Sunday, February 23, 2014

18 U.S. Code § 2385 - Advocating overthrow of Government:

Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

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So, if I understand this right, if I make some offhand comment in a blog-rant such as “it would be desirable to destroy the big-oil sucking US government before it fracks the planet into oblivion” or “it is your duty as a member of a community of caring human beings to overthrow your corporate-controlled city council by violent means if necessary” then I could get 20 years in federal prison?

Well alright then. From now on I will be careful not to advocate the necessity, desirability, or propriety of destroying or disabling the infrastructural support systems of the US government in order to slow its global pointillist drone-strike genocide. And I will be sure never to write about the duty we have as members of the human species to protect and preserve our own habitat even if that means the employment of force and violence targeted directly at governmental institutions and the bureaucratic parasites nestled within.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

“Worse than Hiroshima”

Iraqis will feel the hand of US imperial might into the seventh generation (warning, graphic images of infant bodies deformed by your tax dollars): http://raniakhalek.com/2013/03/20/u-s-turns-a-blind-eye-to-iraqi-birth-defects-worse-than-hiroshima/

There is no statute of limitations for war crimes Mr. Bush. I will gladly donate the rope for your neck.

Monday, February 3, 2014

There's blood on your smart phone

It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard (a soon to be extinct simile). When I hear you talking about “progress” and touting the glorious benefits of the latest technology I want to scream in your face: “So, you approve of slavery and genocide and mass extinction and systemic oppression and economic coercion and . . . !”

But I stop myself. It’s hard not to be mesmerized by the glitter and sparkle. And you didn’t know the Kool Aid was poisoned.

That smart device you clutch so eagerly in your hand right now, for example, is merely the shimmering rainbow reflection on the surface of an oil-poisoned ocean of on-going pain and suffering. Nameless Asian factory workers (but they do have names!), many outright slaves, sacrificed their health and sanity—and in many cases their actual lives—so that you could marvel at the latest iteration of human progress. Deep in the African Congo, men—boys, mostly—are marched for days into the jungle to dig and pan coltan ore, extremely laborious work carried out under the watchful guns of corrupt warlords. As their crops die unattended in the field, they scratch at the earth for daily wages that average about twice what you paid for your last iPad app—the one that you downloaded with circuitry that uses coltan-laced capacitors.

These are just two examples among countless others. When you slide your finger across the smooth screen interface of the latest techno-beacon of civilized progress, you are pressing ever so gently on the heads of real people—people whose lives are being crushed under the collective pressure of a billion fingers just like yours.

And that’s just what’s happening right now, today. But the device in your hand didn’t just spontaneously appear. It represents just one technological moment in an ongoing process with a dark and deadly developmental history.
Not only does technology obscure the truth of the present, it buries its own past as well. For technology, the present is all there is. There is no past. The imperative of efficiency makes anything prior to the present irrelevant. What counts is what we can do with what is now. History is itself a technology that is continuously being refined, retooled, and updated to the newest version—always moving forward.

The past contains (literally, as a container that insulates) the unfathomable sacrifice that all technology demands, the blood tribute that has been paid again and again in order for “progress” to be realized. Recognized for what it is, the past would burn like a hot rock your throat. To embrace the truth of the past would make participation in the present a grueling ordeal for anyone still in possession of half a conscience. To participate willingly in the present technological moment is to luxuriate in the spoils of genocide and holocaust.

The ratchet of progress removes the past with each turn of the handle. And conscience is easily placated with the latest sparkly gadget, the latest shimmering surface distraction, the latest dose of mass-marketed entertainment.

So what about those Seahawks last night!