Question Everything

David Horowitz's War on Rational Discourse

The national security archive has obtained more photos of US soldiers in caskets.







A gallery with the rest of the photos can be found here (requires Flash).

The Bush administration hates to release information that might make it look bad, so it took a lawsuit to force them to release these photos. Dead Iraqis are obviously much more important and a much greater tragedy but this is still newsworthy since most Americans are bigots who value American lives more than non-American lives and these kind of photos can decrease support for the war/occupation (which is why the Bush administration tried to keep it secret). Plus, these soldiers can be considered a kind of 'secondary victim' of imperialism due to the poverty draft, albeit victims very complicit in imperialism and thus their own demise.

Does the Resistance Target Civilians?:

"brutal and horrific attacks on Iraqi civilians have been carried out by some forces claiming to be a part of the resistance. But there is strong evidence from US government and independent intelligence data suggesting that this phenomenon has been wildly exaggerated and torn out of context, creating a false public perception that serves to prop up domestic support for the occupation."

Another Reason not to Snitch: Billy Cottrell was sentenced to 8 years in prison for eco-sabotage even though he snitched on his fellow ELFers. Snitching doesn't pay!

Nationalism is a trick used by governments to get us to put their interests ahead of our own interests, to pretend that society is one big happy country when it is actually hierarchical, divided into exploiters and exploited. It presupposes that we should all be divided into different "countries" (imaginary entities drawn on maps) and that both rich & poor in those countries have common interests against members of other countries. In reality, workers around the world have a shared common interest against businessmen in all countries. Dividing workers by nationality is just a way to divide and conquer us.

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

"We used to have vulgar colonialism. Now we have sophisticated colonialism, and they call it 'reconstruction.'"

The Case Against Alan Dershowitz

Capitalism and Un-Freedom (More on Contract Feudalism)

Europe can bring America to its knees any time it wants by imposing sanctions. The US economy is increasingly dependant on foreign investment, proper sanctions would be just enough to push it over the edge. However, this would hurt the EU's economy, which is a big reason why they aren't doing it. From their perspective, some lost oil contracts aren't worth tanking the whole economy over. They'll whine about it, but it's just not worth it for the European ruling class. It's just some dead brown people - not something they value very highly. Plus the US and EU still have lots of other common interests, like keeping the "third world" down and maintaining global capitalism. Modern capitalism is integrated on a global scale through multinational corporations and the like, it needs a world authority to hold the system together and act as galactic enforcer. The American empire currently acts as that enforcer, but imperfectly so from the perspective of the world's elites since it tends to favor its own interests at their expense. If European and other elites actively attempted to overthrow the American empire and suceeded they'd have screwed themselves because they'll have destroyed what is currently an essential componet in global capitalism. They could attempt to set up a supra-national "peacekeeping" authority to enforce global capitalism, but they will not move against the US unless forced to do so until it is set up.

Shawn Prest has a good post on his blog criticising infoshop.org's authoritarian practices, which I agree 100% with. I've discussed this previously and will probably write more on the topic later.

Hearing No Evil: Rosy visions of the PATRIOT Act

I'm with Wolfowitz:

"Wolfowitz's appointment is a good thing for three reasons. It highlights the profoundly unfair and undemocratic nature of decision-making at the bank. His presidency will stand as a constant reminder that this institution, which calls on the nations it bullies to exercise "good governance and democratization" is run like a medieval monarchy.

It also demolishes the hopeless re formism of men such as Stiglitz and George Soros who, blithely ignoring the fact that the US can veto any attempt to challenge its veto, keep waving their wands in the expectation that a body designed to project US power can be magically transformed into a body that works for the poor. Had Stiglitz's attempt to tinker with the presidency succeeded, it would simply have lent credibility to an illegitimate institution, enhancing its powers. With Wolfowitz in charge, its credibility plummets.

Best of all is the chance that the neocons might just be stupid enough to use the new wolf to blow the bank down. Clare Short laments that "it's as though they are trying to wreck our international systems". What a tragedy that would be. I'd sob all the way to the party.

Martin Jacques argued convincingly on these pages last week that the US neocons are "reordering the world system to take account of their newly defined power and interests". Wolfowitz's appointment is, he suggested, one of the "means of breaking the old order".

But this surely illustrates the unacknowledged paradox in neocon thinking. They want to drag down the old, multilateral order and replace it with a new, US one. What they fail to understand is that the "multilateral" system is in fact a projection of US unilateralism, cleverly packaged to grant other nations just enough slack to prevent them from fighting it. Like their opponents, the neocons fail to understand how well Roosevelt and Truman stitched up the international order. They are seeking to replace a hegemonic system that is enduring and effective with one that is untested and (because other nations must fight it) unstable. Anyone who believes in global justice should wish them luck."

More Billionaires, More Poverty: Get Used To It

Local Law Enforcement Violates the State Constitution

As has become well known in anti-imperialist circles, the US occupation authority in Iraq "lost" billions of Iraq's money, derived from their oil sales, to US corporations. MoveOn, in their typical liberal stupidity, is going around claiming the money lost was US money and attacking the Bush administration over it. Their misrepresentation of the facts reflects the underlying assumption that Iraq is US property, as they're (incorrectly) equating Iraqi money with US money. Losing Iraqi money is the same as losing American money since Iraq is owned by the US. Of course, liberals & conservatives alike deny that in public but Freudian slips like these reveal the underlying imperialist attitude.

Operation (Un)Truth: A Trojan Jackass for the Anti-War Movement

Meritocracy is not a good way to organize things. In a meritocracy, if your'e good at your job you get promoted. If your good at your next job you get promoted again, etc. This continues until you get a job which your'e not good at. Because you're not good at it you don't get promoted and are stuck there. You keep getting promoted until you get to a job your'e not good at, then you stay there. As a result everyone eventually ends up stuck in a job they're not good at. We rise to our level of incompetence. Meritocracy maximizes incompetency and inefficiency by insuring we all end up in jobs wer'e bad at. It's called the Peter Principle. And this ignores the problems involved in actually implementing a meritocracy and the flaws that all hierarchies have.