Restore your faith in democracy by watching this video.

More Obscure Books: The Open Society and its Enemies- Plato

In another time by another author, the subject of this book, the emptiness of Plato's moral-political philosophy, could have been a dull and depressing piece of dead white male bashing. In fact, Karl Popper's dig into the minutia of classical philosophy reveals important truths about the irreconcilable differences that tear at our modern democracies. He views the human condition after the rupture of the tribal bubble as an ongoing conflict between our need to belong and our need to reform, our desire for predictability and the social upheaval of the open society that benefits us in so many ways. These dueling needs mean that our societies always hang in the balance between tyranny and liberty, never safe from the extremes of total disintegration or totalitarian "unity."

Popper takes pains to shatter the idealized and very popular vision of Plato as a deeply moral and fundamentally righteous crusader against the excesses of a democracy run wild. He does this by examining Plato's own social context, his place within the intellectual movements that go unnamed in his dialogs but had to be in the mind of so educated and politically engaged an author. Moreover, he turns Plato's own words against him, citing familiar passages and delivering plainspoken critiques that cut past Plato's clever tricks.

Plato's subtle but seductive war on the notions of egalitarianism, democracy, and openness that had exploded during Athens' golden age, his betrayal of Socratic notions of Justice, and his own sordid political and pedagogical experiments leave little room for doubt about his intentions. His work, particularly the Republic and the Laws where his political program is most explicitly revealed represent an unabashed embrace of social control and collectivism. The search for the "best state" is shown to reflect a tribalistic and totalitarian impulse to establish the unchallenged rule of the master race by eliminating all vestiges of openness and freedom from the society.

That Plato's program purports to answer the very basic human needs for happiness and justice is little consolation when these terms are defined as "knowing and staying in one's place" and "that which is in the interest of the state."

Here are some choice quotes from Karl Popper's book:

... Of much greater merit, although it too is inspired by hatred is Plato's description of tyranny and especially of the transition to it. He insists that he describes things which he has seen himself; no doubt the allusion is to his experience at the court of the older Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse. The transition from a democracy to tyranny, Plato says is most easily brought about by a popular leader who knows how to exploit the class antagonism between the rich and the poor within the democratic state, and who succeeds in building up a bodyguard or a private army of his own. The people who have hailed him first as the champion of freedom are soon enslaved; and then they must fight for him, in "one war after another which he must stir up...because he must make the people feel the need of a general." With tyranny, the most abject state is reached.

...[Plato] insists that only internal sedition within the ruling class itself can weaken [the state] so much that its rule can be overthrown.

...Most people in civilized countries nowadays [1944] admit racial superiority to be a myth; but even if it were an established fact, it should not create special political rights, though it might create special moral responsibilities for the superior persons. Analogous demands should be made of those who are intellectually and morally and educationally superior; and I cannot help feeling that the opposite claims of certain intellectualists and moralists only show how little successful their education has been, since it failed to make them aware of their own limitations, and of their Pharisaism.

...All theories of soveriegnty are paradoxical...We may distinguish two main types of government. The first type consists of governments of which we can get rid without bloodshed - for example by way of general elections; that is to say, the social institutions provide a means by which the rulers may be dismissed by the ruled, and the social traditions ensure that these institutions will not easily be destroyed by those who are in power. The second type consists of governments which the ruled cannot get rid of except by way of a successful revolution - that is to say, in most cases, not at all. I suggest the term 'democracy' as a short hand label for a government of the first type, and the term 'tyranny' or 'dictatorship' for the second. This, I believe, corresponds closely to the traditional usage. But I wish to make it clear that no part of my argument depends on these labels; and should anybody reverse this usage (as is frequently done nowadays), then I should simply say that I am in favor of what he calls "tyranny" and object to what he calls "democracy;" and I should reject as irrelevant to any attempt to discover what "democracy" "really" or "essentially" means, for example by translating the term into "the rule of the people." (For although 'the people' may influence the actions of their rulers by the threat of dismissal, they never rule themselves in any concrete, practical sense)...He who accepts the principle of democracy in this sense is therefore not bound to look upon the result of a democratic vote as an authoritative expression of what is right. Although he will accept a decision of the majority, for the sake of making the democratic institutions work, he will feel free to combat it by democratic means, and to work for its revision. And should he live to see the day when the majority vote destroys the democratic institutions, then this sad experience will tell him only that there does not exist a foolproof method of avoiding tyranny. But it need not weaken his decision to fight tyranny, nor will it expose his theory as inconsistent.

...Democracy (using his label in the sense suggested above) provides the institutional framework for the reform of political institutions without using violence, and thereby the use of reason in the designing of new institutions and the adjusting of old ones. It cannot provide reason.

...The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism. Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. I we turn back, then we must go the whole way - we must return to the beasts. . . We can return to the beasts. But if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure, using what reason we may have to plan as well as we can for both security and freedom.

Godwin's Law Comes to the Mainstream Media

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." ~Mike Godwin



Ms. Wolf is probably justified in her invocation of the Evil One on this occasion, but this is the first time I had seen it done successfully by a serious journalist. This is because her use of "fascism" is not rhetorical and hyperbolic but is on the other hand highly technical and descriptive. The trends she identifies in American political life and the parallels she draws to past instances of democratic collapse have concerned me for some time. Her contribution to the ongoing discussion is much needed because, as she says, the window permitting a peaceful democratic counter-movement is being closed. Take a look.

How to Steal a Country

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I wouldn't trust most politicians to work on my car much less run my country.

Our elected legislators are running around like a bunch of unsupervised children. I've never seen anything like it. I mean, I knew that staffers often voted on behalf of their senile and doddering bosses who probably don't know what city they're in half the time, but these guys are really brazen about stealing each other's votes.

Stuck Pigs

A new youtube channel dedicated to monitoring and documenting police brutality. Check it out any time you feel like getting angry.

That Isn't News

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that the mainstream media is a smoldering wasteland of celebrity gossip, stories about sex offenders, and senseless economic hysteria. I contend that it’s worse than you think.

The problem is not so much that people watch and care about these things, that they are entertained by Britney’s blurred out cooch and amused by O’Reilly’s angry rants. We all indulge in such guilty pleasures on occasion.

The challenge facing serious people in America today is that the events that have come to fill the typical news cycle deliberately distract viewers from the developments most likely to shape their lives in the future.

American news organizations of all political slants religiously avoid discussing in any depth science and technological innovation, and avoid giving audience to powerful new ideas of any kind. Economic trends receive a great deal of coverage, but the discussion leaves no lingering understanding of the dynamics at work. International confrontations cause editors to trot out the usual cast of xenophobes and apologists, but any discussions of the historical context or the roots of the conflict are ridiculed as the kind of mushy intellectualism that has no place on the foreign policy battlefield.

Consuming such disposable media is worse than a waste of time. It actually erodes our ability to distinguish between the sensational and the significant.

I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that this is deliberate. To extract lasting information about the general from the specific of current events would be to make punditry unnecessary. If these organizations were truly educating people about the world, they would be furnishing viewers with the tools necessary to learn about and judge the importance of events independently. This is evidently one of the cardinal sins of the modern newsman.

Thou shalt not challenge, thou shalt not offend, thou shalt not empower.

In the long run we're all dead

While many of us have suspected for some time that the leaders of this country were coming unglued, it is increasingly apparent that the American Empire is fraying at the edges. As much as part of me wants to pour a glass fine bourbon and drink to its demise, I fear that the transformation we are witnessing will not be a happy one for us.

Let us review the facts:

The President and VP of the United States have lost the support of all but a radical fringe of the Republican party, and have even succeeded in alienating the traditional base in the last six weeks. The White House has gone into siege mode, and is increasingly desperate to redeem the Bush legacy - even if it means bringing the ominous predictions of a generation long battle for the Middle East to fruition. This administration has demonstrated its willingness to exploit terrorism and war to increase its political power, and there is no reason to believe that they will not attempt to do so again. Their record of restricting freedoms and trampling the constitution in the name of security may precipitate a confrontation in the event of intervention in Iran or Pakistan.

Congress has abysmal approval ratings, and cannot enforce the cooperation or obedience of the White House given a highly politicized Justice Department and the culture of loyalty fostered within it and the rest of the Executive. The Supreme Court is packed with Bush followers as well, and it is unlikely to provide any significant check on executive power even if it becomes obvious that the President is acting outside his constitutionally limited role. The mainstream media has been effectively neutered by the Bush Administration's overt carrot and stick policy of offering unprecedented access to compliant reporters but mercilessly freezing out the opposition.

Spaces for popular protest are being closed by widely publicized yet continuing surveillance programs that may allow government access to highly personal data and the communications of any American citizen. Knowledge of this capability combined with a well executed crack down on a few classes of social deviant could produce the kind of self censorship upon which true authoritarianism depends. Moreover, many Americans are still in the dark about the nature of the economic and political crisis facing this country, and can be easily manipulated by demagogues as a result. Since the 60's, Americans have lost faith in the efficacy of protest and street action to bring about lasting change, and participants in such acts of resistance are viewed as hopeless radicals or dreamers.

The immense quantity and diversity of information available on the Internet has resulted in a sort of ideological fragmentation, and without filters and mediators of culture, it becomes impossible to mobilize new coalitions that will have impact on the democratic process. The Web 2.0 phenomenon and the rise of social networking may permit a true political dialog to resume in time, but for the moment these forums are underdeveloped and lack the kind of cross cutting participation that would make them viable vehicles for change.

Despite the lull in terrorism at home during the last few years, it is still quite likely that we will be attacked again. Given that the stated goal of our enemies is to turn us against each other by exploiting the tendency of our government to overreact to perceived threats, we have done a poor job of sticking together. In an atmosphere of fear an uncertainty and absent a real alternative to Republicrat orthodoxy, the path of least resistance for politicians is more redistributive populism, more deficit spending, and more war. However, military power cannot solve our essentially political foreign policy problems, our country is already committed to entitlements it cannot afford, and increased government intervention in the economy is likely to undermine our few remaining competitive advantages.

While this all sounds quite bleak, even to a bleak prediction aficionado like myself, it is important to point out that all my short term pessimism is tempered by a firmly held belief that in the long run I will be dead as fried chicken along with all the the sons of bitches that got us into this mess. With any luck they'll go before we do and we'll have a chance to clean the place up a bit before its time to go.

But seriously, what I was going to say before the black wave came over me is that in the long run, it really doesn't matter if the federal government implodes and America becomes a pitiable backwater. Those of us that can flee will do so as people have done for all of recorded history, and we will carry with us the ideas, the information, and the drive that made this country a great place to live. In other words, lets give the reform thing the old college try, but if it doesn't work, well, keep practicing that Spanish.

This Guy's an Army of One

War: Are we still that fucking stupid?

Repeat after me:
. . .
I solemnly swear that I will never initiate the use of force, nor will I allow political representatives to do so on my behalf. I reject the use or threat of violence as a political tool both because it is morally indefensible and practically ineffective.
. . .

A victory in battle cannot settle the great questions of human life, and furthermore such questions are not meant to be buried.

To be human is to be in error. This condition has the makings of a great comedy or a great tragedy; so far we have chosen the latter.

Banish borders, not immigrants.

Your ancestors were migrants.

Indeed, you could even say we are a species of nomads. Though few modern peoples bear resemblance to the original low-speed nomads - walking across the wilderness from water source to water source, following the big game that was their livelihood - the churning flow of human populations and the reasons compelling our motion have changed very little.

We still roam the earth searching for what we need.

You've lived in one place your whole life you say? Well, if you're like most Americans, you commute about 25 minutes to work each day. You set out from the place where one vital resource is located to acquire another that you need to survive. That you return to the same shelter each night and the same job each morning makes you an adept and speedy migrant, but a migrant none the less.

Imagine how difficult your life would become if arbitrary but impenetrable man-made boundaries were drawn across the landscape in such a way that the many resources necessary for your survival were separated from one another.

This is the situation created by states that erect barriers to peaceful migrants and their goods. Our governments have closed down the natural and vital flows people and resources in a foolish and ill devised effort to protect a few enclaves of wealth.

The irony is, the only reason these enclaves, the very estates of intrepid migrants, might now be threatened is that many years of holding back the trickle of humans has turned them into an angry flood. We should stop blaming the people who follow their fortunes as all of us must. The border is the crime, not the crossing of it.

Proxy War: still the best bang for your buck!

Take a look at the photographs of the Fatah-Hamas battle filtering out of Gaza and the West Bank. Pay close attention to the guns they are carrying. What do you notice?

If you answered that ALL the Fatah militants were carrying U.S. made M-16 rifles, the standard duty rifle for U.S. troops since Vietnam, you win today's grand prize.



This weapon is the hallmark of U.S. involvement in a war. Go to the Bay of Pigs and you will still find their spent shells in the sand. They are too expensive, require too much maintenance, and are too difficult to acquire for most would be guerrillas. Quite simply, our government had to supply them to these fighters.



By contrast, look at the weapons wielded by Hamas fighters. They all carry the ubiquitous AK-47, the dirt cheap and extremely reliable Soviet assault rifle faced by U.S. troops in so many conflicts over the years.


Just because no U.S. troops are fighting in Palestine at the moment doesn't mean we don't have a dog in this fight. We need only listen to the smug statements of our representatives in the region to know that this violence is part of the larger War of Terror. We have opposed Hamas since the beginning of their ascendancy, needling them with the economic sanctions and silent treatment so characteristic of the Bush Administration. Now we fund their enemies in a feeble attempt to topple the democratically elected government. Do we expect them to behave better now that they have routed our proxies?

More on secrecy.

From the Washington Post.

The author would seem to agree:

For the past six years, I've been exploring the resurgent culture of secrecy. What I've found is a confluence of causes behind it, among them the chill wrought by 9/11, industry deregulation, the long dominance of a single political party, fear of litigation and liability and the threat of the Internet. But perhaps most alarming to me was the public's increasing tolerance of secrecy. Without timely information, citizens are reduced to mere residents, and representative government atrophies into a representational image of democracy as illusory as a hologram.

Shhh! It's a Secret.

Achieving information control is the fundamental first step of any authoritarian regime. In the absence of informed dissent, the taxpayer-funded noise machine lets leaders do what they want while most of us are so confused about the actual facts that we are incapable of articulating any policy demands at all.

As we become less capable of confronting the world in a coherent way, we are increasingly dependent on politicians to tell us what to think. Even though their "information" may conflict with realities that slap us in the face every day, the cognitive dissonance causes paralysis.

The fundamental crisis facing our government is that most of its actions are so highly classified even other officials can't and don't know what's going on. How can they plan complex operations? How can they coordinate policy? The Iraq debacle makes it obvious that they cannot.

If a government can't even trust its own employees, we must assume that it's up to some seriously twisted shit.

Forget about media bias for a moment and consider the impact of secrecy on our society. True information is the blood of democracy. We need the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God. Without it our political discourse is starved of air. We become captive to "experts," pundits and smooth talkers, insiders who can claim privileged access and special information. We are no longer participant citizens but subjects.

Insane Campaing Clips: Volume 3

And as it turns out . . .

. . . Al Gore agrees.


Page 3:

Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It's a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets—through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.

The danger arises because there is, in most markets, a very small number of broadband network operators. These operators have the structural capacity to determine the way in which information is transmitted over the Internet and the speed with which it is delivered. And the present Internet network operators—principally large telephone and cable companies—have an economic incentive to extend their control over the physical infrastructure of the network to leverage control of Internet content. If they went about it in the wrong way, these companies could institute changes that have the effect of limiting the free flow of information over the Internet in a number of troubling ways.

The democratization of knowledge by the print medium brought the Enlightenment. Now, broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it. We the people—as Lincoln put it, "even we here"—are collectively still the key to the survival of America's democracy.

Network Rule: The “Lesser of Two Evils” Fallacy

In this country, we often find ourselves presented with a short menu of distasteful political choices, but this situation need not persist. “Choose the lesser of two evils,” we are told, as if having an only mildly evil politician in office is some kind of comfort. Let me suggest that we may be approaching this problem all wrong.

At the risk of revealing too much about my views on “good and evil” (I might as well say “choice and no choice” or “freedom and coercion”) I should note that the political history of the world demonstrates an endless and cyclical opening and narrowing of real options, pendulum swings from tyranny to liberty.

I confess that I, like millenarian Christians and assorted other cultists, believe that we are approaching a sort of inflection point past which things are going to get much better or much worse for most of humanity, very quickly and dramatically. We may be on the verge of a political renaissance, and not just in this country but across the world . . . and by that I of course mean that things have gotten very bad, many people have started to notice, and we have the tools to fight.

I do not believe in necessary evils, only evils we have not yet reasoned a way around. When we appear constrained by bad political options, options we would not choose if we were truly free, we must put aside the questions of the moment to restructure the underlying institutions that constrain our choice.

The Westphalian state has decayed, too long a tool of personal enrichment, racial oppression, nationalist violence, and moral crusade. It is tainted by the blood of “criminals” without victims, stained by the acts of its torturers and mercenaries, a monster behind the shroud of triumphalist mythology.

Our leaders, children of the state that they are, cannot be expected to point out its flaws. Even those who struggle against the state, the Bin Ladens of the world are little more than power seekers, thugs who differ from politicians only in their location and willingness to engage directly in the killing of people who oppose them. Even when these types embrace the cause of reforming the state, their actions only expand its power and reach, never reduce it.

And yet I am hopeful, principally because we have the element of surprise. Our leaders have refused to see the writing on the wall, failed to carry the diffusion of information technology across the globe to its logical conclusion.

In a world where participation in the political process is practically cost free, where ideas can cross barriers of language and geography instantly, notions of representation and sovereignty may become anachronisms, literally obsolete.

The ethical and technical foundations of network-based government are being laid right now. The presumption of freedom, total transparency, decentralized participation, and natural rights guide this new movement, and promise to inject a good dose of reason as antidote to the demagoguery and hatred of the past. Network rule, this elusive webocracy is not something that can be completed during the next presidential term, or even the next generation. It will operate first in parallel with the current system and then come to supplant it as people discover that their shared problems are better and more cheaply addressed by a politics stripped of its mythology, its money whoring and its absurd violence.

In the domestic context, we may only have two evils to choose from now, but with a bit of luck the donkey and the elephant will be distant and amusing memories to our children.

Insane Campaign Videos: Volume 2

Insane Campaign Clips Volume 1

Thoughts on the Virginia Tech Massacre

The worst shooting rampage in American history took place this morning at the Virginia Tech campus in sleepy Blacksburg. Families across the country have received the grim news of a dead or wounded child, and countless more have stopped to question the safety of their loved ones studying at far off universities.

I am sure the scars to the community and the families will be deep. For many, today’s events will redefine the word “tragedy.”

Already the news media has politicized the killings, using the deaths as a rallying cry for gun control or as a call to arms. “If only the killer hadn’t had access to a firearm” they say. Or conversely, “If only the victims had been packing, none of this would have happened.” Sorry, but getting tough on crime isn’t the answer to this problem.

This is a time when we should be mourning the frailty of human beings, not just in Virginia but across the world. When something truly terrible and disturbing happens, we cannot stand to look it in the face. We either speak of it as “incomprehensible” and “senseless” or we reduce it to the coldly pragmatic and political. We ask what kind of metal detectors we need to buy, what kind of laws we need to pass to keep this from happening ever again.

What we cannot admit is that this sort of violence is perfectly understandable and in fact quite common.

When he pulled the trigger, the students were just animals in his gun sights. Like countless killers, soldiers, and criminals before him, he had disregarded the rights of his victims.

A lone gunman has turned a safe place, a happy place, a place of learning and friendship into a slaughterhouse. The indelible marks of his cruelty will cause future generations of students to shudder as they pass the spot where he died.

While I would take comfort in the belief that the Virginia Tech killer is somewhere underground being poked by demons, it’s probably not true. His hell was standing there in that classroom full of bodies, putting the hot barrel of a gun into his mouth, and in that moment realizing how irreparably fucked and irretrievably wasted his life was.

If we go by the calculus, there will always be balance in the universe. The number of human births will exactly equal the number of human deaths. However each time we ignore the humanity of others, we contribute to the sum total of our suffering, building in the world around us new infernos. Our capacity for this evil is matched only by our capacity for the opposite, our ability to transcend the bullshit of the day-to-day to create those heavenly moments of peace and love. If you want to see heaven or avoid the torments of hell you don’t have to wait for God to choose for you. If you paid attention you’ll notice that you made one or the other today.

Kurt Vonnegut Expires

Kurt Vonnegut, the archetypical dirty old man and author of some of my favorite books, has just passed away. This weekend we will raise a cold glass of fine gin in his honor.

I'm Learning for Free, Suckers.

Why go to college when you can get all the classes online for nothing? That is a question students of the future will be forced to answer, but more urgently, a question applicants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology must ask themselves right now . . . especially considering the six figure price tag of an undergraduate degree there.

MIT, as part of its OpenCourseWare project has decided to make hundreds of classes – video lectures, homeworks, tests and quizzes – available online to the public. The OCW project began as an attempt to make course materials available for students to review or make up for missed lectures. As the site was developing, rising tuition at the university (now one of the most expensive in the country) had become a contentious political issue on campus. Students and professors argued that low income applicants were being priced out of top universities, and foreigners unable to get visas or travel to the United States often did not have access to quality instruction.

To combat these trends and renew the philanthropic mission of the university, MIT, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation are cooperating to host the university’s materials and disseminate them for free to anybody who wants to learn.

Not only is this very nice of them, I believe it is the wave of the future for education. Why take a class from some local loser who has no background in the field and no interest in what he is teaching when you can learn from a leader in the discipline? Why even leave your room to sit in a big lecture hall when you can have a front row seat at your computer?

I started a linear algebra course the other day and it was surprisingly painless. This really is the only way to fly. No need to take notes because you have the whole lecture right in front of you whenever you want it. No falling asleep in class because you can pause your professor and come back whenever you like. The site also includes a forum so you and other students can get your questions answered and work through the trickiest problems.

Perhaps the best part it that there is no risk to exploring new subjects. You don’t have to worry about flubbing your GPA or winding up in a course that you hate. Don’t take to a class? Switch to another one with no add/drop forms to fill out and no missed sessions.

Oh yeah, did I mention it’s free?

Check it out here.

I Like Ike

I have come across references to this speech many times but I had never read it in full. As we wait with fingers crossed and breath held for the end of the present Administration, I am struck by the merits of this older mode of political discourse. Eisenhower shows morality without dogmatism and clarity of thought without the venom dispensed by our sharpest politicians and pundits. Here is a man who not only watched but carried out the most destructive war the world has ever seen, yet in the horror he never lost sight of the purpose: preserving a space for peace, prosperity, and freedom. How different this true "warrior president" sounds from the chickenhawk whose only answer to conflict between nations is more violence, more war.

Ike in '61:

My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

II.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

III.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

IV.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

V.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

VII.

So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

If only pork were explosive we’d have been done with all this years ago.

With Bush delaying the oversight game by refusing to submit his staff to a thorough probing, Democrats are keeping themselves erect and well lubricated with $21 billion dollars of fresh pork.

By hiding these provisions in the emergency war spending bill, Congress hopes to sidestep its own discretionary spending caps and force the President to play along with its theft of your money.

It seems that once they get a taste, the bloodsuckers come back for more every session. The parade of crooks looks about the same as it has for generations: farms, fisheries, the fucking congressmen themselves, idiotic projects run by somebody’s wife’s cousin, and floats of feel-good social experiments.

We may have reformed welfare, but some people are certainly getting well. Did you know the average income of the farmers you subsidize is over $80,000? Do they pass the savings on to you when they get fat checks from the government? Oh no, actually they are subject to a variety of controls that keep food in short supply, extract contributions for ridiculously expensive ad campaigns (Got Milk?), and drive up the prices paid by us consumers. Not only that, but any foods that are produced “too cheaply” abroad are slapped with a quotas or tariffs to protect our precious agribusiness conglomerates.

Enjoy your high fructose corn syrup sucker.

Bush Visits My Neighborhood

That's right, last night the President the First Lady of the United States were mere blocks from my home. Apparently they were having dinner at Karl Rove's house, totally unaware that I was lurking in the dark just beyond the limos, the 30 unmarked black Suburbans, the uniformed secret service cars, the press vans and the ambulance.

And by lurking I of course mean driving past and rubbernecking as I tried to figure out what the fuck was going on. If I had known at the time that the Maximum Leader were inside, I might have stopped to yell my latest treatise on foreign policy at the windows of the Roves' very ugly home. I hear he likes it when you question his decisions.

This Just In: Castro Not Dead

Surprising and angering the United States Government once again, Fidel Castro has refused to croak for what is perhaps the 100^th time. Scholars in the audience may note that Castro has a long history of not dying. Since the early days of his revolutionary career, people have been trying to off him, and he has time and again refused.

During his ill fated attempt to topple the government of the Dominican Republic, his boat was shot out of the water and his fellow guerillas were captured and killed. Fidel, evidently unwilling to die even at such a young age, turned around and swam the 12 miles back to the southern coast of Cuba.

Later, he and a group of 160 rebels attacked the well-guarded Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba and were met by 400 soldiers. Under the withering machine gun fire, Fidel and his lieutenants made a hasty retreat, leaving most of the men to be tortured and killed in the dungeons of the compound. Castro was captured by the police, tried, and sentenced to death for his role in the attack, but just at that time, Batista, the profoundly unlucky U.S. backed dictator outlawed the death penalty and Castro’s sentence was commuted to imprisonment.

After being freed and exiled from Cuba, Castro made the crossing from Mexico in a leaky and overloaded luxury yacht filled with guns and 81 other revolutionaries. After being decimated by the air force and abandoning most of their supplies, 12 of the 81 including Fidel, Raul, and Che made it to the Sierra Maestra mountains. They spent the next years in the jungle, building up the armed movement and skirmishing in the surrounding countryside, eventually overthrowing the Batista government with the help of urban revolutionaries.

Once in power after the 1959, Castro had to contend with constant challenges from within, some of them from fellow communists and some from counterrevolutionaries hoping to reverse the changes he had instituted. Armed resistance organizations operated in the mountains and cities of Cuba well into the 1970’s, and all of them hoped to end Castro’s long streak of not being killed.

The Kennedy administration was also vexed by Castro’s unwillingness to die, and his CIA trained and deployed a force of some 3000 Cuban exiles to overthrow the regime. Castro himself met them at the beach, and he and some 75,000 regular army and militiamen expressed their desire to live to the arriving invaders. The 2000 or so who survived were apparently quite convinced by the sincerity of Castro’s explanation.

Kennedy’s successors having evidently forgotten this forceful exposition continued their attempts to bury Castro. For decades, he successfully dodged a barrage of assassins’ bullets, bombs, and exploding cigars while going about his business.

In recent years, his principal enemies have been uneven staircases and old age. With Castro’s increasing senility many assumed that he would one day forget not to die.

When he took a header during a public appearance and was immobilized for several months, many in Miami and Washington were hopeful that his injuries would prove fatal. Fidel did not cooperate however.

Just this year when Castro’s health took a turn for the worse, the whole world held its breath with the expectation that he would soon expire. That he has not is a continuing disappointment to the Bush Administration which hopes to be allowed to fuck Cuba up as badly as it has fucked up Iraq.

Tearful prayers and expansive “Transition Plans” may all go to waste if the Bearded One does not hurry his departure to the great sugar plantation in the sky. I for one would hope he holds out until we have somebody competent in the White House, but the possibility of Fidel living forever makes me careful what I wish for. With any luck, two years will be enough.

Warning: Don't Believe Me

Alright, I’ll admit it. I am biased.

But so are you, and more importantly, so are all the pundits you watch on TV and read in the newspaper.

At the most basic level, we are all biased in our own favor. I don’t go around saying that I should be taxed more heavily or that my civil liberties should be suspended for the sake of the state. People may believe that others should pay more taxes, that others shouldn’t be allowed to say and do certain things, but very few of us are stupid enough to explicitly attack our own economic or political status.

In the same way, media outlets and journalists don’t go around saying that their information collection is deeply flawed or that people shouldn't trust them as their only source of news. In fact, they say just the opposite. They make themselves out to be credible, unbiased, and authoritative.

OK, let’s take those one at a time.

Credible? Well, that depends. Do you like unidentified sources? How about reporters who fake stories or play up sensational but irrelevant details (see astronaut in diapers)?

Unbiased? Raise your hand if you know which 24 hour news channel is the Republican channel. The Democratic outlets are less aggressive in their ideological evangelism, but they are no less stubborn when it comes time to pound certain “truths” into our brains.

Authoritative? The “all the news that’s fit to print” attitude of most news outlets is betrayed by their clearly selective reporting. A cute white girls getting kidnapped is a story for days, but the thousands being gang raped and murdered in African civil wars count themselves lucky to receive a moment of silence on the evening news.

The media is an information filter. If you are a passive consumer of media, it chooses what information you receive and what you do not. This in turn affects what you believe about the world and how you identify your place in it.

As a result of our continued reliance on too few sources of information, our understanding of the intentions and policies of our leaders is hopelessly muddled.

Consider that the vast majority of Americans believe that they are in the “middle class.” That is to say, people with incomes from $30,000 to $300,000 a year identify as part of the same socioeconomic group. That they are incorrect from a sociological standpoint is no matter. Their beliefs and identities have been shaped by a standard social perspective beamed into their homes and classrooms since childhood.

This confusion, what the communists might call a breakdown of class consciousness, allows modern politicians to make appeals to the “middle class” (meaning you) advocating policies that favor the elite (meaning them) in the guise of helping the poor (meaning the people you look down on). Insane drug policy, excessive regulation, wars, poorly targeted foreign aid, and the general ossification of our political system can all be viewed through this lens.

Until all media comes with warning labels like packs of cigarettes ("Warning: Viewing this program may result in smallmindedness, the inability to distinguish truth and lies, and cancer)it’s our job as responsible citizens and consumers of media to challenge their assertions of impartiality and with them the doctored images of the world we’ve been given.

The Economics of Empire: Why nobody really cared when Bremer lost $9,000,000,000.

If a private company noticed that 363 tons of U.S. currency had gone missing, they would be alarmed right? Not so with the government. It can just print some more.

Everybody remembers the images of U.S. troops passing out greenbacks in Baghdad back in 2003. It turns out these were not just isolated incidents, but part of a concerted effort to buy the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people. All across the country, U.S. soldiers and CPA officials were handing out hundreds like party favors, paying people for lost property and relatives, and using cash to compensate contractors submitting bills into the millions of dollars.

What we would consider outrageous waste and criminally negligent accounting back home are just part of running an empire.

You see, in Iraq the greenback is nothing but monopoly money. Their price system and domestic markets are sufficiently insulated from world currency exchanges that the Treasury is actually quite free to run the printing press. The important part for you future emperors to remember is that the increase in money supply is accompanied by a corresponding increase in the number of people who do business in dollars. So long as Iraqi markets operate in dollars and keep it out of the U.S. there is no problem. Money for nothing.

Money printing is horribly inflationary under normal circumstances, but due to Iraq’s economic isolation, the effect is distributed over a longer period of time as cash slowly filters back into the international market.

The so-called “inflation tax,” the gradual erosion in the value of the dollars we all hold, allows the Bush administration to come out in favor of tax cuts while still shoveling cash into the Sunni Triangle. That Congress is cut out of the deal is just gravy for the administration.

The effects will be felt for years, but the extra nickel you pay every time you go to the grocery story will be impossible to trace back to the Commander in Thief.

Brilliant.

Tinfoil Hat Alert

The FBI, taking a page from our friends at the NSA, has expanded its domestic snooping to include monitoring and recording huge amounts of Internet traffic without specific warrants. The technique, known as "full pipe recording," is an expansion of a program called Carnivore that was discontinued as a result of its constitutionally questionable techniques.

Apparently, rather than abandoning the illegal approach embodied in the old program, the FBI has chosen a new more innocuous name (DCS1000) and expanded its capture of non-criminal Internet traffic. The creation of its new database - and the network analysis and data mining it allows - may enable "lawmen" to go after people who discuss drug use, for instance, after they get done investigating the ostensible target of the original wiretap.

I have also recently learned that the FBI submitted as evidence recordings made from the cellular phones of mobsters while the phones were NOT IN USE. Combined with the GPS and triangulation capabilities of the cell network, this means that law enforcement can precisely determine your location and then listen to any conversations within a 15 foot radius of the cell phone sitting in your pocket. There is no way to tell if somebody is listening and no way to stop it short of removing the batteries. Experts believe that this technique can be employed even when the phone is turned off, and the government may even have access to images in view of the phone's camera lens.

Your own personal telescreen!

The Long History of Allied Torture

To follow up on the "Letter from Gitmo," I just thought I'd take a moment to point out some resources for people interested in the illustrious history of Allied torture. Leaving aside the alleged war crimes of our troops in the field, there are many examples of systematic and deliberate torture to obtain intelligence or simply to intimidate would be adversaries.

In the aftermath of World War II, the British operated their own concentration camps for German POWs and later for Communists captured on the continent or trying to enter Britain. Torture methods included starvation, beatings, exposure to extreme cold, sleep deprivation, and the use of torture implements captured from old German prisons.

In 1946, the US established a school in Panama dedicated to training military and secret police forces in Latin America. Among its graduates, you will find an infamous list of strong men and dictators who operated death squads, detention centers, and torture chambers across the continent. They were known for "disappearing," torturing, dismembering and murdering labor organizers, university professors and students, opposition members, indigenous leaders, and suspected communists. Methods include the usual beatings, burning, and broken bones, but the school's specialty seems to be the use of powerful electric shocks, especially to the genitals. The School of the Americas continues to operate in Fort Benning Georgia to this day, although the name has been changed.

In 2006, major news outlets reported on the existence of secret CIA torture prisons in Europe and the Middle East, and the practice of exporting detainees to third countries for some softening up before interrogation by Americans is well documented. The CIA and other American intelligence agencies have long practiced "coercive interrogation," but the large scale operations we see today are probably new. New less messy torture methods include "simulated drowning," sensory deprivation, exposure to extreme heat and cold, use of loud music, sleep deprivation, dogs, beatings, verbal attacks and sexual humiliation, a tactic found to be especially effective in the Muslim world.

I could go on about specific cases I've unearthed, but I can't decide if I want to drink whiskey or throw up first. Maybe I'll just drink whiskey till I throw up.

Poverty and Politics

Persistent poverty is a political problem.

It is the result of decades of irresponsible regulation, spending, and legislation which have imposed unacceptable costs on the majority of developing societies while conferring enormous rents on the people who have access to power.

Everywhere we go in the developing world, we see convoluted legal systems, arbitrary and manifestly unjust allocations of rights, and a middle class that is totally dependent on the state for its high living standards. This dependency and the enormous gap between the haves and the have nots creates pervasive fear of change and a systemic inability to reform, even in the face of hard economic facts.

The result is that most of the world’s poor “opt out” of the decaying formal legal structure, falling back on alternate forms of self-governance that can protect their assets and their lives. The central government’s power to enact policy often extends little beyond the center of the capital city, although as gate keeper to the outside world and the owner of many guns, it can play an incredibly disruptive role in the lives of its citizens.

The governments of the world are increasingly at odds with the independent structures that have sprung up around them. Violent clashes with police aside, proof of this adversarial relationship comes from the fact that the people who occupy these new spaces go by all sorts of dirty names in the press. The proletariat, informals, tax evaders, drug users, punks, anarchists, hustlers, squatters, criminals, illegal immigrants, smugglers, narco-terrorists, and insurgents are all part of the counterstate array.

The complexity, diversity, and extent of these alternative societies should not be underestimated. Even in countries with apparently liberal political systems, these extralegal forces often represent the majority, not some fringe of radicals and nonconformists. They represent the three quarters of the world that remains “unglobalized” in the sense that their political, social, and economic structures are unrecognized and even deliberately excluded by the global elite.

It should be noted that their attempts at nonparticipation in the formal economies of their countries does not necessarily signify resistance to globalization. In fact, they often work to bypass state institutions that are themselves obstacles to integration and commerce. Most of these people just want what everyone in the developed world wants: to work, to learn, and to prosper, to exert some control over their lives, and to provide more for their children than they were afforded.

With that said, the environment of inequality and exclusion can foster radical and violent ideologies that cut across national borders and attack the state system at its weakest points. It is important to remember that while the leaders may have a clear vision of their political objectives, the cannon fodder does not. The rank-and-file of the revolution is not likely to have read Marx.

As Claude Bowers noted in June 1945,

"The danger of communism comes from the misery of the masses, and where governments show no disposition to alleviate the economic condition, or even to hold forth hope of a higher standard of living. I venture to say that not one “communist” in ten knows what communism is. He understands it is something extremely opposite to the system under which he suffers and he joins the communists as a protest striking blindly and stupidly. He is convinced that nothing could be worse than his present state. Here again, as all through history, we encounter the stupidity of the over-privileged in refusing to concede anything to the man bellow."

The “rank and file” extralegals of the world are not the enemies of civilization, they are the enemies of their particular oppressors. It would be a shame if they destroyed the one to get at the other. We have already seen the consequences of ignoring their plight.

The crisis of state legitimacy has reached proportions that many in the developed world can scarcely imagine. We wring our hands about the handful of “failed” states, places where government has utterly collapsed or where war has reshuffled communities so many times that people are in a permanent state of flight. We are right to be concerned with these places, but the much larger problem is that all but a handful of states in the world are failed or failing if we apply any sort of objective standards to their performance.

The essence of democracy is not in written constitutions or ballot boxes, and it is not unique to western culture. It has to do with the idea that the just government must conform to the people, not the other way around.

The rise of economic informality shows how most people have voted with their feet against the regimes that profess to "represent" them.

Letter From Gitmo

The LA Times prints a letter by a current prisoner in Guantanamo Bay.

After you read this letter, you may also want to find this book, Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon."

I'll let Jumah al-Dossari speak for himself.

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba — I AM WRITING from the darkness of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo in the hope that I can make our voices heard by the world. My hand quivers as I hold the pen. In January 2002, I was picked up in Pakistan, blindfolded, shackled, drugged and loaded onto a plane flown to Cuba. When we got off the plane in Guantanamo, we did not know where we were. They took us to Camp X-Ray and locked us in cages with two buckets — one empty and one filled with water. We were to urinate in one and wash in the other. At Guantanamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious. What I write here is not what my imagination fancies or my insanity dictates. These are verifiable facts witnessed by other detainees, representatives of the Red Cross, interrogators and translators.During the first few years at Guantanamo, I was interrogated many times. My interrogators told me that they wanted me to admit that I am from Al Qaeda and that I was involved in the terrorist attacks on the United States. I told them that I have no connection to what they described. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I did not encourage anyone to go fight for Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have done nothing but kill and denigrate a religion. I never fought, and I never carried a weapon. I like the United States, and I am not an enemy. I have lived in the United States, and I wanted to become a citizen. I know that the soldiers who did bad things to me represent themselves, not the United States. And I have to say that not all American soldiers stationed in Cuba tortured us or mistreated us. There were soldiers who treated us very humanely. Some even cried when they witnessed our dire conditions. Once, in Camp Delta, a soldier apologized to me and offered me hot chocolate and cookies. When I thanked him, he said, "I do not need you to thank me." I include this because I do not want readers to think that I fault all Americans.But, why, after five years, is there no conclusion to the situation at Guantanamo? For how long will fathers, mothers, wives, siblings and children cry for their imprisoned loved ones? For how long will my daughter have to ask about my return? The answers can only be found with the fair-minded people of America.I would rather die than stay here forever, and I have tried to commit suicide many times. The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed. I am hopeless because our voices are not heard from the depths of the detention center. If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo whose beliefs, dignity and humanity were abused. Please remember that there are hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo suffering the same misfortune. They have not been charged with any crimes. They have not been accused of taking any action against the United States. Show the world the letters I gave you. Let the world read them. Let the world know the agony of the detainees in Cuba.

You don't have to pay income taxes!

"America: Freedom to Fascism."

If you can ignore the crummy filming and apparent lunacy of the producers, this documentary has some interesting information. The interviews when Rasso is not himself speaking are quite good. Just watch it with an eye for the moments when the gears slip and he launches into his own little dream world. Even if it weren't about a topic close to my heart, his delightfully paranoid conclusions would be worth a view.

Also, to my LA associates, you will notice that much of the documentary is shot at a corner in Venice Beach that has perhaps the highest concentration of crackpots and conspiracy theorists in the in lower 48 states. Way to build credibility.

100 Hour Orgy

As the Democrats take control of Congress, the Washington scandal clock is reset by the ceremonial placing of hands on books and the mouthing of oaths.

This majority swept in on a reform platform, promising to ram new laws through to correct the excesses of their Republican colleagues. Unfortunately for us, this “hundred hour orgy” is nothing but a publicity stunt and a thinly veiled loyalty test for incoming members. The issues at stake are decidedly trivial, and are unlikely to change the way things are done in Washington.

The leadership wants to know who will play ball, who will bow to the party and vote the way they want - regardless of the details of a given bill - when it is required of them. Am I the only one to notice that Pelosi and the Democrats are taking pages from the notorious playbook of Tom “The Hammer” Delay?

Boxing out the opposition, demanding lock-step party discipline, and passing legislation with no time for consideration or debate? As the oaths of office fade in their minds and Congress settles back into "business as usual," the precedent is set for the kind of one-sided Democratic circle jerk that can only produce a new and deeper round of corruption, graft, and incompetence.

The clock is ticking.