How Ayn Rand Helped Turn the U.S. Into a Selfish, Greedy Nation. Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society....To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.— Gore Vidal, 1961 Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans.
A century later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Rand’s impact has been widespread and deep. In 1966, Ronald Reagan wrote in a personal letter, “Am an admirer of Ayn Rand.” "The most ironic token of that moment in history" Carl Sagan [703x704] : QuotesPorn. Competitive Enterprise Institute. According to the 2017 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report (Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania), CEI is number 59 (of 60) in the "Top Think Tanks in the United States".[2] Academic research has identified it as one of the Conservative think tanks central to promoting climate change denial.[3] Policy areas[edit] Energy and environment[edit] CEI is an outspoken opponent of government action by the Environmental Protection Agency that would require limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
It favors free-market environmentalism, and supports the idea that market institutions are more effective in protecting the environment than is government. CEI President Kent Lassman wrote on the organization's blog that, "there is no debate about whether the Earth’s climate is warming", that "human activities very likely contribute to that warming", and that "this has long been the CEI's position".[5] Regulatory reform[edit] Net neutrality[edit] Legal advocacy[edit] CEI events[edit] Background and Context | Living Under Drones. This section provides background and contextual information relevant to understanding U.S drone policies in Pakistan. It provides a basic overview of what unmanned aerial vehicles are, how the US has been using this technology as part of a broader effort to engage in “targeted killing” of alleged enemies, and how the use of drones has undergone a dramatic escalation under President Obama.
The section also provides some background on Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the area in which most drone strikes take place, on the residents of North Waziristan who live under drones, and on armed non-state actors and military forces in northwest Pakistan. The US government has been using armed unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, to carry out hundreds of covert missile strikes in northwest Pakistan since at least June 2004. Drones: An Overview Drones and Targeted Killing as a Response to 9/11 President Obama’s Escalation of the Drone Program Who Makes the Call? US drone strikes kill 28 unknown people for every intended target, new Reprieve report reveals.
Media Using Obama Admin. Deceptive Definition To Describe “Militants” Killed By Drone Strike. Did Obama’s Drone War Help Cause Yemen’s Collapse? Photo by MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images A U.S. drone strike hit a vehicle in central Yemen on Monday, killing three members of al-Qaida according to a representative of the group. The strike was the first since Yemen’s U.S. -backed government collapsed last week, in what’s been widely seen as a major setback for efforts to combat the powerful al-Qaida affiliate that took credit for the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Joshua Keating is a staff writer at Slate focusing on international affairs.
But what if the drones themselves are part of the problem? It’s not unreasonable to ask whether U.S. attacks in the past six years, and particularly the civilian casualties they have caused, helped to hasten the Yemeni government’s fall, contributing to the headache now confronting U.S. counterterrorism efforts. There’s long been concern that the strikes have been driving sympathy and support for al-Qaida, particularly in predominantly Sunni southern Yemen. Obama’s Drone War - The New Yorker. At the Pearl Continental Hotel, in Peshawar, a concrete tower enveloped by flowering gardens, the management has adopted security precautions that have become common in Pakistan’s upscale hospitality industry: razor wire, vehicle barricades, and police crouching in bunkers, fingering machine guns. In June, on a hot weekday morning, Noor Behram arrived at the gate carrying a white plastic shopping bag full of photographs.
He had a four-inch black beard and wore a blue shalwar kameez and a flat Chitrali hat. He met me in the lobby. We sat down, and Behram spilled his photos onto a table. Some of the prints were curled and faded. For the past seven years, he said, he has driven around North Waziristan on a small red Honda motorcycle, visiting the sites of American drone missile strikes as soon after an attack as possible. Behram is a journalist from North Waziristan, in northwestern Pakistan, and also works as a private investigator.
Many of the prints had dates scrawled on the back. DN! Richard Clarke served as the nation’s top counterterrorism official under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before resigning in 2003 in protest of the Iraq War. A year before the Sept. 11 attacks, Clarke pushed for the Air Force to begin arming drones as part of the U.S. effort to hunt down Osama bin Laden. According to Clarke, the CIA and the Pentagon initially opposed the mission. Then Sept. 11 happened. Two months later, on November 12, 2001, Mohammed Atef, the head of al-Qaeda’s military forces, became the first person killed by a Predator drone.