If this is a reasonable response, why do we need the nation-state? Or, multi-national states?

I just saw this particular piece about insurance companies providing armed escorts and establishing convoys for the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. Seems that NATO, the UN, the EU and the various entities in that area have been unable to secure the seas and so private business has turned to the old profit motive. I immediately thought of letters of marque and the use of privateers…in other words, in a world in which austerity by government has passed economy and spiraled down to suicide, DYSTOPIA rules the waves. Now, I claim no expertise concerning the Law of the Sea, but I thought privateers and letters of marque went out with wigs, wooden ships, and the rise of the modern state.

After all, the events that established the United States as a world player if not power were those against pirates in the Mediterranean. Great Britain became great behind the wooden walls of the Royal Navy. Hell,  Julius Caesar first gained notice for action against pirates who had captured and ransomed him; Pompey became a hero of Rome (again) for eradicating the eastern Mediterranean of pirates.  And on, and on  and on…if government can not protect its commerce, care and educate its people, provide for the common defense, provide for the common defense thus securing the blessings of liberty for itself and its people then it has no purpose. Why do we need it? It’s ironic that the the fast patrol boats the article alludes to are surplus Swedish Navy ships…the relevance of the Swedish Monarchy will soon be exceeded by the irrelevance of the nation state.

Ayn Rand is chuckling in hell; Jefferson is shaking his head in heaven with Aristotle and Burke while sipping some suddenly bitter claret; Hobbs and Locke just spit coffee all over each other in shock in response to Drake’s news as he walked in the Spectator Coffee House in Piccadilly ; and, Decatur, Jones and Hull are staring at each other utterly dumbfounded. As they should…

A few things reassure me. Mercenaries have worked so well in the Horn of Africa and middle east in the past. I’m sure this future is as bright as any other flock of tame wild geese in history. Another is that bureaucracies get somewhat irate at threats to their survival. With the EU in economic disarray and the Greeks threatening the Euro, a private navy for rent protecting critical sea lanes might encourage the EU to do something kind of meaningful. Like imitate Jefferson and bitch slap some bad guys.

Tags: black helicopter watch, politics & government by Mike Farrell
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One of the benefits of the profound ignorance of a large swathe of the American people lies in their inability to recognize irony. So, when a first term member of congress who is probably looking at being a one term member of Congress pulls something out not from the Karl Rove playbook but the Joe McCarthy playbook, people will miss it. Our political discourse has skipped self-satire and gone straight to slapstick. As Gibbs rule number 7 puts it, “when you lie, be specific.”

Allan West, Congressman from Mesron and Florida, is now trying to win a redistricted, largely Democratic district by railing against the Democratic Progressive Caucus as “Communists’ announcing that he’s “heard that 80 member of congress are communists.” [Read more →]

Tags: black helicopter watch, damned lies, politics & government by Mike Farrell
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CORRECTION: IN MY ORIGINAL PIECE, I REFERRED TO MR. ZIMMERMAN AS A “WHITE GUY.” MR. ZIMMERMAN IS BEING DEFENDED AS BEING OF MIXED DESCENT, WITH BOTH HISPANIC AND ANGLO PARENTS. ACTUALLY, GIVEN THE CONTEXT, I FIND THAT EVEN MORE TRAGIC AND DON’T THINK IT CHANGES THAT MUCH. WHILE READING SOME MORE OF THE COVERAGE, IT BECAME OBVIOUS THAT WHAT LOOK LIKE PUBLIC STREETS EITHER AREN’T IN GATED COMMUNITIES OR IT’S NOW OK FOR LOCAL TWITS TO DRIVE AROUND LIKE THE GUY WITH NO SHIRT IN TRAILER PARK BOYS AND BUG PEOPLE, FOLLOWED BY SHOOTING THEM WHICH IS A STRETCH THAT JC TREMBLAY HADN’T QUITE REACHED. YET…

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.     –WB Yeats

When did Florida become Ulster or Pretoria 20 years ago?

When I say the name Trayvon Martin, does it mean anything to you?” Melissa Harris-Perry asked her MSNBC audience on Saturday. “If it doesn’t, it should.”

Harris-Perry then took some time to explain who Trayvon Martin is: a 17-year-old, unarmed black teenager who wasallegedly shot and killed by a man in Florida in late February, after the man saw him walking down a street and thought he looked suspicious. The case has attracted substantial attention, in part because the man, George Zimmerman, has admitted to shooting Martin but has not been arrested or charged with any crime.

I enjoy listening to Melissa’s work and discussions with her guests. I’m not sure why she was denied promotion to full professor at Princeton – They have a quota on attractive women, Black, Liberal Political Scientists who get opinion gigs on MSNBC and PBS? They still have investments in slavery? Paul Krugman scares them – but their loss is Tulane’s, the nation’s, and MSNBC’s gain. I was steaming over the Trayvon Martin situation anyway, and her commentary pushed a lot of buttons.

Usually at this time of year, I’m writing something about the Irish, or Ireland or Catholicism.  I’ve been following An Problacht, (The Republic) and watching Rugby on both BBC and The Rugby Channel. Caught a brief bit of  Young Cassidy last night on the way out to a very non-Gaelic supper that did include roast beef and cabbage. I wore a dark green  t-shirt, a tweed jacket and a plaid scarf. I looked something like Rod Taylor in the damn movie. I saw some wild pictures of Shane McGowan looking like a punch-drunk old man and heard a bit of the Rocky Road to Dublin. I’ve got a copy of  Fox Crow on  my kindle that seems to be  set in a cross between the Land of the 7 Kingdoms and Donegal. I’ve been getting primed, but what the hell, what for?

watch?v=fUM9J2idxbE

[Read more →]

Tags: black helicopter watch, politics & government by Mike Farrell
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One of the things that binds loose collectives of malcontented malevolent dissidents, anarchists and engineers and intellectual dilettantes like blog writers is our general aversion to the impact of the totalitarian mind on life, language and discourse. Particularly when afraid — when they’re afraid, they come unglued with weird explanations of events…Orwell could have had fun with that realization because it is when under pressure from the unknown that the basic spiritual bankruptcy and ontological void that is the totalitarian way becomes most obvious. Case in point, China.

Now, China has the potential to explode at any time. [Read more →]

Tags: black helicopter watch by Mike Farrell
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Among the many abominations foisted on us is the merging of Lincoln’s Birthday with Washington’s and calling it President’s Day. Frankly, we need more holidays, and Federal Holidays should be made mandatory paid holidays. Like in civilized countries – double time for workers and everybody else is off doing their thing. Now, celebrating Lincoln and Washington makes a lot of sense – but, Jerry Ford? Grover Cleveland? Warren G. Harding? John Tyler? James Buchanan? Seriously, give us back our holidays and make the bastards give them to workers… [Read more →]

Tags: black helicopter watch, politics & government by Mike Farrell
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Etta James

Music. The incredible Crispin Sartwell and I had a brief discussion of Etta James over at his blog “Why the Selection of Newt Gingrich for Pope is part of my master plan to save the universe?” Crispin’s Blog is highly recommended if you’re looking for a IFC sort of always on, sort of off philosopher with a rock and roll bent. (Except for the damn card tricks, which can rapidly devolve to the level of cat pictures.)  Basically, we agree that Etta James was incredible as a performer although, as with many blues and rock and country and grunting Tibetan throat singers her earlier, simpler stuff was better. Some of her producers were like second rate Chet Atkins adding strings and horns to something that just needed more bass, stronger rhythm and more reverb! There are exceptions to this general rule – musicians mature and get better and more interesting and versatile. Marianne Faithful falls into this category, I think as do The Allman Brothers, Emmy Lou Harris and Steve Earle. But as her range decreased and her weight ballooned and plummeted– cocaine, heroin, abuse, and gastric by-pass add up to a helluva drug combination – she remained a great performer but a different one.

Etta James is definitely in the Edith Piaf-Billie Holliday-Tammy Wynette tradition of female singers on the edge –victimized and exploited but never a victim.  I refuse to see her death as tragic. Pretty sure she ran out of steam – pneumonia, diabetes, dementia, high blood pressure, kidney failure and dialysis –and is no longer in pain. The behavior of her family in fighting over who was going to control her estate testifies to something about human nature…as a general rule, people suck. [Read more →]

Tags: black helicopter watch by Mike Farrell
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Earlier this week, on some medium somewhere, I read that a local entrepreneur was holding open auditions for proposed Christian videos, TV shows and Movies. My initial reaction was, By Bless Tiffany’s left tit, what a joke. However, turns out it’s real, and I’m going to cover this as an unpaid staffer for the Crossroads of Opportunity’s Alternative Newspaper, the Mojave Free Press. This will be my first foray into true Gonzo journalism, so we’ll see how this plays out. I’ve seen some “Christian” stuff, and what they lack in aesthetic quality, they make up in perky white-anglo evangelical zeal and nonsense. So, I’m curious as to what is going on here – Why Barstow? A lot of things are filmed around here; for example, Clint Eastwood used the cave systems in the local mountains to film “Letters from Iwo Jima” and I think there are some local shots at various points in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But, the average Barstonian is neither Biff nor Muffy  and doesn’t conform to the traditional California image. It’s a small, poor, grungy blue collar town that depends on a couple of military bases, a lot of fast food restaurants and hotels, and the Burlington Northern to continue existing. So, this is either some local who spent too long in the sun or it’s a scam. [Read more →]

Tags: black helicopter watch by Mike Farrell
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I used to read the Times of London primarily for the book reviews and Jeremy Clarkson’s columns until Murdoch decided to overcharge for the privilege. I do still pull up The Guardian for a variety of reasons. One is that Ana Marie Cox, the equally lovely, younger,equally red-haired version of Dulcinea Dowd who would have been a lot of fun listening to chat with Molly Ivins about Michelle Bachman, has returned to professional blogging and is now doing it for The Guardian. Very cool. The other is that they frequently have columns like this one — the author’s defense of his belief, nay conviction, that the Prime Minister of Great Britian is a slithering reptile.

I do not know why we can’t routinely get it this right… Here are some of the great lines from the piece that should be printed out and posted on every thinking person’s desk when looking for inspiration on how to effectively eviscerate the trolls toiling the bells of American economic justice and freedom.

… writes vividly and from the heart and, if his byline photo is anything to go by, appears to be a perfectly reasonable man (specifically, Ross Kemp). He deserves the benefit of the doubt. But I fear in his rush to reprimand the “Modern Left”, he has overlooked one key fact: David Cameron is a lizard. Yes, David Cameron is a lizard. A lizard that devours live foals in its lair. And as far as Archer is concerned, it’s perfectly fine for this limbless, non-human, Cameron-reptile-beast-thing to squirm across the stone floor of its den merrily excreting the bones of its victims, yet I’m “depraved” simply for writing about it. This is the tragedy of the Modern Right. They’re idiots. Well, let me spell it out: You cannot dehumanise a lizard. Not without humanising it first, by giving it a little top hat, say, or a monocle. Maybe put some lipstick on it. And a wig. Teach it to walk sexy. That’s the way. (Mike’s comment — Like a pitbull, or a momma Grizzly!)

Seriously, we need to spend time practicing to be this good. There is an art, a craft, a honed skill to political commentary and invective, and these awful people deserve the best of that art.

Tags: black helicopter watch by Mike Farrell
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I’m not sure that any of them are left except in the careerist types who went to work for Republican causes like some folks went to work for General Motors, but the rational Republican who rode the Tea Party/Bush/Cheney clown car as a career choice has got to be having second thoughts. [Read more →]

Tags: black helicopter watch by Mike Farrell
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A few months back I read about a truly mind-blowing scandal involving the Bureau of Alcohol Firearms and Tobacco. Apparently the organization had been supplying guns to Mexican drug cartels which – unsurprisingly- had since been used to kill people.

Now in many parts of the world you would assume that corrupt members of the ATF were boosting their income by moonlighting as arms dealers. In Mexico the police, government and gangs are closely interlinked, and nobody is shocked.  In the 1990s some Russian soldiers sold weapons to the Chechen militants they were fighting. Why? Everybody knew: to supplement their miserable earnings.

But America is more complex than that. [Read more →]

Tags: black helicopter watch, politics & government, terror & war, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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