Reason: Oklahoma cops jail four men for transporting legal hemp: “Jamie Baumgartner of Colorado, whose Panacea Life Sciences was the intended recipient of the hemp, tells Fox31 that his company ordered the plant from Kentucky, that a manifest on the truck identified the cargo as hemp, and that Panacea Life Sciences’ contractors received “pre-clearance from the State of Oklahoma” to transport hemp through the state on its way from Kentucky to Colorado. This should have been enough to ward off police harassment.”

Techdirt: Judge recommends vacating sentence of one of the FBI’s handcrafted “terrorists”

JIM BOVARD: Attorney General nominee Wiliam Barr’s connection to Ruby Ridge, defending FBI snipers

FEE: Canada’s new drunk driving law will make you thankful for the 4th Amendment

Consortium News: Bases, bases, everywhere…except in the Pentagon’s report

TAC: NATO is a danger, not a guarantor of peace

PAT BUCHANAN: At age 70, time to rethink NATO

Common Dreams: Bring the troops home, but also stop the bombing

The Hill: Amazon shareholders push to halt facial recognition contracts with police

High Times: Terminally-ill patients in Australian hospital to be treated with psilocybin

Futurism: China claims US police are using its facial recognition software

Geek: US cops can’t force you to unlock your phone with face, finger

Barney Fife thinks he’s the Punisher: Mom fights back against cop who pulled gun on her child at bus stop

Washington Examiner: Report: Immigration loophole OK’d 8,686 child marriages in US

Reason: Supreme Court to consider whether police can order blood draws from unconscious drivers

The Intercept: Democratic Party voters are becoming more pro-war than Republicans Ed: Democrats don’t care about Democrat wars, and Republicans don’t care about Republican wars. Party trumps principle every time.

The Federalist: New York Times reveals FBI retaliated against Trump for firing James Comey Ed: Internecine conflict within government should be celebrated.

High Times: Is psychedelic healing in your genes? A team of scientists seeks to find out

Reason: Why drug traffickers laugh at Trump’s border wall

FEE: Canada’s Laffer Curve lesson: government collects less revenue from high-income earners after Trudeau tax hike

Motherboard: AT&T to stop selling location data to third parties after investigation

The Week: The shameful insubordination of John Bolton

JIM BOVARD: Karl Marx and the great socialist revival

RAND PAUL: Americans have a right to boycott, even when it’s wrong

Wired: Synthetic organisms are about to challenge what ‘alive’ really means

Activist Post: “Internet of roads”: Colorado goes all-in with increased radiation and surveillance

Truthdig: The mystery military bases the Pentagon doesn’t want you to know about

Reason: Having won the war against straws, California mulls a crackdown on paper receipts

FEE: Data show California is a living example of the good intentions fallacy

High Times: Vermont Supreme Court rules marijuana smell is not grounds for search

TheFreeThoughtProject: Cop tries to kill woman’s dog, shoots fellow cop in the back instead

Motherboard: The decline of American peyote

Futurism: Physicist: Black holes could be portal for hyperspace travel

The Intercept: Newly-released FOIA documents shed light on border patrol’s seemingly limitless authority

DeepStateBlog: The CIA’s rising profile in politics

Activist Post: DHS has equipped 400 police departments with military-grade sound cannons

Reason: Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel will finally lose his job, over a year after the Parkland shooting

Techdirt: California Supreme Court rejects police union’s attempt to block new open records law

Mises: Ending the war on the non-drug known as hemp

Verge: Carriers can sell your location to bounty hunters because ISP privacy is broken

Two quotes from Thomas Kuhn’s academic powder keg of a book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:

From page 90:

“Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. And perhaps that point need not have been made explicit, for obviously these are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.” 

And this from pages 137-138:

“Textbooks thus begin by truncating the scientist’s sense of his discipline’s history and then proceed to supply a substitute for what they have eliminated. Characteristically,textbooks of science contain just a bit of history, either in an introductory chapter or, more often, in scattered references to the great lessons of an earlier age. From such references both students and professionals come to feel like participants in a long-standing historical tradition. Yet, the textbook derived tradition in which scientists come to sense their participation is one that, in fact, never existed. For reasons that are both obvious and highly functional, science textbooks (and too many of the older histories of science) refer only to that part of the work of past scientists that can easily be viewed as contributions to the statement and solution of the text’s paradigm problems. Partly by selection and partly by distortion, the scientists of earlier ages are implicitly represented as having worked upon the same set of fixed problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution in scientific theory and method has made seem scientific.No wonder that textbooks and the historical tradition they imply have to be rewritten after each scientific revolution. And no wonder that, as they are rewritten, science once again comes to seem largely cumulative.”

I read this book a decade ago after repeatedly coming across references to it in various papers on economics. The latter quote struck a chord due to the ludicrous textbook racket prevalent on college campuses. Textbook authors, due to their unique position of supplying what in economics is known as a “captive customer”, or captive market, are in possession of a veritable golden goose, skinning students’ parents for several hundred dollars per book. Of course, a new “edition” of the textbook is issued every year, ensuring that the gravy train will never end. And of course these textbook authors and those that teach from their works do a disservice to young scientists-to-be by implying that nothing more need be learned beyond the textbook.

If there is one thing that should never have a home in scientific inquiry, it is “tradition”, because more often than not it is a tradition artificially imposed upon young minds, a tradition that never actually existed. It’s imposition serves the purpose of pushing heterodox thinkers to the fringes, not to be taken seriously. When tradition is enforced from above, it needs a priesthood to do the enforcing. Pushing out the heretics, coddling the obedient and penitent, and distributing the funding to those who will carry on the tradition.

All this reminds me of another quote, from chapter 8 of William Stanley Jevons’ 1871 treatise, The Theory of Political Economy:

“To me it is far more pleasant to agree than to differ; but it is impossible that one who has any .regard for truth can long avoid protesting against doctrines which seem to him to be erroneous. There is ever a tendency of the most hurtful kind to allow opinions to crystallise into creeds. Especially does this tendency manifest itself when some eminent author, enjoying power of clear and comprehensive exposition, becomes recognised as an authority. His works may perhaps be the best which are extant upon the subject in question; they may combine more truth with less error than we can elsewhere meet. But ” to err is human,” and the best works should ever be open to criticism. If, instead of welcoming inquiry and criticism, the admirers of a great author accept his writings as authoritative, both in their excellences and in their defects, the most serious injury is done to truth. In matters of philosophy and science authority has ever been the great opponent of truth. A despotic calm is usually the triumph of error. In the republic of the sciences sedition and even anarchy are beneficial in the long run to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

When we’re kids, we oftentimes fantasize that we are the gunslinging hero of the Western, cop show, or comic book. Even as kids, though, we understand that we aren’t Clint Eastwood, John Rambo, or the Punisher. We separate fantasy from reality. Most of us, anyway. For some, they hide from the guilt and shame of their wasted lives through sustaining this fantasy, and merging it with reality. Which would be hard if they wanted to hold down a job for any extended period of time. Most employers would see the delusional behavior and rid themselves of the crazy person as soon as possible. One profession, however, seems to positively select for delusional nutjobs to fill its ranks: modern-day American policing. In this profession, Barney Fife can act out his Punisher-style fantasies in broad daylight, at the expense of whichever hapless taxpayer happens to bear the brunt of the display. Said taxpayer, when faced with someone in the grips of their militarized fantasy, is at extreme risk of being beaten to a pulp, tased, or shot. And when its over, this Barney Fife receives applause, a paid vacation, and ultimately an expungement of any wrongdoing. The victim either endures the costly, and usually unsuccessful, process of suing the police department. The point is that no real punishment is ever dealt to these sick puppies who don’t hesitate to use violence to fulfill their macho fantasy.

Which brings me to the latest video of a cop unhesitatingly shooting a small, yapping dog. Video here, if you can stomach it. Officer Garbage Human from Faulkner County, Arkansas, is heard and seen telling the owner of the dog: “OK, I’m going to come to you, and if your dog gets aggressive, I’m going to shoot it,” Whereupon he strolls up onto the private property of a private citizen, and casually shoots the small yapping dog in the head.

If there is any giant, pulsing neon sign that points to a psychopath that must be removed from society, it is the murder of a pet. But these people remain on the force, satisfying their juvenile fetish to feel like they are truly the macho badass they want to be. Which of course stems from the fact that they know they are quivering cowards.

Also, most of these knuckledragging, badged psychopaths have very sensitive egos, as so much video evidence will show. Any perceived slight to their authority is met with a quickly escalated encounter, usually ending with the cops wrestling someone to the ground, tasing them, and eventually shooting them.

This cannot continue to happen unchallenged.

The intellectual bodyguard of perpetual war, perpetual debt, the creeping Surveillance State, and authoritarianism both foreign and domestic have an irritating habit of constantly patting themselves on the back, congratulating themselves on being defenders and champions of JOURNALISM, and branding any attack on themselves as an attack on journalism at large. But they are not journalists in any truth-seeking sense, they are gatekeepers of established opinion, toadies of the Political Class. They give themselves awards for the terribly-written, sanctimonious nonsense they peddle as “columns”, for which they receive six-to-seven-figure salaries. And, this New Year’s Eve, several of these sanctimonious establishment propagandists lined up to drop the ball in Times Square. All in the name of JOURNALISM, of course. But the assembled lackeys were from CNN, NBC, Time magazine, etc. They may have done something resembling actual journalism in the distant past, but the money in gatekeeping was too good, so they sold their soul, flushing their integrity down the drain in order to kiss the ring of the Political Class.

Real journalists don’t normally receive awards, or gigantic paychecks. Quite the opposite, actually. Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo, reflecting in the midst of treatment for advanced cancer, lamented the fact that neither he nor his website has received any award or recognition for its repeated accurate predictions regarding the post-9/11 era of total war. The column, The Awards I Never Got, is painful to read, partly because it comes with a recent picture of Justin in his hospital bed in between treatments, but mainly because his frustration comes through:

However, now that I’ve got to slow down I’m struck by the total lack of what we used to call in science fiction fandom Egoboo:  awards, medals, proclamations of solidarity, and the presentation of the keys to the city – any city will do! I mean, they do have awards for writers – and specifically for libertarian writers! Why just the other day I was reading about how the Reason Foundation gave away a trophy, the “Bastiat Prize,” in the shape of what looked like a royal scepter: a $10,000 check goes with that. The winner was a poor downtrodden unrecognized neocon columnist for the New York Timeswhose prehistory of squelching Palestinian voices on campus is surely proof that losertarianism gets you farther in this business than libertarianism.

And then they have this thing called the “Webbies” which are handed out to the sponsor’s friends I guess annually. It’s a good excuse to hang out at a mid-level juice joint and have a few laughs, but aside from that, most of the sites that win those things are never seen or heard from again, so there’s that…

What I’m getting at is the total resentment I feel now, near the end of my life, that Antiwar.com has never gotten any award or even any acknowledgment from the legacy media, let alone from the “Official” Libertarian Movement. Decades of laboring in this rockiest of vineyards, proving 100% right about every foreign conflict since 1995, all of it analyzed from a libertarian perspective and posted daily on the Internet before there was such a thing as Twitter. Indeed, Drudge had just gotten started.

So there I was, lying in bed after a particularly difficult night, slowly coming to consciousness that morning. The clear Indian summer light fell directly on my iPhone, where I’d been listening to Bastiat Award winner Bari Weiss justify the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) using Palestinian children in Gaza for target practice. And suddenly the years of resentment rose up in me, bilious and unabashedly angry: Where’s our fucking award?

Isn’t there some kind of award for not being Bari Weiss?”

He does go on to admit that the true reward has been the feedback from his thousands of weekly readers, but he does have a point. And the fact that he hasn’t won any of those awards is a sign that he’s been doing something right. Rousing the anger and fury of the powerful is also a reward in itself, something real journalists such as Raimondo take great pride in.

Real journalists aren’t overweening, sanctimonious asses, don’t drop Times Square New Year’s Eve balls, dub themselves a ‘Journalist’, pick up a seven-figure check, or schmooze within the DC Beltway. And if you’re winning awards from Establishment-funded think tanks and institutions, you are either a gatekeeper or a prolific arse-kisser of one.

Real journalists are hated, in their time, by the Establishment. They are persecuted, forced into hiding, and sometimes murdered, unfortunately. But that persecution is the sign that they’ve been doing actual journalism. Awards and access to the Political Class’s inner circles are a sign you’re doing the opposite.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Netflix’s latest Black Mirror entry, Bandersnatch, the choose-your-own-adventure style film with…how many possible endings? As I sit here attempting to explain the connection between the episode and the writings of George Shackle, I realize that I’m watching an entirely new permutation, with an entirely new ending. Each choice that Stefan makes turns the Shacklean kaleidoscope, resulting in entirely new choices, leading to an outcome far different than the others.

Of course Bandersnatch would remind me of Shackle, whose entire creative output is leering at me from its place on my bookshelf. Shackle’s concepts of unknowledge, choice in the face of ignorance and expectation, time as a ‘forceps’ in which we are held between “the past which is unchoosable and the future which is unknowable”, the very strangeness of choice based on the choices of others, as well as the visions of the future that our imagination gives us, all sprung to mind as I watched Stefan’s spiraling descent into insanity in the face of the implications of the ‘White Bear’. We take our imagination for granted, mainly because we use it so much, but our entire social order depends on for its functioning the choices that are first passed through the imagination. And yet the social order functions in spite of the strangeness. And not only functions, but thrives. But only as long as we are allowed to make our own choices.

And that’s what happens when you try making sense of Shackle and other philosophers in that vein. Before you know it, you’re lost in a phenomenological wilderness, lured there by his Orphic prose, only to be confronted by the tomes of Alfred Shutz, Edmund Husserl, and Max Weber as your only means of escape. Yet each new revelation brings you only deeper into what feels like a labyrinth of the mind, and you eventually place the books back on the shelf. And from there they will loom, weighing you with guilt until you take them off the shelf again

Our individual choices turn the kaleidoscope. Our choices affect the choices of others. Our interpretation of the past, present, and future affect the interpretations of past, present, future, of others. They are reflected and refracted throughout the social web we are a part of, with the prism of imagination changing, reinterpreting, and then re-broadcasting them back into that social web in a never-ending, kaleidoscopic cycle. The future is being created, destroyed, and reborn in our collective imagination in the present. It really is strange.

Reason: Are we about to see a wave of police using ‘victim’s rights’ laws to keep misconduct secret?

WSWS: Opioid overdose deaths triple among US teens and young children

Zero Hedge: FBI probing theft of 18,000 documents linked to Sept. 11th attacks

The Guardian: Outrage after Netflix pulls comedy show criticizing Saudi Arabia

Consortium News: Fired school employee sues over Israel loyalty oath

Counterpunch: Worse than obsolete: NATO creates enemies

National Interest: The one reason America can’t police the world anymore: Washington is broke

FEE: How economics turns soybeans into washing machines

UNZ: Israel is bad for America

Tech Crunch: Clever AI hid data from its creators to cheat at its appointed task