Article by Ian Huyett.

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Few Republicans would deny that it’s difficult for Mitt Romney to sell himself as a fiscal conservative while sharing a stage with Ron Paul. The Texas congressman and physician, who has consistently scored among the top three GOP candidates in recent weeks, has proposed a comprehensive plan to axe $1 trillion in government spending during his first year in office and create a budget surplus by 2015, according to his official campaign website.

Though Republicans widely respect Paul’s fiscal target, the foreign policy that Paul would use to strike it is more contentious. Besides slashing five cabinet departments and federal welfare requirements, Paul would eliminate foreign aid and use U.S. troops to secure the border instead of policing the entire planet. Neoconservatives — big government Republicans who baldly promote increased foreign aid and gave us the Iraq War — attack Paul as an “isolationist.” More so than Romney, however, Paul, by always putting American interests before those of foreign countries, would ensure a militarily strong United States.

Not unlike the myriad fallen empires of history — potentially, America’s predecessors — our wasteful policy of overextension is leaving the U.S. increasingly ill-prepared to compete with its rivals on the world stage. China tasks its military with protecting China, Russia tasks its military with protecting Russia and we task our military with babysitting the whole world. By consolidating our armed forces, Paul would decisively protect America’s future from what should be a perplexing mistake of the distant past.

We’ve stretched our troops — who I’d venture to say generally enlist to protect America, not Uganda — across 150 countries around the globe, according to vetfriends.com. More of our soldiers are stationed in Germany than in Afghanistan. There are 28,500 U.S. troops guarding South Korea’s border with North Korea, according to a June 22, 2011, American Thinker column by Ethel C. Fenig. That’s at least 6,000 more than the number of agents employed by the entire U.S. Border Patrol.

CNN reports that on Dec. 20, 2011, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to cut the number of National Guard troops along our border with Mexico from 1,200 to 300. The same day, the Jerusalem Post reported that the U.S. is deploying thousands of soldiers halfway around the world for a missile-defense exercise in Israel, a country that already receives millions from beleaguered American taxpayers yearly.

Whatever immigration policy one supports, it isn’t hard to see that our military should be protecting America instead of, for example, Japan. Whether you methodically screen all who enter your home or affably welcome strangers in ski masks, it’s a good idea to have a security system. It certainly isn’t economical to go into debt securing 100 of your neighbors’ homes while neglecting your own.

Our military exists to protect the people whose tax dollars pay for its existence. If we’re required to contribute to a money pool, it stands to reason that it should benefit those who have paid into it. Draining it dry for the benefit of those who haven’t is theft by any measure. This is exactly what our current policy of needless interventionism and foreign aid does.

“I want an American character,” wrote George Washington, “that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home.” Like Washington, Ron Paul champions an America-first foreign policy that rejects subservience to international interests. A vote for Ron Paul is a vote for the sovereign and pragmatic approach to national defense taken by the men who founded our country — a vote to revive our American character.

Ian Huyett is a junior in political science and anthropology. Please send comments to opinion@kstatecollegian.com.

Interesting blog that includes some good words for yours truly.

Article by Kevin Carson.

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In a single day of glory, January 18, a major portion of the Web went dark as a warning that we will no longer tolerate the Copyright Nazis’ infringements on our speech.

The next day, with the FBI’s takedown of MegaUpload, they showed us the law doesn’t even matter to them — that they never needed SOPA in the first place. And they really didn’t. For the past few years, the FBI has seized the domain names of alleged “intellectual property infringers” through in rem actions and civil forfeiture. SOPA was just a legal fig leaf. As Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) Media Coordinator Tom Knapp argues, regardless of whether SOPA passes, its substance will still be implemented piecemeal through executive action.

But only hours after the MegaUpload takedown, Anonymous showed us the real way to fight back against the Copyright Nazis. The good guys’ sites went dark on Wednesday; the bad guys’ sites went dark on Thursday. The websites of the US Department of Justice, FBI, MPAA, RIAA, and dozens of media companies were taken down by distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.

The beauty of it is, this was an an impromptu action using Anonymous’ “Low Orbit Ion Cannon” attack from our grandparents’ day, all of two years ago. DDOS isn’t hacking a site; it’s the equivalent of tearing down a poster — taking a site temporarily offline by overloading it with traffic. In contrast, during the past year, Anonymous has actually infiltrated major corporate and institutional websites — like those of HBGary, Texas law enforcement, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), and Stratfor — and published reams of highly embarrassing internal emails and memos. This is called a “doxing” attack. Just my guess, but I imagine we can expect something similar to happen to the MPAA, Chris Dodd, and assorted Big Content companies starting any day now.

The ultimate response, rather than trying to fight for reform within the system, is simply rendering the Copyright Nazis’ filthy laws — whatever they are — unenforceable. As C4SS board member Charles Johnson has argued, a gram of circumvention is worth a metric ton of lobbying. Let the wicked write whatever laws on paper they see fit; the righteous will break them, as Samson broke iron chains like bands of tow.

The seizure of MegaUploads’ domain name is a shot across the bow, a warning to companies who store and transfer large files through the Cloud, for entirely “legitimate” reasons (under the existing copyright monopoly), that their data is vulnerable to lawless action by the state. The Copyright Nazis’ rentacops in the FBI are only creating a powerful incentive for websites to migrate to servers in places outside the American Gestapo’s control. Iceland, an emerging free information haven, is a good candidate.

The American state’s decline into fascism is also creating powerful incentives for Internet users here behind the USA’s DRM Curtain to adopt Tor routers and circumvention tools like the Firefox DeSopa extension. The latter extension automatically routes to a site’s actual numeric IP address when the domain name is shut down. (MegaUpload is already back up and accessible at its IP address, http://109.236.83.66/, by the way).

Totalitarian regimes in China and Iran are unable to prevent their citizens from using such means to access information in the Free World. The Lords of Scarcity and their hired thugs in the American state, likewise, are unable to prevent Americans from breaching the Great Firewall and communicating freely with the Free World.

There’s also another promising avenue of attack. Just about every day or two, Mike Masnick at Techdirt mentions another example of some Copyright Nazi Congresscritter or Big Content company whose own website includes copyrighted material without permission. If SOPA passes, we need to start actively flagging all such content, calling Joe Biden’s 800 anonymous snitch number, or whatever is necessary to subject the Copyright Nazis to a costly war of attrition under their own laws. In fact, by using government coercion against us, they’ve put themselves outside the law and made themselves lawful spoils of war — why does the violation even have to be real, so long as the complaint is anonymous?

By setting itself up as the World Hegemon enforcing artificial scarcity and information lockdown, the United States will simply reduce itself and its satellites to the position of a closed, squalid, and declining society, shut off from a surrounding world of free, open, and agile networks. And in the end, it will relegate itself to the ash heap of history.

Article by Kevin Carson.

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The present historic epoch is one of transition from authoritarian institutions like states and corporations, to a society of self-organized networks and voluntary associations. As in any historic transition, second-order variables introduce high levels of turbulence to the process.

One such source of uncertainty is internal divisions within the authoritarian camp. That can only be expected. The very existence and function of authoritarian institutions is zero-sum in character. States are instruments of economic exploitation, through which ruling classes extract their wealth from producers. The wealth of parasitic corporations consists of rents on artificial property rights and artificial scarcities extracted from the consumer. It’s no wonder a gang of thieves might fall into quarreling internally as each attempts to put one over on the other.

On the other hand networks, non-capitalist markets, and other voluntary associations among free individuals have no reason for dissension because they’re predicated on positive-sum, cooperative relations among equals.

Among the instabilities of the authoritarian side is dissensions among states in the global system.  We’ve seen this in recent years with states aiding (and frequently attempting to co-opt) dissident movements within competing states. Hence the American policy of encouraging the use of encrypted routers in Iran and China, and its limited support for the Arab Spring uprisings (except in Bahrain and the other conservative Gulf monarchies, of course).

Compared to the Arab Spring, the US had somewhat better luck co-opting the so-called “color revolutions” of the former USSR, using them as disposable tools for installing neoliberal regimes. In Egypt, in contrast, the Tahrir Square movement seems ill-disposed to settle down, accept the new military regime, and take orders from the World Bank and IMF. And the US is on the whole hostile to movements like those in Spain and Greece, because of their much stronger anti-neoliberal focus.

It’s a truism of geopolitics that the emergence of a single, overly strong power will be countered by the emergence of coalitions of smaller powers against it. One early sign of such a counter-tendency was the Shanhai Cooperation Organization, a loose security alliance between Russia, China and several former Soviet republics in Central Asia. We can expect such attempts to solidify and enlarge if the United States attacks Iran. Such an attack will have the same effect on the world system that Hitler’s aggression had on the European Allies.

Recently India announced it will pay for Iranian oil with gold rather than the US dollar. China is likely to do the same shortly.

The Empire is extremely vulnerable to mass, nonviolent — and coordinated — defections by the global South: Abandoning the dollar as reserve currency, repudiating foreign debt, withdrawing from “intellectual property” accords, and transforming themselves into free information havens, etc. And I think we’re very close to the tipping point at which a significant number of countries hit on this idea as a way of restraining the Empire’s power. Perhaps the attack on Iran will be what triggers it.

The most important question is whether the Empire will collapse. Will America retreat into managing its own affairs without trying to take the world down with it? The worst-case scenario is Washington fighting a world war against “failed states” and “terror states” engaged in what it calls “economic terrorism,” with hunter-killer drones operating in Iceland, Spain, Greece, Venezuela, and other states which either fall to networked uprisings or attempt to secede from the global corporate system.

Even in the latter event, though, we can expect the emerging free world to defeat the dying superpower in the end. Networks and other free associations run circles around authoritarian hierarchies. They’re more agile and react to situations more quickly. Because they are not divided among themselves by mutually exclusive interests, because they can trust each other, their local nodes and individual members are free to react to emergent situations on their own initiative and take up promising innovations from other nodes without having to follow endless bureaucratic rules and standard operating procedures in order to get permission to act.

A global superpower founded on the principles of information control and fear and distrust of its own people cannot long endure. We already saw one superpower so founded collapse from the weight of its own internal contradictions. I expect the second one to fall within our lifetimes. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Article by Justin Raimondo.

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There’s no doubt about it: Andrew B. Adler, the editor of the Atlanta Jewish Times, is afool. His article advocating the assassination of President Obama has by now beenbroadcast all over the internet, and brought condemnation from every quarter down on his head. His tearful apologies, his denials that he actually meant to call for Obama’s death, and the swiftness with which major Jewish organizations distanced themselves from his crazed call are, perhaps, punishment enough for the poor man: I can’t help feeling sorry for him.

The Atlanta Jewish Times is not exactly the Forward: with a circulation of around 3,000, it is an obscure publication that carries news of the local Jewish community and is seemingly typical of the dozens of similar niche newspapers throughout the country – except, of course, for the views of its editor, which are by no means typical of the Jewish community. That being said, this incident underscores a phenomenon that has been largely overlooked until recently, and that is the extremism of a certain segment of the pro-Israel community. That this element is present in the Jewish community was acknowledged by none other than my old friend Abe Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League, in his statement condemning Adler’s piece:

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Richard Spencer interviews Jonathan Bowden.

The elite want you to be quiet and take your medicine. This article is a bit creepy. Is it the Holy Church discussing how to squash heresy? No, it’s your progressive intellectual elite discussing how to craft a better man.

Does Google have a responsibility to help stop the spread of 9/11 denialism, anti-vaccine activism, and other fringe beliefs?
by Evgeny Morozov at Slate

In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse—a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips. That much has happened—but with a twist: In addition to borrowing existing items from its vast collections, we, the patrons, could also deposit our own books, pamphlets and other scribbles—with no or little quality control.

Such democratization of information-gathering—when accompanied by smart institutional and technological arrangements—has been tremendously useful, giving us Wikipedia and Twitter. But it has also spawned thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the move toward social search may further insulate regular visitors to such sites; discovering even more links found by their equally paranoid friends will hardly enlighten them. Is it time for some kind of a quality control system?

People who deny global warming, oppose the Darwinian account of evolution, refuse to see the causal link between HIV and AIDS, and think that 9/11 was an inside job have put the Internet to great use. Initially, the Internet helped them find and recruit like-minded individuals and promote events and petitions favorable to their causes. However, as so much of our public life has shifted online, they have branched out into manipulating search engines, editing Wikipedia entries, harassing scientists who oppose whatever pet theory they happen to believe in, and amassing digitized scraps of “evidence” that they proudly present to potential recruits.

A new article in the medical journal Vaccine sheds light on the online practices of one such group—the global anti-vaccination movement, which is a loose coalition of rogue scientists, journalists, parents, and celebrities, who think that vaccines cause disorders like autism—a claim that has been thoroughly discredited by modern science.

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I’ve always thought one of the most embarrassing tendencies of leftists is their habit of parading with tacky, hand-lettered signs with misspelled words. That and all the goofball chants: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, blah blah blah has got to go….”

Puke.

Article by Kirkpatrick Sale.

Required reading.

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Why America Failed, which this book is not about, is nonetheless a devastating and eviscerating critique proving convincingly that Americahas failed, and abominably, even tragically.  That makes it a very important book that I hope will find an attentive audience, particularly among those of the media and intelligentsia who need to understand its truths and rid themselves of the increasingly common idea that there is some kind of palliative that will reform and restore American government to some imagined efficient and democratic past. (Please copy, Occupiers, Tea Partyers, Tenthers, and all Democrats,etc.)

I cannot overemphasize how essential this wisdom is to any comprehension of America today, or tomorrow, or how powerfully Morris Berman (an academic historian who has emigrated to Mexico) makes his case.  It is not a long book (196 pages, plus backmatter), but it is replete with overwhelming evidence to support the thesis, as he puts it on his first page:

The principal goal of North American civilization, and of its inhabitants, is and always has been an ever-expanding economy— affluence—and endless technological innovation—“progress.” A nation of hustlers, writes [Walter] McDougall, a people relentlessly on the make.

From the very start, from the Puritans’ shining “city on a hill” and the Jamestown settlement’s conquest and exploitation of Indian lands, this country has been about making and taking, a business culture with a commercial orientation, devoted to growth and power, wealth and property, private advancement and profit, militarism and materialism, expansion and empire. John Adams saw it at the beginning: the U.S. was “more Avaricious than any other Nation that ever existed.” Or as deTocqueville was to say later: “As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?”

Let it be acknowledged that, given this as its goal and ideal, this nation has done pretty well.  It is in most terms rich and powerful (let us discount the fact that we are $16 trillion in debt and wiped out $14 trillion in household wealth in the last crash), full of comforts and conveniences, food and shelter and plumbing and heat for most, high-tech gadgetry and systems, a developed (if crumbling) infrastructure coast to coast, the largest military in the world, the world’s fall-back currency, an unmatched service industry, and all the rest of what makes up a modern industrial capitalist nation.

But what Berman shows, in fascinating detail, is that with all that concentration on hustling, which makes up our entire lives for our lives, is that we have lost a sense of the public good in the face of private interest, an understanding of community in the face of aggravated individualism, a sense of spiritual well-being in the face of material pressure and stress, an appreciation of the simple life in the face of technological complexity, even a true sense of republicanism and the political commonwealth in the face of manipulative and intrusive oligarchy and political individual wealth.  Much of what we still think of as in some way valuable—stability rather than progress, face-to-face instead of on-line, family and friends instead of networks and “friends,” craftsmanship instead of mass production, virtue and tradition and honor and simplicity rather than egotism and modernity and self-interest and multi-tasking, gemeinschaft instead of gesellshaft—much of that has been quite lost in the dominant hustling culture.

Not only that, but we have acquired a host of evils and sorrows along with material prosperity.  Berman compiles a whole raft of rather depressing facts that show what the downside of the technocommerial society is: mass unemployment, foreclosures, increasing poverty for the many (with corporate bailouts and bonuses for the egregious few); a criminal culture with the highest rate of homicide in the world and a corrections system that contains 25 per cent of all the world’s prisoners; a high incidence of violence throughout the culture, including crime, domestic violence, and warfare, along with movies, TV, and video games; a social numbness and clinically diagnosed “empathy deficit disorders”; consumption of two-thirds of the global market in antidepressants with at least 164 million users; a rank on the worldwide Happy Planet Index in 2009 of 150^th; fully 25 per cent of American households had only one person, a rate of aloneness probably the highest in the world. Or, as Berman puts it at one point:

The culmination of a hustling, laissez-faire capitalist culture is that everything gets dumbed down, that all significant questions are ignored, and that every human activity is turned into a commodity, and anything goes if it sells. What we have is domination by corporate media, politics via poll-driven sound bites, a foreign policy based on unilateralism and preemptive strikes, a failing newspaper industry, a poorly informed citizenry, the unemployed winding up destitute, weak (or no) mass transit systems, and a health care system that ranks thirty-seventh in the world.

The emperor, and the empire, have no clothes.

Berman spends a good deal of time talking about the “alternative culture” to all this, including “a commitment to craft, community, the public good, the natural environment, spiritual practice, and the ‘simple life,” and he shows that its adherents and champions have existed all along, though of course overwhelmed by the dominant culture.  He cites, for example, Thoreau, Melville, Henry Adams, Veblen, Sinclair Lewis, Henry Demarest Lloyd, Ruskin and Morris and the craft movement, Eric Fromm, Lewis Mumford (on whom he justly spends many pages), the Southern Agrarians, Robert Redfield, Vance Packard, William A. Williams, Marcuse, Ellul, Roszak, Schumacher, Lasch, Wendell Berry, and more recently Jerry Mander, Langdon Winner, Neil Postman, and somewhat surprisingly Ted Kaczynski. This is a distinguished bunch, and they are known today because the work they did was careful and trenchant and exposed powerfully the ills of a material society, but, as Berman notes when talking about Mumford, in the end “you can’t get taken seriously if you point this out.”  How well I know.

And so the alternative culture, though it has always existed on the fringe, and still does even now, has never seriously derailed the steamengine of the hustler civilization nor in fact even slowed it down perceptively.  In fact that civilization will always take steps to marginalize it, even destroy it if necessary, a fact that Berman illustrates in a chapter on the antebellum South.  He shows how the South was “the one example we have of an opponent of [the dominant] ideology that had real political teeth,” and blatantly opted for a life premodern (indeed “neofeudal”), agrarian, slow, conservative, and honoring tradition, honor, chivalry, and hospitality more than making a buck or inventing a gadget.  This ultimately the increasingly industrial and expansive North could not stand and so began a war to destroy it. “The treatment of the South by the North,” Berman says, “was the template for the way the United States would come to treat any nation it regarded as an enemy: not merely a scorched earth policy, but also a ‘scorched soul’ policy’” that it would use in Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba, Japan, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and anywhere else it could achieve it.

Which is why in the end Berman concludes that nothing will ever change our hustling civilization and all attempts at trying to replace it are fruitless: “I regard the fantasy of a recovered future as pure drivel.”  He sees, instead, that it is headed toward inevitable collapse, and not too many decades away.  He quotes a U.S. intelligence report from theWashington Post that predicts “a steady decline” in American dominance in the coming decades, the country eroding “at an accelerating pace” in “political, economic and arguably, cultural arenas,” to which he adds, “Nothing could be more obvious.”

In a rare moment of optimism he goes on to say, “Collapse could be a good thing” if it could ultimately “open the door to the alternative tradition,” a process he admits is “a long shot.”  And here he suggests, and wins my heart as he does so, that one means to that is secession, which holds promise precisely because it has given up on trying to change the industrial society as a whole, across the nation, and picks instead smaller places (such as Vermont) where some version of the alternative tradition might be realized.

At the present time, he says, “this project doesn’t have a hope in hell,” but “in thirty or forty years, it may not seem so far-fetched.”

Well, it may take a generation, but I don’t think so.  The collapse will come sooner than we realize—I   have predicted within a decade—and  it will open up secession (or some equivalent such as city-states or medieval walled cities) as the only possible opportunity for a new society with new human-scale alternatives.  I’m not predicting it, mind you, I’m just saying it’s the only way to go.

Kirkpatrick Sale is the author of a dozen books, including Human Scale and Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution, and is the Director of the Middlebury Institute for the study of separation, secession, and self-determination.

Article by Paul Craig Roberts.

I’m not sure I agree with all of this. Most of the criticism of RP  I hear isn’t especially focused on standard libertarian opposition to Social Security and Medicare. Rather, the Republi-turd “base” opposes RP because of his opposition to neocon wars and his lack of zeal for theocratic moralism. The Left opposes him because he’s not as histrionic over the laundry list of Isms, Archies and Phobias as they are. His views on the welfare state seem to be a secondary or tertiary issue for both camps. Roberts’ basic point is correct, however. The issues RP focuses on are the big issues that affect everyone, not just various economic or social interests.

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If Ron Paul’s libertarian handlers and support base could escape their ideology, Ron Paul could be much better positioned to win the Republican nomination.

Here are some suggestions.

Ron Paul should be making the point that Social Security and Medicare are threatened by multi-trillion dollar wars that are funded by debt, by bailouts of a deregulated banking system, and by money creation to keep the banks afloat. Libertarians support deregulation, but their position has always been that deregulated industries must not be bailed out with public subsidies, much less subsidies that are so extensive that they threaten government solvency and the value of the currency.

Instead of hitting hard on the serious threat to Social Security and Medicare posed by Obama and Republican candidates for the nomination, all of whom serve Wall Street, the military/security complex, and the Israel Lobby, Ron Paul has been positioned both by his supporters and his opponents as the danger to Social Security and Medicare. This is an amazing strategic mistake by the Ron Paul campaign.

The mistake is somewhat understandable. Ron Paul’s supporters are mainly among the young. The importance to them of Social Security and Medicare will not register for many years, but for the vast majority of the population Social Security and Medicare are essential for survival. A candidate who is positioned as the destroyer of what scant economic protection the American elderly have is not positioned to win an election for president.

Many libertarians regard Social Security and Medicare as welfare handouts and as Ponzi schemes, when in fact these programs are a form of private property. People pay for these programs all their working lives, just as they pay premiums for private medical policies and make their deposits into private pension plans. Libertarians are great defenders of private property, so why don’t they defend the elderly’s private property rights in Social Security and Medicare benefits? Social Security and Medicare are contracts that government made with citizens. These contracts are as valid and enforceable as any other contracts. If Social Security and Medicare are in dire trouble, why is the government wasting trillions of dollars in behalf of private armaments industries, a neocon ideology, and Israel’s territorial ambitions? Why isn’t this question the most important issue in the campaign?

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Spencer Ackerman
wired.com

It’s not just for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars anymore. The Department of Homeland Security is interested in a camera package that can peek in on almost four square miles of (constitutionally protected) American territory for long, long stretches of time.

Homeland Security doesn’t have a particular system in mind. Right now, it’s just soliciting “industry feedback” on what a formal call for such a “Wide Area Surveillance System” might look like. But it’s the latest indication of how powerful military surveillance technology, developed to find foreign insurgents and terrorists, is migrating to the home front.

The Department of Homeland Security says it’s interested in a system that can see between five to 10 square kilometers — that’s between two and four square miles, roughly the size of Brooklyn, New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood — in its “persistent mode.” By “persistent,” it means the cameras should stare at the area in question for an unspecified number of hours to collect what the military likes to call “pattern of life” data — that is, what “normal” activity looks like for a given area. Persistence typically depends on how long the vehicle carrying the camera suite can stay aloft; DHS wants something that can fit into a manned P-3 Orion spy plane or a Predator drone — of which it has a couple. When not in “persistent mode,” the cameras ought to be able to see much, much further: “long linear areas, tens to hundreds of kilometers in extent, such as open, remote borders.”

If it’s starting to sound reminiscent of the spy tools the military has used in Iraq and Afghanistan, it should. Homeland Security wants the video collected by the system to beam down in “near real time” — 12 seconds or quicker — to a “control room (T) or to a control room and beyond line of sight (BLOS) ruggedized mobile receiver on the ground,” just as military spy gear does. The camera should shift to infrared mode for nighttime snooping, and contain “automated, real time, motion detection capability that cues a spotter imager for target identification.” Tests for the system will take place in Nogales, Arizona.

Read more.

Pacific Northwest Indians go hard. Fuck the system. First Nations, AK Natives, American Indians, tool up. Prepare your minds and bodies. Warriors, step forward.

My interview with Gottfried on VOR.

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Keith Preston interviews Paul Gottfried. Topics include:

• The core characteristics that distinguish the Right from the Left, including a belief in the necessity and legitimacy of organic hierarchy, respect for the limitations imposed by human nature, and a preference for tradition ;
• How the American “conservative movement” is not really of the Right and how mainstream American politics is dominated by two factions of the Left;
• The transformation of the Left from its previous orientation towards Marxism to its current obsession with multiculturalism and alternative lifestyles;
• The role of the managerial state in promoting Political Correctness;
• The relationship between Christianity and modern “politics of guilt”;
• Neoconservatism as an outgrowth of the radical Left.

Paul Gottfried is professor emeritus of the humanities at Elizabethtown College, prolific author, and a leading scholar of the American traditional Right.

Wow!

It looks like Ron Paul is a lot more popular with the public than with the Republi-turds.

Ron Paul is not “the answer.” The Andrew Levine article I previously posted explains fairly well why a RP presidency would be ineffective at genuinely dismantling the system (unified opposition from the political class and ruling class generally, the use of “terror” as a  bogeyman, etc.). Plus, RP’s plan for “deficit reduction” involves only a 15% reduction in military expenditures. However, this is certainly a step in the right direction. What this indicates is that half of the U.S. population is receptive to RP’s libertarian-constitutionalist message. Our secessionist-anarchist message is the next logical step in the continued radicalization of RP constituents.

This is what I think needs to happen: The RP message needs to go from a 46% sympathy level to a majority where a Ron Paul-like candidate would actually win a generally election. The masses of sympathizers for such a candidate would then have the opportunity to witness the political class throwing up every possible obstacle to prevent such candidates from appearing on the ballot, being included in debates, being nominated by either party, being vilified by the media,etc. The public would then have the opportunity to see that the system really is rigged in the establishment’s favor and start becoming open to more radical alternatives.

It’s quite possible the RP campaign could have a “Eugene McCarthy effect” or a “McGovern effect” where even though the campaign itself is a failure (perhaps miserably so) it sets the stage for the eventual takeover of one of the parties by Ron Paulians (the way the New Left took over the Democrats following the failure of the McCarthy campaign in 1968). If a RP-like candidate ran in a general election and was completely trounced (like McGovern was in 1972) it could still set the stage for such ideas to be worked into the mainstream political fabric (some analyst’s have called the Obama election “George McGovern’s Revenge”).

The reason the secessionist message is so important is because it creates a major barrier to an anti-state and antiwar movement being coopted the way the New Left was. Following the New Left takeover of the Democratic Party, the left-wing of the ruling class adopted a strategy of essentially giving the New Left radicals everything they wanted on social questions (public sector jobs, expansion of the regulatory welfare state, affirmative action, abortion right, gay rights, environmental legislation, etc.) in exchange for toning down and eventually abandoning outright their anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist message. Hence, the state of the Left today as an upper middle class movement that cares only about cultural politics and a bigger welfare state.

But secessionism cannot be coopted in such a way as it means the destruction of the U.S. empire, the overthrow of the federal regime, and the dismantling of the state-corporate alliance, and the preservation of these are the only things the U.S. ruling class really cares about.

Article by Andrew Levine.

This is an interesting critique of Ron Paul from a neo-Marxist perspective. While it makes some interesting arguments, and is likely correct is its assessment of the futility of the Ron Paul campaign, it also engages in a lot of unnecessary overreach. The reason the U.S. state engages in persistent military aggression is because it is a large powerful state that possesses the resources to do so and because that’s what states do when they have the means. The solution is to simply smash up the U.S. into lots of pieces so it no longer possesses the means to military imperialism. See Switzerland.

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Ron Paul is the only anti-war candidate running for president.  More than that: he wants to do away with overseas bases and reduce the military to the strictly defensive force envisioned in the Constitution; one that only wages wars Congress declares.  He also wants to dismantle the apparatus of empire and to halt American meddling in the affairs of foreign countries. This would entail, among other things, the end of all Bush-Obama wars, the demise of the military-industrial complex, and the termination of America’s virtually unconditional military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel.

Paul is also the only candidate calling for reversing the Bush-Obama assault on habeas corpus protections and on constitutionally protected due process rights.   His views on domestic surveillance and similar intrusions into individuals’ lives and behaviors are more “liberal” than any other Republican candidate’s.  But for one gaping exception, they’re more liberal too than Barack Obama’s: Paul’s libertarianism goes missing when the specter of homosexuality threatens, and he loses it when it comes to female sexuality.  Thus he’s fine with infringing upon reproductive rights; holding, for example, that states should be permitted to outlaw abortion.

Paul’s anti-militarism, anti-interventionism, and fierce, though partial, support for individuals’ freedoms are not the only reasons he falls outside the governing consensus.   His views on economic and social policies are even more discordant and unsettling to the status quo.  And so there is a bipartisan consensus that his candidacy is a non-starter – a point with which our media heartily concur.

This is why, should his candidacy garner significantly more support than it already has, the powers that be across the entire political spectrum, from a to b, will mobilize to
crush him.  But it won’t come to that.  His rivals for the Republican nomination are more than up to the task.

Still, as the only anti-war, anti-militarist, and anti-interventionist candidate in the national spotlight, and the most reliable civil libertarian (for straight men), Paul’s candidacy has some appeal for leftists, despite the appalling positions he takes on everything else.   Supporting Ron Paul can therefore seem as good a way as any to express contempt for Barack Obama and his liberal supporters.  Since they offer up fresh grounds for contempt on an almost daily basis, the temptation is palpable to discount Paul’s antiquarian economic philosophy, his hostility towards the labor movement, and his attraction to social policies of the kind that Ebenezer Scrooge endorsed before three ghosts and the Cratchit family set him straight.

Of course, acting on that temptation requires forgetting a lot – like the racist comments in newsletters released under his name and his voting record in Congress on issues affecting women and people of color.  Yes, Paul has spoken out more than any of his Republican rivals or, for that matter, Barack Obama on the evils of institutional racism; the balance sheet is therefore equivocal.  Even so, it is hard to dismiss all the reasons for rejecting Paul out of hand, even if doing so is tantamount to making common cause with the scaremongers on the MSNBC evening lineup.   But some think it worth the effort – because Paul is against Obama for some of the right reasons, and no one else with his degree of visibility and voter appeal now is.

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Article by Sheldon Richman.

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The image of four U.S. marines urinating on the corpses of Afghan fighters is a fitting symbol of American intervention in Central Asia and the Middle East. That picture will live forever in the memories of people in the region, along with the pictures from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

Most Americans aren’t much interested in making fine distinctions in foreign affairs. As Republican presidential contender Ron Paul points out, the Taliban (U.S. allies against the Soviets) never wished the American people harm. What they oppose is a foreign presence in their country, Russian or American, and they have no desire to attack anyone who stays home and minds his own business.

Other than Paul, the Republican candidates see the desecration of dead foreigners as an issue with which to score points on President Obama. The candidates and their supporters sympathize with the marines. After all, they say, the Taliban kill Americans. They are the enemy. They all should be killed.

This may be fodder for demagogues, but it’s plain nonsense. The Taliban are the home team. The American forces are the visitors — invaders and occupiers, to be precise. As Ron Paul likes to ask, how would Americans feel if there were an occupying army in the United States propping up a corrupt government? Would they turn militant? Would they mount an insurgency? I think we can predict they would.

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By Bill Anderson.

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As the returns from South Carolina come in, we find that about two-thirds of SC Republican voters are evangelicals, and the evangelicals have spoken loudly: If Democrats are adulterers, they are evil, but if it is a Republican, well, all is forgiven. I’m sure that the Bob Jones University crowd gave serial adulterer Newt its thumbs up. Hey, at least Bill and Hillary Clinton are still together.

During the Clinton years, we heard from evangelicals ad nauseum that character mattered. Well, here is Newt Gingrich, a man who was banging his campaign workers, demanding an “open marriage,” and had the moral compass of a shark. This is the man evangelicals support? And then evangelicals wonder why people on the left see them as hypocrites and moral cowards.

So, the people who claim to follow Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, display their beliefs through candidates like Newt Gingrich. These are the people who jeered Ron Paul when he called for Americans to live by the Golden Rule that Christ Himself taught us. It is beyond me, and I have been part of the evangelical subculture for all of my life.

Article by John Walsh.

It’s official. The Left is formally dead as an enemy of the Empire.

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For the Left, the big news of the New Hampsire primary has been greeted with an embarrassed silence. For there the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, for example “Progressive” Democrats of America, failed completely to put forward a candidate for peace. This failure was not unexpected since the candidate of the progressives was and is Barack Obama who is out-Bushing Bush in the war and empire department. Nor did the wing of the progressive peace movement not formallyassociated with the Democratic Party raise its voice in any discernible way in New Hampshire. Here is a primary which is carefully watched in a state small enough so that a grassroots effort cam have a genuine effect and reverse the tide of war as happened in 1968 and 1952. Where were UFPJ, Veterans for Peace, Peace Action, Code Pink? Missing in action. What an abject failure, a profound indictment of what is called the “Peace and Justice” movement.

Lenin once remarked that each generation comes to socialism in its own way. It might also be said that each generation comes to oppose war and Empire in its own way. For the present generation of 20 and 30 somethings, libertarian philosophy is the vehicle to oppose war, as was evident in the New Hampshire primary. In part they chose Libertarianism, but in part Libertarianism chose them since the progressives have largely abandoned anti-interventionism, preferring instead Obama’s “humanitarian” imperialism. Many in fact are pro-war when you scratch the surface.

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C4SS links back to southern nationalist network

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Dear C4SS Supporters,

This week I’ve submitted 9,083 Center op-eds to 2,763 publications on seven continents. So far I’m tracking six “pickups” of those op-eds:

• Kevin Carson’s “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery … and Fighting Back is ‘Aggression’” appeared on Antiwar.com and in the Baltic Review on January 14.
• Darian Worden’s “Urinating on Life” appeared in the Dhaka, Bangladesh New Age on January 15; the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Malay Mail on January 16; La Tribuna Hispana USA (as “Orinándose sobre la vida”) on January 17; and the Deming, New Mexico Headlight on January 18.

This week’s pseudo-random reciprocal blogospheric link love goes out to Information Clearing House, Lisbon Maine.Net and the Southern Nationalist Network (yes, I was like “WTF?” too).

Have a great weekend!

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Center for a Stateless Society

99% of cops make the rest look bad.

From Paul Craig Roberts new website.

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Since my January 11 column http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/01/11/the-next-war-on-washingtons-agenda/and the news alert posted on January 14 http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/01/14/news-alert/, more confirmation that Washington is moving the world toward a dangerous war has appeared. The Obama regime is using its Ministry of Propaganda, a.k.a., the American media, to spread the story that President Obama, Pentagon chief Panetta, and other high US officials are delivering strong warnings to Israel not to attack Iran.

For someone as familiar with Washington as I am, I recognize these reports for what they are. They are Br’er Rabbit telling Br’er Fox “please don’t throw me in the briar patch.”

If you don’t know the Uncle Remus stories, you have missed a lot. Br’er Rabbit was born and raised in the briar patch.

What these “leaked” stories of Washington’s warnings and protests to Israel are all about is to avoid Washington’s responsibility for the war Washington has prepared. If the war gets out of hand, and if Russia and China intervene or nukes start flying, Washington wants the blame to rest on Israel, and Israel seems willing to accept the blame. Nikolai Patrushev, who heads Russia’s Security Council, has apparently been deceived by Washington’s manipulation of the media. According to the Interfax news agency, Patrushev condemned Israel for pushing the US towards war with Iran.

You get the picture. The helpless Americans. They are being bullied by Israel into acquiescing to a dangerous war. Otherwise, no more campaign contributions.

The facts are different. If Washington did not want war with Iran it would not have provided the necessary weapons to Israel. It would not have deployed thousands of US troops to Israel, with a view toward the American soldiers being killed in an Iranian response to Israel’s attack, thus “forcing” the US to enter the war. Washington would not have built a missile defense system for Israel and would not be conducting joint exercises with the Israeli military to make sure it works.

If Washington did not want Israel to start the war, Washington would inform the Israeli government in no uncertain words that an Israeli strike on Iran means that the US will NOT veto the UN’s denunciation of Israel and the sanctions that would be placed on Israel as a war criminal state. Washington would tell Israel that it is good-bye to the billions of dollars that the bilked American taxpayers, foreclosed from their homes by fraudulent mortgages and from jobs by offshoring, hand over by compulsion to Israel to support Israel’’s crimes against humanity.

But, of course, Washington won’t prevent the war that it so fervently desires.
Neither will Washington’s NATO puppets. “Great” Britain does as it is told, subservient and occupied Germany, bankrupt France, Italy occupied with US air bases with a government infiltrated by the CIA, bankrupt Spain and Greece will all, in hopes of an outpouring of US dollars and devoid of any dignity or honor, support the new war that could end life on earth.

Only Russia and China can prevent the war.

Russia took the first step when the newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister for military affairs, Demitry Rogozin told a press conference in Brussels that Russia would regard an attack on Iran as “a direct threat to our security.”

Washington is counting on subverting Russia’s opposition to Washington’s next war. Washington can time the attack on Iran right after the March elections in Russia. When Putin wins again, the treasonous Russian opposition parties, financed by the CIA, will unleash protests in the streets. The subservient and utterly corrupt Western media will denounce Putin for stealing the election. The orchestrated protests in Russia will turn violent and discredit, if not prevent, any Russian response to the naked aggression against Iran.

For Rogozin’s warning to be effective in preventing war, China needs to enter the fray. Washington is banking on China’s caution. China deliberates and never rushes into anything. China’s deliberation will serve Washington’s war.

It is possible that the crazed neocon Washington government will have one more “victory” before Russia and China comprehend that they are next on the extermination list. As this date cannot be far off, life on earth might expire before the unpayable debts of US and EU countries come due.

Watch the video.

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In the Nov. 22nd Republican debate on CNN Ron Paul was asked about the Drug War. He called it a “failure” and said the US should handle illegal drugs the same as alcohol. “Al least sick people should be able to get marijuana”. He went on to say prescription drugs do the most harm and he fears our civil liberties at the strong hand of the federal government.

The real story is that the audience reaction is not getting the same weight as “let him die” or cheers for Rick Perry’s death penalty cheers.

Article by Anthony Gregory.

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I have noticed many progressives opposed to Ron Paul will say something like this:

“Ron Paul might be right on the drug war, bailouts of Wall Street, the war in Afghanistan, and civil liberties issues, but these are exceptions to an otherwise horrible program. Ninety percent of what he supports is terrible. People on the left should not support him just over a few issues.”

It fascinates me that anyone thinks this way. I am a shameless libertarian. I love the free market and oppose the federal government doing anything. Yet if a leftist president was actually good on the drug war, bailouts of Wall Street, the war in Afghanistan, other foreign military adventures, and civil liberties issues, while being a typical Democrat on everything else, I would prefer that candidate a thousand times over Mitt Romney (or Barack Obama).

From a certain perspective, we can say that economic policy drives everything. If we are arguing about whether to have total communism or a market economy, we are not quibbling over details, but rather life or death for millions, civilization or its destruction. But that is never the debate over economic policy. The difference between Romney and Obama is hardly worth writing home about. Even looking at the difference between Ron Paul’s proposed economic policy for his first term and the status quo — while it is very substantial, probably the most substantial economic reform proposed on the national stage in decades — it still does not amount to the difference between free-market capitalism and communism. For hundreds of thousands of people, however, the difference between a foreign policy of non-intervention and one of endless war is indeed one of life or death, or at least living under somewhat tolerable conditions or seeing one’s entire reality destroyed by the empire.

For the sake of the character of our civilization, and for the sake of millions of people living in the rest of the world, the difference between living under a state envisioned by Ron Paul and the current one — one that wages wars in nation after nation, indefinitely detains people without judicial checks and balances, assassinates citizens without due process, shields torturers from accountability, cuts entire countries off of trade with brutal sanctions, warrantlessly wiretaps the domestic population, jails hundreds of thousands of peaceful Americans for victimless drug crimes, shovels hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars to corporate cronies — is not just a minor difference. If progressives care about this stuff, I would think it wouldn’t all be lumped together as one or two issues out of a dozen or more. I would think it would count for much more of one’s analysis. Again, if Obama were Ron Paulian on everything but domestic welfare and taxes, I’d still prefer him to Romney without question. I wonder why lefties don’t share these priorities.

For me, the question of war and diplomacy is at least half of what matters— because war is mass murder and uproots and snuffs out the lives of millions upon millions of innocent people. If Romney (or Obama) were actually going to stop the killing in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and everywhere else — end the drone murder of children, the CIA funny business, the murderous sanctions, and all the saber rattling — reversing course and promising no more presidential wars — that would be so huge that he would almost have to be an outright communist not to clearly be preferable to his warmongering opposition.

Add in civil liberties questions like torture, wiretapping, indefinite detention, the federal militarization of police, and the drug war, and we’re talking about another 20% or so of what matters — easily. Add to that corporatist bailouts, which are easily among the very worst economic policies, and we’ve got another 10% or so of what matters in federal governance.

These are approximate figures, but the point is: From a humanitarian perspective, any candidate offering an end to America’s wars at home and abroad should be considered correct on more than a “couple” issues. Ron Paul, from a genuine antiwar leftist perspective, shouldn’t be considered good on 10% of the issues — but closer to 90% of the issues. Anyone who would prefer federal genocide and slavery to curbing the EPA and cutting taxes on the wealthy has some twisted priorities.

Article by Pat Buchanan.

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On Sept. 21, 1976, as his car rounded Sheridan Circle on Embassy Row, former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier was assassinated by car bomb. Ronni Moffitt, a 25-year-old American woman who worked with Letelier at the leftist Institute for Policy Studies, died with him.

Michael Townley, an ex-CIA asset in the hire of Chile’s intelligence agency, confessed to using anti-Castro Cubans to murder Letelier, in what was regarded as an act of terrorism on U.S. soil.

Which raises a question: Are not the murders of four Iranian scientists associated with that nation’s nuclear program, by the attachment of bombs to their cars in Tehran, also acts of terrorism?

Had the Stalin- or Khrushchev-era Soviets done this to four U.S. scientists in Washington, would we not have regarded it as acts of terrorism and war?

Iran has accused the United States and Israel of murder. But Hillary Clinton emphatically denied any U.S. complicity: “I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.”

“The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this,” added National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, “We strongly condemn all acts of violence, including acts of violence like this.”

Victoria Nuland, Clinton’s spokeswoman at State, denounced “any assassination or attack on an innocent person, and we express our sympathies to the family.”

The assassinated scientist was a supervisor at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility that hosts regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. If Iran is building a bomb, it is not at Natanz.

U.S. denial of involvement leaves Mossad as the prime suspect. Israel has not denied it, and this comes at a sensitive time in U.S.-Israeli relations.

In Foreign Policy magazine, author and historian Mark Perry, claiming CIA documentation, alleges that Mossad agents in London posed as CIA agents and contacted Jundallah, a terrorist group, to bribe and recruit them to engage in acts of terror inside Iran.

Jundallah has conducted attacks in Sistan-Baluchistan province, killing government officials, soldiers, and women and children.

According to Perry, when George W. Bush learned of the Mossad agents posing as CIA while recruiting terrorists, he “went totally ballistic.”

Yet Meir Dagan, head of Mossad at the time, denies it, and, ironically, has called any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.”

Who is telling the truth? We do not know for sure.

What we do know is that “Bibi” Netanyahu is desperate to have the United States launch air and missile strikes to stop Tehran from becoming the world’s ninth nuclear power. And he is echoed not only by U.S. neocons, but GOP candidates save Ron Paul.

Nor should we be surprised.

To bring America into its war with Germany, Winston Churchill set up William Stephenson, “A Man Called Intrepid,” with hundreds of agents in New York to engage in everything from bribery to blackmail of U.S. senators to get the United States to enter the war and pull England’s chestnuts out of the fire.

This is what desperate countries do.

And while America First kept us out of the European war until Adolf Hitler invaded Russia, ensuring that Russians, not Americans, died in the millions to defeat him, eventually America was maneuvered into war.

Whoever is assassinating these Iranian scientists, be it homegrown Iranian terrorists, Jundallah at the instigation of Israel, or Mossad, the objective is clear: Enrage the Iranians so they strike out at America, provoking a U.S.-Iranian war.

Is such a war in America’s interests? Consider.

While U.S. air and naval power would prevail, Iranian civilians would die, as some of their nuclear facilities are in populated areas. Moreover, we cannot kill the nuclear knowledge Iran has gained. Thus we would only set back their nuclear program by several years. And a bloodied and beaten Iran would then go all-out for a bomb.

The regime, behind which its people would rally, would emerge even more entrenched. U.S. bombing did not cause Germans to remove Hitler or Japanese to depose their emperor. And we lack the ground troops to invade and occupy a country three times the size of Iraq.

All U.S. ships, including carriers in that bathtub the Persian Gulf, would be at risk from shore-based anti-ship missiles and the hundreds of missile boats in Iran’s navy. Any sea battle would send oil prices to $200 and $300 a barrel. There goes the eurozone.

Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shia of the Saudi oil fields and Bahrain, home port to the Fifth Fleet, and Iranian agents in Afghanistan and Iraq could set the region aflame.

As America started up the road to Baghdad in 2003, Gen. David Petraeus is said to have asked, “Tell me how this ends.”

Before some agent provocateur pushes us into war with Iran, Congress should debate the wisdom of authorizing President Obama, or anyone else, to take America into her fifth war in a generation in the Middle and Near East.

Article by Stuart Bramhall.

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The second part of Fleeing Vesuvius is entitled “Innovation in business, money and finance.” It draws on the main theme of Part I, describing how the current economic crisis is a direct result of fossil fuel scarcity and spiking energy costs. The second section focuses on the link between energy availability and money.

The late Richard Douthwaite is the author of the first and (I feel) best essay in Part II, entitled “The supply of money in an energy scarce world.” He traces the history of money, with special emphasis on the de-linking of money, production and wealth which occurred starting in the 1970s. This disconnect results from the “financialization” of the economies of the so called “industrialized” north. He points out the irony of calling Europe and North America “industrialized,” when currently most manufacturing takes place in developing countries, to take advantage of sweatshop wages. At present so called “industrialized” countries earn most of their profits through banking and other financial services. They also carry most of the global debt burden. Douthwaite finds it even more ironic that they owe most of this debt to so-called “developing” countries.

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