Month: September 2012

Making the Poor Poorer

Yesterday the Federal Reserve announced that it would ramp up it’s war on the poor:

The US central bank has announced it will resume its policy of pumping more money into the economy via so-called quantitative easing.

The Federal Reserve said it will buy “additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40bn per month”.

The central bank also said it could increase the size of its purchases if the economy does not improve.

The Federal Reserve is going to start printing a minimum of $40 billion a month for an indefinite period of time. Printing money inevitably leads to inflation, which is a decrease in purchasing power. If the entire economy was made up of $100 and the Federal Reserve printed another $100 it would effectively reduce the purchasing power of each dollar by half. What’s more insidious about this is that the devaluation doesn’t occur immediately, the first receivers of newly printed money enjoy it’s use at full purchasing power. It’s not until the money begins circulating that the reduction in purchasing power hit. Effectively the poor, being the last receivers of newly printed money, get hit the hardest.

With this latest announcement the Federal Reserve might as well have said, “Fuck the poor!” Those who are barely able to get by on the current purchasing power of their money will soon find themselves entirely unable to get by as prices increase due to dollar devaluation. If you’re holding Federal Reserve notes it would be wise to convert them to something tangible quickly.

Judge Blocks Enforcement of the NDAA’s Indefinite Detention Clause

It appears as though there are a handful of good judges left in this country. United States District Judge Katherine Forrest has blocked the enforcement of the NDAA’s indefinite detention clauses:

A federal judge permanently blocked enforcement of a U.S. law that opponents claim may subject them to indefinite military detention for activities including news reporting and political activism.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan today ruled that the law, passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012, is unconstitutional. Forrest made permanent the preliminary injunction against the law that she had ordered in May. The government is appealing her May order.

I’m not surprised to hear the state appealing the decision, the last thing they want is to have their power restricted. If I was a betting man I’d put money on the state getting a successful appeal because the number of good judges in the system is minuscule. Most judges seem happy to grant its employer whatever power it demands.

Influencing the Vote

A new study has shown that using social media to influence people to vote actually works:

Brace yourself for a tidal wave of Facebook campaigning before November’s U.S. presidential election. A study of 61 million Facebook users finds that using online social networks to urge people to vote has a much stronger effect on their voting behavior than spamming them with information via television ads or phone calls.

I wonder if it also works in reverse. Will posting messages to Facebook encourage my friends not to vote? It’s not that I’m a horrible curmudgeon, I’m just concerned about the safety of my friends considering that their chances of dying on the way to their polling place is much greater than the chances of them changing the results of the presidential election. I guess we’ll find out in November.

It’s Good to See Somebody Cares

One of my biggest criticisms about Obama’s supporters is the hypocrisy they’re displaying this election cycle. When Obama was running for his first term he ran on an anti-war platform, which drummed up a great deal of support. Now that Obama has proven himself to be a war monger his supporters are still supporting him even though they decried Bush as a war criminal. Needless to say it warms my heart to see the anti-war movement isn’t completely dead:

DeWitt, NY — Dozens of war protesters were arrested Friday afternoon outside the main entrance of the New York Air National Guard’s base at Hancock Field.

Thirty seven protesters, draped with red-spattered sheets, had lain themselves in the main entrance roads to the base, off East Molloy Road. They were arrested by Onondaga County Sheriff’s deputies on charges of trespassing and obstruction of justice.

Good on those protesters. Somebody needs to speak out against the wanton killing being performed by the United States government.

The Actions of a Few are Often Mistaken for the Actions of Everybody

I doubt anybody missed the news about the United States embassy in Libya being stormed and their ambassador and three other embassy workers. As expected this news has been met with many calling for war against Libya. This brings me to a point that needs to be raised, the actions of a few do not represent the desires of an entire country. War is a horrendous thing. It always ends in death. Combatant and noncombatants alike are killed without mercy in artillery barrages, missile strikes, and firefights.

Is this really what people want? Especially when it wasn’t the actions of every Libyan but a handful of individuals? Can we really justify bombing villages, towns, and cities full of uninvolved people? Before you consider this question I ask you to view these pictures of Libyans apologizing for the actions of those who killed the United States ambassador.

It’s easy to blame an entire country for the doings of a few. I don’t believe it’s an appropriate response to this situation though. Those involved in attacking the embassy and killing the people within should be brought to justice but we should not begin murdering uninvolved individuals. At that point we become no better than those who stormed the embassy.

Another Example of New York City’s Finest

After hitting nine innocent bystanders with gunfire the New York City Police Department (NYPD) decided to again demonstrate their staunch recognition of firearm safety by shooting another innocent person:

A terrified Bronx bodega worker fleeing armed thugs who held up his store was shot dead by a cop responding to the scene — and the three alleged robbers have been charged with his murder.

Robbers entered a story, the worker called the police and fled, and upon exiting the store was gunned down by the police he called (this demonstrates the fact that you should never call the police). This case is made more interesting by the fact the police, who murdered the worker, have charged the robbers with the murder. How does that make sense? It doesn’t, which is why I’m not surprised to see it happen in New York City.

The Most Effective Tracking Devices Every Conceived

Many conspiracy theorists believe the a secret shadow government is plotting to forcefully insert tracking devices into every person on Earth. This theory is absurd because so many people already carry around a personal tracking device voluntarily, it’s called a cell phone. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has put together a rather useful map that you can use to see how police in your state are using cell phones to track individuals:

In a massive coordinated information-seeking campaign, 35 ACLU affiliates filed over 380 requests in 31 states and Washington, D.C. with local law enforcement agencies large and small to uncover when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans.

Sadly no data for Minnesota currently exists but there is data on many other states.

Obama: More of the Same

Remember the halcyon days when Obama was running for his first term? He promised to undue all the ills that Bush wrought upon the United States. Guantanamo Bay was going to be closed, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were going to be ended, and warrantless wiretapping was going to be again made illegal. This greatly fired up political support for the man by those who oppose war and the expanding police state. Unfortunately those days are over and Obama has revealed his true self as George W. Bush II:

President Barack Obama has closely followed the policy of his predecessor, President George W. Bush, when it comes to tactics used in the “war on terror” — from rendition, targeted killings, state secrets, Guantanamo Bay to domestic spying, according to Michael Hayden, Bush’s former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.

OK my statement isn’t entirely accurate. Obama isn’t just another Bush, he’s a more violent Bush:

Moments later, Hayden added:

“And so, we’ve seen all of these continuities between two very different human beings, President Bush and President Obama. We are at war, targeted killings have continued, in fact, if you look at the statistics, targeted killings have increased under Obama.”

He said that was the case because, in one differing path between the two presidents, Obama in 2009 closed CIA “black sites” and ratcheted down on torturing detainees. But instead of capturing so-called “enemy combatants,” President Obama kills them instead, Hayden said.

There you have it ladies and gentlemen, Obama is simply a more lethal Bush. Instead of concerning himself with capturing potential enemies Obama has decided it would be far more expedient to just order their executions.

To every person who is currently supporting Obama and supported him during his previous election because of his anti-war stance let me say this: fuck you you fucking hypocrites.

All Hail the Social Rejects

I think some researched may have discovered why individualists tend to go against the flock while collectivists tend to pursue the status quo:

Most people experience social rejection at some time in their life, some of us more than others

But a study by a business professor at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, found that social rejection can inspire imaginative thinking, particularly in individuals with a strong sense of their own independence.

Lead author Sharon Kim concluded that, for independent people, social rejection can be ‘a form of validation’ to their own beliefs – and spur them on to greater productivity.

Consider the fact that most individualists are generally ostracized by society. Libertarians are generally considered kooky, unintelligent, and are often the target of ridicule in both public schools and colleges. This social rejection may be due to the fact that libertarians are imaginative and therefore able to perceive a society better than what they are currently living in. Meanwhile collectivists are more likely to promote the status quo. Socialists ideas are generally well accepted in much of society, possibly because their ideas are simply more of the same.

It all makes sense now.

It’s Only Genocide When Our Enemies Do It

A lot of time is spent educating people on the atrocities of the Holocaust. The Nazis exterminated millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other “undesirables” in their crusade for racial superiority. What generally isn’t covered are the atrocities committed by one of our World War II allies, the Soviet Union. Like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union exterminated millions of innocent people but those genocides are seldom covered in schools because it’s only genocide when the enemy does it:

The American POWs sent secret coded messages to Washington with news of a Soviet atrocity: In 1943 they saw rows of corpses in an advanced state of decay in the Katyn forest, on the western edge of Russia, proof that the killers could not have been the Nazis who had only recently occupied the area.

The testimony about the infamous massacre of Polish officers might have lessened the tragic fate that befell Poland under the Soviets, some scholars believe. Instead, it mysteriously vanished into the heart of American power. The long-held suspicion is that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t want to anger Josef Stalin, an ally whom the Americans were counting on to defeat Germany and Japan during World War II.

Documents released Monday and seen in advance by The Associated Press lend weight to the belief that suppression within the highest levels of the U.S. government helped cover up Soviet guilt in the killing of some 22,000 Polish officers and other prisoners in the Katyn forest and other locations in 1940.

Needless to say the United States government was willing to sweep the Soviet Union’s genocides under the rug because they were our friends and our friends could do no wrong. This story really demonstrates the extent states will go to propagandize people into believing in a war’s just cause. World War II is often considered a “good” war because the Nazis were really bad guys. That justification requires ignoring the Soviet Union, who we befriended, because they were also really bad guys. Effectively World War II can be defined as one set of really bad guys fighting another set of really bad guys. The United States sided with one genocidal state while other countries sided with the other genocidal state. Ultimately the side the United States allied with won so the genocides committed by the Soviet Union were thrown down the memory hold as the history books were written.