Blackcap Blog

Published at 16:53 on 17 July 2014

The immediate response to the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 shows that when an adversarial nation shoots down an unarmed passenger jet, the rhetoric is that there is absolutely no excuse for such barbarism and that it proves beyond a doubt the moral depravity of the attacking nation.

The response to the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 shows that when the US itself shoots down an unarmed passenger jet, the rhetoric is that even the finest militaries in the world sometimes make mistakes, therefore such things regrettably sometimes happen, and they cannot be construed to say much about the character of the nation which did the attacking.

The response to the terrorist attack against Cubana Flight 455 shows that attacks by non-state actors against civilian aircraft, too, aren’t a super-big deal if the aircraft is owned by the national airline of an adversarial nation, and certainly aren’t reason enough to deny political asylum to anyone responsible if you agree with their political aims.

Of course, if it’s a hostile terrorist organization, then it just shows what a menace terrorism is and why it must be stamped out.

Keep those in mind in the next few days as the news of the most recent tragedy evolves.

 

Published at 10:28 on 3 June 2014

That’s the Nucla gun law in a nutshell.

First, it’s a small rural Western town. As such, the local culture meant that firearm ownership was already the norm amongst residents.

Second, the law has so many loopholes as to be meaningless. Exempt are felons, the mentally disabled, the poor, and anyone whose religion or other beliefs lead them to object to owning a firearm. That italicized phrase is key: don’t want to own a gun, for whatever reason? You don’t have to.

The law may have the effect of scaring away tourists and some economic development, but that’s an issue for local residents to debate. It may be technically a law, but its actual effect is that of a nonbinding resolution.

In fact, all the whining about it actually shows it worked. The point of the law was to attract attention and to point out how many residents of rural Colorado disagree with the state legislature’s recent gun control legislation. As such, it’s succeeded admirably. A few people in a tiny town most never knew of succeeded in capturing the attention of the national news media.

Published at 13:16 on 30 May 2014

I don’t completely agree with everything said in it (it’s too dismissive of radical analyses), but this article is in general very accurate and makes some points I have made here myself previously. Warning: it’s not exactly brief.

Published at 13:45 on 2 May 2014

Here’s some comments on this gallery of photos released by the Establishment media. I hope they don’t add or delete pictures and thereby change the numbering. I suppose I could have mirrored them here, but that would have taken time, particularly if I had mirrored the captions (which are truly required as part of this critique).

No. 3. This is missing the context of what happened. The “superheroes” decided to first attack the protesters (myself amongst them) without warning or any apparent provocation. Note the partial view of the red “superhero” 3/4 of the way up and left of center; he had just charged without warning. The purple one was being tackled before he could likewise charge. I know; I was there. That’s my bicycle in the picture.

No. 7. Note the passive voice, as if the pepper spray suddenly materialized as a force of nature out of nowhere, sprayed by nobody.

No. 15 is actually pretty fair; it talks about “a protester” smashing the window, not “an anarchist”. Yes, there were many anarchists in that crowd, but that march had no political affinity test one had to pass to be eligible to participate in it, and a fair number had decided on the spur of the moment to participate. Absent a positive identification of the individual who damaged that window, and his or her political orientation, it’s not possible to say if it was smashed by an anarchist or not. I assume here that the window actually was smashed, and not damaged in some previous incident well prior to the march; perhaps I am being overly generous in my assumption.

No. 18. A “tussle”. No, he attacked without warning.

No. 22. Note the street sign in the background: 6th Avenue. That’s west of the Convention Center, where the attack pictured in No. 3 took place. The march was heading west at the time. So that photo was post-attack, an attack by the individual being flipped off. Offensive though it may be, a raised middle finger is not a violent act and is in fact protected free expression, and the context in which that gesture was made means it actually showed a degree of restraint (an obscene gesture was made, instead of a retaliatory attack).

No. 31. But why were the media censored? They don’t say. Answer: corporate media have shared their full footage with law enforcement in the past. So their cameras are effectively police spy cameras.

No. 41. This guy looks more “stunned” than “enraged” to me. If he was “screaming” wouldn’t his mouth be wide open? Instead he appears to be biting his lip in restraint.

No. 46. This caption actually appears to be fair. So far as I could tell, the driver of that car was not acting aggressively; it merely got caught up in the march (such things are bound to happen on unpermitted marches). I didn’t like the jumping on cars bit myself. (I also didn’t see much of it; basically this once and that was it.)

Published at 07:00 on 2 May 2014

I ran an experiment of sorts yesterday.

I deliberately chose to be as visibly anarchistic as possible (in the sense of what popular stereotypes about anarchist dress and mannerisms are), yet at the same time to scrupulously avoid causing any sort of lasting damage to any living beings or inanimate objects, and to refrain as much as possible from participating in any physical conflicts or clashes.

You see, I normally don’t dress all in black at demonstrations. It’s something I regard as trite (and, face it, it is trite). So yesterday’s experiment was to get an idea, by personal experimentation, of just how much repressive measures are directed against anarchists per se, as opposed to any unlawful conduct by individual anarchists. I don’t normally find myself the least bit personally at risk, even at demonstrations which are later portrayed as violent or unruly. How much of that immunity is the result of not adhering to stereotypes and thus being seen as not an anarchist and therefore not “deserving” repression?

And after narrowly avoiding getting injured or arrested in what can only be described as a brief police riot, and then again avoiding injury pretty narrowly when one of the so-called superheroes assaulted the march pretty much at random and without provocation, well, there’s the answer.

At neither time did I note any violence or property damage happening before either group attacked the march without warning (had I observed any such things, I would have physically distanced myself from them). That’s not to say that neither happened, only that neither happened near me; both conflicts were initiated not by myself or any other anarchist but by forces in opposition to us.

And note, this Seattle May Day is being reported in the media as tamer than other recent ones.

Published at 22:23 on 1 May 2014

I’m 51 years old, I marched in both the permitted immigrants’-rights rally and the unpermitted anarchist/anti-capitalist one. I wore black and chanted anarchist slogans.

I am hardly perfect, nor in my estimation particularly effective, but I have not sold out. Quite the contrary; I’m more radical now than I was in my twenties. Not because I sought out radicalism as a goal but I kept observing the world around me and thinking fearlessly about it.

In short, I am winning.I am winning because I have not sold my life away. Yes, I have a professional job that pays well, but my career is merely something I do to get by in this world, not my identity. The high-tech salary the system pays me can buy my labor but it can’t buy me. My mind is still my own, and I do not love Big Brother.

I could write many more things about today, but this will suffice for now.

Published at 20:11 on 4 March 2014

That’s what the brouhaha between Russia and the West over Ukraine strikes me as.

Really: the country that went into Iraq in an invasion of choice, and whose purportedly “opposition” party leaders refuse to even entertain the thought of prosecuting those responsible, acting as if it has some sort of principled moral objection to imperialist land grabs? It is to laugh.

And on the other side, the country that was so purportedly upset in principle when the West grabbed a chunk of Serbia, doing basically the same thing to the Ukraine? Statecraft, thy name is rank hypocrisy.

If that uprising had toppled a pro-Western regime, you can bet that the same talking heads bleating in unison about national sovereignty would instead be bleating in unison about the need to “restore order” via military intervention.

Pay no attention to the rhetoric; the words have no meaning in any real sense. It’s just how the hyenas snarl.

Published at 08:04 on 2 March 2014

Right wingers have been getting their panties in a knot over some recent remarks by Spike Lee.

Really, where? I don’t see any racial hatred there. There’s plenty of resentment against both a colonialist mentality in more affluent and generally White newcomers, and against a disparity in the quality and level of city services in Black neighborhoods, but that’s a very different thing from asserting that some people are particularly evil or inferior simply because of their race.

It’s actually an anti-racist rant, taking offense at what genuinely does seem to be an instance of White privilege.

I’m a White guy, and I don’t feel threatened or attacked by Lee’s remarks. I can’t even see how I would be should I happen to live in one of those NYC neighborhoods that Lee mentioned. Criticized, perhaps. But being criticized and being hated or threatened are completely different things.

Published at 10:49 on 12 February 2014

This is absolutely not a surprise.

Mark my words, the tunnel part of this project will end up costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 billion, i.e. about 2.5 times the official estimate. I’ve never committed this number to writing before, but it’s what I’ve long expected, based on the historical record of tunnel megaprojects going way over budget.

Published at 08:44 on 25 November 2013

I don’t care how frustrating and unprecedented the Republican blocking of judicial nominees is, and how hypocritical the Republicans are for opposing the same nuclear option they were advocating enacting when the tables were turned.

The tables will turn again, and when that happens the Democrats will sorely regret “going nuclear” as right-winger after right-winger sails through the Senate and onto the bench.

The foolishness of the current herd mentality is so transparently obvious that it is simply staggering that so many seem unable to see it.

Moreover, it will be made all the worse because the Republicans, unlike the Democrats, are firmly committed to their ideals and willing to pursue them with full vigor, so the rightward shift by the Republican appointees will overwhelm any leftward one put in place by the Democrats.