At $77 bucks a pop for Mister Oh-So-Necktied Coxon’s magic words, it’s rather clear that this posting is even less admirable than conventional vulgar libertarian “kill the poor” tropes. Not a grain of compassion shines through, except, perhaps, for:

“France’s GDF Suez, UK’s Rurelec, Italy’s Telecom Italia, Spain’s Repsol YPF, Brazil’s Petrobras, France’s Total, Switzerland’s Glencore, and a host of other international resource companies.”

Jeez, I guess I really hadn’t realized how truly virtuous the successor firms to government monopolies like Petrobras and Telecom Italia are! I guess I missed out on the memo describing the greatness of Total’s exploitation of Burmese — er, Myanmyarese, or whatever, but who cares about them — slaves. What paragons of goodness the elite management of imperial rump-state France’s appointees to the board of GDF Suez are. Best, in fact, if we ignore the stories on Wikipedia of Glencore which say that “ABC Radio reported that Glencore “has been accused of illegal dealings with rogue states: apartheid South Africa, USSR, Iran, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein”, and has a “history of busting UN embargoes to profit from corrupt or despotic regimes”. Specifically, Glencore was reported to have been named by the CIA to have paid $3,222,780 in illegal kickbacks to obtain oil in the course of the UN oil-for-food programme for Iraq.”

I mean, hell, if you can’t get the goddanged CIA on your side in dirty dealings in Latin America what *is* the world coming to?

Incidentally, my assessment of Evo Morales runs directly to “scumbag” and “moron”. But at least the man doesn’t wear a fucking necktie.

The words were valuable, sure, and within the ongoing saga of Bradley Manning served to call out Emperor Obama to (simperingly, predictably) defend his administration’s actions. But I didn’t celebrate the man. Crowley didn’t say that the way Manning was being treated was evil, barbaric, unjust, unfair, illegal, inhuman, inhumane, sick, perverted, sadistic, etc. All he said was “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid”.

Some of my allies took his statement to mean that Crowley has a good bone somewhere in his loathsome body. I knew better, but didn’t have enough information on hand to really, strongly object, until this:

From The Guardian:

Part of our strength comes from international recognition that the United States practises what we preach. Most of the time, we do. This strategic narrative has made us, broadly speaking, the most admired country in the world.

[...]

The release placed the lives of activists [ed note.: read: spies, saboteurs, agents provocateur, thugs, liars, assassins, arms dealers, etc.] around the world at risk.

Julian Assange and others have suggested that the release of the cables was to expose wrongdoing. Nonsense.

While everyone can point to an isolated cable, taken as a whole, the cables tell a compelling story of “rightdoing” – of US diplomats engaged in 189 countries around the world, working on behalf of the American people, and serving broader interests as well. As a nation, we are proud of the story the cables tell, even as we decry their release.

Much like the George W. Bush administration, Crowley has clearly divorced himself from the “reality-based community”. A little torture here, a few cruise missiles there, a wee bit of multi-billion-dollar bribery and smidge of rampant corporate imperialism over there, and we’ll just wrap that up in a delicious, low-carb, fat-free, totally non-threatening “strategic narrative” and sell it to the dumbass punters all over the world, with American Exceptionalist sprinkles on top.

P.J. Crowley spoke the truth. But he didn’t speak the truth some of my allies perceived. No, what Crowley said, very clearly, was this: “If the American government (and its fully-vested shareholders, who are not, incidentally, the electorate) intends to perpetuate the animating, exceptionalist mythos which supports its planet-dominating imperial aspirations, it must at least pretend in such a high-profile case that it cares about human rights, the rule of law, etc. For, if it does not, some people might, just for a second, truly perceive the maggot-ridden death’s head face behind the stars-stripes-uncle-sam-and-apple-pie mask, and we can’t have that.”

And from the Empire’s perspective, Crowley’s statement was not out of line. No, Crowley’s unforgivable sin lay not in his words, but that he let them be heard by the public.

I’m off to the ice cream shop. I hear they have a new flavor called “rightdoing”. I’ll bet it’s red, white and blue.

It’s important. Go check it out.

Yes, yes, I know you were thinking that .io might be the top-level domain for Io, that hideously volcanic moon of Jupiter, and that the speed-of-light latency to Io (16 minutes one way, at the very least) might make Q&A really hard. But fear not! .io is actually the TLD for the British Indian Ocean Territory, which encompasses that great bastion of liberty, Diego Garcia.

Anyway, git! http://agora.io/

nomikographomania (n.) – A mental disorder caused by reading too many legal(istic) documents.

Other suggestions?

From the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

Sarasota detective fired for trying to secede from U.S.

SARASOTA – Last April, a veteran Sarasota Police homicide detective went to the courthouse and tried to secede from the United States of America.

The detective, Tom Laughlin, filed a convoluted document declaring himself a “sovereign citizen.” The filing included a thumb print on each page and a photocopy of 21 silver pieces — the price to become a “freeman.”

In doing so, Laughlin, 42, joined a small but growing group of U.S. citizens who claim they are not subject to federal law, that they no longer have to pay taxes and that their homes are their embassies.

Last week, he was fired for it.

[...]

His brother, also a “sovereign citizen” who recently was charged in St. Johns County with trying to extort two Florida Highway Patrol troopers and later with bilking a Sarasota bank of $50,000, convinced Laughlin that he could declare himself a “freeman.”

So Laughlin headed to the courthouse in April to legally renounce his citizenship, telling local, state and federal officials that he would only communicate with them in writing.

[...]

The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates there are about 300,000 sovereign citizens in the U.S., and the radical movement has a huge presence online.

As wiser squirts than me have inquired, though, once you’ve nailed your left hand in, how are you going to nail your right hand in?

Oh, I know. You’ll pay someone to do it.

Sure you still have your wallet?

If you go to the zoo or the circus, or even a farm in rural India, Thailand, or other parts of Asia, you may find elephants in captivity.  These very large, gentle, and powerful creatures are really quite agreeable to working with humans.  Yet they are often tethered by very little more than a rope.

It seems absurd, of course, that a huge beast would be secured with such a feeble device.  Talk to elephant trainers and they assure you that the rope is symbolic.  The elephant really can break free.  So why doesn’t it?

Here you are in Thailand, working a rural road project, and there is the vast hinterland.  Other elephants to have sex with.  Endless bounty of food.  Why is the elephant picking up that huge log and moving it?

The answer is deception.  The trainer used the rope when the elephant was a calf.  At that time, the rope was too strong, and it could hold the calf.  So the calf learned that it did not break free at that time because it could not.  It learned a fact that became false as it grew.  And now it does not break free, even though it can, because it is convinced by a past experience which is no longer applicable.  The trainer has deceived the elephant about current conditions through experiences in the elephant’s past.

Don’t get all high and mighty about your brain, just now.  The elephant has a very large brain, compared to its body mass.  Its brain is much larger than yours.  These are not stupid creatures, but amazingly complex, social, and creative beasts.

Your Past

There are two components to any event that has happened to you. The first aspect is what happened. The facts of the event. Who did what, what was said, to whom were things done or said, when, where, and how. Notice that the “why” is not included.

The second aspect is what you made it mean. You not only have the experience, but you have your interpretation of it. You have your reasoning about “why” these things happened.

The elephants do, too. The elephant as a calf was roped. It did not break free.  So, yes, I am saying it has an interpretation of what happened. And it became convinced that because it did not break free, it could not break free.

It may have become accustomed to the rope, to the captivity. It may have become inured to the routine. And presumably there were “carrots” as well, food, some nice things to play with, showers, mud, and whatever else elephants get in captivity. But the interpretation remained: I cannot break these ropes.

That’s really just not so. It applied to the elephant calf that was, but not to the adult elephant that is. The events of the past may even be forgotten, but the interpretation lives on, is clung to, is held as baggage by the ponderous pachyderm. It remains captive because it generated a true interpretation that became false. It did not break free because at one time it could not. Now it can break free, but it does not. Such is deception, such is illusion, such is your captivity.

Your future

So the next step, the difficult and vital step, is to separate what happened from what you made it mean. And to see that what you can now do is find a more empowering interpretation for what happened.

What happened is not who you are. What happened to you is only what happened to you. Part of the “baggage” aspect of it is that you are clinging to what happened like it is your identity. But it isn’t your identity. It is only your past.

Your opportunity now is to design the future you want, design the person you wish to be, and create that future, and create that person. Part of that future hinges upon the past, because what the present is came about because of the past. But part of that future is wholly free form and available for design from tabula rasa, from a blank slate. And letting the past continue to rule who you are and how you can be means limiting what you can do now and what you can create in the future.

If you make the future by looking at the past, and then adding things that you prefer and taking away things you dislike, then the future becomes more like the past in some ways and less like it in others, but it remains MORE or LESS the same. And that won’t do.

You are more than a version of the past, you are capable of creating a future that is more than a stepwise alteration of the past. You are capable of designing a future from whole cloth, and realising it entirely without reference to the past.

But to gain that capacity, to fully express that capacity, you have to release the past, let go of it, as in letting go of the things you are clinging to, the baggage of the past. Not as in erasing memories – you cannot erase them. Not as in denying that things happened – you neither can nor would deny what happened. But as in acknowledging that they happened and then noticing (being empowered by noticing) that they do not bind you. That the past has no chains for you.

Then you see that you are fully free of what happened, because you have finally gotten beyond what you made it mean.

I only just really looked at them now. The plates are each decorated with a ring of 48 symbols broken up into 16-symbol groups.

The symbol (minus the three dots to either side) is the Five-Fingered Hand of Eris.

Sorry for the picture quality here:

The Flatware of Discord

The Flatware of Discord - Close up

And now, a song:

THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE ERISTOCRACY

by Lord Omar

VERSE
Mine brain has meditated on the spinning of The Chao;
It is hovering o’er the table where the Chiefs of Staff are now
Gathered in discussion of the dropping of The Bomb;
Her Apple Corps is strong!

CHORUS
Grand (and gory) Old Discordja!
Grand (and gory) Old Discordja!
Grand (and gory) Old Discordja!
Her Apple Corps is strong!

VERSE
She was not invited to the party that they held on Limbo Peak;
So She threw a Golden Apple, ‘sted of turn’d t’other cheek!
O it cracked the Holy Punchbowl and it made the nectar leak;
Her Apple Corps is strong!

“Oh, on a flight like this maybe up to thirty-three thousand feet,” I tell Casey.

Casey rolls her My Little Pony suitcase along behind her. “How high is that?”

“Well, that’s about six miles.”

“How much is a mile?”

Casey’s five years old, and full of questions as we approach the ticket counter for her first airline flight. The line is moving along quickly. We have twenty minutes before our flight, plenty of time.

“Will I be able to look out and see the clouds?” Casey asks.

“No, I’m sorry, Casey. I told you. You can’t see anything during the flight.” I shift my purse to get a better grip on my rolling suitcase.

“Aww,” she says quietly as we step up to the counter. I hand over our identification cards. The ticket agent plugs mine into the reader and checks my face against my picture on her monitor.

“DNA scan, please, ma’am,” she says. I press my thumb to the red circle on the small scanner terminal. “Thank you. And what’s your name, little lady?” she asks my daughter.

“Casey. I’m five.”

“That’s delightful,” says the ticket agent. “DNA scan, please, miss.” I pick Casey up so she can reach the scanner. She’s used to this; she does it every day at school.

“Thank you. Okay, are you checking any bags today?”

“Just these two and my purse,” I say, lifting my suitcase to the conveyor and placing my handbag on top of it. “Come on, Casey, put your suitcase up.” She does, and the ticket agent tags each bag with a sticker. A few taps on her keyboard, and Casey watches as My Little Pony is whisked away into the bowels of the airport.

“All right,” says the ticket agent, “I’m coding your pod routings into your ID cards. Pod Lounge B, just follow the signs. And for you, Casey, here is a happy kitty sticker you can put on your pod! Have a pleasant trip!” She winks at Casey, who smiles at her sticker as we walk away.

A clock overhead shows fifteen minutes until flight time. I used to hate flying. First there was 9/11 and the fear everywhere, the machine guns at the airport. Later came the super-sensitive metal detectors, removal of shoes and belts, and just more hassle and more time spent at the security checkpoints. The new system is so much easier.

“Mommy, can we get an ice cream?” Casey asks.

“When we arrive, honey. We need to get to our pods now.” We’re just coming up on the entrance to Pod Lounge B.

“Do I have to go alone?”

“Yes, honey, but everything will be fine. I’ll be right next to you the whole time, and everything is perfectly safe. You’ll see,” I tell her, giving her a warm smile and squeezing her hand. We step into Pod Lounge B behind a big family: grandmother, mom and dad, four young children.

Flying is so much nicer now without all the security stuff. The shoe bomber and the underpants bomber forced the government to introduce some pretty tough screening procedures.

First there were the body scanners that showed naked pictures of you to the security staff. You could choose to skip them (a few people were afraid of radiation), but then you were searched by hand. I didn’t mind the scanners – anyway, it was much better than having your breasts fondled and your vulva examined with those cold blue rubber gloves.

Later the body scan became mandatory, along with the hand search. Nobody really liked that, and some people just stopped flying. A couple of airlines went bankrupt and were bailed out by the government. Then there was the vagina bomber and the full cavity searches. I always took the fast-acting tranquilizers the Bureau of Transportation Safety starting handing out for free at the entry to the security lines.

But then came Norman Greer. They said he was some kind of militia terrorist. While in flight, Norman must have taken plastic explosive and a detonator out of hollow cavities inside his metal femur implants. 523 people died that day.

“I don’t want to go in the pod!” The youngest of the family’s four children is screaming loudly. Casey looks nervous, but this doesn’t go on too long. Dad grabs a tranq dispenser off the wall, dials a dosage and applies it to the little girl’s neck. She goes limp, and mom and dad load her into a pod. Then they put their daughter’s happy puppy sticker on the pod and feed her ID card into it. A low beep, a light turns green, and they go about getting the rest of the family settled in.

“Here we are, Casey,” I say as we approach a pair of the silver pods a bit further down the line. I point to a spot on Casey’s pod, underneath the rim of the open lid. “Put your sticker on here.”

Casey peels off the happy kitty sticker and presses it to the surface of the pod, smoothing it down. “Now, hop in.”

Casey gets in the pod and lies down. “Will I dream, Mommy?” she asks.

“No, it will be like you just go to sleep and wake right up again. And Grandma will be there to give you a big hug.”

“Okay,” she says. I kiss her and close the pod lid. I push Casey’s ID card into the slot. After the green light and the beep, I can hear the gas starting to fill the inside of the pod chamber.

They say the pod freezes you to just above absolute zero. Nothing can explode when it’s so cold, so there’s no way to launch a terrorist attack as a passenger. Luggage is handled the same way. Baggage and passenger pods are all racked into the planes by robot loaders. All very efficient, and much cheaper.

I get into my pod, take a last look at the happy kitty, and close myself inside. I push my ID card into the inner slot over my head, and close my eyes as the gas starts flowing in.

* * *

Waking up from pod sleep is a little strange. It’s hard to focus properly and things sound odd for a few minutes after the lid opens. I sit up and look around until I spot Casey’s pod among the others, the happy kitty cheerfully identifying her right next to the BTS rampant eagle logo. Some other passengers are already wandering, somewhat groggily, out of the pod lounge toward baggage claim.

No sign of Grandma yet. Casey’s pod is still closed, so I walk over. Red light, two more minutes until she’s ready, the display says. Suddenly, a woman’s scream drowns out all other sound in the pod lounge. Her cries are quickly joined by the terrified shrieks of children.

It’s the family of the little girl who had to be tranquilized in the pod lounge when we were leaving. They’ve got the lid open on the girl’s pod; I can see the happy puppy sticker. The mother and kids are screaming as they look inside, the father is ashen and the grandmother stands gaping.

Casey’s pod beeps softly and the light turns from red to green. I open the lid to see her fluttering her eyes at the light. We both start at a crashing noise behind us. The screaming stops. I lift Casey out of the pod and we start walking to baggage claim to look for Grandma.

The screaming starts again. We glance back to see that the happy puppy pod has fallen off the rack and a thick, reddish goo is flowing thickly out of it, pooling around the stunned family’s feet.

Ah well. There hasn’t been a terrorist attack for three years now.

“Hey Casey! How about some ice cream?”

“Yeah! I want blueberry!”

Lord Vader passes a quiet moment at the Clone Wars Veterans Memorial before attending a ceremony at the nearby Tomb of the Unknown Stormtrooper.

(Via Arto Bendiken)