Outside The Asylum

Gift Economics and everything else: An Anarchist Manifesto

2010-02-08T18:11:00.000-08:00

What I find most important about post-capitalist Gift Economics is that it works best when the giver expects to receive /nothing at all/ in return, not even increased social status. The closest you might get is a closer bond of friendship, but any quid pro quo transaction is barter, not giving. Even social status can be turned into a commodity, such as titles of nobility in feudal societies.

People don't operate merely as individuals, but also as communities. So gift economics is theoretically scalable based on communities giving to communities rather than just individuals giving to each other or giving between an individual and their community:

A cooperative or industrial/production collective, in my opinion, could also be considered a 'community' in that they share many important traits such as equality of members and a shared relation/experience/purpose (but also, a productive enterprise exists as part of a larger community); thus it is not inconceivable that a simple supply chain could be worked out using nothing but giving:

For example, suppose a hospital needs to be constructed; the construction management collective (perhaps members of the community benefiting from the hospital, perhaps people that just like building hospitals) issues a call for the necessary materials, such as steel I-beams; the call for I-beams is answered by a steel mill cooperative and production and transportation is arranged; the mill in turn announces that it needs Iron &etc in order to continue production, and so on.

The part that gets iffy is when a producer or supplier has insufficient resources to answer all the calls for its product; some propose a sort of resource-based pseudo-money to act as a mechanism to transmit 'price signals', but I think that's a mistake that would reproduce capitalism. There's no reason why a producer should have to provide for complete strangers. Instead, we should build networks of communicating communities so that demands are fulfilled by need and by strength of community ties.

This is a Gift Economy, remember! The giver receives /nothing/ for giving, except a stronger, healthier community (which in turn benefits them indirectly; or, in the case of something like a hospital, sometimes very directly), and the satisfaction of a job well done (which is far more motivating than capitalist economists care to admit). If something can't be found, or no one will provide it, then the community should build the means to produce it themselves. In that way, necessities will be prioritized, then amenities and entertainments as diminishing returns and available resources allow.

Sure, some hoarding will occur. But I think that's better than precarity and scarcity that naturally and inevitably result from a capitalist system in which means of production and a person's time itself can be turned into a commodity and bought and sold. Individuals and communities in a Gift Society can only hoard so much, and only what they themselves produce; in a Capitalist system, a person can hire other people to hoard for them, until they can build their own stinkin' space shuttle while half the planet's population can't even find enough to eat.

Also importantly, without any sort of profit motive, there would be no reason for marketing and other such forms of mass fraud. Without the need to get dehumanizing wage-work, jobs which don't need to be done won't be. But people won't be bums: Who would give food or other resources to someone who refuses to help or be productive? People would build communities of mutual aid and mutual respect.

The greatest challenge is that atomized individuals (people with no real community/tribe) can be exploited through enslavement (involuntary labor enforced with the threat of suffering, torture, or death). Their surplus labor-value (their product above what they consume) is taken by the exploiter(s) and used both to enrich themselves and leveraged to exploit others (for example: today's wage-workers are threatened with homelessness and prison as the only alternative, and atomized by what the Situationists called The Spectacle, which is basically the media/business/government image-management system. Wage-workers' surplus labor-value is then used, in part, to hire police, raise armies, and propagate the Spectacle; all of which are used to exploit the environment, conquer new people, and turn more communities into atomized individuals).

People are exploited in order to exploit others, which threatens even the most God-like Ayn-Randian Ubermensch. That means that in order to be successful as a species of free individuals and communities, we need to recognize that a threat to liberty anywhere is a threat to liberty everywhere- in short, Solidarity.

I understand that this is a thoroughly different worldview than that to which most people are accustomed; but just as a machine sometimes just won't do the job no matter how well it is repaired, I find the orthodox worldview wholly insufficient.

Christianist Movie Review

2010-02-01T19:34:00.000-08:00

Lord of the Rings: Bad. It contains wizards and magic and witchcraft. There's no excuse for showing these things to the children.

Harry Potter: Bad. Wizards, magic, witchcraft. Won't someone think of the children?

Twilight: Good, because the vampires and werewolves are a metaphor for abstinence, and Jesus only loves you if you feel miserable for no good reason. I know I just said that magic and superstition are never acceptable, but it's okay to be a hypocrite if you go to church.

Chronicles of Narnia: Good, because... the um... the Lion is Jesus?

The incompatibility of Christianity and Social Change: On the failure of the Peace Martyrs during the Bush era

2010-01-09T17:21:00.001-08:00

This is a series of thoughts, hypotheses, and semi-speculative ideas I have been mulling regarding the mismatch of words and deeds that seems to affect those peace and social justice advocates who apparently are such because of their Christianity. To be sure, they are, at the core, ineffective because to effect real change would threaten their class privilege; but I am interested in the specific mechanisms of their psychology and reasoning that cause them to appear to be the most dedicated activists while actually being some of the least-effective.

Christianity believes that the physical world is not the real world. In the face of infinity, what do a few decades of life matter?The actions of a person matter only in regards to their effect on the afterlife, with good actions rewarded with infinite bliss and bad actions punished with infinite torment. Tyranny and Christianity have been allies for over 1500 years because tyrants care only about rulership over the real world, which is of no concern to Christians; thus they divide up the real and the imaginary between them by tricking the masses into believing in an infinite afterlife instead of improving their lot in life by overthrowing tyranny. "Religion is the opiate of the masses"

Christianity believes that everything is the work of a magical sky wizard, although people have free will; however, Christians also illogically attribute purely human-caused events to divine intervention. Thus charity, which is expressely advocated in the Bible in the form of Jesus telling people to impoverish themselves helping others and to give /as an individual/ to other /individuals/ is advocated, but organizing for change that would eliminate the necessity of charity is not mentioned, and is probably futile since to them divine will is the only cause of change.

Peace- and social justice- activists who are activists because of their Christianity are motivated idologically by "mercy," the idea of empaty for those who suffer. That doesn't necessarily mean improving the economic and social conditions in order to alleviate suffering- it just means that if there's suffering, we should be upset. The ideological closeness to charity is obvious. Successfully ending suffering is not necessary; the highest activity of a Christian social justice activist is spending time in jail, suffering for the meek as Jesus suffered for humanity. And the more they suffer, the more humanity is redeemed! So in a great act of transubstantiation, what should be considered failure (namely suffering, imprisonment, and death) is turned into victory.

During the last decade, we witnessed the largest anti-war movement perhaps in world history fail to end the war to which it was opposed (although to its credit it may have reduced its length and severity, and may have prevented other wars). Peace Martyrs, those people who think that opposing suffering is sufficient regardless of whether or not that suffering continues, played no small part in that failure, because they are more concerned with self-flagellation and publicly weeping for those who suffer than they are with designing and implementing strategies that would actually end suffering. Thus the entire anti-war movement was, with authoritarian Communists at the helm, reduced almost entirely to symbolic marches and protests which the government could, and did, safely ignore.

In 2008 a president was elected on an image of progressiveness. It was always a sham, as could easily be seen by his lukewarm platform at any point during his campaign. But Christianity is an elitist religion, in that it believes that only action by those 'above' can affect the world- whether God, a Messiah, or over-empowered politicians- as opposed to a populist ideology, one that believes the general population is or should be in charge of its own destiny. Thanks in part to Chrisitan ideology, the anti-war movement became enraptured with electing another pro-war politician.

In 2009 a coup in the Central American country of Honduras was opposed, but not acted against, by Christian social justice activists. Despite the existence of long-standing, professional, and practically institutional Christian social justice organizations which have been doing solidarity with oppressed Central American people for decades, essentially no action was taken against the coup. A boycott of the Honduran textile and produce industries, which are largely owned by the oligarchical business class behind the coup, would likely have had a significant impact on the situation, and the strategy should be well-known because of its employment against the South African Apartheid regime. But no action to that, or any, effect was taken by these organizations or by these people as individuals. The culprit is likely Christianity, which does not mandate success, but only the appearance of being against suffering; and which, being elitist, does not believe that people can really change the world without the leadership of divinely-appointed heroes.

For people who are concerned with the real world instead of the imaginary, suffering can only be alleviated through radical change in the economic and social conditions of oppressed people, by organizing to take direct action without the interference of intermediaries such as self-appointed leaders, busybodies, and religious cults. Christianity, which only advocates charity, can only be an impediment to real change.

Fascism, Cults, Militarism, and Consumerism: But I repeat myself

2009-12-30T16:15:00.000-08:00

To get control over a person, you have to drive them just a little nuts.

Honduras

2009-08-06T15:00:00.001-07:00

actually, article 239 of the Honduran constitution states:

"No citizen that has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President.
Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years. "

Zelaya wanted to call a constitutional convention, but does that necessarily mean he was doing it to increase his term limits? What are you people basing that claim on?

Look at the numbers: The June 28 poll was a nonbinding opinion poll to see if there should be a binding poll on November 29 2009 regarding a constitutional convention. Zelaya's term runs out in January 2010. How is he supposed to be elected president before a new constitution allowing that is written?

To put it another way- November 29, 2009, two relevant things are supposed to be determined- Who the next president is, and whether or not to change the constitution. Get it yet? Zelaya could not possibly be elected to another consecutive term; and if he refused to step down in January, THEN they could have arrested him!

Boycott:
Chiquita
Dole
The Gap?

The Imminent Death of Moloch

2009-05-07T14:41:00.000-07:00

Capitalism is fundamentally about profit: Those who make more profit are rewarded; those who make less or none are punished. People who are better at increasing profit are rewarded more. All this profit taken together is called Capital and I have named it Moloch because it is a superintelligence: The common view is that entrepeneurs are in charge of their destiny; but actually Capital gravitates toward the people who are best at making more Capital. Capital is like a virus or a fungus, with the sole purpose of expanding itself. Its agents have been called Bourgeoisie, Entrepeneurs, or Planners. It selects them based on the laws of economics, rather than the other way around. Think in terms of Game Theory.

Capital is generated in several ways. A new type or deposit of resources is found (Oil). A new technology is formed (The Internet). Resources are pillaged by a group that is not part of the dominant economic system (Imperialism). These are called Primitive Accumulations of Capital. Most recently, your retirement fund was taken.

In any closed system, infinite growth is impossible. Resources run out or an economy tends toward equilibrium. However, Moloch demands ever-increasing profit. When profit begins to stagnate He becomes unhappy and demands a Sacrifice: When the Capital generated by the previous Primitive Accumulation is used up, Capitalism has a Crisis that is only remedied with another Primitive Accumulation. If there is not an Accumulation, Capitalism collapses. A Primitive Accumulation is what keeps Capitalism from decaying in a closed system.

Today, there is nothing left to Accumulate. The Great Depression was cured by the Oil age, but that's nearly used up. The Oil Crisis of the 1970s was made up for with massive government and consumer debt, but now we're all tapped out. Computers and the Internet has made everything as efficient as it's going to get. The interesting thing about the Internet and Oil is that these Accumulations are not only resources in their own right, but they also increase the rate of resource consumption- so the more resources like this we acquire, the faster we'll use up resources... so much that Moloch might have lasted longer if they hadn't been found at all!

So today there are no more Primitive Accumulations possible. Everything has been stolen... actually, that's not true; there's one Accumulation left: Moloch can put the screws on American and European workers in the form of Structural Adjustment Programs (or whatever name they will come up with). So say goodbye to health care, education, infrastructure, rights, and freedom; they're not profitable enough!

Or, we can organize, raise the black flag, and scream, "DEATH TO MOLOCH!"

Socialism

2009-04-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

The problem with Socialism is that it relies on a government bureaucracy and, correspondingly, Legalism (the interpretation and strict following of written laws to determine right and wrong); however, Legalism doesn't work because most meaning is conveyed in conversation nonverbally. They are always open to interpretation, and therefore there must be corruptable human arbitrators to determine exactly what a law "means" (lawyers, judges, commisars, city commissioners). It is not possible to write a comprehensive law system without loopholes, and loopholes are where corruption festers. The USSR failed because it WAS Socialism.

The other thing about Socialism is that it was never meant to be an 'end point'. It was an invention of Communists who needed a mechanism to get society from Point A (Capitalism) to Point B (Communism). After a Revolution (check), a Party was supposed to take control of the government and socialize all property (check), then give control of everything back to communities and Soviets and dissolve itself (which did not happen). The Bolsheviks established a bureaucracy, and the bureaucrats found they liked their jobs.

The first job of a State, like anything, is to maintain and perpetuate its own existence. Thus all efforts to "spread the Revolution" were only sanctioned by the USSR if they were under the control of the Russian bureaucracy; the most glaring example of this was in the Spanish Civil War when Spanish Communists under control of Russia kept supplies from the Anarchists who were doing most of the fighting and dying by the thousands; later they fought pitched battles against the Anarchist labor unions, imprisoned their leaders, and were themselves rounded up and killed when the Fascists won the war. The Socialist Bureaucracy prefered to lose a war rather than risk an affront to its authority.

That is the situation in Socialist-esque countries in Europe. It's true that there are more social services. But there is still poverty perpetuated by racism, petty bureaucrats, and capitalism; and for the rest there is no real control over their own lives. Worst of all, armed gangs of fascists ("police") still roam the streets terrorizing everyone. If you think the police are actually there to protect us, then you'd better take another look at your own privilege. They ARE there to protect you; you're white, middle-class, participate in capitalism; therefore the system serves you without you even realizing it. If you pay taxes, the police serve you; and the only people who pay taxes are privileged white people.

Teabaggers

2009-04-17T16:33:00.000-07:00

Maybe they're not all just a bunch of fascists.

What do they want: Taxes reductio'd ad absurdum. Sanctity of property. "Freedom". They think that the 'free market' is the route to salvation, but a few good questions reveal that their system needs counter-organization to avoid mass suffering. Of course, they don't have any clue about Spectacle, but that's not necessary: Everyone can understand local control and empowerment.

What is harder to get across is the fundamental flaw with Legalist systems, so they keep coming back to the Constitution as if the current situation didn't develop from the more basic historical form they apparently advocate. They don't understand that some times it's not clear what a law means.

For example, the second amendment: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." What the hell does that actually mean? Who are "the People"? What are "arms"? What is a "well regulated militia"? Does that mean you have to be in a well-regulated militia if you want to keep and bear arms? Maybe, or maybe not! It's a poorly-constructed sentence because it expresses two unconnected ideas:
1. A well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.
2. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

As a sentence, the second amendment doesn't actually mean anything; but people think it does because they don't think like lawyers... and unfortunately with any Legalist system you have to have people who parse laws and apply them. If it were possible to write a law for every conceivable circumstance that wouldn't be necessary, but it's not so it is.

Not that that matters. The truth only gets you so far. Being right can be good, but it doesn't matter if you're bad at marketing; and being wrong has never held back liars. Showing someone something usually convinces them but telling them never does. Therefore it does no good to tell these racist, privileged fools that they're a bunch of racist, privileged fools. Showing them that they are might destroy them; but providing them an analysis that does not insult them or make them feel uncomfortable would make them both stronger and a force for good. (I don't have that analysis written and probably won't write it)

Israel, Gaza

2009-02-08T13:14:00.000-08:00

Israel refuses to give it a real chance. Israelis seem to have an expectation that the rocket attacks will immediately end totally when Israel gives half of what the Palestinians need. During the cease-fire, rocket fire declined over 90%, and those few launched were almost entirely done by groups other than Hamas. Those groups don't have international ties or the ability to rearm with the more powerful missiles. After a few years, they'll run out, get bored, or kill themselves in suicide attacks.

The Palestinian people have been driven neurotic. You can't expect them to just get over it right away. Even a decade might not be enough. But this has been going on for 40 years and could easily go on for another 400; so why not just take the rockets for a decade, to see them gone forever?

Israel-apologists say that their charter and their secret Palestinian code or whatever says that they will not rest until Israel is destroyed, but that's absurd. Charters and pacts and vendettas are human creations; economics is a force of nature. There will not be terrorism if Gaza can rebuild. Charters will be ignored and vendettas forgotten. There is not a picture of anything on the Palestinian flag.

The reason that Israel refuses to give peace a real chance is that Manifest Destiny is not complete. What the US did to the Indians is occurring in exactly the same way in Israel: It's a land-grab for a nation's imaginary ego. Someone can say that military attacks can be defensive, but no one can say that the settlements and land seizures are defensive.

That is why Israeli leaders intentionally perpetuate the conflict: By doing so, they advance their careers. They have no interest in ending the rocket attacks; they want to see rockets rain on Israel so they can finish the Book of Judges re-enactment.

I don't think many Israeli citizens have any willingness to go out of their way to kill millions of people; and don't Israelis say that doing so would be purely defensive? But, of course, the rockets- children are crying in Sderot; if 1.4 million Arabs must be killed so civilized people don't have to feel like they need to periodically duck into a bomb shelter, who can argue?

Israel's leaders could end this in 10 years by ending the siege of Gaza and giving the West Bank a fair deal. But instead they perpetuate the conflict for their personal glory. So that is why I say the real enemies of the Israeli people are not in Gaza or Ramallah, but in West Jerusalem.

The Nature of the Universe

2008-07-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

If a tree falls in the woods and there's nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Okay, what if a universe exists and then disintegrates , but doesn't produce anything that can be observed? Did it exist?

Our universe is basically defined by several constants and fundamental laws. Change them, and atoms don't stick together, or the universe doesn't expand, or matter doesn't form, or whatever. So isn't it lucky that the universe just happened to have the perfect conditions for life?

No. There have been an infinite number of universes that failed to produce life (or that produced life but didn't last long enough for us to find). Our universe is a product of the Law of Averages. Hail Eris!

Why not to vote and vice versa

2007-06-07T10:16:00.000-07:00

Voting is a social contract that says that all parties agree to abide by the results. This implies, however, that democracy functions as advertised, which it does not. If you vote, you have no right to complain- you agreed to the results! Voting legitimizes this fucked-up system. So, don't vote.

I vote because I think that's a messianic view of the world- Nothing is going to change for a while, and there's a lot more work to be done. Voting is a stop-gap; hopefully it will slightly reduce the amount of suffering in the world, in the short term. There's no point to not voting until we are enough to make something better (which will probably be some time in the 2020's, fyi).

2007-03-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

http://energybulletin.net/23259.html
(10 minute or so read)
Right now we're at about slide 6, bullet point 3.

The trick is nailing down numbers. Exactly how much is this country in debt? The US Treasury Department says $8.8 Trillion for the Federal Government (almost certainly a gross underestimate). Outstanding consumer debt is probably somewhere in the $3 Trillion range, plus another $12 or so in consumer credit... You can go on and on adding up various debts. I don't know what the total is, but at every level (consumer, government, foreign trade, etc), debt is increasing with no concievable end.

The specific reason why this is bad is that, eventually, there must be a recorrection in the form of a dilution of the value of the dollar. As soon as it appears this might happen, institutions that have dollars will attempt to dump them while they're still worth the ink they're printed with. This sets off a 1929-style cascade, and the next day everyone wakes up and their savings are worthless, their job is gone, and the bank is calling in its debts. You can imagine what happens next (actually, you don't have to- it was called the Great Depression last time... except this time it'll be worse because we're falling farther; we have more amenities today that will be gone after the collapse).

Picture the economy like a person being chased by a pack of wolves. As long as the person can outrun the wolves, they are not experiencing any physical harm (so the TV can tell us that the economy is doing great, everything's great, keep working and spending).

One possibility is that our person could trip over a rock... or, rather, Iran (see what I did there? that's wit. That's how the pros do it). The occupation of Iraq is like a backpack full of bricks. If there is any sort of military action against Iran, Iran will probably retaliate by closing the Persian Gulf, through which 60% of the world's oil supply passes. The collapse would happen within a week or two (I know, I've been saying, "ANY DAY NOW!" for a while, but it's not an exact science).

Our person is starting to run out of breath and the wolves are catching up. The other possibility is that eventually, at this rate, the wolves will devour the person. This is the 'slow decay' collapse model, occuring over ~20 years, primarily due to the gradual using up of cheap oil. The real kicker is that if our economy keeps going strong for 20 more years, at projected or even a, say, 20% reduction in carbon emissions, the global temperature increase by the end of the century will be at "worst case scenario" levels.

Oh shit!

2007-02-11T14:22:00.000-08:00

The casus belli!

It's hard to tell exactly when Armageddon will begin, but it could be as soon as a week.
Wear a sweater.
could get nippy.

I spit on you.

2007-01-30T12:30:00.000-08:00

Take a look at yourselves. You're pathetic. One stupid lie from known liars, and you've gotten completely thrown off-topic.

This crap keeps happening. We work hard to make a big statement, and then they steal all the thunder with one easy jab. We have to stop letting them get under our skin.

It's summarized in the saying, "The Best Defense is a Good Offense". The proto-fascists are totally wrong on everything, but they don't have to defend any of it; they can just strike us whenever we try to attack them. They have no defense (because their ideas are indefensible), but they don't need it because we get too tripped up on their counter-attack.

The solution is simple: Ignore them. We can do that now. We have our own media, and better ideas, and there are millions of us. We should note what they say, but don't respond, don't even acknowledge. Just keep moving forward.

Fantastic Reality

2006-11-22T14:35:00.000-08:00

The greatest empire ever known is dying- but refuses to go quietly. Its armies, despite being armed with nigh-omiscience and machines that throw fire, struggle in distant deserts with ancient people using cobbled scraps of technology.

Blind humanists and righteous but powerless paragons of virtue try to free the masses from the control of the masters of the world and their religious zealot allies.

Human flight is routine. Cities are motorized and mechanized and full of light and activity. A journey of hundreds of miles is quick and routine. Communication is instantaneous. But the party will last only a few decades at most.

The scale of human activity is poisoning the air and changing the operation of nature. Within a hundred years, the planet will be a decaying husk of deserts and empty cities and scattered human settlement- unless the hopeless opposition wins now.

We are living in the most epic, glorious time that has ever been and will ever be.

Subvert the Dominant Gender Paradigm!

2006-08-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

Worried about giving in to beauty standards? There's no shame in indulging yourself every once in a while- just as long as you don't get hooked. After all, the goal is to make the world a more beautiful place, isn't it? To some extent, beauty standards are rooted in our genes, so fighting them completely is futile and not desired.

The so-called 'mainstream culture' the media tries to sell us takes it way too far, of course, by emphasizing the exterior over the interior, turning women into glorified blow-up dolls and men into emotionless rocks (except rocks don't become alcoholics and abuse their spouse, I suppose). The media would tell us that sex is everything and nothing. Everything in the sense that it is the supreme goal in life, and all other activities should be bent on becoming more attractive and 'bagging' a more attractive mate, but Nothing in the sense that there is no emotional attachment- just lust; blind greed for a person's body. I guess there's no surprise that the corporate media understands greed.

The best way to undermine this, as always, is propaganda sabotage, billboard liberation, and guerrilla advetising of our own. Picture a billboard with a model too thin to be healthy- with "Anorexia" sprayed or wheatpasted over the product logo. Put up in the freshman dorms subersive posters that let people know that they are already beautiful. Stick 1/4-sheets with the same message in those magazines in Borders. Aggressively oppose the corporatocracy at every opportunity!

If you Still Actually Trust the Media for Some Ungodly Reason

2006-08-14T01:04:00.000-07:00

Clear Channel's major shareholders and the members of its Board of Directors all have conflicts of interest due to their other holdings and positions. The same is true for every corporate-owned media entity. The net result is undeniable.

Some say we shouldn't listen to, buy from, or otherwise support corporations whose practices we find unpalatable. I don't, and there are many others who follow the same ethic. But most of us only learned about corporate evil through other sources; the overwhelming majority of people get their information only after it has been filtered through the corporate lens, without realizing it is corrupt. Trying to educate them is practically a lost cause, although many try. No, the common man cannot be enlightened without something akin to divine intervention.

But if the corporations are not stopped, then the inhumanity we see in the third world, the destruction of the environment, and (soon) the effective enslavement of our own people will only continue and worsen, until the world is something from a nightmare- and executive bank accounts are very, very large.

Capitalism only works when all players have access to all the information. The system breaks when the way that information is relayed is itself controlled by individual players!

Oh That Wacky Government

2006-08-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

In all three cases of the Miami 'terror plot', Canada gunmen case, and this 'British plane bombers' plot there was an undercover government agent. The most reasonable assumption is that the operative was an agent provocateur.

That is all.

Republican Logic

2006-07-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

Corporate corruption starts to see the light? A few bad apples.

Torture scandals in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo? Nothing indicates it's systemic.

Republican legislators collapse under the weight of their own corruption? No reason to call it a "culture".

A few Muslims attack Western interests and white people? EVERY SINGLE MUSLIM IS A TERRORIST AND WE SHOULD KILL THEM ALL AND NUKE MECCA!!!

Patriotism or something

2006-07-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

Well I was sure I wouldn't care about the fireworks, but when you hear giant explosions a few blocks away the temptation to go watch is overwhelming. Down by the river where, the best view (and thus the crowd) was, I saw people all the people of this city setting aside their differences and just enjoying the show- people of German descent, Irish descent, Polish, French, Italian, British, even a couple non-whites (probably). Truly inspiring.

Not Helping

2006-07-03T16:22:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend MoveOn sponsored a bunch of protests at gas stations. Ironically, the e-mail said there was 'a lot of publicity', but this was the first I heard about it.
Anyway, see if you can spot what's wrong with this picture:

oh god

2006-05-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

the Memorial Day Parade route is right outside my bedroom window at SweetJesusGodWTF AM.

that is all.

Furthermore

2006-04-02T14:21:00.000-07:00

"V for Vendetta" appears to be the crux of a Discordian Convergence.

Two Kinds of Education

2006-03-30T10:12:00.000-08:00

(inspired by an article at DRT News and anarchist propaganda from CrimethInc)

What's the state of Education in the US today? Take your pick: Completely worthless, feel-good pop-culture 'information' (such as the entirety of lower education Social Studies), rote memorization and practice, or indoctrination of the superiority of the modern white, upper-middle-class, Christian life (go to college, get a job, raise a family, get a career, have some hobbies, retire, die).
Souls and inquiry might get in the way of being a good little Corporate-owned robot.

The best way to break it is to force people to confront things contrary to their comfortable worldview without allowing them to write it off as the result of 'depression' (the Anarchists' problem), 'wanting attention' (the Goths' problem), or being 'just plain crazy' (the Discordians' problem).

Moreover, I suspect that any new subculture would quickly be pidgeonholed with some equally-inaccurate one-word attribute that allows "normal" people to pretend they don't exist and ignore their message. This is because a person's ideas are very difficult to modify once they become 'set'; it's easier to have an idea that suffices, no matter how wrong, rather than challenge one's self and question anything, much less everything.

The song I'm listening to on Pirate Radio San Diego has the lyrics "Follow your heart, follow your dreams" repeated over and over again. I wonder how often 'normals' hear that message, from various sources, while thinking actually doing it is impossible? But fear and a lack of options given to them by these same corporate-owned media sources and educational institutions keeps them (us) locked in the same hopeless course.

But, to get back to the point, it is not impossible to affect people by exposing them to alternate ideas, lifestyles, ways of thinking. They don't want to change, even though it is in their best interest to be forced out of their comfortable slavery. So go do something!

Peak Oil II: The Long Kiss Goodnight

2006-03-15T09:48:00.000-08:00

Given current reserves, we have 20-30 years of oil left. I'll generously assume that future finds will increase that by another 5-10 years. Demand is also increasing, though, so it's even less than that.

Anyway, with Oil it won't be so much a matter of "running out" as being priced out. Prices are staying fairly level in the $60-$70 range now, but expect them to skyrocket when, for example, we go to war with Iran; in any case, I expect close to $100/barrel by the end of the year. By the end of the decade, it could be up to $150 (and that's not factoring in the collapse of the dollar and catastrophic inflation that will result from the imminent depression). Think in terms of $5, $6 per gallon. By the end of the next decade, gas for car fuel will be inconcievably expensive. I base these numbers on my own shady memory of facts heard long ago, but investigation will probably find corroborating evidence. Specifics don't matter as much as the fact that, within the next half-century at most, we will not be able to use Oil anymore.

The only alternative that has any hope as far as I can see is produce-derived (corn, sugar, elephant grass) Biodiesel. But, from what I understand, it would take something like 7 times the surface of the Earth to grow enough crops to feed our fuel demand, according to thermodynamics. The problem is that this source derives its energy from the sun, and oil is basically millions of years of sun-derived energy compressed. Also I like the prospects of Coal-derived Methanol, but it's still a non-renewable resource, and much less useful than oil for other things. So we need to use less energy.

So, here's what we need to do to save civilization:
First and foremost, guarantee a good education to everyone in the world- Not for humanitarian, social, or economic reasons, but because educated people produce fewer babies, demographically.

Second, we need to implement off-the-shelf technology into all cars, trucks, and SUVs to improve their fuel efficiency. Ford, for example, could instantly nearly double their fleet fuel efficiency doing this. This will buy us more time to convert the economy to survive without oil.

Third, we need to immediately stop all urban sprawl into valuable farmland and ensure that all cities have sufficient nearby food sources, because there will one day be no such thing as a refrigerated semi.

Fourth, we need to begin what could be described as an orgy of building biodiesel refineries.

And Fifth, we should convert to Wind and Geothermal electricity production.

Also I reccommend building underground- Sure, it's more expensive initially, but the energy savings from all that dirt insulation is more than worth it. Also, this frees up more surface for farming close to or inside cities, reducing energy use by reducing transportation distance.

This isn't like in Civilization where technology is going to just keep getting better and better- Before the end of the century, we will regress. Prepare for the long, slow slide backwards.

Socialism: 100% of your Daily Vitamins and Minerals

2006-02-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

Every student should be given an identical opportunity for education. District-based funding is insane; each school should have a budget of $6,000 (or so) per student, regardless of geography.

Try to make social programs capitalist and we'll be a nation of Winners and Losers: Prosperous communities can fund their school districts well, paying for better teachers, better equipment, and more advanced classes; but poor communities can barely afford to keep the building standing- What do you suppose that does to grades? Rich getting richer and poor getting poorer- And conservatives, libertarians, and laissez-faire economists either don't realize this, don't care, or want to return to feudalism.

They want to privatize social security, health care, and education- things deserved by every person by virtue of their being human. Every is susceptible to economic bad luck. Every is susceptible to disease and injury. And every child deserves equal access to education.

This is not Communism but Socialism, and if you try to make these things Capitalist, anyone who is not rich will fall between the cracks. The stock market might not crash on the eve of your retirement, you might never get cancer, and you might be able to afford to send your children to a private school for $10,000/year- But there is nothing special about you that makes you immune to misfortune or blessed by providence- Just chance. You could be anyone, and just because someone has a larger number in their bank account does not mean they are more deserving of basic human needs.

So Cheney Shot a Guy

2006-02-13T18:34:00.000-08:00

And it somehow took 18 hours for anyone to realize what was going on, in this day of "instant communication". So I read the DailyKos diary WH Press Briefing: Where to begin and WTF? by BarbinMD which analyzed Scott McClellan's comments and whatnot. Go read it and then come back.

This administration and people in it have Fucked Up many, many times. New Orleans, Iraq, Gannon/Guckert. Yet, as I read in some MSM rag in 2004, Bush is the "Teflon President"- nothing sticks to him. This is, as you should know if you've read my (few) other posts, a direct result of corporate media controllers dictating that these stories are handled in ways that will not be damaging to the administration; the "MSM filter" that protects Bush from serious criticism- not all criticism, since that would be too obvious, but from any questions that cannot be easily swatted aside.

All previous Fuckups have either been pre-planned (9/11, Iraq, Enron) or a result of conscious policy (in other words, Their Fault), but controlled so they can easily be spun into being Someone Else's Fault. Yet here we have a Fuckup that is blatant, impossible to hide, and yet actually an accident- But the practiced, reflexive Fascist Propaganda Machine still tried to deal with the situation- After all, this is the Teflon President, and no-one in this administration has ever made a mistake! They wanted to control and spin the situation, even though there was no need to.

It's not the fact that Cheney shot a guy that's a problem. That was probably an honest mistake. The problem is that the White House Spin Machine still tried to control the story. And that hints at how much practice they have.

Jesus Christ!

2006-02-09T15:16:00.000-08:00

Jesus was either just some petty anti-Roman rebel leader, or the Zealots took some eloquent loony and trumped him up to get support. Happens all the time in this sort of situation (a proud, independent ethnic group looking for Ex Deus Machina to save them from their conquerers. see also the American-indian Ghost Dance). I mean, walking on water? healing the blind? Sounds more like common propaganda, to the point of cliche. When that 33rd generation hit, the Zealots saw an opportunity.

So, during his life, Jesus probably did no miracles whatsoever, but bitched about Rome (and, more importantly, the local Jewish pro-Roman traitors/sycophants) and got executed for treason. Common Roman policy- they probably whacked dozens of equivalent "troublemakers" a year all across the empire. But he had a following and people remembered him as being a nice guy.

A couple decades later, Zealots slyly claim he did actually do miracles (and people fully believed in divination, direct divine intervention, and real miracles back then), therefore God would be on the side of the rebellion. Rising up and Ite Domus'ing the Romanuses was their only goal, whether they would actually win wasn't in the playbook. Well, God wasn't their co-pilot (proably because he doesn't exist), and I think we all know what happened around AD 70.

So, in summation: Jesus was just some vocal anti-Roman and anti-Corruption guy who was fraudulently deified by nationalist revolutionaries decades after his death.

He may have said some things that were good (as Skeptic's Annotated Bible says, "enough to fill a pamphlet"), but he wasn't divine. Sorry, Christians, you've been getting up early on Sundays for nothing.

Adam Smith's Folly

2006-02-07T07:36:00.000-08:00

He couldn't predict psychological advertising.

Corporations with inferior products but superior advertising will have more customers than businesses with superior products but inferior advertising.

Modern advertising is not defined by facts but by psychology. Look at a car commercial: Certainly they may talk about the gas mileage and safety ratings (while providing no context for the reliability of said safety ratings), but only interspersed between shots of the vehicle doing impossible things which you will never do.

Food commercials: Perhaps there is a variety of smiling people eating the food- Does this quantifiably and rationally argue the superiority of the food? Of course not. These commercials create the impression that you will also be smiling and happy if you eat this food.

Wal-Mart even gets to lie. They claim to "always" have the lowest prices, but this is simply not the case, as can be shown by comparing prices of products not in the sunday flyer. And of course their commercials show the warehouses as magical fun-lands full of smiling, happy people, which you can also be if you shop there.

Honest, locally-owned small businesses cannot compete with psychological advertising, which take massive ad agencies and millions of dollars. But it is by far the most effective form of advertising- That is, the ratio of customers gained to dollars spent on advertising improves explosively with psychological advertising, even though that money creates no real wealth, paying for itself by manipulation.

The solution is difficult. I would like to advocate worker ownership of factories and firms, and no company should be larger than just a few buildings. This would keep businesses too small to engage in effective, widespread psychological advertising. But for now, it is the responsibility of each individual to doubt and relentlessly question everything which is controlled by the corporations. Remember: They only want your money.

Discordian Thermodynamics

2006-02-01T14:45:00.000-08:00

There's a difference between "Chaos" and "Entrophy": Chaos is what we call it while energy is moving from order (all energy is in potential states) to entrophy (no potential energy). Order and Entrophy are boring, because nothing's happening- Chaos, however, is interesting. That's why 73% of people are Erisian Discordians, according to the 2120 Census results.

Order -> Chaos -> Entrophy. Furthermore, trying to go the other way just speeds it up

Capitalism?

2006-01-17T17:28:00.000-08:00

Capitalism is an economic system whereby goods and services are collected and distributed by individuals' selfish choices. In moderation, it is good; competition allows the most skilled individuals and systems to be rewarded, and discourages sloth. Capitalism is the best system.

But Corporate Feudalism, and the interim phase of Fascism, is not capitalism. Corporate Feudalism and Fascism occur when corporations, capitalist entities, control the government and the media. Media isn't a product. It's infrastructure. It's too important to leave to profit-seeking corporations. But government-controlled media is, um, unconstitutional. I say, individuals should understand that all media is biased, check a story's sources, and take it into account, but accept nothing unquestioningly. Unfortunately that's too much work for the average American plebian.

Sago

2006-01-17T15:37:00.000-08:00

It was early springtime when the strike was on,
They drove us miners out of doors,
Out from the houses that the Company owned,
We moved into tents up at old Ludlow.

I was worried bad about my children,
Soldiers guarding the railroad bridge,
Every once in a while a bullet would fly,
Kick up gravel under my feet.

We were so afraid you would kill our children,
We dug us a cave that was seven foot deep,
Carried our young ones and pregnant women
Down inside the cave to sleep.

That very night your soldiers waited,
Until all us miners were asleep,
You snuck around our little tent town,
Soaked our tents with your kerosene.

You struck a match and in the blaze that started,
You pulled the triggers of your gatling guns,
I made a run for the children but the fire wall stopped me.
Thirteen children died from your guns.

I carried my blanket to a wire fence corner,
Watched the fire till the blaze died down,
I helped some people drag their belongings,
While your bullets killed us all around.

I never will forget the look on the faces
Of the men and women that awful day,
When we stood around to preach their funerals,
And lay the corpses of the dead away.
We told the Colorado Governor to call the President,
Tell him to call off his National Guard,
But the National Guard belonged to the Governor,
So he didn't try so very hard.

Our women from Trinidad they hauled some potatoes,
Up to Walsenburg in a little cart,
They sold their potatoes and brought some guns back,
And they put a gun in every hand.

The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corners,
They did not know we had these guns,
And the Red-neck Miners mowed down these troopers,
You should have seen those poor boys run.

We took some cement and walled that cave up,
Where you killed these thirteen children inside,
I said, "God bless the Mine Workers' Union,"
And then I hung my head and cried.

Woody Guthrie
"Ludlow Massacre"(c. 1944)

Libertarianism

2005-11-28T17:10:00.000-08:00

All you libertarians- You're fools. I wish I had the patience to be more diplomatic about it.

But I can explain: Less government oversight of the massive corporations which are the cause of so many of our problems will only result in more problems. Imagine a weaker FCC (if that's even possible), so one company could control most broadcasting. Do you think that might possibly lead to abuse? Or less environmental regulation- Don't have asthma yet? Your kids will!

Corporations want one thing- Profit. They don't care about us unless they can make a buck off it. It is the very government controls which keep us safe, happy, wealthy, productive, and healthy. Compare to most of South America (Mexico is the best example, because there exists the most information on the issue for that country), where weak government results in increased corporate power and a subhuman existance for the overwhelming majority of working-class people.

Libertarianism, as written, will result, in the long run, in the US becoming, effectively, third-world.

Record of the War to Date: A Primer on Global Resistance to Globalization

2005-11-11T19:53:00.000-08:00

In 1945, the World Bank was formed to rebuild Europe. In 1948, the GATT was created, and in 1995 it became the World Trade Organization. On January first, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect. Later that day, the EZLN seized five cities in Chiapas, launching the most effective resistance to free trade yet- but they were not the first or the last. The alter-globalization struggle, though it exists as a low-key distraction to Americans (barely making it to the edge of our consciousness, thanks to a corporation-controlled media), has killed thousands, cost billions of dollars, and changed millions of lives. It is more a war of ideas than of violence, but that is not to say there hasn't been any.

Though there have been many anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism struggles, the modern phase became most pronounced in the 1980's, when Russia no longer had the strength to support international Communism. This freed up Capitalism (in the form of the IMF and World Bank) to be more overt and direct, take on more projects, and to make lots of money- which is, of course, the goal.

-The question of who is making money, and how they are making it, is central to understanding the conflict. The modus operandi involves the IMF and World Bank recommending to a poverty-stricken country a building project, characteristically a dam, which will ostensibly provide electricity and water: This will supposedly attract more foreign investment, which will provide employment and save the populace. (IMF)

In reality, it doesn't work that well. In order to fund these projects, the World Bank provides a very large, multi-billion dollar loan to the country. Conditions are attached for if the country should be unable to pay; usually, these involve privatization of public works and resources, lessening worker rights, pay, and health care ("Structural Adjustment Programs", SAPs), and liberalizing markets (reduction or elimination of tariffs, opening of markets to foreign goods).

These countries then need to hire foreign firms, such as Bechtels and Halliburtons subsidiaries, in order to do the actual construction- So this money is not reinvested back into the country's economy, which would be a double boon. Instead, it enriches first-world corporations (and their shareholders) at the cost of first-world taxpayers (you and me). The 'beneficiary' country is, however, stuck with the burden of paying the debt (plus interest) for their multi-billion dollar loan. The decision to take on a development loan is often motivated by large bribes to the country's leaders.

So, one way or another, this country now has a large, modern facility, ready to begin producing for the economy. Unfortunately, the amount of the loan was based on unrealistic, overly-optimistic benefit projections. Whether the project was even needed is glossed over. And when the promised results fail to be delivered, the country must still pay the debt and interest. Obviously, this is impossible. Now the conditions kick in. (Confessions…) This is the part where the people are most directly affected; Austerity programs are extremely unpopular. By now, the damage is mostly already done, but SAPs, also called Austerity Programs, motivate the victims.

-The other major form of corporate globalization is Free Trade. The idea behind Free Trade is that that commerce enriches everyone involved- If a company from a rich country builds a factory or mine in a poor country, then the people of that country get jobs, the people in the rich country get cheaper goods, and the corporation can take some off the top and make a higher profit.

Of course, that's only half the story. The "Free" part refers to tariff and worker rights reduction or elimination. Free Trade agreements, like NAFTA and CAFTA, have provisions that allow a corporation to sue a country that upholds worker and environmental rights for "lost profit". (“Nafta”) In addition to the obvious negatives, this also perpetuates such things as unfair land distribution in Latin America. But the countries in question are largely controlled by corrupt, pro-American ruling classes who have no concern for the well-being of those unlucky enough not to be born rich.

Once they see the physical results of IMF/World Bank-funded projects and Free Trade, the People often fight back, usually by attempting to overthrow the government responsible and elect or install a new, leftist, socialist popular government. Either that, or the government, with the support of first-world countries, cracks down on protesters.

-The textbook example of this process is Bolivia. In March 1985, a general strike was called in response to SAP-imposed price increases (the result of World Bank loans). Rioting occurred. Negotiation resulted in an increase in wages. More rioting occurred in 2000 when rural farmers demonstrating in La Paz are repressed by police and the military, killing 10. In 2001, the World Bank suggested to the Bolivian government that water supplies in Cochabamba, Bolivia's third-largest city, be privatized (by a Bechtel-led coalition of international corporations), resulting in the "Water War". (“Thirst”At least seven protesters were killed. Resulting public outcry compelled the government to shelve water privatization. Ongoing disagreements over globalization have led to a call for elections two years early, in December 2005. (“Bolivia”) Curiously, the US government has put in a bid for 3,700 sets of riot gear "pursuant to an agreement with the Department of State" (Contract), and has moved at least 500 troops to a base near Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay, near the Bolivian border; specifically, near a resource-rich area of Bolivia. (“Washington secures…”) Whether the intention of the US government is to intervene in the election is anyone's guess, but not out of character.

-Another notable front line in the war of Globalization exists in Venezuela. In 1992, following years of disastrous Austerity Programs, Hugo Chavez led a coup attempt, with wide popular support, against the ruling oligarchy. It failed and he was jailed, but in 1999 he won the country's presidential race and used this power to open free clinics, schools, create a new Constitution, redistribute land, and give control of the country's vast oil resources (previously owned like a private corporation for the benefit of the oligarchy) to the government and the people. Fearing their loss of power, the oligarchy staged a veto coup in 2002 that briefly ousted Chavez, but, upon seeing that the people still wanted Chavez, loyal soldiers held a counter-coup and restored him. The oligarchy killed 18 people in the first day, and an unknown number died in ensuing riots and police repression. (“The Revolution Will Not be Televised”)

-In addition to seeing Chavez take control of Venezuela (not to mention anti-water-privatization riots that killed seven in Bolivia, a two day general strike in Paraguay, and anti-Austerity Measures demonstrations in Ecuador) (List), 1999 could be considered the first year the war came back to the US. Although there had been fairly large demonstrations in places such as Oregon and London in June, Seattle will likely always hold a special place in the hearts of alter-globalists (Alter-Globalization is the populist response to corporate globalization; the goal is not to eliminate international trade, but rather to make sure that it is done fairly and profitably for those for whom it is supposed to be profitable- namely, workers). There, for four days in November and December, anti-WTO rioting paralyzed the city, shut down the WTO meeting (“Seattle and WTO each assess damages”), and, most importantly, forced Americans to actually pay attention. As Tom Tomorrow put it, "In a few short days, the entire debate was altered, perhaps irrevocably." (This Modern World). If the moderately-successful indigenous resistance was phase 1, Seattle launched phase 2.

-In 2001, at the next major anti-globalization event, the G8 meeting in Genoa, Italy, protesters got their first martyr. Carlo Giuliani was shot on July 20 by Carabinieri (Italian paramilitary police) during a violent skirmish. The next day, protesters marched on the meeting, but were driven back by police.
Two years later, the WTO met in Cancun, Mexico, and were met with the people who had directly lost the most from NAFTA. The EZLN responded to NAFTA most poignantly, but the rest of Mexico was also affected with higher poverty rates and social and environmental degradation, so thousands of workers and farmers came and battled police for several days. Lee Kyung-Hae, a South Korean, charged a police line and shouted, "WTO kills farmers!", and then slashed himself to death. (Source, Wikipedia)

Seattle’s and Miami’s (in 2003) protests were likely the high point of semi-violent anti-Free Trade/corporate globalization action in the United States for a while, because of 9/11. In the long run, nothing changed that day. It was another event in the long struggle; in this case, either anti-globalization militants (if the US government and incestuous American corporate-controlled media can be believed) destroyed the symbolic center of World Trade, or the fascist American government killed three thousand of its own citizens and spread the lie that it was terrorists in order to enjoy the subsequent three years of near-dictatorial control, free of measurable dissent. It took until 2003 for any significant opposition to the administration to regain a voice, and, even then, it failed to prevent the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2005. There were a few local anti-Globalization actions in various third-world countries, but little noteworthy. After the great gains of the 1990’s, the first half of the first decade of the new millennium saw victory after victory for the corporations, in the form of supposedly pro-market (anti-regulation) changes by the now-totally-Republican-controlled US government.

-The lack of direct opposition and disruption nearly changed starting on July 6th in 2005 in Scotland. The G8 held its annual meeting in Edinburgh this year, and so fools such as Bob Geldof and Bono threw a rock concert and pleaded with the corporatist world leaders to forgive some debt for Africa. Meanwhile, thousands of alter-globalists, anarchists, pacifists, and other humanists blocked up Edinburgh and prepared to march on the Gleneagles estate where the G8 conference would be held. The Gleneagles is an old Scottish mansion where the bourgeoisie often visit, stay, golf, hobnob, and decide the fate of the world. It is surrounded by miles of mostly open field, making it very difficult to defend, especially against the one million people expected. It was ringed by concentric fences and thousands of police and military personnel.

On the first day of the protest, the day before the conference even started, tens of thousands of marchers arrived at the outer walls of the fortress. The outermost fence was rapidly breached, and thousands of the more impetuous people moved in. Because of the length of the fence, they were not immediately opposed by police, and many made it across the field to the next fence. Around three hundred people made it into the middle circle before they were surrounded by police and driven out. And that was just the first day, with only a few thousand protestors! It does not take much imagination to conceive what would have happened in the following days, had things gone according to schedule. (Various …)

Needless to say, they did not go according to schedule. On July 7th, simultaneous transit system bombings in London stopped the G8 conference. The protestors were blockaded in their encampment by police. There is still debate as to who actually carried out the attacks- terrorists or the MI5. (“Attack on London…”)

-That is the situation today- Disorganized righteous hope on one side, and wealthy, well-connected control on the other. Globalization and alter-globalization duel for public opinion with victories and defeats (characterized by both local, small-scale violence and political action) on both sides. Today, the corporatists are in control, but alter-globalists are gaining momentum. Which will win depends on how adept the alter-globalists are at getting the truth out versus the ability of the corporatists to confuse and trick the masses.

-------------------------------------------------------
Sources
IMF (International Monetary Fund) http://www.imf.org/external/about.htm

Confessions of an Economic Hitman. John Perkins. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 2004.

“Nafta” Roedy Green. Canadian Mind Products. http://mindprod.com/money/nafta.html. October 17, 2005.

“Thirst” produced by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman. PBS. First shown July 13, 2004.

“Bolivia” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org

DoD Contract http://www1.eps.gov/spg/State/RPSO/FRC/S%2DWHAR% 2D05%2DQ%2D0012/Combine%20Synopsis%5FSolicitation.html
Story at NarcoSphere http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/7/16/14743/4150

“Washington Secures Long-Sought Hemispheric Outpost” Information Clearing House. July 7 2005. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9541.htm

“The Revolution Will Not be Televised” Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain. 2003.

“Seattle and WTO each assess damages” CNN. December 4, 1999. http://archives.cnn.com/1999/US/12/04/wto.03/

"This Modern World" Tom Tomorrow. Dec 20, 1999. http://archive.salon.com/comics/tomo/1999/12/20/tomo/index.html

“Carlo Giuliani” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org

“Lee Kyung Hae” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org

Various sources, heard live on radio and seen on Indymedia subsidiaries for Edinburgh G8

“Attack On London: Blair Plays The Terror Card” Paul Joseph Watson. Prison Planet. July 7, 2005. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2005/070705terrorcard.htm

There's a joke in here somewhere...

2005-10-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

Today, India is majority Hindu. Hindus believe in reincarnation. But hundreds of years ago, India was majority Buddhist. Buddhists also belive in reincarnation, unless you successfully get enlightenment and escape the cycle. This means that most of the population of India must be Hindus who think they're reincarnations of people who were Buddhists seeking enlightment. But they clearly are alive and therefore did not get enlightenment, and are now a different religion.

How's that work? What do they think of their mistaken past lives? "Yeah, I don't know what I/he was thinking."?

Monarchy, for a Better, Stronger America

2005-10-11T20:52:00.000-07:00

Government is not accountable to the people, because the large bureaucracy and incomprehensible legislature allow politicians to be corrupt without us plebians even realizing it.

What we need is a system that leaves no question as to where the accountability lies.

We need a Monarchy.

Now, obviously, it would be an elected position, with sacrosanct elections at regular intervals. If the elections are suspended, the people should revolt. And there is the necessity, if the people are to be in control, of an honest an independent press which focuses on policy and the people's plight rather than acting as a tabloid on the monarch's personal life. However, decentralized internet media may be able to do this.

The main upswing of a monarchy is that there is exactly one place where the buck stops. If someone screws up, the monarch has the responsibility of fixing the problem. If the monarch fails, the people show him the door.

We need a simple solution for complex government. I say, they don't make governments like they used to...

the end of the world

2005-09-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about taking up religion
just long enough
to apologize
for not doing more
to keep the maniac out of power.

Phyrric Victory

2005-08-15T18:18:00.000-07:00

had an interesting encounter at the Weekly Public Anti-War Display today. A crazy man (literally) repeated Bush's talking points verbatum with no thought defending them. In order to avoid being wrong, he said he selfishly wants an endless war. Then he left, with nothing gained or lost by either side.

What's the difference between him and our so-called leaders? They have power. Our country, our taxes, our name, our causes, have been taken by people who are either insane or evil.

They won't make any corrective changes, and they certainly won't oust themselves.

Why we're still there

2005-07-30T09:16:00.000-07:00

Gary Brecher, the War Nerd columnist for the Moscow webzine The Exile, just wrote a frickin' brilliant article about a Fresno, CA, professor who's still in favor of occupying Iraq.

The gist is this: The professor, Victor Hanson, refuses to admit he was wrong supporting the invasion, so he's misrepresenting, and outright lying, about the reality of the situation. While Brecher's article focuses on Hanson, it could easily be applied to anyone who's pro-occupation. Brecher's clincher sentence, which he's said in one form or another in just about every article he's written on Iraq, is

"...what Hanson and morons like him won't admit is that short of genocide, there is no military solution to urban guerrilla warfare."

which, historically, is exactly true. Even when they cite some example of a guerilla army being defeated, it involves the wanton slaughter of a large number of civilians. Since we're (rightly) unwilling to kill millions of innocent Iraqis, Iraq will not have peace while our army occupies it. (although there have been small-scale attempts to wipe out populations, most notably in Fallujah, but none have been large enough to noticably reduce the size of the insurgency)

Even though Brecher and I (and probably just about anyone who reads this) likely disagree on just about every social and economic issue, I respect his logical, unbiased, analytical opinion on military subjects. And being able to agree on some things despite disagreeing on others is the way it's supposed to be.

The Rise of the Empire

2005-07-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

Julius Caesar was a Roman general whose victories in Gaul (France) gave him widespread popular support which he used to acquire dictatorial powers, although there was opposition to his rule (as shown by the Last Republican Civil War). The at-least-somewhat democratic Roman Republic was replaced with the Imperial dictatorship. Destruction, civil anarchy, and oppression was the result. So, several Senators assassinated Caesar. But, rather than at last recognize the dead (and thus powerless) man's evil, Marc Antony remained loyal and turned public opinion against the Senators. In the civil war that followed, any hope of the Senate regaining its rightful power was utterly lost.

A tyrant must have popular support, or else he's just a crazy person raving on a street corner. Thus he must be a good liar and charlatan, because the people would never support him if they understood his true intention.

Because politics is far too confusing for the average citizen to pay attention, they only understand one thing about politics: There are two sides, and I must choose one. Further obfusication works in the tyrant's favor by ensuring that this choice is the only choice. When both sides seem equally appealing and equally distasteful (though for different reasons), they might as well flip a coin. So the tyrant immediately has half the population in his pocket. As long as the tyrant is able to offer some reason- no matter how ridiculous- for his actions, he will have half of the population. Being on the side of rightness and justice did not help Brutus and Cassius.

A Tangential Rant/Manifesto... 'Rantifesto'

2005-06-30T18:48:00.000-07:00

The problem with Africa is not that we're not giving them enough money- it's that we've given them too much money. And this money is used on all the wrong things, and for all the wrong reasons. It's not exactly cause and effect, but it is a big, steaming mess.

First, some history.

1800's- Europe carves up Africa. Colonial regimes are installed after the African resistance (consisting of countless thousands of spearmen... vs. guns...) is crushed. The Europeans come for the gold, and stay for the plantation labor ("Africa- Come for the gold, stay for the plantation labor!")

So about a hundred years or so goes by. The European mother countries have withdrawn their formal militaries, but the colonial population is large enough (although still a small % of the total population) to keep the natives in line, thanks to their overwhelming wealth (their profit came from the plantations and mines), which allowed them to buy European weapons, such as tanks and air forces. In contrast, the natives had numbers and... uh, spirit?

Eventually, the natives decided they had enough of being second-class-citizens on their own land, and put their feet to the behinds of the Whites. It took a while, and literally millions died across the continent, but eventually Europe had to admit that her profitable colonies were lost. Of course, they made sure to destroy the economic viability of the place (by not training the new owners) before they left.

One of the most successful European tactics that really bought them a lot of times was the time-tested Divide Your Enemies. Before Europeans arrived, Africa was rather cosmopolitan, racially. There wasn't nearly as much tribal or religious rivalry as you might thing. The Europeans used propaganda to turn tribes against other tribes, so they'd waste time fighting each other instead of fighting the Europeans who were their true enemy. So that's the souce of most of Africa's tribal rivalries.

After the Whites generally lost power, thanks to genuine democracy (and do you think the Blacks elected Black representatives or Whites? I'll make it easy: Two guesses, and if you say "whites" it doesn't count), not a whole lot changed for the average African, because it turns out that Black Africans like money just as much as Whites. Educated Africans betrayed their countrymen by selling out to foreign, European corporations in exchange for fat salaries and the illusion of being treated with respect.

What I mean is this: European (by which I also mean American) corporations, bankers, and politicans looked at all the poverty and destruction in Africa and thought, "There's a lot of idle laborers who can be exploited for profit". So they proposed to the generally-well-meaning African politicians massive aid loans. These would either be in the form of lump sums (to spend on European goods, of course, since only Europe has the industrial capacity) or utilities projects (such as dams). On paper, they seemed like brilliant plans- The Africans get lifted up into the First World, where they produce enough to pay off the loans, with interest.

Unfortunately, the projections were always skewed optimistic. So, for many countries, these loans became traps they could never escape, because they could never make enough to pay off the loans and the interest. They had no choice but to default. So these loan organizations- such as the IMF and World Bank- exercised their contractual rights to go into these countries and "fix" their economies so they'd be more profitable. In other cases, the economic control came before the loans!

And this is the point of the most recent betrayal. You see, "reorganizing" their economies meant reorganizing them to be export economies. The idea was that these countries would prioritize things that European economies want and sell them for, hopefully, enough to pay off the loans- Thus, for example, the most fertile area of starving India is producing tulips! South Africa's constitution guarantees clean water for all of its citizens, yet the IMF/World Bank arbitrarily suggested a water rate hike which will put it beyond the reach of millions! Ecuador spends half of its taxes on paying interest on its national debt- and that money, for the most part, goes into the pockets of our corporations.

Do you want to know why Aristide got thrown out of Haiti? He dared resist, so our government and corporations financed and armed his opponents (Didn't you wonder why there were so many American flags in Haiti?).
Haiti is a textbook example of what happens to countries after they follow IMF/WTO/FTAA/World Bank guidelines. Example: Grain. Haiti had tariffs to protect its large farmer population. But the FTAA mandated that they be taken down, 'To encourage trade'. Cheap American grain flowed in, and the farmers were ruined. The economists said that Haiti should switch from the Creole pig to more efficient Iowa pigs. But in fact, the real reason they wanted this was to destroy a swine flu, and to sell millions of dollars worth of pigs! They did not remotely have the best interests of the Haitians in mind. To make matters worse, the Iowa pigs quickly died in the comparatively-brutal Haitian climate. So now, the Haitians, for the most part, have nothing.

Now these same globalizing corporate motherfarkers are in charge of this country today. They told us we had to invade Iraq, for example, for many reasons, one of which was to control the economic resources and virtually enslave the working class. Research Bremer's 100 Orders, the incredibly illegal changes to Iraq's laws (that's banned under the Geneva conventions) which effectively gave multinational corporations and banks control of Iraq's economy. For example, non-Iraqi banks can now own up to 50% of Iraqi banks' stock. Even worse, Iraqi farmers are not allowed to save seed from year to year, meaning they must buy it. This was a totally arbitrary and utterly evil rule to impose. And because there are no seed salesmen in Iraq (why would there be? farmers saved their own seed), there is only one source: Corporations like Monsanto, who stand to make a killing.

And these evil bastards control both parties- Clinton signed FTAA, remember, because they told us it would "create jobs". Bullshiat! Our jobs have gone overseas because the labor is cheaper, because they're not being paid enough (so corporations can make more profit). You think Bangladesh has a minimum wage, or OSHA? China? Our workers are more expensive because they're treated like human beings.

Pick a point on the globe,
and the picture's the same:
There's a bank, there's a church, a myth and a hearse,
A mall and a loan, a child dead at birth.

The only solution is to stop all of our trade with any country that does not have a livable minimum wage, adequate labor regulation, and free public education.

For more information:
Read "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"
Watch "The Fourth World War"
Google "Creole Pigs", Ecuador, Bolivia, FTAA (not the official website, obviously)

OOHHHHH Snap!

2005-06-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

"Persistent vegetative state, which is what the court has ruled -- I question it. I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office here in the Capitol. And that footage, to me, depicts something very different than persistent vegetative state."

"I raised the question, 'Is she in a persistent vegetative state or not?' I never made the diagnosis, never said that she was not."

-Bill Frist, Future Ex-Senator

Declaration of Impeachment

2005-06-06T19:16:00.000-07:00

I got the idea for this a few days ago, and Surrogate provided an excellent beginning list of greivances. If you (anyone) has anything that should be added, put it in the comments and I'll do so.

New (6-14): Gary Corseri gave me permission to add some from his list.

In CONGRESS, June 6, 2005
A DECLARATION
By the REPRESENTATIVES of the
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
In GENERAL CONGRESS
Assembled.

When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Governments, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance so these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the Present King is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let the Facts be submitted to a candid World.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good

He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislator

He betrayed the trust of Congress and the American People by knowingly lying to us concerning the capabilities of Iraq to attack this Country with Weapons of Mass Destruction

He Consciously, and Fully Aware of the Consequences, attacked the Sovereign Nation of Iraq for reasons he Knew to be False, and has, as the War drags on, Killed at least 50,000 Civilians and Seventeen-Hundred American soldiers.

He has continued to provide no Exit Plan for eventual Withdrawl of our soldiers from Iraq

He has charged the people of this Nation several times the initial estimate of the cost of the War

He, despite the Billions of Dollars spent for the War, has not adequately Paid nor Outfitted our Soldiers

He allowed, by means of insufficient planning of the Occupation of Iraq after the Invasion, looting of many important Artifacts from well-documented Museums

He opposed an official investigation of the Terrorist Attack of Sept. 11, then stalled for months on testifying before a hand-picked Committee; His testimony was short and not public

He Set and Enforced an Economic Policy that has resulted in the largest Debt ever owed by any entity, Public or Private, in the History of the World, which shall place Undue Burden upon Ourselves and Our Progeny

He was elected twice under highly dubious and scarcely democratic circumstances

He was Away with-out Leave from the Military as a Uniformed Soldier of this country in Time of War

He started his first business with Funds from the Bin Laden family, a member of which perpetrated the Dire Event which precipitated the Current Crisis

He Commissioned an Abortion for His Own Partner and now seeks to Deny this Right to others

He consumed Illegal Substances and now has neither Mercy nor Compassion for those in this same plight

He continues to foster closer Relations with Saudi Arabia than any other President in history; it is a Country ruled by a Tyrannical Royal Family so Ruthless that they show less mercy to their subjects than Saddam did to his people...

He stated, during the Presidential Debates, that Bi-lateral Negotiations would not be sought with North Korea; and now carries out Bi-lateral Negotiations with North Korea

He supports restricted freedom for Americans even within our borders while ignoring any suggestions to stem the tide of Illegal Immigration that might show how vulnerable our Borders really are

He allows millions upon millions of Cargo Containers to enter our Ports without being even minimally checked, unnecessarily leaving unguarded a possible Avenue of Attack by Terrorist Organizations

He values the lives of the 'Unborn' far more highly than those already alive, and uses shamanistic Religious Beliefs to justify his actions, directly contradicting the First Amendment

He will veto a Bill to allow Research that may harvest Stem Cells from Embryos even though the existing Embryos will wasted be if not used

He has paid persons to write propaganda by dishonestly posing as Journalists

He has allowed Corporations to poison our Air, waste our Soil, and pollute our Waterways, for they value profit greater than environmental dignity

He has exaggerated the solvency danger to the Social Security Program

He has obfuscated the Intelligence Agencies of this country by adding more unnecessary Bureaucracy

He has simultaneously claimed that He favors Democracy; yet allies himself with- and supports- many of the World's most oppressive Dictators, and seeks the removal of several leaders who were elected democratically and serve constitutionally

He has told The People that he shall improve the Education Systems of this Nation, while simultaneously cutting Funding to this most sacred Institution

He has knowingly allowed Torture to be perpetrated upon the Innocent People of Iraq by our Soldiers

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Crimes which they should commit on the Inhabitants of this States:

For forcing our Trade upon all Parts of the World:

For removing taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting men beyond the Seas to be held indefinitely for pretended Offences:

He has plundered seas, ravaged Coasts, burnt Towns, and destroyed the Lives of innocent People.

He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.

In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.

Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our Republican Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That the President of these United Colonies is, and of Right ought to be, GIVEN THE PINK SLIP, SACKED, and SHOWN THE DOOR; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the Texan Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the Neocon Cronyism, is and ought to be totally dissolved. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Signed by ORDER and
in BEHALF OF THE PROGRESSIVES
The Undersigned

NCLB

2005-06-01T16:25:00.000-07:00

School A is in a wealthy district. Taxpayers happily pay $12,000/student per year for schooling. The students get advanced, comfortable buildings, high-tech equipment, technically advanced classes, and the school board can attract better teachers by offering higher pay.
Result: Student group A does amazingly well on standardized tests.

School B is in a poor district. They can only afford $3,000/student per year. They get run-down buildings, maybe one computer, huge class sizes, and unmotivated teachers.
Result: Student group B does amazingly badly on standardized tests.

The Republican Response: Clearly, School B isn't trying hard enough. Take away their money. Give more money to School A as a reward for doing so well.

The questions no one's asking:

2005-05-23T18:08:00.000-07:00

Why was there equipment for administering electric shocks?
Why are there chains and handcuffs on the ceilings of the cells?
Where did they learn these techniques?

"It's okay to kill innocent Muslims", he says

2005-05-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

I wonder if Zarqawi remembers how well that worked in Egypt? (for the record, it didn't)

The difference, however, is that whereas those killers-of-the-innocent were opposing the local government, the Iraqi version is opposing a foreign occupation which has only slightly more respect for the lives of innocents. So, the question is, who will the Iraqi people tire of first: The foreign insurgents (but not the local insurgents) or the US occupation?

Personally, I think Iraq will decay into a mafia-style many-sided orgy of slaughter, since their Clan system is still very strong, and there are three distinct ethnic groups.

Millions will die by the end of the decade. Thanks, Republicans.

We Interrupt This Revolution

2005-05-16T15:37:00.000-07:00

Today while putting some groceries away on the top shelf of the refrigerator, my hand got close to the lightbulb- it was hot. I mentioned that this seems counterproductive in a device designed to produce cold, but it was pointed out that the light isn't on all the time. I replied:

"There is no scientific way to prove if the light in the refrigerator goes off when the door shuts. The only way to tell would be to climb in and shut the door, but, as we all know from after-school specials, this causes guaranteed death. So, I climb in, shut the door, and it gets dark- but is this because the light went off, or am I observing the infinite abyss of death?"

Hopefully, recent advances in quantum chaos theory will help us solve the age-old of whether or not the light in the refrigerator ever goes off.

Traffic is getting worse.

2005-05-09T15:35:00.000-07:00

duh... because there are more people!
There's no way around it: The more people, the worse the traffic. I mean, does it get any more obvious than that?
People have shown that they are unwilling to take the bus. The only way to seriously reduce traffic is to reduce the number of people. If those farking unelected municipal 'leaders' would stop trying to inflate their frickin' egos with a larger number on the "Welcome to (city), Population: " signs while simultaneously providing an unwarranted boon to businessmen (usually themselves or their cronies) who own construction companies by changing the tax code to encourage sprawl, there would be no problem! Curse you, bourgeoisie!

...followed by an eternity of waiting.

2005-04-29T22:48:00.000-07:00

I don't have anything major going on... for as long as I can see.

well, today I told off a plurocratic bourgeoise oppressor. That felt good. This fat, white, old Southerner had the audacity to try to give a presentation on Biblical Creationism (well, they're calling it 'Intelligent Design', but I think we all know what their agenda really is) at my college. I attended, listened to his lies, and pointed out (in the Q&A session) that what he was saying was completely ridiculous. In fact, the entire Q&A session consisted of him getting beat down by myself and, mainly, the professors. It was sweet.

At one point, he tried to imply that there is some sort of grand conspiracy among atheist scientists to keep 'Intelligent Design' down. He said he sent a letter to Nature (the #1 science magazine) on the subject of ID, and they rejected it. That's perfectly normal. However, he then claimed that they sent him a handwritten letter explaining why they had rejected it. He then said that he sent another letter refuting their reasons, they sent another letter with new reasons, he responded, they didn't get back to him.

He lied to our faces. Major publications do not have the time to craft an individual response to everyone who tries to write a letter- The rejection notice is given when the letter does not appear in any issue.

So after he ended the one-sided Q&A smackdown he was recieving (and I hadn't seen anyone in a suit act so childish since I last watched C-SPAN), I went down and pointed out his lie to his face. Then I called him a plutocrat bourgeiouse who intentionally misleads the people in the interest of perpetuating the system of fear, repression, and slavery that profits only a few. In my best de la Rocha revolutionary voice I closed with, "There is nothing after you die, and I will laugh on your grave," and left.

I felt pretty good the rest of the day.

A second of fighting...

2005-04-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

Aahh, today the thousands marched! We waved the banners, held the signs high, and shouted with one voice. On and on we marched, and gave them our terms.

The past few weeks have been packed. We won a local victory a few weeks ago; also, the new city council will be one of the most progressive ever. Then we planned and prepared, and staged events, and acted!

That is what you have to do! Get out on the streets and show them that enough is enough!

Peak Oil and the End of the World

2005-03-31T20:17:00.000-08:00

Basically, we're doomed. Global oil production is peaking, and the coming increase in energy cost will force a ~80% shrink in civilization as we know it.

More here.

The main misunderstanding that "the market will save us" crowd has is that they expect someone to invent something which will replace oil. At present, there is not enough impetus to seriously research alternatives. Gas might be $100/barrel before there is, and $150 per by the time it's viable. But by then, how will we manufacture and distribute the solution? It takes energy to move energy, and things are not as simple as supply-and-demand when the literal fuel of the economy is what needs to be replaced!

Think of it this way: The cost of researching most new technologies is linear (all other things being equal), because it doesn't take, for example, TV's in order to research better TV's. Given a pile of TV parts and no TV's, TV's could be made. But oil doesn't work that way, because oil is an energy source and it takes energy to make everything else. It takes energy to make TV's, and it takes energy to research replacements for energy sources.

Oil is not just a commodity; it's energy. Since it takes energy to do anything, this makes theoretical ROEI (Return On Energy Investment) very important. Non-standard oil sources, such as the Canadian Oil Sands, have a surprisingly low ROEI. What this basically means is that, if conventional oil disappears tomorrow (and that day will come at some point- maybe tomorrow, maybe 100 years from now), there is currently no replacement.

In summation, there will not be impetus to find a replacement until a replacement becomes theoretically more profitable than oil, but by that point it will be too expensive to research a replacement! Hail Eris!

A Whistleblower Without a Face is Worthless

2005-03-22T19:07:00.000-08:00

from this story by MSNBC which explained how the EPA blatantly ignored a study by Harvard which directly contradicted its politically motivated denial that tighter Mercury regulations would be beneficial.

But the EPA staff member involved with developing the rule said the reference deleted from rule-making documents would have told the public about the Harvard results. "The idea was to say Harvard School of Public Health had quantified these [cardiac] benefits and the amount of these benefits was -- " a blank that was to be filled in with a figure in the billions once the final report became available, said the staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

On the slim chance this gets back to you, Nameless EPA Staff Member: Say who you are next time. Show some confidence. If the corruption continues, resign and take your message to the media. Start a movement. Open eyes. Get things done.

As an honest employee of the EPA, logically you must honestly care about the environment. Therefore, shine the light on the cockroaches, even if it's your end. We're all soldiers, but you're on the front lines.

"the free exercise ... of the press"

2005-02-27T12:46:00.000-08:00

Jeff Gannon, Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Mike McManus
How many others don't we know about?

Aequalitas

2005-02-23T14:59:00.000-08:00

from these comments.

"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." Ann Coulter, at Conservative Political Action Conference, 2/26/02

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building." - in a New York Observer interview, August 26, 2002.
"Of course I regret [the previous quote]. I should have added 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and the reporters.'" - in a rightwingnews.com interview, June 26, 2003.

Her reward? Books, TV appearances, national syndication. Yet Ward Churchill gives his equally inciting opinion that 9/11 was a sort of karmic justice for the very guilty financiers and industrialists who helped create the oppressive conditions that breed terrorism, and the corporate media calls for his head on a pike.

For Example

2005-02-20T09:41:00.000-08:00

Here is a great example of this administration's vile manipulation and abuse of language: (from CNN.com)

In his weekly radio address Saturday, Bush said he doesn't believe the West is split between an "idealistic United States and a cynical Europe ... America and Europe are the pillars of the free world."

"Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic understand that the hopes for peace in the world depend on the continued unity of free nations," he said. "We do not accept a false caricature that divides the Western world between an idealistic United States and a cynical Europe."

By even so much as mentioning a 'cynical' Europe and 'idealistic' US, he advances the idea that those things may be true. By associating "Europe" with "cynical" and "US" with "idealistic", those false concepts become more true in the public mind.

Notice: No one said that those things may be true, although the he gave the impression that someone did; he responded to a claim that no one made.

The (shh! giggle like a stupid child) Monologues

2005-02-11T20:36:00.000-08:00

This makes for the second of my posts that are basically transcripts of other conversations.

This weekend, the annual showing of "The Vagina Monologues" feminist variety stage-show... thing... is held, at college. I dismissed it when I first heard of it, because I really don't care.

Yesterday, the local college Democrats went eating (we tried to go bowling, but they wouldn't listen to me trying to explain that Thursday is not a good night, because of all the old people), ironically to Hooters. Of the 9 of us, 3 were male. In the course of the conversation, The Vagina Monologues came up, and we were interrogated as to whether we would be going. The other two said, "Yes, of course", because they're really sensitive or some crap like that. I said "Eh, well, um, I don't know...". I tried to hide behind the excuse of "well, it's $5...", but that wasn't working. Thankfully, at about that moment, the Hooters 'associates' humiliated some poor slob (apparently it was his birthday).

So, how do I explain that I just don't care, without sounding like a jackass?

I could try to explain to them that the only reason The Vagina Monologues exists is because it's funny to say the word "vagina," but I'm not too fond of the idea of being dismembered by a horde of feminists. Ah... my greatest weapon is my sarcasm. That I cannot use it is so... emasculating.

I'm not uncomfortable with the idea of women on stage discussing things which are not addressed in public or good company. Oh, no, that's not it; She tried telling me I won't go because I'm uncomfortable with it, and I replied that a parallel "The Penis Monologues" would be shunned, mocked, insulted, and ranted against, thus showing my grasp of the issue and an absence of discomfort.

I'm not uncomfortable, is my point. I just don't care. But I want to say that in such a way that I don't sound like an inconsiderate chovanist bastard. Unfortunately, you see, circumstances demand that I not tick off those with whom I was discussing this. It's so tempting to explain that 1) there is a fine line between "empowerment" and "reverse discrimination" (remember, I am a white male), and 2) the humor is of the detestable "crude" type. That is why I don't like it. But because I'm probably the only person who actually realizes these things, explaining them would sound offensive... so here's hoping I'll still be alive this time next week. I probably need to be slapped a few times anyway.

La historia del chocolate

2005-02-04T17:17:00.000-08:00

So today, I'm in the lunch area at college waiting for my food to get cooked, and there's a table with the following items: A bottle of Captain Morgan (nearly empty), a bunch of paper cup/bowls, a confectionary-type cooking pan/tray with an inch of chocolate being heated by a bunsen burner, a similar pan with white chocolate, and a sign that says something to the effect of "Rum Cake $1.50"

While I'm trying to figure out what's going on (because I can't see any cake anywhere), a Mexican-looking chef (with the hat and everything) comes completely out of nowhere and informs me that I can take some chocolate, it's free, go ahead, help yourself, white or dark

I say, 'Cool', pour some chocolate into a cup/bowl, and turn around to go see if my food's ready. But first, I turn back around to ask the chef what the deal is. He's gone.

So I get my food and my free chocolate, and the cashier tells me about as much, free chocolate.

Moral of the Story: Chocolate is good.

Never Mind

2005-01-25T20:43:00.000-08:00

just go here instead.

Curbing Hubris

2005-01-21T09:26:00.000-08:00

I came across this, I think through Bless's blog, and it gave me an idea:

Let's make a massive internet petition to apologize to the people of Iraq and the Middle East in general for our fascist leaders' invasions and the death and destruction they have caused.

This petition-making website looks like it can host a petition, so we'll need the following:

Petition Statement:
(someone who can write well please do this. Something along the lines of, "The undersigned, citizens of countries involved in the invasions of Iraq and/or Afghanistan, apologize to the people of those countries for the death and destruction caused by these inhuman actions. We will do all in our power to repair your countries, reconcile the irreperable damage, and prevent another unjustified invasion.")

Signer information:
-Name (required)
-E-mail (req.)
-Country (req.)
-Comments (optional)

Petition Background Information:
-Petition Title (the website automatically adds the word 'petition' to the end)
('Apology to the People of Iraq and Afghanistan' Petition)
-Petition Target (such as 'The People of Iraq and Afghanistan')
-Petition Community and Community URL (obviously the PBA and PBA HQ at http://pbahq.smartcampaigns.com/)
-Petition Author: I'd rather not have my name on this, because of paranoia. Nick?
-Eligible Signatories would be "Coalition member-country citizens"
-Category: "Politics and Government - International"
-Geography of Petition Applicability: International
-State of Petition Applicability: International

Petition Author Contact Information
-I'm pretty sure we all already know where Nick lives.
-Share Contact Info with Press: If this goes somewhere, the PBA is sure to be mentioned, and whoever's name is on it might get the Touchdown of Blogging, a major media interview.

Any other points/notes? I'll do a running edit of this post (and the copy of this post at the now-mostly-defunct PBA forums) to reflect the most current agreed-upon changes.

No Mail- err, MLK Day

2005-01-17T18:04:00.000-08:00

Over 30 (2000) years ago, one of this country's (planet's) greatest speakers was a catalyst for peace and tolerance here and worldwide. How quick we are to praise a wise man though we ignore what he actually said.

Fascism Checklist

2005-01-12T14:39:00.000-08:00

came across this here by farker Brutal.
"Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt recently wrote an article about fascism ("Fascism Anyone?," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20).

Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The excerpt is in accordance with the magazine's policy.

The 14 characteristics are:

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays."

Check.

"Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc."

Check.

"Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc."

Check. Who are "The Terrorists"? This administration hasn't been very specific, but there are zillions of 'em, and we apparently have to kill them all before they kill us.

"Supremacy of the Military

Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized."

Check. Never before has the military ever been so glorified.

"Rampant Sexism

The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy."

Check. While women are not told their job is to produce healthy children, their rights are definitely restricted by this administration.

"Controlled Mass Media

Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common."

This one is not currently the case, although it should be noted that our media consists of a bunch of pansy little girls who cannot form opinions, say anything bad about anyone, or point out that anyone is an idiot.

"Obsession with National Security

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses."

CHECK. "The Terrorists will strike possibly within the next few weeks... we expect them to try something around the election... or Christmas... We'll just raise the threat level to be safe."

"Religion and Government are Intertwined

Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions."

Check. Faith-Based initiatives anyone?

"Corporate Power is Protected

The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite."

CHECK +1. This government has shown raving support for business, giving corporations more rights than even individual people get, allowing them to ransack the environment, and changing the tax code blantantly to favor corporations and the wealthy.

"Labor Power is Suppressed

Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed."

1/2 check, because it hasn't really come up. Note, however, that Bush's Big Social Security Fix is to cut benefits.

"Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts."

Check, as per the slur "white tower College liberals".

"Obsession with Crime and Punishment

Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations."

Check. Patriot act, anyone?

"Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders."

Check. What does this administration do when it needs a new Secretary of State? It picks Condoleeza Rice! ??? What did her former job as National Security Advisor have to do with international diplomacy, beside also serving on the National Security Council?
Who do they pick to run the EPA? Mike Leavitt, former Utah governor who oversaw some of the worst deregulation and lowering of protections that left the state open to be wantonly ravaged by corporate interest. For the Environmental PROTECTION Agency!

"Fraudulent Elections

Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections."

Doubleplus Check: Why did exit polls show that Kerry won?

"Any of this sound familiar to you guys?"

Edit: Daily Kos has much better commentary.

also,

2005-01-08T01:52:00.000-08:00

happy birthday me, so there.

Christian Founding Fathers: So What?

2005-01-07T23:19:00.000-08:00

It is foolish to base our current laws entirely on what some people thought 230 years ago without considering the current reality.
If the Constitution and other early laws were re-written today, they would not include references to Christianity. This is a country of many religions, and we have a secular government. This is the reality today. No religion can be treated any better or worse than any other, because the laws are based on indisputible facts and truths. Religions are based on faith, which is beyond facts and evidence. If the government 'respected' any religion above any other, it would have to abandon its primary duty as defender of our freedoms.

So, no, you can't have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse, because that's lifting Judaism and Christianity above every other religion. If you put 'under God' in the pledge, then time can't be set aside specifically for it to be said in our secular government schools. Students can go ahead and say it on their own, as long as they don't interfere in class and as long as it's not broadcast to unwilling listeners (so, special after-school religious group, okay, entire student body, not okay). The word, and any references to, "God" need to come off our money in future printings, because that again raises a specific religion over every other religion.

This still leaves much leeway for evangelical, over-active Christian bible-thumpers who want to cram Jesus down everyone's throat. Churches will never be threated, for example. And they're not taxed, to boot! That's a pretty good deal for something based on a philosophy which is inherently unverifiable. You can have all the religious TV programs you want, and knock yourselves out building religious book/gift stores, celebrating Christmas, and praying before meals- Even if you're in a government building. Just don't try to preach to an unwilling listener, and don't spend MY tax money advertising YOUR religion.

The Enemy

2004-12-26T09:35:00.000-08:00

Hey, I totally agree that some people are evil and need to be destroyed. However, these are only the very few top-leadership types. The rest, the grunts, they're all normal, good people like you or me. The people at the bottom are motivated by what they see and what affects them. Unfortunately, those at the top have lied to them, motivating them to kill the enemy, even though "The Enemy" is really just like them (except for the fringe tiny-% at the top).

So the common people do horrible things to the other side's civilians, and then the leaders say, "See! Look at what they've done to us! This is just what we were telling you! Now go kill The Enemy (because they're evil!)!"

We did something to tick them off. They retaliated. We killed thousands of their civilians, thus proving to them that we're evil. Do you think that ANYONE doubts the fringe-radicals who have been saying this all along? They're wrong; we're good. We're wrong; the average ground-level grunt is just confused and afraid and defending himself.

Now tell me: In the above situation, which side is us and which side is them?
That's the nature of war. Now can we please cut it out?

The Practicality of Politics

2004-12-23T21:00:00.000-08:00

went dancing on the moon with my three favorite people today. Two I failed at pursuing and now we're "just friends". One has been like my brother since time began.

They talked like people- about nothing, or about the here-and-now, what's right in front of them, and enjoyed company. I was mute- All I had was critisism and sarcasm, and I didn't want to spoil anything. What else do I have, but maybe a few tired jokes?

We critisise to keep the system honest; pointing out problems is how they are fixed. good for tomorrow, but aren't I young? So summers go by out the window while I practice saving the world.

pwnt!

2004-12-09T13:57:00.000-08:00

liar!

Rumsfeld Insults Troops to their Faces

2004-12-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

Story here

Soldiers ask why they have insufficient equipment and why there is "stop-loss" (pocket drafting). Rumsfeld, in essence, claims that things are fine and what's going on is necessary.

That is not what a military leader is supposed to do. He gave them a raw deal. A leader should side completely with the soldiers instead of implying that they're wrong, that everything's fine. He should be fighting tooth and nail to fix every complaint they have. At the very least, he should never, never contradict his soldiers to their faces! So much for "Bush/Cheney supports the troops".

Don't get fooled again

2004-11-18T09:02:00.000-08:00

Sorry Colin, but remember the last time you said some country has WMDs?

I am a Hippy.

2004-11-08T08:49:00.000-08:00

Which America Hating Minority Are You?

Iraq: Yes, You Have Seen This Before

2004-11-07T18:51:00.000-08:00

Congratulations military occupants of Iraq and PM Allawi: You are idiots.

Declaring military law in Iraq was the WORST thing we could have done to hasten and end to the violence. Violence, over-reaction, city-obliterating offensives- how exactly is this supposed to 'win the hearts and minds' of the Iraqis?

For those of you tuning in: This operation, and the next few weeks, will kill unprecedented thousands of Iraqis, not to mention the dozens- possibly hundreds- of Americans. It will cause millions of dollars of damage. It will ruin peoples' lives. And the relatives of the innocents we kill for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time will pick up their guns and be shooting at Joe from Ohio the next day. That's who the insurgents are, and indiscriminate mortar fire and carpet-bomb retaliation recruits them faster than it kills them.

This taxi driver, I guarantee you, is an insurgent or dead today.

'The Consent of the Governed'

2004-11-06T18:26:00.000-08:00

If, as history shows is likely, this government oversteps its bounds in some way that demands a response, we must have the framework and networks of people-on-the-ground in place to respond. Violence is not an option, because then our credibility would be completely gone. So, it will be the next best thing: A General Strike. Disable the country's industry, transportation, and bureaucracy with the same sort of protesting we, the left, is already good at. Choke Moloch with our bare hands.

I hope it does not get to that point, because of the dire economic impact, but we may end up with no other option. But if it does, on that day that we say 'that's too far', then we will have to be prepared.

Take note of which local businesses and neighbors displayed 'Kerry '04' signs, and cars with Democrat bumper stickers. People don't have those things because they look good- they're the ones who will join you. Form a local cell, and keep a list of 'just in case' phone numbers.

The key when talking to potential support is DON'T SCARE THEM. We are NOT plotting the violent overthrow of this government. Think Poland 1980's. In fact, the goal would not even necessarily include 'overthrow of government' at all; just a reversal of the incident.

Don't tell anyone else about your list, don't put in on the internet, don't leave it out in the open. Just keep it loaded.

Contingency Plan

2004-11-03T10:52:00.000-08:00

Okay, so we lost, mostly due to fraud. Why do exit polls show a Kerry win? But with an all-Republican government, that won't get investigated. So here's what we can do to survive the next four years:

-Move away from major cities. Bush's imperialist policies will galvinize support for terrorist organizations, and so they'll have the resources to carry out larger attacks.

-Stand in front of bulldozers. Corporations will have a free pass to lay waste to the environment for profit, so do all you can to oppose them. Sue. Picket. I won't support sabotage, but I will say, don't get caught doing anything illegal.
Just hold out for four more years.

-Pay only 2/3 of your taxes, in protest. If this government will continue to engage in not only stupid but also inconsistent policies (why is it okay to kill alive people but not okay to kill people who aren't alive yet?), then it does not represent us. Go to jail as a hero.

-Hunker down for '08. One of two things will happen in the next four years: Either the inevitable attacks will show the American people that Bush's belligerence is counter-productive (odds: Snowball's chance), or the attacks will be seen by the populace as totally uncalled for and we should invade another country to 'teach them a lesson' (odds: yes. this is what will happen).
So what about 2008? Bush might get himself elected "President for the Duration of the Conflict", in which case we definitely rise up. If the legitimate process continues, he doesn't have an heir. Dick Cheney can't get elected. No one in the cabinet is electable either. So it'll be a no-name Republican vs one of the many potential rising-star Democrats: Obama, Clinton, Edwards, heck, even Feingold, the list goes on and on. The Republicans have no charisma.
So if you're a "glass is half full" sort of person, there you go: At least we'll have someone at least somewhat sane in 2008. Then, according to the Mayan calendar, the disputed election in 2012 results in the end of the world. Whee!

Conspiracy Theories

2004-10-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

Conspiracies. Don't. Exist.

Osama bin Ladin was not colluding with the Carlyle Group to cause 9/11. 'The liberal media' is a myth.

It's human nature to try to find connections in unrelated, but elusively similar, events. But without any evidence, Occam's Razor always wins:
In the event of two possibilities, the more simple one is what should be assumed to be or have occured.

The rule of thumb I use is this: Everyone is loyal first and foremost to themselves, and everything they do is in the pursuit of profit. A safe, profitable course, is preferable to a risky, high-profit course. Above all, very few people are 'evil' in the traditional (sadistic) sense (since greed is much more self-serving to almost everyone), and those who are rarely attract followings. Certainly not large followings. How many did Charles Manson have? That's about as big as they get.

Osama bin Ladin conspiring with Carlyle to kill thousands for oil and defense spending? Why bother, when conventional means (extortion, conglomeration, threatening to stop dealing with a company unless they give a better price) are technically legal and already give plenty of profit?
Liberal media? Sure, maybe a bit because more media people are liberal than are conservative, but not to a 'conspiratorial' level.

So the next time you find yourself saying, "There just has to be a connection!!", without any other evidence, ask yourself if it is likely, or if it's just stupid.

Bush/Kerry Debate 4

2004-10-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

Just to change pace a little, go read this transcript of the untelevised fourth debate, on worker safety standards and all that. Funny, depressing- can't solve a problem until you identify it.

Vietnam II: Son of Ho Chi Minh

2004-10-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's episode, I explained, very quickly, the general way that we lose counter-insurgencies. Today I'll go into what we can do to get out of this mess.

First, there's the not-gonna-happen Best Case Scenario. That's where Iraq has elections in January and everyone accepts them. I think we can look at Afghanistan as an example of why that's wishful thinking. Elections have no practical meaning.
If elections somehow go perfectly (and I will guarantee that they won't), we'll still have to have a military occupation for years to keep the country stable. We're building 14 permanent bases. Think we're planning on going anywhere? Guess if we'll hear about near-constant attacks on these bases?

It's moot, though, because even if they hold elections, the populace won't accept them. So, alright, we kill the rebels until they change their ways. Whoops, that doesn't work, because we kill civilians and otherwise ruin their lives.

So, we do what the Brits did in the Boer war to win that guerilla war: Concentration camps. Read Gary Brecher's article #172 for more on how that works. In summation, it works, but it's dirty, and these days it'll make more enemies than we kill. So that's not going to work.

Okay, if things are so bad, let's just cut and run? No good. Everyone will hate us if we do that. Best-case scenario then is years of power struggle, deaths of thousands, poverty, etc.

In case you can't telll, it was a mistake to go into Iraq in the first place.

The only thing I see that has even the remotest chance of success is to flood the country with so many soldiers, that you can't throw a rock without hitting four of five. Most of these would, unfortunately, have to be somewhat-trained Iraqis, but we're looking for quantity, not quality. Before you call me racist; I don't have much faith in the common Iraqi recruit because their training is not remotely as good as ours. A few weeks of boot camp and then "Here's a gun and a uniform" is not how to make a good soldier.
The rest of the troops- in the realm of 600-700 thousand- would simply have to come from Germany, France, and especially Russia. No one else has enough manpower and money except China, and I doubt if even Henry Clay could have negotiated that.

Station them there for a few years, but passively- don't go looking for the enemy. Don't bomb "known terrorist safehouses". Play it cool, accept the losses. Just be police. If you see someone clearly, irrefutably breaking the law, then conduct a formal investigation, bring them to trial, allow them legal counsel, and punish them legally.
We have to win the PR campaign, and bullets don't do that. Our only alternative is the deaths of thousands.

Of course, I'm a realist. What's going to end up happening is that we'll be around for a few years, gradually pulling out, gaining more and more resentment, supporting a string of dubiously legal puppet dictators, sucking out the oil, killing innocent Iraqis, bombing the whole country until you can't tell where the sand stops and the cities start, and generally making a mess of things. Eventually, the rebels will collaborate with existing terrorist and criminal drug and weapons organizations for funding, introducing future Iraqi youth to violent gangs and crippling drug addictions, and turning the country into Los Angeles, except that everyone looks Mexican. All this happens while our leaders tell us things are getting better. Finally, the Iraqi government recognizes that it has no power and secretly negotiates with the criminals, ending the violence but keeping the extortion, drugs, and poverty. Freedom on the march.

Ah, I hear Colombia is nice this time of year...

Vietnam II: Are we really this Stupid?

2004-10-13T08:16:00.000-07:00

One of the most common complaints that the right-wingers have about liberals and leftists is that we're being 'anti-American' by 'taking the terrorist's side'.

The terrorists are the enemy. No one's going to disagree with that.

What we disagree with, however, is obviously how to go about getting rid of them. The rightists say that we should invade every country that knowingly houses terrorists, and kill everyone who gets in our way. It's the 'common-sense' strategy.

Unfortunately, while the initial invasions obviously go well, it isn't very difficult to, essentially, drive in a straight line. Did anyone seriously think that the Republican Guard would put up a meaningful resistance in Iraq? We had the whole 1980's to see how they fare in a straight-up war: They suck. We have the most powerful army in the world. That wasn't the tough part.

The tough part, the part we're in now, the part that our leaders didn't plan for, is the occupation and transfer of power. We, the American public, were told, with a straight face, that the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms and this wouldn't decay into another Vietnam.

Let's tally it up:
-Militarism, military training, and gun ownership are planks of Iraqi culture.
-When you blow up half of a country's infrastructure, you tend to put a lot of people out of jobs.

I think you can see where I'm going with this. There were 500,000 men in the Iraq army when we disbanded it. They were getting paid. Now, they're getting nothing. Who are they going to blame?

To think that the end result would not be a country-wide insurgency is negligent.

Unfortunately, that's where we are today. The Mahdi and various other rebel factions are doing exactly what any insurgents would do: Guerrila fighting, use of the populace as spies, using crowds as shields. If our soldiers don't shoot back, that same insurgent is just going to be shooting again tomorrow. If they do shoot back, and they wipe out half of Ahmed's extended family with stray fire, he'll be videotaping his friends cutting off someone's head the next day. That's how insurgents get recruits. The same things happened in our own revolution 200 years ago.

It's dirty, but all's fair in war. There aren't referees- "That's an illegal torture penalty! al-Qaeda is penalized 5 yards! First down!" War is not disneyland. War is hell. There's no way around it.

Next: Options

Stolen Honor: Behind the Scenes

2004-10-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

Scoobie Davis has a link to an article by John Gorenfeld about Carlton Sherwood, the 'journalist' who is doing the Stolen Honor propaganda piece through Sinclair Broadcasting Group. They wouldn't broadcast Ted Koppel reading the names of the soldiers killed in Iraq because it was 'politically motivated', yet they are showing Stolen Honor which, according to its own website, is "A Documentary exposing John Kerry's record of betrayal".

I can't make this stuff up, folks. I'm not nearly imaginitive enough to concieve of that kind of politically motivated hypocrisy.

Death and Taxes

2004-10-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

Well well, this is my first post as a member of the "Progressive Blog Alliance". I hope I can write with the same quality of these other great free-thinkers.

To business. I revised my take on an income cap, because there's really no hope of convincing the average American that it's not communist. A better way of executing wealth distribution is to have 'exponential' progressive taxation.

Under the current system, if the hypothetical entrepeneur Bob Goursie makes a huge heaping pile of cash, he gets taxed at about 35% regardless of how much he makes. If he makes $1 million, he keeps 65%, if he makes $10 million, he keeps 65%. Almost everyone agrees that this is fair.

I do not. I think that our current system neglects the real purpose of money- It is worthless in and of itself; rather, it is a medium of exchange. Money is just numbers and paper, but saying a loaf of bread is $1 gives money value. Money = standard of living. However, it is not a direct correlation. The goal being to maximise happiness, $1 means much more to a starving person than it means to a rich person. $1 is the difference between life and death for some, but nigh-worthless to others. The key is standard of living: The value of a dollar varies for each person based on how many they already have.

So here's the problem: Our current system neglects the impact of taxes on standard of living.

Even though a poor person, let's call her Polly, might only be taxed at 15%, 15% of $20,000 is a much, much bigger blow to her standard of living than that 35% of Mr. Goursie's $1 million. $3,000 is several month's rent for Polly. I don't have to explain how much money $3,000 is.
$350,000, though- what does that mean to Bob? He might not be able to buy another mansion. He'll still have plenty to eat, his kids will go to the best schools, he'll fly first-class everywhere. His standard of living is hardly affected.

So, even though Polly is paying a smaller percentage, her Standard of Living is being reduced by a larger percentage! Is that fair? There is no data what the populace thinks about this, but I'm confident that, should the question be posed in a way the average person could understand, they would agree with me.

I propose that tax rates graduate like this: If you have no income, your tax rate is 0%, and if your income is (a very large number), you pay 100%. The shape of a graph of Income vs Tax Rate would be along the lines of x^2, sloped so that the amount of government income is whatever is needed that year. No one would actually be taxed at 100%, because it would take an astronomical income, in the trillions of dollars, to be taxed that highly. Similarly, someone making a median income would not necessarily be taxed at 50%; it depends on how the slope comes out that year.

Because it takes a very large amount of tax to affect Bob's standard of living the same way as Polly's, the net effect is that taxes would generally be raised on the wealthy and sharply reduced on the poor and middle class. The increased taxes on Bob could pay for the reduction of taxes on hundreds of worse-off people. Raising his taxes from $350,000 to even $600,000 doesn't reduce his standard of living as much as it raises the standards of living of over 100 people in Polly's situation. An 80% tax rate on someone who made $40 million leaves them with $8 million, still an astronomical sum, and significantly increases the standards of living of over 16,000 Prollies!

So I took my idea over to a right-wing website, Right Wing News, where they don't get much more rabid. They came up with the following counter-points:

1) I am an idiot.
2) I am a Communist.
3) This is unfair.
4) I should move to Europe if I'm such an America-hating commie liberal pinko hippie fag.
5) This would be disasterous for the economy.

Frankly, #'s 1 and 4 seemed a little unfair. I didn't inquire as to their justification for these stances, as history has shown that the conservatives consider them to be self-evident. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

The rest I'll address out of order.

3) This is unfair.
They argued that each person deserves to keep as much as they can and that taxes should be minimal.
However, that ignores standard of living. They are of the opinion that if someone makes a million dollars, it doesn't matter that they could take a slight hit to help out dozens of people; the wants of the individual are greater than the needs of the many. Spock disagrees, but I don't see any way to reconcile this.

5) This would be disasterous for the economy.
The increased tax burden on the wealthy would cause them to reduce their investment in the economy, leading to recession and depression.
They believe that economics is not a 'zero-sum' game, even though they never substantiated what that means. Anyway, even though I explained repeatedly that the money's not being destroyed, just moved to a more fair location. Since the lower classes now have more, they have more to invest, so overall investment would not decrease significantly. In fact, since the lower classes spend a much greater part of their income on consumer goods, the economy would probably be better off than it is now.

2) I am a Communist.
Since I proposed a plan which is clearly socialist, that makes me a communist.
I stated many times that, this is socialist, not Communist. Communism would involve the equal distribution of wealth- I've never proposed that. That's stupid. It squashes incentive. No one worked in Russia. The place was a dump. My old history teacher, who visited in 1986, had a story about trying to use a Soviet bathroom. Not pleasant.
But I digress. Socialism and Communism are different things, and there's nothing inherently wrong with socialism. Socialism is everyone giving a little toward greater collective good.
Government is the classic socialist institution. If each farmer had to defend himself against the Vikings, then they'd had their way with Europe- well, to an even greater extent. But if the farmers give part of their crops toward the purpose of fielding a professional army, then some of them have a chance of surviving. At their most basic level, governments are just mutual defense pacts. Some socialism is good.

Guess if that worked? Of course not. The American populace was brainwashed for 70 years that Communism, and socialism by association, is evil. No amount of logic and calm rationality can penetrate that. They even think that history textbooks are controlled by a communist conspiracy.

So 'Exponential Taxation' is probably not going to happen, if only for that reason. I won't say this isn't a great country but, man, we sure screw ourselves some times.

The Progressive Alliance

2004-10-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

Go to Net Politik and read "Notes on Organization and governance on the Internet" before reading this, or it won't make any sense.

Nationstates is like that. Each country, which is analagous to a website, is in a 'region', and the regions have their own message systems and such, and they're close little units. But each region elects a UN Representative. Everyone is in the 'world', and there are search boxes and indexes to find any region or country.

I don't know off the top of my head how linkage would best be specifically structured. Perhaps each 'blog squad' would have a name (like the "La Follette Cluster") and an 'overblog'. This information could be displayed in a panel that is identical for each blog in the alliance (except for content). Each blog's panel would state the name of the alliance, the name of the cluster, the name of the overblog, a list of all the other blogs in the cluster, and links to the other clusters' overblogs and the masterblog. The masterblog would have a complete index of all the information: Clusters and their overblogs, and all the blogs in the alliance.

Administration. Each cluster is responsible for its own members, and when one cluster gets too large, it splits off a new cluster and informs the masterblog and the other overblogs.

Overblogs would be elected by a simple vote in the cluster. The overblog would be responsible for approving new blogs in the cluster, and cutting any miscreants. If an overblog oversteps their authority, another vote by the cluster could replace them with someone else.

Similarly, the Masterblog, if they somehow are found lacking, could be ousted by a vote, in this case by all the blogs. A direct vote (as opposed to an electoral or parliamentary system where the Overblogs elect the Masterblog) is best on the internet where the candidate doesn't have to go anywhere to campaign.

Any grievances could be appealed to an assembly of the overblogs and masterblog if it must come to that.

Any changes that anyone wants to make to any aspect of anything under the alliance's control could be proposed by an Overblog to the general assembly of Overblogs and the Masterblog. Usually, decisions could be made by a simple majority, with the Masterblog granted a special vote like a veto. There's no real purpose for the veto except to add some drama.

I'd be willing to link up a storm, as soon as I sit down and take a look at blogspot's html structure and whatnot. I know just enough about the language to get myself confused.

An Intervention for Our Sanity

2004-08-31T15:56:00.000-07:00

Duh, of course there's sporadic guerilla fighting in Iraq. Did we expect the Iraqis to just say, "Oh, come into our country like you own the place. Thanks for taking care of Saddam for us- here, have our daughters"??

Actually, I honestly believe that was the thought process of our 'president' and his 'advisors'. That is idiotic. Remember the last time we tried this sort of thing, in the Phillipines? We were there for decades, thousands dead, an unspeakable human tragedy. This is the single most incompotent leadership our country has ever had, and that list includes Grant, Hoover, and Carter (nice guy, bad president). And now roughly half of us want to give him another four years to screw things up?? Let's break things down:

Serious Threat to Americans 1: Bin Ladin.
Promise: Bush would catch him, bring him to justice.
Today: Bin who?

Serious Threat to Americans 2: The Economy and its In-Shambles-ness.
Promise: We'd all be living in paradise within the week.
Today: Gee, we're employed, but lookie that poverty level. It hasn't been that high in almost 75 years!

Outright Lie by Bush 1: Afghanistan is fine
Reality: The only place in the country that the 'official' Afghan government has control is in Kabul. The rest of the country is producing Opium

Outright Lie by Bush 2: Saddam Hussein is a threat.
Reality: Not only was he not a threat, but we went about invading in the most boneheaded way imaginable. The last military adventure to be so badly botched was Tuetobergenwald.

"The only thing that could've been more botched would be if America had landed on the moon using a rocket that only flew one way - with a crew of 130,000 astronauts who then killed 10,000 innocent moon men. We botched this motherfucker like botching was going out of syle. This thing was so fuckin' botched, I'm surprised the name of the war wasn't misspelled" (Rees, Get Your War On 7/04)

Bush is the most inept military commander in world history to be entrusted with this much power, and Rumsfeld is almost as bad. The second guy should have resigned. The first guy should be impeached for this level of botchitude. I mean, whatever you think of Kerry as a person, AT LEAST HE WON'T SEND US INTO TWO UNWINNABLE, OPEN-ENDED CONFLICTS DURING A RECESSION.

This is not raving! THIS IS COMMON SENSE!!!

Business as Usual: Manifesto

2004-07-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

I only have one thing to say, and I'm tired of saying it over and over again, so here it is all at once:

The best thing that we (citizens of the United States) can do in the interest of improving society
is
to impose an upper wage-limit (wage cap).

This is the concept: an example CEO is given $10 million/year (in wages, stock options, corporate gifts, etc). A new wage limit is imposed at $4 million/year. Now the CEO is only making that much. The other $6 million/year is freed up for use by the company again. The Company can do one of three things with it: 1) Charge less for their product, 2) Pay other employees more (or hire more employees), or 3) Invest the money in expanding the business.

In the first two cases, the money is given back directly to the people, improving their standard of living. In the third case, the business becomes more profitable and more productive, also improving everyone's standard of living.

Some skeptics have brought up problems with this idea.
First, they say, arbitrarily limiting a person's income is unfair to them.
To that, I reply: $4 million/year is still an astronomical amount of money. That $6 million means much, much more to people that have nothing than to people who are already rich. What creates more happiness: Giving $10 to someone with $1 million, or giving $10 to a starving person?

Second, they say that standards of living would not increase meaningfully since the extravagantly wealthy make up such a small percent of the population.
Even if the median person gets only 3% more per year, that is in fact a significant sum, since it is effectively free. For someone making $30,000/year, that's $900/year. Bush's one-time tax cuts gave most people much less than that.

Third, the impact to the economy would be massive.
Yes, but in a good way. The very wealthy would not be able to buy *as many* yachts and mansions and jewelry, so those "industries" would be hit. They would have to make cuts, and fire people.
But at the same time, demand for less expensive consumer goods, like personal electronics, cars, and family houses would increase substantially. Inflation would come as the "rich toys" industries are firing. Economic chaos.
The solution is simple, though: The newly-fired go to work making cars, houses, and personal electronics. Not at once, of course, but within a few years (and certainly by the next generation). With more goods being produced, prices will drop back to better levels.

Fourth, it will be extremely hard to track.
This is valid. The very wealthy are skilled at avoiding taxes, so the government will have to vigilantly plug all loopholes as they are identified.