More Arm-Waving. (Nobody seems to have men­tioned that this plan, when rolled out next month, would have vio­lated gam­bling and rack­e­teer­ing laws in addi­tion to com­mon sense [Mark Bern­stein]

The plan in ques­tion is the strange idea pro­posed by DARPA for a “ter­ror­ist futures mar­ket.” I notice that the page on the DARPA site linked to by Mark Bern­stein has mys­te­ri­ously vanished.

In any case, it doesn’t mat­ter if the plan would have vio­lated the law. The gov­ern­ment vio­lates the law in every pos­si­ble way on a con­tin­u­ing basis–for exam­ple, the very exis­tence of DARPA is against the law. How­ever, since the gov­ern­ment makes sure that nobody but gov­ern­ment employ­ees tries to enforce the law, the law effec­tively does not apply to the government.

Mas­sad Ayoob at Back­woods Home Mag­a­zine -

Cheap guns are good enough — a “Sat­ur­day Night Spe­cial” could just
save your life. [End the War on Free­dom]

Aside from the main point of the arti­cle, there’s an inter­est­ing story about a case in which Janet Reno, then a State’s Attor­ney in Miami, charged a woman with mur­der for defend­ing her­self from her abu­sive and homi­ci­dal husband.

Lights, Cam­era, Marx­ism!. Film school isn’t what it used to be, reports the LA Times Mag­a­zine. Marx­ism, semi­otics, and nar­ra­tol­ogy are in; plot is out. (Link cour­tesy of Arts & Let­ters Daily.)… [LewRockwell.com Blog]

An inter­est­ing arti­cle about “film the­ory.” The LA Times web­site isn’t very good, so the linked arti­cle will prob­a­bly dis­ap­pear soon.

Japan Votes to Send Troops to Iraq [AP World News]

The peace­keep­ing bill allows Japan­ese ground troops to pro­vide non-combat sup­port for U.S.-led forces in Iraq. It also gives the gov­ern­ment power to send forces to trou­ble spots around the world to offer med­ical assis­tance, repa­tri­ate refugees, recon­struct build­ings and roads and give admin­is­tra­tive advice — even on mis­sions with­out U.N. support.

I won­der if the Iraqi rebels will make a dis­tinc­tion on the “non-combat sup­port?” I doubt it will help Koizumi’s already shaky pop­u­lar­ity if Japan­ese sol­diers start dying to sup­port an Amer­i­can empire.

Red Dawn in Iraq. Justin Rai­mondo on the commie-neocon axis of evil. By the way, Red Dawn was one of Mur­ray Rothbard’s favorite movies, and it is a fun and instruc­tive watch these days.… [LewRockwell.com Blog]

bq. Does any­body besides myself remem­ber the movie Red Dawn? It’s a cold war moral­ity play in which Amer­ica is invaded, con­quered and occu­pied by the Sovi­ets: the story revolves around the exploits of an under­ground resis­tance, con­sist­ing mostly of teen-agers, that springs up to com­bat the Red Army and its col­lab­o­ra­tors. The resis­tance starts out small, with minor acts of sab­o­tage, and esca­lates over time into a well-coördinated and vir­tu­ally unstop­pable gen­eral rebel­lion that ends in the defeat of the occu­piers. Our government’s rhetoric

Gay Jour­nal­ist on Trial in Uzbek­istan [AP World News]

I doubt this will bother any­one in Wash­ing­ton, since Uzbek­istan is our won­der­ful ally in the War on Nouns. How­ever, look for this to be used in twenty years as an exam­ple of how evil the Uzbek gov­ern­ment is, and why we sim­ply must con­quer lib­er­ate the peo­ple of Uzbekistan.

Assas­si­na­tion ban still on books but widely ignored. In the­ory, pur­su­ing with intent to kill vio­lates a long-standing pol­icy ban­ning polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion. It was the mis­for­tune of Sad­dam Hussein’s sons that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has not both­ered to enforce the pro­hi­bi­tion. (link)

Yes, let’s call it what it was: an assas­si­na­tion. None of this arrest them and bring them to trial and then exe­cute them. No, we now skip straight to the exe­cu­tion stage. If any­body else but the U.S. did this, it would be a ter­ror­ist act. And we’ll no doubt con­demn it the next time it hap­pens. But when it’s us that does it, well I guess that must be A-OK. [Al-Muhajabah’s Islamic Blogs]

Actu­ally I very much doubt that it was an assassination–capturing the broth­ers alive would have been too good a pro­pa­ganda coup for the Feds. More likely, the office in charge was ordered to “cap­ture them if pos­si­ble,” and the NCOs in that unit qui­etly told their troops, “don’t be a hero, their cap­ture is not worth your life.”

How­ever, I wouldn’t have a prob­lem with it even if they actu­ally had been assas­si­nated. If they were cap­tured alive they’d still end up being killed, but first there would be a lengthy kan­ga­roo court “war crimes trial,” which the Iraqi peo­ple would no be allowed to par­tic­i­pate in except as wit­nesses. Do we really need yet another fake trial mak­ing a mock­ery of the Amer­i­can legal system?

Note also that I would have been entirely in favor of a pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion tak­ing up a col­lec­tion to hire assas­sins to truly assas­si­nate Sad­dam and his sons, as an alter­na­tive to con­quer­ing the coun­try. It would have been vastly cheaper, less destruc­tive, and wouldn’t have involved rob­bing Amer­i­cans at gun­point to pay for the whole thing. Nat­u­rally the US gov­ern­ment would never per­mit any­thing so civ­i­lized to occur.

Aide takes blame for Iraq claim. A senior US adviser accepts blame for not remov­ing claims about Iraq’s nuclear ambi­tions from a pres­i­den­tial speech. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edi­tion]

Now that the des­ig­nated fall guy has been selected, will we still have to lis­ten to mem­bers of Con­gress pre­tend­ing they were mis­led by some­thing that was an obvi­ous lie from the beginning?

More Intel­li­gence Fol­lies. The US mur­dered 80 peo­ple in Syria dur­ing a “hot pur­suit raid” on gaso­line traders.… [LewRockwell.com Blog]

A fol­lowup on an ear­lier post.

Berke­ley Social Sci­en­tists Define Con­ser­v­a­tives. Berke­ley social sci­en­tists report that they have sci­en­tif­i­cally estab­lished that polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives are moti­vated by “fear and aggres­sion, dog­ma­tism and intol­er­ance of ambi­gu­ity.” They has­ten to assure the pub­lic that they are not being “judg­men­tal” and that “does not mean that con­ser­vatism is patho­log­i­cal or that con­ser­v­a­tive beliefs are nec­es­sar­ily false, irra­tional, or unprincipled.”

I can hardly wait to see their “objec­tive” sci­en­tific analy­sis of lib­er­tar­i­an­ism. [Hit & Run]

I’d be will­ing to bet that this was paid for with tax dollars.