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.

What few guessed, as late as 1987, that the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact had but a couple dozen months to live? Who could have predicted that Jethro Tull would win a Grammy Award for metal, head-to-head against Metallica? And did anyone really expect breakdancing to ever go out of style?

Broken America by David Cooper: a completely unrelated book

Imagine, for a moment, the possibility of looking back a few years from now on Barack Obama — Nobel laureate, failed Messiah — and labeling him as the last President of the United States of America.

Not the former President, no. The last, final, ultimate President.

It’s entirely possible. Political regimes change markedly, crumble and are swept aside all the time. On the scale of history, the form of government in the United States is already overdue for a fall.

Barack Obama being the last American President would seem to entail the breakup or dissolution of the United States as a political entity, though that may not necessarily be so. One can imagine, for example, the rise of a new monarchism, the replacement of the executive Presidency with a more European-style Premiership, or any number of other structural changes which alter the form of government, but leave the beast more or less intact. None of those would be particularly grand outcomes, though, in my view.

I would like to see the Washingtonian Empire, the Imperial United States of America cease to exist entirely as a political entity — by next Tuesday, if possible, but at least within the next three and a half years.

How might that come about? What might we do to help make it happen?

Sound off in the comments!

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Not only are both of these gentlemen important to libertarian and modern anarchist thought, more — and perhaps most — importantly, they are both dead.

Join the Facebook group!

Coming soon: Corpses for Congress! Habeas Corpses!

Or would you choose not to eat there at all?

For the benefit of which privileged classes would you like to bully strangers today?

Cute, isn’t it, the way propaganda works?

A lot of well-meaning, gentle folks will look at a poster like this and think they’re being presented with a choice among competing priorities: education, agriculture, or technology?

Precious few will look and see the robbery that is taxation. Perhaps fewer still will see the false choice in being able to select from a limited menu of privileged classes: parents of school-aged children, textbook publishers, teachers and others involved in the “education” industry; farmers, agribusiness, pesticide producers and the giant industrial manufacturers of agricultural machinery; or technophiles, those wealthy enough to enjoy the benefits of modern telecommunications and the corporate interests behind the telecoms wallowing already in a century of robbery-subsidized privilege? Maybe only a handful will recognize that government monies are never “invested”, but rather are stolen from taxpayers and bestowed upon politically-connected, privileged classes. Perhaps almost none at all will notice the false choice, the presumption and attempted transference of moral corruption involved in the use of “we” and “our” (the linguistic situation is even worse in the Slovak version, which asks, “Na čo by sa mali použiť naše peniaze?“, placing the question into the passive voice: “For what should our money be used?”).

Few, indeed, will startle, perceiving that freedom is not on the menu.

I call bullshit, horseshit, and dogshit.

Change we can believe in (Pure silver, silver, me hearties! Yaaaar!)

Original image by Ian-S @ flickr.com, who writes:

Found in the Norfolk (UK) village of Snettisham in 1985, the contents of a narrow-necked roman pot were found to consist of stock, raw materials and coins hidden by a Roman jeweller. The collection has become known as ‘The Snettisham Jeweller’s Hoard’, and dates from the late second century AD. These are some of the 83 silver coins from the hoard, and they all seem to show the Emperor Domitian (reigned AD 81-96). Some later coins dated at 154-5 AD were present too, and these dated the find.

Imperialist running-dog lackeys we can believe in

– Samuel Edward Konkin III, “Reply to Rothbard“, Strategy of the New Libertarian Alliance, Number One, May Day 1981, 11-19

Smerom k poddanstvu

Explanation: The photo is of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, leader of the ruling SMER party. The word smer in Slovak means “direction” or “way”, and thus the name the party gives itself is an attempt cast itself as “the way”. One of the party’s slogans is “Smerom k ľuďom“, which means, roughly, “By means of SMER, unto the people”. What is being given “unto the people” is not specified. Poddanstvo means “serfdom” in the medieval sense, and also carries connotations like “bondage”, “servitude” and “slavery” — at least according to the dictionary definition.

One does wonder, a bit, as to in just what direction Mr. Fico is looking in the photograph.

Enjoy.

My decision to renounce my US citizenship is not dependent in any way on the outcome of the election.

Whichever of the ruling class tools gets anointed on Tuesday, America is not free.

I’m waiting for my new Slovak residency permit (read: permission to draw breath within a certain shape drawn on a map); when that’s ready in a couple of weeks, bye-bye passport.