A One Finger Salute for Bush
Ravenwood's Law: "As a discussion about guns grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Dodge City or the Wild West approaches one."
# Freedom Is Free - N.O. Resident Salutes Bush - photographic commentary on Bushnev's handling of Hurricane Katrina. Hehe. [clairefiles root]
# Sploid - Choppers & Riot Cops Bust Up L.A. Concert - LA's finest nazis break up a Katrina benefit concert. Bastards. From Davey D's account, linked from this story: [clairefiles]
So here we are with a couple of thousand people from the hood coming out to support a worthy cause and get inspired by some of Hip Hop's dopest acts. The make up of the crowd was mostly Black and Brown, with everyone vibing in harmony and thus shattering the overblown stories of Black-Brown friction in LA.
Fidel Rodriguez, who hosts Divine Forces Radio on Friday Nights on Pacifica's KPFK, kept things in step and set the tone by dropping an array of facts about the shady-behind the-scenes-antics of both local and national politicians. The cool thing about this, was folks were eating it all up as Fidel blasted away about Katrina clean up contracts being awarded to Vice President Dick Cheney's old company Halliburton.
Fidel also dropped some knowledge about LAPD including the sorted history of police Chief William Bratton and the increased militarization of the police. He also spoke about how a lot of folks in the hood were being depicted as potential terrorists and how there was new laws on the books that allowed the President to keep one in prison indefinitely after he slapped them with a label 'enemy combatant.
...
One thing about LAPD for those who don't know, is that they train all year for this sort of stuff. They have the militarism and intimidation tactics down to a tee. When you left the venue all the chanting stopped because it was clear that LAPD had strategically positioned themselves and had literally surrounded the venue and the people. The whole thing reminded me of gauntlet line with the police on a mission to intimidate. Some had their helmets pulled down and moved alongside of the crowd in a menacing manner. They were like a jarring occupying force-no different then the street gangs they're supposed to regulate. These cats just totally poisoned the air and ruined the spirit of the night. You felt like any moment they were going to attack. They were looking for a reason-any reason to show off and use their fire power and military tactics. At one point everyone braced when a passing car ran over a bottle. Everyone including LAPD thought it was thrown as a phalanx of officers quickly moved from across the street toward the leaving crowd.
# enemyofthestate at The Claire Files Forum - Military May Play Bigger Relief Role - looks like the Busheviks want to use Katrina as an excuse to get rid of the Posse Comitatus Act. Figures. [clairefiles]
# Mark Davis at Strike the Root - Defining Anarchy - Hurricane Katrina: proof that anarchy works better than statism. Really. [root]
Anarchy is a functioning society free of government controls. That is individual persons operating together in harmony based on freely reached agreements concluded between individual members and groups of a society. Anarchy is simply a free society. Anarchy is not the result of a statist-government failure; that would be chaos. The chaos in New Orleans is not due to anarchy, it is an example of the failure of statist-government.
People have said and written to me that: "See, anarchy can't work because look at what happened in New Orleans when there was no government." To define anarchy as statist-government failure is such an obvious distortion of the concept of a free society that it is hard to decide where to begin to dismantle such thoughtlessness. I like to begin by simply pointing out that at least four layers of statist-government agencies still claim jurisdiction over the area known as New Orleans (city, parish, state and federal). The undeniable fact is that they all four failed to provide the services they had promised to provide when they were justifying the theft of individual resources called taxes.
It boggles the mind how one can point to obvious failure to live up to political promises as a way to abdicate the responsibility of politicians to live up to those promises. Of course statist-governments never have and never will provide what they have promised. They simply return promising more and more if only they could have more power and more money. Next time, politicians promise, things will be different, better. Politics is just a show, and the curtain was pulled back in New Orleans .
# L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - Court of Last Resort - an analysis of a brief article by Jamie Court about the price of oil. Mr. Court concludes that government needs to better regulate the oil companies. Neil knows that's bass-ackwards. To reduce the cost of energy, completely deregulate it. And make the oil companies sweat bullets. [tle]
# Bill Hartwell at The Libertarian Enterprise - The Power of Government - the state destroys everything it touches. You knew that, but Mr. Hartwell says it pretty well. [tle]
Every single thing government does, it does because people somehow believe that wearing the funny hat of government absolves its agents of obeying basic ethical principles. Government, in its very nature, is the violation of human rights and violation of the "if you don't hurt me, I won't hurt you" principle that allows humans to get along. This means that, no matter how bad things might be without government, they will still be better than government has already demonstrated itself to be.
