REPUBLIC REBORN

The Verge: Google tries to calm controversy over app developers having access to your Gmail

Truthdig: How much all-seeing AI surveillance is too much?

Reason: Ignore the salaciousness of the Ali Watkins affair. The real story is feds spying on a New York Times reporter.

The American Conservative: Another Saudi coalition wedding massacre in Yemen

Mises: Why the Supreme Court does what the Pentagon wants

Activist Post: Police union calls for banning of high school books because they mention police brutality

Military Times: Immigrant kids could outnumber troops 4-1 at Texas Air Force base

Mint Press News: Amazon’s fusion with the State shows neoliberalism’s drift into neofascism Ed: Yes it’s bad, but is it really a surprise? By all means, be outraged. But surprised?

FEE: What if we treated public schools as monopolies?

Scott Horton Show: The Founding Fathers never intended a secret police

Talking Drugs: As the US spent $8 billion on the Afghanistan drug war, opium production soared by 164%

Scenes from the psychedelic renaissance: OZY: Do magic mushrooms work better than Prozac? She aims to find out.

NewsOn6: Doctor behind Tulsa medical marijuana clinic speaks about his practice

Tulsa World: Medical marijuana: From policy setting to cultivation to testing and transportation, many months will pass before Oklahomans can buy it

The Independent: Why Lush was right to take aim at the undercover policing scandal

GEORGE WILL: The Supreme Court brings privacy into the 21st century

FEE: Actually, you can fight city hall, even on surveillance issues

Techdirt: Researchers reveal details of the sneaky form of surveillance known as printer tracking dots, develop free software to defeat it

Activist Post: Court rules school can use electric shock as punishment for special needs students

Electronic Intifada: Israel lobby seeks to erase occupation from Virginia schoolbooks

JAMES BOVARD: Another ‘state of democracy’ report ignores real cause of plummeting trust

The Federalist: Mexico’s new leftist president is not a threat, but the collapse of Mexico is

TomDispatch: Weaponized Keynesianism in Washington

The Intercept: Poland’s new surveillance law targets personal data of environmental activists, threatening UN climate talks Ed: Protecting the rights of political activists, regardless of affiliation, should be paramount to advocates for liberty. The laws used against advocates of a cause we dislike will one day be used against advocates of causes we champion.

Change is tough. Societal change, when you have firm views about how society should look, views that have spent decades burrowing ever deeper into your psyche, becomes almost unendurable for some. Hence the use of government as a bludgeon against such forces of change. But change, when it emerges in a spontaneous fashion from the collective forces of voluntary interaction, are beneficial on a scale that we won’t be able to comprehend until a generation or two later.  And the very attempt stop the change is like attempting to stop a tsunami. Society itself breaks apart against the rocky shores of comprehensive social crusades as the War on Drugs. Societal change, or increases in liberty, are resisted by those whose wallets will be affected.  The recent specter of a plant becoming less prohibited in my home state unleashed a volley of attacks that ultimately failed.  An entire political establishment aligned against it, because they knew the implications of letting this small liberty intrude on their prohibitionist party. Probably the largest, most profitable, and most entrenched industry, pharmaceutical, will come crumbling down within a decade due the twin awakenings to marijuana and psychedelics. But I digress.

George Shackle, the only writer I’ve managed, painstakingly, to acquire first editions of every book written, said that “economics isn’t a science, and that we ought not to call it a science”. He posited that social order is one of sudden, kaleidic change, and that professional economists should cease pretending to say anything meaningful about static states or equilibrium in regard to the workings of the economy.  Something about Shackle’s whimsical, sphinxlike style of writing is appealing to me (“we are ignorant of what it is we do not know even though we know more than we can ever say”, for instance), but societal change really is kaleidic, and it is best to stay out of its way.  A spontaneous order would rather die than be controlled, and no better example of that has been provided by all the attempts at totalitarian socialism, most recently Venezuela, where the citizens have resorted to robbing the local zoos for food, robbing and murdering each other, and generally ripping society apart in an entirely predictable manner.

So it looks like there are two certainties in regards to the outcome of social policies: if voluntarism is protected as an absolute principal, society will always move towards a better state of affairs even if we don’t know what that will look like, while socialism, strictly enforced, will lead to a fracturing of society, all the invisible social bonds that had been taken for granted will be severed. The Benthamite ‘state of nature’ follows soon thereafter.

I’d say I write posts like this to drive home the point that it is impossible to control society, the change is inescapable.  I’m talking about market and cultural change that are the result of the spontaneous forces that arise from the plans and voluntary actions and choices of millions of people making billions of decisions and calculations on a daily basis.  It’s our duty to prevent the government, or some coalition of offended persons from targeting this type of spontaneous change.  Defenders of liberty are in every sense defenders of the spontaneous forces of society.  Good luck fitting that into a party platform.

Watching the media firestorm over separated families would have you believing that this is not only the first, but the worst, mistreatment of foreign families or children by our government.  But it’s not the first, or anywhere near the worst. The child death toll of the United State’s drone war in the Middle East alone has racked up a far higher body count than the number of immigrants stuck in border detention centers.  The Washington Times reported back in 2015 that the Obama-led drone wars murdered innocents 90% of the time. Obama authorized 540 drone strikes, killing over 4,000 people.

The ‘War on Terror’ itself has displaced millions of people, upending the social order in their respective countries, unleashing chaos for their families.  Where’s the calls for revolution over that?

I’m not quibbling over who was in the White House during each phase of our apparently perpetual overseas massacre of civilians, as if any particular President is exclusively responsible for the entire debacle.  By all means, lets blame Trump for his part in various atrocities, but let’s not forget that they’re not exclusive to Trump, and he’s not much different than the past 30 inhabitants of the White House.  His authoritarianism is only cosmetically different than Obama’s or Bush’s, or Clinton’s.

By all means, let’s abolish ICE and end family separations at the border. We might pay more attention to why they’re coming here in the first place, and also liberalize and streamline the legal path to immigration in the process.  But let’s also take the time to remember the thousands of other children dying at the hands of our government in the Middle East, and direct all the white hot energy aimed at Trump and end our foreign policy of endless intervention.  Let’s also aim our outrage at the fact that our government is the biggest arms dealer in the world, with Saudi Arabia as our number one customer. Let’s remember that the largest concentration camp in the world, Palestine, is currently being overseen by one of our government’s closest allies, Israel.

Our government isn’t so innocent. Far from it. But it’s fall from grace didn’t occur only when Trump took office.  That happened decades earlier, and the policies attributed to Trump will remain in effect long after he leaves office if we keep pretending their were unique to Trump alone.

NewsOK: Oklahoma lawmakers won’t return for marijuana special session

The Hill: Public support for medical marijuana access is overwhelming and bipartisan

Marijuana Moment: Joe Rogan challenges Ted Nugent over marijuana views

High Times: Ex-police chief used misleading stats to lobby against San Diego marijuana dispensaries

Mises: Canada has legalized marijuana, and the US may soon bow to state legalization

Reason: The President shouldn’t act as arms dealer to the Saudis

Also Reason: Pennsylvania officer tases suspect in the back because he didn’t cross his legs fast enough

Activist Post: Taxpayers shell out $2.5 million after cop held 3 year-old girl at gunpoint as he beat her handcuffed mother

Rolling Stone: Sex-worker advocates sue over internet ‘censorship’ law

FEE: Seven Social Security myths

Eric Peters Autos: Faceprinted

Reason: Why I’m teaching my son to break the law

LA Times: ‘Even the cops don’t like us anymore’: Under Trump, ICE is despised and divided

Ayahuasca: Inverse: Psychedelic brew made from Amazonian plants may ease depression

OSA: Spectral cloaking could make objects invisible under realistic conditions

Washington Examiner: NSA deletes years of call records, says it exceeded legal limit

Gizmodo: California lawmakers pass bill stopping companies like Facebook from selling user data without consent

Slate: A digital stop and frisk

Ars Technica: Facebook patent would turn your mic on to analyze how you watch ads

National Review: No, really: delete your social media accounts Ed: Very good piece, but not really all that fair that I post it here, as I use social media.

Texas cops ready to get their goosestep on over Oklahoma weed NewsChannel6: North Texas law enforcement agencies react to OK legalizing medical marijuana

Wasn’t going to post any more regarding ‘Russiagate’, but I just really like this headline: Politico: House GOP rips Rosenstein to his face

Reason: Is it legal for cops to shoot unlicensed dogs?

SHELDON RICHMAN: Why Palestine matters

JAMES BOVARD: That time the media cheered for Gestapo immigration tactics

Antiwar.com: Assange is a journalist, and should not be persecuted for publishing the truth

FEE: It’s time to privatize the US postal service

High Times: Is cannabis the cure to rural unemployment? 

WSWS: Tech giants hold censorship meeting with U.S. intelligence agencies

The Hill: DHS declined to let officials testify at hearing on cell surveillance, chairman says

Techcrunch: Study calls out ‘dark patterns’ in Facebook and Google that push users towards less privacy

Zero Hedge: The Police State takes a giant leap towards pre-crime

Curbed SF: NSA spies on internet traffic from non-secret secret San Francisco building

The Intercept: Calls to abolish ICE are becoming more mainstream. Is D.C. ready for the conversation? Ed: Abolish ICE, along with every other agency created during the hysteria that exploded in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Reason: School security guard who didn’t stop the Parkland shooter was previously suspended for sexually harassing students

The American Conservative: The dying children of Yemen

JUSTIN RAIMONDO: Honduras is a hellhole: who’s responsible?

National Review: Venezuela’s future…and ours

FEE: Schools have created a generation of Permit Pattys and BBQ Bettys

The New Atlantis: Google.gov

Gizmodo: A new NASA-led project means the search for aliens is heating up

Yesterday, something amazing happened in my home state: medical marijuana was legalized, and the authoritarian incumbent Senator Ervin Yen lost by a large margin to Joe Howell. Needless to say, the prairie Political Class received dual blows by a citizenry sick and tired of the galloping approach of authoritarianism, one that has bankrupted our home state.

In Yen’s case, with such a large margin of defeat of Yen to Joe Howell (20 percentage points!) thanks to a true grassroots ‘Yank Yen’ campaign, intelligently organized and relentlessly executed, the authoritarian EX-Senator must be feeling literal whiplash this morning from what was less of a yank and more of a cannon blast.

But a warning to all those who supported these victories: the Political Class is already gearing up for Round 2, and you know they’ve got plenty of tricks up their sleeves. Namely, they’re working overtime to prepare a completely gutted version of 788, one that will bear little resemblance to what all the activists fought so hard for.

Getting to vote for medical marijuana in a state so hostile to change in the direction of greater liberty was a wonderful experience. Not a vote for a politician who has made oblique paeans to working toward medical marijuana sometime in the distant future, but a direct vote for change now.  For once I didn’t feel helpless in the face of a political system that seems to reward only the politically connected, a system that caters to the powerful, with only a few beans tossed to the voting masses now and then.  With 788, we bypassed the Political Class entirely, and made a desperately needed change ourselves because our government has proven too corrupt and cowardly to do it.

Taking my children along as I voted was a symbolic and literal reference to my small power in that moment to alter their future for the better in this state.  Parents are their children’s shield, standing between them and the State.  We must never relinquish that power, something that Yen insisted was his right to take.  No free society can last long when government comes between parent and child.  And no politician or bureaucrat that attempts to weaken or remove that shield should ever be trusted.

Liberty won yesterday, but the battle isn’t over. 788 must not be allowed to be crippled, mutilated, and transformed into just another crony pay-out.  It should be given the force of law as is.  Anything less would be a betrayal of Oklahoma’s citizens, and the future of this state.

NewsOn6: SQ 788 passes, legalizing medical marijuana in Oklahoma

The Intercept: Google and Facebook are quietly fighting California’s privacy rights initiative, emails reveal

Central Track: Is this old east Dallas high-rise an NSA spying hub?

CNET: Google’s Project Maven work could have been weaponized, ex-Pentagon official admits

Motherboard: ICE modified its ‘risk assessment’ software so it automatically recommends detention

Consortium News: How US policy in Honduras set the stage for today’s mass migration

The American Conservative: Separating children from parents? Our prisons do it all the time

Mises: The Drug War is pushing more migrants to our borders

Activist Post: California considering creating advisory group for fake news with Orwellian bill

The Verge: This Japanese AI security camera shows the future of surveillance will be automated

The Intercept: The NSA’s hidden spy hubs in eight U.S. cities

The Hill: Senate votes to require Pentagon to disclose cellphone spying near military facilities

World Net Daily: New drone surveillance will ‘make Big Brother drool’

New India Express: China steps up surveillance with flock of robotic doves in Muslim-majority Xinjiang

Futurist: By turning down 23andMe, immigration activists are actually being responsible about genetic privacy

EFF: A technical deep dive into STARTTLS everywhere

Gizmodo: Orlando police drop Amazon’s controversial facial recognition tech…for now

Forbes: Facial recognition and future scenarios

The Week: If America wants to stop the migrant crisis, it should decriminalize drugs

DANIEL HARSANYI: The real world is starting to resemble Twitter, and that’s a problem

JUSTIN RAIMONDO: Washington D.C., the epicenter of crazy

The American Conservative: Believe it or not, banning flavored E-cigarettes is a terrible idea

Also The American Conservative: The Military-Industrial Complex’s assault on liberty

Reason: 1972: The year that made 2018 seem sane

Activist Post: One card to rule them all

High Times: THC-infused sriracha has arrived