Sunday, December 19, 2010

the corruption of power

The government strong-arms Bank of America to stop dealing with Assange's Wikileaks because the government can't think of anything else to do, feels it can't defend itself against the truth, and so must set about to "influence" corporations and other governments and assassinate characters in order to curtail a truth teller.

I don't know if Assange did the criminal things he's accused of doing (apparently legal entities in the UK believed he hadn't, since they released him from custody), but I do know what our government does to people, I know how it lies to hide truth that it finds inconvenient, I know how it corrupts bureaucrats into doing its dirty work.

[In fact, there is no 'it' in the government; 'it' does not act, corrupt agents of the government act, against the ideals of our democracy. Higher up agents corrupt lower agents to act in a conspiratorial fashion to subvert the rule of law. Politicians and quasi-governmental agents (corporate goons) put their own interests ahead of the people.]

Under the broadest definition of terrorism, which our government chooses to use all the time to characterize fanaticism and computer malfeasance, the government itself is a terrorist organization. Yeah, it doesn't actually kill people...well, now wait a minute...yes it does. Maybe we don't need so broad a definition after all.

I'm less and less happy with this government as time goes on. I thought we elected Obama to end this shit. Meet the new boss... The US government is a terrorist organization in the same way as local cops are the most powerful street gang in any given area. Authoritarianism claims its privilege to overpower any dissent. What democracy?

Gotta Revolution.

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Friday, December 3, 2010

moral concerns

Never mind the moral concerns, if you're prosecuting a war, at whatever level, whether as leader of a nation, as a grunt in the field, as paper pusher in an office, or as a citizen who supports the efforts of any of the former (including spouses and children who give aid and comfort and thereby further enable the bellicose actions of the various warrior classes), then you are compromising (at best, or far worse, debilitating) the future of this planet and the human species.

Lives are being lost, lives of people who might have one day contributed significant knowledge and wisdom to our great adventure, who might have acted to relieve much suffering and further death, who might have advanced us much farther along toward becoming the benevolent and humane species we are capable of being, who might have found a way to more effectively negate the nastiness strain that currently runs through our basic human nature.

And an incredibly enormous amount of money is being wasted on campaigns and munitions, money that could be used to advance us in the same ways as people who are dying might have, that could be used for medical and genetic research, that could raise humanity up to levels previously unthought of, not only some few of us, but everyone. Those of us who think this is a bad idea, who smugly claim that wars (and poverty) kill off the worst of us, can go to hell (and will).

President Obama: You are responsible here. You market yourself as a caring politician, which is why we elected you, despite the intense opposition of warmongers, greedmongers, and bigots. And yet you allow their policies and practices to proliferate, you even adopt them and adapt them to your own political agenda. This is not acceptable. You are selling the future of the planet and its populations for present day political convenience. Stop it! Come out from among them.

Actually, now that I think back on it, these are moral concerns.

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