Essays

With Enemies Like This, Who Needs Friends?

"The U.S. government pursued its vindictive course against Manning to send a message to other potential whistleblowers. The problem is, those whistleblowers — among them Snowden — got the message loud and clear. What Snowden learned is, you don’t work within the system through normal channels, and you don’t play the 'civil disobedience' game and take your punishment, unless you want to spend years naked in solitary awaiting trial and then be sentenced to most of your life in prison. You get the information distributed in secure places, get yourself safely out of the country, and then make your move. The next whistleblower will do it even bigger and better, and learn from Snowden’s example." Continue reading →

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The State, Not Manning, is the Criminal

"Manning is being punished for exposing government crimes, most famously U.S. troops shooting innocent civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in the Collateral Murder video. Manning’s disclosures also shed light on what McClatchy Newspapers called 'evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence.' The outrage caused by exposure of this brutal war crime helped end the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The perpetrators should have been held accountable. They were not. Instead, the state engaged in a series of crimes against Private Manning." Continue reading →

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The State: Judge in its Own Cause

"Is this really a nation of laws, though? There’s an old legal principle, 'nemo iudex in causa sua,' which translated into English means 'no one should be the judge of their own cause.' But in fact all the laws theoretically limiting the state’s power are interpreted by — wait for it — officials of the state. The commission of the actual military, intelligence and diplomatic crimes themselves, the classification of documents that evidence those crimes, and the setting of civil and criminal penalties for revealing wickedness in high places — all these things are done by officials of the same government." Continue reading →

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The Compulsion To Rule

"A system that insists on controlling others through increasing levels of systematic violence; that loots the many for the aggrandizement of the few; that regulates any expressions of human behavior that are not of service to the rulers; that presumes the power to wage wars against any nation of its choosing, a principle that got a number of men hanged at the Nuremberg trials; and finally, criminalizes those who would speak the truth to its victims, has no moral energy remaining with which to sustain itself. The treatment accorded private Manning may have been the final nail driven into the coffin of the American state." Continue reading →

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Murray Rothbard: And Now Afghanistan [1980]

"Afghanistan has no resources, has no treaties with the U.S., no historic ties, there are none of the flimsy but popular excuses that we have used for over a century to throw our weight around across the earth. But here we go, intervening anyway, loudly proclaiming that Russia’s actions in Afghanistan are 'unacceptable', and for which we are ready to scrap SALT, detente, and the feeble past attempts of the Carter administration to shuck off the Cold War. The conservatives, the Pentagon, the Social Democrats, the neo-conservatives, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority [..] have been yearning to smash detente, and to accelerate an already swollen arms budget and heat up the Cold War." Continue reading →

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Fleeing Oppression

"The mayor of Los Angeles has declared a 'state of emergency'. Hollywood’s movie industry is being ceded to other states and countries whose favorable tax 'credits' are increasingly luring away movie and television production. As competition both in the US and abroad continues to grow, the state’s market share and longtime stronghold on production jobs and spending are fast evaporating. The main problem is taxes. California’s government has so destroyed the state that its only option to keep afloat is a continued rise in taxes. In response, people with money have been fleeing the state for other states. New York and California have lost the most in the last decade." Continue reading →

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From the Files of the Nineveh PD

"At some point within the last decade or so, American police adopted a modified version of the Assyrian model of law enforcement. This helps to explain why it is now considered permissible for a police officer to assault an uncooperative but non-violent pregnant woman. Rochester, New York Police Officer Lucas Krull was recently captured on videoassaulting a 21-year-old expectant mother. In an earlier incident, a young pregnant girl was kneed in the stomach by one of three Rochester Police Officers who were restraining her during an arrest. A pregnant mother and an elderly woman were collateral victims in yet another episode involving 'tumultuous' behavior." Continue reading →

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The Tipping Point

"Jesus said that when a garment gets so old, attempting to patch it with new cloth will just tear it up worse. The authoritarian state seems to be reaching that point, beyond which any attempt to patch it up or prolong its life just hastens its demise. The interesting thing about the federal prosecutions of Aaron Swartz and Chelsea Manning is that the vindictive approach to piling up charges and seeking maximum sentences were calculated attempts to send a message to anyone else contemplating sabotage against the information control regime. But those attempts have done more to inspire sympathy among the uncommitted and galvanize the information freedom movement than to terrify would-be leakers." Continue reading →

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When Your Car Is Spying on You

"Traffic cameras in Britain as well in Los Angeles and other jurisdictions overwhelmingly ring up drivers for offenses that wouldn't trouble a cop. New Jersey is just the latest state scandalized by discovery that yellow lights are set below the state minimum in order to yield more red-light camera tickets. London uses its cameras to levy special fees on those who drive SUVs in the city's financial distract. In some future discrimination or hate-crime lawsuit, will vehicle records be called up to show you locked your doors in a minority neighborhood but not in a white neighborhood? Will the state decide to raise your ObamaCare copays because a face-recognition camera also recognized a cigarette?" Continue reading →

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