Good news from Arizona.

Well maybe anyway, dictatorships don't tend to fall apart just because a couple of the inner circle go away. I'm getting ahead of myself, two key members of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's regime have been forced to resign due to some internal politicking. Any set backs for the most prominent dictatorship within the continental US is a good thing though surely?

Emmanuel Goldstein is dead.

So Bin Laden is apparently dead. The vast majority of the media is going to take this story at face value so while they may be right to do so I'm going to look at the holes and questionable details in all this. To defend myself from the fact at least some of what I say here will look very silly in the coming months I will state this is my initial reaction to the news.

Firstly for several years the only evidence we've had that Bin Laden was alive was the odd taped audio message. Then after he was killed instead of recovering the body to put on show or at the very least have some nominally independent autopsy done his body is dumped at sea. We're almost certainly going to get pictures of the body released but creating photos of the body of someone who hardly anyone has seen for years is pretty doable for the US. More to the point if they had recovered the body so as to dump it at sea why not just hold on to it?

Secondly the timing is odd while it certainly wont hurt Obama in 2012 the election is a year and a half away, plenty of time for the right to trash and undermine the achievement or just plain focus on something else as the elation at Bin Laden's death fades away. On the other hand domestic dissent is growing, the Ryan plan is mobilising boomers' inherent selfishness and protests against austerity are ongoing across the US, most notably in Wisconsin. Now while this unrest was focused on the GOP business interests may well no want any dissent blossoming and so had a wonderfully patriotic distraction occuring. Heck protesters could be dismissed as anti-American for daring to protest at this time of national triumph.

Also a more outlandish point but one I feel worth making, we've had two big patriotic distractions that bolster the status quo and conservative entrenched interests in just a couple of days, first the Royal Wedding and now this. If one did want to distract against something pretty big happening that would upset people those would be pretty solid ways of doing it.

Thirdly this gives carte blanche for further incursions by NATO forces into Pakistan. Obama pointedly commented the attack on the compound was solely a US operation. Worse this compound was near a major Pakistani training base and in an area popular with retired members of the Pakistani military. Pakistani opposition to NATO ground incursions and Air Raids which killed multiple civilians has reached a fever pitch so some kind of justification was needed. Further though Pakistan has been very naughty recently, having the gall do things like charge CIA operative Raymond Davis with murder just because he killed a few Pakistani citizens, heck they've been very naughty for a while what with them overthrowing US puppet General Musharraf (who now lives in Britain with UK tax payer funded protection) and trying to act as a sovereign nation, using democracy to select leaders who might not favour US interests.

With the nature of the killing of Bin Laden in central Pakistan, just miles from the capital Islamabad the US is going to pretty much have a free hand to pursue regime change back to a client dictator.

There are other issues at stake but for now thats what springs to mind, I'll probably try and expand on this later in the day.

Iraq Reverting to Police State.

In The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein convincingly shows that the US following the 2003 invasion had no desire for Iraq to become a democracy and it was only by mass protests (that the western media ignored) that the Iraqis got democratic elections. Well Iraqis have been doing mass protests throughout the Arab Spring, albeit for improved conditions and not regime change. Again the western media have studiously ignored it, Iraq is "liberated" and "democratic" so to report on protests would show how inaccurate all their previous reporting has been. Even more depressingly US trained Iraqi security forces are cracking down on the free press within the country.

It would seem that the US is attempting to make Iraq into the puppet dictatorship they always wanted it to be. Though to be fair as Chomsky pointed out the US will endeavour to return all the rebellious countries in the region to client dictatorships.

Justice for a rape survivor, 20 years later.

This article by Liz Seccuro is deeply disturbing. Unsurprisingly I suppose when rape is being discussed but it isn't just the terrifying nature of a rape itself that disturbs. Just as bad is the college administration's seemingly deliberate obstruction of justice. Why would they for instance lie to her about police jurisdiction? Did they not want bad publicity or was one of the rapist's parents a major donor. When a woman is brave enough to pursue justice and the strains that will put upon her and is still prevented from doing so I think we are forced to take a long hard look at our assumptions about this society being egalitarian.

The Federal Reserve gave two Wallstreet Bankster Wives $220m

Theres no real caveats or explanations I can give, they essentially were given free money. As Matt Taibbi explains here.

More questions about Glenn Greenwald.

While previous suspicions about Greenwald had been put on to a low simmer further worrying signs that Greenwald is not nearly as liberal or progressive as one might like to pretend. Ina magazine interview he has mooted support for a Libertarian presidential candidate.

Its well worth a read, one really does have to wonder how progressive Greenwald is.

Edit: Forgot to say at the bottom of that blog post it is also highlighted how anti-immigrant he is.

Man this fucking sucks.

http://www.rainn.org/statistics seems like a useful if depressing website but they only have one supporter (Rachel Bilson) in the entire fucking world? Never have I been so ashamed to be human!