From Democracy Now:

Political blogger Glenn Greenwald recently wrote about retired General Wesley Clark’s recollection of an officer telling him in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks that the then U.S. Secretary of Defense had issued a memo outlining a plan for regime change within five years in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. We play an excerpt of Clark’s comments and ask Greenwald to respond. “What struck me in listening to that video … is that if you go down that list of seven countries that he said the neocons had planned to basically change the governments of, you pretty much see that that vision, despite the perception that we have a Democratic president and therefore the neo-conservative movement is powerless, is pretty much being fulfilled,” Greenwald says.

In a thought-controlled society, surface features like a change of administration brought about with much excitement seem to indicate change. But only perceptions change. Obama=Bush=Obama. Elections do not matter.

Annual deaths caused in US by tobacco use: 443,000
Annual deaths caused by alcohol abuse: 75,000
Annual deaths due to illegal drug use: 17,000
Annual deaths due to FDA-approved drugs: 64,000
Annual deaths due to marijuana use: 0
Annual deaths due to execution for drug-related offenses: 1,000
Number of tobacco executives executed: 0
Number of pharmaceutical executives executed: Far too few.

All right then, armed with the facts, DEA, go get ’em!

“Black Friday” is an interesting social phenomenon, the product of intense advertising throughout the year leading up to an orgasmic release the day after Thanksgiving. I can only speculate on why people behave this way, but the psychologists who are at the center of every successful advertising agency surely have insights worth sharing. I wish they would do so.

“Christmas” is more rational and less manipulative than Black Friday. It is a celebration of the beginning of return of the sun after the solstice. On the 21st of December it will reach its lowest level on the southern horizon, and for three days it appears not to move. On the 25th of December, barely perceptible, it begins its return. (Should not “on the third day he rose again” be “fourth”? What am I missing?)

Our ancestors, having lots of time, paid close attention to the sun, the moon and the stars. Lacking scientific knowledge, they worshiped them as gods. The sun (Zeus or Ra, Greek and Egyptian, and “Yahweh, from some Jewish tribes) became the supreme god over all, and the female moon Meres (Mary) and male Apollo (Paul) tagged along. The word “son” is used to describe the modern sun-god, Jesus. How can that be coincidental? Continue reading “A black festival” →

Last April I learned something startling, but which has since begun to make far more sense: Prior to the defeat of the Nazis at Stalingrad the US had no plans for confronting Hitler’s Fortress Europe. Our leaders were content to make peace with him.

Stalingrad so weakened his regime that plans were quickly made to invade. The Nazis were so diminished as a fighting force that many we encountered were old men and teenagers in uniform.
Continue reading “The importance of Stalingrad” →

Well, I have quite a bit of time between now and my flight at 11 AM tomorrow. Expect some posting here. I’m in Billings, Montana.

When I went to grade school here, as I learned many years later, the reason we were let out at 2:45 and not at 3:00, like Garfield School down the street, was that the nuns wanted to minimize our contact with public school kids. We did not know this, of course, but I did have the attitude that something bad was going on in that school one block away.
Continue reading “Montana lets out at 2:45 PM” →

Let’s take two examples of government, one where it was responsive to the needs of the majority, and one where it was not. Let’s set aside minor differences. I know that right wingers do not like Franklin Roosevelt for a host of reasons. But I also know they do not like Joe Stalin as well. I’m having a problem now because I just read some comments at 4&20, and as I see it, both Roosevelt and Stalin represent the same thing … government. There is no gradation. Government is, or isn’t, and has no quality other than oppression. It cannot be controlled, and even if we like what it does in minor doses, those small amounts always lead to larger abuse.

That’s fairly typical thinking on the right wing, the missing middle, the inability to think in grays. But I thought it would be interesting to do a thought experiment. Let’s say that, for instance, government hiring people to take away our garbage is good government, and government hiring people to break into our houses and steal our possessions is a bad thing. Is it possible to have one without the other? Of course! One is a public service, one is a criminal enterprise. If, by chance, government comes under control of a criminal enterprise, then indeed we have a problem. We have a problem too if ExxonMobil comes under control of criminals, or Bank of America or the local YMCA. Or the Supreme Court, congress, or the presidency.

So then, the problem is not ExxonMobil or the YMCA or government. it is criminals. Bad people. They are a problem in private society, a problem in government.

FDR was effective. Let’s call what he did “representative government.” Another word for that is rule by “us.” We did good things for ourselves. Stalin was a bad dude. Let’s call what he did “tyranny.” That’s another word for rule by criminals. Does it follow that representative government naturally leads to rule by criminals? Quite the opposite, it appears. The criminals were upset by representative government, and have been working ever since FDR held office to destroy his legacy. They hate unions, minimum wage, child labor laws, import tariffs, high marginal taxes, Social Security. They have countered all of this by corrupting politics with money, stealing elections, launching illegal wars, spending us into a ditch … it seems that the criminals are very much opposed to representative government.

So does good government naturally lead to criminal government? No. Not at all. There are merely reactionaries around us, always waiting to pounce, take advantage, seize the public treasury for their own use. These are criminals, and they are being protected by police right now against people who want representative government.

So I wish to take the phrase “representative government” and set it aside, so that it not be thrown into the same pool with “government,” so that we cannot be told that all “government” is alike. The following words are from Dave Budge at 4&20, my substitution of words used for his in brackets. It’s startling what he is really saying!

But one must remember that no matter how egregious the behavior of cops is it is you, dear voter, who indirectly gave them that power. Many of you, I believe, support federal funding of local and state police. Many of you have called for more enforcement by the legal system for protections against civil rights violations.

It would seem that many only want to have enforced those rules with which they agree. Sorry, you can’t have it both ways. The solution, then, is to work to change the rules….I’m not making a red herring. I’m saying that there is a high correlation between wanting more [representative]government and getting more [representative] government abuse. … If you ask for more [representative] government you’ll get more abuse of power. If you want to level the playing field for the poor you have to reduce the ability for the state to discriminate against them. That means expanding freedom and ridding the law of moralistic nonsense in the name of public health.

You blame spooky big corporate interests? Think of [representative] government as the Federal Bank of Abuse and the (well, some) Corporations as Willie Sutton. Why do they rob the banks, cause that’s where the money is. …But the solution will never be to get business to stop rent-seeking (unless you subscribe to a full [representative] state.) One cannot expect a dog to be anything but a dog. The only limits that are effective are those on the grant of favoritism. If you can show me another way (short of complete [representative government] ) I’m all ears.

I can be accused of putting words in his mouth. I surely am, and yet, am I derailing his words or merely amplifying his message, maybe decoding, or removing the dog whistle aspect? He is the one who cannot distinguish between representative government and rule by criminals. But I think he is saying something much more basic – that we have to learn to live with criminals. We cannot keep them caged up. That harms freedom.

It’s quite a muddled thought process he’s got going there, so there is never going to be a unified theory of government coming from him. What will come from him is more of the same, the notion that we must never interfere with the power of the strong to control the weak (euphemistically referred to as “rent seeking.”) That robs us of our freedom. He’s deep in contradiction. Rand would suggest he examine his underlying assumptions.