Las Vegas Anarchoblogs

• feministhulk: LIFE GOALS: 1) SMASH WHEREVER SMASH IS DUE 2) BECOME BFF WITH bell hooks AND BUTLER 3) HONOR HULK FEELINGS 4) EAT ORGANIC. Twitter / feministhulk (2010-06-24). feministhulk: LIFE GOALS: 1) SMASH WHEREVER SMASH IS DUE 2) BECOME BFF WITH bell hooks AND BUTLER 3) HONOR HULK FEELINGS 4) EAT ORGANIC (Linked Friday 2010-06-25.)

• Comment on Puzzlement by Michael Wiebe. Michael Wiebe, Comments for Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-06-22). I meant “enforceable, positive obligation,” such as an enforceable obligation to feed one’s children, which Rothbard quite explicitly rejects. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is no enforceable obligation to feed one’s children, but only an unenforceable one. What exactly is the objection to this? Is it that,... (Linked Friday 2010-06-25.)

• When Cops Visit. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-06-25). All you anarchists who criticise our heroic police officers – who are you going to call when you need your bedridden grandmother suffocated, tased, and lacerated? (Linked Friday 2010-06-25.)

• Lost in Commercial Space. Dorothy, Cat and Girl (2010-06-24). (Linked Friday 2010-06-25.)

In Savannah, Georgia, Corporal Keil Joseph Cronauer and Lance Corporal Christopher Charles Stanzel, two government soldiers working for the United States Marine Corps, sucker-punched a gay man from behind as he was walking away, and then beat him unconscious, for allegedly winking at them. (The Marines, in their defense, claim that they beat him half to death because he might have been coming onto them.) Their victim, Kieran Daly, is recovering in the hospital from bruising to his brain.

A gay man was attacked by two Marines in Savannah, Georgia, reportedly because the soldiers thought that he was “winking” at them.

Kieran Daly was struck in the back of the head shortly before 4:00 a.m. on June 12, following an altercation with the two Marines, reported the local newspaper the Savannah Morning News that same day. A police officer saw the Marines running, then received word of the incident, the article said. The officer investigated the scene where Daly lay on the ground being given CPR by his friends, and then chased after and arrested the Marines, identified as Keil Cronauer, 22, and Christopher Stanzel, 23.

The Marines said that Daly had come on to them, saying sexually suggestive things and following close behind them; but their story was contradicted by witnesses who said that the Marines accused Daly of winking at them.

Daly suffered bruising to the brain, but was talking to the media from the hospital later that day. The guy thought I was winking at him, Daly recounted. I told him, I was squinting, man… I’m tired. Daly added that, the last thing I remember is walking away. I remember the feeling of getting hit, but I only kind of remember it. According to witnesses, one of the Marines punched the back of Daly’s head as he was walking away.

—Kilian Melloy, edge (2010-06-16): Outrage Mounts After 2 Marines Viciously Beat Gay Man in Savanah, Ga.

Here is how the government police responded to this hyperviolent gay-bashing by a couple of government soldiers (their colleagues in the trade of unhinged government violence):

Although there were multiple eye-witnesses who confirmed that the attack was unprovoked, local police authorities charged the men with a misdemeanor and released them into the custody of military police.

—Action alert from Georgia Equality, quoted by Kilian Melloy, edge (2010-06-16): Outrage Mounts After 2 Marines Viciously Beat Gay Man in Savanah, Ga.

(Care to take bets on whether two gay men would be charged with misdemeanor battery right now if they had singled out a young Marine for harassment on the street, attacked him from behind and then beat him unconscious and put him in the hospital with head trauma?)

But, never to fear. The military has them in custody and is assuring us that the Incident will be Internally Investigated. Hear the reassuring words of Colonel David Robinson, Commanding Officer, MAG-31, and know that the guilty will be held accountable. Or, at least, some reports will damn well be made consistent.

Although this certainly does not justify the actions of the Marine who punched the individual, it is important for us to consider both sides of the story, said Col David Robinson, Commanding Officer, MAG-31. As with most incidents there are multiple perspectives, accounts and recollections. The facts of this isolated incident will come out through investigations by civilian and military authorities.

Although the initial reports from the arresting officer and the media coverage of the incident are widely disparate, we are committed to resolving the inconsistencies between the reports, added Robinson.

—Quoted in Kilian Melloy, edge (2010-06-16): Outrage Mounts After 2 Marines Viciously Beat Gay Man in Savanah, Ga.

Boldface mine.

Ah yes; Consider Both Sides; and remember, above all, that this is Yet Another Isolated Incident. Isolated, just like all the others (trigger warning).

What we’re actually dealing with here is an entrenched and institutionalized culture of violent masculinity, in which young men are taken away and set apart, to bond with each other around killing and through over-the-top violent hypermasculinity; where, like many other spaces where over-the-top violent hypermasculinity is encouraged, it’s often expressed through homophobic hostility and celebrations of torture and sexualized violence; where these men trained to see themselves as becoming stand-up men through their dutiful practice of violence on command from other men; where they are constantly told that they can do no wrong and that Their Country will Honor Them for their unrelenting brutality; and after which they are constantly treated as a special class apart, with an entirely separate system of policing and law, deserving special honors, special protection, and also special consideration and kid-glove handling by fellow soldiers and government police, when they turn around inflict that violence on innocent people.

When men in uniform are encouraged to see their manhood in violence, and violence as essential to their manhood, and when government insulates its trained killers, over and over again, from accountability for their violence, you are going to see that violence acted out on the people that masculinity targets: on women, on lesbians, on gay men. The problem here isn’t the apples. It’s the damn barrel.

See also:

• GT 2010-06-13: Quick quiz
• GT 2009-03-23: Men in Uniform #2
• GT 2006-07-31: War and Manhood

• The Dialethic Right. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-04-28). Two things conservatives like to say: Our constitutional rights aren’t granted to us by government. Our rights come from God, and the Constitution simply recognises them. Illegal immigrants and terrorist suspects don’t have constitutional rights because they’re not American citizens. (Linked Wednesday 2010-04-28.)

• Remembering Corporate Liberalism. rechelon, Invisible Molotov (2010-04-24). “Remembering Corporate Liberalism” by Roderick T Long “During the first half of the 20th century, there was a widespread perception that big government and big business were fundamentally at odds. Free-market individualists generally regarded themselves as defenders of peaceful business interests against the rapacious state. Those on the left saw... (Linked Thursday 2010-04-29.)

• XKCD "Hell" implemented in flash. Hacker News (2010-04-29). Comments (Linked Thursday 2010-04-29.)

• Anarchism 101. You, Anarchoblogs (2010-04-16). I love how people who would barely pass an 11th-grade civics test like to taunt anarchists with the ever-so-damning, irrefutable line “But how would you prevent a warlord from rising to power, in Anarchy?” and then act as if that is such a complete and well-thought-out argument that it pre-empts... (Linked Thursday 2010-04-29.)

• trying to find embeddable video, but rachel maddow - who, Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2010-04-15). trying to find embeddable video, but rachel maddow - who, actually, i like to watch - is incessantly touting her show on timothy mcveigh: it's all about the dangers of "anti-government violence." i guess really they focus-grouped the phrase "anti-gov" and now use it as a synonym for insanity. but... (Linked Thursday 2010-04-29.)

• Insert "Won't Get Fooled Again" Reference Here. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-04-29). Charlie Savage reports: The Obama administration is seeking to compel a writer to testify about his confidential sources for a 2006 book about the Central Intelligence Agency, a rare step that was authorized by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The author, James Risen, who is a reporter for The... (Linked Thursday 2010-04-29.)

For those who have been following some discussions elsewhere, this one goes out to dukemeiser. Because Axe Cop is the world’s greatest defender of the Bush-Obama doctrine of surveillance and Homeland Security:

What I like about the comic is that it really does seem to be a pretty accurate representation of how War on Terror-hawks think the world ought to work. Why shouldn’t it? To hell with courts and civil liberties and all those other chickenshit liberal axe-blocks. Since the government has a list of ALL THE BAD GUYS, wouldn’t you want them to chop their heads off?

And I’ve got to say, the kind of police-state and assassin-state policies that they insist on as simple common sense really do sound like something that you get when some bright policy wonk comes up with some legal verbiage and precedents to trick out an idea which, at its core, is something that he got from the ideas and fantasies of his 5 year old little brother.

Hot Pursuit. Daily Brickbats (2010-04-27):

San Antonio, Texas, police say Officer Gabriel Villareal has been suspended indefinitely, but they refuse to say why. However, a woman, who was not identified by local media, says he showed up at her door one day saying he was responding to a 911 call. She said she hadn't called....

In which Officer Gabriel Villareal, stalker in uniform, uses his powers as a police officer to hunt down a San Antonio woman's address, barge in on her unannounced, and harass her in her own home. If you or I used our own private resources to pull a stunt like that, we'd be prime candidates for a restraining order and might well end up arrested on stalking or menacing charges. When Men In Uniform use their own far more extensive resources, as well as the implicit threat of their legal and physical powers, to inflict their unwanted attentions on unwilling women, suddenly it's a private administrative matter, to be handled behind closed doors by the Department.

Happy Tyrannicide Day (observed)!

Today, March 15^th, commemorates the assassination of two notorious tyrants. On the Ides of March in 2010 CE, we mark the 2,053^rd anniversary — give or take the relevant calendar adjustments — of the striking down of Gaius Julius Caesar — the military dictator who rose to power by butchering his way through Gaul, by boasting of enslaving millions of war captives, by setting fire to Alexandria, and, through years of conquest, perfidy and proscription, battering and breaking through every restraint that Roman politics and civil society had placed in the way of unilateral military and executive power — until he finally had himself proclaimed dictator perpetuus, the King of Rome in everything but name. On March 15^th, 44 BCE, a group of republican conspirators, naming themselves the Liberators — rose up and ended his reign of terror by stabbing Caesar to death on the floor of the Senate. By the coincidence of fate, only two days before, on March 13^th, is also the anniversary (129^th this year, give or take the relevant calendar adjustments) of the assassination of Czar Alexander II Nikolaevitch, the self-styled Caesar and Autocrat of All the Russias. A group of anarchist conspirators, acting in self-defense against the ongoing repression and violence of the autocratic state, put an end to the Czar’s reign by throwing grenades underneath his carriage on March 13^th, 1881 CE, in an act of propaganda by the deed. In honor of the coinciding events, the Ministry of Culture in this secessionist republic of one, together with fellow republics and federations of the free world, is happy to proclaim the 15^th of March Tyrannicide Day (observed), a commemoration of the death of two tyrants at the hands of people rising up in the conviction of their own equal freedom to defend themselves from violence and oppression, even the violence and oppression exercised by men in the name of the State and its fraudulent claims to authority. It’s a two-for-one historical holiday, kind of like President’s Day, except cooler: instead of another dull theo-nationalist hymn on the miraculous births of two of the canonized saints of the United States federal government, Tyrannicide Day gives us one day in which we can commemorate the deaths of two tyrants at the hands of their equals — men and women who defied the tyrants’ arbitrary claims to an unchecked authority that they had neither the wisdom, the virtue, nor the right to exercise. Men and women who saw themselves as exercising their equal right of self-defense, by striking down the would-be tyrants just like they would be entitled to strike down any other two-bit thug who tried to kill them, enslave them, or shake them down.

It is worth remembering in these days that the State has always tried to pass off attacks against its own commanding and military forces (Czars, Kings, soldiers in the field, etc.) as acts of terrorism. That is, in fact, what almost every so-called act of terrorism attributed to 19^th century anarchists happened to be: direct attacks on the commanders of the State’s repressive forces. The linguistic bait-and-switch is a way of trying to get moral sympathy on the cheap, in which the combat deaths of trained fighters and commanders are fraudulently passed off, by a professionalized armed faction sanctimoniously playing the victim, as if they were just so many innocent bystanders killed out of the blue. Tyrannicide Day is a day to expose this for the cynical lie that it is.

There are in fact lots of good reasons to rule out tyrannicide as a political tactic — after all, these two famous cases each ended a tyrant but not the tyrannical regime; Alexander II was replaced by the even more brutal Alexander III, and Julius Caesar was replaced by his former running-dogs, one of whom would emerge from the abattoir that followed as Augustus Caesar, to begin the long Imperial nightmare in earnest. But it’s important to recognize that these are strategic failures, not moral ones; what should be celebrated on the Ides of March is not the tyrannicide as a strategy, but rather tyrannicide as a moral fact. Putting a diadem on your head and wrapping yourself in the blood-dyed robes of the State confers neither the virtue, the knowledge, nor the right to rule over anyone, anywhere, for even one second, any more than you had naked and alone. Tyranny is nothing more and nothing less than organized crime executed with a pompous sense of entitlement and a specious justification; the right to self-defense applies every bit as much against the person of some self-proclaimed sovereign as it does against any other two-bit punk who might attack you on the street.

Every victory for human liberation in history — whether against the crowned heads of Europe, the cannibal-empires of modern Fascism and Bolshevism, or the age-old self-perpetuating oligarchies of race and sex — has had these moral insights at its core: the moral right to deal with the princes and potentates of the world as nothing more and nothing less than fellow human beings, to address them as such, to challenge them as such, and — if necessary — to resist them as such.

How did you celebrate Tyrannicide Day? (Personally, I got back into town from San Francisco, got down to sorting my books from the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, and gave my wife a Tyrannicide Day gift that I picked up for her while I was out — a copy of the The Tragic Procession: Alexander Berkman and Russian Prisoner Aid, just barely cooled from the presses from the Kate Sharpley Library.) And you? Done anything online or off for this festive season? Give a shout-out in the comments.

Thus always to tyrants. And many happy returns!

Beware the State. Celebrate the Ides of March!

Other Celebrations

• texts for nothing 2010-03-15
• Barbarianchick 2010-03-14
• Strike the Root 2010-03-07
• Firestorm Cafe & Books in Asheville

See also:

• GT 2007-11-23: The present anarchy of our commerce features a Tyrannicide Day commemorative t-shirt from the Rad Geek People’s Clothing Collective storefront
• GT 2008-03-15: Tyrannicide Day 2008: The fifth annual celebration, with an oration, a mention of the coincide with the International Day to End Police Brutality, and a commemorative translation and singing of the most famous of the outlaw corridos, the ballad of Gregorio Cortez.
• GT 2007-03-15: Tyrannicide Day 2007: The fourth annual celebration, with an oration and a commemorative reading from Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, a dramatic retelling of the legendary Swiss tyrannicide which, if genuinely historical, was perhaps the most strategically successful tyrannicide in history.
• GT 2006-03-15: Tyrannicide Day ceremonies for 2006: the third annual celebration, with some thoughts on equality and a commemorative reading from The Tragedy [sic] of Julius Caesar.
• GT 2005-03-15: Happy Tyrannicide Day (observed)!: the second annual celebration, and some thoughts on tyrannicide and terrorism
• GT 2004-03-15: Happy Tyrannicide Day (observed)!: the first annual celebration. It’s like President’s Day, only cooler.
• Professor Wilkes: Tyrannicide Not Terrorism

It’s March 2010. It has now been two years since my essay Liberty, Equality, Solidarity appeared in Roderick and Tibor’s Anarchism/Minarchism anthology. Which means that those of you who recently ordered now have a shipment in the mail, which should arrive within the next few days. And it also means I can now do this. [...]

Continue reading at Rad Geek People's Daily …

Officer Marcus Ramon Jackson, rapist on patrol.

Officer Marcus Ramon Jackson, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, Charlotte, North Carolina. Last week, the Charlotte city government’s police force fired and then arrested Officer Marcus Ramon Jackson, for using the power of his badge and the threat of arrest to pull over, abduct and then rape at least two different young women off the street within a period of a week and a half in late December. The police force’s spokesman is keeping mum about it, but apparently Jackson was still out on patrol after the first woman came forward to the police — and raped the second victim during the time he was allowed to stay on the road. This is what Police Spokesman Captain Brian Cunningham considers act[ing] in a swift and appropriate manner.

On Wednesday, Jackson, 25, was arrested after two young women told investigators he had pulled them over on traffic stops and sexually assaulted them. He was on duty in a marked patrol car at the time, according to police.

The first incident allegedly occurred on Dec. 18 but wasn’t reported until Monday. Police Chief Rodney Monroe said Jackson — wearing his uniform and driving his police cruiser - pulled over a 17-year-old girl, forced her into his car, drove to another location and forced her to commit sex acts.

CMPD began its investigation after a relative of the girl called police Monday.

As detectives investigated the allegations, Monroe said, a 21-year-old woman reported Tuesday night that she too had been assaulted by Jackson under similar circumstances. That assault, she said, occurred on Monday.

Police would not say what time on Monday they received the first complaint, or how much time passed before the second attack occurred.

—Ely Portillo and Gary Wright, Charlotte Observer (2010-01-01): Ex-officer had past reports of violence

The reason that Officer Marcus Ramon Jackson was given a badge and a gun and the power to detain and arrest in the first place is because the city government’s police force decided to hire him even though he had already been taken to court two different times for threatening violence and battering women:

Court documents reveal that Jackson’s past included two allegedly violent episodes in Mecklenburg County. The first was in 2003 when Jackson, then 19 and a student at UNC Charlotte, was dating a 15-year-old Harding High School student.

The girl’s mother sought a restraining order against him in May 2003. The defendant threatened my daughter by telling her she was going to get hers and catch one, the mother wrote.

Jackson tried to hit the teen with a car and pushed her into a locker, according to the mother’s complaint. He was later summoned to court after being accused of violating a restraining order, but was found not guilty in August 2003.

In 2005, Jackson was working at Off Broadway Shoes on South Boulevard and still studying at UNCC when his 21-year-old girlfriend sought a restraining order against him.

The defendant grabbed me by the face several times, screaming and yelling…, the girlfriend wrote in her complaint. The defendant hit me in the back of the head, slapped my face, pushed me down in the floor, forcing (me) in (a) walk-in closet.

The judge ordered Jackson to stay away from the victim and not own or carry any firearms [for the duration of the restraining order].

—Ely Portillo and Gary Wright, Charlotte Observer (2010-01-01): Ex-officer had past reports of violence

The police admit that they were already aware of the 2003 domestic violence complaint when they decided to hire and arm Jackson. They claim that they weren’t aware of the 2005 restraining order — but, of course, they claim to do background checks before they hand out badges and guns, and the restraining order was a matter of public record, and could easily have been discovered if they took the time to follow up on the 2003 complaint, to see whether it was part of a pattern of behavior. In other words, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department chose to hire, train, arm, and put out on patrol a man who they already knew, or already should have known, to be a hyperviolent control freak with a history of violence against women. Who then went on to become a serial rapist, using the legal and martial weapons that they gave him to single young women out, force them into his car, abduct them, and force sex on them against their will. Police Chief Rodney Monroe has mentioned to the press that he thinks it would be naïve to believe that Jackson hadn’t raped other women while out on duty.

Yes, it would be. Men who attack women typically do so repeatedly; men with a known history of violence against women will do it over and over again, unless and until they are stopped. So how naive is it to hire a man with a known history of abusive rages and physical violence against women, heavily arm him, and putting him out on patrol, where he effectively holds the power of life or death over any woman that he chooses to single out?

See also:

• GT 2009-08-24: Rapists on patrol (#6) / Men in Uniform (#4)
• GT 2009-07-31: The Police Beat (on rapist-on-patrol Officer Feliciano Sanchez)
• GT 2009-06-11: The Police Beat (on rapist-on-patrol Officer Thomas Tolstoy)
• GT 2009-05-14: Rapists on Patrol (#3). Officer Gary Pignato. Greece, New York.
• GT 2008-03-10: Rapists on Patrol (#2). Officer David Alex Park, Irvine, California.
• GT 2007-12-21: Rapists on patrol. Officers Victor Hugo Gonzalez, Michael Anthony Munoz and Raymond Ramos, San Antonio, Texas.
• GT 2009-04-19: Men in Uniform (#3). Los Angeles, California.
• GT 2007-12-02: Men in Uniform
• GT 2008-02-26: Cops are here to protect you. (#2)

• We Need More Truants. Andrew B. Watt's Blog (2009-12-13). "There’s no way that the educational system, a monoculture if there ever was one, is going to manifest the kind of reform needed at every level. We’ve designed our schooling system to clamp down on unorthodoxy in a big way. Even if we allow the unorthodox to thrive in our monolithic system, it becomes a cult of personality. ... These kind of polymathic geniuses can really make a school hum, but once they go, a program often dies with them. ... Maybe what we need in order to reinvigorate American school systems is a broad-based buy-0ut, a sort of inverse-voucher program, where parents say, 'this school has failed my kid for the last time. I’m going to plop him down in front of Sesame Street reruns and YouTube videos, and give him a library card, and see if those stopgap measures can do better.'" [R.G.: I'd just like to add that the notion of an "American school system" is probably part of the problem; what 'we' need is to stop thinking about what 'we' need, and start thinking about how this here individual child or adolescent or adult can live a better, smarter life in the near-, middle-, and long-term. The answer often isn't going to be the same from one person to the next. And it often isn't going to be institutional schooling in any recognizable sense. (Linked Sunday 2009-12-13.)
• The strange consensus on Obama's Nobel address. Glenn Greenwald, Salon: Glenn Greenwald (2009-12-11). (updated below - Update II - Update III) Reactions to Obama's Nobel speech yesterday were remarkably consistent across the political spectrum, and there were two points on which virtually everyone seemed to agree:   (1) it was the most explicitly pro-war speech ever delivered by anyone while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize; and... (Linked Sunday 2009-12-13.)
• Today in Rape Culture. Shakesville (2009-12-13). "Why is it always more important to lecture women on what they should be doing to avoid rape than to talk to men about the fact that they do not have the right to women's bodies without explicit consent?" (Linked Sunday 2009-12-13.)
• Dear Barack, Spare Me Your E-Mails. Commondreams.org Views (2009-12-13). Left flank (cont'd): "The insurers are not really upset with what may survive as a minuscule public option, for they have won the big prize: Everyone must buy insurance from them under penalty of law, and there will be no built-in requirement for cost control. Their so-called opposition to the current plans has to do with fine-tuning the president’s guarantee of their future profits." (Linked Sunday 2009-12-13.)
• Art Interpretation and Climate Change. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2009-12-09). Jens Galschiot's sculpture Survival of the Fattest features an obese white goddess of justice on the shoulders of a frail African. There's an inscription: "I'm sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under the burden. I would do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his... (Linked Sunday 2009-12-13.)
• Protecting America's Borders Against Musical Miscegenation. Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2009-12-13). La Migra Vs. Cultural Exchange. "The evidence repeatedly suggests the group performs a hybrid or fusion style of music...[which] cannot be considered culturally unique to one particular country, nation, society, class, ethnicity, religion, tribe or other group of persons," Therefore, you can't come to the U.S. to play your bastard music, I guess. (Linked Sunday 2009-12-13.)
• The Thin Blue Line That Protects Us From Canadian Science Fiction Writers. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-12-13). Peter Watts writes: If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car... (Linked Sunday 2009-12-13.)
• Nevada trucker wants confiscated $550000 back - Las Vegas Sun. 89119 - Google News (2009-12-13). In which the Shawnee County Sheriff is trying to keep over half a million dollars in cash that it stole from Eduardo Arencibia -- even though he never consented to a search of the cab, and even though the government prosecutors never introduced any direct evidence at all to indicate where the money came from, and even though Eduardo Arencibia was never convicted of any crime, and had all charges against him dropped. (Linked Sunday 2009-12-13.)
• Magic Highway USA. Daring Fireball (2009-12-13). The tomorrows of yesteryear. Technological civilization is awesome, even if it hasn't quite realized the specific forms of awesomeness that Disney might have thought. (Linked Sunday 2009-12-13.)
• On Baked Potatoes. ongoing (2009-12-08). I recently remarked “There are very few foods indeed that compare with a high-quality Russet potato, properly baked.” A voice in the comments wondered “And what do you call ‘properly baked’?” A harmless enough question, but then aluminium foil was mentioned; shudder. Please don’t do that. Here’s how to bake... (Linked Sunday 2009-12-13.)

• The Atrocity of Hope, Part 7: Our Ignoble Laureate. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-12-11). So our President Incarnate, his hands dripping (metaphorically – I’m sure he washes them regularly) with the blood of Pakistani and Afghan children, along with shredded bits of the principles of Nuremberg, jets off to Norway to accept a prize that is supposed to be awarded only to those who... (Linked Friday 2009-12-11.)