MuffinBlog

One thing that is becoming apparent as I read more and more about labor strikes in A People’s History of the United States is that guns in the hands of the strikers does very little to change the outcome. Overwhelmingly, when the federal government decides to send in the militia, the strike is over. Ironically, this puts a different spin on the 2nd Amendment. Here’s what the 2nd Amendment says:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

I’ve always contended that this amendment should be taken in the proper context. It is speaking in support of a militia, not personal self defense. What’s ironic about this is that the militia was used throughout our early history most often to squelch riots as a result of striking labor unions. From the people’s point of view, this is actually in opposition to “a free State”. It protected the entrenched, wealthy, ruling elite from popular revolt. This isn’t suprising if you consider that the constitution was primarily a tool by the ruling elite to control the under class of this new society. In that sense it perhaps did serve it’s purpose in putting up a successfully executed resistance to British rule. That said, fighting off a government that’s thousands of miles a way across an ocean with the support of a unifying replacement government is hardly comparable to fighting off a government that rules from the same land mass by just individual citizens.

Thus I pull two conclusions from this view of guns in our democracy: 1) being armed is little assurance that a popular revolt against the government will succeed, and 2) the 2nd Amendment is actually a very poor device, when taken in the proper historical context, for justifying personal gun ownership. Perhaps it’s no wonder that people who use it only quote the second half of the sentence. The first half of the sentence only makes things worse for one’s pro gun ownership stance the more one knows about the history of this country.

I neglected to mention in my last post that there are new photos for September. There may also be some additional photos in other months since I created the photo pages directly from my photo managing software without any effort to select just those that I thought were decent or redundant. Chances are your time is better spent looking just at the latest September photos.

I did some fairly extensive changes to the layout of MuffinSpawn.com recently. For starters, I got rid of the annoying frames that prevents the user from clearly seeing what URL is associated with the page they’re looking at. In its place I used CSS (cascading style sheets) to create a navigation sidebar on most of the pages. The exceptions are this blog since it’s a third-party application, and my resume since I’m concerned about its appearance with the sidebar. I did add some of the links to the blog “Links” section on its sidebar (lower right corner of this page).

Secondly, I reworked the photos and videos pages. The videos pages is now separate from the photos pages, and includes a new video podcast for all the Jaidee videos. The photos pages have been simplified (no bandwidth-hogging backgrounds and such) and are organized by year *and* month. Hopefully these changes will allow those using dial-up to look at the latest photos and videos more easily, as well as provide a more friendly organization in general.

That’s it for major changes. If anyone has further complaints or suggestions, please let me know.

-Peter

The Senate today passed a non-binding resolution rebuking an advertisement by MoveOn.org that used an epithet for General Petraeus that originated in the army. I’m not going to repeat the epithet or discuss whether the Ad went too far. All that is dwarfed by the fact that the Senate has sided with the executive branch in following Naomi Wolf’s 9th step towards a fascist state: officially condemning dissent as treason. Here’s the statement:

“To express the sense of the Senate that General David H. Patraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United State Armed Forces.”

Granted it doesn’t explicitly say “treason” or even anything about patriotism, but it does indicate that they believe it is wrong to question the “honor and integrity” of the general. What would the Senate have done if they had the power to legally retaliate? And don’t think legal retaliation is ridiculous. The Military Commissions Act allows for the striping of habeas corpus rights for anyone deemed an “enemy of the state”.

So all congress would have to do is ask the justice department to label anyone involved with MoveOn.org an “enemy of the state”, and the executive branch could detain those individuals indefinitely without due process of law. It doesn’t really matter too much whether “treason” is explicitly in the legislation. There just needs to be enough pressure on the executive branch to use it’s new found powers to consider dissenting opinions as treasonous. Condemning dissenting opinions in legislation (whether binding or non-binding) is a step towards putting such pressure on the executive. Lets all hope that Bush remains consistent and ignores all advice from outside his inner circle.

This Blog entry is for Vanna since she seems to be my most loyal (and perhaps only) reader…

The Senate (second body of the law-making branch of our national government) has decided not to even discuss at this time whether the people living in Washington D.C. should be allowed to vote for president and be represented in the national government (i.e. have a say on what and how national laws are created). One senator (a member of the Senate) said it was o.k. because the Senate had a lot of other stuff to do.

My opinion is that the people of D.C. have been without a voice in Congress and without federal voting rights for way too long. Delaying discussions is a really mean thing to do to those people. Not giving the people of D.C. voting rights is as bad as allowing only white, male, land owners to vote (as was the case at the beginning of the United States).

I feel similar about Puerto Rico, but they were given a chance in 1998 to vote for either independence, become the 51st state, or remain a commonwealth (i.e. they have to obey some federal laws like tax laws, but they don’t get federal voting rights or representation in Congress)–they chose to remain a commonwealth. The people of D.C. have never been given a chance to choose anything of the sort, and they live on the mainland. What could be more important at this time than the continued disenfranchisement (the denial of rights, especially the right to vote) of U.S. citizens?

Luckily the senators who proposed discussions say they will try again later. I just hope “later” is in time for next year’s presidential election. It would be a shame to deny the people of D.C. their presidential voting rights at a time when there is a big chance that either a woman or a black man could end up being president.

I’ve been reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States“, and I believe I have started to make sense of how American society got where it is in terms of the ruling elite and the myth of upward mobility. Democracy in this country originated more as a control tactic by the ruling elite to create a buffer between themselves and the natives, disenfranchised poor, and slaves for fear of revolt. The upper class made enough concessions to a new middle class to engender loyalty to fight their wars and keep the proportion of potentially rebellious under class to a manageable level.

To a large extent, that same paradigm remains in place today. It’s very hard for the poor to lift themselves out of poverty, and society helps keep them there by blaming them for their laziness and natural tendencies towards violence and criminal behavior. The middle class rarely becomes truly wealthy to the point where they become part of the ruling elite. The upper class legally bribe politicians to pass laws that favor only themselves, marry only amongst themselves, purchase superior education for their children, and have secret societies like the Skulls which mold the next generation of upper class into the rulers of the country.

What we need in this country is a solidarity movement where the middle class helps improve the lives of the lower class through things like education sponsorship in return for supporting only political candidates that arise from the two lower classes. Combined with a commitment not to take money from rich donors, maybe then the sources of corruption in our government and the almost complete lack of influence by the lower and middle classes will start to become less entrenched. I think it’s about time we had that revolt the upper class has been dreading and trying to avoid for three-hundred years. This time, though, lets try leaving the pitch forks and muskets at home.

I just came across Project Censored (www.projectcensored.org) which publishes an annual list of 25 “overlooked, under-reported, or self-censored” news stories by the U.S. media. I thought I would do my part and highlight a few that I thought were particular scary. Primarily these stories expose how little compunction our federal government has in supporting legislation that further strips our freedoms and expands it’s corporate-controlled power over other nations.

Domestically, the president now has the right to declare martial law pretty much whenever he wants to. To enhance this new power, the president can also simply declare anyone an “enemy cobatant” in order to strip that person of his or her habeus corpus rights. All animal activists can also be declared terrorists, introducing this country to the possibility of categorical political detention. I wonder why they had to create a law singling out animal activists if habeus corpus isn’t an absolute right anymore. Better safe than sorry?

Militarily the U.S. now has a new regional unified command just for Africa (USAFRICOM) in addition to USNORTHCOM, USSOUTHCOM, USEUOCOM (of which Africa used to be a part), USCENTCOM, and USPACOM. Great timing considering we now buy more oil from Africa than from any other continent. I imagine it might also be helpful in monitoring our proxy war in Somalia by the Ethiopian army. Apparently Bush’s Christian mercenary buddies over at Blackwater are also negotiating with Sudan to train their Christian forces. That could be useful if we ever need to use Sudan to start another proxy war in some other resource-rich nation.

On the economic warfare front, the US and EU are getting good at forcing unfair trade deals down the throats of developing nations. The US was even able to largely secure control over India’s retail and agricultural industries as partial payment for the US supplying India with nuclear reactor material. I’m sure this will be welcomed with open arms by all the family members of dead Indian farmers who have committed suicide because of existing destructive influences from companies like Monsanto and their Genetically Modified seeds. Maybe with a wal-mart nearby they’ll finally be able to afford the GM seeds that they are required to purchase every year (along with special fertilizers) that are currently causing widespread debt problems. Maybe they should just stop farming, get a job at wal-mart, and buy the subsidized food crops from the U.S. instead like Mexico. After we finish deporting all our illegal Mexican workers, maybe the broke Indian farmers will find a way to get in and pick up the slack. It’s likely a lot harder to get in from overseas than to cross miles of desert on foot without water, though, so they might have to just settle for suicide.

Sorry, I got a little sarcastic there. It’s my way of coping with how disgusted I am with the corrupt U.S. government and the media corporations that have helped make it happen by reporting anything but real news. Check out the web link at the top for more details and information sources for these and the other stories on the list.