Gummint-Issued ID: Worse than Useless
"One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that 'violence begets violence.' I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure -- and in some cases I have -- that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy." -- Jeff Cooper
# Rocky Frisco - High School Guns Page - in response to the Londondery NH School Board's banning of props in yearbook pictures so that they have a "politically neutral" reason to disallow a future Blake Douglass from posing with his shotgun, Mr. Frisco posts two pictures of the rifle team from the 1955 Yearbook of Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. [smith2004]
# Matt Furey - Combat Abs - this is likely the next excercise book I'll buy, though probably not until I've saved enough to get my Flybar Model 1200. $36 shipped. The Farmer Burns Catch Wrestling Book also looks interesting. In the Royal Court, I'm up to six or seven seconds of back bridge (which I do first, since I'm usually too worn out if I wait), six or seven Hindu pushups, and twenty-five Hindu squats. Slow progress, but progress. And I already notice increased energy. [furey]
# Claire Wolfe at Backwoods Home Magazine - Bob Gets Government ID - a little lesson in why gummint-issued ID is less than useless.
In Hardyville as you may know, we aren't real fond of governments that order us to "comply" with anything. That goes especially for national ID and other such nonsense.
Round these parts, "government ID" means Mayor Pickle saying, "Howdy, Bob."
Any official who got so uppity as to issue a license just so people could go about their peaceable business would probably end up on the receiving end of some extremely unpeaceable business. Very likely involving tar and a few naked chickens. If that official demanded any Hardyvillian's biometrics, he'd quickly find himself sans a few bits of his own biology.
We are who we are and we do what we do, and that's that.
But for some reason, Bob-the-Nerd took it into his head that he needed Official Government Documentation of his identity.
...
And a few minutes later, Bob-the-Nerd ... or is it now Tim-the-Nerd? ... walked out with his laminated, registered, genuine, databased Official Government Identification. And with the key to starting a whole collection of Tim Okida documentation.
# Vin Suprynowicz at The Las Vegas Review-Journal - What about those who aren't dying of AIDS? - it's not politically correct to say that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, but there are many people with the former who never get the latter. From AliveAndWell.org, Christine Maggiore's web site:
Many experts contend that AIDS is not a fatal, incurable condition caused by HIV? That most of the AIDS information we receive is based on unsubstantiated assumptions, unfounded estimates and improbable predictions? That the symptoms associated with AIDS are treatable using non-toxic, immune enhancing therapies that have restored the health of people diagnosed with AIDS and that have enabled those truly at risk to remain well?
# Jacob G. Hornberger at The Future of Freedom Foundation - Augusto Pinochet and the Conservative Threat to America - how the neocons are following Pinochet's lead in their brutal war for terror. Why the maintenance of civil liberties is important, especially during times of war or terrorist attack. Long. [progressivenews]
As harmful and destructive as socialist economic policies are, they pale in comparison to the omnipotent power to kill, torture, and disappear people that come with military rule. Seeing your wealth taxed and given to others is bad. Seeing your economic activities regulated is bad. But when military officials have the unfettered power to take you into custody, torture you, and execute you, it's the end of the story for freedom in that society. As Chileans under Pinochet discovered -- indeed as Russians under Stalin and Germans under Hitler discovered -- there is no peaceful way to change the system once you're dead.
That's why it has been said, for example, that habeas corpus -- the right to challenge the government's detention of you in a court of law -- is the true lynchpin of a free society. To belabor the obvious, if there is no right to habeas corpus in a society, there is nothing standing in the way of the military in that society to seize, torture, and execute the citizenry at will, except for the "good faith" of the military, for what that's worth, especially during a severe "crisis," when the military honestly believes that the "terrorists" or the "communists" are threatening to take over the country. A good example was the famous terrorist strike on the German Reichstag, which led to the decision by Germany's elected representatives to "temporarily" suspend civil liberties and grant their chancellor, Adolf Hitler, "emergency powers" to deal with the terrorist and communist crisis.
Have conservatives taken America in the direction of the Pinochet regime that they hailed and celebrated for so long? How can anyone doubt it? Torture; indefinite detentions; murders; sex abuse; "renditions"; indefinite detentions; military tribunals; and denial of habeas corpus, due process of law, trial by jury, and judicial supremacy. And just as they did during the Pinochet regime, U.S. conservatives are looking the other way while all this is going on -- even claiming it's necessary, all the while hailing and celebrating Bush's "free-enterprise" policies.
President Bush is claiming the same power that Pinochet claimed -- the power to arrest, torture, and kill "terrorists," not just inside the country, but all over the world. It was, in fact, Pinochet, not Bush, who first developed the concept that the entire world was a battlefield in the "war on terrorism." This is what motivated Pinochet to send DINA agents (one of whom perceived himself to be a James Bond) to Europe and the United States to assassinate "terrorists."
# Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com - Abu Ghraib -- a policy, not an aberration - on the show trial of U.S. Army reservist Charles Graner. [grabbe]
Graner, Lynndie England, and the others already convicted, as well as those slated to go on trial shortly, are but pawns in a game: the war-hawks in the Pentagon, who unleashed their army of torturers on the "liberated" peoples of Iraq, have so far escaped blame, and the whole mess is being swept under the rug. As George W. Bush proclaims the glories of his "global democratic revolution" and cites the upcoming elections in Iraq as evidence of America's commitment to liberty, the War Party is desperate to hide the real face of the American Imperium: the horror of Abu Ghraib.
But the mask is slipping, and the truth is bound to come out. And when it does, the 10-year sentence handed out to Graner ought to be doubled, tripled, or maybe even quadrupled when it comes to meting out justice to the real perpetrators of the grave crimes committed at Abu Ghraib.
# Fred Reed at LewRockwell.com - Robot Factories - Fred is amazed that some kids spend twelve years in gummint schools and come out unable to read. His daughter learned reading in a about a month before she was three. The only secret: help kids to learn what they're interested in when they're interested. [lew]
