I used to won­der how peo­ple like Sul­li­van and other Amer­i­cans and west­ern­ers, who con­tin­u­ously jus­tify any man­ner of vio­lence and mil­i­tarism by their own side, could pos­si­bly spend so much time point­ing to oth­ers and depict­ing them–those peo­ple over there–as the embod­i­ment of vio­lence and sav­age aggres­sion. But at some point I real­ized that it’s pre­cisely because they con­tin­u­ously jus­tify so much vio­lence and aggres­sion from their side that they have such a bound­less com­pul­sion to depict oth­ers as the Uniquely Prim­i­tive and Vio­lent Evil. That’s how they absolve them­selves. It’s how they dis­tract them­selves from the real­ity of what they sup­port and what their gov­ern­ments do in the world. And it’s why few things pro­duce quite as much per­sonal resent­ment and anger than demand­ing that they first gaze into a mir­ror before issu­ing these abso­lutist denun­ci­a­tions about others.

Glenn Green­wald

Provo doesn’t know where its fiber is, Google makes city spend $500,000 to find it.

[Ars Tech­nica]

One part of this story in par­tic­u­lar grabbed my atten­tion because of Google’s recently announced plans to bring fiber to Austin:

As we reported pre­vi­ously, Provo tax­pay­ers are still on the hook to pay off the city’s $39 mil­lion bond that was used to fund the network’s construction—the city still col­lec­tively owes $3.3 mil­lion in pay­ments in the next 12 years.

If Google wants to be an hon­est busi­ness and make an invest­ment in fiber infra­struc­ture here in Austin, fol­lowed by charg­ing peo­ple money to use it, great! But if they’re expect­ing the city gov­ern­ment to steal money to pay them to do busi­ness here, then thanks but no thanks.

Quote.

“The ter­ror­ists don’t hate Amer­ica because of its free­doms. The Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats hate Amer­ica because of its Free­dom. The ter­ror­ists hate Amer­ica because of the Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats.” — John Shuey

[End the War on Free­dom]

Any time bombs are used to tar­get inno­cent civil­ians, it is an act of terror.

An evil man who has used bombs to tar­get thou­sands of inno­cent civilians

In recent years the amount of money the Cal­i­for­nia state gov­ern­ment steals directly from my pay­check had gone up dra­mat­i­cally, far in excess of what they claim for taxes. They do send out tax refund checks, but this was effec­tively a forced no-interest “loan” to peo­ple I loath. I just deposited my last tax refund check from Cal­i­for­nia, and decided to use the money to do some­thing to show what I think of the scum who rule that state. So, I bought 1,000 rounds of 5.56 NATO ammo–a type used by many rifles that they think only they and their enforcers should be allowed to own.

It is a great advan­tage to a pres­i­dent, and a major source of safety to the coun­try, for him to know that he is not a great man.

Calvin Coolidge

Enjoy This Mon­tage of Peo­ple Refus­ing to Coöper­ate with DHS Check­points.

Staffer axed by Repub­li­can group over retracted copyright-reform memo. The Repub­li­can Study Com­mit­tee, a cau­cus of Repub­li­cans in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, has told staffer Derek Khanna that he will be out of a job when Con­gress re-convenes in Jan­u­ary. The incom­ing chair­man of the RSC, Steve Scalise (R-LA) was approached by sev­eral Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress who were upset about a memo Khanna wrote advo­cat­ing reform of copy­right law. They asked that Khanna not be retained, and Scalise agreed to their request. [Ars Tech­nica]

Appar­ently the Repub­li­can fac­tion of the Boot On Your Neck Party wants to be sure every­one under­stands that they’re just as much in the MAFIAA’s pocket as the Demo­c­ra­tic fac­tion, and that vot­ing Repub­li­can will cer­tainly not change anything.

“No coun­try on Earth would tol­er­ate mis­siles rain­ing down on its cit­i­zens from out­side its bor­ders,” Says Man Who Reg­u­larly Bombs Pak­istan and Yemen

reason.com

We Should Be Spend­ing Bil­lions Fight­ing Bath­tubs, Not Ter­ror­ism. Qual­ity Legislation: Every year, on aver­age, 40 Euro­peans die in ter­ror­ist attacks. When you com­pare the poli­cies and bil­lions plown down into this num­ber, you quickly dis­cover that we should not be spend­ing bil­lions to fight ter­ror­ism, but to fight bath­tubs. Over five times as many peo­ple drown in bath­tubs every year.

[…]

To our sur­prise, we find that drown­ing in bath­tubs kills over five times as many peo­ple as ter­ror­ism – 223 per year! We need to pull all the tax­payer bil­lions from fight­ing ter­ror­ism imme­di­ately and put them to work against bath­tubs. They are more than five times as dan­ger­ous as terrorism!

Even more, over six times as many die from falling off chairs – 254 peo­ple per year. We should be spend­ing bil­lions fight­ing chairs!

Worse still, 941 peo­ple per year die from falling out of beds – 941 peo­ple per year. That’s over twenty times as many as die from terrorism.

[Falkvinge on Infopol­icy]

This arti­cle is writ­ten from a Euro­pean per­spec­tive, but the sit­u­a­tion in the US is even worse. The politi­cians in the Evil Empire used hys­te­ria over ter­ror­ist attacks to not only spend far more money, but also slaugh­ter over 100,000 peo­ple (so far) and bring about the final con­ver­sion of what was meant to be a con­sti­tu­tional repub­lic into a total­i­tar­ian dic­ta­tor­ship where the ruler has absolute power to imprison, tor­ture, or kill on a whim.