The Postmodern Tribune

But What Will the Cool Kids Say About You...?

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 22:33:00 +0000

In case you don't already know, I'm blogging here now.

The idea I initially had for this new blog of mine was that it would cover a range of topics much broader than, though still not excluding, those of political economy. So far, though, it's been pretty much a political blog. I just can't help myself when it comes to the politics, I guess.

But we'll see where it goes. Hope you can join me there.

Yes We Can!

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:11:00 +0000

Anonymous to FBI and CIA: "You've been PUNK'D!"

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:22:00 +0000

Oh man, this has got to hurt any "intelligence" bureaucrat's ego:

Hackers claiming affiliation with Anonymous are taking credit for taking down the CIA's public site, exposing personal data from Alabama court records and pilfering e-mails from the Mexican mining agency, according to news reports. Other hackers hit the United Nations' site.

The CIA main site (cia.gov) is unavailable and apparently has been down for several hours as the result of a distributed-denial-of-service attack. A spokesman told CNN the agency was "looking into these reports." There's no indication hackers penetrated CIA computers or accessed sensitive information.

Anonymous announced the feat in a tweet. More here.

This comes just days after Anonymous allegedly hacked into the FBI's internal e-mail system, in which they found instructions for dialing into a conference call taking place between the FBI and Scotland Yard related to--and get this--anti-hacking investigations:

The hacking collective Anonymous managed to listen in on a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard as the law enforcement officers were discussing anti-hacking operations, the FBI admitted today.

Calling it "OpInfiltration," Anonymous members were allegedly able to steal a personal email which included instructions for dialing into the Jan. 17 private call. Today the group published a recording of the call -- which discussed the timing of planned arrests and identities of suspected hackers -- as well as the email addresses of the officials on it.

In the call, a Scotland Yard official discusses a few suspected hackers in particular, including a 15-year-old that the official calls "an idiot" and another that's "just a pain in the bum."

"Listen along, and laugh out loud at the law enforcement agents bumbling away," a description posted along with the recording said.

I'm no expert in computer hackery. My knowledge of computer hardware and software is pretty much limited to all that I really need to know to do what I want to do using a computer. But I have to wonder how much these feats are genuinely attributable to hacking skills and how much might be the result of people inside these government bureaucracies lending Anonymous a helping hand. There just may be some in those agencies who have axes to grind that may not even ideological in nature. Such a person could be sick and tired of being passed over for a promotion, or perhaps they're someone who's been warning these agencies for years of security deficiencies in their internal networks but were consistently ignored, so now they're going to teach their superiors a lesson, so to speak. There could be a variety of reasons for some FBI and/or CIA worker to turn into a "disgruntled employee."

But however Anonymous is able to do this, they are clearly making these government agencies look like confederacies of dunces. For decades we Americans have been conditioned to think that whether one may think of them as sinister, benign or heroic, the FBI and CIA are impenetrable, superhuman bureaucracies whose security simply cannot be breached. Of course even a brief overview of the critical literature reveals this perception to be a complete myth, but fortunately for the Washington consensus, most Americans don't read very much.

But they do pay at least some fleeting attention to the mainstream news outlets and they will see, at least for a moment, how these allegedly all-powerful central bureaucracies are really just as flawed and vulnerable as other forms of human organization, even more so. When you're able to fund your operations by means of mass theft and intimidation rather than by competing for patrons who are free to take or leave your services, you're bound to have lots and lots of blind spots.

The Ron Paul Question

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Nearly eight years ago, flush with the zeal of the newly converted anarchist libertarian, I passionately advocated for abstinence from voting under any circumstances—forever. Four years ago, I expressed my doubts hither and yon about Dr. Ron Paul’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, sniffing as I had done a few years earlier that it was somehow not properly anarchist/libertarian to ever vote for anyone in any government election for any reason, even if it was for a candidate who was vowing to do whatever he could to roll back state tyranny and oppression.

As the song goes, I was so much older then but I’m younger than that now.

Like monks debating the meaning of a catechism, there’s been an awful lot of debate and hand wringing over the past several months as to whether or not libertarians, particularly anarchist libertarians, should tread to local polls and sully themselves with the electoral process and cast a vote for Dr. Paul. With no apologies whatsoever to my former self, I will be casting a vote for him in Illinois’ open primary come March 20th. In light of Paul’s 52% win in the state’s GOP straw poll this past November, right in the heart of Obama country, I have a strong suspicion that there will be far more than a few others doing likewise.

Dr. Paul achieved a respectable third place finish in the Iowa GOP caucuses with 21% of the total votes cast and finished second in the New Hampshire primary, where he won 23% of the vote. Polling for the upcoming South Carolina primary in just a few days doesn't look as promising for him, where he's supposedly only looking at winning 12% to 16% so far. This comparatively low percentage may very well be due to that state's deep economic entrenchment in the military-industrial complex.

But Paul is winning far more votes this time around than he did four years ago. Most of the mainstream media, with very few exceptions, have been downplaying his gains as a revolt of masses of people who are just too dumb to vote the right way. There is something in the air here and it has a strong whiff of insurrection. That is, insurrection against the ruling establishment that for nearly an entire century now, if not longer, has arrogantly presumed that there is no power too great for them to assume, no morals or ethics too sacred for them to violate, and no foreign country too far out of reach for them to exploit and subjugate.

What have I got to lose? My anarchist soul? Hardly. None of us, whatever our political ideology, ever chose or consented to this state that we have lived under since birth. We have never had any choice in the matter, not in any meaningful way. Should any anarchists, then, really damn other anarchists for taking up the offer of the first man in who knows how many generations to stand up and fight to push back the creeping tyranny we have tolerated for far too long and widen the margins of liberty? A man who, in fighting this fight, is mocked mercilessly on nearly a daily basis as crazy, a kook, unfairly derided as a “racist,” smeared as an “isolationist” who supposedly wants to cut off America from the rest of the world, and yet he still goes before the cameras day after day after day, in the face of all the mockery and insults, to make the case for liberty and peace before a national audience.

In light of the steam that Ron Paul's presidential campaign appears to be gaining, it looks like there's a genuine opportunity here and it holds too much promise to let it slip away in the name of some abstract, impossible-to-achieve purity of the stateless soul. We should seize upon every strategy for maximizing liberty that’s available to us and clearly the Ron Paul campaign is one highly viable vehicle for that goal, even if it’s surely not the only one. There are many different paths available to those who love freedom and liberty, and right now the Paul campaign is one of the most effective we have. It takes the struggle straight to the den of liberty’s enemies, which is the electoral arena. Like it or not, that is still an arena that is paid much attention by the vast majority of Americans. Even if Paul ends up departing that arena in defeat, he will still have scored a great victory for liberty for having exposed that many more Americans to what he calls the freedom philosophy. As far as we anarchists are concerned, that should be seen as all to the good.

If none of what I’ve written above persuades my fellow anarchists very much, then they should keep in mind that there are quite literally human lives at stake. As president, Paul wants to bring the troops home from the Terror Wars abroad, cease the U.S. government’s unnecessary saber rattling toward Iran over their non-existent nuclear weapons program, roll back the inhumane, stupidly destructive War on Drugs and restore the now nearly destroyed protections of civil liberties in this country. Even if his campaign does not end in an electoral victory, with each additional vote he receives the rebuke against the current rulers is louder and louder, and the more and more their confidence in their wars and persecutions wanes.

And I am frankly sick and tired of helplessly standing by while the government that taxes me uses those revenues to assault and mutilate defenseless children. If Ron Paul is the guy who's volunteering to do whatever he can to end that evil madness, then hell yes I'm voting for him.

If you thought a vote had the potential to save a single human life, would you soil your pristine anarchist soul to participate in a government election?

I’m pretty sure I could live with that trade-off.

You Can't Say Nobody Tried to Warn You

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:16:00 +0000

It's Getting REAL in the U.S. of A.

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:11:00 +0000

(See the addendum at the end of this entry.)

"May you live in interesting times." I know a lot of people who think that is an ancient Chinese proverb. Wikipedia theorizes that it may actually have originated in the English language as no one has ever been able to find a Chinese source. It is supposed to be the first of three successively more severe curses, says the Wik, the subsequent ones being, "May you come to the attention of those in authority" and "May you find what you are looking for."

I would think that one should view being alive at any point in time to be interesting, but we are most definitely living in an interesting time by anyone's standard. And I would normally dig that, I really would. It's just that I'd rather not be living in an interesting time during which "interesting" is synonymous with scary as hell. As the urban youth lingo has it these days, it's getting real in the good ol' U.S. of A.

The most ominous of recent developments is the passage of certain provisions in the most recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the legislation passed annually by the U.S. Congress that specifies and authorizes the U.S. government's "national defense" budget, which was signed into law by President Obama when the country was too intoxicated with New Year's Eve celebrations to notice.

The scariest provision, which most people have heard or read by now, effectively makes the United States internally a legitimate battleground for U.S. military counter-terrorism operations and thus anyone on U.S. soil who is somehow "part of or substantially support[ing] al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners"--per the mere assertion of the president of the United States--is potentially subject to military style "justice," that being indefinite detainment by the U.S. military without any formal charges or a trial. The law allows the U.S. government to reserve the option of indefinite military detainment for U.S. citizens as well.

In light of the facts that a U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) was created in 2002, which effectively created a North American theater of military operations (regardless of how much they post the now meaningless phrase "Posse Comitatus Act" on their website); that the Pentagon has been giving away sophisticated military hardware to local police and sheriff's departments throughout the country (why does the Cobb County, Georgia police department need an amphibious assault tank???); that President Obama had two U.S. citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, assassinated by automated drones in Yemen on the basis of his own say-so that they were involved in terrorism for which still no solid evidence has been presented to the public; and that Predator drones are now being used within the U.S. itself for domestic law enforcement purposes--those developments make the current NDAA provisions all the more alarming.

Keep in mind that this is all against the background of an economic recovery that can be described as erratic at best and is not likely to pick up steam any time soon. It's been disclosed that the Federal Reserve System doled out a mind-blowing $16 trillion in ultra-cheap credit to corporations, banks and other financial institutions both in the U.S. and throughout the world. This most likely involved an extraordinary amount of monetary inflation that is bound to have incredibly severe and debilitating economic repercussions sooner or later.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to rattle their sabers at Iran and may very likely be preparing for some kind of regime change intervention for Iran's regional ally, Syria. The aforementioned NDAA includes new sanctions against the Iranian government, this time targeting foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran's central bank. This involves blocking Iranian oil exports to countries that do business with the U.S., though I should add that the bill graciously allows President Obama to grant exceptions as he sees fit. This breathtaking power grab over a significant portion of the global oil market--Iran is the fifth largest producer of crude oil in the world--must take effect within at least six months of the NDAA's signing by Obama, which would be by the end of June 2012.

I don't know much about the economics of oil, but I have to imagine that these sanctions on their own would result in escalating increases in the per-barrel price of crude oil for the long haul, unless the six-month warning gives other oil producing countries ample time to ramp up their own production in preparation for fulfilling any unsatisfied demand. (There have already been some increases in oil prices. Also see Pepe Escobar's latest piece on what he correctly calls an "economic war.") An increased cost of energy is something that millions of Americans already pushed into a financial corner really don't need right now, not to mention all those consumers in those countries that rely heavily on Iranian oil exports. ("Asian Spring," anyone?) I can't say I have that much confidence in Obama's omniscience that we should expect him to be able to use his newfound power over the global oil market in only the most stable and efficacious way.

But to make matters worse, the Iranians, who could only view the U.S. sanctions as yet another step toward war, have already threatened to seal off the Straits of Hormuz in retaliation. The U.S. has essentially vowed to take direct military action to reopen the Straits if necessary, even though former Obama adviser Dennis Ross, hardly the dovey peacenicky type, has said that the Iranian threats are more empty bluster than legitimate threat.

Meanwhile, the Iranian government has just sentenced to death a former U.S. Marine, Amir Mirza-Hekmati, a dual Iranian-American citizen they apprehended on charges of espionage, bidding up the stakes even further. Not to mention the latest development in the never-ending brouhaha over Iran's alleged but non-existent nuclear weapons program, which is that U.S. bureaucrats are now pissing themselves over the recent announcement that the Iranians have been able to achieve up to 20% uranium enrichment at an underground facility, which the Iranians insist is purely for medical technology. (Enrichment of at least 90% is required for uranium to be weapons-grade, but the U.S. government has never allowed scientific facts to get in the way of scaring up a good bogeyman before.)

If I didn't know any better, I'd say that what we have brewing here is a perfect shit storm of more and more foreign wars combined with massive inflation and economic/financial system crack-ups throughout the world and at home. Any domestic civil disturbances resulting from this highly potent concoction can now be swiftly answered with a massive crackdown by the U.S. government, with the assistance of highly militarized local law enforcement agencies, who have permitted themselves to quite literally make disappear anyone the president of the United States has subjectively defined as a party to "associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States."

May we all live to see this interesting time resolve itself into something other than a massive web of chaos, tyranny and oppression.

Happy New Year.

ADDENDUM: I was remiss in pointing out Becky Akers' recent piece about the the NDAA's indefinite detention provisions over at LewRockwell.com. She makes a very good point here:

Where does all this leave us, the potential "indefinite detainees"?

If history is any guide – and it may not be, given the internet and computers’ long memories – , we’ll escape relatively unscathed at first. Ever since Julius Caesar captured some of Rome’s senate, dictators have tended to focus on political rivals initially, in descending order of threat. If a civilian remains president of the US, he’ll begin spotting remarkable similarities between "terrorists" and his competitors for office. After he’s eliminated them, he’ll focus on Congress: tyrants by definition do not share their power. The craven curs who blithely sold our rights will be among the first to regret the sale – bitterly.

But there’s little reason to believe a civilian will continue as president: armed men usually shove unarmed ones out of the way. The empowered military will probably realize almost immediately what so many troops before it have: politicians are at best a nuisance and at worst an unwanted "partner" in their power.

Once the commanding general has consolidated the executive, legislative, and judicial branches in himself – and imprisoned or executed their former occupants – we’re next.

I doubt it ever crossed Sen. Lindsey Graham's feeble little mind that the law for which he barked like a rabid dog could potentially be turned against him and his partisans one day.

Striking Some More Roots

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:49:00 +0000

I'm once again pulling guest editor duty over at Strike-The-Root.com.

Check it out.

On Miscognitive Consonance

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:04:00 +0000

While perusing the Interwebs recently I came across an ad for something called Americans Elect 2012. They splash across their website such catchy slogans as "Elect a President, Not a Party" and "Help Make History: Every dollar you give helps put your choice on the 2012 ballot." You can sign a petition, submit names of your ideal candidates for government office, submit questions to them, and do all sorts of other fun activities designed to give you that warm, fuzzy, self-deceptive feeling that the gang of thugs who retain a monopoly of force over your life will for some who-knows-what reason, presumably out of a superhuman capacity for altruism, put your particular concerns before the concerns of their own monopoly.

And if you could kindly pitch a few coins into their collection plate to help keep up this comforting illusion, 'twould be much appreciated by them. They'll give you a few nice big pats on the back for your trouble.

What caught my eye was an ad they ran on Antiwar.com that asked "Who will Americans elect?"

Unable to help myself, I found the organization on Twitter and tweeted to them, "Have no idea who they'll elect, but sure whoever it is will be corporatist, militarist pig."

To which #AmericansElect replied, "We hope you'll participate and have your voice heard, so you can get your candidate on the ballot in 2012!"

The first thing that struck me was that there was a communication problem here, for to my knowledge there is no candidate seeking government office who so fundamentally opposes corporatism and militarism that they have pledged to grasp those evils by the roots and completely do away with them.

But I've come to the conclusion that it's more accurate to say that there was a cognitive problem. Communication is not possible between two parties in the first place if one of the parties fails to correctly apprehend the basic facts of reality. A lot of critics of the political status quo frequently refer to what is called cognitive dissonance, defined here as the discomfort one feels when simultaneously holding two conflicting ideas. But I'm not sure that's quite the proper characterization of #AmericansElect's reply to my tweet. I would instead say that they're suffering from a debilitating case of miscognitive consonance, which I define as simultaneously holding ideas that are very much in harmony with each other but are fundamentally at odds with the known facts. In dialogue, that can result in the kind of non-sequitur response that #AmericansElect gave me without them so much as blinking an eye.

If you honestly believe that the kind of tyranny and injustice wrought by the corporatism and militarism I cited in my initial tweet can somehow be corrected, reformed or even--gasp! dare I mention it?!--abolished by casting ballots for the "right people" with the "right ideas" every 2-4 years, then yes, I guess it would make perfect sense for me to spend my scarce time looking high and low for such people, to read up on everything written by and about them, and to spread the good word to people far and wide to be sure to press the right button on their voting machine come Election Day 2012.

But if, on the other hand, you recognize the fundamental facts of our sociopolitical reality, which are that virtually nobody with the gumption to seek any position of coercive government power, let alone the most powerful governmental office in the entire world, that being the presidency of the United States government, would ever--ever--forego the use of the aforementioned powers of corporatism and militarism, and that even if somebody who honestly and sincerely intends to do just that were to materialize on the scene there is no way in hell that the vast mutually reinforcing network of power hungry bureaucrats, crony state-capitalists and other assorted sycophants of state power would ever--ever--allow such a person to set foot anywhere near 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., then you must surely recognize elections as being totally useless enterprises.

I'm not saying that the electoral system is and always will be rigged against voters of my political value preferences, but rather that it is in and of itself the strong arm of the supreme obstacle blocking me and others from ever achieving those values. Which is why I don't vote.

I'd rather take my marbles elsewhere.

Wee luv are warz

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Voluntary Self-Revelation

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 06:10:00 +0000

Visa and MasterCard decided last year to cut off all services for facilitating donations to WikiLeaks on the grounds that the whistleblower site was engaging in "illegal" activities by posting hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government cables allegedly provided by Pfc. Bradley Manning, as well as the notorious "Collateral Murder" video.

It hasn't been exactly clear that WikiLeaks itself has even violated any one of the thousands of laws laid down by that territorial monopoly of force and violence known as the United States Government, even by that deadly institution's own broadly defined standards. But hey, as a libertarian who recognizes the right of voluntary association, which naturally implies every person's right to dissociate, I can appreciate that even setting aside issues of "legality," the credit card companies have every right to withhold their services from whomever they want for any reason they deem. They shouldn't be forced into associating with any other organization against their will. Perhaps now would be a fitting time to spell out just how it is that the customers of Visa and MasterCard don't quite enjoy an equal right of voluntary dissociation since those companies effectively have a captive customer base largely thanks to the privileges bestowed upon them by that previously mentioned institution of force and violence, but methinks that's a lengthy discussion that would be best served another time.

Perhaps the owners and managers of Visa and MasterCard believed the claims of government counsel Harold Koh that the mere publication of those cables, which were previously available only to a few million of the U.S. government's most trusted employees, would possibly endanger any of the countless innocents helping the U.S. government to carry on any one of its many foreign wars and military occupations. Of course, nobody has ever discovered a single specific instance of any innocent person's life being put in danger as a result of any of those cables being published by WikiLeaks, but hey, you just never know, right?

But legal or illegal, endangerment of the innocent or no danger at all, it sure is curious who Visa and MasterCard will serve without hesitation, as evidenced by this screen shot:

Courtesy of the WikiLeaks Facebook page.

Striking At the Root Today

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:15:00 +0000

I'm the guest editor of today's edition of Strike-The-Root.com.

Check it out.

The Terrible Old Man

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:09:00 +0000

Inequality of the Masses

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:04:00 +0000

New Strike-The-Root Piece; Unemployment; Bonhoeffer and Nazis; Revolutionary Moods

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:08:00 +0000

I have a new essay up at Strike-The-Root.com, "What I Saw and Heard at the Anti-War Protest." This is a little write-up of my observations of the US/NATO Out of Afghanistan protest I attended in Chicago on October 8th to mark the 10th anniversary of the Afghan War.

I've unfortunately been absent from blogging for quite awhile. This is largely due to having to spend much of my time lately job hunting. I was laid off about six or seven weeks ago from my bank job. Yes, I worked at a bank. In the real estate lending division, no less. On the one hand, I have to say I'm quite relieved that I'm no longer working in real estate finance, considering this little market crash that occurred in the last few years, which perhaps you've read about. On the other hand, even though I have a little nest of savings that should carry me, my wife and son for a little while, it's a little nerve-wracking that in the past several weeks I haven't been able to land another job.

In brighter news, I've been performing in a new play the past several weeks, Bonhoeffer's Cost, at Provision Theater in Chicago. This is a brand new piece written by Mary Ruth Clarke, who co-wrote the original story that became the movie Meet the Parents, and director Tim Gregory. Bonhoeffer's Cost tells the story of the German Lutheran pacifist theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was involved in the German anti-Nazi resistance and a larger plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. I'm happy to report that we've been packing in audiences with nearly sold out houses. So if you're in the Chicago area and would like an evening of thought provoking drama, buy yourself some tickets and come on over to Provision Theater. This play is running for only two more weekends and I'm told that those performances are selling out fast.

I'm planning to get back to doing some more blogging in the days and weeks and months ahead. There's been a helluva lot going on in the world these days. It feels as though the Earth is shifting beneath our feet. There are lots of people taking to the streets to vent their righteous anger and frustration at an economic system that's left lots of folks high and dry after they were forced to bail out Wall Street fat cats in order to save them from the consequences of their dumbass investment choices. Uncle's response to this revolutionary mood is, apparently, to try to gin up yet another stupid, costly, destructive war, this time against Iran.

We live in interesting times, whether we like that or not.

168

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 18:53:00 +0000

It's when I see news like this that I think, "Well thank goodness they raised the debt ceiling!"

Tiny Dancer

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:00:00 +0000

For anyone who remembers life in the 1970s--and that was the decade of my childhood--it has to give one a chuckle to look at this and think, "Aaaahhhh...simpler times, simpler times."

But they certainly were.

And I defy anyone who looks down their noses at rock 'n' roll or popular music to listen to this and deny that it can and often does rise to the level of great art.

Enjoy.

At the Mountains of Budgetary Bullshit Madness

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:00:00 +0000

As of this writing it appears that there may finally be a deal between Congressional Republicans and Democrats to resolve the ongoing crisis over the unjust limitations upon the U.S. government's ability to expand its vast mountain of debt. To which I say, praise be to the gods! It looks like we may not be cast into the economic abyss after all. Thank goodness! But there is still a chance that this agreement may not come to pass, which of course would spell certain doom for all mankind. For surely we would then be headed for a disaster of biblical proportions--fire and brimstone coming down from the skies; seas boiling; earthquakes; volcanoes; the dead rising from the grave; human sacrifice; dogs and cats living together--mass hysteria!

For surely if The People's Government does not permit itself to borrow another trillion dollars or two, the elderly will be cast into the streets like so much garbage! Our brave young men and women in uniform will not be able to continue our valiant government's ongoing wars against all the evil-doers of the world, particularly those who want to subject all of the peoples of the West to a transnational Islamofascist caliphate in which we'd all be forced at swordpoint to either live under sharia or die! All scientific and technological advancement would suddenly come to a complete stand-still and we would soon find ourselves living in caves, hunting and killing our food with our bare hands, much of which we wouldn't even be able to eat until we made the legally required animal sacrifices to Allah!

Oh, woe, woe be unto us if the U.S. government does not grant itself the privilege of sinking you, me and all of our countrymen into another couple trillion dollars' worth of debt!

Just think of it! Without an increase of U.S. government debt totaling at least $1-2 trillion, the poor central banks of the world would be reduced to beggary as all of our children turned into illiterate savages unable to even count to five! Doctors would have no choice but be forced to resort to such primitive practices as bloodletting and leeches! For what else could they do without the generous government subsidies for themselves and pharmaceutical companies? Oh, the horror! The horror!

To make matters worse, everywhere I turn I am confronted by faces of desperation.

That Nameless Thing To Come If The Federal Debt Limit Is Not Increased

All around me--neighbors, friends, family--all of them are wracked by fear and terror of That Nameless Thing To Come If The Federal Debt Limit Is Not Increased.

"Did you hear?" ask random strangers passing me by on the street, clutching at me, their bodies trembling as sweat runs down their foreheads into their bloodshot eyes. "Did you hear? The government may not be able to borrow another couple trillion dollars right now. We are doomed! Doomed, I tell you!"

Doomed, indeed.

I have locked myself and my family in our basement for fear of the terrifying chaos that would surely be unleashed upon all of humanity should the Republicans and Democrats of the U.S. Congress not agree on a deal to extend Uncle Sam's credit limit. Fortunately, I have enough food and water stockpiled to nourish us for the next few months, but what then? How will we and others survive after we have consumed all of our supplies, with brainless killer zombies roaming the land in search of the human brains they require to feed their mindless, parasitic existence--and all because the Congress could not agree on an increase in the Federal debt limit!

But I must not think of the killer zombies now. No, not now.

But I must confess that I am entirely consumed by fear of That Awful Entity That Would Surely Devour Us All Without A Raising Of The Federal Debt Ceiling.

But this latest news gives us all a ray of hope, however dim it may be. I shall continue to pray.

And I hope. Oh dear gods, I do hope.

May we all live to see the dawn.

Come Home, America!

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 11:00:00 +0000

I've recently added my name to hundreds of others (in the comments section) of a trans-ideological, multi-partisan open letter to President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress at the newly launched ComeHomeAmerica.us:

"Dear President Obama and Members of Congress:

"The wars in which the United States is currently engaged–in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Libya–are harming U.S. national and economic security, degrading the standing of the United States in the world community, fueling hatred abroad for Americans and undermining the rule of law. These unconstitutional wars have been justified on false premises, and most recently in the case of Libya there was not even the pretense of a congressional declaration of war, making it an impeachable offense. We urge you to end the current illegal wars and start a national dialogue about shifting U.S. foreign policy away from dominance through military might, and toward being a member of the community of nations.

"It is time to end all of these wars. It is time to initiate a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy away from domination of others through military strength and damaging sanctions. As a first step we urge a major withdrawal of soldiers from Afghanistan–as candidate Obama promised in 2008. This withdrawal should be at least as large as the 63,000 troop escalation the President put in place early in his presidency. This withdrawal should be defined as a clear first step to a complete withdrawal of all soldiers and private contractors from Afghanistan by the end of 2011. It is time to return to our Founders’ declared conception of the United States as a democratic Republic and not an Empire.

"The people signing this letter come from all segments of the political spectrum. We are conservatives and progressives, liberals and libertarians, from the right, left and center. We are Democrats, Republicans and independents. We represent a healthy and still vital American tradition, indicated by the fact that the majority of Americans want the United States to bring the soldiers home from these counterproductive and avoidable wars.

"The U.S. needs to normalize relationships with countries around the world, especially in the Middle East. We recognize that there are important natural resources in these areas. But we can achieve a sustainable economy in more effective ways than war and empire. The United States clearly has the wealth and knowledge to make this transition, and showing how it can be done would be an unparalleled service to our people and the world.

"This is the time for a profound shift in foreign policy. A perfect storm has demonstrated the urgent need to reconsider militarism and promiscuous interventionism:

"- The U.S. economy can no longer sustain a bloated military that spends as much on weapons and war as the rest of the world combined.

"- The U.S. economy is in dangerous straits with mass debt fueled in large part by military spending that makes up 55% of federal discretionary spending.

"- In war after war the US military has found that it cannot defeat people who seek to protect their countries and reject foreign domination, the very lesson of our own American Revolution.

"- Documents published by Wikileaks have added fresh evidence discrediting the idea of the U.S. being the 'good cop of the world.' Instead the world increasingly sees the U.S. government as one that dominates through threats, violence, bribery, spying and illegal actions, and is all too willing to use military force to achieve its ends. That is not the polity which the majority of Americans wish.

"- The rule of law has been undermined by ignoring Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which specifically states that Congress has the authority to declare war, not the president. Tactics used in recent wars, including torture and widespread abuse of prisoners, further undermine the rule of law.

"- Even with the raid on the Osama bin Laden refuge, the growth of stateless terrorism will not abate as long as the United States continues waging wars which commonly feature torture, midnight raids on families and the killing of innocent civilians.

"- War brings suffering on a massive scale and unnecessary war brings pointless suffering. Reliable reports indicate more than one million war dead in Iraq and millions more becoming refugees. There are constant reports of civilian deaths in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Libya.

"Mr. President and members of Congress, you have a historic opportunity to redirect U.S. foreign policy down the pathways of peace, liberty, justice, respect for community, obedience to the rule of law and fiscal responsibility. George Washington urged Americans to 'cultivate peace and harmony with all' and to 'avoid overgrown military establishments,' which are 'hostile to republican liberty.' It is time for Americans to reject fear and militarism and embrace the highest, noblest aspirations of our heritage. It is time to come home, America.

"Sincerely,*
[Please add your signature and hometown in the comment section below or write to akeaton at antiwar.com with 'Please Add Me' in the subject line.]"

It's nice to see that so many notable thinkers, academics and activists have signed their names to this letter: Medea Benjamin of CodePink; Austro-libertarian economist Walter Block; mutualist thinker Kevin Carson; legendary whistleblowers Daniel Ellsberg and Sibel Edmonds; Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report; David Henderson, libertarian economist with the Hoover Institution; Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation; historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel; libertarian legal theorist Stephan Kinsella; market anarchist philosopher Roderick Long; longtime activist Ralph Nader; Leftist historian Thaddeus Russell; libertarian legal scholar Butler Shaffer; anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan; anti-war writer Laurence Vance; Jesse Walker of Reason magazine; libertarian historian and activist Tom Woods...That's just a brief sampling of the long list of impressive names.

It's clear that more and more people in this country, whose politics can be pinpointed all over the ideological spectrum, are becoming increasingly alarmed about the decade long "War on Terror," not to mention the several hundred U.S. military installations (and counting) throughout the world. This vast waste of human life and scarce resources must stop immediately.

Please consider adding your name.

Rules of Engagement

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 02:29:00 +0000

Good guidelines to follow for discussion of topics related to politics and/or current events with people who disagree with you:

1.) Give the other person the benefit of the doubt that they are arguing just as much in good faith as you are. Neither you nor they should assume that the other is the embodiment of all evil in the universe, or even “shills” for Big Business, The “Homosexual Agenda,” The Christian Right, Neo-Confederates, the Ku Klux Klan, the Conspiracy to Destroy Western Civilization, etc., etc.

2.) Though you most certainly are entitled to express any opinion you wish to express, it is more helpful to your case when your opinion is actually based on some verifiable fact(s) of reality. To enter into any argument is to implicitly accept the laws of logic, of cause and effect. Basing your argument on appeals to emotion and feelings at the expense of facts and logic will be to simply expose your own ass to the other person and anyone else observing the discussion.

3.) Be open to the possibility of learning something from the other person, even if their ideological disposition is diametrically opposed to your own. You may learn certain facts that you didn’t know previously, which is always a plus even if you don’t agree with the other person’s interpretation of what those facts mean or imply. You don't know everything there is to know about a given topic or issue, Mr. Smarty Pants.

4.) Political disagreements are rarely—if ever—a good reason to sunder long valued friendships and family relationships. There may be some exceptions to this rule, such as advocacy of genocide, slavery, or human sacrifices, for example, in which case said discussant is most likely a sociopath and so there may then be very good reason to be wary of any further association with that individual. But short of someone defending those kinds of ideas, political differences are no good reason to abandon relationships with friends and family that have long enhanced your life in numerous ways.

Happy arguing!

Conservative Analysis and the Libertarian Non-Moment

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:54:00 +0000

It’s painfully obvious that America is nowhere near a “libertarian moment,” Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch’s Hegelian, wishful “analysis” notwithstanding. James P. Pinkerton very effectively proves why at The American Conservative, though ironically not by his factual analysis (or lack thereof), but by trotting out all the half-formed impressions and shibboleths that continue to be all too typical of the unexamined assumptions of American politics.

Pinkerton is right to point out that Hamilton wasn’t the only unlibertarian member of who Americans tend to ubiquitiously refer to as the “Founding Fathers,” which shows that libertarians should stop citing them as some sort of pantheon of libertarian gods. Most of them were only for liberty to the extent that it suited their own pursuit of power. But the premise implied by Pinkerton’s own Founding Father worship hardly makes him more right than Gillespie and Welch.

Oh, oh, oh…who is going to protect us from the rapacious, evil corporations? Pinkerton sounds like a typical Progressive Leftist. I have to wonder, if corporations are all by nature so evil, why has he fallen into the trap of using one of the most nefarious products of corporations, the personal computer, to spread his paranoid anti-free market delusions?

Oh, but the internet was invented by government bureaucrats, so presumably that’s what makes it so safe and effective. Only it wasn’t invented by the government–the intranet was invented by the government, and any government employee who used it could tell you how clunky and time consuming it was. It was only after it was opened up to market actors that it was transformed into the internet and became only more efficient and more satisfying to the users as time went on. That’s no reason for Gillespie and Welch to predict digital utopia, but in Pinkerton’s just as happily fact-free, assumption-driven world, government is the greatest source of technology and scientific advancement, a proposition that’s just as dubious and effectively countered by the facts. Did Thomas Edison invent the light bulb on the taxpayer's dime? Did Henry Ford work out his mass production plans under the direction of Federal bureaucrats?

To the extent that there are certain corporations who can and do profit at the expense of others rather than by satisfying their desires, who does he think enables, facilitates and provides the skewed, perverse legal framework for such exploitation? Hint: Corporations can’t write their own laws, pick other people's pockets, print up their own money and subsidize themselves, nor do they have their own armed thugs with the legal privilege of forcing others to do their bidding. It is coercive government that political entrepreneurs must lobby in order for them to benefit from its monopoly power to bully the populace, and it is ultimately government bureaucrats who decide who gets which shares of the spoils, or if there are even to be any spoils to be had, whether in the form of taxation and redistribution, tariffs, import quotas, prohibitions, patents, copyrights or any other form of privilege. Without coercive government, the corporation has to compete for every dollar it gets by fulfilling the needs and desires of others. Without government levying taxation on hundreds of millions, all costs of aggression would have to be internalized rather than externalized onto any hapless taxpayers, thus discouraging any tendency toward aggression by corporations.

But if Pinkerton actually bothered to read any libertarian thinkers other than the overgrown adolescents Nick Gillespie and former “warblogger” Matt Welch, he’d be aware of these arguments and could respond to them instead of building straw men.

Oh, and by the way, if one is really so afraid that Facebook or other social media could be conducting clandestine espionage, there’s a very neat solution to that: DON’T SIGN UP FOR IT. Contrast that with the government thugs who can tap your phones, record your conversations, feel you up and porno-scan you at airports, and yes, even kill you if the president of the United States wills it to be done.

But no, libertarians like myself are all wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and conservatives and liberals have reality and elections on their side. They have had politics on their side, to be sure, and, thanks to uncritical assumptions like Pinkerton’s, coupled with an unwarranted, ingrained faith in the efficacy of government elections, they will continue to dominate politics for the foreseeable future. But the reality is that profit seeking private entrepreneurs of all stripes and sizes have been doing everything possible to make life easier for their fellow men while it has been government bureaucrats and politicians who have endeavored to bring us nothing but pain and misery.

We have little choice but to rock on as best we can.

Happy Secession Day

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:00:00 +0000

Every Fourth of July (even though the Continental Congress had actually cast their votes for independence from the British Empire on the Second of July), Americans celebrate, whether they consciously recognize it or not, the idea of secession--or at least a historic event that was grounded in the right of secession as a fundamental political principle.

Here's to secession at every possible level--political, personal, spiritual. Here's to declaring your secession from all the many and varied kinds of tyrants of mind, muscle and soul.

Here's to freedom in all of its many dimensions.

The People's Republic of Sodor...?

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:00:00 +0000

My five-year-old son, like Robert Murphy’s little boy, has also been a lifelong Thomas the Tank Engine fan. And while I agree with Murphy that Thomas offers a lot of positive examples for children—peaceful cooperation, mutual respect, the virtues of a job well done, etc.—there are a few things about that show that have always gnawed at me just a little.

First off, it seems that Sir Topham Hatt has a nice little monopoly rule going on the Island of Sodor. Notice that there’s only one railroad on the entire island, and it’s owned and managed by Hatt. He has no competitors. Does he own all the other industrial concerns on the island as well? I can’t be positive--perhaps I’ve missed something--but it seems that he does. And while I’ve never been able to ascertain whether or not he in fact does retain a monopoly on final decision making authority over all disputes that arise on the island, it sure seems like it, judging from the many episodes that I've watched.

Second, all this “Really Useful Engine” talk, repeated over and over by Thomas and the other engines—it strikes me as some sort of utilitarian commie, power-to-the-proletariate sloganeering. And I don’t see that Thomas and his friends’ labor ever actually improve their living conditions. In fact, they seem condemned to sharing the same communal roundhouse no matter how much or how little they work. They maintain on the same level of subsistence day after day, year after year…as provided by Sir Topham Hatt and his crew. What motivates the engines is not the promise of higher living standards, but the fear of being scrapped. “From each according to his (useful) ability, to each according to his needs—or it’s to the dustbin of history for you, Comrade Tank Engine!”

Now, it may be objected that we’re talking about train engines here, not human beings, so of course they wouldn’t care to try and improve their living conditions.

Except that these “engines” have the ability to reason, choose values, and to act to acquire those values. They demonstrate the characteristics of free will. And they have those human-like faces. So are they all machine, or are they part human/part machine, like cyborgs? What kind of symbolic messages are these human-like machine creatures imparting to our children? Could it be, “Work as you’re commanded to work, no matter how little your life materially improves, for you are a machine that exists for the uses of others”? It’s damn creepy, I tell ya.

The more I think about it, the more it all sounds like the People’s Republic of Sodor to me. The fact that Thomas promotes the advantages of industrialism doesn’t necessarily make it a celebration of free market capitalism. The Soviet dictator Stalin, for example, was absolutely obsessed with transforming the USSR into an industrial society whether people wanted it or not.

I don’t know much about the political views of the late Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry, the English vicar who created Thomas. WikiPedia says that he was a pacifist who opposed England fighting in the Second World War. While I admire anti-war views, which I myself hold (though I believe pacifism to be a flawed position), it’s important to remember that, particularly in the early to mid-twentieth century, many anti-war folks generally held socialist political views in the deeply mistaken belief that socialism and peace went together as naturally as bread and butter. So it wouldn’t surprise me if Awdry subscribed to some kind of socialist dogma. But again, I can’t say for sure if he did or if he didn’t.

By now you’re probably asking yourself, “Is he kidding?” The answer is I’m half-kidding.

But subjective interpretation is an interesting thing.

On Blagojevich

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:58:00 +0000

I still stand by what I wrote about this whole tawdry affair two and a half years ago when he was removed from office:

"I feel no empathy for any power-seeking politician. If one gets tossed into the river by the other capos to swim with the fishes, well, he shouldn't be that surprised, and his cries of outrage will have no effect on my deaf ears. If you're going to run with that mob, then you deserve whatever they stick you with. There are a lot more people being railroaded by government legislators and prosecutors who are exponentially more deserving of my empathy than Rod Blagojevich.

"But as I've said before, this insipid idea being more or less blathered by the corporate media headbots that American democracy was this wondrous Eden until Blagojevich waltzed in and crapped all over it just about makes me want to vomit all over my next door neighbor's brand new Barack Obama commemorative china. I very nearly upchucked all over the steering wheel as I listened to several state senators via my car radio wax oratorical about why they were voting to remove G-Rod (as my wife likes to call him) from his privileged office.

"Blago, revoking his earlier pledge to refuse participation in his own political lynching, gave a speech in his own defense to the state senate shortly before their vote to remove him. The money quote:
"'There was never a conversation where I intended to break any law...take those four tapes as they are. Those are conversations relating to the things all of us in politics do in order to run campaigns and win elections.'

"I submit to you that this is what appalled his fellow tyrants so much: Stating explicitly what is the implicit philosophy of tax-funded office-holding itself, which is trading privileges for favors, and favors for privileges. The man spoke too damned honestly for his own good, and that's the real crime U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald caught him doing: Talking bluntly. And amazingly, I heard more than one of those senators pretty much own up to the fact that Blagojevich was indeed telling the truth. Yup, that's what we all do, and that's why I'm voting to remove him. This was typically followed by a lot of pointless blither-blather about the 'rule of law,' the need for 'ethics reform' in state government, and 'righting our ship'...Blah, blah, blah, blibbity-blahbbity-blah.

"If only a Federal prosecutor would file charges against Bush and Cheney for lying this country into a senseless, unnecessary, and destructive war and who knows how many other crimes. But to ever expect anything from government that resembles real justice, rather than mere knee-jerk reactions to having its game called out by one of its own, is pure fantasy, of course, and that's the tragedy of wanting government to operate contrary to its nature."

Rod Blagojevich is but one very, very, very teeny-weeny-tiny, insignificant tadpole in the scum-filled pond that is American statism. But people would rather focus their hatred and contempt on this little teeny-tiny tadpole because that's who the news media and their bosses--the biggest fish of all in the scum-filled pond--want them to hate.

Another way to look at this is to ask the question, "Who has Rod Blagojevich killed?"

Forcing Barack Obama to be pro-life:

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 02:01:00 +0000

Thank you, Tom the Dancing the Bug. (By way of Roderick Long.)

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings: 'Caleb Meyer'

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Kaercher) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0000