Quick thoughts about Julian Assange and his arrest

Julian Assange is approximately the leader of wikileaks.  He was recently arrested in London, when he submitted himself for questioning.  I think he's probably in trouble. 

Wikileaks had been a public embarrassment to various governments for about three years before they posted a video of an American Helicopter crew killing a journalist.  At this point, they suddenly became high-profile in the USA.  Then they published some US diplomatic cables last month, and over the course of about a week, the organization was removed from several DNS servers, their paypal site was shut down, their finances were frozen, and Assange was arrested in connection to a very fishy-sounding sexual misconduct charge.

The pace of this sort of mounting of challenges for Wikileaks is intentional: it's there to indicate to the world that the US doesn't enjoy having it's secrets revealed.  It's not that the secrets were particularly damning or anything like that.  It's just that the Government doesn't want it to get worse.  This high-visibility attack of the site and it's principal human being are meant to be a message to those who might do what Wikileaks has done.  This is to discourage the dissemination of US secrets, not because they compromise military operations, but because they undermine American hegemony.

If they wished to stop Assange, the American military could probably have made him disappear.  But they didn't do that.  They appear to have contrived to have him arrested, and then they found a guy who appears to have actually stolen the secret information, and they disappeared him.  But they did it in the most public way possible, putting out his name and story, providing details of his means of stealing the information, and then making it clear where he was being held incommunicado, off US soil, where we are encouraged to believe that he is being tortured and humiliated. 

We are being sent a message with this entire chain of events.  The message is simple: don't you even think of messing with us, or we'll crush you.  We are meant to see this information and be terrified.  The US government is using this event to terrorize the world.  Just thought you might want to know.

I get all socialist

Something's been bothering me.  It's my neck.  I hurt it a  while ago, and I keep reinjuring it.  It's lame when you have a neck injury because if somebody's like "Hey do you want to fight?" you have to be like "Well, I do, man, I really do, but..."  So it really cramps my style.

This looks so good because I used a Wacom board.

Another thing that really bothers me is politics.  American politics is like being a bee in a hive and watching two teams of Japanese hornets descending on you that then start to fight over which team gets to kill you and your family and you notice that one team is lamer than the other so you hope they win because they won't be as effective at slaughtering your hive but then they lose and you know you're fucked.

Our most recent election has been widely said to have been a referendum on the performance of our president.  I want to make a couple of quick statements about that and then talk about taxes, because I know that's mainly what kids are interested in nowadays.

First off, I'm not sure if you've ever heard of a Blue Dog Democrat before, but those guys are "fiscally (and

Vote for me and I'll kill you last.

often socially) conservative," generally hawks in terms of military activity, and half of them in congress that just got voted out in the last election.  They were running as democrat incumbents, and they were all replaced by Republicans.  That's a pretty ambiguous result, but I think that a factor in their tremendous defeat is that democrats didn't want to vote for them because they're basically Republicans, and Republicans didn't want to vote for them because they're technically not Republicans. 

The blue dogs hold as a common point of view the notion that lower tax rates for the wealthy lead to higher tax revenues for the government due to economic stimulation, and that a higher percentage of the tax revenue comes from the wealthy.  Now let's just take a tiny peek at that idea for a second.  If the rich are being taxed at a lower rate AND bearing more of the tax burden, it can only be because they're the only ones who have any fucking money.  You'll note that taxes for the poor (which is to say, all the actual people in the country, more or less) don't have to go down in order for the above two circumstances to be true. It does mean that the poor aren't earning more either. This would indicate that most people would see no significant financial improvement from the upturn in the economy, and that's even taking into account that unemployment would be predicted to drop under these circumstances.   

What this indicates, is that the wealthy get wealthier when they are taxed less, and the poor do not proportionally do so.  By the conservative argument, therefore, lowering taxes for the rich increases the inequality between rich and poor.  It should also be pointed out that our political system has been completely arranged, now more than ever, to allow elections to be influenced by money.  So wealth inequality equates directly with political inequality.  

This is actually perfectly in sync with the philosophy of certain founding fathers, such as John Jay:

The people who own the country ought to govern it.

...But it is clearly a major obstacle to democracy, which is why Aristotle said things like:

Thus it is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered in which the middle class is large, and stronger if possible than both the other classes, or at any rate than either singly; for the addition of the middle class turns the scale, and prevents either of the extremes from being dominant. Great then is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for where some possess much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy; or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme - either out of the most rampant democracy, or out of an oligarchy; but it is not so likely to arise out of the middle constitutions and those akin to them.

But let's just ignore the inequality issue for a moment.  Let's just look at the argument that lower taxes is for the economic greater good.  Here's a little history of tax cuts in America, which is adapted from an essay put out by the Heritage Foundation.  I don't make a habit of quoting the Heritage Foundation, because they're wrong about everything, but I did want to point out the glaring and selective bits of information they put into their essay in support of tax cuts for the rich.  I'll put the Heritage essay in regular text and my brief additions in red, to indicate that it should be read in the voice of Satan, The Accuser. 

The tax cuts of the 1920s
Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent. Then there was the great depression in 1929, which plunged most of the world into a decade of abject misery while increased taxes and social spending slowly fixed shit up again.

 The Kennedy tax cuts
President Hoover dramatically increased tax rates in the 1930s and President Roosevelt compounded the damage by pushing marginal tax rates to more than 90 percent. Recognizing that high tax rates were hindering the economy, President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).  Then there was a recession in 1969.  The maximum tax rate was reduced by 20% earlier in the year and appeared to do nothing to prevent the recession

The Reagan tax cuts
Thanks to "bracket creep," the inflation of the 1970s pushed millions of taxpayers into higher tax brackets even though their inflation-adjusted incomes were not rising. To help offset this tax increase and also to improve incentives to work, save, and invest, President Reagan proposed sweeping tax rate reductions during the 1980s. What happened? Total tax revenues climbed by 99.4 percent during the 1980s, and the results are even more impressive when looking at what happened to personal income tax revenues. Once the economy received an unambiguous tax cut in January 1983, income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54 percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).   Which helped hide the fact that a (world record) recession began in 1987, which continued on into the first Bush presidency, crippling it.  He raised taxes for the rich in 1990, and the recession ended around '91.

So basically, the tax reduction argument is bullshit.  It clearly destroys the economy in time, because most people run out of money.  I think it would be more reasonable to suggest that the periodic lowering of taxes is a kind of culling of excess capital from the general public to the rich, but that it clearly can't go on indefinitely.

Modified: George Orwell: The Freedom of the Press

 Noam Chomsky has been going on lately about a preface for Animal Farm which George Orwell (not his real name) wrote at the time of publication.  The purpose of the essay was to explain that Brits, of which Orwell was one, shouldn't think that the book was merely an attack on the rise of totalitarianism in Russia, since in Britain the same basic totalitarianism stood, but that it was just a little different in terms of approach.  He says that censorship is alive and well in Britain, but that it is largely voluntary in nature.  It is probably noteworthy that the preface wasn't published along with the book after all.  

I think Orwell's essay is worth reading, but there's a problem in that it was written at a time when people were able to read, largely by candle-light, antire books that had no pictures in them, so I have included random pictures in the text so that you, gentle, squidgy reader, don't feel overwhelmed by 4000 words of unbroken text.

George Orwell

The Freedom of the Press

Orwell's Proposed Preface to ‘Animal Farm’

This book was first thought of, so far as the central idea goes, in 1937, but was not written down until about the end of 1943. By the time when it came to be written it was obvious that there would be great difficulty in getting it published (in spite of the present book shortage which ensures that anything describable as a book will ‘sell’), and in the event it was refused by four publishers. Only one of these had any ideological

Russian Blue Kitteh

motive. Two had been publishing anti-Russian books for years, and the other had no noticeable political colour. One publisher actually started by accepting the book, but after making the preliminary arrangements he decided to consult the Ministry of Information, who appear to have warned him, or at any rate strongly advised him, against publishing it. Here is an extract from his letter:

I mentioned the reaction I had had from an important official in the Ministry of Information with regard to Animal Farm. I must confess that this expression of opinion has given me seriously to think... I can see now that it might be regarded as something which it was highly ill-advised to publish at the present time. If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators, that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs[*]. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.

* It is not quite clear whether this suggested modification is Mr... ’s own idea, or originated with the Ministry of Information; but it seems to have the official ring about it. [Orwell’s Note]

This kind of thing is not a good symptom. Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship (except security censorship, which no one objects to in war time) over books which are not officially sponsored. But the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.
Any fairminded person with journalistic experience will admit that during this war official censorship has not been particularly irksome. We have not been subjected to the kind of totalitarian ‘co-ordination’ that it might have been reasonable to expect. The press has some justified grievances, but on the whole the Government has behaved well and has been surprisingly tolerant of minority opinions. The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.
Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

Christmas rat

At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of genuine intellectual tolerance. For though you arc not allowed to criticise the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticise our own. Hardly anyone will print an attack on Stalin, but it is quite safe to attack Churchill, at any rate in books and periodicals. And throughout five years of war, during two or three of which we were fighting for national survival, countless books, pamphlets and articles advocating a compromise peace have been published without interference. More, they have been published without exciting much disapproval. So long as the prestige of the USSR is not involved, the principle of free speech has been reasonably well upheld. There are other forbidden topics, and I shall mention some of them presently, but the prevailing attitude towards the USSR is much the most serious symptom. It is, as it were, spontaneous, and is not due to the action of any pressure group.
The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions. On one controversial issue after another the Russian viewpoint has been accepted without examination and then publicised with complete disregard to historical truth or intellectual decency. To name only one instance, the BBC celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army without mentioning Trotsky. This was about as accurate as commemorating the battle of Trafalgar without mentioning Nelson, but it evoked no protest from the English intelligentsia. In the internal struggles in the various occupied countries, the British press has in almost all cases sided with the faction favoured by the Russians and libelled the opposing faction, sometimes suppressing material evidence in order to do so. A particularly glaring case was that of Colonel Mihailovich, the Jugoslav Chetnik leader. The Russians, who had their own Jugoslav protege in Marshal Tito, accused Mihailovich of collaborating with the Germans. This accusation was promptly taken up by the British press: Mihailovich’s supporters were given no chance of answering it, and facts contradicting it were simply kept out of print. In July of 1943 the Germans offered a reward of 100,000 gold crowns for the capture of Tito, and a similar reward for the capture of Mihailovich. The British press ‘splashed’ the reward for Tito, but only one paper mentioned (in small print) the reward for Mihailovich: and the charges of collaborating with the Germans continued. Very similar things happened during the Spanish civil war. Then, too, the factions on the Republican side which the Russians were determined to crush were recklessly libelled in the English leftwing [sic] press, and any statement in their defence even in letter form, was refused publication. At present, not only is serious criticism of the USSR considered reprehensible, but even the fact of the existence of such criticism is kept secret in some cases. For example, shortly before his death Trotsky had written a biography of Stalin. One may assume that it was not an altogether unbiased book, but obviously it was saleable. An American publisher had arranged to issue it and the book was in print — 1 believe the review copies had been sent out — when the USSR entered the war. The book was immediately withdrawn. Not a word about this has ever appeared in the British press, though clearly the existence of such a book, and its suppression, was a news item worth a few paragraphs.

"By 'football,' Dick, you refer to your absurd American game, yes?"

It is important to distinguish between the kind of censorship that the English literary intelligentsia voluntarily impose upon themselves, and the censorship that can sometimes be enforced by pressure groups. Notoriously, certain topics cannot be discussed because of ‘vested interests’. The best-known case is the patent medicine racket. Again, the Catholic Church has considerable influence in the press and can silence criticism of itself to some extent. A scandal involving a Catholic priest is almost never given publicity, whereas an Anglican priest who gets into trouble (e.g. the Rector of Stiffkey) is headline news. It is very rare for anything of an anti-Catholic tendency to appear on the stage or in a film. Any actor can tell you that a play or film which attacks or makes fun of the Catholic Church is liable to be boycotted in the press and will probably be a failure. But this kind of thing is harmless, or at least it is understandable. Any large organisation will look after its own interests as best it can, and overt propaganda is not a thing to object to. One would no more expect the Daily Worker to publicise unfavourable facts about the USSR than one would expect the Catholic Herald to denounce the Pope. But then every thinking person knows the Daily Worker and the Catholic Herald for what they are. What is disquieting is that where the USSR and its policies are concerned one cannot expect intelligent criticism or even, in many cases, plain honesty from Liberal [sic — and throughout as typescript] writers and journalists who are under no direct pressure to falsify their opinions. Stalin is sacrosanct and certain aspects of his policy must not be seriously discussed. This rule has been almost universally observed since 1941, but it had operated, to a greater extent than is sometimes realised, for ten years earlier than that. Throughout that time, criticism of the Soviet régime from the left could only obtain a hearing with difficulty. There was a huge output of anti-Russian literature, but nearly all of it was from the Conservative angle and manifestly dishonest, out of date and actuated by sordid motives. On the other side there was an equally huge and almost equally dishonest stream of pro-Russian propaganda, and what amounted to a boycott on anyone who tried to discuss all-important questions in a grown-up manner. You could, indeed, publish anti-Russian books, but to

do so was to make sure of being ignored or misrepresented by nearly me whole of the highbrow press. Both publicly and privately you were warned that it was ‘not done’. What you said might possibly be true, but it was ‘inopportune’ and played into the hands of this or that reactionary interest. This attitude was usually defended on the ground that the international situation, and me urgent need for an Anglo-Russian alliance, demanded it; but it was clear that this was a rationalisation. The English intelligentsia, or a great part of it, had developed a nationalistic loyalty towards me USSR, and in their hearts they felt that to cast any doubt on me wisdom of Stalin was a kind of blasphemy. Events in Russia and events elsewhere were to be judged by different standards. The endless executions in me purges of 1936-8 were applauded by life-long opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicise famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in me Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.
But now to come back to this book of mine. The reaction towards it of most English intellectuals will be quite simple: ‘It oughtn’t to have been published.’ Naturally, those reviewers who understand the art of denigration will not attack it on political grounds but on literary ones. They will say that it is a dull, silly book and a disgraceful waste of paper. This may well be true, but it is obviously not me whole of the story. One does not say that a book ‘ought not to have been published’ merely because it is a bad book. After all, acres of rubbish are printed daily and no one bothers. The English intelligentsia, or most of them, will object to this book because it traduces their Leader and (as they see it) does harm to the cause of progress. If it did me opposite they would have nothing to say against it, even if its literary faults were ten times as glaring as they are. The success of, for instance, the Left Book Club over a period of four or five years shows how willing they are to tolerate both scurrility and slipshod writing, provided that it tells them what they want to hear.

"Did someone say socialism?"

The issue involved here is quite a simple one: Is every opinion, however unpopular — however foolish, even — entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say ‘Yes’. But give it a concrete shape, and ask, ‘How about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?’, and the answer more often than not will be ‘No’, In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. Now, when one demands liberty of speech and of the press, one is not demanding absolute liberty. There always must be, or at any rate there always will be, some degree of censorship, so long as organised societies endure. But freedom, as Rosa Luxembourg [sic] said, is ‘freedom for the other fellow’. The same principle is contained in the famous words of Voltaire: ‘I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilisation means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakable way. Both capitalist democracy and the western versions of Socialism have till recently taken that principle for granted. Our Government, as I have already pointed out, still makes some show of respecting it. The ordinary people in the street-partly, perhaps, because they are not sufficiently interested in ideas to be intolerant about them-still vaguely hold that ‘I suppose everyone’s got a right to their own opinion.’ It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.
One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ‘bourgeois liberty’ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. This argument was used, for instance, to justify the Russian purges. The most ardent Russophile hardly believed that all of the victims were guilty of all the things they were accused of: but by holding heretical opinions they ‘objectively’ harmed the régime, and therefore it was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations. The same argument was used to justify the quite conscious lying that went on in the leftwing press about the Trotskyists and other Republican minorities in the Spanish civil war. And it was used again as a reason for yelping against habeas corpus when Mosley was released in 1943.

"Bunch of flowers!"

These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists. Soon after the suppressed Daily Worker had been reinstated, I was lecturing to a workingmen’s college in South London. The audience were working-class and lower-middle class intellectuals — the same sort of audience that one used to meet at Left Book Club branches. The lecture had touched on the freedom of the press, and at the end, to my astonishment, several questioners stood up and asked me: Did I not think that the lifting of the ban on the Daily Worker was a great mistake? When asked why, they said that it was a paper of doubtful loyalty and ought not to be tolerated in war time. I found myself defending the Daily Worker, which has gone out of its way to libel me more than once. But where had these people learned this essentially totalitarian outlook? Pretty certainly they had learned it from the Communists themselves! Tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England, but they are not indestructible, and they have to be kept alive partly by conscious effort. The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous. The case of Mosley illustrates this. In 1940 it was perfectly right to intern Mosley, whether or not he had committed any technical crime. We were fighting for our lives and could not allow a possible quisling to go free. To keep him shut up, without trial, in 1943 was an outrage. The general failure to see this was a bad symptom, though it is true that the agitation against Mosley’s release was partly factitious and partly a rationalisation of other discontents. But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?

"I do not know this 'Free Bird' you speak of."

It is important to realise that the current Russomania is only a symptom of the general weakening of the western liberal tradition. Had the MOI chipped in and definitely vetoed the publication of this book, the bulk of the English intelligentsia would have seen nothing disquieting in this. Uncritical loyalty to the USSR happens to be the current orthodoxy, and where the supposed interests of the USSR are involved they are willing to tolerate not only censorship but the deliberate falsification of history. To name one instance. At the death of John Reed, the author of Ten Days that Shook the World — first-hand account of the early days of the Russian Revolution — the copyright of the book passed into the hands of the British Communist Party, to whom I believe Reed had bequeathed it. Some years later the British Communists, having destroyed the original edition of the book as completely as they could, issued a garbled version from which they had eliminated mentions of Trotsky and also omitted the introduction written by Lenin. If a radical intelligentsia had still existed in Britain, this act of forgery would have been exposed and denounced in every literary paper in the country. As it was there was little or no protest. To many English intellectuals it seemed quite a natural thing to do. And this tolerance or [sic = of?] plain dishonesty means much more than that admiration for Russia happens to be fashionable at this moment. Quite possibly that particular fashion will not last. For all I know, by the time this book is published my view of the Soviet régime may be the generally-accepted one. But what use would that be in itself? To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.
I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech — the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don’t convince me and that our civilisation over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice. For quite a decade past I have believed that the existing Russian régime is a mainly evil thing, and I claim the right to say so, in spite of the fact that we are allies with the USSR in a war which I want to see won. If I had to choose a text to justify myself, I should choose the line from Milton:

By the known rules of ancient liberty

"By the power of-- Man, this is heavy."

The word ancient emphasises the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals arc visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice. An example of this is the failure of the numerous and vocal English pacifists to raise their voices against the prevalent worship of Russian militarism. According to those pacifists, all violence is evil, and they have urged us at every stage of the war to give in or at least to make a compromise peace. But how many of them have ever suggested that war is also evil when it is waged by the Red Army? Apparently the Russians have a right to defend themselves, whereas for us to do [so] is a deadly sin. One can only explain this contradiction in one way: that is, by a cowardly desire to keep in with the bulk of the intelligentsia, whose patriotism is directed towards the USSR rather than towards Britain. I know that the English intelligentsia have plenty of reason for their timidity and dishonesty, indeed I know by heart the arguments by which they justify themselves. But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it. In our country — it is not the same in all countries: it was not so in republican France, and it is not so in the USA today — it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect: it is to draw attention to that fact that I have written this preface.

1945

For some reason in their 2000 edition, Penguin decided to publish this preface (the only one) as Appendix with small intro. But it is preface? Preface for Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm was printed also as Appendix (II). (O. Dag)
____
By Penguin:
APPENDIX I
Orwell’s Proposed Preface to Animal Farm.
Space was allowed in the first edition of Animal Farm for a preface by Orwell, as the pagination of the author’s proof indicates. This preface was not included and the typescript was only found years later by Ian Angus. It was published, with an introduction by Professor Bernard Crick entitled ‘How the essay came to be written’, in The Times Literary Supplement, 15 September 1972.

____BD____
George Orwell: ‘The Freedom of the Press’
First published: The Times Literary Supplement, September 15, 1972.

____
Machine-readable version: O. Dag
Last modified on: 2004-12-19

An important lesson about cops

I used to drive a 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.  It was the best car I've ever driven. It had plush bench seats, a kick-ass heater, and I could sit up straight in it. 

I got it from a friend of a friend, who had left it sitting in front of our mutual friend's house for three months or something.  It wouldn't start, so she left it there and got another car.  Having some experience with beat up old cars, I immediately recognized that the starter was going crappo.  So I replaced the starter and it ran like a champ.  Around that time, I gave the owner a call. 

"Hello?"
"Marsha?*"
"Yeah?" 
"This is Owen."
"Hey."
"Can I have your car?"
"(sigh) sure."
"Sweet.  Thanks!  Just drop the title by Wagner's* house sometime."
"Okay.  Whatever."

And it was mine. 

Somehow the designers managed to get that four-cylinder engine to hurl that two-ton hunk of steel around at quite a clip.  It took a while to accelerate, but it would just keep doing it till you got too scared to continue.  That coupled with the fact that it was big and heavy and felt safe, meant that I was usually driving 80 MPH in that thing. 
Whenever anybody tried to cut me off , or race me, or otherwise be aggressive with their vehicle, me and that car would placidly allow them to decide whether they were interested in causing a collision with us.  Inevitably, the other guy would realize that I was driving a car that was worth (the value of their car) less than theirs, and they would vehicularly apologize.  Somehow, I just believed I would survive any collision in that car.  I never had the occasion to test this though, which is probably evidenced by the fact that I am alive. 

The major problem I had with the Olds, though, was that it attracted cops the way a hot chick at a bar attracts creeps.  I've never had a car that was so consistently in good working order than that one, because any time a taillight went out, or the smokec coming out of my exhaust pipe looked too rich or my tire pressure got too low, a friendly neighborhood police officer would pull me over to let me know.  Then he'd write me an $80 dollar ticket.

It was during this phase in my life that I learned to discern the specific shapes of cop headlights from some distance away. 

It was also during this time that I learned a valuable lesson about being pulled over.  The event went like this:

"Hi, do you know why I pulled you over?"
"Uh, no actually."
"Really?"
"Yeah, I don't really know. (nervous laughter)"
"Oh, okay, well, have a great night!"
"Thanks!  You too!"

*not their real name

Just a reminder: The founding Fathers weren't christians

In this year's election, we hear a good bit here and there about the Founding Fathers of our country and the way that they were all wise and shit.  Additionally, it is often proposed by the New Right Tea Party demonstrators  that prominent founding fathers  would certainly have their back regarding the  establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the USA.

This idea is so absurd that it hardly seems to need refuting.  But luckily, my time is not so valuable, and so here for your delectation are some quotes and tidbits from some of our founding fathers, so that their own words might set the record straight. 

Ben Franklin

"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble...." -Ben Franklin, six weeks before his death in 1790

So here Ben Franklin is clearly saying that he holds Jesus' actions to be a moral guide, but has no particular opinions about whether he was the son of God or something, and furthermore, he isn't worried that he'll die without having made that decision.  That is just about the opposite of the Baptist creed.   Does this sound like a guy who would support the likes of Christine O'Donnell? 

Thomas Jefferson wrote the text of his own epitaph and boasts in it that he authored the Virginia Statute for religious Freedom.  This document says in part:

Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free; ...all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness...no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.

 Here Thomas Jefferson explicitly states that religion is and should be a matter of personal belief.  In fact, in the text of the document he goes on to say that attaching any consequences in life to a person's religious beliefs is harmful to their spirituality.  That sure as shit doesn't sound like what Rand Paul is talking about to me.

James Madison, the guy who wrote the US constitution (a holy document only just a bit less so than the good old King James Bible in the minds of the Tea Party), has this to say about the meddling of religion into the affairs of state:

Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.  

 I don't think you gotta read into that much to come out thinking that he doesn't like the idea of government as a religious institution.  Madison also points out that:

...Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which prevades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.

So he not only believed that the government shouldn't be in the religion business and vice versa, but he also thinks that having widespread variety of religions help keep everybody free.  Try and reconcile this with Sharron Angle's xenophobia.  

Thomas Paine wrote the pamphlet Common Sense, a rhetorical work arguing for American independence from Britain. He also wrote The Age Of Reason*, a book devoted to the systematic, smartassed demonstration of the improbability of the christian myth.  In it, he says of Christ's birth and resurrection:

The story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the books in which the account is related were written by the persons whose names they bear.

To interpret a bit, he says that the bible certainly sounds fake, and that there's no way to say who wrote it.  This is important, since there were folks like Roger Sherman around who said that the bible was the inspired word of God.  Of the bible as a whole, Paine had this little gem to offer:

When we contemplate the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the word of God.

The whole book goes on in this vein.  It is a mean spirited, insulting book.  It could not be more antichristian. Here is a bit about his feelings on established Christian religions:

out of the matters contained in those books, together with the assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty. 

What I'm trying to drive home about this Thomas Paine guy is that he would have nothing but contempt for any biblical literalist sect of Christianity.   He would mainly have extreme skepticism and scorn for people attempting to suggest that Christianity is the basis of morality.

If you got the founding fathers together in a room, once they had been resuscitated, they would all argue that the US is not a Christian nation and that that fact makes us a stronger country.  Then, if we are lucky, they would spearhead the zombie apocalypse, because it would be about the only way to get idiots to stop quoting them like they were prophets or something.  Plus it would be awesome.


* If you have not read The Age Of Reason, you really ought to do so.  It's a quick and easy read, it's text is available online, and you can honestly say you have read a treatise on the bible written by one of the founding fathers.  It's the sort of thing that impresses the ladies.  The first part of The Age Of Reason was written hurriedly because he assumed that he was to be arrested and executed in France, and in fact he was arrested on the day that he finished the manuscript.  While on his way to prison, he arranged to visit a friend and gave him the manuscript. This gives you some impression of what a different world it was at the time.  Knowing himself to be under imminent threat of arrest and probable execution, he made no effort to escape France.  Then when under arrest, he visited a friend.  It's all so ludicrously gentlemanly.

Typical left-wing establishment media hoax

You may have heard that a Rand Paul Supporter stomped on the head of a moveon.org demonstrator outside a debate in Lexington last night.  This has been creating a bit of hubbub on the interwebs today.  One major reason is that the moveon activist was a chick.  There is talk that the whole thing was a staged event by moveon.  Watch the video and decide for yourself.

I heard this guy's name was Curby.

 I’d like to take a moment to help explain the actions of the apparent woman abusers in this video.

First of all, these guys had been drinking bourbon and snorting meth all night.  Sometimes your response to a situation is a little too exuberant when you’re tanked and cranking, take it from me.  I once climbed up the side of an apartment building and bit a lady on her calf for wearing white Capri pants in December.  Stuff like that just happens.  These people shouldn’t be blamed for getting a little riled up.  They probably thought she was there to hurt Rand Paul.  They probably don’t even remember it.

Second and more importantly, they thought she was a guy.  She had been wearing a blonde wig, and underneath she appeared to have short hair.  So the guy who stomped her just momentarily thought that she was a guy (who had earlier been wearing a blonde wig) and thus a fag.  If you watch the video, you can see him experience doubt about this idea around the same time that he gets his stomp in.  That’s why he doesn’t kill her.  In Kentucky, you can legally do anything you want to a fag.  You can even fuck them and you’re still not gay as long as the fag doesn’t come.  So they had originally just been planning to kill a fag that was there to give Rand Paul AIDS.  As soon as they realized she was a lady, they backed right off.  I really don't see what the big deal is.

Thirdly, He didn’t stomp on her head.  He clearly stomped on her neck.  This is probably the most blatant media smear ever.  The head is where the brain is kept.  You’d have to be a total moran to step on somebody’s head.  You could really hurt somebody that way.    That poor guy is getting a bum rap.  He just stomped lightly on her neck.  That’s what it’s made for!   It just made her skull bounce off the pavement a little.  No harm, no foul.  (Remember: they though they had a fag on their hands).  

Word is, the activist, whose name is Lauren Valle, has a concussion from the incident.  Although we don't yet know the name of the bubba involved, we probably will.  I hear Fox News wants to hire him as a commentator.

UPDATE:  ...and another life is ruined. The neck-stomper's name is Tim Profitt.  It sounds as though Valle has filed a complaint and so Profitt will likely have assault charges at least.  The guy who held her down is named Mike Pezzano.  I think it's interesting how good of an intelligence network the internet is when something is sufficiently viral.  For instance, we not only wknow who Mike Pezzano is, we also know what he cares about.   In Mike's interests, he points out a bunch of things that I'm interested in too.  Even though this guy and I would probably consider each other to be on opposite ends of some kind of spectrum, the truth is we're concerned about a lot of the same problems in our country.  

A bold election proposition.

Hey, would you fill out a survey for $45?  What if we made it easy for you and told you the answers first?  Would that be worth half an hour of your time?  Well I go this idea, see?

The economy, in case you haven't heard, is still in the toilet.  The number of foreclosed mortgages has because so large that the onerous task of keeping track of the paperwork to legally foreclose a house is too big to actually do, making it necessary to forge the necessary documents.  This leads to mistakes, such as foreclosing on homes that don't actually have mortgages.  Regular Americans just don't have enough money to throw around.  I have thought of a solution.

Conservative estimates of campaign spending this year suggest that a total of at last 3.7 billion dollars will be spent on midterm elections this year.  This money is spent largely on advertisements meant to induce people to vote for somebody.  That's a shaky way to get someone's vote.  Ads can misfire.  There can be backlash.  It's hit or miss.

Somewhere around 40% of eligible voters vote in midterm elections.  There are 200 million eligible voters in the USA.  40% of 200 million is 80 million.  Why not just divvy up the 3.7 billion and pay people to vote for you?  It works out to about $45 per voter.  I think plenty of people would get to the polls if they were paid to do it.  Somebody who works in a Pringles factory is not going to be insulted if you offer them $45 to vote Republican.

I'm sure we could institute some receipt system so that the folks cutting the checks would know we didn't screw them and vote our conscience.  Whaddya say, America? 

Small government + limited resources = we are doomed

Hey, let me explain something to you.  It'll just take  a minute, so put down your tuna sandwich and give me your undivided attention.  I'll be done before the bread gets soggy.

In Alaska, an idea that sells well with the public, politics-wise, is "small government."  Alaskan citizens think the  idea of efficient government is pretty cool.  We like our taxes low.  We don't want a bunch of weird projects on the ledger.  You know what else sells well in Alaska?  SUVs. 

In case you're braintarded, here's the connection: taxes on petroleum production account for 90% of the state's income, not counting federal largesse.  Petroleum is also (if you believe the scientists, anyway) a non-renewable resource.  That means that we'll run out some day.  In fact, the production trend would suggest that we are in the process of running out.

If you want to make a lean, mean government, you have to do it on a tax base of stable revenue.  Then you can balance a budget and coast along on the proceeds as you go.  It would be like, say, having a solar powered car: the sun comes up every day, you can get to work on the energy it provides.  The Alaska economy model should be different.  It should be more like a rocket: you have a shitload of propulsion up front, and it gets you to escape velocity so you won't need it anymore.

So in Alaska we have an expendable resource and we're trying to use it for our daily commute for the forseeable future.  Unless you flunked thinking, it ought to occur to you that this will not go on forever.  One day, perhaps one day soon, Alaska's last drops of sweet, precious, nourishing oil will trickle out of our hose, and we will lay spent and forgotten, a crushed beer can on history's highway. 

Of course, this isn't inevitable.  It's merely very likely.  What Alaska needs in order to survive the petrocalypse is some kind of industry.  Preferably one that provides energy.  Something along the lines of wind, hydro and geothermal.

If you want small government in Alaska, you want renewable resources in Alaska.  But don't bother writing your congressman about it: he's an oil man.

See, your tomato soup doesn't even have a skin on it yet.  

America never was

Ever hear of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment?  It went on till 1972.

When you see representatives of our nation
apologizing for things done long ago,
or as if they were long ago,
things so terrible,
When you see them apologizing so often,
you have to wonder
What are they doing now
that someday, someone
will have to apologize for.

Insane man with gun treated in reasonable manner at state fair. Film at 11.

I just read a Salon article about a guy at the Alaska State Fair who was holding up an anti-Obama banner and shouting at the crowd and some stuff that the security guys did to him.  There's a video in the article, so go watch it and tell me what you think.

Couple quick thoughts about this.
1. The Fairgrounds are private property.  Crazy assholes aren't allowed to walk into your house and support Lynden LaRouche for president by yelling insults at people in your living room.  That's because your house is private property.  The Alaska State Fair is the same kind of situation.  they let people in to mill around and buy stuff, not to engage in rowdy public discourse
2. That guy is clearly fucking nuts.  As the video shows, he's a crazy asshole.  When you're running a fair, where there's, like, kids and stuff walking around, you want to discourage assholes from being loudly insane on the premises.  Weird, twisted shit happened over the course of his life that made this guy so overwhelmed with rage that he feels the need to act inappropriately in a crowded place.  As security, it would be your job to get him to fucking quit it.  If he's gonna be cool about it, it means he can just leave.  If he's gonna continue to be a crazy guy, some stepping on his neck may need to take place in order to control the situation.  Cops do so much way worse shit than this every single day.  It's baffling why his would be misconstrued as news.  Hence the title of today's blog.
3. That crazy asshole had a gun on him.   My fucking word!  Guns ain't allowed at the Fair!  People don't like insane people to have guns.  If this guy was waiting with you at a bus stop, and you happened to notice he had a gun on him, You would suddenly remember a not-waiting-at-the-bus-stop type errand you had to run elsewhere, out of bullet range.Come to think of it, how did he get a 12-foot banner into the fair?  He carried that through the gate when he bought his ticket and nobody was like "Um, sir?"  What's he gonna say, that it's his walking stick?  But anyway,  had he tried doing that routine with a gun at, say, a presidential visit, or Chilkoot Charlie's, They'da shot him in the face and put him in the dumpster, end of story.
4.  In Alaska, being anti-Obama is like being anti-AIDS.  Anti-Obama protestor, eh?  'Spose it's a government conspiracy?  Well, before you judge, allow me to present some counter-evidence.  First, here's a link that shows the likelihood of the Democrat taking the Governor's seat in the next election.  It's *.  Label readers will recognize * as Nutrition Facts abbreviation for "less than 2%."  That's right, there's more iron in my Sugar Smacks than there are votes for Ethan Berkowitz.  Additionally, here's the poll returns for the 2008 election.  As you can see, Obama got18% more of the vote in Arizona than he did in Alaska, and remember, they're openly racist in Arizona.  Point being, this guy's Obama-as-Hitler banner was not really an issue for some political reason.  If anything, it's why they didn't shoot him.  He certainly has the sympathy of the crowd, as you can hear. in the video.  While you're at it, though,Look at how badly Obama stomped McCain in Hawaii.  He lost like three to one.  You don't normally see that kind of thing in a presidential election.

So maybe this whole thing is being blown out of proportion in the Salon article just a bit.

Political leanings are a consequence of basic thought style

Separated at birth?

Occasionally I try listening to left-wing talk radio when I'm driving in my car.  Left-wing talk radio is a fairly new phenomenon.  It is modeled very closely after right-wing talk radio.  It works like this:  You get a host with a loud voice to express opinions very emphatically.  During the course of this, they may have guests with concurring or opposing viewpoints on to talk with them.  They may take calls.  It doesn't really matter, since the main content of the show is a brash person shouting about things as if they're just too fired up to modulate their voice.  If the guests agree or disagree, the host behaves more or less the same way.  I don't tend to learn much from these shows.  In fact, I can't listen to them for more than a few minutes without wondering what tapes I have to listen to in my car.  Generally, within five minutes of beginning to listen to Left-wing talk radio, I start listening to the B-52s. 

I'm not impressed by expression of strong feelings about issues like public policy.  I see a lot of expression of strong feelings whenever I watch TV, so I know that somebody somewhere believes that people are impressed by that kind of thing, and they are probably right, since it's their business to know these things, but I'm not impressed by it.  If you say that drug legalization or gay marriage is going to save/destroy society, you don't get to just say that emphatically and expect me to get your back on the issue.  You have to show me what you're talking about (especially if you think it'll destroy society, seeing as how the facts aren't on your side).  If you want to emphatically state that it'd be great if we all moved and grooved at the Love Shack, particularly if you do so in verse, I've totally got your back on that.  You don't need a lot of supporting evidence to get me there.

I think that having some asshole feign outrage and forecast the apocalypse is a routine that naturally appeals to people who are inclined to be conservative.  Furthermore, I think that it's more of a turn-off to folks who are inclined to liberal viewpoints.  You can't just look at the wild success of a bunghole like Rush Limbaugh and think "If only we had one of those!"  It doesn't work very well, because of big philosophical differences between conservatives* and liberals.

You see, the conservative point of view is a very specific point of view.  You have to accept a specific set of values absolutely to play.  The set of values has mostly developed over the last several decades as an opposition to US Social programs (which is peculiar, since most conservative people seem to think the whole shebang burst fully-formed from God's skull on the sixth day), since they were annoying to the wealthy (who don't use them).  Since the ideas that comprise US conservatism are largely created for the benefit of non-human entities, ie, corporations, and non-rational belief systems, ie, religion, You wouldn't expect the conservative point of view to have much cogency.  It doesn't.  So you just have to believe it and avoid thinking about it.Consequently, people on the right march better than people on the left.

This is fundamentally different from a lot of liberal ideas, which for starters, don't come in a bundle.  This is part of why it's tough to organize left-wingers.  They don't march as well as right-wingers.  And quite possibly, they aren't motivated by the same kind of noisy stuff.  Especially when it's reactionary.  A ton of liberal talk radio is devoted to pointing out the lies of right wing media.  I hope you can appreciate how distracting that is.

You want to convince me of something? Here's how you go about it.  You explain the context as you see it and give a reasoned argument for your views.  Or if you don't have one, express your feeling and go on.  Being all loud and mad-sounding about it just makes me tune out.

Remember, the left invented PBS.       

*Conservatives are a consortium of disparate entities who agree to believe a specific set of things.  Conservative beliefs are summarized as follows:

Border security is more important than food security
Israel has an important role to play in US imperialism/Armageddon
Gun rights are more important than human rights

Free market capitalism works even when it clearly doesn't
Unbending adherence to beliefs on principle is a personality strength
Christian morality is the only morality
Kids are for everybody whether they want them or not
Incorrect notions about the founding fathers aren't
No to taxes, but yes to increasing government spending exponentially. 
God hates it when you're gay.
 
Military intervention is the work we undertake for God and country
Old-fashioned values are best, except where they seem socialist
Religion should be mandatory in public school
Observe the US constitution and interpret it our way
New world order is the only logical order
States' rights are great because corporations can bully states easier than the fed

Drug decriminalization in Mexico has failed to destroy society as promised

Personal possession of most of the drugs you've ever heard of was decriminalized in Mexico around a year ago.  Somehow, this landmark change in drug policy wasn't much discussed in US media.  So far, the result of this has been that the Mexican government has more money to spend going after organized criminals.  This increase in meaningful drug war activity may be why it's been a fairly violent year in Mexico, which you might have heard about.  It's not actually the most drug violence in Mexico in recent memory, though, which is also something that isn't put into context in the US media treatments of Mexican drug violence I've read lately.  I thought that Mexico had a record number of murders this year, because they have had a lot.  But it turns out the recent figures aren't even close to the kind of killing during the'80s.

In latin America, it has become a commonly held belief that the drug war is impossible for anti-drug elements to win.  The pro-drug team has the anti-drug team outclassed in terms of intelligence networks, weaponry, and possibly even public sentiment.  They have way more money to throw at the problem, and are indeed the means of financial livelihood for a number of people who would not otherwise be able to feed their families.*

Generally, personal drug possession decriminalization has almost no effect on drug use, supply, or demand.  I think this is an argument for drug decriminalization, personally.  I suppose it would be nice if legal possession reduced one of those things, but it doesn't.  If it made use more common, that would be an argument against decriminalization in some people's books, since it would mean that there would be more criminal behavior in trafficking and dealing to keep up with demand.  Since it has no effect except to put drug users in jail, we should stop doing it.  After all, it's expensive and it doesn't do anything.  

This is why Latin American countries are decriminalizing personal drug use, by the way.  They don't care any more than our government whether or not drugs or drug policies are harmful to people.  It's just that keeping so many people in prison is expensive.  So they've decided to make the use of drugs legal... sort of.

Mexico has a peculiar set of legal limits of each drug.  Peruse the follow list and tell me if anything jumps out at you.

Drug	Quantity
Opium (raw, smokable)	5	gm
Heroin	25	mg
Marijuana	5	gm
Cocaine	500	mg
LSD	0.015	mg
MDA	200	mg
MDMA (ecstacy)	200	mg
Mescaline	1	gm
Peyote	1	kg
Psilocybin (concentrate, pure active ingredient)	100	mg
Hallucinogenic mushrooms (raw, off the farm)	250	mg
Amphetamines	100	mg
Dexamphetamine	40	mg
Phencyclidine (PCP)	7	mg
Methamphetamines	200	mg
Nalbuphine (synthetic opiate)	10	mg

 Does it strike you as at all odd that A person can carry a kilogram of peyote for personal use, but only 15 micrograms of LSD?  In case you aren't familiar, 150 micrograms is generally considered to be a dose of LSD.  Below 20 mics, no one would even notice they'd taken a drug. 
Peyote gets you high because it contains Mescaline.  The effective dose for Mescaline, which has more in common with LSD than the other drugs on this list, is around 250 milligrams.  a kilogram of dried peyote has about 36 grams of mescaline in it.  That would be enough peyote to make 144 people hallucinate and gibber for the rest of the day.  Then again, a person can only carry up to one gram of pure mescaline (the same drug as peyote, you understand)  which is to say, about a sugar cube's worth, but peculiarly, the dried plant is legal in volumes that would be a significant bulge in your knapsack. 

The psilocybin/mushrooms limits have the opposite problem.  A 1/4 gram of dried psilocybin mushroom is well below the psychoactive threshold.  A common dosage would be about 2 grams.  But 2 grams of dried mushroom would contain about 10mg of psilocybin, the active chemical.  If you just carry the chemical itself, you can have 10 times that much.  That strikes me as a strange rule.

The law says in effect that you can have enough fresh peyote for 100 people, or less mescaline than you can use yourself, and you can have too little mushroom to get high, but enough psylocybin for ten people. Ah well, hey, okay, whatever.  It doesn't totally make sense, but it's a start.  I assume that the folks who came up with this policy were not familiar with these particular drugs.  They made some strange choices.  It beats sending people to prison for carrying a few joints, anyway.

Anyhow, I made up the map you see here that indicates the legal status of drug use in various Latin American countries.  I couldn't find any reliable info for Suriname or French Guiana, but I did find this peculiar fact the other day.  Residents of Suriname made a liqueur out of avocados.  This drink had a thick texture like a pudding, but packed around the same alcohol content by volume as wine.  These folks couldn't get avocados anymore when they moved to the Netherlands, so they used custard to mimic the texture instead.  This delightful relative of eggnog is called advocaat.  

Back to the map, Uruguay gets special mention because drugs haven't ever been illegal there.  The Brazilian government has recently decided that drug users need counseling rather than jail time, so they're heading in the right direction. 

As you can see, Latin America is leading the world in drug legalization.  I think it's probably a good sign.  It may be a sign of what's to come, too.  Ain't the future grand?


* I could tell you about it, or you could watch movies on the drug war and see these people explain it themselves, so I leave it to you if you're inclined.  I highly recommend a documentary called Drug Wars: the Rise and Fall of the Worlds Largest Drug Cartels.  This movie is a 4-part series, and is badly edited, but extremely informative.  It's pretty unbiased, and will make you think about this stuff in different ways.  You can stream it on Netflix or buy it at Amazon.  It really is a great survey of drug use worldwide. 

Anchorage bicycle law about to be rewritten to be more stupid.

The Municipality of Anchorage Traffic Code is being rewritten this year.  The rules governing the use of roads and sidewalks are all being reviewed with the intention of bringing them into sync with the driving conditions of our city.  This sounds like a neat idea, but dig this proposed addendum to Anchorage bicycle law:

9.38.060(c): C. Persons operating a bicycle upon a sidewalk, recreational trail or bike trail

must yield the right-of-way to traffic before crossing a roadway, street, or driveway.

The justification for this rule is practical-sounding and goes something like this.  The right-of-way given to pedestrians crossing streets is based on the idea that the rider is going slowly enough to be seen by drivers.  But since bikes can go really fast, they are harder to anticipate, and so drivers shouldn't be held responsible for making sure they don't run them over.  This is a leading cause of accidents, and so by changing the law, we can make riders more responsible, and so avoid accidents.

The problem with that idea is that it's based on the faulty reasoning that bicycles are darting into the roadway in front of vehicles because they have the right of way and so causing accidents.  That's not actually what happens.  What actually happens is that bikers, and walkers for that matter, often travel on the left sidewalk of a road, facing oncoming traffic.  If you drive a car, you know that when turning right onto a street, the cars you are merging with are all coming from the left.  Thus, cars merging on to the street who want to avoid getting into vehicle collisions will generally be looking left while they are turning right. These people are engaging in what I refer to as Backwards-Looking, Oppositely-Oriented Driving (BLOOD).  They are actually the leading cause of vehicle/pedestrian accidents, since they aren't looking where they're going.

Nearly everybody who drives a car does this.  It's not rare in the slightest.  It's the most practical way to merge a vehicle into traffic.  The problem is, and this really should be the problem of the driver, that pedestrians can be coming from the other direction.  They usually aren't coming, because there aren't many pedestrians on most Anchorage roads.  That doesn't change the fact that people driving big machines around should be aware of where they are putting them at all times.  Giving them the right-of-way over pedestrians is definitely not going to make this happen.

Personally, I've been hit by cars on two occasions.  They were both caused in the same way:  I was crossing a street and the driver was turning right.  The first time, I was on the left sidewalk and they didn't see me until shortly after they hit me. They just looked at me and kept going, since I didn't appear to be hurt.  They didn't even stop.   

Here's a little thought experiment:  cars merging cause a large number of accidents.  So here's what we can do about it: give them the right-of-way.  That way, cars going straight on a roadway know that they have to yield to cars turning on to the roadway.  It's flawless, right?  That ought to prevent tons of vehicle collisions.  Write your assembly member.

I have a friend, let's call him Manfred, who is a regular bicycle commuter.  Prior to becoming one, he was a regular rollerblader.  When Manfred and I first started hanging out, we were riding somewhere up the left sidewalk. A car waiting to turn right pulled out in front of us in the crosswalk, causing us to stop riding so that we didn't get run over.  The driver then proceeded to turn onto the road, and never at any point did they so much as glance in our direction.  So my friend spat right on their passenger side window.  The driver didn't notice.  Manfred said he used to do that all the time back in his rollerblading days.  If they didn't notice getting a loogie on their window, they wouldn't have noticed running us over till it had already happened.   

To prevent both accidents and window loogies, I recommend the following addendum to the Anchorage Traffic Code:

9.22.010: A (continued). Drivers turning right shall turn their fucking neck and see if they're about to drive into something before they begin their turn.

 To sum up, giving cars the right of way isn't going to prevent vehicle/bicycle collisions.  However, it may increase the number of bewildered drivers trying to figure out who spit on their windshield.

I awoke yesterday morning to discover that our lovely houseguest had made hard-boiled eggs.  I like hard-boiled eggs.  I don’t really have cooking them worked out, so I don’t ever make them, but they’re pretty much the funnest food to eat.  They certainly have the highest fun to difficulty ratio of any food I can think of.  I like to carry them in my pocket.  It makes me feel like I’m carrying a delightful secret.  Plus, the shape of an egg is so agreeable for general fidgeting purposes.  Have you ever sat at a table and idly spun a hard-boiled egg?  You haven’t lived till you’ve done that. 

If there were no such thing as Easter, and no one had ever thought of painting eggs before, I’d have thought of it by myself, I’m certain of it.  The world is full of insane inventions that I can honestly say would never have occurred to me at all, not even in part, and it’s comforting to me to know that this one thing, painting hard-boiled eggs, would have been an invention I could count on.  I don’t really know how pulleys work, or why they don’t work when I think they should.  When my car stops working right, I have as much chance of making it run again by myself as a tobogganer has of making the mountain taller (though I do open the hood anyway).

I have an idea for an invention.  It’s a collapsible stepladder that’s shaped like a three-tiered wedding cake.  Instead of carrying it, you just roll it where you want to go, then pull it up, and viola.  Who doesn’t want to stand on a cake?  It would have a rubberized traction layer that was very reminiscent of frosting, which also made for easy rolling.  Cakes are, in part, made of eggs.

Once, at a céilidh, I met a guy who had invented a revolutionary new kind of mop and needed people to invest in their manufacture so that he could become a rich man and god among custodians.  I’m not making this up.  He needed like $15,000 to make the mop heads and he figured every custodian in the world would be stoked to buy one.  I told him that I didn’t have any money, though I wished him well, and that I had actually come to the céilidh to dance with girls, not talk to custodians, no matter how visionary.  I had had eggs for breakfast that morning.

Whenever I fry eggs, I always crack the first egg right in the middle of the pan.  This makes the finished yolk constellation pretty limited.  The shape is always set to some kind of lopsided thing by that middle egg, unless I cook six more and take care to arrange them around the middle one in a circle, which I’ve never quite done.  I ought to think it out beforehand, but I’m not a morning person.

I can never be sure how the egg I’m about to crack will turn out.  I fry eggs nearly every day, usually 3-5 of them, and I still always end up with the pan too hot or the oil to sparse.  Every egg I crack causes albumen to get on my fingers, which I think is a little bit gross.

Make a little birdhouse in your cathouse

 It's not clear what cockatiels are saying, It is clear that they mean it emphatically.

There's this house in my neighborhood that has cats. It was the first thing I noticed about the place, because I noticed the cats slinking around the neighborhood over a block away. I couldn't tell you how many cats live there. at least a dozen.

They all seem like pretty good cats, all things considered. A good chunk of them are related, I believe, and many of them clearly are not, so I suppose they have the makings of a good cat society: the family aspect, clanishness, to encourage sticking together, but with enough genetic diversity to keep fresh generations from getting harelips and things. They mostly seem to live on the front porch during the Summer, which is to say that the cat density is highest there, though individual members of the household probably wander as far as flat Top when the urge strikes them. They certainly set the tone for the surrounding block, which is to say that it is full of furtive, wide-eyed shadows crouching under cars and trees, and noticeably empty of mice.*

I'd say the cats have the run of the house, except that they don't appear to. I've never actually seen any people who live there, but each window on the South side of the house leads to an outdoor aviary which is full of cockatiels. Consequently, the East, South and West sides of the house are full of cockatiel noises, which are stunning, and then stunning again when you realize that they aren't being played on a nature sounds cd or something, but are actually piping fresh from the vocal cords of a flock of actual birds, that, as I have described, live in the house. The outside of the aviary frequently has cats crawling on it, trying to figure out some way to get those paint-feathered assholes to shut up for a minute.
With that visual and auditory barrage going on, the placid waddle and low murmur of the ducks in their pond on the house’s Southeast corner might go completely unnoticed.

Given all this, it should not surprise you particularly to learn that the house next door is for sale, and has been for some time, despite its quite reasonable asking price.

I’m always conflicted by things like these. The people who I must infer live there obviously put a great deal of energy into keeping these animals, and keeping them from killing one another. This would seem to suggest that they like their life the way it is. I feel a kind of jealousy. I imagine these Francis of Assisi types sitting I their sunny home, which contains a fountain in the living room, speaking to their birds and cats, their lives somehow serene. I also feel a squirmy kind of pity. I imagine them sitting, frazzled on their ruined furniture with their flock of birds and their herd of cats and whatever else they’ve got in there, feeling somehow a slave to the degenerate flow from two birds and three cats to four birds and six cats, to what the hell’s the difference, sure, we’ll take ‘em, we’re already deaf anyway and the toxoplasmosis isn’t so bad once you get used to it.

There but for fortune go me, anyway.  Except that I don't think I like birds much.


*I am actually referring to mouselike creatures of all kinds, as well as largish beetles, spiders, flies, unwary songbirds and anything else which has the unfortunate qualities of being smaller and slower than a cat, and therefore becomes a thing for a cat to play with until the thing dies, or if it thinks of it in time, feigns death. Those possessed of the mentality or instinct for playing possum, if they do it convincingly enough, find the experience of having to do so unpleasant, and usually find some other neighborhood to be small and slow in.