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.