Charlie Hebdo

A couple of interesting responses to the Charlie Hebdo shooting. I don't agree with all of what they say, but they're worth reading, if only as an anodyne to the sanctimonious hand-wringing.

An open letter to 99.99% of American editorial cartoonists:

What is not justified, or rather, what is not earned, is how many of you are comparing yourselves to the slain cartoonists based, it seems, on nothing more than the fact that you are in the same line of work as them.

On Charlie Hebdo:

[T]here is already an enormous pressure, in this context, to defend Charlie Hebdo as a forceful exponent of “Western values,” or in some cases even as a brilliantly radical bastion of left-wing anti-clericalism. . . .

[But] irrespective of whatever else it does, and whatever valid comment it makes — the way in which that publication represents Islam is racist. . . .

No, the offices of Charlie Hebdo should not be raided by gun-wielding murderers. No, journalists are not legitimate targets for killing. But no, we also shouldn’t line up with the inevitable statist backlash against Muslims, or the ideological charge to defend a fetishized, racialized “secularism,” or concede to the blackmail which forces us into solidarity with a racist institution.

In the forward (?) to his book Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut compares writing an anti-war book to writing an anti-glacier book. The comparison is apt: people have been slaughtering each other in retail, wholesale, and industrial quantities since the beginning of recorded history. And it's always at best just "regrettable" or "unfortunate" when people are dishing out the hurt, but everyone gets seriously bent out of shape when they're on the receiving end. We've been dishing out the hurt in the Middle East and South Asia; now we're all shocked that we're getting some back. I suppose that's just how people are. C'est la vie.

I think it's almost always a mistake to assign blame. Whom do we blame, the provocation or the disproportionate response? My training in business and engineering was, "Fix the problem, not the blame." When, for example, someone shoots his or her spouse, I think it's a mistake to blame the shooter; I ask why we have a society where people let resentment build up to murderous intensity rather than just separate. And with Charlie Hebdo, I ask, why do we have a society and international relations such that people think killing cartoonists is a Good Idea?

Almost all social problems are structural. Either they're just people acting economically efficiently, e.g. a social structure where thousands of drug murders really is economically efficient, or they're a structural failure to provide humane medical treatment for people with mental illness. I mean seriously: we can fly thousands of enormous, complicated aircraft five miles up in the sky for a trillion passenger miles for years without killing a single person. Our political problems are not technical.

This is the society that we want, that we ourselves have built. We built it the way we did because we want power more than peace. If we don't like it, only we can fix it.

Another Great Depression?

Underneath the Happy Talk, Is This As Bad as the Great Depression?

According to the post author, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker and host of other Very Serious Economists "have - at some point during the last 2 years - said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression." Today's housing crisis rivals that during the Great Depression. States and cities are in worse shape. Loan loss rates are higher. Unemployment is near Great Depression levels. Wealth and income inequality are worse. One out of every seven Americans now rely on food stamps.

If you're not in the top 1%, or hanging on by your fingernails in the top 10% (don't get too cocky: you're next on the chopping block), things are looking pretty fucking grim.

(via Naked Capitalism)

Very afraid

Maxine Udall sounds the alarm:

I'm afraid I'm in agreement with Paul Krugman that if Republicans gain control of the House we should be "very afraid." [I'm already very afraid, and I'll still be very afraid even if the Democrats hang on.] I'm sorry to say this, but unless you expect to inherit immense wealth or you are already in the top 1-2% of the income distribution I think you would be nuts to vote Republican. I base my opinion on the stark economic results of their nearly invariant beliefs and their performance over the last 30 years.

But what is to be done? Maxine says,

Some of you will point out that elected US lawmakers of both parties appear to be wholly owned by corporations and finance. Even if you believe this, it hardly argues for shrinking government, thereby giving corporate and other interests even more unfettered power. It argues for a political philosophy that believes government serves an essential purpose in an advanced, complex capitalist society: that of countervailing force against those interests when they are harmful to the rest of us and helpful to those interests when they are beneficial to us.

This is, of course, the crux of the biscuit. We do indeed need to change our philosophy, but can we do so by changing only our political philosophy? We know the government can indeed act as a countervailing force against capitalist interests -- the government actually did so from the mid 1930s until this role began to decay in the 1970s. But we also know that this sort of government is unstable, precisely because it began to decay in the 1970s, and the decay has continued to this day; it was not merely a fluke, it is a structural feature of our social, political and economic landscape. I cannot see how trying to roll back the regulatory clock to the 1950s or 60s is a feasible plan: even if it could be done, why would we expect it to not decay again?

Economic power is the foundation of every society; the rulers are those who hold economic power. The concept of formally separating the traditional instruments of government (i.e. "state power") from the exercise of economic power affords only the ability of factions within the economic ruling class to more efficiently jockey for state power... and that only sometimes. Such a formal separation does not and cannot offer true political power to any class that does not actually have economic power. At best, those without economic power can be courted and used by one or another faction of the economic ruling class. The only time there's any sort of real change in the political landscape is when the physical means of production change substantially enough so that the habits and characteristics of the old economic ruling class become radically unsuited to the new conditions.

There's nothing "wrong" with the idea that the class that holds economic power is the ruling class. It's a fact of our present social, psychological, political and economic development. It's not necessarily an ineluctable fact, but it's true of human beings as we are today. So the key is, if we do not want a small group of people to have disproportionate political power, some large group of people must seize economic power. But no class can simply "seize" economic power; an economy is extremely difficult to run, and it takes generations of education, experience and the development of social and institutional legitimacy to run an economy as relatively unsophisticated (compared to ours) as the Roman Empire.

One way to seize economic power is to develop economic power under the noses of the existing ruling class, as the capitalist class did under feudalism, and as the communists almost did in the 19th century under the capitalists. Note that the victory over the European communists required the capitalists to initiate the First Imperialist War. (Defeating communism was not, of course, the only reason for this war, perhaps not even the primary reason, but it was, all things considered, probably the least trivial reason.)

The only alternative is to develop economic power rebuilding after a catastrophic collapse of the previous society, as the Russians and Chinese did after the catastrophic collapse of feudalism. (Ironically, the First Imperialist War, which dramatically weakened communism, paved the way for the collapse of Russian feudalism and the rise of communism there. Likewise the Second Imperialist War paved the way for the collapse of Chinese feudalism and its own rise to communism.) I see no signs of the first method; I see no new economic power rising under the noses of the capitalists. So the only "hope" for progress is a worldwide catastrophic collapse of capitalism. I most definitely do not advocate intentionally creating a catastrophic collapse. I don't believe it's actually possible: if the ruling class is at all vigorous and competent, it will successfully prevent a collapse. Contrawise, if the ruling class has become indifferent, incompetent or irrational, it will bring about a collapse on its own.

The capitalist ruling class appears bent on creating a world-wide collapse of society, a collapse that replicating the New Deal can neither halt nor recover from, as it did the last world-wide catastrophe.

By all means vote Democratic in the next election. I don't think it will hurt anything, and I don't see how not voting will help anything. It's entirely possible that a (miraculous) Democratic victory in the mid-terms might slow the inevitable collapse somewhat, which is not the worst thing that could happen. But don't think for a moment that any form of purely political action will do anything at all to reverse our course towards economic and social catastrophe, and don't think that we can build a new and better capitalist society on the ashes of the old. The capitalism of the last 70-80 years is the absolute best we can get. I think we can do better.

The shit is going to hit the fan. Things are going to become very very bad over the next 5-10 years. What are you personally going to do in the face of famine, plague, death and war? When the people are not just demanding justice but fighting for survival, which side of the battle lines will you be on? And when the fight is done and we begin to rebuild, what will you contribute... should you survive?

The United States is a fascist police-state

The United States is a fascist police-state.

[Y]esterday’s Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project decision of the Supreme Court, coupled with last week’s Arar v. Ashcroft denial of certiorari, [made] the case for claiming that the U.S. is a fascist police-state... a whole lot stronger. ...

The U.S. government can decide unilaterally who is a terrorist organization and who is not. Anyone speaking to such a designated terrorist group is “providing material support” to the terrorists—and is therefore subject to prosecution at the discretion of the U.S. government. And if, in the end, it turns out that one definitely was not involved in terrorist activities, there is no way to receive redress by the state.

Sounds like a fascist police-state to me.

Don't confuse them with facts

Don't confuse them with facts:

To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper's online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth.

Apple v. the People

5 Reasons You Should Be Scared of Apple:

1. You don't own what you buy
2. Censorship
3. Paranoid secrecy leading to actual torture and suicide
4. Anti-competitive practices
5. "Lovecraftian" intrusiveness

This commercial? Perhaps not so much.

The riots in Iran

archvillain passes on the latest news from Iran:

Iran is descending into chaos, and the only people who seem to be keeping tabs on it are online. Forget about “the most trusted name in news“- they’re busy wanking themselves over the vital issue of Dan-Quayle-in-drag versus David Letterman. The only “real” news network spending any time on these events is the BBC.

Read the rest

Quiverfull

Hemant Mehta interviews Kathryn Joyce, author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. Martha Peace is one of the women profiled in Quiverful:

… [P]riorities [for Christian women] may include rising early to feed the family, being available anytime to satisfy a husband’s desires (barring a few “ungodly” or “homosexual” acts), seeking his approval regarding work, appearance, and leisure, and accepting that he has the “burden” of final say in arguments. After a wife has respectfully appealed her spouse’s decision — a privilege she should not abuse — she must accept his final answer as “God’s will for her at that time”… The godly wife must also suppress selfish desires (for romance, a career, an equitable marriage), practice addressing her spouse in soothing tones, and maintain a private log of bitter thoughts to guide her repentance. “If you disobey your husband,” Peace admonishes in The Excellent Wife, “you are indirectly shaking your fist at God.”

How to survive when the shit hits the fan

How to survive when the shit hits the fan

Preparing for the Great Collapse

Getting Prepared for the Great Collapse: Dmitry Orlov:

If there is one thing that I would like to claim as my own, it is the comparative theory of superpower collapse. For now, it remains just a theory, although it is currently being quite thoroughly tested. The theory states that the United States and the Soviet Union will have collapsed for the same reasons, namely: a severe and chronic shortfall in the production of crude oil (that magic addictive elixir of industrial economies), a severe and worsening foreign trade deficit, a runaway military budget, and ballooning foreign debt. I call this particular list of ingredients "The Superpower Collapse Soup." Other factors, such as the inability to provide an acceptable quality of life for its citizens, or a systemically corrupt political system incapable of reform, are certainly not helpful, but they do not automatically lead to collapse, because they do not put the country on a collision course with reality. Please don't be too concerned, though, because, as I mentioned, this is just a theory. My theory.

[h/t to kevin]

The global financial collapse

And you think I'm pessimistic. I don't know shit about what's actually going on. This guy seems to be paying attention; he makes me look like a rose-colored-glasses pollyanna.

1. The "Ponzi Pyramid of Debt Death/Bretton Woods II" that was the world's financial system collapsed five weeks ago today. Tens of trillions of electronic fiatscos were evaporated from the servers and spreadsheets housing them.

2. Literally every single large financial instution failed, simultaneously. Worldwide.

3. The world's governments and central banks have been performing ever-greater and more desperate maneuvers to revive the now-decaying corpse, pumping in seven trillion fiatscos.

4. So far, their efforts have shown little success as the spillover effects on the credit and equity markets can no longer be hidden.

A full blown, up-in-your-face credit collapse and stock market colllapse has ensued. Again, worldwide.

5. Coming next: "Great Depression II Meets Mad Max".

6. Therefore, we're scroomed.

Stock up on canned food and firearms.

[h/t to db0]

Quotation of the Day

But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. ... Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

-- Theodore Kaczinski (a.k.a. the Unabomber)

[h/t to kevin]

Deutchland uber alles

PZ Myers is scaring the shit out of me.

The Democratic party has no monopoly on fascism.

And the news about Joel's Army is not particularly encouraging.

Mind Control Made Easy

Mind Control Made Easy or How to Become a Cult Leader



(h/t to FreThink)

The tip of the iceberg

Dave at Orcinus has a long article about the Phineas Priesthood, a Christianist terrorist organization. This organization is well financed, with an extremely well-disciplined cell structure.

The Phineas Priesthood was recently endorsed by Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

Link love:

In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest by Dave Neiwert

Mark Kleiman on The Phineas Priesthood
Tony & Phineas
Religious Right, Still Wrong
Holy Hell
Mainstreaming Our Confederate-American Heritage [satire]

Humanity is Doomed

5 Psychological Experiments That Prove Humanity is Doomed

Progressive politics

Many years ago, when I was just a lad, the President of the United States (Nixon) and his minions broke the law, compromised the electoral process, and lied to Congress and the American people to cover up their crimes. The President resigned in disgrace — at the demand of his own party — and no small few of his minions ended up in prison. This is how things should go.

A few years later, the President (Reagan) and his minions broke the law, actually committed treason, and lied to Congress and the American people to cover their crimes. The President escaped accountability, and, while a few of his minions were indicted and some convicted, all escaped punishment by appeal and pardon. This is not how things should go.

A few years later, the President (Bush fils) and his minions broke the law, shredded the Constitution, made a mockery of the electoral process, lied as consistently and egregiously as a cretinist propagandist with a word-processor and perpetrated acts recognized as crimes against humanity (torture and aggressive warfare). Worse yet, every institution charged with moderating the excesses of tyrannical authority — the opposition political party, the "free" press, the judiciary — actively abetted his crimes and lies. (Passive refusal to take reasonable steps to expose and confront wrongdoing is recognized morally and legally as aiding and abetting.) No one will even be indicted, much less be forced to account for their crimes. This is the complete opposite of how things should go.

The upcoming election will not change anything. Senators Clinton, Obama and Edwards all voted to engage in or fund the illegal war in Iraq and have either complied with or failed to vigorously oppose Bush's manifestly illegal and immoral actions. They're part of the problem, and their in up to their eyeballs.

If you let someone get away with something once, they'll do it again. This principle is an obvious and ubiquitous truth of human psychology. We've let the bastards do it to us twice with little or no consequences, so we can be rationally convinced they will do it again. Hence, I foresee a weak and constantly badgered and assaulted Democratic government for 2-4 years. We'll have a Republican congress in 2010 and a Republican president in 2012. And the 2012 government will be worse than the Bush administration.

It's already the case that a Christian Theocrat, an authoritarian criminal and a racist nutjob are legitimate contenders for the Republican nomination. Nobody looks good with George W. Bush still hanging around, but in four years, when our "free" press has convinced everyone that the Democratic President and Congress are responsible for our economic depression, our continuing failure in Iraq, our declining international prestige and of failing to adequately protect the American people from extremist Islamic terrorism, a return to religious fundamentalism and authoritarianism will look a lot better.

I don't think the United States will follow Russia's pattern: The collapse of a totalitarian government into pure criminal anarchy followed by a return to totalitarianism. The people of any democracy are the last line of defense, and I think the American people will win out in the end. It's one thing to take off your shoes and throw out your shampoo to get on an airplane, but when people start "disappearing", when the concentration camps start filling up, I think (I hope!) the American people will resist.

But it's still true that the people are indeed the last line of defense. Conditions have to get really bad — South and Central America bad, South Africa bad — before the people will choose leaders who actually resist. We have already missed our last chance to nip totalitarianism in the bud by institutional means. (We might have missed the last chance when our institutions refused to vigorously prosecute Reagan and his minions.)

The progressive blogosphere might be one important tool in the last line of resistance. It is only the "lesser" blogs that are howling with the outrage that stands a chance of ever reversing the dismantling of our democracy and the undermining of the moral foundations of our civilization.

The "mainstream" bloggers have made themselves irrelevant to this effort; if they persist at all, they'll be completely co-opted by the totalitarians. They've descended into tactical considerations of how a few not completely batshit insane people can prosper in a batshit insane totalitarian system. It is futile to try to work within a system that is unable to prosecute and punish egregious violations of the Constitution, treason and crimes against humanity. The system is in the midst of catastrophic failure, and we now need to change the system. Systemic changes always incur a heavy cost in suffering and death.

The Democratic party could have saved us. The liberal free press — even excluding Murdoch's authoritarian propaganda — could have saved us. The liberal billionaires — Gates, Turner, Soros, etc. — could have saved us. A little courage, a little forethought, a little common sense among those who have justified their power on the basis of their exceptional abilities could have saved us. They failed to live up to the responsibilities concomitant with power. Oh well. The smart ones will get the hell out of Dodge; the dumb ones will stay and suffer along with the rest of us.

I think Blogroll Amnesty Day is really important. It's not just about getting a bunch of Z-list bloggers a little more traffic. Progressive bloggers are building an infrastructure that may well form the nucleus for the coming struggle against totalitarianism, and we may well determine what the success of that struggle will entail. (Just as the 18th century colonial liberal intelligentsia built the Constitution; without them we would have had become just another European-style kingdom.)

I hope I'm wrong. I want to be wrong. If I were religious I would pray that I'm wrong. If the Democratic government we elect in 2008 really turns things around, I'll jump for joy. I'm too soft, too sentimental. I don't yearn to be part of world-historical events; I want to live out my life in quiet obscurity, adding my minuscule contribution to esoteric philosophical issues. If the progressive blogosphere becomes just a little voice in a functioning liberal democracy, there's nothing lost.

But I don't think I'm wrong. The Republicans know what works. They know they can do most anything without institutional punishment. They want nothing more than personal authoritarian power for its own sake. Like the villain in a cheap B movie, they'll escape the disaster of this failed plan only to come back stronger than ever in the sequel. They're evil, not stupid, and they learn from their mistakes. Bush Cheney failed to establish a totalitarian regime only because he hesitated; our next authoritarian will not be so weak.

Christian Totalitarianism

dogemperor on Daily Kos writes about Why the subject of dominionism is rather...personal to me:

You see...I was once one of those kids like in "Jesus Camp" myself.

I'm a survivor of the same "Third Wave" (aka "Joel's Army") dominionist movement that spawned the camp depicted in "Jesus Camp". I even remember in my youth attending a day-camp program run by the dominionist church I escaped--one that was very much like "Jesus Camp", in fact.

Read it, and ponder Sinclair Lewis's comment, "When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag and carrying a cross."

(h/t to Dark Sided)

Quotation for the day

The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors.... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'

—Ron Suskind, Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush.

(h/t to TomDispatch)

How is this different from religion? It's all about making shit up and calling it true (or real).

It may already be too late

A Whore in the Temple of Reason has a terrific post on Christianism in the US Military:

An extremist segment of Christians has become increasingly dominant thoughout all branches of the armed forces. Recently, for example, the cadets at the Air Force Academy were all required to watch Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ. And while the military has regulations in place to prevent superior officers from "pushing Mary Kay Cosmetics and Amway and Tupperware," religion seems to be given free rein.

Quoth conservative wingnut pundit Thomas Sowell,

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can't help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup. [emphasis added]

You might soon get your wish, Mr. Sowell.


Update: According to this commenter, the assertion that AFA cadets were forced to watch The Passion of the Christ might not be accurate. If anyone has more information, please comment here or send me an email.