Et Tu?

I had MSNBC on most of yesterday.  I can't stand the sight of Wolf the Weasel and what other choice is possible?

I'm disappointed. When the evening network news came on I began to learn facts the cable guys never mentioned, That the FBI had investigated these boys, for instance and they managed to give us the facts without the constant theme of "you can see that it's been worth it to give up our privacy."  Cowards!  Is this what it means to be a Liberal today?  Sacrificing freedom for some imagined and miniscule increase in safety? 

Needless to say, I don't think so.  I don't think this gruesome incident is anywhere near the calamity it's being made out to be. It's no worse than a good part of the world has to put up with all the time and that it's being made out to be something on the order of WW III it's only because giving up our privacy is only a taste of what some would have us give up.  The Right, predictably, is growling about Miranda rights because we can't go around thinking that this crime is a crime and a US citizen is entitled to civil rights if he's motivated by some sick religious doctrine that isn't Christian. Is this pathetic teenage loser an "enemy combatant" while Tim McVeigh, David Koresh and Jim Jones weren't?

It has to be a WAR because then all's fair therein including making a mockery of our Bill of Rights. It has to be a war so that they can find yet another reason to attack Obama as a weakling, or perhaps a clandestine Muslim for trying to fulfill his oath to preserve and defend the same Constitution the Republicans have seen as a stumbling block for years.

Of course the NBC reporter who told us last night that we'd just witnessed "the greatest manhunt in American history" needs to go back to school if indeed he's ever attended or at least read up on Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Jesse James and of course John Wilkes Booth, but such idiocy is all part of the effort to make everything seem like a catastrophe and every crime an apocalypse. 

I have to be impressed however with Boston and Massachusetts law enforcement, both for their efficiency and their restraint. Supporters of the "government can't do anything right"  battle cry should take this opportunity to shut the hell up.

Silent Running

The weeping and wailing industry is almost as quick to react to certain events as the paramedics are, and this morning's paper has a local runner's group holding a silent run in the attempt to feel relevant or perhaps to express ire that anyone would interfere with one of America's sacred sports.  Yes, I'm sounding cynical here, but it's not because I'm callous with regard to the loss of life and all the injuries, it's just that in recent decades, the public reaction to high profile death has been so orchestrated and so formulaic that it cheapens the moment and distracts us from seeing such things in context. I'm not interested in crying, I don't subscribe to self-pity and I don't need closure or healing. I'm interested in being able to keep the kind of things that have plagued us all at least since Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament from happening, as much as is possible in a free country.

Judging from other events, we'll soon be seeing piles of Teddy Bears on Boston streets and other silent runnings slowly turning our anger and willingness to learn from this event into a  declining series of maudlin and sentimental exhibitions of self-pity and the lachrymose quest for 'healing.'  One might forget just how rare such occurrences are in our country.  One will forget what must be done to keep things that way.  Our record, at least since the Oklahoma City bombing and the events of 2001, to thwart bombing attempts has been pretty good and  the mawkish  mourning and stuffed animal social club hasn't played much of a part.

According to a CNN.com editorial, only one successful bombing in America has been carried out since 9/11/01 -- by a White Supremacist. In the decade before that there were many, not the least of which were the killing of 168 in Oklahoma City, the 1998 Olympic bombing in Atlanta and the 1993 World Trade garage bomb which killed 6.  I don't include the horror of the 'Branch Davidian' holocaust, where David Koresh and his devout men of valor as he called them burned his followers to death.

What can we learn from the recent past?  That such events are pretty rare in America and getting more so as compared with Europe -- that our domestic politics of anger and violence is costly, for another. 380 people have been indicted on terrorism-related charges in the United States between September 11, 2001 and December 31 2012 and of those 207 have been so-called 'jihadists' or Muslim extremists, but non-Muslim perpetrators, 80% of whom have been American "conservatives"  have killed 29 versus 17 by Muslims.  All this and more from a Syracuse University study.  

But we've obviously gotten better.  We're catching nearly all the bombers and poisoners before they can act.  We'll never achieve perfect safety, not even if we achieve a perfect police state, but we'll come closer if we pay more attention to our own potential terrorists all across the political and religious  spectrum and spend less time wallowing in stylized and choreographed sorrow.

Is it time to notice just how much of our grossly exaggerated fear of  mad bombers should be directed  toward the American Right?    How much is fueled by Rush and Fox and Coulter and Bachmann and yes, the holy hellfire Christian Conservatives?

The Mouth of The Lord

The 'reverend' Phelps is at it again, twittering that God Bombed Boston for the same reason God does most of the horrible things he does like letting millions of children die miserably and needlessly and live miserably and hopelessly all over the world -- because they aren't actively persecuting gay people.  So busy is the God of Rage and so obsessed with regulating love and sex that he's never had the time to do anything else.  You'll notice that he never blew up Sobibor or Auschwitz or wasted his time with chastising the murderers of millions of children in Africa and Asia and yes, even Europe.  In fact he must have blown the budget on his flood since he hasn't done shit that looks anything like divine retribution since -- except for the odd bombing or two -- and a lot of threats.

No, what God, or at least Deus ex Wesboro, is about is  -- you should pardon the term -- "fags."  God just hates 'em, the way Indiana Jones hates snakes or the way I hate preachers.  He can't really do much about it though, whether he's in the form of the old man or his son who's also himself or that bird that crept in sometime in the 4th century when they left the window open,  other than to use an improvised explosive device against people who can hardly be blamed for not persecuting anyone.  Little kids, for instance.

Persecuting gay people isn't something God is good at doing all by himself actually. He needs kids and grown ups with hate in their hearts and not much in their heads.  Gay people or doctors who perform abortions or as the commandments stress: abominable people who eat cheeseburgers or hate any of the 613 commandments. The best he can do is kill one or two here or there who have no connection to his weird dislikes and kids are always best.  No, those flood days are over for good what with the economy as it is.

Typical of helpless tyrants, what God does best is to make gruesome threats and Phelps quotes Leviticus 26:15-16 where the anonymous author speaking for his version of God, tells anyone who doesn't like all those psychotic prohibitions and commandments:

"I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it."

He quotes the Prophet Micah as saying "Hear ye the Rod and who hath appointed it"

So what I put together from this strange choice of divine inspiration is that we should be concerned with our rods and that our enemies will eat them.  You know, I suspect and I suspect that you suspect that Phelps is a bit overly  concerned with rods and those who eat what issues from them.

Too bad for him and good for us, that celestial ventriloquist's dummy only speaks with our voice and only says what each of us thinks he does.  For my part, I see Phelps' lips moving with desire when God talks about Rods and Staffs and the seed thereof and as the Old man of the Sky happens to be sitting on my knee at the moment, I seem to hear him saying "SUCK IT PHELPS -- YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO."

Stupid

Remember when talking down the economy was "hating America?"  Remember when Liberals were badmouthing the market because they wanted to destroy America?  Now I don't think I have any special kind of memory or that I'm the most well informed or well read person on Earth but I want to know how the hell we remember only what's convenient or what we're told to remember in order to support our political pieties.  I remember this crap.  I remember 8 years of it because I was predicting a collapse from the beginning of that misbegotten administration and predicting the loss of civil rights and Goddamn it, I was right. They were wrong. They were lying like Limbaugh. Why don't you remember?  Do you even remember Bush?

Yeah, right, Obama's private army and I'm sure they all wear "jack boots" whatever the hell those are.  Remember when George W. Bush decided to use private troops at a huge expense because the American military had too many rules against things like killing civilians and torturing prisoners?  Oh, you don't? Do you remember when it was anti-American even to mention that people were getting killed on the news?  Sure, watch the 'shocking video' while you suck down another Budweiser, you sick, moronic loser.  Feel sorry for yourself because you have to pay for all those sluts to have sex and all those slackers to get foodstamps while the liberals take your guns so that the illegal aliens can rob you and rape our daughters ( unless they're unconscious in which case it's OK)

My mailbox is full every morning with apocalyptic economic predictions that somehow don't seem to provoke the offended responses from "conservatives" who not long ago told us, as it was happening, that the markets were sound and robust and that borrow like there's no tomorrow policies would require some payment to the piper and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were more than we could afford if we didn't raise taxes back to where they were in our most prosperous years.  Oh, but paying off the interest on that bastard's debts is "reckless spending."

Well I guess it's different now and I guess these lying vermin don't hate America, they don't hate freedom -- they don't care as long as they can steal it all from us and from what I hear and overhear every day, they certainly have been successful. America just eats it up like a pig eats it's own shit.  Oh, yes, you think Obama stole everything in Fort Knox and is going to call down an airstrike from flying saucers and take everything from you and give it to the "takers" because I hate to say it, we're not just an ignorant nation, we're fucking crazy pigs and destined to become somebody elses bacon.

Rape, and a Little Reality

So, another sad example of male privilege and victim-blaming came to light last week, when Canadian teen Rehtaeh Parsons hanged herself after the RCMP decided that it didn't have enough to act on, and closed the case. Despite one of the four boys having circulated evidence of him committing the crime (which also constitutes child pornography, incidentally). Despite the fact that it took hacker group Anonymous about two hours to find the names of the four boys involved.

Backed against a wall, the RCMP agreed to reopen the case. So, bravo, Anonymous.

This case is remarkably similar to the Steubenville, Ohio rape case, in which two teens took advantage of a drunk underage girl to abuse her when she couldn't fight back. In both cases, the victim was blamed for being a slut, when they were both unconscious (or all but) at the time. In both cases, the police tried to cover it up, and members of Anonymous wouldn't let them.

The Far Right (and some other idiots) practically dryhumped the Steubenville story, trying to empathize with the rapists and saying it was the victim's fault (because, after all, all men rape - they can't help themselves, right?).

Easily the weirdest reaction, though, came from a libertarian college professor, who put it this way:

Let’s suppose that you, or I, or someone we love, or someone we care about from afar, is raped while unconscious in a way that causes no direct physical harm — no injury, no pregnancy, no disease transmission. (Note: The Steubenville rape victim, according to all the accounts I’ve read, was not even aware that she’d been sexually assaulted until she learned about it from the Internet some days later.) Despite the lack of physical damage, we are shocked, appalled and horrified at the thought of being treated in this way, and suffer deep trauma as a result. Ought the law discourage such acts of rape? Should they be illegal?...

As long as I’m safely unconscious and therefore shielded from the costs of an assault, why shouldn’t the rest of the world (or more specifically my attackers) be allowed to reap the benefits?

Now, I'm not going to try to refute his argument directly (if you aren't sociopathic, the answer should be obvious). What I'm going to point out is this:

A. Following that logic out to its obvious conclusion, there is no private possession of any item. This is more extensive than anything ever suggested by any follower of communism or socialism.

By this reasoning, nobody should ever be allowed to take their keys with them after they drive to work; while you're in your office, other people should be allowed to use your car. After all, if they refill the gas and return it before you leave for the day, there's no problem, right?

Nor can you lock your door: people should be allowed to have parties in your house while you aren't there, shouldn't they? As long as they clean up after themselves, no harm, no foul, right?

(Let's just pretend that there's no such thing as "depreciation" in the tax code: these are his thought experiments, not mine.)

B. Would you like to guess why the Right Wing is losing the idiotically-named "War on Women"? It's fascinating how this argument joins up with the abortion question: it's all the same. Dr Landsburg doesn't expand on his rape-apology in the way that I just did, because that's where it breaks down. In his view, not only is a woman's body just property (and not property that she controls, by the way), but it isn't even as important as his house, or his car. She's just there to be used by other people.

This is why the Right Wing is roughly as popular as chlamydia in most polls.

We are not alone

We're going to have to get used to drones.  They're available everywhere and getting better and cheaper as electronic toys do. HD TV cameras can be added that are now tiny and lightweight and cheap and can even see in the dark

I hope we don't have to get used to the constant surveillance they make possible and it's not just the invasion of our private spaces by government agencies I'm alarmed about.  Various people and groups of people with all kinds of ideas about what you're doing, aren't doing and should be doing are now able to watch and record from hundreds of feet above wherever you are.

PETA, one of those well-intentioned groups whose sentimentally extremist views about things like the personhood and civil rights of insects isn't the kind of  organization I want watching me if I'm out in the woods or down at the dock fishing seeing as for them, fish are sensitive and loving and self aware creatures and catching them is murder. But hunters are evil too as are those with leather shoes or eating sushi and PETA intends to   "monitor those who are out in the woods with death on their minds," according to a press release.  Those feral hogs we have here need to be protected against my violating their civil rights as well, and what about the local butcher shops!  Death on their minds! But according to the FAA, as long as you fly your Hammacher Schlemmer drone below 400 feet, there's no problem with areal reconnaissance. For extremists, kooks, voyeurs and fanatics, it's a whole new day.

"The average person has no worries" is the kind of  'reassurance' one expects from advocates of random and warrantless stops and searches.  Steve Hindi, president of yet another animal rights group called Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, or SHARK, assures us we have nothing to fear from him unless you have death on your mind.  He likes to watch bird hunters and post video on line and sending links to law enforcement. Perhaps the average hunter has no worries but what looks like one thing may look like another thing from a TV camera from 40 stories in the air and after all, Steve doesn't want you hunting in the first place you evil carnivore Bambi murderer you.

Of course flying your drone a few hundred feet above people with shotguns has it's hazards. Drones have suffered mysterious failures and there's a lot of giggling going on in the bird shooting community.  Might be some mirth in my back yard as well should there be an unidentified flying object hovering over my swimming pool, but I'm not sure the future doesn't hold endless drones over our heads and perhaps under our feet making sure we don't have aces up our sleeves or that we're not walking on the grass or filling out our golf score cards improperly or actually are playing cards with the guys like we said.  But let he who is without sin not worry, right?

Drones are the future.  Insurance companies are already 'offering' gadgets that record how fast you drive -- to save you money of course, but also to deny claims because you might have been observed at 5 over the limit.  Red light cameras don't seem to reduce collisions at intersections and may actually be causing more, but hey, you have nothing to fear in our brave new world where you have so many big brothers watching our for you.

Sometimes a missile is only a missile.

Other times, maybe not.

So North Korea now has two mobile IRBM's standing proudly erect and America's eyes in the sky are watching.  Little Kim, the only fat man in North Korea may be erect too but nobody's watching and nobody cares, the whole thing being so disgustingly Freudian.

The likelihood that the PRNK is conducting a prank, waving it's mechanical member at us, is pretty high in my opinion as the notion that they have a nuclear weapon that can be fitted to one of these things is pretty low. Can we be sure that it will function and be accurate enough even for nukes?

Speaking of dicks, the old war criminal himself has made it a point to express his nervousness about the smallest of the Korean Matriushka dolls, the son of the Glorious General who descended from Heaven and totally awesome Commander Kid and his WMD.  Interesting to note as this time there may actually be a WMD even if it's only a clumsy prototype. I'm glad he no longer has the launch codes even as much as I'd like to see the Great Sun of the 21st century vaporized, his little dick and all.

But the opinion of the other Dick, notwithstanding, I'm not really worried about being attacked.  I'm more worried about the Republicans dredging that old Three O'Clock phone call meme to go after Obama The Unprepared from another angle. It's Junk Un who has to be sitting up nights worrying about military coups or the Chinese flyswatter or a war that would be over before he could empty his bladder in his pants. Even if he's firing blanks, he may draw fire on himself and if he just puts it back in his pants, he'll look like the 8 year old in the Superman suit he really is.  Nobody will criticize him at home, not until someone gets up the nerve to assassinate him, but my guess is, that he's already lost this opening gambit and that he can't afford another.

But hey, for those of us tired of the 24/7 wailing, weeping and mourning and trembling in our Nike's that someone will shoot us as we watch a movie, or maybe sneak through our Smart Meters to steal our guns and raise our taxes Sharia Law style, it's almost a relief to contemplate nuclear war, Gangnam style.

What is it about Islamic fundamentalists?

Anybody who knows me (statistically, damned few of you) is aware that I am not a faithful churchgoer. And some of you probably worked that out from my nom de blog.

However, for all that unbelievers in America face discrimination, idiocy and occasional threats, we have it better than people in some parts of the world.

I tend to reserve most of my bile for Christianity, mostly because it's the religion that keeps trying to take over America. Which happens to be where I live. I don't happen to appreciate people trying to shove their beliefs down my throat - I'm not going to compare it to rape, but there are philosophical similarities. Much in the way that a house fire would be similar to a nuclear holocaust, but still...

In fact, due to the excessive and overwrought hatred of Muslims that is typically found among members of the Right Wing, I've tended to shy away from pointing out the less-brilliant aspects of Islamic beliefs. But let me just say this.

Muslim societies, on the whole, are less advanced than those of us in what they call the "West." Their educational levels frequently aren't even on a par with Mississippi, they are roughly as set in their ways as the Catholic church, and they share many beliefs with the Westboro Baptist Chuch. And they have an unpleasant tendancy toward violence similar to members of the NRA.

Bangladesh, for example, is nominally a secular democracy, but they seem to have forgotten what "secular" actually means. When Bangladesh gained independance from Pakistan in 1971, they set up a constitution that included "Four State Principles" - Secularism, Democracy, Nationalism and Socialism (factors which were upheld in Bangladeshi court in 2010).

However, with a population that is almost 90% Muslim (89.4% in 2010), they seem to be adding two more principles: Bigotry and Intolerance.

And Violence. So maybe three principles. (I could add "Murder," but it would rapidly grow into a Monty Python sketch about the Muslim Inquisition.)

See, there's an atheist blogger in Bangladesh named Asif Mohiuddin. In January, he was attacked in an apparent murder attempt, by three men who tried (but failed) to stab him in the throat. A month later, on 15 February, another atheist blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was hacked to death in a machete attack in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh.

For the crime of making himself a target, the surviving blogger, Asif, was arrested last Wednesday, and his blog on www.somewhereinblog.net ordered shut down by the government. He was the fourth blogger in two days to be arrested for "defaming Islam.".

The government is cracking down on athiests because Muslims are rioting. Which is, of course, the perfect response: you should always give in to violent threats. On 13 March, the Prime Minister's office formed a committee tasked with identifying "blasphemous" bloggers.

Earlier in the week, four online writers were arrested on charges of hurting Islamic religious sentiments in a country where 90 percent of people are Muslims.

Following recent protests over the war crimes tribunal, the government has blocked a dozen websites and blogs to stem the unrest. It has also set up a panel, which includes intelligence chiefs, to monitor blasphemy on social media.

Under the country’s cyber laws, a blogger or Internet writer can face up to ten years in jail for defaming a religion.

What is it about radical Islam that causes them to attack and kill anyone they disagree with? If girls try to go to school, they get shot. Cartoonists who draw pictures of Mohammed are attacked with axes. Being "too Western" or committing "sexual impropriety" will get a woman murdered by her family.

Now, among Christians, the percentage of fundamentalists varies: in the Bible Belt (sociographically, the "East South Central Region" - Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Alabama), it stands at about 58%, while in New England, it climbed slightly during the Bush era to 13%. If we assume that the same percentages hold for the Islamic peoples, that's still a buttload of fundamentalists. And in any religion, it's the fundamentalists who make the worst neighbors.

Here's the thing. Islam has been round for about 1400 years. Know what Christians were doing at about the same point in their history? Crusades and Inquisitions: killing people of other religions, and locking people up for daring to speak against them. The only difference is, modern Muslims have access to more technology than Christians did in the Middle Ages.

You have to wonder if this is a cycle that all major religions go through.

Constitution-free zone ahead

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

______________

It's one of those news items that's been out there on the Web since February, In fact the ACLU has been talking about it since 2008,  but I had to hear it from someone in another country.  It's a situation I haven't heard on The Situation Room or even  on the blogs I read and yet it's the sort of thing one would have expected to arouse paranoia and rebellious rhetoric amongst the people who obsess about the Government taking away our freedom and our guns and our privacy.  Actually it seems to entail the government taking away what it damn well pleases for any reason it can think up -- and even for no reason at all.  Worst of all, and unlike your run-of-the-mill Chicken Little fantasies -- it's real.

The DHS has worried me since its inception and when national security became homeland security my innate suspicions were aroused.  I still think I was justified.  Yes, there have been exceptions to the 4th amendment proscriptions against searches and seizures of property since the beginning and many are there to allow customs enforcement, but now it seems our borders have by fiat, been arbitrarily moved 100 miles inland and nearly 200 million Americans -- almost 2/3 of the population can, without probable cause and without a warrant or reasonable suspicion and at the whim of law enforcement be stopped, required to prove citizenship, searched, papers and effects rummaged through and have property seized,  and you sir -- you can't do a damned thing about it.  The majority of the US population now lives in a 4th amendment free zone says the ACLU.

I and everyone else living in Florida for instance, which is all within 100 miles of the border, can have our computers and smartphones confiscated and contents downloaded and examined in the name of  Homeland security. No warrant, no pardon me, no apology.  There's a war on, you know and there always will be. So much for being secure in our papers, effects and persons.

We can be patted down for looking like someone who might possess the wrong kind of cigarettes -- or in other words black or Hispanic -- or just young.  And all your papers, documents, pictures, private correspondence, political opinions, records, music, love letters and secret formulas for barbeque sauce can and will be violated, unreasonably searched, downloaded and seized in the name of  Homeland safety and security. For the most part, it's all based on precedent and as with the run up to the total collapse of  the legitimacy of government we experienced in 1930's Germany, they've always got a good and convincing reason.

The insistence on freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures as a fundamental right gained expression in the Colonies before the Revolution based on experiences such as that of John Wilkes.  We've forgotten it.  We've been so conditioned to fear by polemicists on both sides of the governmental aisle, by think tanks, propagandists, do-gooders, evil doers, fear mongers and greedy, power hungry bastards that authoritarianism and its false promises of safety have taken us full circle.  Yes, there have been great strides made in some aspects of personal liberty with respect to minority rights, women's rights and religious freedom, but perhaps that success has blinded us to the non-monetary costs of our perpetual wars and pseudo-wars.


As George Bush said in 2001, we're going to have to give up some of our civil rights and so we have and little has been done since to reverse that trend. We are not secure in our homes and persons and effects and papers because someone blew up some buildings a dozen years ago.  We are not because we have a war on drugs that defies reason and erodes freedom. We've become a prison state where we can detain, imprison without charge, torture, kidnap and kill without due process, where nearly every quotidian government document is classified and the telling of the truth is treason and as long as they can keep us riled up about taxes and fictitious attacks on religion and trumped up dangers we just don't care because we're cowards and encouraged to be cowards for whom freedom is secondary.

Margaret Thatcher (1925 – 2013)

I lived in the U.K. during the Thatcher years and can tell you from first hand experience: It was not a happy time. It was an era marked by high unemployment and stagnant wages - and a combative and bullying style that treated everyone as ‘whiners.’ In retrospect, one cannot say for sure why Thatcher won reelection (or why some folks choose an enema to treat chronic diarrhea). One thing certain: Margaret Thatcher did change England – but not for the better.