onnweng chin @BeeeeeChin - Twitter Profile

14 days ago

The most important thing about September 11, from the perspective of American foreign policy, is what it authorized. It authorized the suspension of legal norms. It authorized surveillance of citizens without warrants. It authorized the mass collection of communications and telephone records on an unprecedented scale. It authorized torture, renamed "enhanced interrogation" with the same vocabulary trick used for "collateral damage." It authorized secret CIA prisons, the "black sites", beyond ordinary judicial scrutiny. It authorized extraordinary rendition, transferring suspects across borders outside ordinary judicial process. It authorized detention without charge. It authorized military commissions to try certain detainees outside the ordinary civilian court system. It authorized wars without formal declarations of war. It authorized targeted killings abroad by executive decision, without trial, including of American citizens. All of this was authorized by 2,977 deaths. Now ask what was authorized, in other countries, by the deaths produced by American foreign policy. The answer, from the perspective of those countries, should be at least as much. But of course, that's not how it works. Because authorization flows from power, not from logic. And power decides whose grief counts as a mandate.

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Sony Thăng

@nxt888

about 2 months ago

A country that genuinely cared about children would measure its greatness by child outcomes. Child poverty rate. Child mortality rate. Access to healthcare. Access to nutrition. Quality of education regardless of ZIP code. Protection from abuse and exploitation regardless of the perpetrator's institutional affiliation. The United States ranks, among wealthy nations: 33rd out of 38 in under-five mortality. 37th out of 44 in mortality among children aged 5 to 14. Near the bottom in relative child poverty among OECD nations. Below average on key child wellbeing metrics in international comparisons. These rankings do not appear in political speeches. They do not appear in the State of the Union. They do not drive budget negotiations. What drives budget negotiations is the threat from abroad, the competitor on the horizon, the adversary who must be countered. Because the threat from abroad requires no domestic accountability. The threat from abroad does not ask why a child in Mississippi cannot access clean water while the government spends nearly a trillion dollars on defense. The threat from abroad is a very cooperative explanation for why things are the way they are. The children in Mississippi are a very inconvenient one.

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onnweng chin

@BeeeeeChin

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