Marc Emery Kidnapped

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 02 Aug 2005 12:00:00 GMT
From The Federalist:
"Why, it appears that we appointed all of our worst generals to command the armies and we appointed all of our best generals to edit the newspapers. I mean, I found by reading a newspaper that these editor generals saw all of the defects plainly from the start but didn't tell me until it was too late. I'm willing to yield my place to these best generals and I'll do my best for the cause by editing a newspaper." -- Robert E. Lee

# Here I am with my Cold Steel Knightshade knives (Tai Pan and Skean Dhu). Photograph taken by my daughter. Click for higher res version (159K).

Knightshade Wacko

# Wendy McElroy at LewRockwell.com - Henry David Thoreau and 'Civil Disobedience' - a wonderful overview of Thoreau and his political essay, Civil Disobedience. [claire]

Civil Disobedience portrays the Mexican-American war as an evil comparable to slavery. The 1840s expressed a spirit of expansion called "Manifest Destiny" -- the idea that it was the destiny of Americans to expand across the continent, civilizing the wilderness and the natives as they went. Part of the expansion was an annexation of Texas, which sparked a war with Mexico, which also claimed the area. The annexation was doubly offensive to Thoreau because it permitted slavery in the new territory.

Moreover, the domestic consequences of the conflict deeply disturbed him. Taxes soared; the country assumed a military air. Thoreau was horrified to learn that some of his neighbors actively supported the war. He was perplexed by those who did not support the war but who financed it through the taxes they paid. After all, he considered the war to be "the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool." Without cooperation from the people, "a few individuals" would not succeed in wielding that tool.

Blind obedience to the state

In fact, the cooperation of the tool itself -- the standing army -- is required. Thoreau wonders about the psychology of men who would fight a war and, perhaps, kill others out of obedience. He concludes that soldiers, by virtue of their absolute obedience to the state, become somewhat less than human. He writes, "Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts -- a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity." This is how "the mass of men" employed by the state render service to it, "not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies." In doing so, the men relinquish the free exercise of their moral sense and, so "put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones."

# Claire Wolfe at Backwoods Home Magazine - Rock 'n Roll ala Mode: The Party Continues - more on the Hardyville machine gun shoot, and why it's important that Americans own and shoot military weapons. [claire]

# US Marijuana Party - Loretta Nall Needs Your Help - with the arrest and pending extradition to the U.S. of Marc Emery for shipping cannabis seeds, Ms. Nally has lost her income from Pot TV and Cannabis Culture Magazine. She needs money. Help her if you can. More on Mr. Emery's case at Cannabis Culture. You can donate to Mr. Emery's legal defense fund via his website. Claire files discussion here. [clairefiles]

# Joris Evers at ZDNet - VoIP security prototype gets an airing - Phil Zimmerman's new encrypted voice over IP system is called "Zfone". It should be available online by the end of August. [grabbe]

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Comments (2):

your a fucking freak

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 25 Jan 2007 22:21:55 GMT

your a fucking freak

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Thanks for the compliment.

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:38:03 GMT

Thanks for the compliment. Now, learn to spell.

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