A Growing Leak

By now, anyone who is reading this blog has certainly heard about the 92,000 classified government documents - exposed and posted on the website Wikileaks- linked to the horrible mistakes and failures of the American military occupation of Afghanistan. Many of these documents shed light on failed unmanned drone attacks, faulty intelligence that led to the massacre of women and children, and the number of U.S. troops killed by weapons that the U.S. supplied to Afghanistan 20 years ago. Needless to say, the Pentagon wants it to all go away.  This relatively new "leaks" phenomenon brings up a few points that I think relate nicely to many of the hot topics on this blog.

1.  Conspiracy Theories.  An unfortunate but vociferous side of the libertarian movement that has caused me much consternation over the years is the conspiracy theorist/junk science/quack medicine crowd; if only they could apply the same logical tools outside the realm of economics, too.  With the near-constant stream of  classified information being leaked all over the internet, it would seem that by now some ground breaking tidbit should have surfaced regarding the 9/11 attacks in New York City.  Since 9/11, the government has ballooned, and with it vast numbers of bureaucrats who have access to classified information are starting to feel the need to expose bad things.  In this article, Glen Greenwald writes about the recent expose by the Washington Post regarding the Dept. of Homeland Security.  How many years will these people hold on to their crazy notions while all around them actual conspiracies are being debunked left and right? Three years?  Seven years?  And if ghosts exist, if bigfoot exists, if the Lake Champlain sea monster exists, why haven't we seen any high quality, undeniable proof?  I mean, we can now see a three-ton great white shark leap 14 feet out of the air while hunting seals!  We caught that on film - super slow-mo, for that matter!  If indeed there is any credibility to any of the claims made by these conspiracy theorists, we should start seeing some hard evidence pretty soon.

2. Police Brutality.  In this video, one of countless finding their way on to the web, a large cop body slams an innocent bicycle rider to the ground. 


In this video, which, be warned is kind of disturbing, a 57-year-old black woman gets tazered 12 times at her own home by a young jackass cop.  This was filmed by the cop's camera, but somehow ended up on Youtube.


Now these crimes - yes, crimes - carried out by government thugs are becoming viral on the internet and are no longer simply first person anecdotes passed on word of mouth.  In the cases of both of these videos, the thugs were fired. Unfortunately, they can't be sent to jail because they can hide behind the badge.
Patri Friedman, the grandson of Milton Friedman and author of Beyond Folk Activism, one of the more brilliant and important political documents written in the last hundred years, talks about the importance of changing incentives and not minds.  I think this is a fine example of that theory.  You can write to your congressman five times a day for the next four years, but one devastating upload on Wikileaks or Youtube can do more in ten seconds than all of your impassioned letters will ever do.  Suddenly, there is an avenue for people to get these terrible police officers fired immediately and to try and make sure they never carry a gun under the auspices of public service again.

3. The Media.  Why, might you ask, does it take one disgruntled soldier to expose those horrible truths about the war in Afghanistan when there are so many newspapers, cable television news channels and radio news channels that we pay for?  Simply, incentives.  Reporters in the mainstream media are far too worried about being ostracized from their crowd and put on the black list at the correspondents' dinner to actually tell any truths.  If you were to read antiwar.com regularly, these leaks come as no surprise to you.  This is SOP, standard operating procedure, for an empire at war.  The war reporters associated with antiwar.com have been pumping this stuff out since their inception.  With one click of the mouse, Wikileaks did more to inform the public of the secret horrors of war than any of the major media outlets have in the past seven or eight years.

Expect more and more and more terrible truths about the military evils of the American Empire to become exposed over the next few years.  I can only hope that with all these leaks and videos and documents, Americans become really aware and demand CHANGE!

War News is Bad News

Idly scanning the local newspaper this morning, I came across three blurbs from the Associated Press regarding America's ever growing foreign military engagements.

1.  It seems that the U.S. is performing military "exercises" with a nuclear-powered war ship off the coast of North Korea.  South Korea is participating in these exercises with the U.S.  This action seems to be in response to the North Korean attack in March that sank a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors.  North Korea is evidently "enraged" by these actions.  North Korea attacked a warship from South Korea, so America sends in the Navy?  What the hell is going on?  Why is this our fight?  And does it make sense to be enraging the incredibly unstable dictator of that nation, who happens to have in his possession nuclear warheads?

2.  Former chief of the CIA Michael Hayden is now saying that a military strike against Iran "seems inexorable" due to the fact that Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program.  The fact of the matter is that Iran is a very poor country with an incredibly weak military.  And why is it that we and our friends the Russians get to have nuclear weapons when other countries can't?  Surely it can't be the benevolent record our two countries have around the world. America is the bully on the playground who goes around beating up little kids.  Does it make sense to invade yet another Middle Eastern country?  How has that worked for us thus far?  I also wonder if Iran's proximity to our friend - their rival - Israel has anything to do with this supposedly unavoidable attack.  But the drum of war with Iran has been beating in Washington for a long time now, so what should we expect?

3.  A U.S. drone fired missiles at two houses, killing 12 "militants" in Pakistan.  In the past two years, there have been more than a hundred of these unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan carried out by the U.S.  These are most insidious and counter-productive for a couple of reasons.  Time and again it turns out that the intelligence was wrong and that the house was filled with women and children!  This new information from WikiLeaks tells that story.   U.S. missiles are blowing up houses full of innocent people!  If that makes you and me this mad, imagine how pissed the Pakistani people must be?  These are bombs coming basically from space with absolutely no warning and no possible chance of immediate retaliation.  Talk about terrorist recruitment!  Let's make it easier for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda!  And our government and people continue to be dumbfounded as to why anyone would possibly want to attack America.

It's a good thing that everyone voted for change and hope.  That's really paying off, eh?

Cartoonin

This is a very brief and nerdy summation of the dubious fiat currency system that somehow works on religious type faith in this country.  YOUR DOLLAR IS NOT WORTH A DOLLAR!!!

Political Opposites Team Up!

Congressman Barney Frank (D) of Massachusetts and Congressman Ron Paul (R) of Texas have teamed up and are calling for an immense cut in military spending by the United States.  Paul and Frank say that by eliminating most of the unnecessary military bases and troop presences around the world (all over Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc. etc.), the government could save and estimated one trillion dollars! 

This development is of particular interest to me, in part because of the somewhat unholy alliance between two congressmen whose political and economic philosophies are quite different from one another. Frank is a supporter of government intervention into the economy, while Paul is a proponent of the Austrian School of Economics and truly free-market-based solutions. (Note that this isn't the first time that Rep. Paul has joined forces with a congressman from the "opposite" end of the political spectrum: See my post, Audit the Fed Bill Gutted!, for more about Paul's work with Sen. Bernie Sanders.)

This unusual collaboration speaks to the priority of the issue. Both men understand plainly that the American empire is vastly over-extended and that if there is not a concerted effort to reign in the beast, it will, like all empires throughout history, collapse. 

In the following clip from CNN, Wolf Blitzer (what a great football name!) interviews the two of them on this issue. It is a good interview as a whole (it is in two parts), but I really like (at 4:44) the way Frank responds to the ignorant claim being made that if we pull out of Afghanistan, we will just allow the terrorists to gain strength and establish training grounds: He is in agreement with Ron Paul in asserting that even if we were able to gain complete control of Afghanistan, the terrorists would simply relocate to Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, etc. I love when Frank says he wishes "nuclear submarines could defeat terrorism, because we have all of the nuclear submarines, and we would have beat it." Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. 

The strategic significance of such a momentous shift in US foreign policy goes beyond the vast - and obvious - initial economic savings. If we pull out of all of these countries, we inherently make ourselves less vulnerable to terror attacks: For one, we would suddenly give unstable regions and impoverished populations less of a reason to hate us so much, making recruiting harder for terrorists; and second, we would have much more money available to invest in a legitimate national defense.
 

This recent proposal highlights yet another difference between Ron Paul and everyone else.  Let's see one of the "intellectual" leaders of the Tea Party movement team up with an openly gay socialist from Taxachussetts for the express purpose of ending war!  Hell yeah, Ron Paul!

Make sure to look at 4:44 if you can't watch the entire interview.

Drug Laws Debunked!

Complete drug decriminalization/legalization is a topic I have already posted about but want to revisit because it is one of the more counter-intuitive and controversial conversations. I am of the opinion that all drugs should be legal; if you, me or your cousin wants heroin, we should be able to go to the drug store and buy it. That we should be able to does not mean that we should, and it is the heinous nature of drug abuse that makes legalization so counter-intuitive for the majority of us.  I want to be clear that by advocating for drug decriminalization, I am in no way condoning drug use.

"Legalize all drugs? You must be crazy!" you are saying.  "Drug use will skyrocket and the streets will be consumed by twitched out addicts desperately searching for another fix."  Well, as you might expect, I have found a few videos that prove the opposite, with clear empirical evidence.

Drugs of all varieties were decriminalized in the country of Portugal eight years ago, and the results have been pretty definitive. 

In this first one by the BBC news (hmm... sounds legitimate), I think one of the most crucial points is that since drug legalization, the number of people being treated for heroin addiction has risen. When there is absolutely no fear of jail, I think drug addicts are more likely to seek treatment because their condition is seen as a medical issue, not a criminal offense.



In this fantastic interview from Reason.tv with Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, Greenwald raises several key points and provides viewers with a libertarian argument for natural rights.  His assessment of Portugal's severe drug problem in the nineties is particularly revealing; the more the Portuguese government criminalized drugs, the more usage increased.





It will be interesting to see if the California ballot measure regarding the complete decriminalization of marijuana will pass this fall.  If it does, I think we will start to see many more states fall in line: Increased tax revenues and less "crime" in California - the criminal justice system and prisons are a huge money suck! - would bring about a kind of market response as people pushed for similar results in their own states. Individual states have the right to nullify overreaching federal law.( Nullification of bad laws is a subject I will explore in future posts.)

For the throngs of readers who have been desperately seeking a new post, I apologize for the delay.  The two of you can get back to reading.

Interested In?

If you like some of what you have read here, look into the work of Murray N. Rothbard.   He was prolific!  Here is a nice article about him.

Right to Discriminate - Continued

A reader linked an article by Tim Wise in the comments section of my last post.  The title of the post was Rationalizing White Supremacy, Racism, Free Markets and the Morally Obtuse Rand Paul. There is a close up of him holding his temple.

As one of Tim Wise's (did he name himself that?) unmentioned "nary a black libertarian" Larry Elder puts it,

"Constitutional rights extend to both saints and sinners and those in between, no matter the outrage... 

This is freedom 101.

It is this freedom to discriminate that enabled Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson to become a billionaire through the use of race-based programming. It is this freedom that allows the Miss Black America beauty pageant to exclude non-black applicants."

Read his great article here. 


From this very eloquent article written by Lew Rockwell,

"Referencing the great controversy about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Karen De Coster put the issue to rest by turning Rachel Maddow's question on its head. She [Maddow] demanded to know whether a white businessman has the right to refuse service to a black man. Karen asked, does a black businessman have the right to refuse service to a Klan member? "  


I really think this gets to the heart of the subject very quickly.  What does Tim Wise have to say to this I wonder?

  

More from Lew,

"...It is the same with college admissions, church membership, fraternities, civic clubs, and nearly every other association. They all exercise the right to exclude. It is central to the organization of every aspect of life. If this right is denied, what do we get in its place? Coercion and compulsion. People are forced together by the state, with one group required at the point of a gun to serve another group."

Stossel writes in regard to the cries that Fox needs to fire him for his racist comments,

"It wasn't free markets in the South that perpetuated racism. It was government colluding with private individuals (some in the KKK) to intimidate those who would have integrated.
It was private action that started challenging the racists, and it was succeeding—four years before the Civil Rights Act passed."


Tim Wise is undertaking a very important and difficult task.  He is trying through his writing, teaching, and lecturing to eliminate, or at least minimize racism.  I think that is a wonderful thing, and the article he wrote is very clearly written for his point.  Unfortunately, Mr. Wise's point in this case is that all libertarians are white supremacist nut jobs who know absolutely nothing about the way the "real" world works and are morally corrupt weak-minded simps.  Tim Wise is the clearly the product of the states' self propagating education system and is ignorantly suckling on the teat that is government=panacea.  The ridiculusly ingrained confirmation bias that markets=evil is so pervasive in this type of writing, but at least its consistent.

As a friend wrote in an email disscusing this subject


"It was government that institutionalized slavery.
It was government that institutionalized segregation in the south.
It took private citizens and market pressures (Frederich Douglas, ML King, Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, etc.) to overcome these abhorrent injustices"


Reader Tim writes
"I often wonder if such rigid adherence to a way of thinking and focus on consistency can hamper ones ability to react to certain situations and deal with issues"


I think examining this subject with the consistent and principled eye for natural rights and property rights has allowed me to further understand this topic and its relative importance regarding anarcho-capatilism and truly free market economics. I must say, a big reason for that is the reading of links readers have sent and the comments themselves.  Thank you both for that.   


Libertarianism by its very nature is anti-racist!  The focus is on the individual, and the racist focuses on a group. 


Having said all of this, what we are discussing was a small part of a huge law that was passed almost 50 years ago which will never change.