Beyond Orwell: The Electronic Police State, 2010
by Tom Burghardt
hat tip: Antifascist Calling
A truism perhaps, but before resorting to brute force and open repression to halt the “barbarians at the gates,” that would be us, the masters of declining empires (and the chattering classes who polish their boots) regale us with tales of “democracy on the march,” “hope” and other banalities before the mailed fist comes crashing down.
Putting it another way, as the late, great Situationist malcontent, Guy Debord did decades ago in his relentless call for revolt, The Society of the Spectacle:
“The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender ‘lonely crowds.’ With ever-increasing concreteness the spectacle recreates its own presuppositions.”
And when those “presuppositions” reproduce ever-more wretched clichés promulgated by true believers or rank opportunists, take your pick, market “democracy,” the “freedom to choose” (the length of one’s chains), or even quaint notions of national “sovereignty” (a sure fire way to get, and keep, the masses at each others’ throats!) we’re left with a fraud, a gigantic swindle, a “postmodern” refinement of tried and true methods that would do Orwell proud!
Ron Paul and Judge Andrew Napolitano at OSU TONIGHT!
Watch Ron Paul LIVE!!!
http://live.foxnews.com/strategy-room
Make sure to come out and see two of the greatest modern day defenders of the Constitution! Rep. Ron Paul and Judge Andrew Napolitano will be at the historic Newport Music Hall tonight! Don’t miss out on this amazing event!
Here’s the schedule of events:
6:15pm – Doors open at the Newport Music Hall
6:45pm – Introduction
6:50pm – Jordan Page
7:00pm – “Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano” goes LIVE! feat.
- Rep. Ron Paul
- Ron Hood
- Maurice Thompson
- Rep. Tim Grendell
- Sheriff Mack
- Alicia Healy
- Chris Littleton
- Jason Rink
- Dave Grabaskas
8:00pm – “Freedom Watch” ends. Jordan Page
8:10pm – Judge Napolitano
8:20pm – Rep. Ron Paul
Admission is FREE (no ticket needed).
Standing room only (some seats will be available), first come, first serve. So get there early!
Newport Music Hall is located at:
1722 North High Street
Columbus, OH 43201-1105
Parking is available across the street from the Newport:
Parking Garage: Ohio Union South
Building 162
1759 N High St
Columbus, OH 43210
Parking Garage: Ohio Union North
Building 288
1780 College Rd
Columbus, OH 43210
“Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano” and Rep. Ron Paul’s speech will both air live on FoxNews.com, http://live.foxnews.com/strategy-room
More info at http://www.RonPaulohio.com.
Email YALOSU@YALOSU.com with any questions.
My Journey For Your Freedom
by Ilona Trommler
Guest columnist of The Liberty Voice
Throughout the forty years since immigrating from Communist Hungary I watched many changes take place, political climates shift, as slowly I was beginning to recognize signs of what I knew growing up. Whenever I tried to talk to people about the changes I was noticing, they simply told me it could never happen in America!
As I am getting more politically interested and involved, realizing how we all slept through the decades while politicians took more and more liberties limiting our freedoms, I realized my story was becoming important for people to hear. It tells what is to come unless we take a stand, and force those we send to Washington to lead by that wisely written document, that allowed our country to be the best the world has ever offered. That incredible document that made this land the sanctuary to all people who ran from tyranny, and they found safety and freedom on our shores…… under the protection of the Constitution.
I often wondered why my search for freedom took me so far from my homeland, and not long ago it dawned on me, maybe the history of my country is important knowledge for America’s freedom. Maybe my story needs to be told to open eyes, and make what is happening today feel real, and more believable. Maybe I am here so I can tell what happens when a people sleep, and take their eyes off what their government is doing! I came from where we are heading, and this road was paved by tyrants!
I Want FREEDOM!!!!
From the movie Waking Life
Freedom to Fornicate: R U A Sexual Libertarian?
When it comes to sex, we are all libertarians. Why aren’t we on all issues of personal freedom?
Hat tip: Fairfield County Weekly
and LAURA!
Thursday, January 21, 2010
By Phil Maymin (Used by permission.)
istock photo
There’s no government crackdown on sex
On any other matter, people largely divide into left and right camps, each trying to legislate their own morality, but if you look at the two major government parties, you would think that nobody believes speech should be as free as sex.
The left wants to censor anti-environmentalists and the right wants to censor anti-imperialists. Speech is okay so long as it is pre-approved by those in power. We can’t allow racist speech or hate speech or unpatriotic speech. Commerce and trade is even more regulated.
But not sex. Even the most heavy-handed politicians on either side of the aisle wouldn’t dare directly regulate sex. It may be our last free act.
You can have sex with whoever you want. Of course, it’s not the lawlessness of anarchy, but the justice of libertarianism: Do what you like as long as you don’t harm others. You can’t have sex with people who don’t want to have sex with you, or who don’t have the capacity to agree to it. And you can’t have unprotected sex with people if you knowingly carry a deadly disease. That would be murder. But otherwise, rock on.
Give me Liberty or Give me Death!
The (condensed) speech delivered by Patrick Henry on March 23, 1775.
This is no time for ceremony. The questing before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away
by Chris Hedges
Truthdig
June 22, 2009
Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.
The fundamental problem in the Middle East is not a degenerate and corrupt Islam. The fundamental problem is a degenerate and corrupt Christendom. We have not brought freedom and democracy and enlightenment to the Muslim world. We have brought the opposite. We have used the iron fist of the American military to implant our oil companies in Iraq, occupy Afghanistan and ensure that the region is submissive and cowed. We have supported a government in Israel that has carried out egregious war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza and is daily stealing ever greater portions of Palestinian land. We have established a network of military bases, some the size of small cities, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, and we have secured basing rights in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. We have expanded our military operations to Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Egypt, Algeria and Yemen. And no one naively believes, except perhaps us, that we have any intention of leaving.
We are the biggest problem in the Middle East. We have through our cruelty and violence created and legitimized the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads and the Osama bin Ladens. The longer we lurch around the region dropping iron fragmentation bombs and seizing Muslim land the more these monsters, reflections of our own distorted image, will proliferate. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that “the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.” But our hypocrisy no longer fools anyone but ourselves. It will ensure our imperial and economic collapse.
Bill Hicks on War and Freedom: Let it go?
Bill Hicks thoughts:
People ask me where I stood politically you know. It’s not that I disagree with Bush’s economic policy or his foreign policy. But that I believe he was a child of Satan here to destroy the planet Earth.
Yeah, I’m a little.. a little to the left there, I was. I was leaning that way.
Yeah you know who else is going, little Quayle boy. Little Damien.
Is that guy Damien? Tell me those blank empty eyes aren’t gonna glow red in the very near future.
[eyes roll back in head]
Stop making jokes about meee. Nrrr. I’ll spell potato any fucking way I want. Nrrrr.
Rioters in LA, let’s nuke them.
Bush was a pussy Nrr.
He held me back.
Frightening people man. Bush tried to buy votes towards the end of the election. Goes around, you know, selling weapons to everyone, getting that military industrial complex vote happening for him. Sold 160 fighter jets to Korea and then 240 tanks to Kuwait and then goes around making speeches why he should be Commander-in-Chief because, “We still live in a dangerous world.”
Thanks to you, you f***er!
Secession Is in Our Future
Hat tip: Mises Daily
by Clifford F. Thies
Posted on 4/28/2009
Can states secede? There are three levels on which this question can be answered:
1. the inalienable right of secession,
2. the international law of secession, and
3. the US law of secession.
All three say yes.
The Inalienable Right of Secession
The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America invokes the self-evident truths that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that governments are formed to protect these rights and gain their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that when a government becomes abusive of these rights, it is the right — no, it is the duty — of the people to alter or abolish that government.
To say governments were formed to protect the rights of men would be historically incorrect. Almost all governments were formed by ruthless men exerting their will over others through the use of force. Some governments, over time, evolved toward the rule of law, perhaps only because their rulers saw that this would sanction their own continued enjoyment of the wealth that they possessed. In some instances, this evolution involved one or more “revolutions” in which those who were governed were able to better establish the rule of law.
The language of the Declaration should not be construed as an argument about the historical origins of government but, rather, as what would be true and just to an enlightened person, namely, that as persons and as communities of persons, we have the right and the duty to alter or abolish governments that become abusive of our rights. As Benjamin Franklin once put it, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
The concept of an inalienable right of secession was not original to the American Revolution. It can be traced to the scholastics, to Reformation politics, and to the most ancient Greek and Hebrew writings. Without going into a dissertation on the subject, let me simply point to the flag of the state of Virginia, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson. It depicts a female warrior (Athena) standing atop a slain tyrant (Zeus).
According to legend, Zeus, the greatest and most terrible of the gods, was supposed to be the god of law, yet he was himself lawless. When he heard that he would sire a child who would destroy him, he swallowed his wife whole to prevent it. But the child grew within him and then burst from him fully grown. This child was Athena, the goddess of victory, liberty, and peace. And, she did indeed slay her father. It should be easy to see, in this legend, how the rule of law might be established from a government formed through the use of force.
New bill may give president ability to shut down Internet
Hat tip: Venture Beat
Ed Oswald
April 15th, 2009
Legislation is now passing through the U.S. Senate that could give the president unprecedented powers over the Internet, including the ability to ’shut down’ portions of it when a cybersecurity emergency is declared. The bill was introduced at the beginning of the month, but concerns have since been raised over its vague wording.
At issue is Section 18(2) of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, which reads as follows:
“The president … may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network.”
At face value, the legislation, introduced by West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, seems aimed at protecting sensitive government data and infrastructure, such as electrical grids and the like. Rockefeller makes his case by presenting a litany of findings indicating how vulnerable we are to cyber threats. Among them, Congressional studies that found an attack on a major financial institution could severely impact the economy, and attacks on systems controlling our power grid could “have the potential to disrupt services for hours or weeks.”
However, the bill offers no definition for what may be considered “United States critical infrastructure.”
