Just Jerking Off
"The only way to assure peace, progress, and prosperity is to outlaw the draft, outlaw income taxation, disarm the government, and arm the people.
"The only way. Everything else is just jerking off."
-- L. Neil Smith
From grabbe:
"With the White House increasingly under siege, the probability grows that the White House will engineer a domestic terrorist incident to 1) justify a crackdown on domestic dissent, and 2) plant false flag evidence of foreign involvement--Syria or Iran--in order to justify another glorious war for 'freedom and democracy' in hopes it will distract attention from the last one (Iraq). With Bush currently a medicated wacko, Cheney is in charge. The sooner Cheney is indicted the better, but it may be too late." -- unattributed
# Jeremy Robb - San Francisco Struggles to Keep Up With Gun Returns by Gang Members - satire. Hehe. [codrea]
# The Revolutionay War Veterans Association is "a group of friends interested in preserving and passing on the heritage of rifle marksmanship that is the birthright of all Americans." Added to my links page. RWVA National Headquarters is in Ramseur, NC, at Fred's rifle range, The Fred of Fred's M14 Stocks. [clairefiles]
# Mark Spungin at The RWVA Blog - Neither Predator Nor Prey - Mr. Spungin prefers the bull bison to the sheep dog as the symbol of humans who are neither wolves nor sheep.
# Penn Jillette at NPR - There Is No God - Mr. Jillette is beyond atheism. He doesn't just not believe in God. He actively believes there is no God. And his belief has very positive consequences for his life. [unknown]
# John Shiffman at The Philadelphia Inquirer via Unknown News - Tax daredevil gets fifteen months in prison - on the sentencing of Larken Rose. [unknown]
"My own arrogance... my own actions brought this stress and embarrassment and pain on the ones I love the most," he told U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson. "I brought this on myself, I know. I asked for my day in court and I got it. I can't say I'm pleased with the outcome."You're right, Mr. Baylson. It's time for you nazi fucks to die.
...
Rose's lawyer had sought home detention or probation, and the judge noted that since the trial, Rose had embarked on the road to rehabilitation. He has paid $38,000 in back taxes and disabled his Web sites.
Baylson, however, said Rose still deserved prison time because he not only failed to pay his taxes over five years, but he profited from his choice by selling the videos.
"It's a pretty simple duty to file tax returns," said Nanette L. Davis, a trial lawyer at the Department of Justice. "Larken Rose failed that duty."
Rose was ordered to report to prison on Monday.
"It's time," Baylson said.
# John Silveira at Backwoods Home Magazine - Let prisoners get high on marijuana - a good, practical, idea for reducing prison violence. Keep the prisoners stoned. Of course, the first step is to reduce the prison population by two thirds by deregulating drugs.
You think I'm joking? Irresponsible? Insane? I'm not.
Legalize marijuana and we'll empty our prisons, and those violent people who do end up there will be more docile, making the prisons safer for both inmates and guards.
#
Maciej Ceglowski -
Secret CIA Prisons in Poland? - commentary on a
Washington Post article 
, in which the author talks about secret
c.i.a. prisons, but, at the request of the U.S. government, won't say
which countries they are in. Mr. Ceglowski couples this with reports
of landings in Poland by a c.i.a. plane to infer that perhaps the
reason for that request is that some of the prisoners are being kept
in Poland. [picks]
If it is confirmed that American secret prisons are operating or have operated in Poland, it will lead to a major confrontation with the European Union. I would hope it would also lead to more pressure from the American side to find out what exactly we are doing holding prisoners in indefinite detention outside the legal system.
There's an almost absurdist irony to the situation. The reason Poland and other countries in Eastern Europe are so unabashedly pro-American is that for fifty years, America stood for the antithesis of this kind of behavior. Poles knew full well about secret prisons, torture, incarceration without trial, and secret services that operate outside the law, and they looked to the United States as a society that stood against this kind of arbitrary exercise of state power.
# Bill Walker at LewRockwell.com - Energy: The Bottomless Well - the world is not going to run out of energy until the Sun stops pouring it down, but fear controls the uninformed, so it will continue to be used. [lew]
The truth is that our current energy use is minuscule. The entire world burns about 345 Quads of fossil fuel every year. Known coal reserves contain 200,000 Quads, oil shales 10 million quads, the deuterium in the ocean 10 trillion Quads. (Of course we are no longer allowed to think about using the huge thorium reserves... if you are younger than 30, you probably don't even know what thorium is). To believe that energy shortages are our biggest problem requires very special blinders.
# Paul Craig Roberts at LewRockwell.com - The Grave Threat Is the Bush Administration - the only terrorist threat to the United States is the police state being created by the fedgoons in the White House. [lew]
A month ago the administration's line was that cutting and running was the dastardly act of cowards and traitors who would abandon our troops and all they have fought for. A month ago senior US commanders in Iraq said that the US-trained new Iraqi army only had 700 troops who could operate independently of US support.
Now suddenly the new Iraq has the troops to do the job and America's soldiers can come home. What this means is that Republican pollsters have made it clear that the Republicans cannot win next year's congressional elections if the US is still mired in Iraq. The war is unpopular. A large majority of Americans do not believe the war was justified, and they no longer support it. Republicans have no prospect of rehabilitating Bush if he keeps the country bogged down in a pointless war.
The war, in other words, no longer serves the Republicans' political interest and must be got rid of. So much for "staying the course."
What will happen to Iraq and the Middle East no one knows. Our concerns need to be directed at what happens here in the US. Bush's war against Iraq might be over, but the police state Bush built at home is still in place.
...
A police state has to catch enemies in order to keep the people frightened and appreciative of the watchful eye of the police state. Now that the Padilla case has evaporated, the Bush administration has come up with a replacement. An American student of Arab descent, who was studying at a Saudi Arabian university, has been indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to assassinate President Bush. The indictment rests on the confession wrung out of the young man by torture in a Saudi prison.
Does anyone really believe that al Qaeda leaders would conspire with an American college student to assassinate President Bush? Indeed, President Bush has been Osama bin Laden's greatest benefactor. Why would al Qaeda want to kill the man who is doing them so much good? Before Bush launched his war on terror and invaded Iraq, the vast majority of Muslims thought bin Laden was a nut case and supported the US. Today Muslims think Bush is a nut case and support bin Laden.
What kind of a country have we become when we put a citizen on trial on the basis of a confession obtained under torture by a foreign government? Is the case against this student anything other than an attempt to enlist the sympathy factor for Bush in order to repair his standing in the polls?
