Axioms in Epistemology

I have been trying to figure out my own blindsides. As in trying to ascertain where the holes in my critical epistemology lie. The places inevitably that will lie the most effectively are the ones that I think are not lies, but truths. I would like to explicate what I faithfully believe as truth at this snapshot point in my being/becoming.

1. Pain is real and every living thing experiences pain. 
Although You will never experience My pain and I will never experience Your pain, our pain is real. Suffering CAN be worse than death: life as torture is not a life worth living. Although such a belief can lead to an extreme of solipsism on the one end or an extreme of utilitarianism on the other, the reality of pain and pain residing in reality is an important element of making morally justified decisions in life. This assumption about reality is very important for understanding empathy and agency.

2. Death is real and every living thing dies. 
Although nobody has died and lived to tell about it, we can safely assume that the corpses are not all pretending. No matter your religion we can all agree that "death" is an event that happens at the end of one's life when whatever a person was (apart from their fleshy shell) exits this reality. Some people think this consciousness is a soul which will be assigned a specific home, a single unchanging role to play in an "after-life". The point being that this life is only a temporary place for our consciousness whether you are a religious person or not. This exiting consciousness and vacant fleshy shell is real and inevitable. In fact believing otherwise leads to ridiculous narcissism and political action to control random events. Immortality is impossible in this world death could be around any corner, and as blind Oedipus would tell you: trying to escape the inevitable just exacerbates the problem. Although there is much traffic regulation motor vehicles are still a top killer, although there are endless ways that have been shown to increase the probability of not dying from heart disease it is still a top killer, and although there is endless credible evidence linking health problems with smoking the activity still continues. Death is something often cognitively deferred and is therefore not as ubiquitous in human's motivation for action as suffering or empathy for a sufferer.To borrow an already loaded phrase and employ it differently: "the sanctity of life" is another important baseline assumption for moral decisionmaking. When evaluating this sanctity one must reject the idea that any life outside of our current life is more valuable than our current life. By current life I mean the de facto life you are living demonstrated as life through consciousness and actions in this world or this here-and-now. Dying this life for a life that cannot be demonstrated as real is pure folly. This idea is what my assumptions about the sanctity of life have arisen out of.

3. History is real. History explains reality better than simply sensing it.

History is real in multiple ways the two I would like to draw out are: History is real insofar as the narrative we (re)produce is viewed as the true story of our past and History is real insofar as our past restrains us because we are on a certain historical trajectory. It is not possible to colonize space next week or next year in our current historical trajectory. It is not possible to stop the over consumption of carbon based energy in the next week or year in our current historical trajectory. History is then something that makes the future possible in the latter definition. The former definition that our (re)production is viewed as a true story is a necessary pre-requisite for any other analysis of history. Because one is always (re)producing history in their present actions/inactions then this history must be viewed as real by the people (re)producing it.

For even if we forget that we have had a history (which our memory forbids) for example we were all struck with simultaneous amnesia,  this event of forgetting would be the defining moment of our history and our successive present(s) from then on. We would excavate the buildings we now live in and stare curiously at complicated machinery. Writing down incorrect assessments of the artifacts as we allowed such assessments to discipline how people lived their lives in this alternate present.. In this extreme example our forgetting of the past would be central TO our past in such a situation where history CAN be forgotten.To forget history would be an infinite amnesia, an end to self, and an end to homo sapien.

Because history can never be forgotten is why people will continue to need to believe it is real, even though it is just a recreation of the past from an interpreter's flawed memory in the future, and can therefore never be "real" or even adequate to explain an entire time period or all the nuances of an event. The most effective type of history that I am aware of at this point is  using historical trajectory as the point of analysis: genealogy. An investigation of the various turning points/syntheses or dialectics that twist and turn their way through history to reach where we are standing today. But an ideal genealogy is impossible, it is too much information to be written. So genealogy is historiographical or episodic, written in big brush strokes thusly homogenizing/essentializing just like history before it. The attempt to come to terms with subjugated or counter-hegemonic truths by looking at the dialectic "losers", still disciplines identities and assumes stable subjects. It is more informative though to see the dialectic's aufhebung as a domination rather than a synthesis in this regard.It is a more "justified knowledge" than regarding the here-and-now as universal and neutral. Instead it should be acknowledge that the hear-and-now is built upon the battles of the past. I think a helpful concept in understanding this idea of history is another Foucauldian concept, that is the inversion of Clausewitz: "politics is war by other means". Even our shared homogenized(nationalized) identity or any other type of identity is marked by battles that are not war because they are happening within the state, but are still oftentimes violent (see: Matewan).

4. The Social (or the creation of inter-subjective reality through discourse with the other)

Human is a political animal: Zoon Politkon ; the self cannot exist without differentiating from an other ; without contact with other humans: psychosis manifests. These are three basic reasons why I feel that the need for human interaction is inherent in all humanity. This also has implications for how one can read philosophy. The idea that the path to truth or enlightenment comes through seclusion cannot provide answers to political questions. This long standing belief that removing yourself from the milieu and objectively observing from this other place is the preferred form of philosophy, social science, or any explanatory measure cannot be true if humans need other humans. The most effective form of philosophy, social science, history, etc. is to explain these narratives, being attentive to the fact that theory and practice are one. Any narrative of explanation will (re)produce a certain reality, to pretend otherwise will just lead to discourses which are not conducive to humans as a whole. Instead, by focusing on its' theory as practice, these justified narratives immerse themselves in the milieu giving far better explanatory sketches than epistemologies of feigned objectivity ever could.


5. Hybrid human motivation
My final attempt to assemble justifiably factual or legitimate evidence for my own de facto epistemology that is constantly changing but must be used whenever I make a decision or make a decision not to make a decision. Every keystroke and every pause between them is a decision that I am making with whatever formed my snapshot of an epistemology for my arguments and the ontologies of the words I'm using to explain them. What is my motivation for writing this down? I want to practice writing, I want to practice interacting with concepts I find interesting, I want to interact with the world through this medium of the internet, I want to rant, etc. Can it be said that either Emotion or Rationality is my primary motivator? Socrates' and Decartes' rehashing of stoicism just to name two are huge events in philosophy which still dominate modern western thought on what makes a good decision and what motivates individuals to make decisions.
The Stoakon was a porch, dudes hung out on it and talked. Sounds like the opposite of classy right? But it turns out between them they hammered out a plank of thought that has become an integral part of  western epistemology ever since and became especially supercharged after the enlightenment: emotions bad, logic good.
Socrates followed their thought and then Plato started writing shit down, philosophy apparently being dominated by speaking rather than writing (although there are many writings). Rationality and logic became the panacea for all that is good. Sex as an emotional paroxysm was irrational. Desire became the enemy of good decisions. Whether this evolved out of an attitude towards gender or whether this discourse helped create a an attitude towards gender I am not in a position to say. Feminist authors point out that this same discourse is applied to gender where males are seen as logical and rational (neutral/normal) while women are seen as overly emotional. When you go to a movie theater and a guy is crying holding a woman's hand is that normal? I don't want to discipline, crying is something humans do, but for the most part this act is associated with femininity. This attitude still pervades, I just give that one example, but we should understand that there is philosophy behind everything whether someone recognizes it or not. There is philosophy behind who cries at movie theaters. This discourse is so tied in with gender that it makes suppression based on gender easier and easier.
Orientalism shows us that cultures are feminized. Through our discourse(or the accumulated academic and media works) we create an image of an exoticized other in the east. This other is either feminized by being painted as emotional and sensual. Picture the exotic harem. Or they are hyper-masculinized as too stoic and thusly irrational based on the fact they are too rational! Think about the discourse of the japanese man as the us was opening that country to capitalism. Inscrutable and unpredictable because of their inscrutability far too stoic.
Once a culture or population is feminized it then becomes easier to authorize violence against such populations. The populations are irrational! What they need is management. The subordination of the feminized population is neccesary, because as we were constructing the other as irrational it meant we were really constructing ourselves as rational. The next logical step then is to manage the emotional population for their own good, to subordinate their feminized identity with our performance of masculine identity.
I am taking a long time to get here, but my point is that all motivations for human action are hybrid motivations. There are elements of materialism/self-interest and emotional/intrinsic motivators in all action. In fact if there was not an "irrational" emotional element to decisionmaking amongst humans war between families would be the norm and we would not understand the meaning of the word friend. Why do we stand by our friends and families when they have tough times? Why do we fall in love? Why do we wake up every day for work? It is not simply because we will receive material rewards, it is also because we seek to perform our selves. We adopt roles in order to use the discourses within those roles. We desire to be ourselves and being is a constant process. Work is not just money it is an identity, a social event, a disciplining of time, a responsibility, etc. When countries go to war with each other it is not ONLY because they want to control their natural resources. It is also because a discourse was used to justify violence against such a country which gives the population some intrinsic motivation to fight. People do not join the army because if they didn't then foreign invaders would kill them or for money, they also want to adopt a role. Oftentimes the roles we adopt are based on masculine and feminine identities, if we can start to move away from this bifurcated model for human motivation and instead move toward a hybrid model I think it is a way in which to deconstruct the violence which is visited upon subordinate identities and justified through feminizing discourses, the same discourses which are guilty of subordinating the identity to begin with.


With that said all of these ideas have aporiae with eachother and internal contradictions. Also my epistemology has changed since I began writing this and when I finished it changed again. :D

The Alluvium of Lake Michigan by The Owl

Every year, in early summer, a certain fish dies in droves and is deposited on the sandy beaches of Lake Michigan.  The carcasses are layered three, maybe four, deep along an undulating line where the gentle waves exhaust themselves and leave behind their morbid cargo and depart to whence they came.

Sunbathing sucks when atop a pile of fish rotting in the summer sun; you want clean beaches for the summer months, then you got to shovel away the dead.  Piled black garbage bags filled with fish guts and flies and copious amounts of sand form tar-black mountains on the curb of the street.  The mountains are heavy with death, rot, and earth.

And then, the beach is handed over to, in what one human described as “The two species making up the overwhelming majority, after everything smaller than your fingertip is discounted, are Larus smithsonianus and Homo sapien.

The beaches of Chicago’s North Shore are up-current from the mega-industry to the south, and the water was usually clean enough to swim in, clear enough to hunt for stones.  Oh, those were good days, when I was young.  The world was one long beach.  It began with a parking lot, under the looming shadow of The Tower.  Adjacent, were crowds of blankets, coolers and pale skin slathered in sunscreen roped in by the floating boundaries of the swimming area; the beach then became private property, more peaceful and solitary, though with a hint of menace that grew as you moved further down the beach, away from the familiar crowds and into the freedom of very rich peoples’ private, and mostly deserted, beaches.

I don’t know their condition today.  I haven’t been back in a while and have no reliable source to attest to the cleanliness of the sand, or the cold, crystal purity of the water.  I imagine the seagulls are still there, since they feed on trash and there cannot be a shortage of trash in the greater Chicago area.

The one problem was always people, that was always what would bring you down, and, ironically, you would bring them down as well.  To some it is safer to hide than risk the shame of a shared humanity.

I learned to drink and take drugs on those beaches at night.  Sometimes blind, black skies, with Bic lighters as the only illumination; other times a shining moon and an endless shimmering path reflecting on the water.  These brilliant nights could make one believe there was such a simple way into the infinite mysteries of life...no, the true paths are grossly less picturesque.

Oh, praise the lord, who deposited me on the shores of the lake.  Under blessings and immorality, beauty and beastliness, I lived innocently, then not so innocently, then rebelliously, then decadently, then, I would like to believe, maybe morally.  I got out of this metamorphosing dance around the lake by finding a new source of aquatic wonder in a different city.  I burned most of the memories on my final trip down the track, or tarmac, or where ever I made my escape, I cannot remember.

Revolution in the Middle East

In Tunisia there were popular protests that caused a president to resign in a currently boiling over endless struggle of politics.  In Egypt there are similar protests going on in another active struggle for democracy.


In my opinion one cannot "have" a democracy, one can only constantly (re)create a democracy which if it were truly investigated is hardly democracy. Which is why one must keep reaching for democracy as if one does not have it, but this process of reaching for democracy is itself the closest thing to actually "having" democracy. The protests (or to put it in a different way to leave the negative connotations our corporate media has attached to that word): "a conglomeration of public politically active peoples" is a good thing in any country. People need to engage in the political process as individuals not as pieces of an illusory homogenized whole that is then "represented". As an individual against orthodoxy, I would like to explain why I can hold such a view when I am critical of all epistemologies because of internal contradictions.



It is my belief that the best way to explain anything is to historicize it. How can I justify holding a belief that people within any country no matter how the government is labeled(democracy, dictatorship, oligarchy etc.) will benefit from actively engaging the political process?



Lets start with Egypt, which is the center of a question for US policy right now: Should the US support the protesters against one of the largest recipients of U.S. Aid? Support the protestors against the regime which moderated enough to recognize Israel(thats why the Aid)? Support the protestors against the regime which houses many of their CIA black sites?



The easy answer for the United States is to just be quiet and stay in the background like Tunisia. The problem with that is that silence is violence for the United States, because of its ubiquity in the domestic governments of many countries. Current  conceptions of sovereignty which are not fluid cannot recognize that the United States is in many ways a de facto world government. Certain countries have surrendered autonomy in certain places to get things from the hegemon(US). In Okinawa the soldiers can rape, murder, and drive drunk all day. They can't be prosecuted, because of the Status of Force Agreement between Japan and the US. This is in return for the United States military protection of their country cerntrally and military protection of the energy supply more loosely. When the United States does nothing about a spontaneous flare up of democratic tendencies, it is giving an OK to the regime which will tamp it down.
The United States should not take the easy way out and instead follow the advice of Jefferson and MLK jr: democratic revolution. The american revolution was not a divinely ordained event and it did not expose any universal truths. What I mean to say by these two qualities is that the american revolution can be exported, what I mean by the latter is that this revolution is not a universal truth so we should not engage in violence which would be an action of forcing democracy on a people which is a farce as we see in Iraq. The revolution should be exported, but with ideas and support(monetary, logistical). The only problem is that our revolution was too violent, our country was created by terrorists, in order to make sure that part of our revolution doesn't get exported we need to support peaceful revolutions WHENEVER the opportunity presents itself. Like in Tunisia and Egypt. But that is simply an ethical concern, why would I really be able to justify such a strong statement that these flare-ups of democracy are good and crushing them is bad?


The only justified knowledge comes from history, so lets look specifically at Egypt. Egypt was a country colonized by multiple powers, but eventually the British got a monopoly. During this time Britain controlled the political apparatus of Egypt through their puppets the Monarchs. Eventually nationalist groups or groups that are united by their national identity starting growing. These individuals felt that monarchs who pretended to be pious while allowing Britain to run the country were not good for their interests. Many nationalist uprisings were slaughtered by the British. In an example of where democratic action was not allowed to happen by an overbearing government. In a policy that is still alive today in Egypt any political parties had to be licensed in a process that no party except those which were puppets of Britain were allowed to exist. In this context the Society of The Muslim Brethren was formed. Religion being the one area which the regime would shy away from regulating. This society was a welfare and community service oriented entity. Through writing, criticizing, and activism using religion as the justification for demands the Muslim Brotherhood made attempts to better the political situation of Egyptians who faced an uncaring colonial power and later an autocratic nationalist regime.

The next generation of Brotherhood leaders included an individual named Sayyid Qutb. Qutb was put in prison and tortured for his political activism. Many other members of the brotherhood were treated in similar ways. The torture effected Qutb's outlook and thusly influenced the outlook of the entire Muslim Brotherhood, which by this time had proved a huge success (in terms of membership) with international potential. Qutb essentially opted out of the peaceful means of his predecessors. How can one be peaceful and criticize through the language of Islam, but face torture and imprisonment for it? What was the brotherhood going to gain from repeating this process? The people in power will stay in power and people who speak out for Muslims or Egyptians will receive the worst of all possible existences: life as torture. It was time to turn the page on these ineffective attempts at democracy and take a cue from the American Revolution: use violence.

Qutb became a lionized figure of violent jihad to such a degree, that it is impossible to imagine 9/11 without the life experience and subsequent writings of Qutb. I do not mean to say that Qutb bears responsibility for 9/11 and I do not mean to say that the hijackers, wahabbi, saudi, or pakistan do not bear their responsibility. I am only pointing out that things become possible by their historical trajectory. If Britain had brought democratic reforms they might still be in a great mutual beneficial relationship with Egypt, far more advantageous to Britain in the long run then blowing money keeping democracy down and eventually getting thrown out. If the nationalists had learned from the mistakes of the monarchs/britain and made political parties an accepted part of democracy the Brethren wouldn't have had to go underground. If the Egyptian government hadn't been dead set on imprisoning, torturing, and martyring the leaders of a religious movement maybe violent jihadis wouldn't have so much motivation and empirical evidence for the justification of violence.

Non-violent democracy should be cherished and supported. If one does not support such events, there are two alternatives: do nothing or actively destroy. Doing nothing is seen as complicity with the current regime, because of the close relationship Egypt has with the United States, they cannot feign ignorance with such a key ally. Which means they lend legitimacy to the efforts of the Egyptian government to actively destroy. This has taken the form of violent counter-democratic actions: beatings, chemical warfare, rubber bullets, etc.

When groups attempt to achieve their agenda peacefully and are met with violence, these groups learn that they cannot achieve their agenda peacefully. This leaves one option: violence.

If instead when groups attempt to achieve their agenda peacefully they are met with debate and compromise, that group will feel that they have won and will feel empowered by their inclusion in the political process, reducing the probability of violence to a negligible amount.

If we don't want more Al-Qaedas and more violent idealogues with the scars to justify such venom, then we should use our foreign policy to support groups who engage in the political process.

six-legged giraffe(Why oh why didn't I choose the red pill?) by Da Owl

She’s near;

hear                the tramp of her step,

tchick, tchock!

        like empty, hollow skulls upon an infected tree

        that sound, like jumpin’ jazz riddims

                banged out in groups of three.

...a cold night, when the roof loomed low and the walls were like

        Imperial Star Ship trash compactors,

the six-legged giraffe was in a cold corner

        her two eight-ball eyes locked on me.

The pit of my stomach: hollow,

the weight of my head: 0 lbs, 0 oz,

and a marvelous, masochistic tingle in the head of my penis.

Dialogue with Scuba

A conversation between scuba and I over Steam that was fun. It is rife with unresearched claims and misspellings.

Never tell your password to anyone.

Jimothy: dude

Scuba: dude

Jimothy: i just was reading this declassified military document about the effects of nuclear weapons on my kindle

Jimothy: and i figured out why you wearing black is functional

Jimothy: one sec i'll just copy it

Jimothy: "once the victim is beyond the radius at

which light-colored fabrics are directly ignited, even simple precautions can greatly

reduce the extent and seriousness of thermal injuries. Many examples exist of people

severely burned on their faces and arms, but unburned beneath even a thin shirt or

blouse."

Jimothy: so if you're outside the blast wave of a nuke

Jimothy: and wearing dark clothing

Scuba: will it retard the absorbsion of radioactive materials

Jimothy: and you do'nt look at the thing,

Jimothy: bam you're good

Jimothy: first of all light colored fabrics ignite

Jimothy: from the heat pulse

Jimothy: and then if you happen to be in the direct line of sight for the light pulse

Jimothy: if you have clothing it like won't burn u

Jimothy: the clothing stops the haet

Jimothy: i never knew that only light colored fabrics ignited at a certain distance

Jimothy: loooool

Scuba: that is so weird

Jimothy: http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/mctl98-2/p2sec06.pdf

Jimothy: pg 18

Scuba: do you think it has something to do witht he heat being reflected from the light colors?

Jimothy: i found this in this torrent it downlaoded awhile ago

Jimothy: it has to

Jimothy: liek some kind of spectrum is ok some kind is not

Jimothy: for this like super brief pulse of heat

Jimothy: like dark colors absorb it or reflect it or something

Jimothy: and light colors just ignite

Jimothy: amg

Jimothy: At about 0.1 second after detonation, the shock front becomes sufficiently transparent

that radiation from the innermost, hottest regions becomes visible, producing a

second thermal peak. Before the second peak begins the fireball has radiated only

about one quarter of its total energy. About 99 percent of the total thermal energy is

contained in the second pulse. The duration of this pulse depends on the yield of the

weapon and the height of burst (HOB); it ranges from only about 0.4 s for a 1 kT

airburst to more than 20 s for a 10 MT explosion.

Jimothy: i don't think its declassified actually, i think they mad eit public on purpose

Jimothy: for ppl everywehre to benefit from their nuke testing so they didn't feel they had to do their own nuke testing

Scuba: that makes sense. your commment that is

Jimothy: The response of any given system to the thermal pulse depends on the absorption

properties of the test subject but also to the distance from the burst and the atmospheric

conditions between fireball and target such as clouds, snow, aerosols, and dust. The

atmosphere is not equally transparent at all wavelengths, so the spectrum of the radiation

incident on a target must be correctly calculated and then simulated

Jimothy: so will aerosol protect us from nukes?

Scuba: so the first wave is the blinding light. then its the second wave with the heat

Jimothy: which contains most of the energy of the heat

Jimothy: so you have a chance to react

Scuba: right but a quater of all the energy is produced in the wave of light.

Jimothy: but hopedfully the news at least has the balls tob el ike, whast up nukes comin

Jimothy: so most of the energy when added all up is in the blast wave

Jimothy: the blast wave goes farther than the heat

Scuba: but the timing will only give you a few min at most

Jimothy: but it goes at the speed of sound so you can get behind shit

Jimothy: so you'd notice light colored fabrics igniting around you

Jimothy: that means get behind shit

Scuba: think the blast wave would turn you to vapor?

Jimothy: and you might have been far enuff awy to survive

Jimothy: no thast the heat when you're really realyl close

Jimothy: its like every megaton

Jimothy: is one mile of vaporizing it hink

Jimothy: or its one mile of like catching everytihg on fire, and a fraction of miles for vaporizing

Scuba: so why dont we still have bomb shelters?

Jimothy: lol

Jimothy: no russia

Jimothy: but they still scare us with nukes

Jimothy: which would make more sense to have a bomb shelter

Scuba: but lots of countries with capability

Jimothy: bc if its a rogue state or terrorist

Jimothy: it would be highly localized the intial impact

Jimothy: and people would want to stay underground to swee which way the wend blew

Jimothy: i started reading thsi bc i'm interested in radiation

Jimothy: get this

Jimothy: so in debate

Jimothy: i'm judging and coaching i told u

Jimothy: but in debate you can have 2 types of impacts

Jimothy: overall

Jimothy: one is utilitarian the other is moral

Jimothy: for the most part, people stick with utilitarian

Jimothy: like "if you vote for me i save tons of lives"

Jimothy: instead of "if you vote for me my plan is morally right so fuck the people who ahve to die for it"

Jimothy: so because most of the arguments are utilitarian/consequentialist/body count

Jimothy: everyone links their shit to nuclear war

Jimothy: so there is this argument called "spark" and I don't know if it is an author's name or what but thats what everyone calls it

Jimothy: which says "nuclear war good"

Jimothy: it starts by claiming that nuclear war is survivable

Jimothy: then it says that our current use of energy leads to extinction

Jimothy: that there are type I type II and type III civilizations based on energy consumption

Jimothy: which is their ability to harness solar energy

Jimothy: then there is defense

Jimothy: like nukes get better with time so now is the best time to have a nuclear war

Jimothy: because if nukes get better nuke war won't be surivviable

Jimothy: then later they read cards about how in order for us to get off planet we have to become a type II civilization

Jimothy: lol

Jimothy: so i want to know how survivable long term a global nuclear war would be

Jimothy: because I think that a nuke war in which russia or the us launched any fraction of its stockpiles would lead to extinction

Jimothy: because it woudl kill off so many humans in different places and cause them to be infertile and cause a population bottleneck and kill the water and crops

Scuba: its not like they can target every area on the planet though. least not yet

Jimothy: i guess it depends on the amount launched, but I do believe ther eis a point at which extinction happens when a certain number of nukes of a certain number of megatons is launched

Jimothy: i dion't know what that numbe ris, but its somewher ein my head

Scuba: humans tend to be crafty though

Jimothy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nukecloud.png

Jimothy: our shits way bigger than 10 megatons

Jimothy: lets find out though

Jimothy: what we woudl launch

Jimothy: in my opion

Jimothy: is a trident sub

Jimothy: which could get cut off

Jimothy: i think they mad ea movie about htis

Jimothy: they thought they got orders for nukes

Scuba: trident subs are a fail safe

Jimothy: to make sure we have second strike capability

Scuba: bombers would be first

Jimothy: which means they always have to be ready to receiv ea signal to launch

Jimothy: what if that signal was sent

Scuba: yeah. they are the back up

Jimothy: somehow in some mistake

Jimothy: they woudl have no way to check it

Jimothy: ok

Jimothy: lets say

Jimothy: korea builds an icbm

Jimothy: would we retaliate?

Jimothy: if they could hit the us

Jimothy: if they nuked LA

Scuba: they dont have to hit the us.

Jimothy: if Iran nuked Israel?

Scuba: they would just have to hit japan

Jimothy: and we would retaliate with nuclear capability?

Jimothy: just for them nuking japan/.?

Jimothy: i mean japan is hearty when it comes to nukes

Jimothy: they're nuclear grizzled

Scuba: no. we have conventional weapons that would decimate that country

Jimothy: no we can't say that

Jimothy: we've seen that logic

Jimothy: in afghanistan the graveyard of empires

Jimothy: and mess o' potama

Jimothy: potamia*

Scuba: if we didnt have to worry about casualties. we would glass citys with thermoberic shits

Scuba: we wouldnt need nukes

Jimothy: bc thats all we'd do

Jimothy: is nuke civilians

Jimothy: ppl that are basicaly being held hostage by the powerful

Jimothy: especially evident in that country

Scuba: afganistan is fighting a guerilla war. armies are not good with guerilla

Jimothy: loose dark clothing i guess

Scuba: warfare

Jimothy: ick

Jimothy: afgthanistan is a tribal land

Jimothy: it was never afghanistan

Jimothy: it was a bunch of tribal and local governments

Jimothy: we shoudl just get the fuck out and stay out

Jimothy: iraq we're never leaving

Jimothy: ever

Jimothy: until the next hegemon takes over

Jimothy: its germany its japan its korea its kuwait

Scuba: isnt taking terrioties part of warfare?

Scuba: strategery speaking

Jimothy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions#Summary_of_the_effects

Jimothy: but this isn't warfare

Jimothy: its not a state

Jimothy: they've acknowledged that

Jimothy: its a failed state

Scuba: i guess we would have to nuke afganistan

Jimothy: thats the logic behind their "enemy combatant" bullshit

Jimothy: its police action

Jimothy: its fucking weird

Jimothy: its a manhunt

Jimothy: think about htat fuck

Jimothy: this is an effort to prosecute someone for a crime

Jimothy: and it turned in tot he longest war in US history

Scuba: so yeah. we are still at war right. and 8 year long war right

Jimothy: they call it conflagaration on this chart when u burn up

Scuba: why did we ever cut taxes?

Jimothy: yes...

Jimothy: and i suppose it worked

Jimothy: he got bitpartisanship

Jimothy: got dadt repeal passed

Jimothy: got start passed

Jimothy: but nobody will notice those things

Jimothy: or realize how amazing they are

Jimothy: and in order to do it we pay a really high cost in my opinion which is another tax cut for millionaires

Jimothy: he was also over a barrel, he had to get unemployment benefits extended

Jimothy: that would have crushed the economy if it wasn't passed

Scuba: but the start treaty and the 9/11 bill should have been nonissues.

Jimothy: there would be fucking bread lines

Jimothy: exactly

Jimothy: so republicans have better political maneuvers

Jimothy: they're more cohesive than democrats

Jimothy: democrats are pussies

Jimothy: they're not allowed to be liberal

Jimothy: or else they're soft on crime or pinkos or fuckin whatever

Scuba: they dont need to be liberal though.

Scuba: or very liberal

Jimothy: but people should have noticed that republicans were going to force a recession if they didn't get a tax cut for millionaires

Jimothy: everybody should have notied that

Jimothy: but the media is conservative

Jimothy: the myth of the liberla media is shattered again

Jimothy: except for msnbc's marketing strategy now

Jimothy: which just spits the weak ass liberal shit

Jimothy: the colmes bullshit

Jimothy: bounding the debate on the left

Scuba: the media isnt liberal or conservative. they are just trendy and shallow

Jimothy: dude the media is controlled by a few corporations

Jimothy: those corporations are very wealthy

Jimothy: many of those corporations have actualy companies they own that produce weapons

Scuba: i know that.

Jimothy: if they don't actually directly own them they have huge investments in the military industricla complex

Jimothy: the media will therefore be pro business, whcih means anti-labor

Jimothy: the media willb e pro-war, which means anti-dissent

Jimothy: the media will be pro prison, which means they'll be anti common sense drug laws

Scuba: thats why npr is so epic.

Jimothy: true

Jimothy: lots of politicians trying to shut them down

Jimothy: they say "starve the government"

Jimothy: thats their platform

Jimothy: but the things the govenrment is gorging itself on they don't touch

Jimothy: they kill little tiny social programs like a subisdy for npr and shit like that

Scuba: dude all news orgs and hospitals need to be nonprofit. thats my new belief

Jimothy: i'm pissed at obama and republican and democrats!

Jimothy: th;at could be a good middle ground between public and private

Jimothy: i don't disagree

Jimothy: i'd support a policy like that

Jimothy: did you see that thing the loner stoner put on my facebook?

Jimothy: about julian assange's next target being a bank?

Scuba: things that are for the peoples benifit should not be allowed to make large profits

Scuba: yeah. heard about that in october

Jimothy: i totally agree, certain things are social goods and as people with political needs and taxpayers we should protect them from the market

Jimothy: because the market doesn't give a fuck about what you want

Scuba: exactly

Jimothy: all these banks are refusing to process donations to assange

Jimothy: but bc of all the media

Jimothy: he got tons of high rollers to donat ei think

Scuba: the market can totally survive with out trying to make a buck on everything

Scuba: its epic

Scuba: it truly is.

Jimothy: i think he must have known

Jimothy: that he was going to secure massive funding

Jimothy: in order to make such a suicidal statmeent

Scuba: hopefully this is the catalyst the people will need

Jimothy: or maybe its like a "if they say i killed myself tomorow, its because i'm about to take down a bank"

Scuba: well its not like he is the sole owner of this information.

Jimothy: well he hasn't relaese it yet

Jimothy: i mean u got any idea how many spies and keyloggers that guys got?

Jimothy: they prolly know weveryone who has it or the servers that its on

Scuba: yeah but he and his droogies have it and could release it

Jimothy: that was one of anon's missions was to mirror all the info so that it was literally impossible for the government to censor it

Scuba: its the internet you cant keep shit off it

Jimothy: i can't vbelieve time didn't make him man of the year

Jimothy: the online poll was ridiculous

Jimothy: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2028734_2029036_2029037,00.html

Jimothy: zuckerbergis number 10

Jimothy: ffs

Scuba: he will get it next year when this controversy dies

Jimothy: so ridiuclous

Jimothy: not him but him being the face whatever hes an arrogant prick apparently

Jimothy: but wikileaks is so fuckign important

Jimothy: its like the internet culture of open source and opposing censorship flowered and is acting on the real world

Scuba: important people tend to be pricks imo

Scuba: doesnt mean their causes arent worth while

Jimothy: oh listen to what i got my sis and bro for xmas

Jimothy: i got them both the first manga of death note first of all

Jimothy: then my bro got 2 tpbs of the boys

Jimothy: andy my sis 3 tpbs of irredeemable

Scuba: i just saw that there are five volumes of irredeemable.

Scuba: wtf!

Scuba: my brother in law loved the boys

Jimothy: that means a new one we haven't read?

Scuba: so many. there is also two volumes of incorruptable.

Jimothy: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2039711,00.html

Jimothy: the people who the tea party elects are fascists

Scuba: dude. im starting to like scott brown

Jimothy: whats he been doin?

Scuba: pissing off the teaparty

Jimothy: lol

Jimothy: lololol;

Jimothy: they organized that thing fo rhim in boston

Jimothy: and he didn't show up

Jimothy: he didn't wanan be associated with them

Jimothy: i give him props for htat

Scuba: i know. cause mass doesnt want a teaparty

Scuba: we had ours

Jimothy: lol

Scuba: it sure was weird how much got done in the lame duck.

Jimothy: because democrats are afraid of next term

Scuba: but know what i find really interesting.

Jimothy: wut

Jimothy: wiki sez he was one of five republicans who tried to get the jobs bill passed immediately

Jimothy: actually i don't know

Scuba: the republicans with a minority were able to strongarm everyone. so when the tables are reversed next session. everyone already assumes that the dems will roll over. even the dems seem to feel that way.

Jimothy: it sez cloture

Jimothy: i think thats the media

Jimothy: creating a narrative

Scuba: but no one is trying to refute it.

Jimothy: i think it was an effort at bipartisanship

Jimothy: i mean it was a compromise

Jimothy: a millionaire tax cut sucks ass

Jimothy: but a bunch of shit got done

Jimothy: i guess thats what obama said he'd do in the campain is aim for bi part

Jimothy: obama was hoping this would be cast as a win for him

Scuba: which people are saying it is

Jimothy: but then whats next

Jimothy: he should get some of the other shit he said he'd pass

Jimothy: he said he'd get the senate to ratify ctbt

Scuba: whats ctbt

Jimothy: comprehensive test ban treaty

Jimothy: clinton signed it awhile ago

Jimothy: but it just gets tabbled in the senate

Scuba: there should be a limit on tableing

Jimothy: he said in the campaignhe'd passit

Jimothy: well its better this way for this policy

Jimothy: because the military has acted as if the senate were about to ratify it fo ryears

Jimothy: that document from the army i linked to you

Jimothy: said that they stopped testing in 96

Jimothy: and i was like wtf, ctbt never was ratified

Jimothy: that was like jessie helms capstone

Jimothy: just an old white supremacist conservative

Jimothy: any policy that restrained the military was bad

Jimothy: he'd be okay with the military being police

Jimothy: how about a little work on gitmo

Jimothy: whatever

Jimothy: but the state of the union is in jan

Scuba: gitmo is never going away dude

Jimothy: next month we'll hear the state of the union

Jimothy: we'll see if he can carry the bipart over

Scuba: nope.

Scuba: he wont.

Jimothy: so people ar ejust going to be in this state of exception until they die at gitmo

Jimothy: its so fucked up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Scuba: i know

Jimothy: at least he gave like half of 'em trials

Jimothy: anybody tlakin shit about eric holder

Jimothy: he may be a douchebag

Jimothy: but him and obama are not bringing the federal marshalls down on states with open pot laws

Jimothy: and he managed to get a few trials

Jimothy: better than nothing

Jimothy: scott brown voted for the repeal?

Jimothy: baller

Scuba: hell yeah he did. he is from mass

Jimothy: jobs bill and start

Jimothy: not bad

Jimothy: the eloguence

Jimothy: lol

Scuba: i just wonder how long he will be able to keep this up

Jimothy: perfect i'm not even gonna fix that spelling

Jimothy: "There’s enough of an underground movement in the Tea Party movement as seeing him as not being conservative enough.

Jimothy: presidnet of the greater boston tea party

Jimothy: shes obviously stupid

Jimothy: why couldn't she just be like "there are a growing number of people in the tea party movement that believe he is not conservative enough"

Jimothy: or like

Jimothy: lots of people don't think hes conservative enough

Scuba: in my opinion. there is voting witht he party no matter what. then there is doing what you think is best for your state and country.

Jimothy: underground movmeent in the movement which see things

Jimothy: he represents massachusetts

Scuba: underground movement adds a layer of intrigue

Jimothy: if he keeps voting for easy bills and not being extremist douchebag he'll get re-elected

Jimothy: i mean wtf start?

Jimothy: why would you oppose it?

Scuba: i know

Jimothy: its a simple check on accidental launch and proliferation

Jimothy: the repeal of dadt?

Jimothy: wtf

Jimothy: its not like NOW there are gays in the military

Jimothy: its like we just got rid of this antiquated thing

Scuba: but dadt is going to be tricky though.

Jimothy: yes this is what i have heard

Scuba: with all the fine details.

Jimothy: it might be used to discriminate

Scuba: it will work. its just going to end up setting an example for the rest of the countries policy

Scuba: obvioulsy it will.

Scuba: people are still discriminated becasue they are colored.

Jimothy: which is good

Scuba: but no as much anymore

Jimothy: i mean the firs thting u said

Scuba: yeah.

Scuba: it will be. but it will take a while and not fun

Scuba: not be fun

Jimothy: modeling is important as well

Jimothy: maybe asking is important

Jimothy: maybe its really really bad

Jimothy: because if they ask

Jimothy: they can figure out if there is discrimination

Scuba: but they dont have to tell

Scuba: why should they have to

Scuba: if they dont want to bring their sexuality into their job they shouldnt have to.

Scuba: but. what do you do about dependents for teh gheys

Scuba: do they get the same rights as the non gheys?

Scuba: if so where does that apply? only foriegn bases, only certain states?

Jimothy: does anythign need to be changed?

Jimothy: i don't think so

Scuba: so they can serve but they cant get married?

Jimothy: well

Jimothy: lets get that taken car eof

Scuba: cant bring their loved ones overseas? share the same insurance and back accounts?

Jimothy: if gays wanna make themselves misreable with marraige and die for vague ideas of nationalism then shit we oughtta let 'em

Jimothy: well lets get that taken care of!

Scuba: i know right

Scuba: im just saying that dadt is going to have to answer these questions

Jimothy: elaine donnely's think tank si called the center for military readiness

Scuba: and those answers will have to carry over to the states the personel live in

Jimothy: the acronym CMR, can also stand for civil-military relations

Jimothy: I hope they are answered correctly

Scuba: me too

Jimothy: and i'm glad the military supported this

Scuba: me too.

Jimothy: it shows a very politically conscious military

Jimothy: even though they're getting shit on by politics left and right

Scuba: my friend whos in the army brought up some interesting questions.

Jimothy: maybe thats why i guess

Scuba: lets say there are two people in a unit. ones gay the other has a problem with it.

Jimothy: then he can suck it up and follow orders lol

Jimothy: i mean fuck

Scuba: can the commander request transfers on this bases with out violating anyones rights?

Jimothy: or he gets booted jsut like a white supremacist serviceman beating a jewish or black serviceman

Scuba: they only got booted cause they beat the guy.

Jimothy: the commander can request transfers and he'll choose whichever he thinks is best

Jimothy: exactly

Jimothy: at the point its reaching violence its fucking with discipline

Jimothy: up until then who cares

Jimothy: you may ahte someone u still gotta follow orders

Scuba: but verbal and emotional abuse happen with much more frequency and goes unpunished.

Jimothy: and u might as well be nice bc you neve rknow if he'll be ur supreior officer down the road

Jimothy: thats true, but I don't think this policy was restraining such instances

Scuba: not everyone thinks that way

Jimothy: i think there were still many instances before this policy, and most people were aware if people in their unit were gay

Scuba: oh yeah it was well known.

Jimothy: means that others will have to get used to the idea of being exposed to people who may be sexually attracted to them

Jimothy: lol

Scuba: we have had queermos in the service for as long as weve had queermos

Jimothy: thats what donnely sez

Jimothy: its like do these peple not udnerstand that gays wer ein the military before dadt was repealed?

Jimothy: i norite

Scuba: why do people think that every gay person they meet is going to hit on them or rape them?

Scuba: just now the military has to recognize that fact

Jimothy: thats the other thing people conflat homosexuality with sexual violence and pedophila

Scuba: which will be sweet, in the end

Scuba: proabably be pretty bitter before then

Jimothy: there is possbility for backfire, but we might see a good result in terms of long term acceptance of homosexuality as a social inevitability

Scuba: when those instances are usually done by the straights

Jimothy: ok i should hav eleft for work like 5 min ago, i'm supposed to get in to logan at 11pm, and my bro flew today and said that the airports are complete clusterfuck terrible so we'll see

Jimothy: i'll talk to you before my flight though peace

Scuba: later

Counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency are the same thing

 This blog made me angry, this is my way too long comment, I hate "experts" They haven't read anything you can't read.


Number one: There is no difference between counter-insurgency and counter-terror. WTF, I feel like i'm taking crazy pills! Lets take out the counter and we end up with insurgency and terror(short for terrorism). 
WHat is the difference between insurgency and terrorism? The definitions of both are exactly the same they just use different words. A terrorist IS an insurgent it just depends on HOW YOU WANT TO LABEL THE ONGOING CONFLICT: a civil war or a few fringe violent radicals who want regime change. An insurgency is just a larger pattern of terrorism. WTF!? is nobody else seeing this? Is it really that hard? How would "insurgency" manifest itself? violent actions against civilians or government? in order to destabilize a regime? OH SHIT! well how would "terrorism" manifest itself? VIOLENT ACTIONS AGAINST CIVILIANS OR GOVERNMENT IN ORDER TO DESTABILIZE A REGIME!

How can you say, end A, but begin A(with a different label). How can you be so naive as to think the two are different and how can you be so naive as to not realize that we are in Afghanistan until we fall, just like Korea, Germany, Japan, Gitmo, Iraq, etc., etc.  YOU ARE ONLY HELPING THE REGIME RE-LABEL AN UNSUSTAINABLE WAR!

Now I would like to address this next point You said: "The U.S. could "win" in Afghanistan where victory is defined as a stable, legitimate central government that can project power within its own borders."

There has NEVER been a central government that can project power to all of Afghanistan. As you claim to have some knowledge of geopolitics you should really really know this. Pakistan through the Taliban could never do it, Russia could never do it, and we will not be able to do it. You should also be aware that when you use neutral words like "project power" what you really mean is that the central government has the ability to regularly enact violence in all geographical areas within those borders. We don't need your pedantic euphemisms to efface the utopian violence you are advocating Mr. COIN expert.
Regaining hard power he says. All you "experts" on hegemony have not historicized your discourse. Let me give you a quick history lesson: Its world war I!!!!! omg a multipolar hegemonic system! Many different "poles" or world powers duking it out over vague concepts of ethnicity and economic bitterness. OMG its world war 2!!!! The vague concepts of ethnicity have become completely entrenched in nationhood and are now conflated with "race" in what will be the final act of a multipolar hegemonic system two winners will emerge. CCCP and USA. Now look! A bi-polar hegemonic system! The concept of race's imbrication with nation has been effaced by the feigned revulsion of the holocaust's eradication of the other(even though the need to fill the psychic ontology of the self through destruction of the other is still part and parcel of modernism), now we are on to ideology! Two different poles of thought police: USSR and United States, labeling their justifications for violence "Communism" and "democracy" respectively. who will win!?!?

There are a lot of ideas about the transition from bipolar to unipolar out there. The only one that matters is the narrative of energy. Without energy the lights go out no more typey typey on computer, no more lithium from bolivia for ipods, no more IPODS!!!!! No more food, no more movement, no more credit, etc. Our current historical trajectory requires immense amounts of energy or else everything crashes. In order to become the unipolar world power the USSR and USA engaged in ideological battles, proxy warfare (for ideology, energy, drugs etc.) but in the end the country that controls energy will be the unipolar hegemon. The USSR suffered internal collapse before any ultimate confrontation could take place: rumors of a travel visa causing the berlin wall to fall. THen glasnost and perestroika causing the fissures of an already troubled society to become apparent. Without the competition from the USSR it was now the USA's turn to dictate the terms of global organization. Actions like Kosovo, the first gulf war(being the iran-iraq war[which was a policy actively supported by washington's agenda:making iran and iraq batter eachother in order to make sure a regional hegemon never appeared]), the other two gulf wars, special forces deployment in Iran, destabilization campaigns in Iran. Were the efforts of the US intelligence community in destabilizing Iran insurgency or terrorism? Do you understand yet?

A stable democracy in afghanistan, point out a stable democracy in this world. Were you paying attention to the midterm elections? we are a divided country. There is no such thing as some utopian stable democracy, everybody has problems, internal contradictions, and unsustainable institutions.

Now here is where your argument goes completely off the wall: you claim war fatigue is the undergirding support for your argument!!!! WAR FATIGUE!! in this day and age? Iran and Iraq aren't even on the fucking list of issues this election, nobody gives a shit, war has become entertainment! We eradicate the other through our remote control bombers(which by the way Iran has started building [I hope you're the first one to get hit by one, for advocating terrorism through remote control aircraft in the first place you ignorant americunt]) to create a "stable"(like you say) ontology of self. There are no stable ontologies of self and no stable democracies, in fact nothing in this world is stable we re-create THE ENTIRE FUCKING THING EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY! Why should we be killing people for your utopian dream! because you re-label the violence?

How will "overextension" manifest itself n00b? lol can't we just....RECRUIT MORE! lol, elect more republicans to cut social spending send more to the military? Well we've BEEN DOING THAT FOR A LONG LONG TIME! Why does this war which is the longest in US history and STILL HAS NOT CAUSED WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT happen all of a sudden now?

China "free riding" lol what is this mancur olson? Are you aware of the joint military drills China and Russia regularly engage in? are you aware of SEATO and various other asian military, economic, and political treaties? Why would the chinese collapse the dollar? It would destroy their growth and the rest of the world's economies. There is no danger of China calling in debts it knows it can't be paid, in the same way there is no danger from a state launched nuclear missile because of mutually assured destruction. Now comes the real reason you want to get out of Afghanistan: TO REDEPLOY ELSESHWERE! To be ready for various other paranoid "red dawn" fantasies.

OH no theres more! we will use the money to PAY INTEREST ON THE DEBTS THAT WILL NEVER BE CALLED IN! rofl, this is so epically absurd.

"Only the B-52 Effect will prevent a resumption of frank civil war along ethnic lines,"

The B-52 effect is terror of what we can drop on them from above right? some kind of....terrorism? right?

"To paraphrase the line from Kaplan's Warrior Politics that changed my mind: At the end of the day, America's power to do good is strongest when American hard power is both abundant and largely held in reserve."

The quote that changed your mind is Kaplan's rehashing of the white man's burden?!!?!? When has the US ever done "Good"? When it happened was it not just serendipity that caused it while the US was pursuing its reified agenda?

We're in afghanistan to stay, if you're gonna advocate the opposite, at least strap on a nutsack and say it like you mean it none of this re-labeling equivocation bullshit.

"32" of Liquid Crystal anodyne" By The Owl

Got a contribution from a friend of mine The Owl, this is what he writes: 

Empty is modern life.  Void of a purpose, we live in physical comfort and security but writhe in mental anguish at the dismal aspect of meaningless existence.  How the fuck, then, do we get by?

Reading Kaczynski's Manifesto, among what amounts to paranoid venom against an innately evil, yet strangely ambiguous, "technology", something of a truth appears.  Modern man, supplied with all the necessities of survival, obtainable with a minimum of effort, must supplement his psyche with "surrogate activities."  These activities are our jobs, aspirations, hobbies and passions.  They are, in the accepted morality of today, all of what constitutes a healthy and useful life.

It is unfortunate, however, that they are all bull shit.  At the root, each an every pursuit not focused on the basic survival or gratification of the basic senses is a pathetic attempt at fulfilling that empty hollow hole we all feel deep inside.

Whether Kaczynski is right to blame technology for these woes is a mute point, since it is obvious that technology and humanity walk hand in hand.  Thus, to denigrate technology is to denigrate homo sapien as well, which, all of us being human --or am I writing for future A?I-- is pointless.

Taking technology, and all its circumstances, as a priori, we see that this vapid, wasteland of purpose is unavoidable and must be dealt with as a force outside our control.

How to deal?  Suicide?  Hedonism?  Some form of blinder that allows us, in the words of Peter Gibbons, to "just come home and think I've been fishing all day or something?"  Or is the ability to deal simply, turn a bilnd eye to what's apparent and plow on ahead, what most of us term "growing up"?

Last weekend, these existential woes had me deep in a shadowy valley.  A highly anticipated day off from work, without school or any other obligation, should have been blessed, but instead I awoke with a terrible feeling of anguish.  I could think of nothing to do, or more to the point, nothing that I wanted to do.

So, at her suggestion, Ellen and I wandered down to the Charles river to watch the regatta.  (By the bye, did you not know that I now live with my girlfirend, ******?)

It was boring.  The boats moved endlessly down the river and it was impossible to know what you were watching.  Who was winning?  Who was racing?  The fluid strokes of the rowers and the boats cutting through the water were aesthetically pleasing, but so were the clouds in the sky and I could have watched them just as easily (which I did).

The most notable aspect was the veritable fair the grew up along the river banks, having nothing to do with skulling or Vespolis and everything to do with Consumption.  Apparently, the Head of the Charles is a great place to stock up on free samples of junk food, shop for overpriced clothing and be more or less cerebrially inundated with commercial ectoplasm.  I had no wish to push through a crowd like an infant pig to the fat teats of the Dunkin Donuts truck handing out free shot glass sized Pumpkin Spice Lattes, so I applied myself to naviating safely through the masses and not sobbing out of pity for the all those present.

This has nothing to do with my overall argument other than to set the scene for my emotional state of mind.  Any other day, any other time, the setting and circumstances are different, but the basic story is the same.  Without a surrogate activity, I am depressed, lost, confused, antisocial and altogether, so pathetically, sane.

Now, the day continued in this blase manner, growing ever more tedious and unendurable.  Naturally, my ill feeling permeated the air around me and infected my significant other (who doesn't share my former sentiments, or at least refuses to acknowledge them) until we were both exhausted with the effort of living effortlessly.

Towards evening, Ellen brought up the current Best Buy sale.  Our apartment was without a television, one white wall in our living space glaringly vacant, the whole room some how incomplete.  We were living in American sin.  She suggested we atone for this sin by buying a TV, and in the process, though this was not stated, only implied, supply ourselves with a purpose.

Consuming - not the food we need, nor the sights, sounds, smells and touches of an active life- but commercial goods, is an extremely effective surrogate activity.  From the moment I agreed to the plan, I felt immensely better.  We looked up bus schedules, purposefully gathered the necessary cards, bags and clothing for the trip, all the while feeling more and more sure of our own agency.  Throughout all of this, I was aware of the fiction, and yet it still affected me positively.  I knew how pathetic, how false and, may I use the word, EVIL this turn of events was, but like scratching your ass in public, once you give in to the craving, even the disapproving glare of a beautiful girl cannot stop you from sphincter spelunking.

We took the trip, the deal went down.  All the way home we guarded our precious new purchase like it was the physical manifestation of that happy feeling.  It really (and this is totally without sarcasm) was a wonderful night.  All because we were able to fill that drafty void of existence with this greedy, self-centered activity.

You could argue that there are many other surrogate activities that are not so base.  But with each example, e.g. jogging, reading philosophy on the internet, volunteering at a hospital, smoking phat-ass blunts etc. you must acknowledge that at the root, these are all desperate attempts to paper over a structural fracture at the cornerstone of our being.

There is no conclusion here, only complaint.  Please respond.

Please do not vote for Mark Kirk tomorrow

For those of you who have not read this blog(thats everyone but me), I have been paying close attention to Mark Kirk since he first became a congressman. I would just like to write down the reasons why I would vote against him even if he was running against Satan.


1. Mark Kirk claimed that he had special classified intelligence that confirmed the fact that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq we just had to trust him(I cannot find this cite online [the Giannoulias website sez its chicago daily herald, 10/27/02; Chicago Daily Herald, 10/8/04] I have not managed to confirm that).
Now kirk claims that Bush lied to him! http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/gop-senate-hopeful-bush-official-lied-iraq/

but please take 10 seconds out of your day and watch this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gupBSG09YpY

I might be crazy here, but I think he got Bush and Saddam mixed up.


2. Mark Kirk claimed to have been in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which is to say he claimed to have killed hajis in the Iraq war in order to make us safe. This article explains how he equivocated out of it, but any intelligent person wouldn't buy his bullshit http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/06/kirk_campaign_mum_on_another_a.html 
This is part of a larger pattern of packing bullshit behind claims of military service: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeFf4JNx3tc

3.Mark Kirk claimed to have been the Navy's "Intelligence officer of the year" a claim which gets broken down by research at this blog: http://ellenofthetenth.blogspot.com/2010/05/details-on-kirks-award-show-kirks.html  Long story short he claimed the navy gave him an award the navy doesn't give. Claimed it was a prestigious award with a similar name even though it wasn't. Claimed that he was intelligence "officer" when in fact it was given to an entire "combat wing". Kirk's role within that combat wing is marginal at best.

4. Now I want to dwell on what we haven't been addressing directly: MARK KIRK IS A SPOOK! Kirk is a spy! He works for the ONI(Office of Naval Intelligence). The intelligence community works to achieve the agenda of wall street, the 1% of the 1%. A spy will never represent what is best for you, a Spy will do whatever it takes to barely stay in office in order to push money to his real constituency. But you may just say: "ONI is the oldest intelligence agency and its within a branch of the armed forces, whats so bad about that?". So I ask you to read this quote: http://cryptome.org/kirk-cia.htm
"To my knowledge, there are only three current Members of Congress who work with the CIA: our chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), the author of this amendment; the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Simmons);and me, who is detailed to the CIA from navy intelligence." So as of 2005 Kirk was "detailed to the CIA". Now is it a little more apparent? Intelligence is an area of the executive in which a shadow government can be created because THERE IS LITTLE OR NO OVERSIGHT. During wartime (not our bullshit wars of choice, but wars like world war II) it may be justifiable to have a robust intelligence community with some independence. But when there is not an existential threat we do not need the lesser evil of a shadow government within the executive to check the greater evil of a total collapse in government. The more we let the foot soldiers of wall street infiltrate the legitimate political apparatuses of the United States the more we will see more militarization in our policy: Imperialism abroad(kirk's efforts to lie in order to get a war with Iraq, then say anything to make people forget/forgive for the lie), repression at home through the expansion of the drug war/prison industrial complex(The only bill Kirk has authored in recent history is a bill to make incarceration/penalties harsher for more potent marijuana[thats right if you have bad marijuana its a lesser sentence than if you have high grade marijuana{this is such a perfect example of a wall street policy}]), and anti-progressive fiscal policies(tax cuts for the rich[because rich people have to eat too!]). Those are the three themes you will find in wall street's agenda. Now I'm going to move to the borders here.

5. Another thing that wall street loves is money laundering. There is a good deal of evidence that vast amounts of money are laundered through US banks, stock markets, and corporations the most famous of which being: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/imf-loans-to-russia-sold-on-sly-alleges-skuratov-1119438.html The massive IMF loan to Russia to stabilize the rouble before the turn of the millennium saw a large portion of its money rerouted through US banks most notably the Bank of New York. As you can imagine this influx of liquid can have very positive effects for an economy, and thusly it is in the interest of wall street to make sure that the United States stays a haven for money laundering. In order to achieve this agenda the banks most be quite independent, there must be very little corporate financial oversight, and there has to be massive amounts of illicit money sloshing around in the economy. This is one reason why the CIA who was providing the Hmong militias in the plain of jars with funding and logistics necessary to keep the barracks open(as a tripwire to communist chinese land invasion of southeast asia) and the poppy fields plowed (exports of opium) ensured that some of it make it to the United States. I'm not going to go to in to the specifics here if you are not familiar with this then check out (professor at University of Wisconsin) Doctor Alfred McCoy's book "politics of Heroin". The reason I bring this up is because a non-fiction book "shadowplay" by Tim Marshall (not to be confused with the novel of the same name)

"He quotes one source, quoting Mark Kirk a US intelligence officer saying that: 'Eventually we opened up a huge operation against Milosevic, both secret and open. We gave KLA both military, technical, officers as directors, logistical support, we smuggled drugs, ran prostitution rackets and murdered civilians, and blamed all this on the Serbs and Milosevic.'"

I had to give you the background because some people would ask: "why would an intelligence officer slang drugs and pimp hoo'ers?": Its the economy stupid. Specifically the most important part of the economy the cash economy. Because if you have cash, you can borrow more!  Credit can't get you more credit, but cash? cash gets you more credit.


6. This one is rumor, but I have to at least mention it after Kirk voted against the DADT repeal. Certain males have claimed to have had relationships with Kirk in the past and recently.

Thats right folks Mark Kirk is a spy, a pimp, a drug dealer, a liar, an anti-gay closeted homosexual, murderer,  and the only legislation hes written is to make pot more illegal. 

Mark Kirk's career may be in intelligence but attempting to brand Bush a liar as the sole source of WMD info when this youtube video is one click away, shows what he thinks of your intelligence. United Statesians may have a short memory, but it cannot possibly be this short! Please do not vote for this man tomorrow.



MARK KIRK IS NOT A MODERATE: "I will lead the effort to repeal" and "we're well on our way to making this guy a one termer"