In honor of Guy Fawkes Day this Nov. 5th (Wiki link)* are a couple of links for light reading:

A recent musing of mine on anarchy and democracy: link

An excellent (and scary-sad) collection from Classically Liberal of examples of police state abuse and misconduct.

* Like most things in postmodern culture, this topic is well filled with contradictions. Guy Fawkes, for example, was not truly an anarchist (as far as I can tell). He, along with his cohorts, were simply p.o.ed that Catholics were being descriminated by the Protestant British government and decided to get rid of it, hoping to establish a Catholic-friendly one. (*sigh* what, religious violence again!?)

Guy Fawkes ironically became a symbol of later anrchistic movements despite his basically being just a religious terrorist.

Guy Fawkes was also appropriated by the British cultural hegemony as a symbol of celebrating the God-protected and ordained rule of proper British royalty. (Much like how Hitler propagandized his surviving the Valkyrie assassination attempt as a sign that God protected his divinely ordained Third Reich. [I may have just Godwined myself, but it just goes to show that anyone and everyone can and does invoke God's favor when things go well for them.])

And now there’s this Anonymous group appropriating Guy Fawkes to protest Scientology. Interestingly, as this is a quasi-religious fight, this may actually be a more “appropriate” use of Guy’s image… if not for the fact that what they’re really doing is using the image created by the film “V for Vendetta”. They’ve taken an image crafted for entertainment consumption, based on a hyperreality of an appropriated image, of a man whose purpose has been fictionalized by one group and celebrated for it’s failure by another group for ideological justification…

Ow. Jean Baudrillard is probably laughing in his grave over this a-historical postmodern pastiche! (I think I see a scholarly paper in this!)

The Tyranny of the Majority:
If you ever found yourself in a vastly outnumbered minority, and the majority voted that you had to give up something as necessary to your life as water and air, would you comply? When it comes down to it, does anyone really believe it makes sense to accept the authority of a group simply on the grounds that they outnumber everyone else? We accept majority rule because we do not believe it will threaten us – and those it does threaten are already silenced before anyone can hear their misgivings.

[...]

Three wolves and six goats are discussing what
to have for dinner. One courageous goat makes
an impassioned case: “We should put it to a vote!” The
other goats fear for his life, but surprisingly, the wolves
acquiesce. But when everyone is preparing to vote, the
wolves take three of the goats aside.
“Vote with us to make the other three goats dinner,”
they threaten. “Otherwise, vote or no vote, we’ll eat you.”
The other three goats are shocked by the outcome of
the election: a majority, including their comrades, has
voted for them to be killed and eaten. They protest in
outrage and terror, but the goat who first suggested the
vote rebukes them: “Be thankful you live in a democracy!
At least we got to have a say in this!”

–From THE PARTY’S OVER: BEYOND POLITICS, BEYOND DEMOCRACY
http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/pdfs/democracy_reading.pdf

So, I’ve discovered this Web site: CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective (http://www.crimethinc.com). They have some blog posts on the G-20 protests…and most interestingly, a non-protest that was treated as a violent protest by the police and resulted in more than a hundred arrests (including a great many who weren’t doing any protesting) and many injured. (State Repression at the G20 Protests) From this I started looking over the site. It’s an anarchists’ site, filled with info and publications geared toward helping people find the anarchist within and fight the system.

This is what’s struck me as interesting: Their reason for existing, their criticism of the system, their complaints of capitalism and democracy, I completely agree with–and I’ll explain why in a moment. But their explanation of their remedy, their idea of anarchy, I’m having trouble with. (Note, that anarchy does not mean violence or chaos in the sense of abuse of others, harming people. It simply means no government, no rule of imposed law, no masters.)

Ironically, these anarchists have, from what I can see, I great disdain for socialism, communism, any -ism apparently derived from Marxism. I say “ironic” because their entire criticism of the current state of capitalism and authoritarian democracy comes straight from Marxist criticism, 101. Take for example this page from the book Days of War, Night of Love:

(page image link: “How Does Capitalism Work“)

This is capitalist criticism straight from Marx’s Kapital (not verbatim, of course). Everything this anarchist site decries about the current state of capitalist economy, culture, and the police state used to protect the hegemony and the owners of capital, is Marxism stripped of the Marxist lingo (like “hegemony”). There’s nothing about their critique of capitalism I don’t agree with (my being a Marxist). However, and this is where things get uncomfortable, their ideas of overcoming the system I don’t know if I can support. Well, let me clarify…

At the core, I consider myself an anarcho-socialist. I too believe that the best path for humanity, for human advancement, equality, justice, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the complete lack of government and forced adherence to someone else’s majority rule. However, I also believe that married to that must be a social contract of mutual cooperation, shared resources, publicly owned and operated resources, manufacture, distribution…capital. This is different from anarcho-libertarianism, or Objectivism (vis-à-vis Ayn Rand) which believes that in addition to lack of any forced rules or regulations, private ownership is valued above all. That humans are selfish and greedy by nature, and that we should live to acquire as much for ourselves as we can and help others only so much as we can gain from it ourselves. Pretty much ethically and morally bankrupt, in my opinion.

As I read through the CrimethInc site, most of what they believe (and what they purport anarchists believe) matches up with my anarcho-socialism. They support cooperation, mutually beneficial action, gift economy. Hey, great! But they also support a sort of worship of anti-social behavior, crime, vandalism, activities that make me cringe (e.g.: shoplifting). Although, all the anti-social behavior they support, is all geared toward the state, corporate America, the power structure, and not against other individuals and their personal rights. OK…that sounds good… I guess.

So, I’m left to question: Is my cringing because I’ve lived my entire life controlled by the hegemony, brainwashed into subservience to conformity with passivity, being a good little worker bee who keeps his head down and continues to make profit for his capitalist lords without making any trouble for them? Well, yes I have. We all have. That’s the entire goal of hegemony, be it capitalist or feudal or slave economy. Those in control use whatever sociological means available to control the other 99% of the people for their own benefit. This requires blind obedience to their laws. It requires complete acquiescence to state-supporting meek mildness.

When I remember these things, which I’ve been studying and contemplating for some years now, it reinforces my belief in the anarcho-half of my anarcho-socialism. So, why does the action of subversiveness bug me?

Since President Dubbya started taking away civil liberties after 9/11, I started studying libertarianism and even anarchy–but always from a level of personal rights and liberties. It wasn’t until I started grad school and my first professor, Dr. Burling, introduced me to Marxism that I learned that Bush, civil liberty removal, the corporate ownership of the government, wars, all of it, are a result of the economic foundation: capitalism. It is essentially the base on which everything is a superstructure built extending from it. Everything is about the material question: Who uses it and what is it for? With that in mind it’s easy (easier) to understand power, wealth, who benefits from it most, and how they exploit those without it. Dr. Burling helped change my entire outlook on culture, laws, economy, politics, etc.

But when asked why doesn’t he live outside the corruption and control of capitalism, his response was, in essence: you can’t escape it, it affects everyone, might as well not make your own life unnecessarily difficult fighting it. And this is a guy who, in addition to being an unashamed Marxist, was also a musician with a focus on rock (meaning nothing exactly, except an implication that he has a rebellious spirit).

And it also makes me think of vaunted Marxist cultural critic and major figure of the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno, who it is said that during the Paris riots of 1968 when asked by his students why he didn’t participate or support the student protests, he replied “How can you actively fight for something before you fully understand it?”

There is “theory,” and there is “praxis.” Praxis is putting theory into action. Is it that these Marxist critics and theorists I look up to, who happen to be intellectuals and educators, don’t know how to put their words into action? Do they not have the courage of their convictions? Or are all they are about is understanding and criticizing the current system, but not about doing anything about it? When asked what good is knowing how culture develops, knowing how the hegemony controls and influences our decisions and our wants? They have replied that it helps you understand why you make the decisions that you do, why you choose what products or how you sell your labor. But is that enough?

Frederic Jameson (Marxist cultural critic) has developed a concept of applying “cognitive mapping” to cultural criticism, which is a theory of mapping the contradictions in capitalism, where it affects our lives, and finding and exploiting the holes in it. And it’s a step toward praxis, which gives people like me hope of doing something to make a difference. To help turn the tables on capitalist exploitation and help the “seeds of rebellion” grow. But…what is that rebellion? What are we Marxist intellectuals waiting for? We who study culture, and politics, and socio-economics? Dr. Burling had cryptically referred to the biopic about Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries, in which a young, pre-revolutionary Guevara is asked about how to spark the South American peoples into revolution against their oppressors, he responds that you can’t have a revolution without guns.

But then, Dr. Burling often referred to other ways to create such drastic upheaval as to eliminate capitalism, without revolution and war, and used as examples Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy and 40, 50, 60 trilogy. Stories in which the only way to evolve from capitalism to egalitarian socialism is either to colonize another planet, or deal with Earth-shaking environmental disaster. So, do we just wait for change?

Back to my point: Are these anarchists doing what we intellectuals fear to do, but are a natural and proper result of the same Marxist-rooted criticism of capitalism we both share? Am I a hypocrite for complaining about and railing about capitalism and its ills and evils, but I continue to lust after home ownership and getting a better job and obeying all the laws of the land so I don’t draw the attention of the state’s police apparatus?

Is it because I have a family to care for? I don’t risk rocking the boat, and so I participate, if grudgingly, in my own commodification and the orgy of consumerism? Of course, this is exactly what the hegemony counts on, this conservativism that we’re all supposed to grow into. We’re allowed to rebel a little as a youth, test the bounds of social acceptance, and then “settle down.” Grow a family, buy a home, get a job you can’t leave because you can’t live without the insurance benefits. You become a productive worker bee who has too much to lose by questioning authority, bucking the system, making waves. Be a quiet little worker bee, and you get to go (somewhat) unnoticed by the system that exploits you and uses you and extorts you, giving little in return except an addiction to mass consumption.

Are anarchists heroes I fear to admire? Or are they the hemp clothing wearing, organic food growing, dumpster diving neo-hippies that I can easily dismiss and marginalize, exactly as I’ve just done, because they threaten the social stability and conditioning I’ve internalized because I grew up brainwashed to become a quiet and non-trouble-making worker bee? Is that why when asked, I say I’m an anarcho-socialist “in theory” but “in practice” I’m a democratic-socialist? Isn’t that just a way for me to marginalize myself?

I don’t know. But this Fighting For Our Lives: An Anarchist Primer is at the very least thought-provoking reading.

So my iPhone is in the process of updating to the latest software, 3.0. It failed the first time because I’m doing it through a Windows XP install within a Linux virtualbox, and I wasn’t paying attention to the USB status. So it had to restore and now I’m anticipating my application data will be lost (like my budget record). Oh well, I’ll soon have copy-n-paste and that’s a good thing.

So, now that it’s summer, I’ve still almost completely ignored this blog. But, I spend most of my social e-media time on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/liamrw) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/mechphisto), I don’t feel compelled to write articles on here even though I have tons of saved links and news items and others’ blog content I want to comment on. Darn you short attention span time wasters!!

Anyway, so, the iPhone is updating, I just finished re-planting some cilantro and Greek oregano into a new window-box planter…thought I’d at least get one interesting item I’d like to share out of the way today.

“vjack” over at Atheist Revolution has a recent post entitled: “Did Jesus Abolish the Old Testiment.” It starts with a question he received from one of his readers, that goes in part like this:

…why Christians cherry pick from the bible. I brought up stuff from the old testament, like women not being allowed to dress fancy in church. His response was, “That’s mosaic law and we are under a new law now.” I didn’t know how to respond to this. What would you say?

vjack’s response I think is incredibly reasoned and thought-provoking. Well, OK, not to me at this moment, I have to be honest. Because his response, which I agree with 100%, is a response I came up with on my own (and so do many many many former Christians) while I (1.) first read the Bible in its entirety around age 17 or 18, and (2.) once again a few years ago when I was working through those questions and issues that actually reading the Bible sparked so many years earlier.

It’s not a bad thing, and I mean no negative intent, when I say vjack’s response is not interesting to me…in fact, I mean it as both matter of fact and a complement. See…I was reminded of something this week as my wife and I watched Richard Dawkins’ “The Root of All Evil?“, and part way through we started discussing liberal/non-fundamentalist Christianity and the atheist response. And I gave answers and opinions and analysis which were kernels of understanding I came to on my own a few to several years ago, wrapped with wording and terms and nuance gained from other freethinkers I’ve since read who also deal with the same issues and questions. Then, when we continued to watch the documentary, my words were virtually echoed back to me by Dawkins.

Agnosticism and atheism have been on an upswing lately, people have started coming out and talking about it, and not being ashamed or afraid of being non-believers. It’s almost like a fad in appearance. But it’s not new by a long shot. Ancient Greeks wrote about doubt regarding the gods their contemporaries worshiped, including questions like: “Does [god] command what is moral because [he] decides what it morality; or does [he] do so because morality is absolute and [he's] simply relaying the message? If the former, then morality is still relative…believers have simply shifted the responsibility up one level. If the later, then what is the need for [god] as a middle-man if morality is absolute and universal?” For example.

Then there’s Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius. And after that slews of freethinkers (at least, those not murdered by Christians during the Dark Ages), to Spinoza and Bertrand Russell, and now Hitchens and Dennett and John W. Loftus, who basically have been saying the same things for centuries regarding God(s), belief without evidence, religion. Because let’s face it: atheism is the final point of critical thinking for any person of any culture, any background, former religion or belief system. Any individual, anyone, can come to atheism on their own through thinking through the questions and thinking critically about the supposed answers. The reasons for non-belief don”t change through the ages (like religions constantly do in order to survive in changing and evolving cultures). Atheism doesn’t require any books, tomes, scrolls, or prophets. No figures of authority, no priests or rabbis. No spiritual revelation from any of the over 2,000 gods humans have created.

Religious belief requires revelation. For example: it is impossible for a person to become a Christian without coming into contact with the Bible or another Christian (who uses the Bible). A book that requires stores and libraries full of books to try to interpret it, explain it, rationalize the contradictions and inherent issues in order to bolster a person’s belief in it. Atheism only requires one’s working brain to come to the same conclusions freethinkers have been coming to for millennia.

And so, some years ago I would have found vjack’s response thoroughly interesting and informative. Now, it’s old hat. But, that’s a good thing. It continues to show that for 2000 years the same arguments hold up and continue to be inadequately answered by the believer.

That said, seriously, read vjack’s response. It may be old hat to me, but it’s a good read! And, he has some fantastic links toward the end of his post to some resources which pose issues that demand response from the believer.

Also, some of the comments on vjack’s post are great as well. Some annoying or just plain worthless. But some, like this one, poignant and well-said:

The question is, why do you follow a different law? And, if you are supposed to follow a law that contradicts what is in the old testament, why even have the old testament in the first place? It is obvious that it simply creates confusion, so why not simply publish a version of the bible that is only the new testament and use that at church?

The reality is that no believer knows exactly what they are supposed to believe or follow, which is why they pray for guidance. Given that, if one has that kind of access to a deity, why would they need the bible in the first place? Couldn’t you just ask for guidance and go from there? Or, does this deity only answer some of the time, and how do you know when your god or gods is/are answering? You see, there are endless questions, none of which have answers that are going to (1) satisfy the skeptic, and (2) convince a believer otherwise. I guess the best that I hope for is that they begin to try to actually answer these questions honestly with themselves, which is how I became a skeptic in the first place. That eventually led me to atheism, although I realize that doesn’t happen with everyone.
(TDG)

(OK, only a couple more of blog posts in this surge.)

BoingBoing has an article: “Marx was right!” in which the author discusses his move from being a dot-com capitalist to a return to a respect for Marx’s criticism of capitalism. (His wife, who said of his return to Marxist studies that it’s “worse than your reggae phase!”, could commiserate with mine!)

[quote] The work of Karl Marx is ultra relevant to understanding the world’s current financial mess, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Marx has become intellectually indispensable to me again, as if there ever should have been any doubt. It’s fascinating to consider that during the time period when Marx was writing “Capital,” there were few factories in England –it was largely an agrarian society still– yet somehow Marx was able to see clearly the mess that we would be in today. He’s the most accurate prophet in all of history, there should be no doubt about this. Marx viewed history with a very, very long telescope. How he was able to see so far into the future is a mystery of his particular genius, but Marx accurately extrapolated how capitalism’s endgame would play itself out at the very birth of the system. Marx saw how utterly destructive this system would ultimately become. Look around you: Marx was right.[/quote]

(On a related note, Richard Metzger posted a followup: “Marx was… second???” about Thomas Jefferson’s essay on “fictitious capital” decades before Marx wrote about it.)

Well, I could write for a long time regarding my thoughts and history in Marxist studies, but you don’t care, do you? Instead, let me link to this great page that helps explain both Marxist and anarchist theories in ordinary terms that speaks to the common person:

Questions about Capitalism and Class

Yes, it’s Chumbawamba’s Web site. They live the spirit of anarcho-socialism, and their answers to common questions about materialist criticism of capitalism is really fantastic! I really encourage you to read at least this one page I just linked top to bottom. That’s it, all I ask.

(For the Facebook users: This is a post from my blog getting auto-noted to Facebook, which cuts off any images or videos in the transfer.)
(Drawing of Marx and Engles stolen borrowed from http://www.hermes-press.com/distinctions.htm)

For Xmas, my wife got me Paul Kurtz’s book _Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Secularism_ (I’m on my iPhone, can’t copy links–look it up *grin*) even though she’s more of a religious humanist, herself. What an incredibly thoughtful and giving gift. I love my wife.

If you know me you know that I have a love/hate relationship with conspiracy theories. On the one hand, they’re really entertaining! They make for great “X-Files” plotlines, and extra bonus points if they can work in The Illuminati! (And keep a straight face.) fnord

But on the other hand, they’re almost always complete bunk. Not to say there haven’t been grand conspiracies in the past: Military radiation testing on civilians, CIA selling crack, Watergate. But here’s the thing about conspiracies: they never stay secret. I think it’s supposed to be an old Sicilian saying, something like: “Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.”

Someone talks. Someone always talks. Documents are kept. Conspiracies become known, the bigger they are the more certain they’ll be exposed. And, unlike most fringe and popular but unfounded conspiracies, it won’t be some outside group of amateur conspiracy hunters who have all the answers but are frustratingly ignored by so-called scientists and experts, who expose the cover-ups. And the more impossible and absurd the scope of the conspiracy, the more likely the conspiracy is BS. Like 9/11, “Loose Change” khrap. For 9/11 to have been a government planned event, it would have required the cooperation of literally thousands of people.

Occam’s Razor here: What’s more probable? That thousands of military, police, firefighters, and civilians were involved in setting up and carrying out an event so huge and devastating that it would have required unimaginable about of planning, organization, timing, cooperation, and yet no one involved has come forward to say they were a part of it and become the most famous person in the world for exposing the greatest and worst conspiracy ever in the history of human civilization…. or, that several fundamental religious zealots took advantage of holes in air transportation security to fly some planes into buildings?

Like I said, conspiracies are entertaining; reality is often banal in its horrific simplicity.

Anyway,to the point: Here’s a recent news item that goshdarnit, sounds a lot to me like it could be a valid conspiracy-murder:

• Man who set up alternate email for White House dies in plane crash

A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to VR in July that Mr. Connell’s life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR’s attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General , Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell’s not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.

Now, here’s where critical thinking has to come in. For example, these tips…can they be independantly verified? More importantly, can they be proven to have come before the event? It’s simply amazing how much people just knew something, or state they predicted something, or had a clue to something…in hindsight after an event has happened. Cognitive bias is rife with this kind of post hoc misthinking.

And of course, there’s the reader’s own subjective bias. I, for example, would believe Rove, Cheney, many others in the Bush administration, would kill and eat babies if it meant massive quasi-fascist control of the free world. I don’t think much better of most politicians in general–the neo-cons just happen to be Hitlers in an ocean of SS. Am I more prone to confirmation bias and self-selecting evidence to fit my personal bias? Yep. Guilty as charged. We all are. It takes a lot of work to be fair and unbiased, and argueably, we never can be.

(Which, by the way, to go off on a tangent, the scientific method is vital to get at objective truths. Proper scientific methodology demands blind and double-blind testing to correct for bias, as well as repeated retesting and verification of results by other people. Science: it works, bitches.)

So, I’m going to watch this case of the killed Bush admin. I.T. guy and see what, if anything comes from it. But then, the co-called liberal media, the “4th Estate,” has been horrifically bad the last eight years at following up on and putting to task recent conspiracies, such as Valarie Plame and Scooter Libby/Cheney. And Congress has no interest in investigating Bush or Cheney for impeachable offenses nor is the media interested in investigating the possibility. Nor for the possible war crimes charges againast Rumsfield and Bush that were recently released. Nor for the countless open-for-all-to-see conspiracies of war profiteering (highly illegal by the way) committed by Cheney and Rumsfield and Bush with the help of Haliburton, KBR, BlackWater, and several other contractors in Iraq.

So, while it’s still true that conspiracies are exposed and are rarely huge and complicated, it doesn’t mean there’s always anyone paying attention.

I came upon the subject through a blog entry on Skepchick:

• Creationist Comeuppance on YouTube

I started watching the video apology the creationist is “forced” to give for unethically and possibly illegally invoking DMCA to try to extort a critic of his to remove his critical videos. I got bored and stopped watching it. While I’m glad justice prevails and no slimy lawyers had to get involved (no offense to my friend* who’s a lawyer; he’s a public defender and not a civil suit lawyer anyway *grin*) I get no pleasure fr0m the schadenfreude inherent in celebrating his (just) public apology.

I watched a couple of the Thunderf00t YouTube videos in which he categorically refutes the creationist VFX’s video claims, and they’re extremely well-informed, researched, reasoned, evidenced-based, etc etc yadda yadda. I don’t mean to imply the videos refuting the creationist are boring or uninspired in any way–they’re quite good (if a bit rough in the audio quality) and I would absolutely recommend them to anyone interested in the debate between empirical reality and Biblical literalism…

Thing is, it’s getting tiring to me. I’ve spent nearly eight years now actively following and reading and watching all I could get my “hands” on regarding the fight between evolution and creationism, and I feel like, not that I’ve seen it all (although I am seeing the same old creationist misunderstandings/fallacies/mistakes/lies and the same old empirical evidence/logical reasoning/evidentiary refutation fr0m the evolutionist side over and over), it’s more like I’m tired of the existence of the debate itself. It’s become obvious this will never end. It’s like digging a hole in water.

No matter how much factual evidence is out there, completely open and available to anyone and everyone who wants to bother looking for it, there’s still armies of people who are quite happy living in worlds of cognitive dissonance (I used to freak out but now I just sigh when people, like this VFX does, decry science as all ideological and full of fantasy and imagination and lies, and then use (a misapplication of) whatever scientific laws and processes is convenient for them to try to prove their creationist argument) and mythological fantasy as far as the eye can see. Change needs to be made and humanity needs to finally enter the 21st century, but the fight is wearying.

In any case, I skipped to the most recent video by Thunderf00t, and the first two-thirds and a refutation of one of VFX’s latest videos using terrible reasoning to accept micro-evolution but claim macro-evolution is “evil.” And the last third of Thunderf00t’s video, though, becomes a philosophical criticism of the concept of “eternal life” as a creation of greedy humans, as the idea of eternal life is not only horrific to sentient beings, but removes all value fr0m life! The fact that we are finite sparks of life in a vast universe gives the ultimate meaning and the greatest importance possible to life. It was a very inspiring closing and for that reason alone I highly recommend viewing it!

*Update, 11 Nov, 08: I had written there all this time, until today, “non-friend”. I have no idea how that typo happened, and I do hope if the friend in question saw that, he realizes that was a mistake. I dunno, maybe I intended to type “non-slimy friend”.

.

“Devilstower” has a fantastically complete and detailed explanation of how three of the largest events/scandals to undermine the U.S. economy in the last 25 years have had the involvement of persons like, oh, John McCain, his financial adviser Phil Gramm, and Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan:

• Three Times is Enemy Action

Alan Greespan is often lauded, even by people skeptical of conservative administrations, as a champion who tried real hard, darn it. I’d known his policies helped accelerate the corporate owned government but I didn’t know to what extent–nor when it all began! I didn’t realize until I started to do some research that Greenspan was appointed by Reagan and was involved in the development of “trickle-down” Reaganomics which sought to tear down New Deal regulations and oversight and increase the flow of wealth toward the top of the social pyramid.

He was also the Fed Chairman under Clinton–but then, he had little to do with the Clinton admin’s balanced budgets and federal surplus. What he was involved with was the continued encouragement of government by the CEOs, (supported by Clinton as well, lest people forget that while he was a social progressive, Clinton was still a corporatist).

Here was the biggest kicker for me: Greenspan was a dyed-in-the-wool Objectivist and even a close friend of Objectivism’s matriarch, Ayn Rand, and a member of her “inner circle”. (Objectivists are anarcho-libertarians; I learned about them back when I was learning about libertarianism. They believe in no government (or at least no government involvement in economics) with a focus on selfishness and self-gratification (in an economic/business sense). They believe people are inherently self-serving and altruism is a “sin” which perverts the operations of a completely free market. This is in stark contrast to anarcho-socialists (like me) who believe in no government but with a focus on collectivism, altruism, trade and labor unions.)

To put someone like this in charge of the Fed is like putting a wolf in charge of the management of the hen house, or an atheist as a church’s preacher. Or a faith healer as Surgeon general.

Is it any wonder….

Yesterday I posted a super-bloated overlong post: The failure of conservatism. (That’s what happens when I allow myself to write unedited in stream-of-consciousness–which is every time, really.) I railed against the ideas of free market capitalism and libertarian, objectivist anarchy in the modern world. I briefly mentioned public education as part of “the commons,” a service that everyone in a society benefits from either directly or indirectly, and it gets privatized at the risk of harming society.

Well, today, “carr2d2″ on the SkepChick blog posted an article that addresses that very topic:

• Whose freedom?

She reasonably questions the libertarian belief that parents should totally determine the way, why, how, and when a child is educated. carr2d2 asks:

We were looking at the children’s education as a function of the parents’ freedom.  At what point does a parent’s right to raise their child as they see fit (or, as some argue, their freedom to not pay taxes) infringe upon that child’s right to live a healthy life, relatively untainted by abuse?  Don’t we owe it to all our kids to give them as equal a shot as is possible at success?

This topic spawned a great comment thread with wonderful observation like this snippet from AgnosticOracle:

If we look at periods and places where there was no public education the vast majority of working class people didn’t get educated. It isn’t merely a question of fairness to the child. There are externalities of education that benefit society as a whole. Carl Sagan’s father was a garment worker. Without public education there is a good chance the world would have lost out on his genius.
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It is a benefit not only to the child but to society at large to educate children well. This is especially true if you want a functioning democracy. While we may wish to give the parents the right to teach the child what they want, we shouldn’t give them the right to deny them education. For instance, a parent shouldn’t be able to choose not to teach their daughters math and science.

He, and most commentors, have it exactly right. A parent isn’t imbued with special wisdom simply because they can procreate. They certainly have a wide range of rights along with their responsibilities, but the minimal education of the people who are going to be participating in society is everyone’s concern–not just the parents. The libertarian mindset, like I implied in yesterday’s post, was perfectly reasonable when people can and did live in a such a way as to not have to interact or participate in society at large. but we, as Americans and a human race, have developed far beyond any reasonable concept of isolationism and selfish individualism.

The education of my children directly affects your and your childrens’ lives–you want to be assured that my kids have a certain basic level of education, no? In a libertarian paradise, there’s no guarantee that anyone you interact with doesn’t have a skewed and flawed education, if any. Would you want to live in that kind of wild west in an age in which our health and lives and lifestyle is so delicately balanced on a web of dynamic social interactivity?

A quickie:

Here’s a great and even amusing post by Harry McCall in which he uses his experience with guitar salesmen, vacuum tubes, and personal biases to explain how people see “truth” as relative and its criticism often off-limits to those “not a part of it”

• Truth: Absolute or Relative?

I’ve had some heated discussions in the past with a fervent Christian educated in apologetics, both on here and his site, regarding objectivity and relativism. The funny thing is while he and most religious people argue tooth and nail for the concept of objective moral truth, they themselves are some of the biggest practitioners of relativism. Logic tends to escape them in favor of cognitive biases and fallacies.

A great post by Steven Novella on understanding logic and whether the “universe is logical”:

• Is the Universe Logical?

It alternates between the heady and the easy to understand, but it’s a fantastic foundation in understanding the concept of logic as it exists outside the ideas of human perception and awareness–which should aid people in critically thinking about issues of supernatural belief.

Glenn Beck is a tool.

He recently wrote an op-ed printed on CNN.com:

• Commentary: T-shirt depicts ‘pathetic and brutal legacy’

He seems to find much humor in the idea that, supposedly, part of the reason the people who portrayed a terrorist group was able to deceive the FARC group that they were “bad guys” (and thus able to liberate the group’s hostages) is that one of them was wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt. First of all, this is purely anecdotal from very biased source; and secondly, the successful deception probably had more to do with the fact the group in disguise was armed with AK-47’s, spoke the appropriate language, was able to talk and discuss key ideological points successfully, and had the general look and demeanor of a terrorist organization and was able to act the role. The Guevara shirt could have instead been an Old Navy American flag t-shirt and they would have been just as successful in the ruse. Likewise, the same group could have all been wearing Guevara shirts but if they lacked any of the other elements, would probably have been shot.

What the corporate news machine tool, Beck, is more riled up about is the idea that Americans wear the Guevara shirt because it offends his hegemonic capitalist sensibilities. So he sets about on a screed vilifying and smearing Guevara and in turn the people who appear to support Guevara’s struggle in the process. (For my own criticism of people wearing the shirt, see the end.)

By the way, he states: “So, what is the uniform of choice when fooling terrorists in Colombia?” Since when did every bad guy in the world suddenly become a “terrorist”? Now the FARC are not a friendly bunch. They use some despicable tactics in their battle for revolution, such as kidnapping innocent people, which is terrifying, no question! But should any tactic which causes pain and suffering and fear make a group a “terrorist group”? Here’s something terrifying: cluster bombing a town in order to take out a single target, occupying a city that had been sent from modernity back into the dark ages thanks to shock and awe missile attacks, using contract mercenaries to harass citizens and act as a foreign run police force. American forces and their proxies, like Blackwater, have killed thousands of civilians, devastated towns, destroyed civil infrastructure, and created millions of refugees, and have made people afraid to step outside for fear of being harassed and abused and afraid to stay inside lest their building gets hit by a rocket. If harming civilians and causing havoc is a sign of a terrorist, make no mistake: the U.S. military is the largest, most well armed terrorist group in the world.

The ones with the larger guns are military, the rest are terrorists.

Beck hates Che Guevara because he was an ideological revolutionary. Again the hypocrisy is wonderful. If the ideology is his and the revolution to spread is his ideology, it’s OK. History lesson: The U.S. has been invading countries and imposing its ideology on other countries (usually by force) since the 19th century. Since the Spanish-American war the industrial robber baron owned administrations have sought to spread empire to Central America, South America, the Philippines, by either funding and arming and training (gasp!) local rebel and revolutionary organizations, or by directly invading. Since WWII (the last “good” and legitimate war) the government through the CIA has been funding and training and arming revolutionary groups from Honduras to Argentina (not to mention throughout the Middle East) in order to craft and contrive puppet rulerships that support U.S. interests.

And you can’t even claim the ideology being encouraged is Freedom and Democracy. If the goal of spreading empire was to promote freedom and democracy, Saudi Arabia should be the first country to go down (forgetting for a second that all but a couple of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian and none of them were Iraqi). Saudi Arabia is one of the most oppressive, violent nations in the Middle East if not all Europe/Asia. They constantly behead people for violating Sharia and use what used to be a, go fig, actual terrorist organization as their police force. Yeah, Saddam Hussein was a cruel and murderous dictator, but Saudi Arabia makes Hussein’s Iraq look like Sweden by comparison. Hmm, I wonder why this administration would invade oil rich Iraq and depose the not-too-friendly-to-U.S. dictator, but actually improve cooperative relations with the oil rich but friendly-to-a-certain-oil-family theocracy of Saudi Arabia….

Spreading U.S. ideology has nothing to do with freedom and democracy or any of the ideals of the enlightened Founding fathers of the United States, let’s get this clear. It has everything to do with spreading global market capitalism that specifically benefits corporate owners. It has nothing to do with patriotism, nothing to do with the American way, nothing to do with liberty and freedom–unless it’s the way of profit and and liberty of corporate management. In fact, the more oppressed a people and culture are the more the corporations prefer them as quasi-slave workers. The less choice, the less freedom a society has, the more likely a company will move operations and manufacturing to that country for cheap labor. But funny when they do this, the savings don’t get passed on to the consumer–prices stay the same or even increase.

On the flip side, corporations also love for the consumer societies to also have as little freedom as possible. The ideology of capitalism is about a false sense of freedom in that the choices we have are over this shampoo brand or that identical one, between a Mercury Mystique or a Ford Taurus, between blue jeans or slacks. We believe we live in a “free country” because that’s what the country was originally based on, before industrialization, and it was possible to be truly free to make whatever choices you want regarding your own life, liberty, and happiness–and it wasn’t tied into what products you buy.

The immediate, and reasonable response, is to say “but compared to the aforementioned Saudi Arabia and Iraq, we have a lot of freedoms!” and indeed we do. Don’t get me wrong, I’d much rather live in America than Cuba. I like having the ability to buy an MP3 player and an iPhone. I like the fact technically, at least for the moment, I can say exactly what I’m saying right now without fear of arrest, unlike, say, North Korea. But it’s still the justification of the prisoner in the holding cell versus the one in solitary. “At least I only got punched in the jaw and not kicked in the ‘nads.” It’s the same rationalization the person who accepts mass surveillance by the state commits by saying “Well, if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.” The hegemony gives us token freedom in order to keep us placid and thankful while exploiting us no less than they exploit the worker class in developing countries. They encourage us to believe in capitalist ideology, the myth of working hard and get rich, not because it serves us, but because it serves them. Ideology is the values of the ruling class, the masses are convinced it’s their own, and by following the ideology they’re convinced they’re following the “right” and “proper” and “natural” way to be and so they don’t revolt against the exploitation they are subjected to by the ruling class.

5% of this country control 95% of the wealth. Since, under capitalism, wealth equals power and control, 5% of the nation is the ruling class. And it’s not the government that are the rulers–government is part of the superstructure, an outgrowth of the material and economic foundation that generate an ideology to support it. The government is not the rulers, those with the power are the rulers and in our society it’s the 5% that own the capital–the government is in service to them both directly (by being bought by the capitalists and corporate owners) and indirectly (by supporting the capitalist ideology which serves the rulers and exploits the masses). So, the overt military invasions, the covert CIA infiltrations and instigation, that are the extension of government expansion of empire is not to serve the interests of “freedom” and “democracy,” but the interests of the ruling class which benefit from the empire of global market capitalism.

Better than feudalism by a far sight! Like having an eye plucked out instead your limbs hacked off. We’re convinced that capitalism is the best and only way to live, and we buy into that because, guess what, it serves the ruling class for us to believe that, as the alternatives may include an ideology which serves the 95% a whole lot better.

So, when Beck uses non sequitur and ad hominem attacks against Che Guevara because he took up arms to fight for an ideology he believed was better than the exploitation of capitalism and fascism, and Beck calls him a mass murderer, he fails to see that the Founding Fathers were exactly the same–rebels and criminals and traitors who took up arms to fight the legitimate ruling class and their ideology in favor of one they thought was better. When the U.S. overthrows a sovereign nation in order to force their own ideology upon the people, they’re doing the exact same thing he accuses Che Guevara of doing, except with trillions of dollars of equipment to do it with, and it’s his ideology that is being fought for. Whether the ideology is “right” or “wrong” is beside the point–the winner is always the one who gets to determine which is which. The one you believe in is always the right one, and the one the other person believes in is always the wrong one.

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Now, as for criticizing the wearers of the Che shirts, Beck misses the real issue: Most of the people wearing the Che shirt are not supporting the revolutionary leader–they have little idea who he is and a whole lot less of what he fought for. The irony that Beck misses and should actually be celebrating, being the tool he is, is that capitalism has won–Che has become a commodity. He is a product that one buys and consumes. When capitalism commodifies something it loses its ability to be subversive! Whether it’s Che’s image, protest music, or you as labor. Most people who buy and consume Che Guevara shirts think they’re making a statement of rebellion, fighting against The Man, but all they’re doing is putting more money in the pockets of the corporations while The Man smiles and pats the lil rebel’s head and says “Yes yes, you’re such the little revolutionary, my son. Now go run and play.”

We rebels buy Chumbawamba and Rage Against The Machine CD’s and we think we’re supporting the revolution or at least the idea of it, but what we’ve done is simply exercise our “freedom” (of choice) between one commodity over another. We paid Corporation A $15 for a rebel rocker’s CD instead of Corporation B for Brittney Spears. Our intent, as a consumer, may be one thing but our actions support the hegemony no matter what. “Heh, why aren’t you just the lil scrapper! Give me your allowance for Chumba’s Anarchy and go clean your room.” When Paltrow buys a $200 shopping bag (probably made using exploited workers) with a socialist slogan on it (see Beck’s article), who’s winning? Beck should actually be jumping for joy.

(It’s tough to speak the truth as I’m someone who loves Chumbawamba and would like to buy a Che shirt to state my message of support on my chest.)

The Supreme Court has handed down a couple of very important decisions recently regarding crime and punishment:

• High court strikes down sweeping gun ban.

This one’s easy for me to comment on: _Liberal delusion of gun control._

The other ruling is just as heated of an issue (I suppose if it weren’t it wouldn’t have reached the Supreme Court,)

• Law makers vow to execute child rapists.

…despite the Supreme Court ruling that:

“the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” despite the horrendous nature of the crime

Whooboy, what a charged, emotional subject–and that’s the crux of the problem regarding why we have the death penalty: emotion.

Based on emotion alone I would advocate the inhuman Clive Barker-esque torture of a child rapist and I’d sleep well at night. But can we run a civil, democratic, progressive society on emotional appeal?

Imagine what society would be like if we all acted based on emotion. The most positive among us would like to believe we’d all get along a lot better, love and flowers for all. But what about those days when you are in your worst moods. What about your co-workers? What if they all acted upon their emotions? Imagine the most incompetent and vile politician in office right now: would you want them to be able to make and enforce policies based on emotion only? What if the police arrested and treated the accused emotionally?

Well, we do know how that goes. YouTube and those captured video shows on TV have countless examples of police who abuse and mistreat and beat people in fits of emotion. Our administration is using torture we condemn and try other countries for, because we have an emotional desire to cause pain to our enemies. Because we’re human we have an awesome capacity for a huge gamut of emotion from one extreme to another–but to create legal policy and have the state act to appeals of emotion makes for an unbalanced, non-impartial, schizoid society.

What legalized and mandated acts of emotion you think are justified on others can be turned right around and have enacted upon you, in ways you think might be irrational or unfair but is justified by someone. The law has to be unemotional to be fair and objective and impartial.

It’s an established fact that the death penalty does not dissuade crime one bit. But is can dissuade people from turning in alleged criminals! As implied by the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, “a nonprofit victim advocacy group representing 80 rape crisis centers,” where they made the statement:

“Most child sexual abuse victims are abused by a family member or close family friend,” the group said in a statement. “The reality is that child victims and their families don’t want to be responsible for sending a grandparent, cousin or long time family friend to death row.”

Such a situation could make people related to or close to a perpetrator hesitant about turning them in, knowing they may be get the death penalty.

Take a look at these lists of nations which have abolished the death penalty, stopped performing them, and still do perform them:

• The death penalty world wide.

With the exception of two other modern nations, Japan and South Korea, the United States is in the company of some of the most abusive, primitive, religiously fundamental nations like Syria, Afghanistan, Qatar, Pakistan, Singapore, in our continued use of the death penalty. All other modern, civilized, progressive nations have outlawed its use–some as much as a century ago. Even Russia stopped executing people. We think about how modern we are, with our cell phones and air conditioning and we automatically equate everything else that we do as an extension of that modernity, including the practice of execution. We forget that it’s a barbaric and primitive form of state vengeance that has no place in a society that is supposed to promote human rights and dignity and is supposed to be a bright shining example for the world of humanity and compassion.

Emotional is wonderful and vital for being human, making and appreciating art, relationships, exploring being alive. But emotion, including hate and vengence, has no place in a democratic republic that is supposed to serve and protect all of its citizens fairly.