills to kill looters during Hurricane Katrina.

[...]

[American Sniper screenwriter Jason Hall explained, “As far as the movie was concerned, it wasn’t a part of the narrative of the story we were telling and the desire to make this allegorical for every soldier out there.”

[...]

However, as the Inquisitr previously reported, director Clint Eastwood doesn’t think that American Sniper glorifies the war — he recently claimed that he believes the movie makes “the biggest antiwar statement any film can.”

Really? That didn’t seem to come across to the people who saw it. If you haven’t read Kyle’s book by the same name as the movie, and if you haven’t watched the movie (I’m guilty on both counts), you might not know how religious Kyle was.

Kyle opened his book by probing the ethics of combat as he wrote about his first sniper shot, when he had to kill an Iraqi woman holding a grenade. “My shots saved several Americans, whose lives were clearly worth more than that woman’s twisted soul,” he wrote. “I can stand before God with a clear conscience about doing my job. But I truly, deeply hated the evil that woman possessed. I hate it to this day.”

In the film adaptation, Kyle is visibly moved by his first shot and later mentions meeting his maker and justifying each shot he took. He writes that he spent a lot of time praying during difficult times.

[...]

” If I had to order my priorities, they would be God, Country, Family,” Kyle wrote.

[...]

Ever since I had gone through BUD/S (SEAL training), I’d carried a Bible with me. I hadn’t read it all that much, but it had always been with me. [...] With all hell breaking loose around me, it felt better to know I was part of something bigger.”

[...]

In his book, Kyle writes that he told an Army colonel: “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.”

[...]

[J]ournalist Nicholas Schmidle wrote. “He tattooed one of his arms with a red crusader’s cross, wanting ‘everyone to know I was a Christian.’”

[...]

” I have a clear conscience about my role in the war. I am a strong Christian. Not a perfect one — not close. But I strongly believe in God, Jesus, and the Bible.”

[...]

“I hated the damn savages I’d been fighting,” Kyle wrote. “I never once fought for the Iraqis. I could give a flying f**k about them.

[...]

”I believe the fact that I’ve accepted Jesus as my savior will be my salvation,” he wrote. “But in that backroom or whatever it is when God confronts me with my sins, I do not believe any of the kills I had during the war will be among them. Everyone I shot was evil. I had good cause on every shot. They all deserved to die.”

  HuffPo

Veteran and PTSD sufferer [Eddie Ray ] Routh, who admitted to police that he killed Kyle and the marksman’s friend Chad Littlefield, will have his day in court early next month.

  WaPo

Good luck on that one, son. You’re up against an American Hero. And now, martyr.