In the Sixties I was very involved in the peace movement, and more and more people in the peace movement started telling me and telling one another that we were infiltrated by government agents. And after a while, I decided it was true, and we just had to learn to live with it. There wasn't much we could do about it. No sense in getting hysterical about it. But it turned out that we were - that was the "call and tell" program. Then when the war ended, I got involved in the Timothy Leary defense fund, which was raising money to fight Leary's case and get him out of prison. Everybody in the Leary defense fund eventually suspected everybody else of working for the Drug Enforcement Administration, and we were all suspected of being government agents, we all suspected one another. People would come around and tell me, "John is a government agent," and the next day John would come around and tell me Jim was a government agent. I've been living in that kind of environment since the late sixties. I just got used to it.
-- Robert Anton Wilson
While there is an ever-present danger that any given libertarian will launch yet another blog or social media account or think tank, libertarians generally are not associated with terrorism or violent activity. I suppose that someday there will be a bombing carried out by the Murray Rothbard Liberation Front or the Robert Nozick Revolutionary Brigade, but fortunately, it hasn't happened yet.
But yesterday, the same day that I put up a blog posting about a video featuring Robert Anton Wilson and Karl Hess, in which Wilson talks about being spied on while part of the peace movement in Chicago (in terms similar to the interview citation referenced above), I read that Antiwar.com, the libertarian peace site, has sued the FBI in an attempt to learn more about the FBI's surveillance of the website and its editors. Apparently the government has nothing better to do than monitor an opinion website. (I've linked to Antiwar.com at this blog for a long time.)
The best article I've read about the lawsuit is this one by Kelley Vlahos published by Antiwar.com.
2 comments:
In a relatively sane political environment, there should be some serious discussions about impeachment for Obama...and I voted for him! (But only due to that goddamned Evil of Two Lessers quandary thing.)
But...but...if Bush/Cheney/Rummy/Wolfie, et.al got away with what they did (Crimes Against Humanity?), I don't see how Obama can be impeached. The asymmetry of deeds is just something I can't wrap my head around.
Wait a minute: Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob; that's how much the Rethugs care about the country and human values. (And it's only gotten worse since the late 90s, largely due to gerrymandering and Citizens United.) So, I can see it happening. Will it happen? I don't know. Sometimes I confess I don't care.
Obama has turned out to be a far bigger dangerous violent asshole than I ever thought, and I thought he was pretty worthless/dangerous when I voted for him in 2012. But the Rethugs seem like fascists to me. (So does Obama, but the Rethugs manage to be even worse, to my eyes.) Gawd, we seem fucked.
The mind of Murrka seems so fucking stupid, that if I say I voted for Obama but think he's committed crimes I think ought to be impeachable (let's start with Secret Drone Kill Lists); then people automatically think I've finally come to the side of Rush Limbaugh of Hannity.
If I say not even close and try to explain, then I'm an Murrka Hater who just wants socialism, which is communism, which is like what Hitler/Stalin/Mao/Manson/Benedict Arnold/Hannibal Lecter wanted. The lack of nuanced historical knowledge and political imagination stuns me. It's some pretty dark stuff, man. Or it seems that way to me, now.
I spend a lot of time these days reading commentary from anarchists such as Charles Davis and that Rancid Honeytrap guy I wrote about a couple of posts ago (http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/). Listening to the spokespeople for the two parties makes little sense to me these days. Maybe the only thing to do these days is to work for issues and forget about the two party system.
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