Freedom and Reason

Biology and Inequality

2012-01-30T07:35:00.001-08:00

If we say that biology explains inequality, then we must also say that blacks are, as a sub-population, biologically inferior to whites, since blacks as a group substantially trail whites in every significant social category - income and wealth, educational attainment, health and wellness, housing, etc. Any argument that roots class differences in biological differences must therefore also be a racist (and sexist) argument because it uses inequality in occupation, income, and wealth to infer the existence of group biological differences which, in turn, justify inequality. The argument is circular, as well.

Honor Killing and Forcing Women to Have Babies

2012-01-29T14:27:00.000-08:00

In this way of looking at things, honor is more important than life. "What we need to understand is that the male power and the male desire for the control of the woman's body and the woman's sexuality - the honor resides in that sort of understanding and the ownership of women's body and sexuality," University of Toronto professor Shahrzad Mojab told CNN. "So when that is being presented in a way that is not acceptable to the social norm, then the only way the honor can be restored is by purifying that. And the purification is through blood."

This same desire to control women's bodies largely underpins the desire to criminalize abortion. The so-called "pro life" movement has little to do with saving the lives of fetuses. This crowd rarely expresses a serious concern for killing per se. Disproportionately conservative, they celebrate the deaths of Muslims, homosexuals, and inner city black youth. They had it coming, the scum. They sit up at night praying somebody tries to break into their homes so they can shoot them with the gun they worship as an extension of their power. No, their desire to criminalize abortion is to punish girls and women who unintentionally become pregnant or no longer want to be pregnant, punish them for deciding what to do with the sexuality and reproductive capacity. It is the male desire to control the woman's body and sexuality. They see in this control a sort of male honor, which is in this fashion a celebration of male power over women.

The Absurdity of Criminalizing Peer-to-peer Sharing

2012-01-27T09:32:00.000-08:00

Is it illegal to invite friends over to watch a pay-per-view boxing match? If sharing music is illegal, then it must be, because it is exactly the same thing. And if the illegality to have a pay-per-view party seems absurd to you, then it must also seem absurd to you that sharing music is criminal.

A Popular Fascist Display

2012-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

Many of those who turn their backs "in protest" during this event symbolize not brave souls engaged in a legitimate act of disagreement with ideas, but rather cowards who cannot face the truth of their blind faith in an imperial state that does not reflect their values. The anger they feel derives from confrontation with the truth of their patriotism, namely that it permits the slaughter of innocents and enrichment of warmongers. Others, those who are shouting reactionary and jingoistic slogans, have taken authoritarianism to heart and thus have, as a result, lost their humanity. Like fascists, their opinion is irrelevant because it is immoral. Hedges bravely soldiers on because, to talk about anything else at this moment, just a few months into an illegal war of aggression, would be glib.

Watch all four parts. They cut his mic. They threaten him physically. They interfere with others to hear his words of truth, words that give those who believe in peace and love an argument to make to their neighbors. With their belligerence, they intimidate into silence not just those with different opinions, but those with the correct opinions. Chants of "USA! USA!" while civilians are being blown to smithereens is a palpable sign of sociopathy. Watching this spectacle makes my heart ache.

Make the Rich Pay all the Income Tax

2012-01-25T12:36:00.000-08:00

It's true that, as a group, the wealthy pay a larger share of federal income tax. But the reason for this is because they have a greater share of the income.

How about the wealthy pay all the income tax, since their income is for the most part based on the appropriation of value produced by workers. Whatever amount of income the wealthy receive that is the actual product of their own productive labor can be claimed as wages and written off. A fair accounting would find very little of it is actually earned.

In fact, working people are doubled taxed. The average industrial worker produces per hour roughly six times in value than he receives in wages. And then he has to pay income taxes on top of that? Since the factory owner gets a much larger share of the productive output of the worker than does the worker, let the factory owner pay the tax!

Ron Paul's Racism, His Racist Backers, And His Lies About It.

2012-01-23T14:59:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul's Pro-Slavery Argument

2012-01-23T14:52:00.000-08:00

Listen very carefully to what Paul says here. It is a pro-slavery argument. He will tell you that he personally doesn't believe in slavery. But at the same time he says that it is up to the people to decide whether or not they will own slaves. That's like saying that, while he personally wouldn't rape anybody, it is up to the community to decide whether rape is okay. He says that it is consent of ...the people in a Republic that matters, and the consent of the slave states was to keep the non-people in bondage. The federal government threw that consent out of the window and freed slaves, Paul whines, which represents tyranny. In other words, in Ron Paul's mind, tyranny is freedom and freedom is tyranny. It doesn't get clearer than this, folks. Everything I have been saying about Ron Paul for all these years is true. Stop trying to rationalize his candidacy. He is a white nationalist.

And could somebody answer the damn phone?

Amend 2012

2012-01-22T20:07:00.000-08:00

Poverty

2012-01-22T12:02:00.001-08:00

Poverty as a social problem so infrequently results from the behavior of poor people that it's a waste of time talking about work ethic and individual initiative. Worse, pointing to personal failing as an explanation for poverty is really about blaming the victim and confusing an audience over the real cause of poverty: the absence of good paying and meaningful work.

Surveillance Society

2012-01-20T14:04:00.000-08:00

Clay Shirky: Why SOPA is a bad idea

2012-01-19T16:31:00.000-08:00

Chris Hedges Sues Obama Admin Over Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Approved in NDAA

2012-01-17T12:26:00.000-08:00

Speak truth to power

2012-01-17T12:23:00.000-08:00

The Fundamental Problem with Religion

2012-01-17T11:45:00.000-08:00

Any person who adheres to a moral system that is consonant with the greater secular system of universal human rights cannot say that she derives her moral system from a set of religious beliefs since those religious beliefs are always in direct contradiction to the secular moral system that she uses to judge the adequacy of the religious beliefs she chooses to believe.

Let us take Christianity as an example. Slavery is at several points endorsed in the New Testament. Slaves are told to respect their masters, to obey them, to love them, and masters are only directed to beat their slaves less severely when the slave has made an honest error.

Any moral system worthy of our adherence would explicitly condemn such tyrannical ideas. The adequacy of the New testament is therefore judged from the standpoint of a moral system that necessarily lies outside the New Testament. Any part of the New Testament which accords with the greater secular moral system can then only be superfluous to it and therefore can contribute nothing to it.

In other words, all religious belief and practice is revealed as unnecessary since the entire code for moral behavior exists prior to and supersedes it.

It is, moreover, dangerous for the same reason. For in reality religion is an impediment to universal moral relations because its various doctrines contain within them negations of universal moral thought and action.

It follows that religion is inherently immoral, if only because (although for many other reasons) it divides morality from itself, separating populations and making immoral things moral and moral things immoral.

Universal morality can only be finally attained in a truly secular society. This is not a sufficient condition, of course. But it absolutely a necessary one. The struggle to free the world of religious thought and practice is a moral struggle.

The Story of Broke

2012-01-16T17:32:00.001-08:00

"When the Right to Resist Becomes the 'Duty to Submit'" with Commentary

2012-01-12T17:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=37975

The above link is to a well-written and important article.

“The right to resist unlawful arrest memorializes one of the principal elements in the heritage of the English revolution: the belief that the will to resist arbitrary authority in a reasonable way is valuable and ought not to be suppressed by the criminal law,” observed Paul Chevigny in a 1969 Yale Law Journal essay. And so this must be true of the American revolution (if we may be allowed to call it that). “The weight of authoritative precedent supports a right to repel an unlawful arrest with force…. This was the rule at common law,” according to the Alaska State Supreme Court in Terry Glenn Miller v State of Alaska. “It was based on the proposition that everyone should be privileged to use reasonable force to prevent an unlawful invasion of his physical integrity and personal liberty.” (Read the article to see how the court wormed its way back into a justification of unlawful police coercion.)

There is a fundamental distinction to be drawn between power and authority. POWER is ability to make people act in ways contrary to their will. AUTHORITY is LEGITIMATE power. In a monarchy, legitimacy comes from the divine right of kings. In a totalitarian state, legitimacy comes from the dictator and his cult of personality. In a free society, legitimacy flows from the consent of the governed who, through common law and democratic deliberation, express a willingness to submit to that authority when it accords with the law and meets their fundamental needs, which includes the preservation of their rights. No upright citizen in a free society voluntarily gives up those rights or agrees to act in a nature contrary to the law. They are either forced to do so or they are confused about their rights and needs, both conditions that indicate that society is become more or less unfree.

It follows that, in a free society, every citizen has a right to resist an unlawful or wrongful order (just as we have the right to violate unjust rules and laws). Self defense, defense of the innocent, and resistance to and overthrow of tyranny and oppression are fundamental and nonnegotiable rights in a free society. You do not have any legal or moral obligation to follow the commands of a police officer if you have done nothing wrong or if he is commanding you to do something wrong. Any state that would criminalize resistance – even violent resistance, to which every human being has a right – to an unlawful order is by definition a tyrannical state. The only reason to obey a police officer’s unlawful order is for personal safety and then only if following that order does not jeopardize the personal safety of others. However, it must be emphasized that obeying an unlawful order for personal safety is a personal choice, never an obligation. It may be prudent, but it is not obligatory. Moreover, every citizen has the right to aid any other citizen who is being unlawfully detained and, especially, assaulted by the police. Indeed, citizens, if able, have an obligation to physically intervene in the case of an assault. If you are in a group of persons of sufficient number or if you are armed and you see a police officer assaulting another person, you are within the law to stop that assault – yes, even if it means using deadly force.

Americans must, if we are to be free, understand the meaning of this and start acting in a manner that asserts our rights. WE ARE THE LAW. The police work for us. We pay their salary. They are our servants. Their duty is to protect and serve the community, not detain, harass, and assault its members. We cannot harass an officer who is harassing us. Resistance is not harassment. We cannot assault an officer who is assaulting us. Self-defense is not assault. A badge doesn’t give a police officer the right to do whatever he wants, go wherever he pleases. The police need to acquire a healthy fear of the public so that they can have confidence in their actions only when those actions are in accordance with the law. The police need to work for and with us, not against us.

We have a long way to go to reign in the police state. Laws and prostitution and drugs and other so-called “public order crimes” must be repealed. Such laws as disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and harassing a public servant must never be used as tactics to control populations, especially when those laws amount to contempt of cop charges. There should be no felony associated with touching a police officer or breathing on an officer or spitting on an officer. If police officers don’t want to be breathed or spat upon, then they shouldn’t be getting in the faces of citizens. If a police officer puts his hands on you and he has no reason to, it cannot be a felony when you physically resist what is by definition assault. The very notion that citizens do not have a right to resist physical force when it is wrongful is the essence of tyranny. We must criminalize deception and lying by the police and prosecutors. Entrapment should be disallowed.

To win back our freedoms – and more fully realize them, since we have never truly been optimally free and cannot be so in the current epoch – we need to critically examine ourselves. I have watched too many videos of police perpetrating wrongful acts – unlawful detention, arrest, assault – with scores of people standing around not doing anything about it. Why did the crowd stand by while Andrew Meyer was being unlawfully arrested for asking John Kerry uncomfortable (too revealing) questions at an event at the University of Florida? They watched – only a few verbally protested – while he was being tortured in front of them, repeatedly dry tased. Many in the audience applauded the police action. Recently I showed a clip of a naked man at an outdoor concert being violently assaulted by the police, repeatedly tased for refusing to put on his clothes. A human being was tortured in front a crowd hundreds strong merely because he wanted to wear the suit he was born with. Some in the crowd cried “shame,” but no one in the crowd acted to stop it. Why? I posted a video of men and women being violently arrested at the Jefferson Memorial for the crime of “dancing.” This occurred in front of a number of witnesses. None of the bystanders organized a group to intervene and stop the police. How come?

Michael Foucault, in the preface to Gilles Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus, suggests that Deleuze’s book might be otherwise titled “Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life.” Foucault condemns “the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploit us.” Truer words have rarely been recorded. We love POWER in America, don’t we? Shame on us! We heroize the police and the soldier. Even while they are off protecting the imperial interests of the transnational corporation we thank them for defending our freedoms. We see the capitalist exploiter as virtuous – just as the slave society sees the plantation owner as noble. We are psychologically locked into the hierarchical mentality of class, gender, and race. We are alienated from our own power – the power to make history and the law. We think that it is only natural that the law comes from the state and that the state decides what is lawful. We have come to see the republic as previous generations saw the monarchy. But in a free and democratic society, the law comes from the people. WE decide what is lawful.

And here is exposed the fundamental problem of our epoch: in a capitalist society, the state is not legitimate because it does cannot represent us. It is an instrument of the ruling class – the capitalist class – and that class wields the state and law as a weapon to oppress our right, the right to determine history for OUR needs.

Walter Benjamin, in his essay, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” put it superbly: “The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property.”

Liberal capitalism inevitably gives way to fascism because the inequality generated by exploitation destabilizes liberal legal and intellectual structures. These are ultimately incapable of legitimating the oppressive rule of the capitalist class. Class society is not a free society and eventually enough people come to realize this and demand something different. Consent breaks down because the people understand the problem and withdraw their consent. Then the torn velvet glove of consensual control comes off and the iron fist of force emerges. Hence the police violent perpetrated on the Occupy Wall Street protesters. And at that point it is no longer authority – it has lost its legitimacy – but naked, bare-fisted power. Of course, in this transitional moment, the population is divided against itself, and too many desire that police action against the protestors. Hence the need to educate.

But Benjamin understands the moment perfectly. “All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war. War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system. This is the political formula for the situation. The technological formula may be stated as follows: Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources while maintaining the property system.”

And so we have our wars: the war on communism, the war on terrorism, the war on drugs, the war on sexuality, the war on the poor, and so forth. We have our carceral controls, our gulags – 2.4 million strong – and more than eight million with criminal labels under some form of correctional control, with millions more stigmatized, many disenfranchised. We have our therapeutic controls (remember, if you aren’t criminal, then you're crazy). And in our wars and control systems (THEIR wars, THEIR control systems), the police and the soldiers must be our heroes. Speak no ill of them! They protect us from danger! No, they protect the ruling class from the dangerous classes – you and me, the working people and the poor and the movements against capitalism, racism, and imperialism.

Duh!

2012-01-10T08:31:00.001-08:00

"Now, you have to ask a question: Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money?" - Newt Gingrich

The Century of the Self

2012-01-09T10:34:00.000-08:00

The Century of the Self is an award winning British television documentary film focusing on how Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays influenced the way corporations and governments have analyzed, dealt with, and controlled people. Bernays, Freud's nephew, combined his uncle's psychoanalytic ideas with those of crowd psychologists Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter to pioneer propaganda and mass manipulation.

Capitalism and Racism

2012-01-09T08:23:00.000-08:00

Your morning dose of truth, brought to you by the black autoworkers of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement.

Identifying the Parasitic Class

2012-01-09T07:38:00.000-08:00

Guantánamo Nightmare

2012-01-08T11:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/my-guantanamo-nightmare.html?_r=3&ref=opinion

Two points I want to make about above-posted must-read op-ed by victim of the “war on terror” (aka US imperialism), Lakhdar Boumediene, locked away at Guantánamo Bay for seven years, his family thrown into poverty, his world forever changed.

First, George Bush should be arrested and tried for the crimes that were perpetrated against Lakhdar Boumediene and the many others who suffered his fate (or worse). It is hard to imagine that a fair trial would find Bush not guilty of these most serious offenses – false imprisonment, torture, destruction of livelihood, and, in some cases, physical injury and death. These are the actions of a sociopath, and only a successful plea of not guilty by reason of insanity would (not to my mind, though) justify sending him anywhere else but prison for life, along with all his henchmen. I don't think many of my progressive friends will disagree with me about that. If they do, then I wonder about their commitment to rule of law and – not to be insulting – basic moral decency.

Second, if Bush should be punished for the crime of Guantánamo Bay, then what shall we do with Barack Obama for keeping Guantánamo Bay open? Human beings are there still, enduring all the horrors that the Bush Administration visited upon Lakhdar Boumediene and his fellow detainees. Only now it’s the Obama Administration perpetrating the crime Guantánamo Bay. If Guantánamo Bay is a reason for prosecuting George Bush – and I know it is because I can still hear the din of progressives calling for his impeachment over the matter – then why are progressives silent about Barack Obama? It is only wrong to falsely imprison and torture human beings when Republicans do it? If Guantánamo Bay exists whether a Republican or a Democrat is the Commander-in-Chief, then how can a person vote for either party’s nominee?

Rick Santorum wants government to be in your bedroom

2012-01-06T11:26:00.001-08:00

2012-01-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Fusion Paranoia

2012-01-04T17:07:00.001-08:00

Hey progressives, if you find that you share with some on the far right-wing end of the political spectrum their concern for civil liberties and permanent war, know that you suffer from "fusion paranoia" and need to see a doctor right away. That’s right, there are no organized elite groups desiring more power and wealth at your expense. What are you, a conspiracy theorist? Laws that appear to take away civil liberties are really laws that protect you and your family. (If you aren’t a terrorist, then why are you worried?) U.S. foreign policy looks like it does because is designed to protect you. You're nuts if you think that Obama uses the U.S. military to secure capitalist hegemony. (What do those big words mean anyway?) We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on high-tech weapons and a massive volunteer army to spread democracy and free markets. The president won a Nobel Peace prize for crying out loud. And why are you sharing the same ideas with right wingers anyway? Those are crazy right-wing ideas. Come to the reasonable center represented by the moderate types in the Democratic Party and the corporate media that accurately portrays our world through consultations with serious analysts and experts.

Poverty USA

2012-01-03T11:57:00.000-08:00

Obama's Loyalties

2012-01-02T14:45:00.001-08:00

To the degree that Obama appears to have other loyalties beyond the power elite, these are strategic and superficial. Without feminists, homosexuals, minorities, and labor unions, the Democratic Party could not do the work that transnational elites need it to; we will always see the national Democrats paying lip service to identity politics. However, the Democratic Party's function is to co-opt the energy of identity groups on the left, dissipate the radical aroma, and steer society towards the neoliberal/neoconservative agenda currently unfolding globally. Once one understands what is happening - which is plainly evident in history - one is no longer deceived by the rhetoric and posturing.

The Power of Raw Cannabis

2012-01-02T11:30:00.001-08:00

On Darwin’s Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution

2012-01-01T10:54:00.000-08:00

Belief drops to 24% among frequent church attenders.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/darwin-birthday-believe-evolution.aspx

You Tube Video on the Economy Gets it Wrong

2011-12-30T19:53:00.000-08:00

Let me say at the outset, before I get to the substance of my thoughts on this, that I am not a progressive. Heavens no! Progressives are liberal reformers and a lot of our problems in this country flow from the unfortunate choice that many on the left have made to join with liberals and elements in the ruling class to pursue progressive “solutions” to the discontents of capitalism rather than demanding populist democratic remedies. I don’t want people to assume that just because I am making critical comments of the video that I therefore stand with those the narrator criticizes.

Furthermore, I am not interested in critiquing the narrator's critique of progressivism. I have a better critique, but that’s neither here nor there with respect to this particular little video.

Having said that, for the sake of accuracy, the video contains a least three mistakes that should be corrected.

First, the Tea Party is not a grassroots movement at all but an astroturf (PR industry insider term) project of capitalist elites organized by several corporate-backed and staffed groups, foremost among them are FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and American Solutions for Winning the Future. These organizations provide logistical support and public relations assistance to protesters, joined by industry confederates to direct activities on the ground.

FreedomWorks coordinates conference calls among protesters, teaches them how to plan events and write press releases, provides them with how-to guides on how to deliver a clear message, and gives them templates for sign construction. FreedomWorks has established several Internet domain addresses, making them appear to be the work of amateur grassroots groups. Pretty slick stuff. Dick Armey, a former high-ranking Republican congressman now working for industry public relations, runs the operation.

Americans for Prosperity is run by Tim Phillips, a partner in Ralph Reed’s lobbying firm Century Strategies (the parent company of Millennium Marketing, a commercial PR firm). Phillips is a long-time Republican Party operative (so is Reed). Remember the “grassroots” movement “Drill Here, Drill Now” protests? That was the work of Americans for Prosperity (there was no actual grassroots movement there either).

Most important in all this is the former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who heads up the American Solutions for Winning the Future, plays. Gingrich was part of the same Congressional leadership team as Armey when they were Republican Party officials. They engineered the “Contract with America” campaign of the 1990s that aimed to slash government programs for vulnerable populations and expand the trade agreements that devastated American industry. The function of the Tea Party is to create a context that allows the 1990s crop of Republicans to come back to power after having been disgraced by scandals.

Second, the Tea Party non-movement (or countermovement, if you like) does not advocate classical liberalism, but rather neoclassical liberalism, supporting the elite project of neoliberalism that aims to realize the goals of international banks and transnational corporations.

The difference between classical and neoclassical liberalism is fundamental. The former view operates on the basis of the labor theory of value, which recognizes that all value is produced by labor. This was the view advocated by Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, David Ricardo, Abraham Lincoln and other 18th and 19th century economists and politicians. These thinkers were anti-corporate pro-market capitalists.

In contrast, neoclassical liberalism explicitly rejects the view that labor creates value and substitutes that premise with a subjectivist view of value: value occurs in the mind. In other words, exchange value is reduced to use value. In the truest sense of the term ideology, neoclassical liberalism reduces value to psychological phenomena. Therefore, the argument in the video that follows is based on a false premise. What it actually does is regurgitate right-wing propaganda.

If capitalism operated today the way it was envisioned by classical liberal intellectuals, I would have far less complaints about our circumstances. But it doesn’t and hasn’t since the Civil War, and that’s not mainly the fault of progressives, but of monopoly capitalism. Indeed, over the last fifty years, it has been the influence of neoclassical economists on U.S. (and global) economic policy that has created the problems! Nothing would crash the global economy more quickly that to try to fully realize neoclassical economic theory in reality. That’s asking for market Armageddon. Just look at what’s happening in Europe if you want to see our future down that path. Yet that is precisely what the Tea Party is advocating!

I hasten to add that this is what Obama wants, too, and both he and the Republicans are taking the country down that path already, all the while pretending as if they disagree over the matter. This is why neither political party is a viable choice for those of us who care about the fate of working Americans.

Finally, as a libertarian, I must state a simple historical truth: libertarianism has for more than one hundred and fifty years - from the very moment the term was first used to refer to political economic matters by anarchist Joseph Déjacque - referred to the left-wing idea more well-known to Americans today as anarchism. It was only in the 1950s and only in the United States that some neoclassical liberals co-opted the term in an effort to hide from business conservatives - whose support they desperately sought - the fact that they were liberals (since progressives gave liberalism a bad name!). I am here talking about the followers of Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics and Hayek and others of the Austrian School, which differs in some, albeit marginal respects to the neoclassical take Friedman represents. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1970s that the Libertarian Party was founded.

The global libertarian movement - with which I am proudly associate – does not cede the name of our political economic philosophy to right-wing neoclassical liberals for their propagandistic purposes. And, regardless of my loyalties to this worldview, it is historically inaccurate to use the term in the way the narrator in the video uses the term.

Rex 84

2011-12-30T13:25:00.001-08:00

Transcripts from the Iran-Contra Hearings in 1987. Dialog between Congressman Jack Brooks, Oliver North's attorney Brendan Sullivan and Senator Daniel Inouye, the Democratic Chair of the joint Senate-House Committee:

Brooks: Colonel North, in your work at the NSC were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?

Sullivan [agitated]: Mr. Chairman?

Inouye [sternly]: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch upon that?

Brooks: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed, by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was an area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

Inouye [more sternly]: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.

This dialog concerns Rex 84 (Readiness Exercise 1984), a detailed plan, developed by Oliver North, deputy director for political-military affairs of the NSC, Louis Giuffrida, head of FEMA, and vice president George H.W. Bush to declare martial law, suspend the United States Constitution, put military commanders in charge of state and local governments, and detain large numbers of citizens deemed threats to national security. All that would be required is for the US president to declare a "State of Domestic National Emergency." Listed among activities that could trigger an emergency: widespread opposition to a US military invasion abroad.

North co-authored the report with John Brinkerhoff, deputy director of FEMA's national preparedness program. The plan is based on a Army War College template published in 1970 by FEMA chief Louis Giuffrida. The original plan proposed detaining 21 million "American Negroes" in the event that there was a "black militant uprising."

TNR Exclusive: A Collection of Ron Paul’s Most Incendiary Newsletters

2011-12-29T22:19:00.000-08:00

Devastating. It's over. Apologize and drop out.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive

“Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,”and “Lazyopolis ”

2011-12-29T22:18:00.000-08:00

http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_Oct90_p4.pdf

Martin Luther King Jr. “a world-class adulterer” who “seduced underage girls and boys”

2011-12-29T22:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_Dec90_p8.pdf
http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_Feb91_p7.pdf

Ron Paul Political Report: "A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism"

2011-12-29T21:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_June92_p1.pdf
http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_June92_p7.pdf

Ron Paul and Libertarianism

2011-12-29T14:33:00.001-08:00

As Noam Chomsky is fond of pointing out, only in the United States is libertarianism confused with right-wing neoclassical liberalism. Everywhere it's a left-wing political economic philosophy. I'm a libertarian. Emma Goldman was a libertarian. Alexander Berkman was a libertarian. Libertarianism is synonymous with anarchism and communism (not the state socialism the capitalist West falsely tagged “communism.”). Libertarianism is a left-wing philosophy, since its aim is to challenge and dismantle all illegitimate form of hierarchy.

Self-styled libertarian, Ron Paul, is not libertarian at all, but a right-wing neoclassical liberal with heavy conservative leanings. Therefore, Paul's ideology is antithetical to libertarianism. He believes in putting the "right" of capital ahead of personal liberty (see his argument against the 1964 Civil Rights Act). He opposes a woman's right to control her womb (see his advocacy of the anti-abortion amendment). He believes in putting the power of the state over human rights (see his opposition to the Supreme Court decision in overturning the Texas law criminalizing homosexual conduct).

I have identified Paul as a white nationalist. Some of those I have been arguing with lately claim that however much one may associate Paul with the racism of the newsletters that bear his name, these newsletters are in any case the distant past, and Paul hasn’t made racist arguments during the past decade. However, this claim can be sustained only if you one narrowly defines racism as calling black people “animals” and other similar offensive rhetoric. We all know racism is much more than racial epithets and offensive rhetoric.

In fact, Paul has been making the classic segregationist argument on numerous talk shows during the past several years, and even over the past several months. In an interview with Tim Russert in 2007, and in an interview with Larry O’Donnell in October of last year, Ron Paul argues that it is wrong for states to stop white property owners from discriminating against black people. A person who wants the government to uphold "a right" to discriminate in public spaces is a racist even if they say they are not doing for racist reasons. This is a matter of truth by definition. Race segregation in public accommodations is the essence of apartheid.

While this position is obvious racism, it is just as obviously not libertarianism. No rational conceptualization of libertarianism can squeeze racism into its worldview. A libertarian believes in personal freedom before the "right" of a white business owner to practice racial exclusion. (There is no such right!) A libertarian believes in personal sovereignty: the right of persons to be free from hierarchy and illegitimate forms of domination. Segregation is quintessentially hierarchical and illegitimate (so is capitalism). Aside from his white nationalism, Paul is a run-of-the-mill neoclassical liberal. He's no libertarian.

Words can't mean whatever we wish them to mean. Words have histories. The right wing conspired to co-opt a noble term several years ago to cover the true meaning of their politics. The world libertarian community does not accept the theft of the term and does not cede the meaning to an ideology (really a tangle of beliefs with no underlying principle) that in its main points is antithetical to

Private Property is not Monolithic: Segregation and the Privilege of Capital

2011-12-29T14:04:00.000-08:00

A business is a special class of private property, yet Ron Paul and other self-styled "libertarians" speak of private property as if it there were one all-inclusive class of things operating under the same set of rules. For example, in a contentious appearance on the Larry O'Donnell show, Paul claims that forcing a white-only restaurant to serve black customers (hyperbolically characterized as the government “taking over private property”) is like “taking over the bedroom.” The analogy is absurd.

I don't need a business or any other license or permit to sell my car to the teenager down the block. I just need a title. I can sell that car to anybody I choose. If I want to sell my car to a white person I will. If I don't want to let black people into my home, I don't have to.

However, if I run a business, I fall under a different set of rules because it's a different type of property. It's capital. I must obtain local, state, and, sometimes, even federal and professional licenses and permits. Additionally, I must obtain a state tax license, labor department registration, employer identification number, etc. If my home is not a public accommodation, then I decide whether blacks can sleep in it. If my home becomes a public accommodation, then I don’t have that choice. This is because it has become a business.

Here's the essential difference: A person or group of persons who want to go into business must seek the state’s blessing. The state grants a license – a privilege – to a business thereby legitimizing its operation and retaining the express power to regulate that business. (Businesses that decide to operate without the state privilege become part of the black market. Yet when I sell my car, I do not become part of the illegal market.)

When the term “right” is appealed to in the context of the business-state relation, the term is assumed to be a condition legally conferred, not an inherent or natural right. This is because only individuals have inherent rights – and the right to operate a business that harms persons is not among them. To be sure, businesses have protections in the law, but none of these are allowed in principle to exclude and harm without reason (i.e. rational secular justification). (I say in principle because this often doesn’t always work in practice due to the power of capital in influencing government action or inaction. See, for example, mountain top removal. However, just because the state doesn’t act consistently on principle doesn’t mean the principle isn’t well established.)

The state has always had the authority to compel establishments serving the public to open their services to everybody. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 confirmed this by providing the machinery to force state governments to recognize the unalienable rights of US citizens – life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness, which are self-evidently compromised by the racist "separate but equal" doctrine – by banning laws permitting or requiring segregation.

Paul and others make two errors. First, they fallaciously separate the private and public sectors, as if a public accommodation can refuse to serve black people without that refusal enjoying or suffering either positive or negative sanction by the state. There is no neutral state position relative to business in the concrete – this is to say, any state that permits racial discrimination in public accommodations acts in a racially discriminatory fashion. It is basic to common legal understanding that laws that either require or permit establishments to discriminate against certain group members are themselves discriminatory and must be struck down in order to restore the inherent right. Therefore, discrimination in labor and consumer markets had to fall along with policies and acts of state discrimination; there is no disentangling the spheres; they rise or fall together.

Neoclassical liberal thought is shot through with this error: the error of reification. See Milton Friedman or F.A. Hayek. So busy building ships in bottles were they that it's comical to watch how confused they could become when trying to talk about the concrete character of actual political economic systems. Friedman looked particularly foolish on a regular basis, since he was keen on getting in front of audiences and challenging college students to match wits with him (they routinely bodyslammed him).

Libertarians (I am talking about true libertarians now), on the other hand, don’t commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness because they consistently operate on the principle of personal sovereignty. That's what makes it an intrinsically left-wing philosophy and practice: the aim to dismantle all illegitimate hierarchy. Not so with so called “libertarians” like Ron Paul. He desires to keep the capitalist hierarchy firmly in place and, more, entrench it even further by weakening the democratic machinery (the positive freedom side) of the republic.

Second (and this isn't so much error as it is propaganda), neoclassical liberals want to flip the universe by making the alleged right of business unalienable while characterizing the rights of individuals as apparent privileges. In doing so, they explicitly put property before people; they are essentially arguing that having capital gives one person the right to oppress other people, and if that person is white, then he is free to oppress black persons. In other words, they use the rhetoric of private property to justify apartheid.

I do wish they would finally admit that the inevitable conclusion of their argument is that de jure apartheid is a legitimate outcome of capitalist property relations.

Finally, concerning Paul’s mantra of federalism and strict constructionism, given that the federal government is, according to the Constitution, the supreme law of the land (you’re familiar with the supremacy clause, no?), and the obvious fact that states do not have rights but powers (only individual persons have rights), Ron Paul supporters don't have a leg to stand on.

The bottom line: Paul’s rhetoric is subterfuge in defense of white nationalism. Maybe some Ron Paul supporters don't recognize that (yet?). But it is what it is.

Corporate-Dominated Government

2011-12-27T12:21:00.000-08:00

To a "certain degree" the White House? Bernie! Don't hold you fire. The president used you to fake his progressive credentials!

Thom Hartmann Calls Sen. Ron Wyden ‘Useful Idiot’ For Promoting Ryan-Wyden Medicare Plan

2011-12-26T12:12:00.000-08:00

More Ron Paul Hypocrisy

2011-12-26T12:05:00.000-08:00

One cannot be a libertarian and advocate state law compelling women to serve as human incubators. Laws against abortion are the epitome of state tyranny and therefore antithetical to libertarian principle.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/12/26/ron-paul-signs-personhood-usa-pledge-proving-once-again-that-he-is-not-a-libertarian-or-a-liberal/

What is a Segregationist?

2011-12-26T11:54:00.000-08:00

A person who believes a property owner has the right to deny other persons access to public accommodations on account of race is a segregationist. Indeed, this is the purist form of racial segregation.

Ron Paul voted against Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday.

2011-12-25T19:09:00.001-08:00

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h1983-289

Ron Paul Lies About Martin Luther King Jr.'s Position on Civil Rights

2011-12-24T10:17:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul completely distorts Martin Luther King, Jr.'s position in order to defend his white nationalism. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't for treating people equally and merely ending laws requiring segregation. King was for reparations. He wasn't just about civil disobedience as a tactic for achieving racial equality. He advocated using the force of law and state to integrate society and to transfer wealth to black people. Ron Paul and Martin Luther King Jr. are opposite one another.

Here it is folks: Ron Paul advocating racial segregation.

The Disorderly Person

2011-12-18T15:28:00.000-08:00

The "disorderly" person - the nonconformist - is subject to the criminal law (taken away in handcuffs and jailed), psychiatric control (medicated or institutionalized), or bureaucratic regulation (dismissed from an occupation, or otherwise sanctioned), unless s/he has something to offer that is perceived as having value to those with the power to punish or discipline. This is how one becomes eccentric rather than crazy.

The Medicalization of Deviance

2011-12-18T15:08:00.001-08:00

It is useful to consider the benefits that accrue to the several parties in and around a conflict when misbehavior is defined as illness.

The Saving American Democracy Amendment

2011-12-17T20:17:00.000-08:00

"Conspiracy theory!"

2011-12-10T18:44:00.000-08:00

"Which of the following, pray tell, would those who are so ready to cry 'Conspiracy theory!' have us believe? That people with enormous fortunes and/or high political positions do not have greater ability than the ordinary citizen to get what they want? That men and women who spend most of their adult lives seeking to obtain or retain money and influence do so only in order to abstain from employing the advantages these confer? That those with wealth and power are inhibited by some mysterious force from making use of either to accomplish their purposes? That the rich and well placed not only practice such extraordinary self-denial as individuals, but that they also steadfastly refuse to cooperate with their peers in the pursuit of common political-economic goals?

"All of these notions are, of course, absurd on their face. People strive for wealth and power precisely because the more of either one possesses, the more readily one can have his way in every realm – professional, political, personal. Moreover, the idea that the rich and powerful shrink from uniting with others of the same station is even more laughable. If, in fact, there is one thing that characterizes those at the top of the heap, it is their readiness to organize amongst themselves to secure their desires. No other group in society even comes close in this regard."

- Frank Kofsky, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948.

Why Conservatives Beat their Children

2011-12-10T15:50:00.000-08:00

That conservatives are far more likely to support corporal punishment and other forms of violent and coercive control is borne out in the scholarly literature and what we all know to be true. Why this is true is also well understood: coercive and violent control issues from the hierarchical and authoritarian worldview that underpins conservative thought and practice.

In family relations, conservatism appeals to the principle of pater familias, or rule of the father, a system of beliefs that (to their mind) legitimates physical control over those believed to be under the command of the dominus (or master). They seek obedience and see others (including animals) as objects on which to take out their frustrations.

This same attitude makes conservatives more likely to despise and discriminate against those they perceive as different from themselves, for example gays. Conservatives have little tolerance for other beliefs and practices, and they will not tolerate deviation - what they perceive as disobedience - from what they assert is correct behavior. This Republican wishes he could beat every "deviant" in the same way he beats his own children.

This is the source of the apparent contradiction manifest in the rhetoric against big government yet the obsession with the police and military state apparatus. They hate government that nurtures and assists those in need, whom they view as inferior and immoral. They love government that excludes and punishes. They are always excusing bullying, police brutality, and war crimes.

This obsession with authority is what lies at the core of conservative family values and legitimates physical violence in the family, coded as discipline. Are all conservatives like this? No. But we all know that they are far more likely to be like this than are others. So let's not pretend that this is some sort of liberal libel.

Take the Nation Back from the Bankers

2011-12-03T17:39:00.000-08:00

Zach Wahls Speaks About Family

2011-11-30T13:08:00.000-08:00

The Real Public Nuisance

2011-11-23T18:09:00.000-08:00

Obamahousing

2011-11-19T09:44:00.001-08:00

I have an idea. Maybe you have heard this before. Sorry if I sound like a broken record. Let's end homelessness by forcing people to at least rent an apartment! Don't have an actual working address? Pay a fine, say something like 50% of the lowest monthly rent in a given county or municipality. Or we could raise a person's monthly taxes by this amount if she fails to rent an apartment. Can't pay the fine or the tax? Jail maybe? I don't know. That seems harsh. How about the taxpayers subsidize those who can't afford rent? We're not a heartless society, after all. But we do have to find a way to use the law to force citizens to support the livelihood of landlords. After all, like capitalists, landlords are people, too. We wouldn't want them to actually engage in productive labor. Actually producing value in society is the task of working people! Besides, government-provided housing is evil, mainly because there is no profit to be made from it.

Why we are the 99%

2011-11-18T08:29:00.000-08:00

Tax Dollars at War

2011-11-08T14:22:00.000-08:00

Tax Dollars At War from Softbox on Vimeo.

Jake Tapper vs. Jay Carney on President Killing U.S. Citizens.

2011-10-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

I AM NOT MOVING

2011-10-14T17:32:00.000-07:00

"The Opium of the People," Karl Marx (1843)

2011-10-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

The criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.

The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis [“speech for the altars and hearths,” i.e., for God and country] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought an Übermensch [superman], will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself – the Unmensch [non-man ] – where he seeks and must seek his true reality.

The foundation of irreligious criticism: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur [point of principle], its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

Excerpted from Karl Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)

Chris Hedges nailing it

2011-09-25T15:21:00.001-07:00

The Fact of Class

2011-09-25T08:43:00.001-07:00

Class struggle grows out of an objective fact: the existence of social classes. One's relationship to the means of production determines this fact, so think about which class you belong to and organize for battle. The ruling class is terrified by the possibility, because they know there are more of us than there are of them.

Eyes Wide Open

2011-09-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

Obama’s “jobs” plan is actually a plan to deplete the Social Security trust fund in less than a decade, as well as dismantle Medicare/Medicaid.

The payroll tax cut will drain $300 billion annually from the trust fund. Right now there is a $2.5 trillion surplus. The surplus will fall beneath $2 trillion within only two years. At that rate, the trust fund will be depleted in 8.33 years. This is on top of the 2.5 trillion that they are planning to cut from the budget: one trillion initially (that’s a done deal) and $1.5 trillion from the super committee to be set by Christmas.

Obama has emphasized that all money spent in the “jobs” bill must come from an equal amount of spending cuts. That’s another $500 billion dollars. Now we’re up to 3 trillion dollars.

To pay for the additional cuts, Obama has promised to cut Medicare/Medicaid, vital programs from which he has already cut half a trillion dollars in order to finance his health care plan, which, as you know, forces citizens to purchase health insurance from private corporations (so employers can dump coverage). In other words, the framework for the complete privatization of health care is in place; all that remains is a precipitating crisis which the Democrats and Republicans are now manufacturing.

Within only a few years the government will inform the public that the Social Security trust fund is depleting much faster than anticipated and that the system must be privatized (invest in Wall Street so the rich can take even more of your income). The government, military, police, corrections, and public education are already in the process of being privatized.

We are nearing the final phase of neoliberal restructuring of the global economy and the United States is ground zero, with Europe not far behind. Obama has been the key to the project, since the working class would have rebelled if a Republican were at the helm.

I am genuinely shocked at how so many people on the left can’t see what is right in front of their eyes. It's proof of the sophistication of the ideological machine and the deep indoctrination of the public.

Conservatives, Human Nature, and Morality

2011-09-07T08:32:00.001-07:00

What retards the moral development of the conservative is his image of human nature. It's a truly pessimistic view of people. In his mind, people are intrinsically avaricious, lazy, predatory, and sly (which is why greed, the leisure class, war, and ignorance are conservative virtues). Human nature demands that people be left to their fate, disciplined by the uncertainty of markets, subject to authoritarian control, and never trusted with the facts.

Obamanation Part II

2011-09-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

The Truth Progressives Must Grasp About Obama

2011-09-02T21:30:00.000-07:00

Obama isn't giving ground. He isn't caving. He isn't timid, confused, or unsure of himself. He simply isn't one of us. If he wins re-election, he will become even more of what he is right now and had been for years: a neoliberal globalist.

The entire campaign was a sham (the great story of our age is how millions of progressives allowed themselves to be so completely bamboozled by an obvious Madison Avenue-style campaign). His election sucked much of the energy out of anti-corporate/anti-war movement. It was a spectacular achievement by the class that owns the country.

What progressives must now understand (what they should have understood all along) is that Obama is a key player in a structural adjustment program being imposed on the United States by big finance capital. Obama had to be the bringer of the austerity phase of the project because the ruling class knew progressives wouldn't fall for it if McCain were president. If it were McCain cutting Medicare, expanding military presence in Central Asia, Middle East, and Africa (imperialism), extending the PATRIOT Act and George Bush's tax cuts, organizing assassination squads, undermining Social Security, etc., progressives would be howling. But because it's Obama, they instead rationalize, apologize, make excuses, and blame Republicans.

Such rationalization as, "We're stuck with him," would sound ridiculous to progressives if it were McCain doing all the things Obama is doing. But it's just as ridiculous to say this and all the other things about Obama. In fact, that he commands the obedience of so many progressives makes him worse than McCain.

The Obama years will be looked back upon as the worst yet in the rollback of democracy gained during the 20th century. The United States is now being fully re-articulated into the global capitalist economy, but this time with a different locus of power: a transnational ruling elite. Both parties are servants of the project.

It's time to withdraw consent from the two-party system. They win. We lose.

Obama and both the Democrat and Republican leadership have fucked us.

2011-09-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

The U.S. economy gained a net total of zero jobs for July. Officially, unemployment remains at over 9%. However, if you include the long-term unemployed and underemployed, unemployment rises to 16.2%, which is an increase over June (16.1%). There are fewer people working today than in 2004 - and the population has increased by some 20 million!

Frank Schaeffer on Right-Wing Evangelical Christianity

2011-08-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Everybody who cares about the USA must watch this. Hear Frank Schaeffer, who lived at the epicenter of right-wing evangelical Christian politics, explain why conservative Christians are anti-American and unpatriotic. Their desire to de-fund the government stems from a hatred of America and a desire to bring down our country and its laws - in order to replace them with a Bronze Age religious system.

A Democratic Society would ban this practice

2011-08-15T12:07:00.001-07:00

Bamboozle!

2011-07-19T18:14:00.000-07:00

The plan would CUT taxes by $1.5 trillion over 10 years, reducing personal and corporate taxes. The so-called tax "increases" come from allowing tax cuts to expire that were assumed to be renewed. Eliminating these only "increase" revenues by $1 trillion. This is the "26%" in "tax increases." The rest (i.e. all of it) comes from spending cuts, including Medicaid and Medicare. Obama supports it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303661904576456042405686316.html

2011-07-15T22:30:00.000-07:00

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/07/2011712891421784.html

US BOAT TO GAZA: The Audacity To Love

2011-07-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

Fantastic. Disseminate Everywhere.

2011-06-29T19:22:00.001-07:00

Brian Becker: "Libya is a Rich Man's War!"

2011-06-28T19:42:00.001-07:00

Right-wing Politicians and the Corporate Media are LYING to you.

2011-06-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Documentary on Thomas Altizer (Part 1 of 2)

2011-06-05T23:49:00.001-07:00

Documentary on Thomas Altizer (2 of 2)

2011-06-05T23:48:00.000-07:00

The Importance of Empathy

2011-05-18T16:24:00.000-07:00

Sixty-three Years

2011-05-15T14:18:00.001-07:00

No way to live.

2011-05-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

Israeli troops clashed with Arab protesters along three hostile borders on Sunday, leaving as many as 16 people dead and dozens wounded in an unprecedented wave of violence marking the anniversary of the mass displacement of Palestinians surrounding Israel's establishment in 1948.

The Freedom Riders of this Generation

2011-05-09T15:20:00.000-07:00

UC Irvine Stand With the Eleven protest Israeli Ambassador at UCI

2011-05-07T15:13:00.001-07:00

Pilger - Obama and Empire

2011-04-24T19:16:00.000-07:00

The Appeal to Human Nature

2011-04-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

The Appeal to Human Nature
by Andrew Austin
Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 1:51pm

Let us accept the appeal to an enduring human nature for the sake of argument. Doing so, we will see that an appeal to human nature actually discredits the claim – typically made by individuals seeking to rationalize or justify exploitation and inequality - of a nature supposedly characterized by self-interested behavior.

If we are to proceed objectively, then we will have to agree that determining the nature of human beings requires looking at the history and prehistory of the species scientifically and historically. As a distinct species, Homo sapiens has been around, in its modern form, for at least 200,000 years. The species originated in Africa and migrated outward, reaching nearly every part of the world by roughly 25-35 thousand years before present. Some 6-10 thousand years ago some groups of Homo sapiens began living in large-scale social systems in the Indus, Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, and Yangtze River valleys. Meanwhile, most members of the species continued to live outside the city-state environment for thousands of more years, finally being incorporated (with a few notable exceptions) into modern world-system by the mid-twentieth century.

Now, it is with the emergence of the city-states that we see the regular appearance of the major forms of social segmentation, i.e. class, gender, and ethnic divisions, unjust arrangements which, over time, required, among other things, an ideology claiming that selfishness is part of human nature, which in turn, it was said, explained such things as exploitation, genocide, property, war, and so on (as if these are simply the natural conditions of human existence).

However, before the city-state and outside it, human beings for the most part lived in democratic egalitarian social orders, communities based on cooperation, sharing, and compassion. In essence, these societies were based on altruistic relations and behaviors, not on selfish ones.

Let’s do the math. Taking the more generous number of 10,000 years ago to establish the emergence of the selfish conception of human nature, and the conservative number of 200,000 years for the existence of the species (it’s probably longer, and moreover we have earlier hominids displaying symbolic culture who also enjoyed communal existence going back more than a million years), we find, measured temporally, that 95 percent of human beings lived in communist and socialist societies in which either everybody owned everything in common or those who worked kept what they earned for their families (which were extended and essentially covered, through larger familial networks, the entire community).

In other words, at best, only 5 percent of human beings have lived in the types of social orders that the advocates of selfishness (and exploitation and inequality) seek to legitimize with their appeal to human nature.

Therefore, judging the situation using archeological, anthropological, historical, and sociological facts and analyses, we would have to conclude, from a human nature standpoint, that class-based societies are CONTRARY to human nature, not a reflection of it.

Live by the sword die by the sword, I always say. I will let them have their human nature argument. But then they will have to admit its wrong.

Who Didn't Pay Their Taxes?

2011-04-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

I Am A Man: Dr. King & the Memphis Sanitation Strike

2011-04-03T15:03:00.001-07:00

Ilan Pappe "Israel is not a democracy"

2011-04-02T14:51:00.001-07:00

Burnin' Up - Judas Priest

2011-03-31T18:10:00.001-07:00

Lyrics | Judas Priest lyrics - Burnin Up lyrics

Cantor Puts His Cards on the Table

2011-03-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.ourfuture.org/institute/blog-entry/2011031329/cantor-social-security-cannot-exist-america-we-want

"We're going to have to come to grips with the fact that these programs cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be." Eric Cantor.

Just Think of What Could be Achieved without Labor Unions

2011-03-31T09:26:00.000-07:00

The Great Dictator

2011-03-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others' happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.

Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say "Do not despair." The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder! Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men---machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have a love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it’s written “the kingdom of God is within man”, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power.

Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill their promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

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A Speech for this Generation

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Ian Murphy as 'David Koch' Talk with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (FULL TEXT)

2011-02-23T15:39:00.001-08:00

Ian Murphy as 'David Koch' Talk with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (FULL TEXT)

February 23, 2011

The following is a transcript of a nearly 20 minute conversation on February 22, 2011 between Ian Murphy, a columnist for the website known as The Buffalo Beast, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Murphy was posing as conservative activist David Koch. The conversation was initially posted to the YouTube.com website.

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WALKER: Hi, this is Scott Walker.

MURPHY: Scott, David Koch, how are you?

WALKER: Hey, David, I'm good, and yourself?

MURPHY: I'm very well. I'm a little disheartened by the situation there, by what's the latest?

WALKER: We're actually hanging pretty tough. Amazingly, there's a much smaller group of protesters, almost all of whom are in from other states today. The State Assembly is taking the bill up, getting it almost to the last point to where it can be unamendable but they're waiting to pass it until the Senate is in, but they're-the Assembly Democrats have about 100 amendments to go through. The State Senate still has the 14 members missing, but what they're doing today is bringing up all sorts of other non-fiscal items, many of which are things members on the Democratic side care about. And each day we're going to ratchet it up a little bit. The Senate Majority Leader had a great plan, he told them about this morning, he told the Senate Democrats about and he's going to announce it today and that's the Senate Organization Committee is going to meet and pass a rule that says if you don't show up, for two consecutive days on a session day in the state senate, the senate chief clerk, it's a little procedural thing here, but can actually have your payroll stopped from being automatically deducted into your checking account...

MURPHY: Beautiful.

WALKER: And, instead, you still get a check but the check has to be personally picked up and he's instructing them, which we just loved, to lock them on the floor of the state senate.

MURPHY: Now, you're not talking to any of them Democrat bastards are you?

WALKER: There's one guy that's actually voted with me on a bunch of things that I called on Saturday for about 45 minutes mainly to tell him that while I appreciate his friendship, and his work with us on other things and tell him well, I wasn't going to budge. Mainly, because he's about the only reasonable one over there,

MURPHY: Goddamn right.

WALKER: I figured if I go talk to him, he'll go back to the rest of the gang and say you know I've known Walker for 20 years and he's not budging.

MURPHY: Now what's his name again?

WALKER: His name is Tim Cullen.

MURPHY: All right.

WALKER: He's ...

MURPHY: I'll give that man a call. WALKER: Actually in his case, I wouldn't call him, and I'll tell you why. He's pretty reasonable, but he's not one of us. So, I would let him be. I think he's in a position where maybe he can motivate that caucus but he's not an ally, he's just a guy, he was in the senate years ago, he was actually the Senate democrat leader back in the 80s and Tommy Thompson hired him to be the head of health and human services, he went into the private sector, made real money, and then became a little more open minded, and last fall he got elected into the senate seat he was in 25 years ago. And he's kind of one of these guys, he really doesn't care, he's not there for political reasons, he's just trying to get something done. So he's good to reach out to for me, but he's not a conservative, he's just a pragmatist.

MURPHY: Now, who could we get to budge on this collective bargaining?

WALKER: Well, I think in the end, a couple of things are one, I think the paycheck will have an impact. Secondly, one of the things we're looking at next probably announce in the next day or two, we've been working with our Republican leaders in the legislature, we're still waiting on an opinion to see if the unions have been paying to put these guys up outta the state, we think there's at a minimum an ethics code violation if not an outright felony.

MURPHY: Well, they're probably putting hobos in suits.

WALKER: Yeah.

MURPHY: That's what we do. Sometimes.

WALKER: Well, I mean, paying for the senators to be put up.

MURPHY: Ah.

WALKER: I know they're paying for these guys to be in. People can pay protestors to come in, that's not an ethics thing, but literally if the unions are paying the 14 senators, if they're paying for their food, their lodging, anything like that, we believe at a minimum it's an ethics code violation, and it may very well be a felony misconduct in office because see technically, it's not just a political contribution. It is - If they're being paid to keep them from doing their job, we think that's a, you know, legally an obstruction of justice, but an obstruction of their ability to their job and we still got the attorney general's office who is looking into it for us. So, we're trying about 4 or 5 different angles and each day we crank up a little bit more pressure, but the other thing I've got layoff notices ready, we put out the at risk notices, we'll announce Thursday, they'll go out early next week, and we'll probably get 5 to 6,000 state workers will get at risk notices for layoffs, we might ratchet that up a little bit too.

MURPHY: Beautiful, beautiful. Got to crush that union.

WALKER: Well, it's one of those where in the end, I've had not only Cullen, I had 3 or 4 other of my business leader friends who known him over the years and just kind of pass the message on these guys. If they think I'm caving, they've been asleep for the last eight years 'cause I've taken on every major battle in Milwaukee County, and won even in a county where I'm overwhelmingly overpowered, political because we don't budge.

MURPHY: Goddamn right. WALKER: You're doing the right thing, you stay firm and in this case, we say we'll wait it out, if they want to start sacrificing thousands of public workers will be laid off, sooner or later they're going to put pressure on the senators to come back. We're not compromising, we're not.

MURPHY: Beautiful.

WALKER: The other thing we may do 'cause the senator I mentioned thinks that these guys, you've got a few of the radical ones who unfortunately one of them is the minority leader but most of the rest of them are just looking for a way to get out of this, and they're scared out of their mind, they don't know what it means. There's a bunch of recalls up against them, they'd really like to just get back here and get it over with. So the paycheck thing, some of the other things, threatens them. I think collectively there's enough going on that as long as they think don't I'm not going to cave, which again we have no interest in. An interesting idea that was brought up to me this morning by my Chief of Staff, we won't do it until tomorrow is putting out an appeal to the democrat leader that I would be willing to sit down to talk to him, the assembly democrat leader, plus the other two republican leaders. Talk, not negotiate, and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn, I'll only do it if all 14 of them come back and sit down in the state assembly, they can recess it to come back and talk to me but they have to come back there. The reason for that is we're verifying it this afternoon, but legally we believe once they've gone into session, they don't physically have to be there. If they actually in session that day and they take a recess, the 19 senate republicans could then go into action and they'd have a quorum because they started out that way. We're double checking that but that would be the only if you heard that I was talking to them, that would be the only reason why we would only do it if they came back to the capitol with all 14 of them. And my sense is, hell, I'll talk to them-you want to yell at me for an hour, you know, I'm used to that. I can deal with that but I'm not negotiating.

MURPHY: Bring a baseball bat. That's what I do.

WALKER: I have one in my office here. You'd be happy with that. I've got a slugger with my name on it.

MURPHY: Beautiful.

WALKER: But in the end, this is and I pointed this out last night because I'm trying to keep out as many of the private union as possible, this is about the budget. This is about public sector unions, hell even FDR got it. There's no place for that kind of...essentially you're having taxpayers money being used to pay the lobby to spend more of the taxpayer's money. It's absolutely ridiculous.

MURPHY: Beautiful.

WALKER: So, this is ground zero, there's no doubt about it but I think for us, I just keep telling - I tell the speaker, the senate majority leader every night, give me a list of people I need to call at home, shore them up. The New York Times of all things, I don't normally tell people to read the New York Times, but the front page of the New York Times has got a great story, one of these unbelievable moments of true journalism what is supposed to be objective journalism, they got out of the capitol and went down one county south of the capitol to Janesville, to Rock County, where the General Motors Plant once was.

MURPHY: Right. WALKER: They moved out two years ago. The lead on this story is about a guy who was laid off two years ago and has been laid off twice by GM. who points out that everybody else in his town has had to sacrifice except for all these public employees and it's about damn time they do it, he supports me. And they had a bartender, they had every stereotypical blue collar worker type they interviewed and the only ones that weren't with us were people who were either a public employee or married to a public employee. It's an unbelievable ... so I went through and called all these handful a dozen or so lawmakers I worry about, each day and said everyone of you should get that story printed out and send it to anybody giving you grief.

MURPHY: Goddamn, right. We sent Andrew Breitbart down there.

WALKER: Yeah.

MURPHY: Yeah.

WALKER: Good stuff.

MURPHY: Yeah. He's our man, you know.

WALKER: Well, it has been amazing to me, the massive amount of attention you know I want to stay ahead so every day I do a 5:00 press conference and I'm actually doing a fireside chat which the state TV stations are picking up on I guess a bunch of national ones are too, and in the last couple of days when I do the TV shows I've been going after Obama because he stuck, although he's backed off now but he stuck his nose in here and I said, you know, he asked me what I thought about it and I said last time I checked this guy's got a much bigger budget deficit than we do and maybe he should worry about that. And not stick his nose in Wisconsin business.

MURPHY: Ha ha ha.

WALKER: We've been on all the national shows, we were on Hannity last night, I did Good Morning America, the Today Show and all that sort of stuff was on Morning Joe this morning, we've done Greta, we're going to keep getting our message out. Mark Levine last night and I've got to tell you, the response from around the country has been phenomenal I had Brian the governor in Nevada call me last night, he said he was out in the Lincoln day circuit the last two weekends and he was kidding me, he's new as well as me, he said Scott don't come to Nevada 'cause I'd be afraid you'll beat me running for Governor. That's all they wanna talk about is what are you doing to help the governor in Wisconsin. Next question is I talked to Cassick every day, you know John's got to stand firm in Ohio. I think we can do the same thing with Rick Scott in Florida, I think Snyder if he got a little more support could probably do that in Michigan. We start going down the list, and a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something, big.

MURPHY: You're the first domino.

WALKER: Yep. This is our moment.

MURPHY: Yeah. What else can we do for you down there?

WALKER: Well, the biggest thing would be and your guy on the ground probably seeing this is the well, two things. One, our members originally got freaked out by all the bodies here, I told them an interesting story, when I was first elected County Executive, in Milwaukee of all places, the first budget I put through was pretty bold, aggressive, the union went nuts on me and got all sorts of grief, but a couple of weeks later I'm at a Veteran's Day parade and I'm going down the line and usually unless you're a veteran, or, you know, when you're marching with a veteran's group politicians all get polite applause but nobody gets up. I come down the line 40, 50 people in a row hands up, thumbs up, you know, cheering, screaming, yelling, way to go, hang in there Walker and then after about 40-50 people like that there's a guy flipping me off. This goes on, you know, 40-50 .. [empty space] .. the people who know it's right will cheer you, applaud you, they'll run through a wall for you, and the people that don't like you, they're going to flip you off. But stop worrying about, you know, them because the other day there were 70,000 probably about 2/3rds were against the bill, 1/3 were for. 70,000 people at the Capitol all week there's been, 15 to 30,000 a day but I remind all our lawmakers that there's 5 and a half million people in this state and just because a bunch of guys who can jump off of work because their union rules doesn't mean that the rest of the people in your district are with them. So one thing for your question is the more groups that are encouraging people not just to show up but call lawmakers and tell them to hang firm with the governor the better, because the more they get that reassurance, the easier it is for them to vote yes.

MURPHY: Right, right.

WALKER: The other thing is more long term and that is after this, um, you know, the coming days and weeks and months ahead, particularly in some of these more swing areas, a lot of these guys are gonna need, they don't necessarily need ads for them but they 're going to need a message out reinforcing why this was a good thing to do for the economy and a good thing to do for the state so the extent that message is out over and over again, that's obviously, that's obviously a good thing.

MURPHY: Right, right. We'll back you anyway we can. But uh, what we were thinking about the crowds was, was planting some troublemakers.

WALKER: You know, the well [sighs] the only problem with - because we thought about that. The problem with, my only gut reaction to that would be right now the, the lawmakers I've talked to have just completely had it with them. The public is not really fond of this. The teacher's union did some polling of some focus groups I think and found out the public turned on them the minute they closed school down for a couple of days. The guys we got left are largely from out of state and I keep dismissing it in all my press conferences and saying uh, they're mostly from out of state. My only fear would be is if there was a ruckus caused, it is that that would scare the public into thinking that maybe the governor has got to settle to avoid all these problems. Where as I've said, hey, ya know, we can handle this, people can protest, this is Madison, you know, full of the 60s liberals, let 'em protest. It's not going to affect us and as long as we go back to our homes and the majority of people are telling us we're doing the right thing, let them protest all they want. So, that's my gut reaction, is I think it's actually good if they're constant, they're noisy, but they're quiet, nothing happens, cause sooner or later the media stops finding them interesting.

MURPHY: Well, not the liberal bastards on MSNBC. WALKER: Oh, yeah, but who watches that? I mean I went on Morning Joe this morning, but I like it just getting, being combative with those guys. But they're off the deep-end

MURPHY: But Joe's, Joe's a good guy, he's one of us.

WALKER: Yeah, he was all right, he's fair to me, I mean the rest of them we're out there, well I had fun they had Schumer over from New York on, ripping me and then they had a little clip of a state senator hiding out ripping me and it was almost too easy. I walked out and Joe asked me a question and I said well before I answer that, let me just point out the amazing irony of the fact that you got a United States Senator from New York. A Senator who, by the way is a part of a team that can't seem to balance the federal budget talking about my budget, at least he's coming into work to talk about something although it's mine, and you got one of these 14 state Senate democrats who can't even bother to show up and deal with the budget he's elected to do something about and that kind of tells you the whole story right there.

MURPHY: Beautiful, beautiful. But you've got to love that Mika Brzezinski. She's a piece of ass.

WALKER: Oh, yeah.

MURPHY: She's the best.

WALKER: A couple of weeks ago, I had known her before, I was having dinner with Jim Sensenbrenner when I came into DC for a day, to do an event and was going over to do Greta's show, had dinner with Jim, Congressman Sensenbrenner and right next to us was the two of them and their guest was Axlerod. So, I came over, I introduced myself.

MURPHY: That son of a bitch.

WALKER: Yeah, no kidding huh? Introduced myself and said, I said you probably knew who I was since your boss was campaigning against me but uh, and it's always good to let them know you know what's going on.

MURPHY: Well, good, good. It's good catching up with you.

WALKER: Well thanks. This is an exciting time. This is, I told my cabinet. I had a dinner the Sunday, excuse me, Monday right after the 6th, came home from the Super Bowl where the Packer's won, that Monday night, I had all my cabinet over to the residence for dinner. Talked about what we were going to do, how we were going to do it, we had already kind of doped plans up, but it was kind of a last hurrah, before we dropped the bomb and I stood up and I pulled out a, a picture of Ronald Regan and I said you know this may seem a little melodramatic but 30 years ago Ronald Regan whose 100th birthday we just celebrated the day before had one of the most defining moments of his political career, not just his presidency, when he fired the air traffic controllers and I said to me that moment was more important than just for labor relations and or even the federal budget, that was the first crack in the Berlin Wall and the fall of Communism because from that point forward the Soviets and the Communists knew that Ronald Reagan wasn't a pushover. And I said this may not have as broad a world implications but in Wisconsin's history-little did I know how big it would be nationally, in Wisconsin's history, I said, this is our moment, this is our time to change the course of history and this is why it's so important that they were all there. I had a cabinet meeting this morning and I reminded them of that. I said for those who thought I was being melodramatic, you now know it was purely putting it in the right context.

MURPHY: Ha, ha, ha. Well, I'll tell you what Scott once you crush these bastards, I'll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.

WALKER: All right that would be outstanding. Thanks for all the support in helping us to move the cause forward. And we appreciate it and we're uh, doing it, the just and right thing for the right reason and it's all about getting our freedoms back.

MURPHY: Absolutely and you know we have a little bit of vested interest as well.

WALKER: Well, that's just it. The bottom line is we're going to get the world moving here because it's the right thing to do.

MURPHY: All right then.

WALKER: Well, thanks a million.

MURPHY: Bye bye.

WALKER: Bye now.