The Bloomberg Nation

How downright scary is this?

"I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.  I have my own State Department, much to Foggy Bottom's annoyance.  We have the United Nations in New York, and so we have an entree into the diplomatic world that Washington does not have." -Mayor Michael Bloomberg

The New York Observer recorded the above quote from a speech Mayor Bloomberg gave to students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on 29 November 2011.  It is simply shocking to me that he would claim such an "army" mere weeks after citizens were brutalized in the streets.  

It is only in the light of this human tragedy that burning the Occupy Wall Street Library is a lesser evil.  The obsession with power makes this seemingly moderate mayor come off as a brute.  That he would cite these powers as valuable experience for the presidency is as clear of a sign of megalomania we citizens can get from elected officials.

What is more frightening is that this admission comes only a few months after the shocking news that the NYPD has been working closely with the CIA in order to secretly spy on citizens in the years since 11 September 2001.  As the Huffington Post reports this is still going on, unabated, and without any real accountability.  Furthermore, the police department has been using its funding to spy across the tri-state area, which is clearly a violation of its jurisdiction.

These actions, taken together, make it very easy to present the case that the New York Police Department is out of control.  In addition the department and the mayor's administration have hardly offered apologies for any of these "minor" atrocities.  What happened to protecting and serving?  What happened to the democratic spirit in the governance of New York City?

Hitchens on al-Awlaki

Anwar al-Awlaki

The great Christopher Hitchens has recently devoted two columns at Slate.com to the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki.  I discussed this topic previously on this blog, but Hitchens brought up questions that were too thought-provoking to miss.

To summarize, I agree with Hitchens that the Obama administration's assassination of an American citizen raises a host of issues which need to be discussed by thinking individuals.  However, he brings up a salient point: what do we do instead?  That is to say, if we are not willing to kill homegrown terrorists, how else can we prevent the destruction of civilization?

Killing American Citizens

While this topic has certainly got a lot of (libertarian) press over at Reason, what brought it to my mind was the so-called "Commander-in-Chief" debate hosted on CBS on November 11.  During this debate, both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney were asked about whether they would assassinate Americans like Anwar al-Awlaki.

Since I don't watch news television, I don't know to what degree the media covered the Awlaki assassination.  I imagine it was not covered very much, so I will redirect you to the above link to Reason Magazine and to the less partisan wikipedia page.  If you are not interested in reading the gory details, I will summarize the story.  Anwar al-Awlaki was a Yemeni-American who later became a popular imam and self-proclaimed anti-Western jihadist.  To be clear, he was a citizen of the United States.  He has been linked to many terrorist activities since then, including the "Underwear Bomber," the Times Square Bomber, and the Fort Hood Shooter.  For a more complete list, see the wikipedia page.  In any case, he was put on the Obama Administration's targeted assassination list in early 2010.  Thus we used drone assaults to bomb the various places the administration thought they could kill him.  In September 2011, the United States of America successfully killed him in Yemen.  Two weeks later, we killed his 16 year old son, American citizen Abdul-Rahman al-Awlaki. [More below the fold.]

Veteran's Day Post: Issues with the U.S. Military

As the title suggests, since today is Veteran's Day I thought it would be helpful to outline some of the main problems with the U.S. armed forces and the attitudes towards the military in this country.  As a disclaimer, I do think it is courageous for the men and women of the military to offer to give their lives for their country.  Therefore, there is certainly nothing wrong with honoring those men and women who have served or died in the armed forces.

However, I am sorry to say that I think the esteem and admiration of soldiers has swung too far in one direction.  It is certainly not anything like the level present in Nazi Germany, nor do I think it is a slippery slope to that hell.  The republican virtues are still pervasive enough in the country and the citizen led nature of the army is still firmly in place.  But what is very troublesome is that I see people repeatedly assert that the men and women serving in the military are the best of their respective generations.  This adulation seem to come from people who are from all walks of life and any political party.  Jon Stewart, Nancy Pelosi, Glenn Beck, and Mitt Romney all seem to agree on this point.  But that sort of praise really is terrible.  It simply implies that if you are not willing to kill another human being for your country, then you are automatically excluded from being one of the best people in your generation.  I don't think that the people who say it intend it this way, but it is a direct implication. [More below the fold.]