This blog will be put out to pasture some time on or around July 17th, 2010 when the hosting expires. I don’t have the $99 or frankly the will to continue blogging. I think that much has been obvious for some time.

I will retain the url and may at some point find free hosting to create an archive. I’m hoping to get everything download, pictures, database, etc and on disc over the next month.

Oh blogoshphere, waster of time and space, I bid you a fond adu!

“Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. ‘Patriotism’ is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by ‘patriotism’ I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare–never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.”- Erich Fromm

There’s no “anarchist state” – or even a potential “anarchist state” – any more than there’s an “atheist church.” Atheism is the belief that there is no god or gods. You can be an atheist without bombing churches or murdering priests, even if you believe the world would be a better place without either. Atheism does not advance its own theories about ethics. Atheism simply says, “All this stuff about gods? It doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

Similarly, anarchism is the belief that there is no State. By “State,” I mean “some independent body of law that limits the unjust use of power.” There is no such animal. I can’t sum up my entire argument in a blawg’s comment box, but, in brief: (A) what we call the State is not a singular entity but a network of agencies with different agendas; (B) the State is no more immune to human folly than the humans it governs; (C) the State is a concentration of power, not a bulwark against it.

My ultimate point: we are already living in anarchy. We are already living in the world that you predict anarchy would turn into – a world where the biggest gang has grabbed all the guns and cowed everyone they can’t shoot. That’s the state of affairs right now. Anarchism, as a philosophy, simply exposes that. Anarchism states that the idea of Power Subservient to Justice – a/k/a, a benevolent State – is a myth.

- John Perich AKA Professor Coldheart,
via the comments section @ Who is IOZ?

Blue Oyster Cult: Then Came the Last Days of May

I exist up here on this hill with minimal “Government.” There’s the Mailman. Snow plow man. The Town guy who mows the ditches. Minimal code enforcement. Vehicle registration and inspections. State mandated car insurance. FDA’s suppose to check out my food and the EPA suppose to keep the air and water clean. I get my electricity from the state power monopoly. The Police man or the Game Warden will come if I call him. My kids ride the bus to school and I see the Town Clerk to pay my land and school taxes three times a year.

I’ve listened to the Anarchists and the Libertarians. I’ve suffered the Liberals and Progressives, the Conservatives and the Republicans. Nobody’s arguments hold any water anymore. I go my own way. Take the best part of each and keep to my own. Good day.

Rodent scurries by as Obama lauds Wall Street vote

Almost one month ago President Obama halted a decades-old moratorium on offshore drilling. 198 years to the day after they first became a part of the United States, Louisianans can smell the petroleum from shore.

In 1789 George Washington took office in New York as the first president of the United States.

The . . . most crucial difference: back then, when it was Medicare, the center-left much more firmly understood the concept of the reactionary — that this small and predictable minority of obdurate Americans would automatically fight any serious social reform as harbinger of the apocalypse.

Politicians had the moral confidence to push it through nonetheless, past the shrieks of the scared extremists and their corporate ideological partners. Meanwhile, they rhetorically stigmatized the shriekers — confident that wise and enlightened legislation would before long establish cherished social rights (keep the government out of my Medicare!).

With Obama care, however, too many Democrats proceeded from the suspicion that the shriekers might just have something important and useful to say about the broader judgment of of the electorate. And so ultimately, too much political energy and capital was expended trying to achieve an impossible bipartisan consensus on too little reform. Luckily — with financial reform and energy policy — Democrats will have two more bites at the apple.

There will be shrieking. It will be the shrieking of a small minority. Democrats stand nothing to gain by paying overmuch attention.

There was a time, not long ago, when the tagline of this blog was “I’m not Liberal, just paying attention.” But there is no denying my Liberal background/upbringing. Or Progressive. Or whatever. But these Democrats wont get it no matter how many wacks you give them, and I’m done ponder the fruitless question of are they just stupid or are they in collusion with the enemy. It is what it is, right?

Thoreau:

Despite my disdain for much of the punditocracy and my insistence that I am not a liberal, I am at the end of the day a latte-sipping academic on a good trajectory in an elite profession, and I am definitely NOT a conservative or Republican. I am an outsider, and perhaps I am simply too removed (and uninterested) to get what is really going on. Well, the same was true of the elites who didn’t get Nixon and didn’t get how he got as far as he did. I don’t think Palin will get nearly as far as Nixon did, but I do think she will remain on the scene and a factor on the right for some time, even as the rest of us scratch our heads in bafflement.

I could get caught up and become invested in the strategy of it all… WHY ARE THEY NOT LETTING THESE TEA BAGGER FOLK SHOUT THEIR IDIOCIES FROM EVERY ROOFTOP! Then again I’m probably making the typical assumptions about the capacity for people to recognize things for what they are… myself included. And here I’m stuck. Going around in circles, repulsed by the Right, weary of the Left and politics in general.

Ask a dead Afghan poppy farmer trying to scratch a subsistence existence between our global dominion and the violent rebellions it engenders what he thinks about the problem of political apathy in the first world and see what he says. Oh, nothing? Yeah. He’s dead, you see.

via Who Is IOZ?: Das Krapital.

P.S. I’m experimenting with publishing posts through the Shareaholic plugin for Google Chrome. It’s convenient… find something interesting and with a click or two decide whether to share it with family and friends on Facebook, my fellow Malcontents on Google Reader, blogging refugees on Tumblr, or go Old School and send it here to my WordPress blog.

1. I can’t stand the new commenting system that replaced Haloscan.
2. I detest the new commenting system and layout at Youtube.
3. I finally gave up on Firefox and made the switch to Google Chrome.
4. I’m spending less time within the blogosphere and more on Craigslist, Craiglook and Ebay.
5. There have been so many updates to wordpress in the last year I’m sick of it and have left for tumblr.

That is all.