Blackcap Blog

Published at 22:35 on 15 February 2013

I actually know — or, used to know; I cut off all contact with him when he started cavorting with fascists — the guy they are talking about. He’s a longtime activist that had done many positive things in Portland.

He was always deficient in the critical thinking department, which might provide some explanation for what he’s been up to in recent years. I remember him once trying to convince me that David Icke’s conspiracy theory about shape-shifting space aliens infiltrating human society was plausible and reasonable.

Perhaps even a more plausible explanation is that what he’s seeking is to mainly be the member of an exclusive “club” which is “in” on some knowledge that the rest of the world is not. Any sort of non-mainstream scene can furnish that; its values and whether or not its shared beliefs conform to logic and observable reality are irrelevant for such purposes.

Regardless, it’s tragic. It’s particularly tragic that Citybikes hasn’t taken the commonsense step of voting the guy out of any sort of position involving power or prestige in their organization. (It’s a worker’s co-op, so they easily could.) Yes, he did play a key role in forming the collective. Too bad — past good works should not serve to excuse one from present accountability.

And yes, Calvert does cavort with known fascists. Here’s him shamelessly and fawningly introducing one at a so-called “9-11 Truth” society meeting in 2009.

As such, it’s especially tragic that I have to say I find Rose City Antifa’s call to boycott the establishment sounds like a reasonable response. Though I do take issue with their demands that Calvert be fired; I think a demotion would be sufficient. He has a right to express his views, reprehensible though they may be. What he has no right to is any sort of respect for those views.

It’s a great store, and I generally believe that worker’s collectives deserve all the support they can get, so it really pains me to come to any sort conclusion in favor of boycotting one.

Published at 19:27 on 10 February 2013

Unlike most liberals, Peter DeFazio gets it.

For a particularly egregious example of just how wrong the outcomes of carbon trading can be, consider how it is enabling indigenous people in Chiapas who live very modestly being moved off their land so that Californians can continue their fossil-fuel-intensive lives unchanged.

If you want a modest first step that can easily fit within Establishment politics, it would be a carbon tax (levied at the point of purchase of any fossil fuel), not casino capitalist games with “trading” carbon emissions. Worries about such as scheme being regressive taxation or leading to growth of government can be addressed by making it an “untax“: a revenue-neutral tax that simply goes into a trust fund which is refunded to all equally on a per-capita basis. Wastrels will end up losing, and the carbon-thrifty will be rewarded; the poor will tend to come out winners simply because they can’t afford to consume much, even though they might spend a higher percentage of their income on fossil fuels than the non-poor.

Published at 10:05 on 7 February 2013

The conventional wisdom is that Rudy Guiliani as mayor was responsible for turning around New York’s crime problem. Not so fast:

Giuliani took office in 1993, when the declining-crime trend was well underway. Crime rates were dropping rapidly when the much-maligned liberal David Dinkins was mayor, and had first started dropping when centrist Ed Koch (whose terms are off the left edge of the chart) was mayor.

New York’s turnaround from its low point in the 1970s has been a long process which has spanned the terms in office of three mayors. Giving all the credit for it to Giuliani is like giving all the credit for building a house to the drywall hangers and painters.

Moreover, a big part of the decline in NYC and elsewhere has been simple demographics and not public policy at all: Statistically, young men are the most likely to commit crimes, and the US population has been aging, causing that demographic to represent a shrinking fraction of the nation’s population.

Published at 07:47 on 5 February 2013

So, it’s OK to kill Americans extrajudicially overseas, not because of any specific evidence they are planning to launch attacks, but simply because they are part of an organization which is “continually” planning attacks. (Which is not to imply that extrajudicial executions of anyone are ever morally justifiable, just pointing out the ever-slipping standards.)

Well all righty now.

By the way, just when is the President planning his next overseas trip, anyhow?

Update: full document here.

Published at 20:03 on 5 December 2012

Some months ago, I wrote a rant about what I believed to be the capitalist censorship of radical political opinion. It seemed a reasonable thing to presume at the time: the building in question had been a disused eyesore for over a decade, mainly serving as a venue for advertising posters of various sorts.

And then a radical political group appropriates it for their own message, followed quickly by the building being surrounded by fencing. Mere coincidence? Highly unlikely.

Unlikely or no, I feel safe now saying that it does indeed appear to have been coincidence. There’s been an ever-increasing amount of activity at the site since it was fenced, and it’s now quite obvious that the building is in the process of being gutted and renovated.

Moral of the story is that even fair dice sometimes come up snake eyes.

Published at 07:37 on 5 December 2012

The most important thing to remember about the “Fiscal Cliff” the Establishment types are obsessing over is that it is merely a law, not a Constitutional mandate. All it takes to change or repeal a law is a new law. That’s hardly anything extraordinary.

In other words, “going over a cliff” is a very poor analogy. It’s a curious kind of cliff, one that can be wished away at basically any time, even after one has “gone over” it. All Congress needs to do is pass a law retroactively repealing the “Fiscal Cliff”.

The nervous mobs that rule the fiscal markets may get a few jitters about the process until it is all settled, but there is approximately zero chance that the “cliff” will fully and lastingly go into effect with all its drastic measures intact.

Published at 19:40 on 3 December 2012

Introduction. This is going to be a somewhat long and rambling collection of thoughts prompted by a visit to Vashon Island last weekend. Conventional blogging wisdom says I’m not being a very good blogger big gaps in activity punctuated by periods when I post lots of content.

To hell with the conventional wisdom. Regarding the first electrical communications medium, Thoreau once wrote:

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

Well, often times I have nothing meaningful to communicate. In those cases, the most appropriate course of action is to post nothing.

On last Saturday. I spend most of the day (and the following night) on the island, visiting some friends, touring artist’s studios, communing with nature, and generally evaluating Vashon Island as a possible place to move to and live one day.

On primal beauty. One of my favorite places on the island is Maury Island Marine Park (despite its name, Maury Island is connected by an isthmus to Vashon Island, making it a peninsula rather than an island of its own). Much of it is a pretty ravaged landscape, having once been a large sand and gravel quarry.

No matter. Nature is continually reasserting itself, showing that in the big picture, on the scale of eons, civilization’s depredations, catastrophic though they may be, will be but a fleeting departure from the normal wild state of things. Already madrone are spreading from the surrounding forest, colonizing the once-bare land, the sunny, denuded slopes being to the liking of this drought-adapted species near the northern limits of its range. Many of these relatively young trees are already the brilliantly intense red berries that are their fruit, ensuring that the pace of afforestation will only accelerate in the coming years.

So there it was, little bits of red so intense and vibrant littering the ground, contrasting so strikingly with the overall grayish-blue dusky scene. I didn’t even bother attempting to photograph any; some things must simply be experienced. Art always falls short of wild nature, serving at best as a reminder to get out and appreciate it.

On feelings, reason, and rationalization. Ultimately, it is the feelings inspired by direct, unmediated exposure to primal beauty and not logic or science which will save both the natural world and the possibility for freedom to exist. That’s not because science and logic have no value, but because they are merely amoral tools. It is as easy to construct arguments — logical arguments based on scientifically-determined evidence — against freedom and wildness as it is to construct arguments in their favor. We are ultimately not rational animals but rationalizing ones.

The forces of capitalism ensure that almost all the money is on the side of the destroyers. How do you privatize and monetize beauty and freedom? You can’t. But you can easily to both to natural resources, even when extracting these resources destroys beauty and freedom.

On Anarchism, Evolution, and Freedom. That freedom is possible is probably the greatest and best thing about the world and universe we find ourselves in. That’s probably why most authoritarian power structure value organized religion and why the advocates of both tend to get so upset when the lack of evidence for their boss in heaven is pointed out. The existence of our 3 billion year old biosphere proves that leaderless systems can work and create a lasting order — and order that has lasted at least six full orders of magnitude longer than any hierarchical civilization has lasted.

With all its warts and drawbacks, I can think of no better way to exist as a sentient being than as the way I do, in fact, exist — as an animal, as a product of a freely-organized and freely-evolved natural order in a world where the pursuit of greater freedom for all beings is possible. Morbidity and mortality are small prices to pay for this possibility of freedom.

On commuting. I tend to forget the above when I get wrapped up in my workaday city life. It’s particularly a hazard in a place like Seattle, which has not done a good job of preserving any large swath of nature close to the inner city. There is no Forest Park, Point Defiance Park, or East Bay regional park system here. One must cross a wide moat of sprawl in order to get to anything reasonably wild.

Of course, were I to live outside of the city that would not be the case. But it would be no win for either myself or the environment — I’d merely be replacing commuting to nature once a week with commuting to the office five times per week. Under my present circumstances, commuting cannot be eliminated, only minimized.

I hope to make the transition to mostly telecommuting within a year. That would make living out of the city more of a net win, if I could get my in-person appearances down to a weekly or fortnightly level.

On island living. This takes me full circle back to where I was on Saturday. Overall, I feel save saying now that Vashon is about what my previous observations led me to believe. It’s not a particularly good match for me. Although it’s not an awful match, and I could probably make it work, there’s a few things about it that give me pause.

For one, grocery shopping — a routine task for which it is thus critical to be able to accomplish on-island — the options are significantly more limited than on the mainland. There’s a small natural-foods store, but the key word is small. There’s a nice Thriftway supermarket there, but that is still slim pickings compared to the food co-ops found in Seattle (or in Bellingham, Mount Vernon, or Olympia).

There’s also a moat — one of water, this time — between the island and any truly large wild areas. Most of the island itself is exurban in character; there are many hobby farms on lots of 5 to 50 acres there. Swaths of wild land tend to be limited in number and size. If I’d want access to any wilderness, it would mean a ferry ride. Sure, there’s always bicycling the back roads on the island, but I’d still be on a machine on a paved road — not as good as being barefoot in the wilderness.

So, probably not. With the proviso that any future living arrangement I transition to is going to depend strongly on some particulars. If I find a home on Vashon which is in all other ways ideal, then I could see perhaps deciding to accept the other limitations of the place.

Realistically, though, the odds are against my finding that otherwise perfect match there.

Published at 19:17 on 29 November 2012

After covering the recent internet blackout in Syria, NPR All Things Considered had one of those basically useless wastes of breathable oxygen known as professional pundits come on to discuss the story. He was full of BS about how the USA so much better than that, and respects free speech so that anything of the sort would be “impossible” here.

Ignoring completely, of course, the inconvenient fact that the US ruling elite would like very much to have that capability, has sought it in the past, and almost certainly will seek it again. Oops!

Published at 21:20 on 14 November 2012

An astounding bit of progress, and the marijuana legalization is, for the first time in my memory, the United States (well, two states) actually starting to take the lead on something progressive for a change. (Same-sex marriage was the law of the land on other countries before the first state in the Union legalized it. Ditto for universal health care, which Obamacare really isn’t, given the cracks and gaps in that program, as much as it will dramatically expand coverage. But even The Netherlands never actually flat-out legalized cannabis use; they merely decided to stop enforcing the laws against possession of small amounts of it.)

But, there’s still plenty to do, particularly on global warming and ecological sustainability.

Published at 22:35 on 1 October 2012

A prime example of that can be seen by considering the abandoned building at 11th Avenue E. and Pine St. in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. For over a decade it’s been disused for any purpose save for those of bill-posters. It’s typically covered in ads for upcoming music performances and whatnot.

Well, about a month ago, a group called Grrrl Army decided to appropriate that space for their own. It was a wonderful action which provided a glimpse of what a world where advertising is used to challenge people to become better individuals, instead of simply to turn a profit, could be like:

This was arguably vandalism, but then again, so was the postering of every available vertical street-facing surface on this structure, which to reiterate has been tolerated for a decade or more. But, it’s postering with a political meaning (as opposed to postering to encourage people to spend money). We can’t have that!

The building’s owners saw to promptly erect a fence to prevent any such further defilement of their precious dilapidated eyesore from happening again:

What’s particularly amusing about this is that the structure, post-Grrrl Army action, was far more attractive than it had been in years. The unified effect of everything being the same basic color scheme made it look significantly better than the disorganized collection of advertising which it had previously borne. It’s not just me who thinks so, either: a number of my friends volunteered the same opinion.