More clashes at Occupy Oakland

Just when you think the Occupy movement has died down, it comes and pops back up again. Here's some protesters in Oakland yesterday burning a symbol of what is destroying our civil rights. Once you say one form of speech is off limits, you don't believe in free speech at all.



That guy with the lighter whose face was photographed is fucked.

Footage from yesterday:



A press release from Occupy Oakland:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 29, 2011 – Oakland, CA – Yesterday, the Oakland Police deployed hundreds of officers in riot gear so as to prevent Occupy Oakland from putting a vacant building to better use. This is a building which has sat vacant for 6 years, and the city has no current plans for it. The Occupy Oakland GA passed a proposal calling for the space to be turned into a social center, convergence center and headquarters of the Occupy Oakland movement.

The police actions tonight cost the city of Oakland hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they repeatedly violated their own crowd control guidelines and protester’s civil rights.

With all the problems in our city, should preventing activists from putting a vacant building to better use be their highest priority? Was it worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent?

The OPD is facing receivership based on actions by police in the past, and they have apparently learned nothing since October. On October 25, Occupiers rushed to the aid of Scott Olsen who was shot in the head by police, and the good Samaritans who rushed to his aid had a grenade thrown at them by police. At 3:30pm this afternoon, OO medics yet again ran to the aid of injured protesters lying on the ground. Other occupiers ran forward and used shields to protect the medic and injured man. The police then repeatedly fired less lethal rounds at these people trying to protect and help an injured man.

Around the same time, officers #419, #327, and others were swinging batons at protesters in a violation of OPD crowd control policy, which allows for pushing or jabbing with batons, but not the swinging of them.

In the evening, police illegally kettled and arrested hundreds of protesters. Police can give notices to disperse, if a group is engaged in illegal activity. However, if the group disperses and reassembles somewhere else, they are required to give another notice to disperse. Tonight, they kettled a march in progress, and arrested hundreds for refusing to disperse. Contrary to their own policy, the OPD gave no option of leaving or instruction on how to depart. These arrests are completely illegal, and this will probably result in another class action lawsuit against the OPD, who have already cost Oakland $58 million in lawsuits over the past 10 years.

[...]

At least 4 journalists were arrested in this kettling. They include Susie Cagle, Kristen Hanes, Vivian Ho who were arrested and then released, and Gavin Aronsen who was taken to jail.

[...]

Numerous protesters were injured: some shot with “less lethal” rounds, some affected by tear gas, and some beaten by police batons. There are no totals yet for the numbers of protesters injured. One 19 year old woman was taken to the hospital with internal bleeding after she was beaten by Officer #119.

Cathy Jones, an attorney with the NLG gave the following statement to Occupy Oakland’s media team: “Through everything that has happened since September, from Occupy to the acceleration of “Bills” — NDAA, SOPA, PIPA, ACTA — never have I felt so helpless and enraged as I do tonight. These kids are heroes, and the rest of the country needs to open its collective eyes and grab what remains of its civil rights, because they are evaporating, quickly. Do you want to know what a police state looks like? Well, you sure as hell still do not know unless you were watching our citizen journalists.”

[...]

Once again, Oakland shows the country how it's done. From the picture and videos I've seen, most, if not all, of these demonstrators look like anarchists. Anarchism and socialism essentially call for the exact same things, so I'm typically very sympathetic towards them. The west coast has a pretty big anarchist movement, and I'm sure the reason why Oakland has become so feisty is because they're all descending there.

More video:





See that sign? What they were wanting to set up in that vacant building is a commune. Originally, I thought communes were what this Occupy movement was going to be all about (it's called "occupy" for crying out loud). This is what we need to see.

History lesson. The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first major socialist experiment in the history of the world. France had just suffered a defeat by Germany, and it left the agitated, politically aware citizenry in Paris extremely bitter. They were dragged into a war they didn't even want, and then their city was fucking bombarded. They were pissed. The newly elected National Assembly (which had a large royalist majority) decided that Paris was too turbulent for them to meet there. They moved several miles southwest of Paris. What this created for the Parisians was a power vacuum.

The Paris National Guard (basically a citizen militia) was getting increasingly radical. The French government decided that they should not be allowed to have cannons. But when regular troops arrived to seize them, they began to fraternize with the National Guard and Paris residents. When a general ordered them to open fire on the Guard and civilians, he was dragged from his horse by his own troops and later shot, along with a hated former National Guard commander. The rebellion was now in full swing.



The Central Committee for the National Guard was now the only thing in Paris resembling a government. It arranged elections for a Commune. The Commune was not allowed to exist for very long before it was crushed, but here's some of the things they were able to implement in that short time:

• Complete separation of church and state
• Abolition of night work
• The granting of pensions to the widows and children of National Guards killed on active service
• The right of employees to take over and run an enterprise if it were deserted by its owner
• Education for women
• Free clothing, food, and school materials for children

This is what socialism is: extremely weak central government; a culture based around caring for your fellow man; workers in control of their own lives; democracy in its purest, most beautiful form. The Commune was accepting of everyone, regardless of their political alignment. Reformist royalists were allowed to participate with open arms, and the socialists looked back to the left wing Jacobins of the Revolution of 1789. This is the blueprint we should strive to emulate.





It only last for a week before clashes with regular troops began. Fighting would take place over the course of about a month, and the Commune was finally crushed for good on May 28. Regular troops began slaughtering and executing Guardsmen and civilians almost at random.





These are exactly the kinds of tactics we need to be implementing. With things like the NDAA, Citizens United, the Patriot Act, SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA, the American people are no longer in control of their government (if they ever were at all). Voting is so strongly emphasized in our country, because it brings about the smallest amount of change. Activists, meanwhile, are equated to terrorists. This kind of rhetoric is going to become a standard talking point very soon.



Here's Howard Zinn talking briefly about the Paris Commune, and why Marxists and Anarchists should ally with each other.

Sunday Youtube Post

This is important to know.

Ralph Nader on Democracy Now, completely destroying Obama's State of the Union

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

"Well, I think his lawless militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing. I mean, he was very committed to projecting the American empire, in Obama terms, force projection in the Pacific, and distorting the whole process of how he explains Iraq and Afghanistan. He talks about Libya and Syria, and then went into the military alliance with Israel and didn’t talk about the peace process or the plight of the Palestinians, who are being so repressed. Leaving Iraq as if it was a victory? Iraq has been destroyed: massive refugees, over a million Iraqis dead, contaminated environment, collapsing infrastructure, sectarian warfare. He should be ashamed of himself."

Obama's Crackdown on Whistleblowers

In December 1772, Benjamin Franklin was living in England. He was spending his time negotiating fragile compromises between the crown and the colonies. An anonymous source leaked to Franklin some letters that had been written by the governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson. Hutchinson had written of his concerns about the growing dissent in the colonies, and made a number of suggestions of how to quell it. He went so far as to suggest they begin taking away rights. Franklin felt that his friends in Boston should know about this, and so he passed them along, asking that they not be published. His friends published them anyway against his wishes.

The British government was outraged. Three people were soon accused of leaking the letters, but Franklin came forward to protect them. He was called before the Privy Council in January of 1774, accused of attempting to incite riots and unrest. This was treason, and punishable by death. For the whole hour-long spectacle, Franklin stood there and watched the council berate and slander him, refusing to utter a single word in response.

"[Franklin] stood conpicuously erect, without the smallest movement of any part of his body. The muscles of his face had been previously composed as to afford a placid tranquil expression of countenance, and he did not suffer the slightest alteration of it to appear."

Edward Bancroft, observing the hearings

Had he not fled England for America immediately afterwards, he likely would've been arrested and hanged. Franklin and the colonists couldn't comprehend why the British government was focusing on the whistleblowing, while completely ignoring the content of the letters. The suggestions in it were clearly illegal, and yet there wasn't any amount of outrage over them. Franklin felt betrayed. It's when he chose his side.

238 years later, the corporate police state that the American colonies became have just charged ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou with revealing confidential information to a journalist. He revealed that the CIA tortured Abu Zabaydah.



Torture is illegal. But that's not what this government is focusing on. This government, Barack Obama, granted full immunity to the war criminals who conducted this torture. They're going after the guy who was courageous enough to tell the rest of us about it. Kiriakou faces up to 20 years in prison. He threw away his life for us.

Kiriakou is the sixth person the Obama administration has charged with the Espionage Act. This traitorous act has a long and distinguished history. In its heyday in World War I, it was used to suspend the first amendment, and lock up anyone who spoke out against the war, including socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs (he ran his 1920 campaign from prison and still managed to get nearly a million votes).



The act is now being used to go after whistleblowers. In 2010, Bradley Manning leaked the infamous "Collateral Murder" video, which showed U.S. troops murdering innocent people. They looked for any excuse to open fire, claiming that a small camera was in fact an RPG launcher. Once they were given the 'okay' to shoot, they uttered disgusting comments such as "Nice" and, upon seeing that they had just shot children, "Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle." It actually wasn't a "battle" because they were killing civilians. Bradley Manning's reward for revealing a war crime is a psychological torture, a show trial, and calls for his death.

Manning could possibly face a life sentence. Meanwhile, a marine who led the massacre of two dozen civilians, including five children, gets 90 days. 90. Days. Needless to say, the Iraqi people are pissed.



This is what tyrannical governments do. They punish the heroes, and give the war criminals medals. Business as usual under Obama, just as it was under Bush.

Sunday Youtube Post

Two friends have told me this drove them to tears.

Alex Molnar: "If My Marine Son Is Killed . . . I Won't Forgive You, Mr. President" (August 29, 1990)

Source

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Dear President Bush: I kissed my son goodbye today.

He is a 21-year-old Marine.

You have ordered him to Saudi Arabia.

The letter telling us he was going arrived at our vacation cottage in northern Wisconsin by Express Mail on Aug. 13. We left immediately for North Carolina to be with him. Our vacation was over.

Some commentators say you are continuing your own vacation to avoid appearing trapped in the White House, as President Carter was during the Iran hostage crisis. Perhaps that is your reason.

However, as I sat in my motel room watching you on television, looking through my son's hastily written last will and testament and listening to military equipment rumble past, you seemed to me to be both callous and ridiculous chasing golf balls and zipping around in your boat in Kennebunkport.

While visiting my son, I had a chance to see him pack his chemical-weapons suit and try on his body armor. I don't know if you've ever had this experience, Mr. President. I hope you never will.

I also met many of my son's fellow soldiers. They are fine young men.

A number told me that they were from poor families.

They joined the Marines as a way of earning enough money to go to college.

None of the young men I met are likely to be invited to serve on the board of directors of a savings and loan association, as your son Neil was.

And none of them have parents well enough connected to call or write a general to ensure that their child stays out of harm's way, as Vice President Dan Quayle's parents did for him during the Vietnam War.

I read in the Raleigh News and Observer that, like you, Quayle and Secretary of State James Baker were on vacation. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was in the Persian Gulf.

I think this symbolizes a government that no longer has a non-military foreign-policy vision, one that uses the military to conceal the fraud that American diplomacy has become.

Yes, you have proved a relatively adept tactician in the last three weeks. But if American diplomacy hadn't been on vacation for the better part of a decade, we wouldn't be in the spot we are today.

Where were you, Mr. President, when Iraq was killing its own people with poison gas? Why, until the recent crisis, was it business as usual with Saddam Hussein, the man you now call a Hitler?

You were elected vice president in 1980 on the strength of the promise of a better life for Americans, in a world where the United States would once again ''stand tall."

The Reagan-Bush administration rolled into Washington talking about the magic of a "free market" in oil. You diluted gas-mileage requirements for cars and dismantled federal energy policy.

And now you have ordered my son to the Middle East.

For what?

Cheap gasoline?

Is the American "way of life" that you say my son is risking his life for the continued "right" of Americans to consume 25 percent to 30 percent of the world's oil?

The "free market" to which you are so fervently devoted has a very high price tag, at least for parents like me and young men and women like my son.

Now that we face the prospect of war, I intend to support my son and his fellow soldiers by doing everything I can to oppose any offensive American military action in the Persian Gulf. The troops I met deserve far better than the politicians and policies that hold them hostage.

As my wife and I sat in a little cafe outside our son's base last week, trying to eat, fighting back tears, a young Marine struck up a conversation with us. As we parted he wished us well and said, "May God forgive us for what we are about to do."

President Bush, the policies you have advocated for the last decade have set the stage for military conflict in the Middle East. Your response to the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait has set in motion events that increasingly will pressure you to use our troops not to defend Saudi Arabia but to attack Iraq.

And I'm afraid that, as that pressure mounts, you will wager my son's life in a gamble to save your political future.

In the past, you have demonstrated no enduring commitment to any principle other than the advancement of your political career.

This makes me doubt that you have either the courage or the character to meet the challenge of finding a diplomatic solution to this crisis.

If, as I expect, you eventually order American soldiers to attack Iraq, then it is God who will have to forgive you. I will not.

Pastor Jeremiah Wright's response to 9/11: America's Chickens are Coming Home to Roost

More pastors need to start speaking like MLK and Wright. People respect clergy. Occupy sure could use them.

Chris Hedges is suing the Obama administration

One of my favorite writers (who's about on par with Zinn and Chomsky, imo) is suing Barack Obama over the constitutionality of the NDAA. It's obvious to anyone who has read the constitution that indefinite detention is illegal; but the Patriot Act, which is also illegal, has been upheld so far, so I'm not exactly getting my hopes up. Here's an interview with Hedges on Democracy Now from yesterday.



And here's his excellent article out the day before, "Why I'm Suing Barack Obama"

I suspect the real purpose of this bill [NDAA] is to thwart internal, domestic movements that threaten the corporate state. The definition of a terrorist is already so amorphous under the Patriot Act that there are probably a few million Americans who qualify to be investigated if not locked up. Consider the arcane criteria that can make you a suspect in our new military-corporate state. The Department of Justice considers you worth investigating if you are missing a few fingers, if you have weatherproof ammunition, if you own guns or if you have hoarded more than seven days of food in your house. Adding a few of the obstructionist tactics of the Occupy movement to this list would be a seamless process. On the whim of the military, a suspected “terrorist” who also happens to be a U.S. citizen can suffer extraordinary rendition—being kidnapped and then left to rot in one of our black sites “until the end of hostilities.” Since this is an endless war that will be a very long stay.

This demented “war on terror” is as undefined and vague as such a conflict is in any totalitarian state. Dissent is increasingly equated in this country with treason. Enemies supposedly lurk in every organization that does not chant the patriotic mantras provided to it by the state. And this bill feeds a mounting state paranoia. It expands our permanent war to every spot on the globe. It erases fundamental constitutional liberties. It means we can no longer use the word “democracy” to describe our political system.

The supine and gutless Democratic Party, which would have feigned outrage if George W. Bush had put this into law, appears willing, once again, to grant Obama a pass. But I won’t. What he has done is unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous. The threat and reach of al-Qaida—which I spent a year covering for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East—are marginal, despite the attacks of 9/11. The terrorist group poses no existential threat to the nation. It has been so disrupted and broken that it can barely function. Osama bin Laden was gunned down by commandos and his body dumped into the sea. Even the Pentagon says the organization is crippled.

So why, a decade after the start of the so-called war on terror, do these draconian measures need to be implemented? Why do U.S. citizens now need to be specifically singled out for military detention and denial of due process when under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force the president can apparently find the legal cover to serve as judge, jury and executioner to assassinate U.S. citizens, as he did in the killing of the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen? Why is this bill necessary when the government routinely ignores our Fifth Amendment rights—“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”—as well as our First Amendment right of free speech? How much more power do they need to fight “terrorism”?

Fear is the psychological weapon of choice for totalitarian systems of power. Make the people afraid. Get them to surrender their rights in the name of national security. And then finish off the few who aren’t afraid enough. If this law is not revoked we will be no different from any sordid military dictatorship. Its implementation will be a huge leap forward for the corporate oligarchs who plan to continue to plunder the nation and use state and military security to cow the population into submission.

Newsweek: Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?

Here's the article. I doubt Andrew Sullivan himself would be okay with that headline, because the actual article is called "How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics." The head honchos at Newsweek did a great job with that cover, though. It definitely drew me in. I don't like being called dumb. Fuckers.

Sullivan takes it upon himself to take all the arguments against Obama from both the right and the left, and debunk them. He did a great job talking about the right's arguments, because it's impossible not to. The right is made up of a bunch of fucking morons and none of their arguments make any god damn sense. That's always the fun part, and I'm not going to talk about it. The hard part is liberals debating liberals, because that requires actual intelligent debate.

[Leftists] miss, it seems to me, two vital things. The first is the simple scale of what has been accomplished on issues liberals say they care about. A depression was averted.

Not everyone would agree with that. Paul Krugman doesn't: "It’s time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression." More children are living in poverty now than any other time in American history: one in five. One in five kids in America are below the poverty line. American ghettos are looking like third world countries. Just because this isn't being shown on the news doesn't mean it isn't happening. This situation is fucking bad. When Sullivan says "a depression was averted," what he really means is that the only people left with any money still have their money. "The economy" is just some vague term describing how confident the upper classes are about their own security. The poor are still being left behind, as they always have been in the United States.

The Iraq War—the issue that made Obama the nominee—has been ended on time and, vitally, with no troops left behind.

This is just flatout false. 5,500 private security forces were left behind. A massive CIA station, with Special Ops troops operating out of uniform, were left behind. Tens of thousands of troops were left behind across the border in Kuwait, and the U.S. still has dominance over Iraq's coastlines and airspace. We haven't left. And Obama does not deserve credit for withdrawing our main troops from Iraq. He tried to keep anywhere between 10,000-20,000 troops in Iraq. He wanted to break the deal. The Iraqi Prime Minister fought him on it, and he thankfully won. This is important. Why doesn't anybody fucking know about this? I keep repeating it to everyone I talk to about Iraq, and I'm always met with the same level of shock and confusion. It's Obama's critics who are "dumb" though.

Defense is being cut steadily, even as Obama has moved his own party away from a Pelosi-style reflexive defense of all federal entitlements.

This is meaningless. "Defense" spending is still higher than any time during the Cold War. Still higher than any other time in American history in fact, even surpassing World War II. We are living in the military industrial complex nightmare Eisenhower warned us about. Obama has no power over this, the forces around him are too great.

Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels. Under Obama, a crucial state, New York, made marriage equality for gays an irreversible fact of American life.

Great. I think what we should be celebrating is these things happening in spite of the president. Obama is against same sex marriage and marijuana legalization.

Gays now openly serve in the military, and the Defense of Marriage Act is dying in the courts, undefended by the Obama Justice Department.

Absolutely right. Thank you.

Torture was ended.

No it wasn't. Waterboarding was ended. That is one form of torture. Psychological torture is still taught in army manuals. Bradley Manning was tortured. Torture is still going on under Obama. And it's not like his administration ever cared about torture, beyond how it effects him as a political issue. Obama's administration threatened to stop sharing information with the UK if they revealed that one of their citizens was tortured in a CIA blacksite during the Bush years. He was hung from a ceiling and his testicles were slashed with a razor. Just shut up and pretend it didn't happen, Obama '12.

Or take the issue of the banks. Liberals have derided him as a captive of Wall Street, of being railroaded by Larry Summers and Tim Geithner into a too-passive response to the recklessness of the major U.S. banks. But it’s worth recalling that at the start of 2009, any responsible president’s priority would have been stabilization of the financial system, not the exacting of revenge. Obama was not elected, despite liberal fantasies, to be a left-wing crusader. He was elected as a pragmatic, unifying reformist who would be more responsible than Bush.

None of these arguments addresses the fact that his administration is in bed with Wall Street.

Nothing in his first term—including the complicated multiyear rollout of universal health care—can be understood if you do not realize that Obama was always planning for eight years, not four. And if he is reelected, he will have won a battle more important than 2008: for it will be a mandate for an eight-year shift away from the excesses of inequality, overreach abroad, and reckless deficit spending of the last three decades. It will recapitalize him to entrench what he has done already and make it irreversible.

Personally, I'd rather have 4 years of getting shit done than 8 years of strengthening the system that caused the collapse in the first place. To be perfectly honest though, I am a little curious to see how an Obama presidency would turn out when it's not spent campaigning for another election years away. I really don't see how Obama can lose 2012. Romney's going to be 2004's Kerry.

Yes, Obama has waged a war based on a reading of executive power that many civil libertarians, including myself, oppose. And he has signed into law the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial (even as he pledged never to invoke this tyrannical power himself).

So Obama signed away two amendments of the Bill of Rights, and we're all at risk of being rounded up in concentration camps and tortured. Yawn.

But he has done the most important thing of all: excising the cancer of torture from military detention and military justice. If he is not reelected, that cancer may well return. Indeed, many on the right appear eager for it to return.

Torture has not ended, and thanks to Obama's half-assed political gestures, waterboarding will probably return after he leaves office in 2016 anyway.

If I sound biased, that’s because I am. Biased toward the actual record, not the spin...

Uh huh.

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” George Orwell once wrote. What I see in front of my nose is a president whose character, record, and promise remain as grotesquely underappreciated now as they were absurdly hyped in 2008.

So you end the article by quoting a non-moderate socialist. This is a joke. I'm getting a little sick of these holier-than-thou Jon Stewart moderates acting like the gatekeepers of what we can say and how far we can go. I'm sorry if torturing, child murdering Democrats upset me just as much as torturing, child murdering Republicans. Excuse me.

I posted this Newsweek cover in my tumblr yesterday before it was out, and left the comment "Can’t wait to read this and have an aneurysm." (success!) A follower of mine replied. I didn't reply back because I try not to make a habit of getting into arguments with strangers on the internet, but this is what she said:

No politician will ever be perfect, so I’d rather take the person I agree with on the most issues. I’m not okay with all of his strategies, but it’s better than disagreeing with those plus even more I don’t agree with considering other options

I can't even tell you how many times this has been said to me. The systematic murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is a little more than an "issue" to me. Seriously. Why doesn't war fucking bother anyone? Right in this very article, you got a war apologist claiming Orwell. What the actual fuck. I can't be the only one who feels like he's a survivor in a zombie apocalypse. Liberals get their panties in a bunch over some racist newsletters from 20 years ago that Ron Paul didn't even fucking write, but you never see nearly the same kind of outrage over Obama murdering of thousands of women and children. Doesn't anyone notice this? I really feel like giving up. If liberals are willing to sacrifice habeas corpus and thousands of innocent lives for a few feel-good tidbits about gay rights, then there's absolutely nothing I can say to them. They're nationalistic partisans and they're not going to think.

Sunday Youtube Post

Fox News' John Stossel: Young people are stupid and shouldn't vote

"I’m not saying we should have a test or something. But this endless cheerleading — let’s go to the rock concerts and register the kids. And the kids aren’t paying attention. And it’s important in a democracy, it’s important to vote. And these are important issues. The people who participate ought to be the ones who pay attention…I’m just saying we shouldn’t have these “Get Out The Vote” campaigns and make these statements: “Everyone has to vote. It’s your patriotic duty!” Well if you’re not paying attention, I think it’s your patriotic duty not to vote."

He was essentially arguing that if you're misinformed about issues and if you have no idea what you're voting for, then you should just stay home. And I wouldn't necessarily disagree with him. But then he exclusively targets "the kids," as if people in their 20s who fight and die and go to war are children. This is just unbelievable. When there are seven separate polls showing that Fox News viewers -- baby boomers -- are the most misinformed demographic in the country, he says it's "the kids" who don't know what the hell is going on. There are some real dumbshits in my age group, but fuck this ageist dickbag for presuming that they only preside in a single generation. "The kids" aren't the ones who got us into fucking Iraq. They're not the ones who fall for Cold War propaganda and Southern Strategy anti-black, anti-Muslim racist bullshit. They're the ones who support equal rights for gay people. They're're the ones who are at least open to socialism (or as I like to call it, democracy). Young people are the ones who spearheaded the Arab Spring. I'm really not trying to turn this into a circle jerk, but some of the most intelligent and informed people I've ever met in my life have been people my own age.

There are historical records going all the way back to ancient Rome, where people bag on "the young people" as hopelessly lost and stupid; so this kind of thinking is really human nature (they're not exactly like me in every way, what's happening to this world!?). The real truth of the matter is that nobody ever really "grows up," and the people who pretend to, like John Stossel, just want to be bullies and pick on others because they're "bigger" than them. God damn moron. I'll end this with a Joe Rogan quote.

Remember back when you were a kid, and you thought there were actually people that knew what this thing we call “life” was really all about? Remember when you thought there really were “grown ups?” Then, all of a sudden one day you become a “grown up” yourself and the terrifying revelation occurs to you that there really are no “grown ups,” just kids that got old and had kids of their own, and no one really knows what the fuck is going on.

Video leaked of U.S. soldier urinating on dead Afghans sparks outrage

I don't think I'm going to give any commentary of my own this time, because Hamilton Nolan said everything.

A video emerges showing US Marines pissing on three Taliban corpses in Afghanistan. The outrage machine grinds into motion. The media bestirs itself from its slumber. Americans momentarily pay attention to the war in Afghanistan again. Politicians rush to add their names to the chorus of identical statements. All inflamed over the least bad thing that soldiers do in war.

Do you know what is worse than having your dead body urinated upon? Being killed. Being shot. Being bombed. Having your limbs blown off. Having your house incinerated by a drone-fired missile that you don't see until it explodes. Having your children blown up in their beds. Having your spouse killed. Having your hometown destroyed. Being displaced. Becoming a refugee. Having your entire life destroyed as a consequence of political forces far, far beyond your control.

War is horrible. War is sickening. Wars started for supremely righteous causes are just as horrible and sickening in their consequences as wars started for less than righteous causes. Politicians who sit in office chairs and start wars and wave flags as young men and women go off to kill and die and be psychologically and emotionally damaged for life are the most sickening of all. Politicians start wars and are rewarded with an appearance on weekend talk shows and Very Respectable Discussions with Very Respectable media figures and jokes at the White House Correspondent's Dinner and appearances on Leno and ghostwritten self-glorifying memoirs and lavishly catered fundraising parties with corporate executives. They should be rewarded with outrage. They should be rewarded with scorn. Starting a war is a monstrous, monstrous crime against humanity, as we know when it begins that no matter how cleanly it is conducted it will result in thousands upon thousands of bullets smashing men's skulls and arms and legs blown off by shrapnel and mothers and children incinerated by high explosives. And every extra day that a war is perpetuated unnecessarily is a crime anew.

And we as a nation could not be more bored by the unceasing industrial strength violence being carried out in our names in nations where none of us will travel, or vacation, or think about much at all as long as sports and American Idol and Downton Abbey are on TV. We skim past those stories of the latest bombing or drone strike or gunfight or civilian massacre. We joke about the personal foibles or funny accents or minor gaffes of the politicians who hold it in their power to stop war, but won't. We're bored and petulant and self-absorbed until that video of some soldier pissing on dead bodies comes along, at which point we can have an outrage contest and feel good about ourselves for being more outraged than the next completely uninvolved person, for a day or two, until the big game comes on.

Here's what else happened in Afghanistan this week: "The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of four Soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Jan. 6 in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their vehicle with an improvised explosive device. Killed were: Staff Sgt. Jonathan M. Metzger, 32, of Indianapolis, Ind.; Spc. Robert J. Tauteris Jr., 44, of Hamlet, Ind.; Spc. Christopher A. Patterson, 20, of Aurora, Ill.; Spc. Brian J. Leonhardt, 21, of Merrillville, Ind."

"The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Pfc. Michael W. Pyron, 30, of Hopewell, Va., died Jan. 10 in Parwan province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 25th Signal Battalion, 160th Signal Brigade, 335th Signal Command Theater, East Point, Ga."

"The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Pfc. Dustin P. Napier, 20, of London, Ky., died Jan. 8 in Zabul province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained from enemy small-arms fire. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Wainwright, Alaska."

"The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of three airmen who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Jan. 5 in Shir ghazi, Helmand province, Afghanistan, when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device. Killed were: Senior Airman Bryan R. Bell, 23, of Erie, Pa. He was assigned to the 2nd Civil Engineer Squadron, Barksdale Air Force Base, La.; Tech. Sgt. Matthew S. Schwartz, 34, of Traverse City, Mich. He was assigned to the 90th Civil Engineer Squadron, FE Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.; Airman 1st Class Matthew R. Seidler, 24, of Westminster, Md. He was assigned to the 21st Civil Engineer Squadron, Peterson Air Force Base, Colo."

And all of the dead bodies on the other side. We just don't have the names.

Piss on that.

Guantanamo Concentration Camp turns 10

Well. Okay. I was reluctant to use that term, "concentration camp," only because that might invoke some holocaust imagery that Guantanamo doesn't entirely fit. It is a concentration camp though. It is a camp where people are concentrated. And it definitely is not a "prison" camp. The actual definition of a prison is "a building (or vessel) to which people are legally committed as a punishment for crimes they have committed." Guantanamo is not legal, and no one there has been convicted of any crimes. Of the 171 prisoners currently being held there, 89 have been cleared for release. And they won't be released, at least until after the 2012 election. Can't be seen as the president who released a bunch of terrorists, you understand.

We committed torture there. Japanese war criminals were hanged for doing what we did to Guantanamo prisoners. In 2009, Barack Obama granted full immunity to all the war criminals involved in waterboarding, from the policy-makers, to the guards who directly participated in and committed torture. Everyone.

Here's Christopher Hitchens getting waterboarded. Hitchens was a sharp guy, but on America's war on terror, he could be a real dumbshit. He argued that waterboarding was not torture, until his boss at Vanity Fair challenged him to undergo it himself. Hitch may have been a moron in some regards, but he was a man of integrity. This is what waterboarding looks like.



Now imagine if your captors didn't kindly stop when you asked them to. Imagine if you were waterboarded 183 times. Imagine that once your torture session was complete, you were forced back into your cell where the lights were always on, and you were subjected to another form of torture known as sleep deprivation. Imagine if you were then beaten, electrically shocked, forced to be naked, or raped. It's okay. It's for freedom.

Full. Immunity. Not only has Barack Obama let war criminals go free, all but guaranteeing that these tactics will be used in the future, but he has abolished the fifth amendment. You no longer have a right to a trial. You can be rounded up and put into a concentration camp. And guess what? No one gets in trouble for committing torture. Thanks to Barack Obama, you can be legally put into a concentration camp and tortured.

The CIA is made up of a bunch of right wing fascists, and they still have black sites up all over the world. You can bet your buckle there's shit going on there. An American detainment facility in Afghanistan was just accused of torturing prisoners. Psychological torture is still taught in army manuals, which Bradley Manning was subjected to. So torture is still going on under Obama.

I don't see how any person who claims to have respect for this country, even anyone who claims to have conventional morality, can vote for the Republicans or Democrats after the last eleven years. There is supposed to be a point, somewhere, where the "lesser of two evils" is so bad that you just can't fucking take it anymore. The Democratic party is now further to the right than George W. Bush. Both American political parties commit torture. Both political parties are players in perpetual war. Both have taken steps to destroy the Bill of Rights. Say you vote third party, and those mean ol' Rethuglicans win because of it. How will anything at all be different? Anything? It's going to be Romney no matter what, let's not kid ourselves. Romney is seen as a "moderate" Republican. Well. Barack Obama is a moderate Republican. This isn't fucking rocket science.

But don't take my word for the horrors that go on in this camp. Here's an article written by Lakhdar Boumediene, an innocent man who was imprisoned there from 2002 to 2009.

I went on a hunger strike for two years because no one would tell me why I was being imprisoned. Twice each day my captors would shove a tube up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach so they could pour food into me. It was excruciating, but I was innocent and so I kept up my protest.

Or how about Murat Kurnaz, another innocent man who was held there for five years?

I was taken to Kandahar, in Afghanistan, where American interrogators asked me the same questions for several weeks: Where is Osama bin Laden? Was I with Al Qaeda? No, I told them, I was not with Al Qaeda. No, I had no idea where bin Laden was. I begged the interrogators to please call Germany and find out who I was. During their interrogations, they dunked my head under water and punched me in the stomach; they don’t call this waterboarding but it amounts to the same thing. I was sure I would drown.

At one point, I was chained to the ceiling of a building and hung by my hands for days. A doctor sometimes checked if I was O.K.; then I would be strung up again. The pain was unbearable.

After about two months in Kandahar, I was transferred to Guantánamo. There were more beatings, endless solitary confinement, freezing temperatures and extreme heat, days of forced sleeplessness. The interrogations continued always with the same questions. I told my story over and over — my name, my family, why I was in Pakistan. Nothing I said satisfied them. I realized my interrogators were not interested in the truth.

Despite all this, I looked for ways to feel human. I have always loved animals. I started hiding a piece of bread from my meals and feeding the iguanas that came to the fence. When officials discovered this, I was punished with 30 days in isolation and darkness.

You should read this piece by Andrew Cohen. He cites part of an interrogation which took place at Guantanamo, that is strikingly similar to the interrogation scene in 1984.

Recorder: [Item 3.a.4.] While living in Bosnia, the Detainee associated with a known Al Qaida operative.

Detainee: Give me his name.

Tribunal President: I do not know.

Detainee: How can I respond to this?

Tribunal President: Did you know of anybody that was a member of Al Qaida?

Detainee: No, no.

Tribunal President: I'm sorry, what was your response?

Detainee: No.

Tribunal President: No?

Detainee: No. This is something the interrogators told me a long while ago. I asked the interrogators to telI me who this person was. Then I could tell you if I might have known this person, but not if the person is a terrorist. Maybe I knew this person as a friend. Maybe it was a person that worked with me. Maybe it was a person that was on my team. But I do not know if this person is Bosnian, Indian or whatever. If you tell me the name, then I can respond and defend myself against this accusation.

Tribunal President: We are asking you the questions and we need you to respond to what is on the unclassified summary. If you say you did not know or you did know anyone that was a part of Al Qaida, that is the information we need to know.

Detainee: I have only heard of Al Qaida after the attacks in the United States. Before that, I had never heard of Al Qaida. Even after I heard of Al Qaida, I felt that Al Qaida was the Taliban and the Taliban was AI Qaida. Then after watching the news, I knew Al Qaida was associated with Bin Laden and the Taliban was associated with the Afghans.

From the same article:

Mr. Ait Idir's resistance during the episode of religious-physical abuse described above led to a further, unprovoked attack, which ultimately resulted in partial facial paralysis and a life-long disability. One day shortly after the pants related beating, guards told him they wanted to search his cell. There had been no intervening disciplinary issues. He sat on the floor as instructed. Despite his full cooperation, he was sprayed in the face with chemical irritant, and put into restraints. Guards then slammed him head first into the cell floor, lowered him, face-first into the toilet and flushed the toilet -- submerging his head. He was then carried outside and thrown onto the crushed stones that surround the cells. While he was down on the ground, his assailants stuffed a hose in his mouth and forced water down his throat. Then a soldier jumped on the left side of his head with full weight, forcing stones to cut into Mr. Ait Idir's face near his eye. The guards twisted his middle finger and thumb on his right hand back almost to the point of breaking them. The knuckles were dislocated. As a result of this incident, the left side of Mr. Ait Idir's face became paralyzed for several months. The symptoms from that attack continue to plague him two years later.

On yesterday's Democracy Now, Amy Goodman interviewed Omar Deghayes, an innocent man who was held in Guantanamo for five years. She also talks to a Guantanamo prosecutor who was fired after speaking out. Deghayes was tortured in Pakistan before being transferred to Guantanamo, where guards gouged his eyes and left one eye permanently blind. He comes on at about 21:40.

People are locked up in isolation camps... People lost their hands, lost their eyes, lost their limbs... Some people were subjected to sleep deprivation. They weren’t allowed to sleep... And they had to live under those conditions for six years ... without being convicted of any crime, which is the most unacceptable thing."

"Hello. I'm going to read a declaration of a state of war... Within the next 14 days we will attack a symbol or institution of American injustice."

Here's a 2002 documentary on The Weather Underground, an anti-war extremist group that bombed government targets throughout the 1970s in retaliation of "American injustice." They took extreme care to avoid hurting people. Gonna be honest, I went into this suspecting I might come out thinking of them as sorta romantic revolutionaries. Nope. They were just doped up and fucking insane.

Embedding is disabled, here you go.

Sunday Youtube Post

Never trust any American news source, ever. Here's the court case that ruled that media outlets can legally lie to you.

Here's a video showing what Obama supporters are voting for

Don't look away. Skip to 3:25, this video starts out stupid and sensationalist. I wish I could kidnap every Obama supporter in the country, tie them down, and force them to watch this.

2011: The Year of Global Revolution

2011 was one of the greatest years of my life, but not for anything I actually did, or what happened to me directly. I got to witness international revolution. It was also fairly torturous for me, because more than anything else, I wanted to actually be at these places. I got to protest in Madison before Occupying was cool, which was pretty fucking rad, but labor struggles in first world countries just don't seem as important when people elsewhere are being shot in the streets.

I've been told before that I should major in history, and others have told me I should major in political science. But to be perfectly honest, I'm starting to feel like my hidden calling might be journalism. The greatest political writers -- Paine, Orwell, Hitchens -- were all journalists (not that I'm even hinting at comparing myself to those giants, I just admire them). Every one of them saw revolution firsthand. Paine personally travelled with the continental army during the New Jersey campaign. Orwell travelled to Spain amidst civil war as a BBC correspondent; but once he got there, he knew he couldn't just stand by and let the fascists win, so he picked up a gun. And Hitchens, the former socialist, travelled to Cuba and covered Castro's revolution. Even Matt Taibbi spent time in Russia, not to mention Chris Hedge's career as a journalist in the most dangerous parts of the planet, on the edges of the American empire.

I feel like such a dweeb sometimes just giving my criticisms behind a computer about things I've never actually seen. I mean, I do like graphic design. I can do it. It's a job. And besides, journalism is a for-profit industry, I highly doubt I would be able to deal with those hacks. Taibbi is stuck writing politics for the illustrious Rolling Stone Magazine because no one else can deal with the fact that he isn't a partisan, and Hedges had to leave the New York Times after he started reporting facts; he hasn't been in journalism for years, he just writes books now. The media has been purged of dissenting thought, it's only real role anymore is to manufacture consent. Maybe I'll just save up and travel around someday.

I digress. This is a year of revolution in review. Meet Mohamed Bouazizi. Mohamed Bouazizi was not only the greatest person of 2011. So far, he was the greatest person of the 21st century.



On December 17, 2010, Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest of the Tunisian government. He died 18 days later, on January 4. Here's the former president of Tunisia visiting him in the hospital.



Inspired by Bouazizi's selfless sacrifice in their name, the people of Tunisia rose up.



It didn't take long for the cowardly fascists holding that nation hostage to flee in terror. They just held their first democratic elections. Egyptians soon poured into their own streets chanting "We are next!" They organized, and occupied Tahrir Square. Another regime fell.



Then Libya rose up. A third dictator is gone.



People have been protesting in many other countries throughout the Middle East. We shouldn't forget that Iran rose up with its Green Movement an entire year before the Arab Spring. The people of Iraq have been protesting against their oppressive government, and in many cases have been shot, but you likely didn't hear about that since Iraq is a U.S. ally. Tunisia and Egypt were U.S. allies too, not to mention Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which the U.S. is still supporting (Saudi Arabia's oil exports through the gulf are why war drums are currently thumping against Iran). The Chinese government unfortunately is doing an excellent job at putting a lid on the protests arising there. In Europe, people have risen in countries like Spain, England, Italy and Greece. A friend of mine just got back from studying abroad in Italy, she saw some of the protests firsthand. Iceland had itself an entirely peaceful revolution, where communities elected their own representatives to write their new constitution, and the country got to read it and make suggestions over the internet as it was being formed (read more about that here, it's pretty incredible).

Greece's protests have been particularly intense. Europe is basically blaming them for the entire continent's crisis, and the Greek people don't want to put up with foreign debts being pushed on them. Some protesters simply want their government to default so they can start all over, and possibly even leave the European Union, and others want the entire government to collapse so they can institute a more socialist government. Greece went through a civil war after WW2 that resulted in three decades of bitter political rivalry between leftists and rightists. It finally climaxed into the brutal military junta of the 60s and 70s, in which thousands of leftists were systematically rounded up and tortured (the junta was backed by the U.S. for the whole seven years, they were anti-communist after all!). So yeah, needless to say, Greece has had a rough 20th century. The leftists are finally able to come out of hiding, I remember hearing a poll somewhere saying over 90% of Greeks are supporting these protests. It's good to see the inventors of democracy showing the world how it's done.



Up to 50,000 Russians went to the streets to contest their stolen elections last month, making them the largest demonstrations since the fall of the Soviet Union.



South America hasn't been left out either. Protests have erupted in Venezeula and Chile. The Chilean protests are mostly led by students demanding a restructuring of their education system (in addition to the obligatory concerns about income inequality). If only Americans cared so much about learning.



Are you noticing a pattern? Most of these countries, particularly in the Middle East, are U.S. allies. That's why these protests are making the American government so nervous. It's why the CIA won't disclose their involvement in the Occupy crackdowns. British police just labeled Occupy London protesters as "terrorists." If you haven't been concerned about the impact that the Patriot Act and the NDAA could have on American protests in the future, you haven't been thinking hard enough. They're scared shitless, and there is nothing they won't do to put a lid on this.

Which is exactly why I don't understand why the Occupy movement is still the only part of these global protests that have a cult-like devotion for nonviolence. We know how evil our government is. We know it opposes democratic movements. We know it overthrows democratic countries and installs dictators (this isn't limited to the Cold War, they are still doing this). We know it is supporting and supplying totalitarian regimes that are shooting protesters in the streets. These things are in the public record. So why are these hippies acting like their government is something to be tolerated? Shouldn't we try to be a little more aggressive, if not for ourselves, then at least to support those who our government are murdering and torturing overseas? Even the Egyptians sent Occupy a letter warning them against "fetishizing nonviolence." And I'm not even talking about violence against police officers, that's detestable and should be avoided. I'm talking about violence against property, if breaking non-sentient objects can be considered "violence." Destroying property was one of the most effective tactics the American colonists had. Jesus Christ destroyed property.

But I guess if these hippies aren't willing to use methods beyond nonviolence against a fascist government that installs and supports fascist dictators, I suppose it's a bit too much to ask them to raise their fists against class warfare and wage slavery. As far as I know, Oakland has been the only city that has shown the slightest bit of courage to resist. They defended themselves when the police attacked them. They're also the ones who successfully implemented a city-wide strike for an entire day. And shut down one of the largest ports in the most powerful nation on the planet. That's how you fucking protest. These heroes showed the world who Oakland really belongs to.



I think I'm being a bit too hard on Occupy. They've done a lot to change the conversation in this country, and no one likes violence. But nonviolence is simply not an effective means of changing this system. The problem with nonviolence is that it only works if you're appealing to people who have a conscience. Many police officers still have those things, so this tactic is not entirely useless, but the people who the police defend - the 1% - most certainly do not. We are not dealing with individuals here. We are dealing with enormous, abstract organizations and corporations which are made up of many, many people. When groups of like-minded people get together, and they are given a sense of unlimited power, without fear of repercussion, the entity they form will be sociopathic. This is practically a scientific law by now. I'm sure you've heard of the Stanford prison experiment. Look at Abu Ghraib. Look at the history of the Catholic Church. Human beings are fucked up. Questions of morality do not effect these people because they're conveniently able to deflect their own responsibility onto the system as a whole. The system can't be reasoned with.

I follow a blog on tumblr called cultureofresistance, and someone asked a wonderful question earlier. A vague form of this idea has sort of been floating around in my head for a while, but I'm glad someone else thought of it before me so they could put it into better words than I could.

This might be a stupid question, but what is the difference between an underground and aboveground movement? Why is DGR so vehemently against association with an underground?

Deep Green Resistance’s strategy involves two separate parts of the movement - an aboveground and an underground. The aboveground works for sustainable, just, and participatory institutions, and assists the aboveground frontline activists with loyalty and material support. And in any resistance scenario, the underground dismantles the strategic infrastructure of power. This is a basic tactic of both militaries and insurgents the world over for the simple reason that it works. But such actions alone are never a sufficient strategy for achieving a just outcome. This means that any strategy aiming for a just future must include a call to build direct democracies based on human rights and sustainable material cultures. Which means that the different branches of resistance movements must work in tandem: the aboveground and underground, the militants and the nonviolent, the aboveground frontline activists and the cultural workers. We need it all.

We are strictly an aboveground movement and will not answer questions regarding anyone’s personal desire to be in or form an underground. We do this for the security of all involved with Deep Green Resistance.

One of the main roles of the Aboveground is to be the public face of the movement. We stand publicly and say “I support this strategy and I advocate for DGR,” for example.

Time Magazine chose 2011's person of the year to be "the protester." I'm not sure how I feel about it.



By all rights, that title belongs to Mohamed Bouazizi, who single-handedly sparked this worldwide revolution. But this is also coming from a magazine whose 2010 Person of the Year was the facebook movie, so I don't put much weight on what they think. Seriously, what the fuck did Mark Zuckerberg even do last year?



And then there's this too. This is 100% real.



That friend who lived in Italy I mentioned earlier? She picked up one with the real cover when she was over there, and showed me when I visited Chicago last weekend. I am super jealous.

It's incredibly sad to me that I'm forced to do all my own research on these protests. I shouldn't have to. But American media is just so unbelievably incompetent. As I watched these protests happening over the course of the year, I was just fucking stunned at how little our media was covering it, and how little they understood it. In the closed off circles of American right wing politics, the protesters in Egypt are "radicals" and "Islamists," as made clear by Rick Santorum on Meet the Press this week. I don't even know what the fuck an "Islamist" is. Doesn't he mean Muslims? "Islamist" isn't a word.

"The Muslim Brotherhood is not--is not about democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood are Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood are going to impose Sharia law."

And it's not like David Gregory actually corrected him about any of this. Because he doesn't know what the fuck is going on either: "They were popularly elected, I think."

He thinks. The people on Sunday talk, the best American journalism has to offer, think Egypt's protests are democratic. Unbelievable.

Democracy Now, undoubtedly the best news source in the country, dedicated Monday's show to reairing their coverage of the global protests throughout the year. Watch it. Good luck not getting teary.

TYT: Why defenders of Obama and the NDAA are wrong

Cenk mentions it's the "fifth amendment" being destroyed. I've been saying the sixth amendment over the last few weeks. I've been getting my amendments mixed up. Oops. Cenk graduated from Columbia Law School, I think I'll believe him.

You are now living in a police state

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."
-William Adama (...so say we all)

Barack Obama signed the NDAA into law yesterday. The NDAA is passed once a year to help fund the military. This year, a provision was attached that would allow the military to detain American citizens indefinitely with no trial. The wording is vague, and it doesn't say that directly, but there is plenty of room for interpretation, and that is exactly what our government is best at. It should be noted, as Glenn Greenwald has been pointing out, that this changes absolutely nothing about what the government has already been doing for the past ten years. The Bush Administration and the Obama Administration have both been illegally detaining citizens indefinitely already, and even assassinating them. This bill adds nothing new except for immunity for the president from U.S. courts. As if those cowards would prosecute war criminals anyway.

The sixth amendment of the Bill of Rights says:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

The Patriot Act effectively destroyed the fourth amendment, and thanks to the NDAA, these words are now meaningless as well. The military can now kidnap you, and there's nothing you can do about it. The Bill of Rights is traditionally used only to protect U.S. citizens, but that was not the intention when it was written. These are unalienable rights, relevant to all human beings, regardless of which invisible line you happened to be born behind. They are always in effect, for all people, whether a government recognizes them or not. This was one of the main ideas championed by John Locke, which propelled the Enlightenment, and the American and French revolutions. You have rights that no manmade institution of government can take away. As soon as your country's government tries to take away your rights as a human being, that government is no longer legitimate, and you no longer have any obligation to recognize its authority over you.

A hundred years after Locke, Thomas Paine said in his Rights of Man:

There is a single idea, which, if it strikes rightly upon the mind either in a legal or a religious sense, will prevent any man, or any body of men, or any government, from going wrong on the subject of religion; which is, that before any human institution of government were known in the world, there existed, if I may so express it, a compact between God and Man, from the beginning of time: and that as the relation and condition which man in his individual person stands in towards his Maker, cannot be changed, or any ways altered, by any human laws or human authority, that religious devotion, which is a part of this compact, cannot so much as be made a subject of human laws; and that all laws must conform themselves to this prior existing compact, and not assume to make the compact conform to the laws, which, besides being human, are subsequent thereto. The first act of man, when he looked and saw himself a creature which he did not make, and a world furnished for his reception, must have been devotion, and devotion must ever continue sacred to every individual man, as it appears to him; and governments do mischief by interfering.

All this talk of "God" could seem a little confusing to 21st century atheist revolutionaries, but the main idea is still valid. Paine was not a Christian, and he was not talking about Yahweh of the Bible; whenever deists of this era mention "God," they are talking about what they see as the "natural order," seen through scientific observation, and this could easily be translated into secular humanism.

I'm not even making my own arguments here, I'm simply reciting philosophers from 300 years ago. If you disagree with this and you start to think of me as some pissy privileged white boy angry at THE MAN, then you'll likely find more comfort with the bourgeois fucks like Hobbes and Burke who argued against these guys. Go read their stuff and take the coward's way out, favoring security and "order" at the cost of enslavement.

On the issues that really matter, on the questions of state-sanctioned imprisonment, wage slavery, and murder, there is absolutely no difference whatsoever between the Democratic and Republican parties. If you are still in a mindset contrary to this, then you are a slave. America is a one-party state, and that party is corporatism. In 1774, the richest one percent in Philadelphia owned 50% of the wealth. Right now they own 40%. Mussolini said, "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." America is a fascist state.

We should've been talking about this stuff when George Bush passed the Patriot Act. We should've talked about this when Obama renewed it. Fuck me for not getting as angry then as I am now. It is no exaggeration to say that under an NDAA-empowered America, concentration camps are now theoretically legal. Barack Obama is a traitor. Do not recognize this law, and do not recognize this government. Chomsky said the other day that the Occupy movement needs to proceed to "the next step." If OWS doesn't grow a fucking backbone and escalate into something like the Arab Spring -- if the passage of the NDAA does not spark nationwide protests in which people are no longer afraid to fight back against the state, with the goal of severely altering or even abolishing this government -- then we'll deserve everything that's coming to us.