REPUBLIC REBORN

What could go wrong?

MATT TAIBBI: The Pentagon wants to use DARPA to police internet news

Salient points:

“The most enormous issue posed by the modern media landscape is the industry’s incredible concentration, which allows a handful of private platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Google – to dominate media distribution.

This makes it possible to envisage direct levers of control over the public’s media habits that never existed back when people got much of their news from local paper chains with individual distribution networks. We’ve already seen scary examples of misidentified foreign subversion, from the Washington Post’s repeat editorials denouncing Bernie Sanders as a useful idiot for the Kremlin to the zapping of hundreds of domestic political sites as “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

What if the same people who can’t tell the difference between Truthdig and Pravda get to help design the new fake news algorithms? That’s a much bigger worry than the next Paul Horner or even, frankly, the next Russian Facebook campaign. While Donald Trump is in the White House, progressives won’t grasp how scary all of this is, but bet on it: In a few years, we’ll all wish we paid more attention when the Pentagon announced it wanted in on the news regulation business.”

If that’s not a red flag. From The Sun: Police team up with Amazon Ring to hand out free camera doorbells to thousands of households across Britain

For decades, the Left, traditionally the anti-free market side, opposed the Drug War, exposed its ill effects on the most vulnerable classes of people, and all the tragedy that ensued. The Right, despite their declared support for free markets, have almost universally supported the Drug War, as well as the law-and-order approach to offenders and the militarization of police. How both sides were able to hold such a contradiction in their collective minds for so long is beyond me.

The Left, in calling for the legalization for cannabis, implicitly understood the humanitarianism of the libertarian vision of removing controls on voluntary behavior, and the idiocy of declaring something illegal when there exists no victim.  It would only take a small nudge to apply that libertarian humanitarianism to every other area of life currently blighted by government interference.

Most of the mainstream Right only recently admitted to the utter lunacy of cannabis prohibition, and how it contradicts their supposed support of freedom. The ‘libertarian Right’ if there is such a thing, has supported legalization, but they have historically been drowned out by the Republican demagogues of Prohibition.

Only the libertarians remain as the ones who have not only supported legalization, but understood the principle behind it.

But marijuana legalization belongs to neither the Left nor the Right. Marijuana legalization has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt what libertarians have been saying for years: that liberty is humane, and good, and our only option.

It’s prohibition of voluntary behavior of any stripe that is immoral, because it violates the dignity of both parties to a transaction, forces transactions underground where neither side have recourse to courts of law. Prohibition augments and consolidates power, siphoning it away from the people and into the hands of the government. Prohibition becomes a black hole for taxpayer billions and an unending source of power for its architects.

The Drug War became a jobs program for hundreds of thousands of government employees. It also became a playground for all the totalitarian surveillance tech that was designed and manufactured by the domestic arm of the Military/Industrial Complex, and then handed over to the cops, who took it gleefully and immediately deployed it against U.S. citizens. It is now coming to an end, in grand fashion.

The definitive herald of the end of the Drug War is the appearance of the colorful, creative cannabis billboards that have popped up around Oklahoma City. They are beautiful to behold, who would’ve predicted their presence a decade ago? They signify a dramatic increase in liberty, well-being, and prosperity.

Liberty is humanitarian, and nothing is more exemplary of that fact than legalized cannabis.

I’ve made a similar post in the past, but it bears repeating: the vaccine court is compensating cases of “vaccine-induced brain injury”, but only if those cases aren’t labeled as “autism” even though the brain injury results in autism. Bizarre logic that could only be dreamt up by a government lawyer it seems. Here is the paper, published in 2011 in the Pace Environmental Law Review, that looked into it:

Unanswered Questions From the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced Brain Injury

Amazing piece appearing at the New York Post: Robert Mueller helped Saudi Arabia cover up its role in 9/11 attacks: suit

From getting Saudi officials out of the country in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, to shutting down investigations into Saudi connections with the hijackers, Mueller was allegedly instrumental in turning attention away from Saudi Arabia and aiming it at Iraq, where he lied to Congress about the threat Saddam posed to the US. What a piece of garbage.

I put this question to someone in a conversation recently about the cascading success of marijuana legalization. She, Canadian, early 30’s, and a self-described “socialist”, claimed it as a victory for the Left. “But marijuana legalization means a free market. Doesn’t socialism seek to abolish the free market?” It was “different”, apparently. After some waffling around the issue, it was basically agreed by both of us that marijuana legalization transcends Left and Right. Clearly, both sides champion legalization now, seeing it for the humanitarian miracle that it is. But marijuana legalization itself shows the dichotomy between Left and Right to be entirely false, but also exposes the lack of imagination that both groups have had over the past decades. The “Right” couldn’t imagine a world made better through drug legalization. The “Left” couldn’t either, but extended that distrust for the unseen, uncontrollable forces to every aspect of society. But the success of marijuana legalization rests on the unleashing of those unseen, uncontrollable forces. The ability, however limited at the moment, to open a dispensary or shop, to grow and sell cannabis, is revolutionary. The advocate of liberty asks that people imagine that same process extended to every aspect of society.

Liberty is neither Left nor Right. It is a path out and away from the endless problems that these two warring political camps create for everyone. Liberty means a removal of every obstacle to voluntary interaction between people. It places a strict prohibition only on the use of force. Only voluntary interaction is allowed. Which means we humans must learn the art of persuasion to get our way.

I see new dispensaries opening all the time. It warms the heart. I know that some will succeed and some will fail. It’s entirely up to the customers to whom they will reward with their money and time. This state of affairs is just, fair, simple. And it has the power to change the world.

One more word on those young idealists who claim “socialism”. They have the heart and imagination for the philosophy of liberty that few on the Right appear to have the capacity for, but just haven’t heard it. It’s a philosophy that has to gestate in the mind, if you preach it at someone it won’t stick. They have to work it out for themselves. But when they make the connections, when they see the simple logic of liberty, it sticks permanently. Let’s not write off these young idealists looking for the social philosophy that will lift the human race out of its present plight. They’re the ones that will attach themselves most passionately to the ideal of a free society once they realize its potential. And that potential is being broadcast loud and clear through the example of marijuana legalization.

The secret terrorism watchlists of the post-9/11 era that swept up millions of American citizens in a massive dragnet have finally been ruled unconstitutional in a historic decision. Being placed on these watchlists meant either harassment at the airport by the TSA, or a restriction on flying altogether. It also meant being incessantly snooped on by law enforcement and the lives of those affected were filled with pervasive, and unnecessary, anxiety and fear, dramatically diminishing their quality of life and that of their families.

Millions infected with simian virus 40, tens of thousands crippled from an improperly inactivated live virus, sugar cube vaccines that sent children to an iron lung, and other inconvenient historical tidbits that have been thrown into the memory hole.

Pretends to brace against wind while two people calmly walk by behind him:

There are no depths our government won’t plumb if it means attaining some petty act of revenge against a target country.

Iran’s restraint in the face of repeated acts of war and provocation is admirable.