Brexit Frankly Surprised Me

Published at 17:37 on 29 June 2016

It does go to show that the sentiment which gave birth to the Trump phenomenon is not unique to the USA. As if there was ever any doubt. Italy had Berlusconi (and before that, Mussolini), France has the LePen family, Austria has a popular right-wing nationalist party, and so on. Smug Europeans have nothing to be smug about.

It’s a problems that has its roots in hierarchical class society. It doesn’t benefit the majority who live in it. The only way electoral democracy (or any open society) can be maintained under such a system is to have a powerful system of propaganda to keep the masses convinced to act counter to their best interests. And it has been shown, repeatedly, that the level of propaganda needed to do that, and the level of propaganda needed to sell fascism are dangerously close to each other

Reality-based politics is the only practical antidote to fascist myths, and that same reality is fatally toxic to class society, so absent revolutionary change it won’t happen and fascism will be an ever-present risk.

Zfacts Really Doesn’t Like Bernie

Published at 07:56 on 17 June 2016

Partly it’s a misunderstanding of his democratic socialist politics. Partly it’s an understanding but a personal disagreement with them. It’s lead to several smear pieces about him on their site, some of which come across as downright conspiracist, predicting he will do his darndest to defeat Hillary even if that means helping Trump.

It seems the latter have just been proven wrong. It’s a cautionary tale about not letting your personal emotions about something get in the way of being able to perceive and interpret facts.

Here’s Hoping the Viaduct Collapses Soon

Published at 10:16 on 18 April 2016

It’s going to be closed while Bertha tunnels under it, and given that there already have been subsidence and sinkhole issues caused by the tunneling, the chance of collapse-inducing damage is greater while at the same time the chance of the collapse actually hurting anyone is far lower.

Given that the Viaduct is on its last legs anyhow, it’s either going to collapse before it is demolished or be demolished before it collapses. And given how it’s already in territory that was previously proclaimed to be unsafe, but retroactively claimed to be safe, because the state doesn’t want to tear it down without a replacement in place, its best that the procrastinating be ended now.

And given that the tunnel project was always an unrealistic boondoggle, it’s better that it be cancelled sooner rather than later, as a result of its subsidence damaging an obsolete viaduct as opposed to a perfectly good and non-obsolete downtown building or two.

And once the viaduct is out of service for good, Seattle will then be compelled get busy with the process of figuring out how to live without it.

Capitalism Has Its Faults…

Published at 17:19 on 15 April 2016

(This is the second of two posts which I had written down intending to repost here long ago, and only just recently rediscovered.)

… huge ones, in fact. But it is still the economic system of classic liberalism, based on the pro-freedom insight that letting people do as they choose need not create chaos and dystopia and can in fact create peace and self-organizing order.

Its biggest failure is in its indvidual-rewards mechanism. In attempting to reward valuable and useful effort, it ends up handing out privileges and creating a ruling class that subjugates others. The problem is not the rewarding of individual effort, but the way it is done. Rewards that create authoritarianism are anti-freedom and should be opposed.

But back to my first paragraph. That pro-freedom nature makes opposing capitalism tricky. One can’t simply get into the mindset that one is an anti-capitalist and then just oppose whatever the capitalist way of doing things is, all the time. If one does, one will often end up opposing freedom.

It’s part of the reason (only part, it was a feudalistic society with no tradition of nor much respect for freedom) the Soviet experiment went so badly for freedom. It’s also a reason to eschew the term “anti-capitalist,” which leads to just the wrong mindset when it comes to opposing and replacing capitalism.

I’ve never liked “anti-capitalist” much because it’s negative. I’d rather use labels based on what I am for, not what I am against. Now I have another reason to dislike the term.

Large and Small Organizations

Published at 08:04 on 14 April 2016

This is the first of two posts which I had written down intending to repost here long ago, and only just recently rediscovered.

Any organization the size of Google, Microsoft, GM, Exxon Mobil, etc. should have its autonomy significantly curtailed and restricted by some form of public participation. Only relatively small organizations are deserving of autonomy. And all economic organizations should be non-authoritarian.

That latter one in particular is an ideal that would take serious time to implement throughout society. But the former part would be quite a bit easier. It need not take the traditional state socialist form of nationalization. In fact, in a world of increased globalization, traditional nationalization is less and less relevant.

Requiring such participation will inevitably bog down and restrict large economic players. That’s not a problem; in fact, that’s a large part of the point. Innovations are decisions about the future and such things are too important to be decided by unaccountable authoritarian power structures. The proper role of large organizations is in overseeing and coordinating established economic activities that cannot practically be undertaken by smaller organizations.

Small organizations would still have the autonomy to innovate under this proposal. That is the proper place for innovation to take place, where it subsequently has to prove itself to larger society via competition and other means, rather than having an authority structure clear an artificially easy path for it.

Squaring this with traditional anarchism might not always be easy. In particular the part about the large organizations might be tricky. Autonomy for smaller ones isn’t that different from what anarchism has always proposed.

David Fry is the Worrisome One

Published at 07:54 on 31 January 2016

I don’t have time to research all the links to back this up (so you’ll have to do that yourself), but he was very close to LaVoy Finicum, the other militant that was shot and killed. Like Finicum, he has many times used extreme rhetoric about preferring to be killed rather then being incarcerated. He’s the loose cannon who has blogged in support of Nazis and ISIS and advocated nuking Israel. In interviews, his father (who has been worried about him for some time and who tried to talk him out of going to Oregon) has openly worried about him choosing to commit “suicide by cop.”

In other words, he’s just about the last person you’d want to be amongst the final few holdouts. And that’s precisely where he is now.

We may not have seen the last of the bloodshed during this thing.

The Bundy “Militia” is a Joke

Published at 09:20 on 30 January 2016

Nothing proves this more than a recent quote from Ammon Bundy himself:

“This was never meant to be an armed standoff. Please do not make it about something it wasn’t supposed to be. Go home to your families.”

Oh, really now? Then why were people allowed — encouraged, even — to show up with firearms? Yes, yes — I know: You’re a big fan of the right to keep and bear arms. Well, guess what? Just because it’s your right to do something does not automatically make it a wise decision.

And it was not your right to occupy the Malheur NWR and:

  • Prevent Federal employees from doing their jobs,
  • Interfere with the freedom of other citizens to visit their public lands,
  • Vandalize government property,
  • Use government computer and Internet resources without permission, and
  • Steal government vehicles.

All of these things are quite illegal, in fact criminal, acts. You may not personally like the fact that the Federal government owns so much land, but the fact is that it does and that current law (upheld by court after court) allows it to.

All of this means that in choosing to engage in an illegal action, you chose to expose yourself to criminal charges. As such, it was your job to:

  • Research what those charges were likely to be,
  • Research what the consequences (punishments) would likely be,
  • Decide if you were willing to accept those consequences, and
  • Modify or call off the action if you were not.

This is all very basic stuff. Left-wing groups I’ve been involved with do this whenever they plan actions. (And committing a crime armed is a great way to enhance the charges and punishments you face for it.)

If you let people participate whose beliefs and goals did not mesh with your own, that is your fault. It was your responsibility to clearly state your goals and methods, and to screen those directly supporting you to ensure they agreed to those standards.

This is an instance of a general failure to communicate and plan which the comments of other participants that I’ve seen in the media makes most evident. (For example, many were surprised by your decision to depart for that forum in John Day, and didn’t even realize you had planned to until the moment your convoy left the refuge.)

That you failed in all of the above indicates just what a joke your “militia” is. You clowns couldn’t even properly organize a takeover of a bird refuge while it was closed during the winter holidays, yet you act as if you’re some sort of a military force? It is to laugh.

laugh

So the Occupation is Winding Down… Finally

Published at 07:22 on 28 January 2016

After sitting around and basically doing nothing for most of a month and watching the occupiers get increasingly destructive in recent days (bulldozing new roads through sensitive areas), action was finally taken by law enforcement.

It’s a pity that it’s lead to someone’s death, but the individual who died is on record as being one of the most militant in his rhetoric, going so far as to say that he’d die before he’d let anyone arrest him. Moreover, two of his fellow occupiers say that the way he got shot is by fleeing a traffic stop, encountering a roadblock soon afterwards, and confronting a law enforcement officer there.

This guy apparently got shot while armed and charging a cop. Trying to equate that to getting shot while unarmed and fleeing a cop is false equivalence, to say the least.

And there is not much equivalence to movements like Occupy Wall Street, either. That movement was unarmed and occupied public parks. It did not take over whole facilities while armed and prevent their operation.