Marine on thanking him for his service.

I hate it when people thank me for my service, and I know it seems douchey, I refuse to accept it. I tell them there is nothing to thank me for. Nothing I did improved their quality of life. Like this guy said, I trained to be a killer. This isn't the middle ages anymore. Not only that, but my time in the military wasn't spent doing anything actually productive for this nation. While I did actually spend my time on my one deployment doing something useful for our military(communications for an airfield) it shouldn't have even been necessary. Who was really benefiting from my services? The people trying to kill the Iraqis. Clearly it didn't help our economy. If anything I should be hated for participating in a blatant waste of our country's limited funds.

Plus, I don't like being reminded of my time served. It's not something I'm proud of. To me it's similar to thanking a criminal for the time he spent in prison. I was stuck in a contract for 5 years serving a country who's actions I don't exactly approve of. And I couldn't even leave of my own volition. There is no easy way out of the military, and if you do get out then you are screwed for the rest of your life. If you do stay in then you get viewed in some sort of preferential light in some cases, which is completely undeserved. It is not the highest quality of life, either. If you don't meet their regulations you get yelled at like a dog who just peed on the carpet.

I can testify that the character of the people in the military is in general not of a high caliber. A majority of the people I served with were of less than average intelligence and of low morals. A lot of them thought it would be cool to see combat and get to kill Iraqis. I don't see how anyone should be thanked for that. This nation's propaganda has turned us into heroes when we have done absolutely nothing to deserve it. As a network administrator in the military my job was to sit around on a computer browsing the internet and occasionally troubleshooting computers when someone had a problem. This makes us heroes? Well we should be worshiping every tech support guru that we see.

So, in the end, I agree with what this man says. Don't thank me for my service. It was a 9-5 job except when I was deployed on a deployment that I shouldn't have even been on. Anyone that still thinks that we're in the middle east fighting for justice because of 9/11 needs to think again.

Plans Made To Smash Window

Yesterday, a group of black clad anarchists gathered together under the cover of night to make plans of breaking a window, or a whole bunch of them. The targets planned to be hit included Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, every police station, the IMF, Noam Chomsky's house, and a Pizza Hut. The projected damages would have ranged anywhere between $20 to $50,000,000,000 if the attacks had actually occurred. Several cigarettes (valued at a cost of approximately 3 dollars) were also torched in the discussions, against their collective house's “no smoking inside, unless it's weed” rule. The attack was nearly identical to hundreds of others imagined, proposed, bottomlined and forgotten in the same vicinity over the last few years. This was also the same gang of insurgents whose fierce passionate discussions had forced Merrill Lynch into bankruptcy and scared President George W. Bush into fleeing the capitol in early However this discussion escalated the recent string of imaginary retributions, because Blockbuster Video was added to the drawing board of potential spots to make social war on and because the cell was able to use nonverbal signals to indicate that they should take the batteries out of their cell phone, giving the pigs no chance to see this incendiary conversation coming. [OMG I was at that meeting!!!]

The plans fell through when the affinity group ran out of coffee and someone saw a police car on the bike ride to the store to get more coffee. Though the full force of their blow was restrained by this brutal state repression, this imaginary action was a lot more rad than every action that has actually occurred (outside of Greece) in years. The cadre celebrated how awesome they are at making up badass ideas over a Doctor Who marathon on SyFy over 40s and fell asleep to a CD playing NWA's “Fuck Tha Police” on repeat, letting the whole night echo with raw anti-state rage.

A pair of glasses were actually broken a few hours later when one of our comrades rolled over in their sleep, crushing them and making a tangible blow against one of the most alienating manifestations of the totality. We all made it away from the discussion safe and uncaptured, free to talk about fighting another day. The state whimpered away to nurse its wounds, we talked about maybe dumpster diving upon waking up at 2 PM, and in our imaginations we will smash even more windows tonight... or maybe even draw some circle A's in sidewalk chalk, in the real world. To the pacifists, snitches, cops, boring leftists and other collective houses that have been reading our minds: GTFO, cause we're down as fuck around here and we're planning to burn it all down. Till all pictures of prisons have flames drawn on them, we'll only rest eight hours a day. And then we'll dream of burning more shit down. We are the birds of the coming storm, and we promise it's coming sometime in the next few decades

Solidarity with the Asheville 11, Conspiracy Cells of Fire, Oscar Grant, Tortuga, Eric McDavid, all the normal people that go to jail for badass shit like robbing banks and counterfitting money and everyone that drank themselves to sleep tonight.

-some imaginary insurgents

If A Tree Falls

I watched this documentary on Netflix last night titled, "If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front". Earth Liberation Front (ELF) is the collective name for autonomous individuals or covert cells who engage in economic sabotage and the destruction of private property to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment, also known as a form of direct action. The documentary follows one cell in Oregon from their actions all the way to their initial arrest and later prosecution. It demonstrates how the police were able to bluff, lie, and be able to coerce one member into revealing and incriminating the rest of his cell. This gave police an upper hand into being able to coerce many more cell members into exposing and incriminating each other. To put this into an example, police would go to one member and say, "So and so told us this about you. You are going to go to jail for a long long time unless you give me information about so and so."

Three things stood out to me in this movie which I'm going to write about: the power of direct action, the lack of courage, intuition, and intelligence amongst the cell members, and the government using their prosecution to claim a victory on domestic terrorism.

The power of direct action when compared to picket line protest, civil disobedience, and working with public officials is astounding. Wild horses were being gathered up on government owned lands and shipped to this company's slaughterhouse to be killed and sold off. Citizens protested, wrote public officials, and did nonviolent civil disobedience to try and make it stop for ten years, to no avail. Late one night, four members of ELF set off fire bombs and burned the slaughterhouse to the ground. The company never recovered from this and the slaughtering of wild horses stopped. What masses of people had been trying to achieve for ten years was accomplished by four members of ELF in just a few hours.

The actions of this cell spread and inspired others. By 2010 there were ~1,200 ELF direct actions and not a single person was injured or killed. The cell eventually disbanded after an action based on incorrect information burned down the property of an innocent company. Three years went by and the police caught whim of one of the cell's members, Jake Ferguson, stealing a truck on the night of one action. They thought this was strange and called him in for questioning using a petty crime he had committed as the cause.

During the questioning the police appealed to Ferguson's emotions as well as made subtle threats about where his life would end up because they could send him to prison for the rest of his life for his involvement with ELF unless he cooperated. The tactics the police used on him worked, and Ferguson agreed to fully cooperate with the police's wishes. This meant Ferguson would tell them everything he knew, testify in court, and wear a wire while running around the country "accidentally" running into old cell members and getting them to talk about past events and actions. He turned out to be a gold mine because he was the one who really started off as the driving force and mastermind of the cell.

If the police ever tell a person they are going to send them away to prison unless they cooperate, they don't have enough evidence to incriminate at all. The whole point of the deal is to get more information. Reality is not a T.V. show, if police have enough evidence to send someone away to prison they will act on it, not try to gather more. Ferguson should have asked to see the evidence they have, and when they failed to show it, leave the questioning and find a way to covertly inform all his cell members that the police have no evidence and are trying to threaten, bluff, and lie their way to getting one of them to snitch on the others. Ferguson did not do this, instead he chose full cooperation.

Ferguson willing to testify in court against his cell members turned out to not be enough to incriminate them though, so he wore a wire and went all around the country invoking incriminating conversations with old cell members. The film shows Ferguson stating that this was the hardest thing to do and that the police had to mentally pump him up to get him to do this. Ferguson remarks that he had no other choice, he either cooperated with the police or go to jail for life because he had already admitted to doing all these actions.

There is always a choice. Ferguson had to cooperate with the police, but at the same time did not want to go from cell member to cell member gathering incriminating conversations with them. So what does one do? Ferguson should have found a way to alert his fellow cell members that the police had made a deal with him to get them to talk and warned them not to say anything incriminating. The film reenacts Ferguson sitting with David McGowan at a park bench and "reminiscing" about past actions. Ferguson could have had a piece of paper resting on his thigh that read, "Police listening, don't incriminate yourself." This is just one example, each situation would call for something different. The point is Ferguson made no effort to warn his fellow cell members.

At the same time, the cell members were also rather idiotic. After an action, the only time one talks about the details of it are in the immediate debriefing. They should have seen a huge red flag that a cell member, who many haven't spoken to for years, is suddenly around and wanting to talk about past actions. They should have sensed this and warned all their other cell members not to discuss anything with Ferguson.

Even with all the tape recordings provided by Ferguson, the police still didn't have enough evidence. They began offering the same deals to other cell members for lesser sentences and many of them agreed. (See http://earth-liberation-front.org/those_who_cooperated.htm)

The US Government felt this case important because it would allow the destruction of private property to be considered terrorism even though no one got hurt or killed. Those who refused to cooperate with the police ended up serving anywhere from three to thirteen years and being legally labeled as a terrorist and held in a special terrorist prison in Idaho. The US Government then claimed victory on terrorism and masqueraded Ferguson around as several people were put into prisons.

One question needs to be asked and this is it:

If the ELF is the “number one domestic terrorism threat,” if it is “violent” and “dangerous,” and if Ferguson was the lead arsonist of the most destructive ELF cell in U.S. history... how is he walking free? If these activists are truly national security threats, Ferguson, of all people, should be behind bars.

Occupy Oakland: General Strike

I was not in Oakland or at the General Strike. Everything below is a work of fiction and should not be taken literally or acted upon. Due to legal reasons I want everyone to know that the realistic composition of the cartoon My Little Ponies is much more serious and true than the fictitious blog spot I am about to write.

The general strike at Occupy Oakland on November 2nd was a long and eventful day. I am going to write a summary of the days events and then briefly write some random thoughts and analysis.

I urge you not to live vicariously through this post or other media coverage about the event. Go visit and start a dialogue at your local Occupy Movement or put flyers/news articles up all over your neighborhood on a weekly basis.

Summary:

• Total turnout throughout the entire day had to be at least 100,000 people.


• The early morning marches to Well Fargo, Citigroup, Chase, and Bank of America had about 3,000 people and involved people sitting in front of the bank doors for about fifteen minutes and writing "Withdraw Only" on the ATMs before moving to the next bank. Pictures from this march.


• The anti-capitalist march at 2pm saw a black bloc smashing the windows at these banks and Whole Foods (CEO busts unions and fights for corporate healthcare while the local owner threatens workers regularly) while spray painting on them. About 30 people screaming "Non-Violent Protest" were actively attacking the black bloc. The general consensus is the crowd felt vandalism is violent. Video One. Video Two.


• If someone throws a battery to break a window, you shouldn't pick it up after and put it in your pocket. The battery is probably broken and will leak battery acid all over your thigh.
  


• Even though chaotic and unorganized, the march to shut down the port of Oakland (fourth biggest port in U.S.) from 5-8pm was successful. 20,000 people marched to the closest berths to blockade them while a critical mass bike ride of 1,000 people rode to the farthest berths. Helicopter footage.


• On the march back from the port a driver keeps edging forward slowly, someone pounds on his hood, and the driver floors his car ramming several protesters. Footage.


• My hands absolutely reeked of tuna after spending two hours making tuna fish sandwiches for hundreds of people. Some homeless guy said he's been eating better in the past two weeks than he has in years thanks to Occupy Oakland.


• At around 10pm a building is taken over and occupied. A crowd of seven hundred masses outside while music plays, the walls are painted, and barricades are constructed. News that five hundred riot cops are assembling.
  


• Cops slowly work towards the building from three different streets, threatening use of "non-lethal" force (Scott Olsen argues otherwise) if crowd does not disperse. Barricade is set on fire to protect against tear gas and cops fire flash bangs and rubber bullets. Roughly ten protesters respond with rocks and bottles. Cops launch tons more flash bangs and unleash tear gas. Video One.


• I learn from tear gas what it's like to suffocate to death and vinegar on a mask doesn't do shit. My eyes felt like someone was holding a match up to them. Never before have I ever been so happy to have someone squirt creamy white liquid into my eyes. As of now I'm still trying to figure out what I did to warrant being attacked like this by the police. I will make light of the situation by jokingly admitting tear gas is a wonderful way to clear out my sinuses.
  


• Tear gas spreads to the camp, people and kids are waking up in their tents and choking. People with gas masks are collecting rubber bullets to make necklaces exclaiming that there's business opportunities from police brutality.
  


• I take off running as cops come pouring out a nearby alley blockading seventy protesters and shooting flash bangs at them while beating others with batons. Cops shine flashlights on media cameras to blind them. Police injure another vetern during this time by rupturing his spleen.
  


• Entire downtown area is covered with spray paint by this point. Undercover police officer who has been trying for hours to incite the crowd to riot breaks a window at the Men's Warehouse. Someone else breaks a window at a large local coffee chain.
  


• I watch the police line for a bit then head to the camp. There's a lot of fear that the camp is going to get raided tonight. I sleep on a park bench waiting so I can help defend the camp if that happens. Most of the people edging for police confrontation are gone at this point.
  


• Police are mostly gone by 4am and camp is safe for one more day. Some guy approaches me and is acting crazy. He is on crack, has nunchucks, and threatens to kick my ass because I'm wearing all black. Another crack head rolls over and goes back and fourth saying I'm only not getting my ass kicked because cops are nearby and that he's only full of love. Some other girl who isn't on crack says my outfit is really popular and that she's going to help kick my ass because of all the graffiti that I did. One of the crackheads chime in at this point that I'm a member of an Anti-Israel 9/11 Terrorist group and that there's thirty of me in every city. I am pretty scared, but good at dealing with people so I calm the situation and give them all tuna fish sandwiches.
  


• Head home and find a fourteen year old on the corner having an asthma attack at 4:30am from all the tear gas. His face is white even though he's black, can't breathe, can't talk, and his eyes are drooling. I call an ambulance and a firetruck. I tell him to remain calm and focus on his breathing. Paramedics come and save the day.
  


• Twitter feed the following day is full of people discussing how vandalism is violence and how anarchist have no place in Occupy Oakland.
  

Random Thoughts and Analysis:

• Liberal hypocrisy will never cease to astound me. I am just absolutely in awe at why the liberal reactions to the anarchist black bloc are so much greater than their reaction to the continuing violence perpetrated by societies that maintain prisons, executions, wars, condone homelessness, bankruptcy from health care costs, and allow companies that kill workers and pollute the world to continue giving bonuses and dodging taxes. Most liberals agree that corporations are not people, so then why when a corporate window is smashed they immediately scream "VIOLENCE!!!" as if a person has been shot? Lovely brainwashing is lovely. The marching on the port was WAY more destructive than a few broken windows and spray painted walls.



• Most of the people at the end of the day occupying the building, building barricades, and setting shit on fire were being idiots. Entire population's lives are reliant on this movement to succeed and idiots are out having dance party's in front of a building occupation, all of which would run away at the first sign of cops and tear gas. If you take over a building be ready to defend it and do something productive with it, not just turn it into some temporary "anarchist" photo-op. Here's some additional and excellent analysis of this act.



• The twitter calls about how anarchism has no place in Occupy Oakland is completely insane because the entire movement is based on anarchism. The general assembly, affinity groups, occupying space illegally, communal living featuring medics, media, libraries, arts, etc., un-permitted marches, "Who Streets? Our Streets!", banner drops, food not bombs, and many other collective and non-hierarchical forms of action and organization from straight from anarchist theory and practice.



• It's easy to get caught up in the frenzy of the moment at a giant protest, but the truth is that there's two worlds. The small minute world of a protest and the giant world about people who don't know about it or just don't give a fuck about it. While the encampment at Occupy Oakland is inspiring and a good way to branch out actions, there's gotta be organization in people's neighborhoods and workplaces. This movement has to grow and talking to people outside of the camp is the only way to do it.

The Egyptian-backed US Dictatorship.

Egypt installed a dictator for various geo-political reasons in the United States thirty years ago, giving the dictator weapons all the while to enforce his domination over the population. This domination included economic misery and impoverishment for the citizens of the US as well as rampant torture and brutality for anyone speaking out.

Egyptian citizens are in complete ignorance of this, spending their time gluttonously collecting consumer goods and surrounding themselves with popular entertainment. Those who are aware shrug it off with meaningless sentences of "freedom isn't free" before going back to watching a $5,000 television set.

The citizens of the US rose up in mass protest a week ago. They hit the streets in the hundreds of thousands and demanded free elections. The police state fought back, killing many, but the US citizens were too much to handle. Eventually the military was brought in, and the Egypt-backed US dictator dressed its police force in civilians clothes and sent them around the country killing protesters. The point of this was to cause so much violence it would scare protesters away, encourage people not to further join the protest, and give an excuse for the military to step in and forcefully end the protest.

Egypt continued to support the dictator through weapon trades and backroom deals. They eventually made the announcement that the dictator should stay in order to "ensure transition to a new government". US citizens demanded a US where they could decide their own destinies, free from the influence and corruption of Egyptian foreign policy.

Egyptian citizens who were now paying attention stated some evil Christian, theocratic, terrorist state would be built if US citizens were given free elections.

The rebellion would be eventually squashed. A return to the status quo of US citizen's freedom continually subjugated through torture and brutality while being forcefully held in economic misery. The protesters would become increasingly violent, radical, and Christian - and they would not forget Egypt's role in all this.

California's Perpetually Late Budget

Want to know why California will never pass a budget on time, ever? We have to go back to 1978.

Real estate boomed in the late 1970s with property becoming more expensive due to the higher demand in the market. This in turn raised property taxes which are based on a percentage of property value. People began to get scared, some justifiably and most just stupidly, that their property taxes were going to start soaring and they would lose their homes.

Governor Jerry Brown at this time had amassed a huge surplus thanks to fucking over state workers. He did nothing to address people's fears over property taxes, even though many people told him to use the surplus to subsidize and/or lower property taxes.

Come the 1978 election cycle voters approved Proposition 13, and California has been fucked ever since.

Proposition 13 did two main things:
- Cut all property taxes to 1%.
- Require a 2/3rds majority in the legislature to raise taxes.

The first thing, cut property taxes to 1%. This completely gutted local governments who relied heavily on property taxes to raise funds. They were now bankrupt. Jerry Brown then used the surplus to bail out local governments, but only if they would agree to certain things. This essentially took power away from local governments and put it in the hands of state government.

Furthermore, by cutting property taxes, local governments had to find new ways of generating revenue. They looked to sales tax, which is a regressive tax that severely punishes poorer people. By relying more on sales tax, it influenced the jobs available in the community. Local governments wanting more sales tax would revenue often choose a retail outlet to build rather than a high-end tech job. Essentially, communities were given jobs at Wal-Mart rather than a Silicon Valley replica.

The second thing Prop 13 did, requiring a 2/3rd majority in the legislature to raise taxes. This on its own might not be a big deal, but couple it with California not being able to run a budget deficit and the budget requiring a 2/3rds majority vote to pass a budget and you have big problems. (Just to note: Only six other states in the country have a 2/3rds requirement in the Legislature for either raising taxes or passing a budget. Other than California, no state has 2/3rds for both.)

What this means is that 14 Senators can completely shut down State government - which they often do. Since California cannot run a deficit, to balance a budget you either have to raise taxes or cut spending. The 14 Senators have all the power in the world, as do the remaining 26 Senators. Both have a no compromise attitude. The 26 Senators do not want to compromise with a minority, and the 14 Senators know they have all the power and so do not feel the need to compromise. Each group are represented by different constituencies with different interests, therefore you will almost never be able to raise taxes. Choosing where to cut spending is also a challenge.

It is essentially a deadlock with nothing getting done.

The only reason the budget passed in 2009 is because the two leading Republicans of the House and Senate decided to sign the budget realizing the State was crumbling beneath them. The Republicans in the State Legislature were pissed and replaced them immediately followed by death threats from the constituency. I expect the gridlock for the 2010 budget to be just as bad (worse?) as in 2009, especially being a gubernatorial election year.

Solution to all this? Simple: get rid of Prop 13.

Start this process by approving Prop 25 in November which would require a simple majority vote to pass a budget rather than the super majority of 2/3rds.

After that, a movement for a referendum needs to start to put a Proposition on the 2011 ballot. The proposition needs to completely negate Proposition 13 and rewrite property tax laws, sales tax laws, and local government revenue streams.

Fears of property taxes would need to be alleviated somehow. I am for putting property completely under control of local governments. Most people will not be. Instead, perhaps property taxes could be dealt with as follows: if you are over the age of XX and you own/live a home less than XXX,XXX, you would only pay 1% property tax.

Some sort of addition to the Proposition would have to be made about making sales tax illegal and to include some other progressive revenue stream (income tax or car registration fees for example) for local governments.

-e.

Socialism is bad, I hate socialism.

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the Municipal Water Utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the Local, State, and Federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the Public School.

After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which has not burned down in my absence because of the State and Local Building Codes and the Fire Marshal's Inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it's valuables thanks to the Local Police Department.

I then log onto the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on FreeRepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

Mr. Michael Moore

Sorry for sending you to Ebaum's, but it's the only place that still has the video: Michael Moore's Oscar Acceptance Speech.

Michael Moore in a recent interview regarding the Oscar speech:

I went back to the hotel room that night, made the mistake of—my wife went to bed, and I stayed up with the remote control. In LA, after the Oscars, it’s only 9:00 in the evening, so every local channel has a, like, post-Super Bowl show. And every local—I just went around. “Well, that’s the end of Michael Moore.” “Why would he do that?” “Well, that’s the end of his career.” “No one’s going to give him a job here.” I mean, every channel was saying that. And I watched that literally for an hour. And by the time I went to bed, I believed it. I believed that was it, I’m toast.

We got back to Michigan. Our house was vandalized, horse manure spread everywhere, signs on the trees telling us to move to Havana, and everything else, which, when you live in Michigan in the winter, that actually doesn’t sound so bad.

And then life got—you know, I decided to say just to hell with it, and I, fifteen months later—in those fifteen months, I made Fahrenheit 9/11. And it was made during this time of constant death threats, constantly being attacked physically—and I’ve told you some of this before. I don’t really like to talk about it publicly, because I don’t want to encourage, you know, nuts to—but eventually, they had to put—I had a total of—it got up to nine bodyguards on me, three per shift, twenty-four hours a day, living with us.

You know, I mean, there was the guy in Nashville that came, jumped up on the stage with a knife. There was a guy in Portland that had a metal pipe coming at me. There was the guy in Fort Lauderdale who was just walking out of Starbucks and saw me on the sidewalk and became livid and took the lid off his hot, scalding coffee and threw it in my face. The bodyguard was so—I mean, he was so fast, he put his face in front of mine to catch it and got second-degree—we had to take him to the hospital, but not before he took the guy down on the sidewalk and handcuffed him. And then, there was the guy who was going to blow up our house. And he was making his practice bombs in Illinois, and one night one went off accidentally. He wasn’t hurt. The neighbors heard it. They called the cops, and they came there, and they saw all the materials and the list of people whose homes he was going to blow up. And it was Janet Reno, Rosie O’Donnell, Hillary and me. And how I made it on the lesbian list, I don’t know, but I—But Girlfriends Magazine, the following year, named me "Man of the Year," so—that’s the lesbian magazine. So, no, all I can—I try to laugh about it, because—anyways, he was convicted and went to the federal penitentiary.

And as I’ve said to you privately, I’ve wondered at times if I had it all to do over again, whether I actually would, because I don’t know if it’s been worth it, personally. I don’t think it’s been good for my health. I don’t think it’s been fair to my family to have to live in fear, to my eighty-nine-year-old father, who lives alone, who has to live with that fear, and all the security apparatus that has to be put in place to protect them. And the honest answer—I’d like to give you the brave answer, but the honest answer is I’m not so sure I would do it again, having gone through what I went through at that time. And I say that only because I’m human, and I’m every bit as frightened of not being able to finish my life as any of you would be.

But somehow I pushed through it. I have some very good friends and a wonderful family, and so many—you know, all of you and the people that keep going to my movies and send me lots of words of encouragement, and all my Twitter followers. So, I’m grateful for that, and I persevere and keep going. And I don’t know what I’m going to do next, because I’m not doing anything right now. But I’d like as many people as possible to see this last movie, and it’s because I think it says everything I want to say about how we’ve structured our society when it comes to how we treat each other.

Rest of the interview

-e.

The First 9/11.

Excerpt from Chomsky, "The Evil Scourge of Terrorism."
http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20100323.htm

I have been writing about international terrorism ever since Reagan declared a war on terror in 1981. In doing so, I have kept to the official definitions of "terrorism" in US and British law and in army manuals, all approximately the same. To take one succinct official definition, terrorism is "the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear." Everything I have just described, and a great deal more like it, falls within the category of terror ism, in fact state-directed international terrorism, in the technical sense of US-British law. For exactly that reason, the official definitions are unusable. They fail to make a crucial distinction: the concept of "terrorism" must somehow be crafted to include their terrorism against us, while excluding our terrorism against them, often far more extreme. To devise such a definition is a challenging task. Accordingly, from the 1980s there have been many scholarly conferences, academic publications, and international symposia devoted to the task of defining "terrorism." In public discourse the problem does not arise. Well-educated circles have internalized the special sense of "terrorism" required for justification of state action and control of domestic populations, and departure from the canon is generally ignored, or if noticed, elicits impressive tantrums.

Let us keep, then, to convention, and restrict attention to the terror they commit against us. It is no laughing matter, and sometimes reaches extreme levels. Probably the most egregious single crime of international terrorism in the modern era was the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, killing almost 3000 people, a "crime against humanity" carried out with "wickedness and awesome cruelty," as Robert Fisk reported. It is widely agreed that 9/11 changed the world.

Awful as the crime was, one can imagine worse. Suppose that al-Qaeda had been supported by an awesome superpower intent on overthrowing the government of the United States. Suppose that the attack had succeeded: al-Qaeda had bombed the White House, killed the president, and installed a vicious military dictatorship, which killed some 50-100,000 people, brutally tortured 700,000, set up a major center of terror and subversion that carried out assassinations throughout the world and helped establish "National Security States" elsewhere that tortured and murdered with abandon. Suppose further that the dictator brought in economic advisers who within a few years drove the economy to one of the worst disasters in its history while their proud mentors collected Nobel Prizes and received other accolades. That would have been vastly more horrendous even than 9/11.

And as we all should know, it is not necessary to imagine, because it in fact did happen: in Chile, on the date that Latin Americans sometimes call "the first 9/11," 11 September 1973. The only change I have made is to per capita equivalents, an appropriate measure. But the first 9/11 did not change history, for good reasons: the events were too normal. In fact the installation of the Pinochet regime was just one event in the plague that began with the military coup in Brazil in 1964, spreading with similar or even worse horrors in other countries and reaching Central America in the 1980s under Reagan -- whose South American favorite was the regime of the Argentine generals, the most savage of them all, consistent with his general stance on state violence.

When the Right Comes to Campus.

I don't understand why Libertarians of the right and Republican students even bother showing up to political debates at CSUS. One simply needs to ask them how they feel about government programs and then proceed to call then hypocrites for attending a government subsidized and managed school.

A girl was blabbing on and on about socialism this, socialism that.
I asked her, "Have you read any Marx? Any Bakunin? Rosa Luxembourg? Anton Pannekoek?"
She mumbled that she's read bits and pieces of Marx.
I said, "Bits and pieces? Okay, well I've read extensively from those authors, much more than bits and pieces, and you do not know what you are talking about."

A kid walked nearby wearing a "Meg 2010" t-shirt.
I said, "Hey! Hey man! Did you buy that on Ebay?"
"No, I got it form Meg Whitman herself."
"Oh ya, say... is it worth a billion dollars?"
"No."
"So, then I mean, what do you have in common politically and economically with a billionaire besides nothing?"

-e.