[P2P-F] Center for a Stateless Society » Commentary

[Michel Bauwens]

sounds like our good mutualist friend, Kevin Carson, would write this ..

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 2:52 PM, Bryan Hugill <bryan.hugill at gmail.com>wrote:

> In case you haven't already seen this, I think you'll enjoy reading this
> commentary :) Especially the final two paragraphs:
>
> "Domestically, I think Wikileaks, The Pirate Bay, Anonymous and Bitcoin’s
> first essay at an encrypted currency were the first weak tremors of what
> will become a 9.0 earthquake shaking all authoritarian hierarchies to their
> foundations.  What emerges, in the aftermath of the long series of
> earthquakes, will be decentralized and networked, and largely beyond the
> control of whatever remains of the hollowed out states and corporations.
>
> Regardless of all the powers asserted in Executive Orders, “National
> Security Doctrines” that sound like a Thousand Year Reich, and corporate
> attempts to put the entire world under a DRM Curtain, their authoritarian
> claims will ultimately be about as efficacious as the edicts of the Emperor
> Norton."
> Cheers,
> Bryan
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Center for a Stateless Society» Commentary <bradspangler at gmail.com>
> Date: 14 September 2011 02:37
> Subject: Center for a Stateless Society » Commentary
> To: bryan.hugill at gmail.com
>
>
> **
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>
> Posted: 12 Sep 2011 10:09 PM PDT
>
> During the recent memorial of the September 11 attacks, I heard a lot of
> discussion by people remembering where they were and how they felt when they
> first heard news of the attack on the World Trade Center.  I remember it
> very vividly myself.
>
> I was awakened by my clock radio while the local morning DJs were still
> excitedly discussing the plane impact on the first tower.  Before long,
> another plane hit the second tower.  It became pretty clear then that the
> first one hadn’t been an accident, and that some sort of terrorist attack
> was underway.
>
> My first thought wasn’t fear of the terrorists.  I didn’t think “Oh, my God
> — what will they do next?”  I didn’t fear for my safety or that of my loved
> ones.  My first thought was that federal law enforcement and the
> intelligence community would drag out their Christmas list of police state
> legislation that they didn’t get passed after the Oklahoma City bombing, and
> that Congress would probably rubber stamp it.  My second thought was that
> George Bush would get a blank check for any war he wanted, anywhere in the
> world, in the name of fighting terrorism; “terrorism” would replace the
> previous fig leaves of “International Communism” and “narcotrafficking” as
> an all-purpose justification for attacking any country that looked crossways
> at global corporate rule.  After that, my thoughts turned closer to home.
> “Another wave of attacks like this,” I thought, “and my red card from the
> I.W.W. will get me a bunk with the other ‘subversives’ being detained
> without charge.”
>
> The next several weeks, with the flag-waving and hysteria, struck me as
> unbridled lunacy.  Americans, as usual in wartime, stopped exercising the
> skepticism of authority that is our defining feature and instead began
> acting like Good Germans.  When Tom Daschle said “there’s no daylight
> between us and President Bush,” and Dan Rather said “tell me where to line
> up, Mr. President,” I wanted to spit on the floor.   When USA PATRIOT
> passed, I wondered if the formal powers conferred on Bush were greater than
> those in the Reichstag Enabling Act.
>
> Over the past ten years, if the clampdown hasn’t been as nightmarish as I
> feared, it’s still been massive:  the whole security-industrial complex
> around Homeland Security, the TSA and their contractors; USA PATRIOT,
> warrantless wiretapping, and the use of “national security letters” for
> purposes entirely unrelated to terrorism; the wars all over the globe, and
> the doubling of “Defense” spending; extraordinary rendition and torture at
> Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Baghram and CIA black sites all over the world.  It’s
> like the Paul Verhoeven version of Starship Troopers — with “Freedom fries”
> for all.
>
> There has been an enormous ratcheting upward of state power — sufficient to
> cause one email correspondent, the leader of a prominent libertarian
> organization, to express private despair that human liberty might be on the
> way to being extinguished in a new Dark Age of totalitarian barbarism.
>
> I’m more optimistic.  I don’t think the state will become any less
> authoritarian in its intent or policies, but its grasp will weaken faster
> than its reach extends.  There is a breathtaking future in people taking
> advantage of new technical possibilities for rendering the state’s laws
> unenforceable and living as we want below its radar.
>
> In the purely military realm, I have a hunch that the possibilities for
> cheap anti-ship missiles capable of taking out aircraft carriers (and other
> comparatively cheap “assassin’s mace” weapons with ROIs of 100,000% in terms
> of the value of the targets they take out) will continue to stay several
> steps ahead of attempts to counter them.  If so, agile networked asymmetric
> war will acquire the same kind of generational advantage over the Sole
> Remaining Superpower’s legacy forces that the U.S. had over the Soviet bloc
> thirty years ago.
>
> Domestically, I think Wikileaks, The Pirate Bay, Anonymous and Bitcoin’s
> first essay at an encrypted currency were the first weak tremors of what
> will become a 9.0 earthquake shaking all authoritarian hierarchies to their
> foundations.  What emerges, in the aftermath of the long series of
> earthquakes, will be decentralized and networked, and largely beyond the
> control of whatever remains of the hollowed out states and corporations.
>
> Regardless of all the powers asserted in Executive Orders, “National
> Security Doctrines” that sound like a Thousand Year Reich, and corporate
> attempts to put the entire world under a DRM Curtain, their authoritarian
> claims will ultimately be about as efficacious as the edicts of the Emperor
> Norton.
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