leftlibertarian.org

TSA INSPECTION TARGETS Debra here. The last time I flew was September 20, 2001 (we had expensive, non-refundable tickets that even the horrific events a week earlier couldn't dissuade me from using). But recently, a 2-week cross-country training class for my new job at Globex required me to brave the gauntlet. I won't go into the well-documented security procedures (except to note that all the TSA agents wore blue latex gloves. "Two by two, hands of blue..."). I wasn't pulled aside for any special attention, even after I committed the grievous faux pas of placing both my notebook computers (one personal, one business) in the same gray plastic bin. Upon arrival at my hotel room, I unpacked my suitcases (which had been checked through airline baggage), and found a card in one stating that it had been selected randomly for TSA inspection. Having a deep and abiding streak of cynicism (especially of all things government), I began comparing the two bags for clues on what could have prompted one to be inspected and not the other.

"Neither God nor Master!" is an old anarchist slogan first stated by Bakunin, and a mighty fine one. But how does this jibe with the many anarchists, like Leo Tolstoy and Dorothy Day who were believers? Then again, how about the anarcho-pagans and their Goddess? How can such two widely divergent viewpoints be reconciled? Or can they be reconciled?

I say they can be reconciled to a degree. First off, what does one exactly mean by "God" ? For Bakunin, God was a vengeful authoritarian monster, a purely imaginary and human creation modeled upon earthy despots – a tyrant of infinite dimensions – one that had to be overthrown to liberate humanity. As long as people were beholden to such a horrible fantasy, they were in mental and spiritual chains and thus incapable of liberating themselves from their human masters.

This cruel monster is the God of religious "fundamentalists" everywhere, and to this extent Bakunin was absolutely right. But talk to the anarcho-believers, and this is definitely not how they see God. For them the Divine is benevolent, agree with Bakunin that the Monster is a human creation and reject it. Tangentially, many proto-anarchist Gnostics saw the Old Testament God - the one who creates, murders, curses and destroys seemingly in fits of psychopathic or infantile folly, not as God, but as Satan.

Fine, we now have an evil God and a kind one, and the anarcho-believers follow the latter. Such a God is not a "master" anymore than the eco-system is a "master". It just is and one goes with it, or one does not. If you don't go with it, you are "punished" by your own foolish behavior and not by some Super Cop In The Sky, in the same way we are being "punished" by Global Warming for the stupidity of polluting the atmosphere.

Neither Evil, nor Master, but surely the God concept is still irrational and a purely human invention? Maybe our believer comrades have a screw loose somewhere in wanting to believe in this fiction?

To answer this query we have to turn to the German American libertarian socialist philosopher Joseph Dietzgen, (1) who discovered the underlying materialist aspect of the God concept. A dialectical philosopher, he sought the rational kernel within all thought and belief. For Dietzgen, the basis of all rational thought was the interconnectedness and unity of all existence, also known by philosophers as the Absolute, the Universe or the Totality. It is this unity of existence that is the materialist basis of the God concept, or as he put it, ...the all-perfect Being, with the conception of God, with the Substance of Spinoza, with the "thing in itself" of Kant, and with the Absolute of Hegel, has its good reason in the fact that the sober conception of the Universe as the All-One with nothing above or outside or alongside of it, is the first postulate of a skilled and consistent mode of thinking... (2)

When you think about it, the Totality of Existence or the Universe does have the classic attributions of God – it is infinite, it is greater than anything else, and since everything is interconnected and every action ultimately effects every aspect, one can even stretch the notion to include a degree of omniscience. The basic idea is not wrong, it is what people do with it. The reification and anthropomorphication of the Totality creates the God that atheists deny...the infinite, eternal, is not personal, but objective. (3) [my emphasis]

The Totality is not too far removed from the Tao, or for that matter, (even though they have become reified) Dharma, Karma and Rita of Hinduism and Buddhism. And is not The Great Spirit of the First Nations more of a Creative Force-Totality than the personal God of the Abrahamic religions?

Now, I agree that the folks who desire a personal God, let alone those who crave a Celestial Monster to bully them, will not find the Totality satisfying, and this problem I cannot even begin to resolve. But what it ought to do, is make non-believers more sympathetic to believer comrades and to realize that both of us share a certain spiritual-philosophical common ground.

1. The Joseph Dietzgen Page http://www.geocities.com/vcmtalk/jodietzgen.html

2. Joseph Dietzgen, Some of the Philosophical Essays, p. 274

3. Joseph Dietzgen, Popular Outcome of Philosophy, p. 437

This has been published in the Carnival of Anarchy http://carnival-of-anarchy.blogspot.com/

Dick Cheney's daughter Mary had her baby on Wednesday. If Iraqi grandparents have time to pay attention to such things, they probably are envious that Grandpa Cheney doesn't have to worry about his new grandson being murdered by an American bomb falling out of the sky or soldiers bursting into his home looking for "insurgents."

The Iraqi and Afghan dead, that is. Several hundred thousand Iraqis and Afghans are dead -- many more than killed on 9/11 -- and many more injured at the hands of the American military and the forces their invasion and occupation have unleashed. The Commander-in-Chief and his Iraq war planners knew it would happen ("Analysts' Warnings of Iraq Chaos Detailed"). Yet it goes on, the Democrats too impotent or cowardly to make a difference, the public complacent.

I second Arthur Silber's motion here:

Our national media remain cowed and intimidated, and they refuse, a few honorable exceptions aside, to provide details of the daily and hourly horrors in Iraq to the public. A single major newspaper could provide a noble and invaluable service: if they gave a damn at all about unnecessary death and suffering, they would select the most awful and horrifying picture they could find -- a body with its guts falling out, a bloody corpse shorn of arms and legs, a mutilated face made unrecognizable -- and fill up their entire front page with it, a new one every day. Perhaps after a month or two, enough Americans would demand that their government stop butchering people who never harmed us. [To achieve the sought-for effect, the pictures obviously should be of Iraqis, and only Iraqis. The Iraqis had no choice about our criminal war of aggression, and the endless destruction we have unleashed; the United States did -- and does, even today. We could leave, as we quickly would if we had any remaining decency and humanity, but we won't.]

"Yesterday, in my speech, I quoted quotes from Osama bin Laden. And the reason I did was, is that I want the American people to hear what he has to say -- not what I say, what he says. And in my judgment, we ought to be taking the words of the enemy seriously." --George II, May 24, 2007

Hat tip: James Ostrowski

From The Progressive:

With scarcely a mention in the mainstream media, President Bush has ordered up a plan for responding to a catastrophic attack.

In a new National Security Presidential Directive, Bush lays out his plans for dealing with a “catastrophic emergency.”

Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government.”

He laid this all out in a document entitled "National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51" and "Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20."

The White House released it on May 9.

More here.

Excerpts from Joyce Arthur’s “The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion“…

“Many anti-choice women are convinced that their need for abortion is unique — not like those “other” women — even though they have abortions for the same sorts of reasons.”

Anecdotes:

“I’ve had several cases over the years in which the anti-abortion patient had rationalized in one way or another that her case was the only exception, but the one that really made an impression was the college senior who was the president of her campus Right-to-Life organization, meaning that she had worked very hard in that organization for several years. As I was completing her procedure, I asked what she planned to do about her high office in the RTL organization. Her response was a wide-eyed, ‘You’re not going to tell them, are you!?’ When assured that I was not, she breathed a sigh of relief, explaining how important that position was to her and how she wouldn’t want this to interfere with it.” (Physician, Texas)

“We too have seen our share of anti-choice women, ones the counselors usually grit their teeth over. Just last week a woman announced loudly enough for all to hear in the recovery room, that she thought abortion should be illegal. Amazingly, this was her second abortion within the last few months, having gotten pregnant again within a month of the first abortion. The nurse handled it by talking about all the carnage that went on before abortion was legalized and how fortunate she was to be receiving safe, professional care. However, this young woman continued to insist it was wrong and should be made illegal. Finally the nurse said, ‘Well, I guess we won’t be seeing you here again, not that you’re not welcome.’ Later on, another patient who had overheard this exchange thanked the nurse for her remarks.” (Clinic Administrator, Alberta)

“I had a patient about ten years ago who traveled up to New York City from South Carolina for an abortion. I asked her why she went such a long way to get the procedure. Her answer was that she was a member of a church group that didn’t believe in abortion and she didn’t want anyone to know she was having one. She planned to return to the group when she went back to South Carolina.” (Physician, New York)

“We have anti-choice women in for abortions all the time. Many of them are just naive and ignorant until they find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. Many of them are not malicious. They just haven’t given it the proper amount of thought until it completely affects them. They can be judgmental about their friends, family, and other women. Then suddenly they become pregnant. Suddenly they see the truth. That it should only be their own choice. Unfortunately, many also think that somehow they are different than everyone else and they deserve to have an abortion, while no one else does.” (Physician, Washington State)

More here.

REMEMBER THE STRIKING GRAPHIC FROM JPFO that inspired a blog entry a while back? Aaron Zelman just sent me a couple of copies of it in the form of good-sized 18 x 24 posters. It's even more in-your-face BIG. The graphic now serves as a promo poster for JPFO's movie The Gang, which has been in production for more than a year and should be be released right about now. I saw a rough-cut of The Gang and I'm impressed. No, it's not as lively as a Michael Moore anti-gun alleged documentary. But it has the distinct advantage of being factual -- and very revealing. It had facts about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Tobacco that I didn't know -- and I've been hanging around the gun-rights world for a long time. The Gang is a feature-length film that, in a just world, would blow the evil BATFE right out of our lives. If enough people see and show this film, Congress should be shamed into calling that vicious, anti-Bill-of-Rights gang off our rights and getting its boot off our necks.

THE HUMAN BEING IS A STRANGE BEAST. At least creative ones are. At least this one is. Here's one of those little personal, non-freedom-related writer-revelations you can skip if you're only visiting Wolfesblog for the political rants:

OH DRAT. I COMPLETELY MISSED NATIONAL POLICE WEEK. I guess that's the price one pays for not enjoying the blessings of Washington, DC, where most of the annual festivities take place. Jim Bovard, however, works and bicycles in Our Nation's Glorious Capital and experienced These Noble Protectors of Our Persons and Our Liberties innocently disporting themselves in the cause of Celebrating Their Fallen Comrades. For those of us who missed the party: http://jimbovard.com/blog/2007/05/21/another-police-rampage-in-dc/ and http://jimbovard.com/blog/2007/05/23/police-rampage-update-contact-info/