#mis

Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368, unanimously passed, explicitly recognized the right of the United States to self-defense and further called upon all member states 'to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the terrorist attacks. It added that 'those responsible for aiding, supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of those acts will be held accountable.' In a speech the following month, the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly acknowledged the right of self-defense as a legitimate basis for military action. The SEAL unit dispatched by President Obama to Abbottabad was large enough to allow for the contingency of bin-Laden's capture and detention. The naïve statement that he was 'unarmed' when shot is only loosely compatible with the fact that he was housed in a military garrison town, had a loaded automatic weapon in the room with him, could well have been wearing a suicide vest, had stated repeatedly that he would never be taken alive, was the commander of one of the most violent organizations in history, and had declared himself at war with the United States. It perhaps says something that not even the most casuistic apologist for al-Qaeda has ever even attempted to justify any of its 'operations' in terms that could be covered by any known law, with the possible exception of some sanguinary verses of the Koran. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#al-qaeda #assassination #barack-obama #death-of-osama-bin-laden #international-law

Besides, the story is ambivalent and mysterious in its ending. Is this Alkestis returning from down below? Why does she have a veil over her face? Could it be that when we forcefully bring back to life what has been lost through love what we get is only a shate of its former reality? Maybe we can never succeed fully in restoring the soul to life. Maybe she will always be veiled and at least partially shielded from the rigors of actual life. Love demands a submission that is total. ↗

— Thomas Moore

#death #love #submission #death

Love is responsible for nearly every kind of insanity in the world though greed, vanity, and pure meanness contribute their portion to general misery. ↗

— P.N. Elrod

#insanity #life #love #meanness #misery

Head up, heart open. To better days! ↗

— T.F. Hodge

#encouragement #endurance #faith #inspiration #optimism

If we keep pulling death from the ground, we will reap death from the skies. ↗

— Van Jones

#environment #fossil-fuels #death

Economists are coming to acknowledge that measures of national wealth and poverty in terms strictly of average income tell you little that is significant of the health or viability of a society. ↗

— Rowan D. Williams

#average #coming #economists #health #income

If you found a cure for cancer, wouldn’t it be inconceivable to hide it from the rest of mankind? How much more inconceivable to keep silent the cure from the eternal wages of death. ↗

— Dave Davidson

#death

My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short. ↗

— Armistead Maupin

#been #being #could #damn #feared

Death continues to stalk the streets, stealing the souls of our children as they sleep. We're running out of fingers to close their eyes, voices to bless their souls, hands to dig their graves. Poisonous fumes from their unburied bodies contaminate the alleys, and the ghosts of those who have been buried rise nightly. Their tiny forms dance above their tombstones, an agonising reminder that we've failed them. ↗

— Joanne Owen

#the-alchemist-and-the-angel #death

Hey, pretty damn smart aren't you? You made it just ugly enough. inconspicuous. Nobody looks twice." "I have to admit, that was a hard one for me. I think one of the designers had a breakdown. Cried for an hour ↗

— J.D. Robb

#death