your right to say "rape" comes up quickly against my ability to kick your ass

Don’t use “rape” as a generally applied verb.

Don’t use sayings like “I raped that test;” or “[that opposing player] raped me;” or “I’m going to rape their argument;”

Don’t use “rape” in reference to objects, tasks, events, or metaphorically;

Don’t use “rape” in jokes.

Don’t use “rape” to compare things which are not at all akin to rape.

Don’t use “rape” as a stand-in for other activities or words.

Don’t do any of those things around me or I will non-metaphorically stab the fuck out of you.

fuck straight "allies"

[update]
So it turns out the "Straight But Not Narrow" campaign/organization doesn't donate one red cent to LGBTQ charities or organizations. It is a group dedicated to promoting straight "allies."

Fuck these people--they are profiting off of the oppression we suffer without actually suffering any consequences.

You don't get a cookie for believing that LGBTQ people are regular human beings with rights just like you. That's called "being a decent person" and there are no awards for basic human empathy.

Go to their twitter: @weareSBNN (or website) and give them some shit for this money-pocketing--that is how one can get a "good ally" point.


[update]
Most people who identify as "allies" are doing so in a self-serving way. They want to think better of themselves for not being a homophobic asshole. Or for not bashing my skull in because they see me walking down the street.

You just don't get any credit for being "accepting," even in a society that is still insanely oppressive to LGBTQ+ people. Why? Because you should fucking accept people because they're people. It's called "empathy" and "compassion" and just having a healthy, non-bigoted worldview. More thoughts about allies (from myself and others)

friendlyangryfeminist:

you get to be an ally when it is convenient for you, and that is why I will always criticize you. 

when it’s christmas and grandma is sighing over how your cousin just needs to find the right man, you can be silent and neutral because well, grandma’s old, she can’t help it. 

I’m waiting for my grandfather to die so I can bring a girl home. 

when it’s dark at night and you see frat bros yelling “faggot” at the kid in your art history class, you get to walk on by without wondering “am I next?”

I’ve met fresh-faced 17 year old kids who have already planned what they’ll wear after they’re bashed because it seems like an inevitably. 

so when I say don’t apply for lgbt+ scholarships , it is not because I don’t think straight people dont need scholarships. it’s because 40% of the homeless youth in nyc are lgbt+ when we make up less then 10% of the general population.

when I say “no, you don’t understand coming out” its not because you haven’t watched enough Glee or talked to your friends about it, it’s because I have to come out all the time.

THIIIIIIS

I’d like to add: You get to worry about normal danger (or not worry at all), whereas every time I go outside alone I think about how my statistically most likely cause of death is homicide. 

the Onion and how it's now basically reality

The Onion posted this article a few days ago: 

U.S. Military Sends A Few More Of Those Things Over To Afghanistan To Replace Dead Ones

WASHINGTON—In the wake of the news that 2,000 of its things have now died in Afghanistan, U.S. military officials announced Monday that it will be sending some additional things to replace the dead ones.

“A bunch of those things are dead or don’t work anymore, so we need to send over a bunch more,” said U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, adding that while the military sent a bunch of new things in 2010, a good amount of them either died or were broken. “We’ve got tons of things just sitting around in Texas and Florida, so we’re going to send some of those.”

“We actually have a whole load of some used, pretty-beat-up-things that were sent back from Afghanistan a few months ago, so we’ll probably ship them over, too” Panetta continued. “They’re not in perfect condition or anything, but in a pinch they’ll do the trick.” 

Maybe it's bad blogger strategy but I encourage you to go read the whole article (it's not long) before continuing here.
--

Ok, now that you've see that...does anyone disagree with it? I mean, be honest with yourself, be honest about the world we live in. Be as objective as possible. Is that not the most accurate news-like description article of the American military establishment and America's We've Always Been At War With Eastasia mentality?

If you can find me better (and more succinctly, brilliantly done) satire on the point please post it in the comments--but I think this one would be hard to top.

Should you be unconvinced of or unimpressed with its skillful execution I shall provide you a comparison:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Pentagon announced on Friday that three more Army brigades, including one from Fort Campbell, will deploy to Afghanistan later this winter.

The current announcement of rotation of things includes the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Ky.; the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division from Fort Bliss, Texas; and the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, N.Y.

The Army said about 1,900 things from the Fort Campbell unit will be included in the deployment, along with 4,000 things from the Fort Bliss unit and 2,870 from the Fort Drum unit, according to the Pentagon.

The 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division has been designated the first security thing assistance brigade, according to the brigade commander, Col. JP McGee.

He explained that while the troops will be going back to the same area of eastern Afghanistan they were in during their last deployment from 2010 through 2011, they would be doing a different mission.

"With this new designation comes a focus on improving the proficiency of Afghan Security Things as US things decrease their numbers," McGee said in a letter to the unit's things and their families. "This new mission will not require us to deploy the entire brigade. A sizeable portion of the brigade will remain at Fort Campbell while the thing that deploys will include many things [that] are designed to advise and assist our Afghan partners."

This is the second unit from Fort Campbell that is being sent to Afghanistan to serve the Afghan National Army, Afghan police or border patrol in a mostly advisory role. About 400 things, mostly senior leaders and non-commissioned officers, from the 2nd Brigade Combat Things deployed earlier this year as security thing assistance things.

The unit will be broken down into groups of advisory things and battle space integrators, such as artillery support, intelligence and other technical assets that are part of the brigade. This will also be a shorter nine-month deployment because the Army has shortened the length of deployments for most Army units.

The brigade has been preparing for the deployment with training events at Fort Campbell, Fort Knox, Fort Carson and Fort Polk.

"The training that these things [have] conducted over the last year here at Fort Campbell, in the mountains of Colorado and at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, has thoroughly prepared them for their upcoming mission in Afghanistan," Maj. Gen. James C. McConville, commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division, said in a prepared statement.

The things from 1st Brigade Combat Team are expected to start deploying in November.

[I’ve replaced “force(s),” “warriors,” “soldier(s),” “team(s),” and “troop(s)” with “things” original article here] 

The immediately above article is 100% real article from three days ago, I just made some slight adjustments to interchangeably synonymous terms.

This is our country, friends, this is the Empire and the police state revealed with a simple word-swap. In the eyes of our rulers we all exist as mere instruments of their will, objects fit only for use as drone pilots, wage slaves, product consumers, chemicals guinea pigs, capital production units, traded commodities, sources of sadistic entertainment and convenient cannon fodder.

Agency is largely an illusion in this place--by those with the most power over your lives you are viewed as little better than a socket wrench or a box of ballpoint pens, and with that view combined with their power you get the results we are seeing now and have seen for many years if we decide to actively acknowledge them.

On Rape Culture: "SHUT THE FUCK UP, BITCH!"

[update & update III below]

[update II]
I compiled  a single PDF of all the tweets I got (so far) over this--it's 97 pages long and about 12,500 words total. Taking out the extraneous twitter buttons and whatnot I'm betting it's still probably around 10,000+ words from the tweets (and their owners' names) themselves. Some are missing since I was blocking many of these dudes before I decided to start saving them, but this is the overwhelming majority. You can find a MS word doc version here. [/update II]

So I had dozens and dozens of people tweet rape/death/violence threats at me today, all over these two podcasts, and call me a cunt, a whore, a bitch, a whiner, to get my head out of my ass, the stick out of my ass, etc. so on and so forth. Jamie Kilstein of Citizen Radio was on Joe Rogan's podcast the other night and they ended up having a long argument about Rape Culture, and whether million upon millions of women have or do get raped in their life-times (like, cause it's a common thing to just lie about...).

Rogan played the role of your typical Rape Apologist jackass in this little episode by diverting the coversation like it's all about "Free Speech" or how Not All Guys Are Like That or Look, Everyone Hates Rape, BUT... Today it all started when I tweeted this to Joe Rogan:

@jamiekilstein So much solidarity over all that bullshit. I can't believe I listened to@joerogan or @redban for this long.#FuckPatriarchy 

That was at roughly 11:30 am this morning. Joe Rogan retweeted that without comment and that, my friends, is when the fun truly began.

Let make this clear if you're one of the hundreds of lucky folks to come to my blog because I said something mildly unfavorable about Joe Rogan on twitter [and it made you want to say angry things to me:]
FUCK YOU, YOU IGNORANT JACKASS RAPE-APOLOGIZING-MISOGYNISTIC-CREEPER-MOTHERFUCKERS

I hope a feminist you know (and who may not be of the lady persuasion) saw what you tweeted today and badmouths you to everyone you know and you never get laid again. I hope they spray paint "Rape Apologist" on your front door and your car and your boss' car. I  hope the next time one of you proto-rapists creeps on a woman she sticks a knife between your godsdamned ribs and breaks the fucking handle off.

A fraction of the gems I got today:
"@phillyslice99:
@laurenalesia @jamiekilstein get over yourselves, it was a joke you silly bitch""@Bartlebee420: @laurenalesia @metalbrad42 of all alleged rapes, 50% are women crying wolf to make themselves feel better about being a slut "

"@thetimmalone:

@laurenalesia Rape culture is when a whore lies about being raped. Guy gets sent to jail. Whore admits she lied. Nothing happens to her""

"@Jretribe: @jamiekilstein Rape is only funny when done to people who call themselves RADICAL FEMINISTS"

"@potstar420:

@laurenalesia YOUR SO PHUCKING UGLY U MAKE ME SICK U STUPID FEMINAZI KEEP YOUR CUNT SHUT NO ONE CARES ABOUT U #BLACKBRIGADE GO FUK YER MOM"

Oh and if anyone wants to get involved by say, going to any of those persons' twitters and ruining their lives, or notifying their loved-ones/friends/employers that they're rape-loving, rape-threatening asshats, by all means, you have my fucking blessing. Gods' speed to you.

And here are some wonderful quotes from users of Joe Rogan's forums for the episode that had Jamie on:

I don't want to say anything bad about Joe's friend, but Jamie is a fucking cunt. Dude has serious ego issues. Wtf is rape culture? Like a bunch of rapists get together and live a rapist lifestyle where they rape people and pray to a rape god? Get fucking real you cunt. Jamie acts like guys never get raped. Imagine the stigma of coming out and admitting you got raped by a man when you're a young boy. I want to call out a lot of the shit he said, but the rape culture thing was the most absurd. He seems like he wants attention and he seems totally fucking bat shit insane because he refuses to listen to logic. This was the worst podcast I have listened to. It gave me a shameful feeling after listening to it."

--

Guy [Kilstein] says he's anti-censorship, yet says comedians shouldn't talk about certain subjects. My point: it doesn't matter how serious a subject it is. A joke can be in poor taste or ineffective in stirring up the right emotions in the audience, but no one should ever discourage that comedian from saying what they want to say. 

Btw, I'm not trying to be a douchebag right now...but let's face it, that guy is just itching for some cock in his mouth. Dude talks like my fucking sister"

--

"Also, this bullshit about how women are scared to report rape? There are plenty of measures put in place to ensure sexual predators are dealt with properly. The emergence of DNA testing has given victims increased leverage in court and afforded them a higher probability that their attacker will be caught."

DNA testing doesn't mean shit when the victim doesn't ever go to the police because she has "authority issues".

 So Joe Rogan obviously knew what was going to happen when he retweeted my mild criticism. He is well aware of who some of his followers are and how the operate when people criticize him. I'll update and post more later or tomorrow but this has been a strange experience and a strange day. I've never been on the receiving end of such a massive torrent of Internet Hate, especially around just being a woman and a feminist.

I'm tired and adrenalined out for today. I'll be more intellectual (not that I really should have to be, or need to be about any of this) tomorrow, I suppose.

[update]

The comments below are pretty fun, with lots of anon bro-dudes (presumably with lots of internalized shame, misogyny and heavily-denied Kinsey variance) telling me I should have said what I said here or on twitter, that I'm dumb (or my blog is dumb) or that I'm a silly bitch. Also present are the guys who think they're being Reasonable by telling me "Don't go to comedy clubs if you don't want to have the famous, powerful comic threaten you with rape."

First of all, this ain't about that, clods; no one is preventing Tosh from speaking, but you all are trying desperately to make sure that no one criticizes him for what he said. Exhibit 1-999999 are you tweets at me, Kilstein, your comments here and elsewhere and all the rape apologizing you're doing.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, to those who keep claiming that Rape Culture isn't realy: Thank you for proving my point by doing everything you can on the internet to tell me to go away and stop threatening your very fragile self-image. Take a moment for yourself to just look at what went down, and whether or not you'd feel the same way if I was your girlfriend, or your sister, or mother.

There's a reason this post has the title it has. Think about it.

[update III] 
My gratitude for participating in an important study of social-cultural dynamics and their interplay with herd mentality. Thanks for playing, chump(s).

defriend the creepers: kick the fuckers (out)

[update]

This insightful post from Captain Awkward highlights an all-too-common problem in even the best progressive and radical spaces and social circles: Creepy Dude Syndrome.

We all know or have known someone who fits this general description:

• Makes awkward and unwanted sexual comments around/towards female-identified friends and strangers in/around the group
• Propositions (often frequently) female friends and acquaintances for sex acts, including but certainly not limited to comments about their state of dress, revealing body parts or his mental image therein.
• Touches people without their consent.
• Dutifully ignores body language indicating that their presence, conversation, or physical contact are unwanted.
• Reacts negatively and/or defensively when called out by someone for this behavior.
• Touches people without their consent.

I know I'm leaving out other common factors but I'm sure you get the point and you've probably already thought of one or two people that you know. Now I know that male-identified people are also subject to harrasment, and female-identified people are capable of being creepers too, just like any human is capable of any human thoughts/feelings/conduct. But let's not split any fucking hairs, we live place dominated by a soul-crushing Patriarchy enforced primarily though Rape Culture. 

If by some chance you are reading my blog then you probably agree with that sentence wholeheartedly, and if you do not then you're probably an extremely deluded motherfucker who lives in the Plane of Eternal and Unending Cognitive Dissonance colloquially known as Western Society.

These writers I've linked to (besides myself, naturally) do a great job explaining all of the themes touched upon and I just wanted to make a comment and do a little signal amplification for a common and important issue.

If you know of a creeper in your circle you can be nice about if you want, but I wouldn't be. We've spent many decades (as a culture) being accommodating and apologist for this behavior, and to that I say "Fuck it, burn that fucking bridge to its moorings." We have no obligation to help the creepers be non-creepers; it is perfectly acceptable for them to just be excluded by society at every turn. They're adults and if they want back in they can adjust their behavior accordingly.

We have to eliminate the Missing Stair problem from our culture, and the best place to start is right at home in your own friend group (and workplace if at all possible). Quite simply the idea is that we become accustomed to even very dangerous and awful things if we are constantly exposed to them and forced to endure their existence. Humans are amazingly adaptable creatures and we learn to live with even horrible circumstances. When it comes to patriarchy and rape culture that needs to change and godsdamned fast.

So, my friends (or stalwart foes), eliminate the creepy, proto-rapist jerks from your life either by calling them out and forcing them to change their behavior, or by ejecting them entirely so they can go on to be rejected by other friend-groups for their fuckery.

If you think you may be a creeper, or you know a creeper who might be a salvageable human being or you are at all inclined to out yourself as a rape culture apologist by objecting to calling people who do those sorts of things "Creeper" I'd like to direct you here, here, and here.

I will leave you with this comment from one Hershele Ostropoler, who I think lays out the situation beautifully:

If you step on my foot, you need to get off my foot.

If you step on my foot without meaning to, you need to get off my foot.

If you step on my foot without realizing it, you need to get off my foot.

If everyone in your culture steps on feet, your culture is horrible, and you need to get off my foot.

If you have foot-stepping disease, and it makes you unaware you’re stepping on feet, you need to get off my foot. If an event has rules designed to keep people from stepping on feet, you need to follow them. If you think that even with the rules, you won’t be able to avoid stepping on people’s feet, absent yourself from the event until you work something out.

If you’re a serial foot-stepper, and you feel you’re entitled to step on people’s feet because you’re just that awesome and they’re not really people anyway, you’re a bad person and you don’t get to use any of those excuses, limited as they are. And moreover, you need to get off my foot.

See, that’s why I don’t get the focus on classifying harassers and figuring out their motives. The victims are just as harassed either way.

p.s. full disclosure: I plan to steal the above anecdote to make this point in conversation without citing the original author. I feel honesty here will absolve some of that dishonesty later.

[update]

I neglected to include another important category: People who ask really personal questions/make remarks about private matters in public settings.

There is no set criteria for this (as always it is how the person affected by the actions/comments that matter, not the intent, pure or otherwise). However, good examples include asking gender-non-conforming persons about their gender status, their genitalia, their personal history relating to their gender identity, etc. You don't do this to perceived cisgender folks, so why do it with others?

Also, asking people about their history with abusive relationships, sexual assaults and other traumatic life experiences--if they want to tell you they will tell you.

This includes making someone's gender, potential survivor status, or sexual orientation a topic of discussion in a group setting. Just don't do any of that shit. It isn't your business unless the person in question decides to bring it up. Respect individuals and their agency, remember that they're all real people, just like you.

america: land of the 40,000 volt pigs

So police tasered a 12-year-old  girl a couple days ago. 

Police say the officer came into the Victoria's Secret looking for the girl's mom, who had warrants for her arrest.
'This one goes in my chest. It was stuck in there so she had to keep on pulling trying to pull it out,' said Dejamon Baker, as she pointed to a small wound on her chest. Baker has a matching wound on her stomach. 'I had fell on the floor and I couldn't control myself, I just kept on shaking and stuff,' said the girl.

The warrant for her mother's arrest was based on traffic tickets, which seems like a good use of public safety resources given there is absolutely no violent crime whatsoever that police could be putting in some effort to stop. It's not like there have been over 400 murders since 2009 St. Louis and less than half have been solved. Oh wait, that's exactly the fucking case.

So friends and underpaid contractors forced to read the millions of "subversive" internet musings, if it wasn't made clear by the thousands of other similar incidents that happen all the godsdamned time, cops are are fully willing to murder the hell out of you if you so much as look at them cross-eyed. And if you happen to be a black person, or homeless person, or pot smoker, or hispanic person, or gender-nonconforming individual, or political activist your odds of dying by police hands go up considerably.

So in the first referenced case a little girl, who couldn't possibly pose a threat even if she were wielding a fully-fueled chainsaw, is extremely unhappy that her mother is being violently assaulted by police officers--a natural reaction virtually everyone has when seeing a family member injured by another.

The girl then reacts like a child would, screaming and crying, and because all cops are pigs these pigs decided the best course of action was electrocute a 12-year-old child for the crime of having a mother with traffic tickets and being a 12-year-old child.

So there you have it, the military--er, I mean, the "police" now taser unarmed children they find to be pesky or bothersome. At least they aren't shooting them in the head, right? Aw shit, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

Behold the Great Fizzy-Pop of Justice.

NDAA has officially passed into law. It solidifies the status quo; law follows power.

Voting: It's Pointless

We hear a lot these days from our “liberal” or “progressive” friends about the electoral system. How we should support this candidate, or that incumbent, or oppose one party by favoring another. If you haven’t realized it by now, such pleas to engage in the electoral system are ridiculous. Aside from—perhaps—local elections, voting will never change anything of significance in the United States. It simply is not how the American system is set up.

This was true since the first days of the American Change in Management (formerly the American Revolution™), when one group of wealthy, white, slave-and-land-owning men established a society to free people exactly like them from the oppression of other men exactly like them but with slightly different accents. No nation built on the backs of slaves (black people and white women and “indentured servants” ie. the working class), that didn't enfranchise those same groups for hundreds of years, that continues to oppress them by legal and extralegal means, could ever be called “free” or “democratic.” Certainly no nation guilty of sustained genocide on its indigenous population would ever merit such labels.

 No, friends, this government is not yours and it never was. But again and again even the most well-meaning activists, protesters, and politically aware/passionate people will engage themselves in our quadrennial circus, clinging desperately to the bankrupt notion that their ballots matter in the least to the outcome of the election. Ignoring the obvious fact that electronic voting machines exist only to facilitate easier falsification of election results, at most the vote may determine which flavor of cryptofascist narcissists butcher children abroad and throw our friends and family members into cages for offenses against the King’s Laws. The electronic machines do not, under any circumstances, determine which policies will be followed. We are a society bathed in blood and tears and misery and your votes do not matter.

But discuss it they shall. Tens of millions of people will continue to debate the finer details of our national stage production of Natural Born Killers while the criminals continue to stomp on the desiccating corpse of our humanity. The cognitive dissonance to maintain this fiction is at once fascinating and terrifying. The number of fictions we must not only absorb, but internalize, reinforce in others and create for ourselves is truly staggering.

Even I fall victim to this trap, with invective after invective cascading from my finger tips on blogs and facebook and in loudly, trenchantly vocalized thoughts about this unreality and how it poisons every aspect of our lives. Perhaps the best strategy is to simply ignore all of it. But with hundreds of millions of people still bought into that system no evolution seems possible.

The “outcome,” theoretically at least, is not who wins and who loses, but what laws and policies those persons produce. But as anyone can plainly see (if they aren’t lying to themselves), those outcomes are never actually discussed because they never change.

That festering, rotted, dark heart on the Potomac is not now, and has never been anything other than your jailer. It wraps you in endless restrictions and regulations, appropriates your labor, and reserves the right to murder you and everyone you’ve ever met should the mood strike it. Voting doesn’t matter. It never mattered. It never will matter so long as our collective consciousness remains shackled to this dreaming state of nightmare unreality.

If we have any hope for survival we have to shake things up, and that cannot be done within the confines of “acceptable” or “legal” political action. Georgia is about to make picketing a felony punishable by a $10000 fine and a year in jail, while at least Tennessee and Arizona have similar legislation in the works. If anything marginally effective is illegal and the legal means are ridiculous scams, what are we left with? It is not a question I ask rhetorically, with a ready answer in my pocket. Rather I ask because it is a question which I myself am struggling with every day. My only advice is to have an answer for yourself before the question is moot.

Sunday's war day

[updated below]
If---no, when-- the United States engages in the next full-scale conflict (likely, it appears, with Iran*) I expect America's domestic situation to dramatically worsen. The violent crackdowns on Occupy protesters will look like Halcyon Days of tranquility. It is obvious that the government is intent on waging a war on whistleblowers and "material supporters of Terrorism." This could mean a much greater degree of state and federal ire directed at dissenting voices (let alone people in the streets), because such voices could properly be deemed to be "aiding the enemy". This is not without precedent in this country.

I hope for (and will be directing my psersonal efforts towards) as large a war opposition movement as can be conjured. I expect the exceedingly valuable connections made between activist of all stripes through the last six months will lead to large and sustained protests this spring and summer, even if the war has not started by then. Whether peaceful protesters loudly voicing their dissatisfaction against a state already willing to suppress them with brutal aplomb will be any more effectual once The War is On is the obvious question. It is a question, I think, which answers itself.

[update]
It is not at all beyond consideration that Syria, and not Iran, will be the next target of our murderous globalist elite.

*The author of this Economist piece "opposes" starting a war against Iran. However, they accept all the premises of the globalist warmongers and their imperial functionaries: "many say", "Some analysts, especially in Israel", "Iran’s intentions are malign...". At least the author acknowledges the obvious result of starting a war with Iran (massive destruction and the serious likelihood of an regionally expanded conflict). But it makes no mention of Israel's large stockpile of nuclear weapons, or the fact that the United States is the only nation to have ever used them. As it stands, a rejection of war based on these premises can be reversed just as soon as "new intelligence" or "changes on the ground" can be manufactured to justify it.

some ideas

A few thoughts for today:

If you are ever called to jury duty:

1)      Go. It isn’t worth the trouble for not showing up

2)      Remember that by getting on a jury you might be able to help someone

a.       There are quite a few people (likely tens of thousands of people) ever year that get charged with crimes they did not commit. Don’t let the State railroad them.

b.      You also have the opportunity to spoil convictions on victimless crimes and crimes against the state (think drug possession charges, and protesters who “resisted arrest”). It’s called “Jury Nullification”  and it is a Constitutional right that you hold as a member of a jury.

3)      If you happen to be one of the few people who are ever empanelled for a capital case, do not under any circumstances admit that you would be incapable of applying the death penalty. If you live in a state without the death penalty (and most of you don’t), then consider the implications of placing a person in a cage for the rest of their natural life, which is nearly as terrifying.

a.       If you admit that you are morally oppose to the death penalty under any circumstance—even the precious laws of the state—you will be dismissed from the jury selection almost immediately.

b.      This practice is not only common, but has been repeatedly approved by the Supreme Court. Thus it becomes one’s moral duty to, in my opinion, to get on such a jury if the opportunity arises and prevent a death sentence.

Also, the march to war against Iran continues apace, as any cursory glance at corporate media (and its faithful “dissenting” voices) will tell you. Truly a monstrous crime against humanity approaches should we be unable to avert this conflict. Prospects for avoiding it do not look good, I think.

One more thing; if you are serving jail time and the police take you out of your cell, “ask” to interview you in a locked room with two armed officers in the middle of the night and you fear for your safety if you decline to be questioned, the Supreme Court does not think you were “in custody” enough to have rights. 

Yes, just yesterday, in Howes v. Fields, the eminent scholars of the court ruled unanimously on a patently false technicality and then rejected the idea that there is no obligation to read Miranda warnings to a prisoner taken from his cell and subjected to intense interrogation about a completely separate alleged offense for “5 to 7” hours in the middle of the night. Rights-shmights I will cover this case in more detail later, once I finish reading the 6^th Circuit opinion the Court reversed. Aren’t police states just wonderful?

the specter of war and those who might give voice to its prevention

Chris Floyd has a comment on Glen Greenwald's latest piece, echoing a theme that has been kicking around for ages and that I have begun thinking about quite a lot recently:

"And so I read the Greenwald piece looking for, hoping for, that pivot beyond the customary criticism, the laying out of evidence (which, let me add, is really all that I do here). Hoping, I suppose, that someone who commands a far larger reach than a relatively marginal site like mine or Silber's would at least reference something like the Silber idea, if only to say: "Hey, here's a thought -- why don't we try something like this?" Or "What do people think of this?" Or even, "Silber suggests this, but I have an even better idea. "

The idea in question is a series of simple but cutting advertisements in popular media (and the few remaining newspapers) in an effort to present ideas countering the heavy-handed push for war. The corporate media, known propaganda arm of the ruling class, faithfully reports American and Israeli claims about the grave Persian Menace, even seemingly take a leading role in preparing the populace for the conflict .

Certainly, as I think is plainly evident at this point, a war with Iran will happen if the ruling elites want it to. This fact has been made clear by recent events; Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, the global Special Operations wars and the War on the Implacable Noun are all proof their effectiveness in creating conflicts. The austerity measures being enforced against popular will or interest across the West and police reactions to mass protests demonstrate not only how secure is their control, but also how confident they are in their position. The power is wielded with impunity. The law and its enforces are set to guard the corporate/media/political classes as they ravage our societies for resources.

Floyd's point is one that we are faced with and have been for some time: what do we do about it? Chronicling the devastating effects of our wars of aggression and documenting the never-ending lies of our media are valuable endeavor, but they simply are not enough. Greenwald's criticism is unmatched in these areas. His voice is vital to exposing the truth to his many, many readers. But that is exactly the point. His voice is loud and it reaches far - he could offer a major platform to concrete strategies to oppose this march to war. After the better part of a decade documenting the ruling class' crimes, seeing now the full-speed push for a war that could cost millions of innocent human lives one wonders why he has not yet.

Beware of information gatekeepers and half-measure dissidents. The West will soften Iran and its people with destructive sanctions, and then war will follow, if not soon, then in the near future. We must marshal ourselves to oppose this course of events - if that is even possible - we must try.

Debt; cognitive dissonance

Over at The New Inquiry, Aaron Bady has a long, but excellent review of David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years. I plan to acquire and then read this book, and hope it does what Graber set out to do:

If the heart of neoliberal doctrine is that a particular kind of economic reality is what must be and to which we must consign ourselves, then Graeber’s re-narration of how this economic reality was created – out of a dense field of historical alternatives which it subsequently tries to obscure and downplay – is an effort to make available, visible, and viable the intuitive morality of those alternatives, a standard by which we could judge what neoliberal orthodoxy sees as simple realism.

It is imperative that more people in the United States recognize that the present iteration of the economy and nation-state are primarily (now, at the least) designed for and controlled by the ruling class. Most people are never exposed to the idea that other options truly exist (remember how virtually no one knows the actual definition of socialism). I endorse none, and am merely using as example a relatively old but at one time quite popular political/economic philosophy that propaganda turned into a punchline. 


The word "troubling" scarcely describes the unreality that permeates thought in our culture. The drastic over-spending on empire and economic collapse brought about by massive criminal enterprise (Wall Street) leads to an "obvious" answer of Austerity Measures; government officials receive tens of millions in campaign funds and later land well-paying corporate jobs but in no way is this influence corrupting we are told; American armies invade countries--slaughtering civilians with all manner of high-explosives and burning metal--and then the spokesmen and their media stenographers call the people who oppose brutal American occupation of their countries terrorists or militants or insurgents. 


Unreality pervades and it will eat our civilization (and all of us with it) if we let it. 

On the "Justice" System

Nearly seven million adults are in the “correctional system.”

Over two million are currently behind bars.

Each year 216,000 imprisoned Americans are sexually assaulted.

America operates a terrifying system of gulags. Cross the State and find yourself in its ghastly, dehumanizing embrace. Millions are arrested every year on drug possession charges, hundreds of thousands are incarcerated based on like convictions. These are crimes against the State, crimes that only exist because the State says an activity that affects only the actor is illegal.

And god help you if you are a political dissident, which anyone who’s participated in the Occupy movement should well know by now. When the State decides to take you into its increasingly for-profit “justice” system for your political beliefs it will start with sending in militarized cops to crack the skulls of you and your like-minded friends. Then they charge you with resisting arrest for getting beaten. If you are one of the unlucky few to get hospitalized by police violence, expect several felony counts of resisting arrest or assaulting an officer to be charged against you.

Even if these charges don’t land you in prison for years (and give you all the wonderful collateral consequences of a being a convicted felon, like never being hired for a job again, or being unable to vote), you still have to deal with possible confinement before trial if you cannot make bond for release, an overworked and under-resourced public defender’s office, court fees, fines, the time it takes out of your day-to-day life and the intense stress born of facing a possibly long stint in prison.

Increasingly people are punished by Peace Officers for the brazen act of not showing the proper amount of deference or respect – park police tazering people walking their dogs without a leash, arresting people who document police activities on public streets, murdering teenagers in their homes over a tiny quantity of marijuana – the use of force is wide-spread and encouraged.

And the numbers of innocent people convicted of crimes (or forced to take plea "bargains" where they admit guilt to avoid the maximum sentence possible from an unsuccessful defense at trial) is truly staggering:

Extrapolating from the 281 known DNA exonerations in the US since the late 1980s, a conservative estimate is that 1 percent of the US prison population, approximately 20,000 people, are falsely convicted.

 And of course the excuse given at the beginning of that article that no true number can be found because the court system is a "patchwork of federal, state, county, and municipal" institutions, and thus the numbers are not kept and cannot be combined. If only some machine could be invented to put all this data in one place, maybe in a format that is easily transfered between different machines of the same or similar type. What a world that would be.

Alas, we are consigned only to "conservative" estimates the governments do not want the data to be compiled, because, I imagine, the numbers would be much higher if proper data was kept on the subject.

The justice system of this country could be called a joke, but given how many innocent humans are chopped up and devoured by its dark, gaping maw I would call such a characterization callous.

Oh and don’t be fooled by the notion, however tempting, that this is the result of a mistake, or well-intentioned failure. For all intents and purposes, and by all rational observation, it operates well within its intended range and effect. But more on that another time

FivebyFive

A small reflection on the coming storm

Glenn Greenwald has a new post today about a lawsuit filed by the ACLU regarding the Obama Administration's refusal to release the legal standards by which the executive will decide whether or not to murder you at any moment the mood strikes him; it can be found here.


He then reiterates an important point that comes now only as an aside (I've changed his emphasis somewhat to highlight it):

In other words, if the President discloses classified information, then it’s inherently legal, even if he does not declassify the information (a slight variation on President Nixon’s infamous if-the-President-does-it-then-it’s-legal decree). But this is exactly the opposite of what President Obama said when he publicly decreed Bradley Manning guilty: “If I was to release stuff, information that I’m not authorized to release, I’m breaking the law.” Clearly, that’s exactly what President Obama did when he discussed drones this week — and what he did before that by boasting of the classified Awlaki killing on The Tonight Show – but that’s the point: secrecy powers (like the law generally) is merely a weapon to protect and advance the interests of government officials. 

 That he mentions this casually, almost as an afterthought, does not exactly reflect poorly on him, but rather reinforces the (entirely correct) notion that that fact is to be readily assumed at all times. That is the state in which we live, not under the rule of law, but the rule of men, of corrupt and evil individuals actively engaging in brutal, human-devouring empire at home and abroad to serve the interests of a small ruling elite.


The law has no other meaning than the will of the powerful, and its application, particularly in the criminal context, is now only to suppress the domestic population or shield ruling class accountability. My only quibble with Greenwald's use here is that he has not fully acknowledge the extensive and dire implications of this fact, including all of its eventualities, most of which are horrifying. I plan to expand on the latter idea much more in the coming weeks--though I make no promise of daily updates--suggesting only that if you would like to read more of my thoughts on the current state of affairs, it encumbrances you not at all to add this to your RSS feed or even give me a full bookmark.


Take care, my first reader(s), these are dangerous times.