Essays

The Latter-Day Rome Lives And Kills

"Libya is no longer. Ditto Iraq. Afghanistan is not doing much better since Rome set up camp there. The Comitatus – 'the sprawling apparatus that encompasses the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals' – refused to keep count of the casualties in the Iraq war. Likewise has 'Operation Enduring Freedom' in Afghanistan, still ongoing, been the direct and indirect cause of the deaths and displacement of many thousands of Afghan civilians. The latter-day Rome has mechanized the warfare state’s killing capabilities and has refined its propaganda wing to an art." Continue reading →

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Last Hurrah of the Interventionists?

"In what a Washington Post columnist describes as a rout of Rand Paul isolationism, the Senate just voted overwhelmingly to send another $1.5 billion in foreign aid to Egypt. The House voted 400-20 to impose new sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, two days before Iran’s new president, elected on a pledge to re-engage the West on the nuclear issue, takes his oath. Do these triumphs of AIPAC and the War Party, of neocons and liberal internationalists, tell us where we are going? Or are they the last hurrahs of the interventionists, as America’s long retreat proceeds apace." Continue reading →

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Kill Wasteful Missile Defense Efforts

"In the 30 years, since President Ronald Reagan created his expensive pie-in-the-sky Strategic Defense Initiative—quickly and appropriately named 'Star Wars' by critics and journalists alike—the United States has spent a whopping $250 billion on trying to shoot down fast intercontinental ballistic missiles, such as those that might someday be fielded by Iran and North Korea. This government effort has been a boondoggle, but then huge costs and poor performance rarely cause any government program to be terminated—evidence of this effect is exhibited by the continued flow of money to the project despite three decades of failure." Continue reading →

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The Ecuadorian Library: or, The Blast Shack After Three Years

"Snowden sure is a dissident defector, and boy is he ever. Americans don’t even know how to think about characters like Snowden — the American Great and the Good are blundering around on the public stage like blacked-out drunks, blithering self-contradictory rubbish. It’s all 'gosh he’s such a liar' and 'give us back our sinister felon,' all while trying to swat down the jets of South American presidents. These thumb-fingered acts of totalitarian comedy are entirely familiar to anybody who has read Russian literature. The pigs in Orwell’s 'Animal Farm' have more suavity than the US government is demonstrating now. Their credibility is below zero." Continue reading →

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Satoshi Nakamoto: Natural Elite to the Rescue

"As the financial world melted down in 2008, a person or group of people developed the cyber-currency Bitcoin under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. This innovation epitomizes the natural elite in action. This brilliant work, done anonymously, is, after only four years, providing a sound alternative to debauched government currencies. No political grandstanding. No interviews from Capitol Hill. No ghost-written rants in the Wall Street Journal. No horse trading or sausage making. This is the simple creation of a product to satisfy human desires. A product people trade with voluntarily, not through the force of legal tender laws." Continue reading →

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State Sponsored Terrorism: Another Anniversary

"August 6 marks the 68th anniversary of a truly horrific example of state sponsored terrorism. It was on this date that the United States government dropped a nuclear bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. This was followed by an even more callous example of state sponsored terrorism three days later, with the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki. There was no military reason for these acts of state sponsored terrorism. This military myth has been exposed for the lie that it is. Don’t take my word for it: ask Admiral Leahy and General Eisenhower. That the myth persists is a testament to the indoctrination schemes of public education and mainstream media." Continue reading →

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Why So Much Faith in Supreme Court Justices?

"A quick reading of the decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) should cause any reasonable person to question the assumption of judicial infallibility, and the wisdom of granting judges the definitive and final say in all cases. In essence, the Supreme Court declared black people inferior and that even free blacks were not citizens under the Constitution. The court reasoned that since black people – even those not held in slavery – were not citizens and possessed no rights, Scott had no standing to sue in court." Continue reading →

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Will Grigg: Abolish Your Local Police

"Ronald Weekley, Jr. , a 20-year-old college student from Venice, California, was riding his skateboard on the 'wrong side' of the street in front of his house when he was assaulted by four armed gangsters and severely beaten. The assailants then abducted the victim and accused him of a criminal offense because he was insufficiently docile while being beaten. They also claimed that Weekley had previously been seen on their turf, without permission, after sundown. The assailants belonged to that privileged caste of social misfits and intellectually stunted functionaries called 'police officers.'" Continue reading →

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Indian central bank has debased the rupee 99% vs the dollar; no hope in next Guv too

"The rupee has lost almost 99 percent of its value against the US dollar since 1947 when the rupee was at parity with the dollar. The dollar itself has been no great paragon of virtue and has lost 98 percent of its value against gold in the same period ($35/ounce in 1947 to around $1,330 today). So to state the the RBI has decimated the value of the rupee would actually be an understatement of sorts. But it continues to amaze me when I see the RBI Governors being extolled to the realm of divinity by the media. 'Headless Chicken' would be a much more appropriate description of how they have performed over the last few decades." Continue reading →

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Courts Quietly Move From “May” Convict to “Must” Convict Jury Instructions Over 40 Years

"The Dougherty case began in 1969 when nine pacifist Catholic priests and nuns broke into the D.C. offices of Dow Chemical Corporation to protest the company’s production of Napalm for the Vietnam War. There were similar antiwar protests being staged elsewhere during the period, including the cases of 'the Catonsville Nine' (who burned draft board files), the 'Baltimore Four' (ditto), the 'Harrisburg Seven' (tried for mentioning the possible kidnapping of Henry Kissinger in intercepted letters), the 'Milwaukee 14' (tried for burning draft records), and the 'Harrisburg Seven' (tried for planning to arrest Henry Kissinger for waging an illegal war [..])." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCourts Quietly Move From “May” Convict to “Must” Convict Jury Instructions Over 40 Years