Here I was, thinking that there was going to be some sort of revolution in Iran. I'd even saved a draft entry just for that purpose. But that was not to be. The mullahs crushed the opposition and sent it back down into the underground. I get the feeling that when revolution finally does come to Iran, it won't be the "greens" doing it, and the American Empire will probably have collapsed first like an unwieldy business conglomerate, leaving the mullahs with no more "Great Satan" to build their dictatorship up against.
Here's the surprise. The revolution came to Araby first. Specifically, Tunisia.
If you've been paying attention to that part of the world, you know that the Arab countries are ruled by dictators and absolute monarchs propped up by American foreign aid and military power. The exception, of course, is Iraq, which is ruled directly by the US military as a colony, same as Afghanistan. The Arab kings and dictators are notoriously cruel and corrupt; many of them even use Islamists as symbiotic enemies or (in Saudi Arabia especially) as enforcers.
Now the dictatorship of Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali has fallen in Tunisia; he and his notoriously corrupt family have decamped to — surprise! — Saudi Arabia. Tunisians are a famously laid-back people. However, the Ben Ali/Trabelsi family mafia (there is no other word) enforced its absolute monopoly over the economy so brutally that they provoked their subjects to revolt. Now all the other autocrats in Araby are finding themselves at war with their own subjects, the fabled Arab Street. Expect more crowned heads to fall, and soon.
Why the Arab revolution came as a surprise to Americans: the image most of us have of Arabs is of savage headhunting barbarian jihadis battling Western Christendom over control of the Holy Land during the Crusades. You know, the crap they taught us in Sunday school. Al-Qaeda fits the Sunday-school stereotype all too well, perhaps even by design. Illusions fall hard, especially when they concern people outside our own petty tribe.
Some people are calling the revolution being fought in Tunisia the American Empire's 1989 moment. For those who remember, the 1989 Revolution was when the Soviet Union's "satellite" buffer colonies broke away from that rebranded Russian Empire. Keep in mind that the 2011 Revolution didn't start in American rival Iran, but in one of the more insignificant satellite régimes in a Mediterranean world turned American Mare Nostrum. And it's barely even begun...
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Wikileaks: World Infowar I
The article: WikiLeaks: Winning the Info War Despite Assange's Arrest (Time)
Since I posted last, Julian Assange has been arrested. Wikileaks' original sites, hosts, and funding sources have been ripped away from them by an enraged American imperial government. The government and the "lamestream" corporate media have lined up behind Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly in calling for Assange's head on a platter, preferably bloody, with his mangled corpse paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in a Roman-style military triumph.
The outcome is already clear to see. Wikileaks is already winning.
The hacker underground's anarchist statement of faith is: Information wants to be free. Sure enough, faced with an escalating worldwide US government crackdown, the Internet is striking back. Wikileaks may not have a host anymore, but it now has over 500 mirror sites, and the number will only grow. The guerrilla hacker group Anonymous are attacking the online operations of corporations complying with the crackdown using denial of service attacks just like the one the US government attacked Wikileaks itself with before the Cablegate release. It's no longer the American Empire against one pesky leaker of government secrets. It's now the American Empire against the entire hacker underground. To them, Julian Assange is a hero. And now he is also a martyr. His arrest may well be his "Martin Luther King in Birmingham Jail" moment.
If you're trying to defeat an enemy, the worst thing you can do is turn him into a martyr. The US did just this to a psychopath named Osama bin Laden by invading Iraq in order to steal its oil for America's oilman elite. Now they've done this to Assange, making him the David to America's Goliath.
When he was president, American revolutionary John Adams declared that America did not go out looking for monsters to fight. Today, America exists for no other reason than to fight monsters, and even mass produces them in order to fight them. Many vested interests and infinite profits depend on this. The war between the US and Wikileaks was not only necessary, it was inevitable.
For the first time, the decentralizing force of the Internet is beginning to show its full power. The ancient tradition of government, even "democratic", is military-based command and control, in which the people know their place and the rulers make sure they stay there. The Internet, on the other hand, was purposely designed to be decentralized; in the ultimate irony, the US military insisted on creating it that way, so that it could withstand a Soviet nuclear attack, during the Cold War. For security reasons, the Internet is structured to avoid what is called a single point of vulnerability. In a system with such a vulnerability, take out that single point and you take out the whole system with it. But if the system is completely decentralized, it becomes extremely difficult to destroy, if not impossible. Redundancy is security in cyberspace.
Now that Julian Assange is in jail and the original Wikileaks site is permanently down by American decree, the single point of vulnerability is now gone. 500+ hackers' mirror sites can't be taken down so easily. The Empire now faces a far more protean foe, one increasingly determined to bring the entire corporatist system down. The American rulers still think they can pull a Tiananmen and crush the revolt. The anarchists who saved Wikileaks are instead working to inflict on the ailing Empire the fate of another seemingly invincible Communist despotism: the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It's more than just a clash between an angry empire and an empowered rebel underground. For the first time, the traditional world system is facing its successor. America is now fighting the future. But now a growing international revolt is fighting for the future. And yes, believe it or not, I can even quote Ayn Rand on this:
Since I posted last, Julian Assange has been arrested. Wikileaks' original sites, hosts, and funding sources have been ripped away from them by an enraged American imperial government. The government and the "lamestream" corporate media have lined up behind Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly in calling for Assange's head on a platter, preferably bloody, with his mangled corpse paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in a Roman-style military triumph.
The outcome is already clear to see. Wikileaks is already winning.
The hacker underground's anarchist statement of faith is: Information wants to be free. Sure enough, faced with an escalating worldwide US government crackdown, the Internet is striking back. Wikileaks may not have a host anymore, but it now has over 500 mirror sites, and the number will only grow. The guerrilla hacker group Anonymous are attacking the online operations of corporations complying with the crackdown using denial of service attacks just like the one the US government attacked Wikileaks itself with before the Cablegate release. It's no longer the American Empire against one pesky leaker of government secrets. It's now the American Empire against the entire hacker underground. To them, Julian Assange is a hero. And now he is also a martyr. His arrest may well be his "Martin Luther King in Birmingham Jail" moment.
If you're trying to defeat an enemy, the worst thing you can do is turn him into a martyr. The US did just this to a psychopath named Osama bin Laden by invading Iraq in order to steal its oil for America's oilman elite. Now they've done this to Assange, making him the David to America's Goliath.
When he was president, American revolutionary John Adams declared that America did not go out looking for monsters to fight. Today, America exists for no other reason than to fight monsters, and even mass produces them in order to fight them. Many vested interests and infinite profits depend on this. The war between the US and Wikileaks was not only necessary, it was inevitable.
For the first time, the decentralizing force of the Internet is beginning to show its full power. The ancient tradition of government, even "democratic", is military-based command and control, in which the people know their place and the rulers make sure they stay there. The Internet, on the other hand, was purposely designed to be decentralized; in the ultimate irony, the US military insisted on creating it that way, so that it could withstand a Soviet nuclear attack, during the Cold War. For security reasons, the Internet is structured to avoid what is called a single point of vulnerability. In a system with such a vulnerability, take out that single point and you take out the whole system with it. But if the system is completely decentralized, it becomes extremely difficult to destroy, if not impossible. Redundancy is security in cyberspace.
Now that Julian Assange is in jail and the original Wikileaks site is permanently down by American decree, the single point of vulnerability is now gone. 500+ hackers' mirror sites can't be taken down so easily. The Empire now faces a far more protean foe, one increasingly determined to bring the entire corporatist system down. The American rulers still think they can pull a Tiananmen and crush the revolt. The anarchists who saved Wikileaks are instead working to inflict on the ailing Empire the fate of another seemingly invincible Communist despotism: the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It's more than just a clash between an angry empire and an empowered rebel underground. For the first time, the traditional world system is facing its successor. America is now fighting the future. But now a growing international revolt is fighting for the future. And yes, believe it or not, I can even quote Ayn Rand on this:
"Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today."
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Obama's Neocon Turn Makes A Peace Movement Possible Again
The article: Is a Peace Movement Finally Awakening? by Sheldon Richman of the Future of Freedom Foundation
We know what the New Right is all about: corporate socialism. They call it Big Government Conservatism, and it consists of corporate welfare at home, imperial expansion abroad, and a national security state powered by religious fanaticism worthy of Al-Qaeda. The liberal Left, however, was all but defanged by the election of a black president who talked the liberal talk. But now we know that he walks the neocon walk. Liberals are actually starting to come out of their closets and protest again.
Guess what this means? Now that the Great Black Hope has proved to be just another tyrannical Great White Father, a left-wing peace movement has become possible once again. We antiwar libertarians are starting to believe we won't be so lonely for long.
Where liberals and libertarians part, of course, is in their opinion of government. Liberals, descending from the social democrats of the 19th and 20th centuries, believe that government can be used as a force for good, a weapon against the oppression of the masses. Libertarians are far more cynical: expansion of government welfare leads inevitably to the supreme corporate welfare of war and empire, or the other way around if the empire wants to buy the masses' loyalty. The supreme statement of the libertarian position comes from early 20th century libertarian Randolph Bourne: "War is the health of the state."
But now Obama has shown his true colors. He is indeed bent on destroying America — but on behalf of his real owners: the banksters who lead the New Right and fund the TEA Party. He sold us a bill of goods, you see. The liberals are now a constituency without representation. Some of them are beginning to complain. As the war between the US and Wikileaks escalates, and as an increasingly frustrated US government threatens to abolish freedom of speech and unleash Soviet-style secret police tactics in order to defend the empire and its war policy, they may actually start to realize they may have to take to the streets again, perhaps all the way to the barricades.
But until then, antiwar libertarians and socialists will remain the proverbial prophets crying out in the wilderness...
We know what the New Right is all about: corporate socialism. They call it Big Government Conservatism, and it consists of corporate welfare at home, imperial expansion abroad, and a national security state powered by religious fanaticism worthy of Al-Qaeda. The liberal Left, however, was all but defanged by the election of a black president who talked the liberal talk. But now we know that he walks the neocon walk. Liberals are actually starting to come out of their closets and protest again.
Guess what this means? Now that the Great Black Hope has proved to be just another tyrannical Great White Father, a left-wing peace movement has become possible once again. We antiwar libertarians are starting to believe we won't be so lonely for long.
Where liberals and libertarians part, of course, is in their opinion of government. Liberals, descending from the social democrats of the 19th and 20th centuries, believe that government can be used as a force for good, a weapon against the oppression of the masses. Libertarians are far more cynical: expansion of government welfare leads inevitably to the supreme corporate welfare of war and empire, or the other way around if the empire wants to buy the masses' loyalty. The supreme statement of the libertarian position comes from early 20th century libertarian Randolph Bourne: "War is the health of the state."
But now Obama has shown his true colors. He is indeed bent on destroying America — but on behalf of his real owners: the banksters who lead the New Right and fund the TEA Party. He sold us a bill of goods, you see. The liberals are now a constituency without representation. Some of them are beginning to complain. As the war between the US and Wikileaks escalates, and as an increasingly frustrated US government threatens to abolish freedom of speech and unleash Soviet-style secret police tactics in order to defend the empire and its war policy, they may actually start to realize they may have to take to the streets again, perhaps all the way to the barricades.
But until then, antiwar libertarians and socialists will remain the proverbial prophets crying out in the wilderness...
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Barack Obama Jumps the Shark
The article: Obama Channels Reagan, and Risks Becoming Carter
Remember when I said, before the election catastrophe, that Rand Paul was over? Well, allow me to eat my words: he's not. In fact, he won. There can be only one reason why Rand Paul is not over:
Barack Obama is.
This time, he's gone too far. He's extended Bush's disastrous tax cuts for the rich! And without spending cuts to compensate. You know, Big Government Conservatism. Remember voodoo economics, the religion of Wall Street? You know, the magical thinking that claims tax cuts for the rich without spending cuts will cut deficits? He's now its most ardent acolyte. He's now defending his support of the Republican agenda against the liberal base that elected him. The people who voted for hope and change in 2008 are now every bit as unrepresented as the British colonials who started the American Revolution.
Even earlier, not long after he rode the wave of hope and change into office, he betrayed the millions of actual liberals who voted him into the White House by going to West Poing to announce a George W. Bush surge in the Afghan war. This war, like any other colonial war against the Middle East, has never been for the purpose of preserving freedom. Its only purpose is profit for the corporate welfare kings, particularly the oil barons and war profiteers. That's when he strangled all his beautiful promises in the crib, promises he never had any intention of ever keeping.
Now the man the TEA Party thinks is a Kenyan-born agent of Osama bin Laden has completed his transformation into a neocon. Yes, he is determined to destroy America. But with enemies like Obama, do Al-Qaeda even need friends? His plan for the destruction of America was written by America's corporate owners on Wall Street and their agents in the Republican Party. This is the beginning of the end of Obama's one and only term as president, for he has now definitively jumped the shark. Only the neocons are left in government now. There is only one party left, the party of corporatism and empire. The US government does not belong to the people, and never has; it is democratic only in theory, but oligarchic in design. Today, America is not its people but its corporations.
Obama's failure is the failure of the Democratic Party. The Republicans may be at each other's throats to the point that it threatens to split in two; but it's the Democratic party that's collapsing. The Democrats are an echo of the Republicans. An echo, not a choice. If the GOP is the Evil Party in the 1 1/2-party system that H.L. Mencken described almost a century ago, then the Dems can only be the Stupid Party.
No wonder they got clobbered by the TEA Party reactionaries in the '10 election! But said rebels are also signalling their eagerness to sell out to our corporate slavemasters. They shouldn't expect to be immune from the populist backlash, either, when the reckoning comes in two years.
I tell you, it's going to get ugly come 2012. Watch the Democratic primary. And don't bet on the incumbent winning it.
Back to Take Nothing On Faith...
Remember when I said, before the election catastrophe, that Rand Paul was over? Well, allow me to eat my words: he's not. In fact, he won. There can be only one reason why Rand Paul is not over:
Barack Obama is.
This time, he's gone too far. He's extended Bush's disastrous tax cuts for the rich! And without spending cuts to compensate. You know, Big Government Conservatism. Remember voodoo economics, the religion of Wall Street? You know, the magical thinking that claims tax cuts for the rich without spending cuts will cut deficits? He's now its most ardent acolyte. He's now defending his support of the Republican agenda against the liberal base that elected him. The people who voted for hope and change in 2008 are now every bit as unrepresented as the British colonials who started the American Revolution.
Even earlier, not long after he rode the wave of hope and change into office, he betrayed the millions of actual liberals who voted him into the White House by going to West Poing to announce a George W. Bush surge in the Afghan war. This war, like any other colonial war against the Middle East, has never been for the purpose of preserving freedom. Its only purpose is profit for the corporate welfare kings, particularly the oil barons and war profiteers. That's when he strangled all his beautiful promises in the crib, promises he never had any intention of ever keeping.
Now the man the TEA Party thinks is a Kenyan-born agent of Osama bin Laden has completed his transformation into a neocon. Yes, he is determined to destroy America. But with enemies like Obama, do Al-Qaeda even need friends? His plan for the destruction of America was written by America's corporate owners on Wall Street and their agents in the Republican Party. This is the beginning of the end of Obama's one and only term as president, for he has now definitively jumped the shark. Only the neocons are left in government now. There is only one party left, the party of corporatism and empire. The US government does not belong to the people, and never has; it is democratic only in theory, but oligarchic in design. Today, America is not its people but its corporations.
Obama's failure is the failure of the Democratic Party. The Republicans may be at each other's throats to the point that it threatens to split in two; but it's the Democratic party that's collapsing. The Democrats are an echo of the Republicans. An echo, not a choice. If the GOP is the Evil Party in the 1 1/2-party system that H.L. Mencken described almost a century ago, then the Dems can only be the Stupid Party.
No wonder they got clobbered by the TEA Party reactionaries in the '10 election! But said rebels are also signalling their eagerness to sell out to our corporate slavemasters. They shouldn't expect to be immune from the populist backlash, either, when the reckoning comes in two years.
I tell you, it's going to get ugly come 2012. Watch the Democratic primary. And don't bet on the incumbent winning it.
Back to Take Nothing On Faith...
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Wikileaks: The Pentagon Papers Escalating into Watergate -- and More
Remember the BP disaster, America's Chernobyl? It gets better! All this year, Wikileaks has been posting all kinds of classified US government material that was leaked by a single disgruntled Army private named Bradley Manning. I haven't been keeping track of the disaster that's been snowballing for the American Empire here, since in recent months I've been too busy retweeting the news. Thus, I missed the opportunity to comment on what I immediately recognized as the Iraq/Af-Pak War counterpart to the Pentagon Papers (which you can read here). Now that this new Pentagon Papers scandal is exploding into a full-blown Watergate, I have to say something. First: a quick rundown of the events:
- On April 5, Wikileaks released classified video of an American helicopter attack intended to massacre Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, and for no other reason. Wikileaks' name for the incident: Collateral Murder.
- On July 25, they released over 90,000 classified US military documents on the Afghan war, collectively known as the Afghan War Diary. This was what reminded me of the Pentagon Papers. Once again, the Empire got egg on its collective face.
- On October 22, they released nearly 400,000 secret US Army field reports in the biggest leak in American military history, known as the Iraq War Logs. This leak focused not just on American massacres of unarmed civilians, but the occupation authorities' tolerance of murders by the Iraqi police and military.
- November 28 was the first day of the most embarrassing leak yet, which Wikileaks has dubbed Cablegate and Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com calls simply The Big Dump. The first 291 of over 250,000 diplomatic cables from the US State Department were released. In an attempt to stop it and hopefully destroy Wikileaks, the US government had a cyberagent codenamed "Jester" pull a massive denial of service attack against the site. The attack failed; the site was back up within hours and began releasing the cables. Still, Obama and Clinton warned every single government leader in the world about the leak right before it started.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Al-Qaeda Is A Cult
The article: "Can Utilizing Knowledge of Cults Help Us with Terrorist Groups?" by Steven Hassan
Some of you will surely dispute me on this, the same way people disagree when I insist that there is no such thing as a split infinitive. Some will insist Al-Qaeda is strictly a "terror organization". As with the alleged split infinitive in English, this is really a semantic quibble. I look at it structurally. The Manson Family and Aum Supreme Truth committed some of history's most infamous acts of terrorism, but they have always been seen as what they are: doomsday cults. Structurally, in organization and doctrine, Al-Qaeda is clearly a cult.
The author of the linked article, Steven Hassan, is a former Moonie (Sun Myung Moon/Unification Church cultist) turned cult expert. His experience in a cult allows him to know a cult when he sees it. I decided to write this entry when I read his article and realized that he was saying publicly what I already believed but hadn't told anybody yet (except maybe my mother and brother). He begins: "When is it time to start recognizing that Al Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups are cults?"
Some of you will surely dispute me on this, the same way people disagree when I insist that there is no such thing as a split infinitive. Some will insist Al-Qaeda is strictly a "terror organization". As with the alleged split infinitive in English, this is really a semantic quibble. I look at it structurally. The Manson Family and Aum Supreme Truth committed some of history's most infamous acts of terrorism, but they have always been seen as what they are: doomsday cults. Structurally, in organization and doctrine, Al-Qaeda is clearly a cult.
The author of the linked article, Steven Hassan, is a former Moonie (Sun Myung Moon/Unification Church cultist) turned cult expert. His experience in a cult allows him to know a cult when he sees it. I decided to write this entry when I read his article and realized that he was saying publicly what I already believed but hadn't told anybody yet (except maybe my mother and brother). He begins: "When is it time to start recognizing that Al Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups are cults?"
Thursday, June 3, 2010
American Chernobyl: The BP Disaster
You've heard all about the BP oil spill, on TV and online, in the business and environmental and political news. Well, guess what? The Republican Party and the TEA Party are loudly defending the sovereign right of BP's corporate raider owners to destroy whatever the hell they damn well feel like, in the name of the "free market". The problem with BP is that the "free market" is hardly free at all. The problem is corporatism.
Corporatism, a form of synarchism, is socialism for giant corporations and the financial elite. Its core policy consists of privatizing profit while socializing risk and harm. To that purpose, the government enacts protectionist laws to restrict competition. Private business is completely embedded in government and should be considered a branch of government.
Yes, free markets exist, even in America. But the oil industry is not one of them. It is controlled by a corporatist monopoly cartel, some of whose members (most notably ARAMCO) are owned by fundamentalist Islamic dictatorships and absolute monarchies.
Corporatism requires state socialism in order to prevent competition. But competition is the lifeblood of any true free market. No free competition means no free market. The oil cartel bought the US presidency for Enron executive George W. Bush with corporatist state socialism as its mandate to him. He corporatized the US government faithfully, going so far as to use the US armed forces as the cartel's mercenaries to pirate the oil from Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon (and this will be faithfully carried out by future corporate lawyer Barack Obama) Iran.
Chernobyl was the inevitable result of Russian state socialism under the Soviet Union. I've heard tweets that the BP disaster is Obama's Hurricane Katrina. It is not. It is American corporatism's Chernobyl. It is destroying the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea the same way that nuclear meltdown destroyed a corner of Ukraine. It's not just BP that's to blame. The entire oil cartel, the US government, the irresponsible financial elite, and the entire system of corporatism are to blame. The bad karma is theirs, and that of their "populist" apologists for corporate dictatorship.
Chernobyl was the omen of Communism's collapse. The BP oil disaster, the American Chernobyl, is the same thing. Soon American Corporatism will follow Russian Communism into the trash compactor of history.
Corporatism, a form of synarchism, is socialism for giant corporations and the financial elite. Its core policy consists of privatizing profit while socializing risk and harm. To that purpose, the government enacts protectionist laws to restrict competition. Private business is completely embedded in government and should be considered a branch of government.
Yes, free markets exist, even in America. But the oil industry is not one of them. It is controlled by a corporatist monopoly cartel, some of whose members (most notably ARAMCO) are owned by fundamentalist Islamic dictatorships and absolute monarchies.
Corporatism requires state socialism in order to prevent competition. But competition is the lifeblood of any true free market. No free competition means no free market. The oil cartel bought the US presidency for Enron executive George W. Bush with corporatist state socialism as its mandate to him. He corporatized the US government faithfully, going so far as to use the US armed forces as the cartel's mercenaries to pirate the oil from Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon (and this will be faithfully carried out by future corporate lawyer Barack Obama) Iran.
Chernobyl was the inevitable result of Russian state socialism under the Soviet Union. I've heard tweets that the BP disaster is Obama's Hurricane Katrina. It is not. It is American corporatism's Chernobyl. It is destroying the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea the same way that nuclear meltdown destroyed a corner of Ukraine. It's not just BP that's to blame. The entire oil cartel, the US government, the irresponsible financial elite, and the entire system of corporatism are to blame. The bad karma is theirs, and that of their "populist" apologists for corporate dictatorship.
Chernobyl was the omen of Communism's collapse. The BP oil disaster, the American Chernobyl, is the same thing. Soon American Corporatism will follow Russian Communism into the trash compactor of history.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Rand Paul Is Over: or, Why Conservative Libertarianism Is a Contradiction in Terms
The article: "Rachel Maddow Demolishes Rand Paul" by Joan Walsh, Salon
Yesterday, "fighting liberal" MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow interviewed Kentucky senatorial candidate and "TEA Party" favorite Rand Paul on her show after he crushed his establishment opponent, secretary of state Trey Grayson, in the Republican primary election. Joan Walsh insists Maddow won big. Ray Beckerman is not so sure. Me, I had to see for myself. So I read Walsh's article and watched the interview. When it was over, I realized that Walsh was spot on. Toward the end of the interview, I got the feeling that I was witnessing a fatal car wreck as it was happening and watching the driver die right in front of me: what I witnessed was the complete self-destruction of the New Right's rising superstar in the span of half a minute. In effect, even despite himself, Paul defended the nasty racial protectionism called Jim Crow, convicting himself of not just racism but statism. He outed himself as a conservative. He didn't sound libertarian to me: he extolled the economic freedom of corporations, pointedly including racist owners of lunch counters, while spitting on individual freedom in the form of consumer choice, which Jim Crow was designed to restrict. My verdict: Maddow crushed him, ending his political career in front of the whole world. Rand Paul is over.
Yesterday, "fighting liberal" MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow interviewed Kentucky senatorial candidate and "TEA Party" favorite Rand Paul on her show after he crushed his establishment opponent, secretary of state Trey Grayson, in the Republican primary election. Joan Walsh insists Maddow won big. Ray Beckerman is not so sure. Me, I had to see for myself. So I read Walsh's article and watched the interview. When it was over, I realized that Walsh was spot on. Toward the end of the interview, I got the feeling that I was witnessing a fatal car wreck as it was happening and watching the driver die right in front of me: what I witnessed was the complete self-destruction of the New Right's rising superstar in the span of half a minute. In effect, even despite himself, Paul defended the nasty racial protectionism called Jim Crow, convicting himself of not just racism but statism. He outed himself as a conservative. He didn't sound libertarian to me: he extolled the economic freedom of corporations, pointedly including racist owners of lunch counters, while spitting on individual freedom in the form of consumer choice, which Jim Crow was designed to restrict. My verdict: Maddow crushed him, ending his political career in front of the whole world. Rand Paul is over.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Ayn Rand, Religion, and the Problem with the New Atheists
You've probably heard of the so-called "New Atheists": Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris. Their books against religion are red-hot in a still religion-mad America. However, there's a shrillness about their tone that outrages even many atheists. That shrillness, especially in Harris, struck me immediately as very familiar. It's the same tone you find in a figure I discovered three years after her death (i.e., in 1985); one whose books have been remarkably consistent bestsellers ever since they were published in the mid-to-late 20th century; one whose heavy influence Harris openly acknowledges: Ayn Rand. Problem is, Rand is notorious as the guru of a cult.
Rand was one of the true founders of the New Atheism, one of its two twentieth-century godmothers. The other was Madalyn Murray O'Hair, founder of American Atheists, who dedicated her life to relentless struggle against religion. Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris aren't fighting a new battle; they have simply picked up the swords left by the founding mothers of their movement.
I was once a closet believer in Rand's philosophy, unknown to anyone in the movement. (In my first decade on the Internet, roughly 1995-2005, I was strictly a lurker, keeping my presence hidden; I similarly didn't reveal myself to the online Objectivists.) I'm familiar with her writings, not just her three major novels but her many books of essays. I also studied the history of Rand, her philosophy which she named Objectivism, and the movement she founded on it. I'm as familiar with the philosophy as just about anybody in the movement. My entire realist worldview derives to a very large degree from Rand's. But there's something about how Rand led the movement, and in how she wrote, that is suspiciously religious. Many have gone so far as to call Objectivism a cult: Murray Rothbard (the free-market economist and a former Rand associate), Michael Shermer, Albert Ellis, and Jeff Walker, among others. Even no less a figure than Rand's one-time protégé, Nathaniel Branden, has made a detailed critique of Rand's philosophy, pointing out its weaknesses, which happen to be the most religious of her tenets.
Rand was one of the true founders of the New Atheism, one of its two twentieth-century godmothers. The other was Madalyn Murray O'Hair, founder of American Atheists, who dedicated her life to relentless struggle against religion. Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris aren't fighting a new battle; they have simply picked up the swords left by the founding mothers of their movement.
I was once a closet believer in Rand's philosophy, unknown to anyone in the movement. (In my first decade on the Internet, roughly 1995-2005, I was strictly a lurker, keeping my presence hidden; I similarly didn't reveal myself to the online Objectivists.) I'm familiar with her writings, not just her three major novels but her many books of essays. I also studied the history of Rand, her philosophy which she named Objectivism, and the movement she founded on it. I'm as familiar with the philosophy as just about anybody in the movement. My entire realist worldview derives to a very large degree from Rand's. But there's something about how Rand led the movement, and in how she wrote, that is suspiciously religious. Many have gone so far as to call Objectivism a cult: Murray Rothbard (the free-market economist and a former Rand associate), Michael Shermer, Albert Ellis, and Jeff Walker, among others. Even no less a figure than Rand's one-time protégé, Nathaniel Branden, has made a detailed critique of Rand's philosophy, pointing out its weaknesses, which happen to be the most religious of her tenets.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
It's Official: No, Obama Can't, And He Never Wanted To Anyway
The articles:
- Tom Sullivan: President Obama Loses His Base: He Just Ran Out of Slack
- Glenn Greenwald: White House as helpless victim on healthcare and The underlying divisions in the healthcare debate
- Matt Taibbi: Obama's Big Sellout
- David Sirota: The "Candidate vs. President" Canard
- Barack Obama is not a progressive.
- Barack Obama is a bought and paid-for conservative Clintonite corporate shill who is selling out American democracy to corporatist dictatorship.
- Barack Obama has officially jumped the shark.
Friday, December 11, 2009
On the other hand, he's actually done some things right...
The page: The Obameter: Obama's Campaign Promises that are Promise Kept In previous posts entitled "No He Can't" (part 1 and part 2), I've harshly criticized President Obama's insistence on continuing his predecessor George W. Bush's imperial wars and white-elephant bank bailout, and his willingness to sign a health care reform bill that is little different from Bush's corporate-welfare Medicare reform bill. On the really big issues, then, it seems he's the typical cowardly Democrat who kowtows to Operation Permanent Republican Administration. It's the little issues where he actually succeeds, as this entry's featured link should prove. (And it helps that he doesn't like Bush any more than I do.)
Now click that link again and pay close attention. On the war, promises 134 and 167 are the ones I'm so harshly criticizing. But remember, he actually did promise to escalate the war in Afghanistan till Osama bin Laden is dead, Al Qaeda is annihilated, and the Taliban crushed. The last is impossible, though, since the war itself is empowering the Taliban extremists. Colonial war tends to do that. Think: Viet Cong. Still, he's criticizing the Bush-Cheney cowboy chauvinism and fundamentalist Americanism. But still, by escalating the Afghan war and spreading it into Pakistan, he's created his Vietnam. Remember, the Vietnam War destroyed not one but two presidents, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
Even so, he's promised to end Bush's pet war, the one in Iraq (promises 119 and 125), though so far he hasn't gone so far as to actually de-escalate it, at least not yet.
I like promise 222, loosening restrictions against Cuba. Still, he should end the embargo completely and restore diplomatic relations; that would eliminate the perceived necessity for all that Cold War nationalist bluster on both sides.
He's also kept his promises on other issues, some dear to liberals (or which should be), others reversing repressive, theocratic, and anti-scientific decrees and laws signed into law by Bush. So you can't say Obama hasn't done any good things as president — unless, of course, you're an irrational wingnut neocon or born-againer who hates his guts, thinks he's not even American, and maybe even wants to kill him (the Psalm 109:8 controversy).
It's only on the big issues that he's failed. (With one exception: little by little, he's starting to take little steps toward ending the long-standing and destructive policy of drug prohibition, though it's partly because of the increasingly violent drug war in Mexico.) But it's the big issues that threaten to destroy not just his presidency, but the country. Ultimately, the oligarchic republican system established in 1787 is unsustainable, and will have to be superseded by something far more democratic. The criticism and praise will continue as his term progresses and he keeps or breaks his promises. Keep your eyes peeled, your ears to the ground, and stay tuned...
Now click that link again and pay close attention. On the war, promises 134 and 167 are the ones I'm so harshly criticizing. But remember, he actually did promise to escalate the war in Afghanistan till Osama bin Laden is dead, Al Qaeda is annihilated, and the Taliban crushed. The last is impossible, though, since the war itself is empowering the Taliban extremists. Colonial war tends to do that. Think: Viet Cong. Still, he's criticizing the Bush-Cheney cowboy chauvinism and fundamentalist Americanism. But still, by escalating the Afghan war and spreading it into Pakistan, he's created his Vietnam. Remember, the Vietnam War destroyed not one but two presidents, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
Even so, he's promised to end Bush's pet war, the one in Iraq (promises 119 and 125), though so far he hasn't gone so far as to actually de-escalate it, at least not yet.
I like promise 222, loosening restrictions against Cuba. Still, he should end the embargo completely and restore diplomatic relations; that would eliminate the perceived necessity for all that Cold War nationalist bluster on both sides.
He's also kept his promises on other issues, some dear to liberals (or which should be), others reversing repressive, theocratic, and anti-scientific decrees and laws signed into law by Bush. So you can't say Obama hasn't done any good things as president — unless, of course, you're an irrational wingnut neocon or born-againer who hates his guts, thinks he's not even American, and maybe even wants to kill him (the Psalm 109:8 controversy).
It's only on the big issues that he's failed. (With one exception: little by little, he's starting to take little steps toward ending the long-standing and destructive policy of drug prohibition, though it's partly because of the increasingly violent drug war in Mexico.) But it's the big issues that threaten to destroy not just his presidency, but the country. Ultimately, the oligarchic republican system established in 1787 is unsustainable, and will have to be superseded by something far more democratic. The criticism and praise will continue as his term progresses and he keeps or breaks his promises. Keep your eyes peeled, your ears to the ground, and stay tuned...
Thursday, December 10, 2009
No He Can't, Part 2: Obama Says War Is Peace, Jumps The Shark
The article: Nobel-winning Obama defends war in call for peace - Yahoo! News
So the latest chickenhawk warlord who rules the world, who might as well be called George Bush III because he loves loves LOVES war so much, the neocon in liberal's clothing called Barack Hussein Obama, accepts the Nobel Peace Prize in order to defend the negation of peace. He pays lip service to the peacemakers, then defends his true calling, All-Conquering Khan of the World, his true title. Apparently God's got him on Shrub Bush's hotline! "Some will kill; some will be killed." But what's important is that the killing must must MUST continue, at all costs! For the infinite glory and profit of America's corporate welfare kings!
Barack Hussein Obama, the smooth-talking Chicago conman who convinced us that he's a liberal but is really the second coming of Emperor Shrub, has now definitively jumped the shark. If you remember the 2008 US presidential election, Obama was elected by an antiwar majority. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were going badly and bankrupting the country. But not only did the new president continue Bush's bailout of his big banker friends, he escalated both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and is waiting like Bush for the perfect excuse to invade Iran in order to save damsel in distress Israel. He ended up being more of the same, only with the silver tongue of the Devil and a convincing liberal façade. The neocon warhawks are having multiple orgasms over their former seeming enemy's total conversion to the cause of empire.
So the latest chickenhawk warlord who rules the world, who might as well be called George Bush III because he loves loves LOVES war so much, the neocon in liberal's clothing called Barack Hussein Obama, accepts the Nobel Peace Prize in order to defend the negation of peace. He pays lip service to the peacemakers, then defends his true calling, All-Conquering Khan of the World, his true title. Apparently God's got him on Shrub Bush's hotline! "Some will kill; some will be killed." But what's important is that the killing must must MUST continue, at all costs! For the infinite glory and profit of America's corporate welfare kings!
Barack Hussein Obama, the smooth-talking Chicago conman who convinced us that he's a liberal but is really the second coming of Emperor Shrub, has now definitively jumped the shark. If you remember the 2008 US presidential election, Obama was elected by an antiwar majority. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were going badly and bankrupting the country. But not only did the new president continue Bush's bailout of his big banker friends, he escalated both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and is waiting like Bush for the perfect excuse to invade Iran in order to save damsel in distress Israel. He ended up being more of the same, only with the silver tongue of the Devil and a convincing liberal façade. The neocon warhawks are having multiple orgasms over their former seeming enemy's total conversion to the cause of empire.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Obama? No. He Can't.
When Barack Obama was campaigning for President, he made all these promises to the American people to try and get us to vote for him. His campaign slogan: "Yes, We Can!" Since then, he hasn't followed through with hardly any of his campaign promises, and most of those were early in his presidency. Lately, he's been spending too much time appeasing the most conservative Republicans and "Blue Dog" Democrats and the megacorporate lobbyists who own them to actually push through any real reforms. He's losing big support among his liberal base in the Democratic Party. And now he's supporting Sen. Max Baucus' anti-consumer, corporate-welfare version of health care reform; all but puts agribusiness in charge of the US Department of Agriculture; and proving that he doesn't deserve his Nobel Peace Prize by giving in to Bush's generals and secretly escalates the war in Afghanistan.
Obama has started to resemble a Lyndon Johnson in blackface. Johnson started out as a popular reform president only to lose it in Vietnam, and ended up one of the most hated presidents in American history. And we thought Obama was a liberal. We are realizing the truth:
No, he can't.
Obama has started to resemble a Lyndon Johnson in blackface. Johnson started out as a popular reform president only to lose it in Vietnam, and ended up one of the most hated presidents in American history. And we thought Obama was a liberal. We are realizing the truth:
No, he can't.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Extra! AP Declares War On Internet!
#Bloggers ap #censorship
In June, the Associated Press filed a lawsuit against the Drudge Retort. The Retort claimed that citing an AP article falls under the fair use law. The AP insists that any citation other than a link constitutes plagiarism under the draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act (full text in PDF format here). Under the new AP copyright policy, it is forbidden to copy even one word from an AP article without payment. The cost for quoting? $2.50 per word!
You know what this means.
The Associated Press has declared war against the Internet.
In June, the Associated Press filed a lawsuit against the Drudge Retort. The Retort claimed that citing an AP article falls under the fair use law. The AP insists that any citation other than a link constitutes plagiarism under the draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act (full text in PDF format here). Under the new AP copyright policy, it is forbidden to copy even one word from an AP article without payment. The cost for quoting? $2.50 per word!
You know what this means.
The Associated Press has declared war against the Internet.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Going Public Again
I've neglected my opinion blog here since, actually, Inauguration Day. For some reason, despite my strong opinions and my desire to keep up with current events, I couldn't think of anything to write. I've posted lots of entries on my main and opinion blogs in the past six months, but nothing here. Since then, my attitude has mellowed some; I'm no longer quite the "angry young man" I was last year (this post on my main blog explains part of the reason). But now I feel I'm ready to take on the world again, so I intend to post here regularly now.
Here's a few of the current events that I'm keeping up on right now:
But I'm not going to neglect my opinions and philosophy, either. This blog isn't purely political; I don't call it my opinion blog for nothing.
I hope to post at least once a week at minimum.
Update: Sarah Palin wants her own radio show! Interesting choice for someone who keeps attacking the media. Even so, whenever people ask me about the Alaskan ex-governor's future, I always tell them "Fox News". I have to say it: I told you so!
Here's a few of the current events that I'm keeping up on right now:
- The Iranian revolution in progress. Right now, the massive and frequently violent protests over the perceived rigging of the recent presidential election have died down considerably, but the theocratic régime is increasingly divided.
- The anti-abortion movement seems to be breaking up because the "pro-life" organizations are increasingly far more conservative than the majority of Americans opposed to abortion.
- The rise of the conspiracy theory of the "birthers", who claim that President Obama is not an American citizen and therefore cannot legally be President. They even have their own website! The big problem they have with Obama, it seems to me, is that he's black. The "birthers" are neoconservatives who are almost all white; they ruled America till January 20 this year, but now they are bitter and even willing to call for violent revolution.
- The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, of course.
But I'm not going to neglect my opinions and philosophy, either. This blog isn't purely political; I don't call it my opinion blog for nothing.
I hope to post at least once a week at minimum.
Update: Sarah Palin wants her own radio show! Interesting choice for someone who keeps attacking the media. Even so, whenever people ask me about the Alaskan ex-governor's future, I always tell them "Fox News". I have to say it: I told you so!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Inauguration Day 2009: The Day Everything Changed
Is it just me, or do you too think it highly significant that Inauguration Day this year came the day after Martin Luther King Day? MLK Day is an American government holiday established to honor the legacy of the martyred civil rights hero, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the famous "I Have a Dream" speech he gave at the 1963 March on Washington, he gave voice to the idea of equality between Americans of African descent, most of whose original ancestors were brought to America as slaves, and their European-descended fellow citizens. Today, the dream has still not been fully achieved. However, today represents one big step closer.
Barack Hussein Obama, son of an African immigrant, has just been sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America.
Hell has officially frozen over.
Barack Hussein Obama, son of an African immigrant, has just been sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America.
Hell has officially frozen over.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
What I missed by not posting here for so long...
I haven't been posting here often. In fact, for almost four months last year, I didn't post here at all. And so I missed a whole lot of things, including some very important events. Here's what I missed:
I hope to get myself informed enough to comment more often here. Since it takes time to do so — that is, to research what I'm writing about, for one thing — I probably won't post as often as I'd like. Still, I should at least try...
- First and foremost, the American election, and especially the long process that led to the historic election of Barack Obama as president.
- The sudden and cataclysmic collapse of the American financial industry and the total extinction of the investment banks, which has all but plunged the world into economic depression. Recently, this was complicated by the collapse of Bernard Madoff's gigantic pyramid scheme.
- The big December 2008 snowstorm that paralyzed Seattle and the Northwest, with its January sequel. (However, I did take pictures...)
- And other things that happened, but which I've already forgotten.
I hope to get myself informed enough to comment more often here. Since it takes time to do so — that is, to research what I'm writing about, for one thing — I probably won't post as often as I'd like. Still, I should at least try...
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Finally: This Blog Gets Its Final Name
At last, I found the right name for this opinion blog. It is "Take Nothing On Faith", which just happens to be the motto I live by, just as "with great power comes great responsibility" is Spider-Man's. Now, how did I come up with this title? Archetypically: it came to me while I was brushing my teeth.
Also, I found out why my recent posts look so screwy in their layout. I found out when I was preparing to post this very entry. It was the post template, something that can be corrected in my settings. Believe it or not, it's a bug in the regular Blogger, one that amazingly does not exist (or has been corrected) in Blogger in Draft. Somehow regular Blogger has been turning my newlines into spaces. I corrected the problem manually in this post, then I corrected it definitively in the settings menu — in Draft, of course. Problem solved. Now I'm ready to start posting here again. Stay tuned...
Also, I found out why my recent posts look so screwy in their layout. I found out when I was preparing to post this very entry. It was the post template, something that can be corrected in my settings. Believe it or not, it's a bug in the regular Blogger, one that amazingly does not exist (or has been corrected) in Blogger in Draft. Somehow regular Blogger has been turning my newlines into spaces. I corrected the problem manually in this post, then I corrected it definitively in the settings menu — in Draft, of course. Problem solved. Now I'm ready to start posting here again. Stay tuned...
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Nihilism and Three Levels of Mindsets
In my previous entry Atheism Without Nihilism, a pious Christian posted an anonymous comment that, in retrospect, made me realize that between people with differing mindsets, no communication is possible. To the religious mind, atheism is defined as nihilism. Why? Because of religion's definition of "value": all value is of God, and is therefore supernatural by definition. If God doesn't exist, then value doesn't exist. Ergo, atheism = nihilism. period. And so if you deny the existence of a Supreme Being, to avoid nihilism you must redefine the meaning of value so that it refers to this world and not the world above. However, you can only make the redefinition if your mind has evolved to a sufficient level of complexity. Thus, I need to speak of mindsets.
I learned about three evolutionary levels of mind by reading Richard Brodie (his site here), specifically Virus of the Mind. These levels are:
Now the thing about mindsets is that minds operating on a higher level can understand those at lower levels, but lower-level minds cannot understand those at higher levels. The religious mind cannot understand the scientific mind; people who operate according to dogmas (religious or ideological) defined as Absolute Truths cannot possibly conceive of the higher mindset in which people submit everything to objective inquiry and take nothing on faith.
So, to answer the question as to whether atheism is nihilism: yes &mdash but only on the second, meme-driven, dogmatic (religious and ideological) level of consciousness. But on the third, self-driven, scientific level of consciousness, definitely not. Indeed, the Level 2 belief in a Supreme Being, or at least Absolute Truth, strikes the Level 3 mind as itself nihilistic, because it drains all value from the world and leaves it a desolate wasteland from which Level 2 longs to escape to the world above. So Level 2 minds like my anonymous commenter's and Level 3 minds like mine are doomed to talk past each other. Less tolerant Level 2 minds simply declare "holy war" against all other minds that are like them, and become terrorists.
I learned about three evolutionary levels of mind by reading Richard Brodie (his site here), specifically Virus of the Mind. These levels are:
- gene-driven, meaning concerned only with one's instincts and appetites;
- meme-driven, meaning concerned with one's ideology or religion, sometimes at the expense of life itself, one's own or others'; and
- self-driven, of a sufficiently high level of consciousness that one can define the way one defines their life.
Now the thing about mindsets is that minds operating on a higher level can understand those at lower levels, but lower-level minds cannot understand those at higher levels. The religious mind cannot understand the scientific mind; people who operate according to dogmas (religious or ideological) defined as Absolute Truths cannot possibly conceive of the higher mindset in which people submit everything to objective inquiry and take nothing on faith.
So, to answer the question as to whether atheism is nihilism: yes &mdash but only on the second, meme-driven, dogmatic (religious and ideological) level of consciousness. But on the third, self-driven, scientific level of consciousness, definitely not. Indeed, the Level 2 belief in a Supreme Being, or at least Absolute Truth, strikes the Level 3 mind as itself nihilistic, because it drains all value from the world and leaves it a desolate wasteland from which Level 2 longs to escape to the world above. So Level 2 minds like my anonymous commenter's and Level 3 minds like mine are doomed to talk past each other. Less tolerant Level 2 minds simply declare "holy war" against all other minds that are like them, and become terrorists.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Why do I need a new opinion blog?
Because, for one thing, I realized that the URL I chose for my original opinion blog, The Space Helmet Show, didn't quite fit the opinion blog mold. And the name "The Outside View" that I chose all the way back in 2001, when I was merely considering blogging (I didn't actually set up my first two blogs till March of this year), turned out to be so common as to be utterly cliché. And so I'm going to abandon that overly common name "The Outside View", repurpose The Space Helmet Show as a repository for my more miscellaneous stuff, and transfer the more political posts on TSHS here.
I like to keep each of my blogs focused on a single range of subjects. That way, I can keep them in order. I have a few more blogs I want to set up, since I have a few more subjects I can use them on, including myself. All of them will link to the other in my list of "Links to My Sites".
Soon, I will create both my main homepage and my project page. I'll use my main site as the central hub for all my sites, including my blogs and my future social network accounts. Some of this is in my list of Big, Fun, Scary goals I drew up for NaNoWriMo, and some are not. From now on, my politically incorrect opinions go here.
I like to keep each of my blogs focused on a single range of subjects. That way, I can keep them in order. I have a few more blogs I want to set up, since I have a few more subjects I can use them on, including myself. All of them will link to the other in my list of "Links to My Sites".
Soon, I will create both my main homepage and my project page. I'll use my main site as the central hub for all my sites, including my blogs and my future social network accounts. Some of this is in my list of Big, Fun, Scary goals I drew up for NaNoWriMo, and some are not. From now on, my politically incorrect opinions go here.
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