Also, if your house is on fire, analysts say flamethrowers might make that worse, too.

If the U.S. government begins bombing Syrians, they won’t be resisting Assad, or stopping him, or ending his butchery. They will just be joining him in it, with the aim of replacing it with their own. #NoWarOnSyria

http://www.gofundme.com/all-libertopia-2013 ($175 out of $2,800 raised so far) Help me & the ALL Distro get to Libertopia! We have currently raised $175 of the $2,800 that we need to cover the travel costs, exhibition booth, and to help replenish our depleted travel fund for this fall’s upcoming bookfairs, speaking appearances, a research trip to the Labadie Collection, etc. Thanks to those who have contributed! Anything you can chip in will help us a lot in bringing some great talks, some great books, and a strong left-libertarian presence to Libertopia.

Of course President Obama gave President Bush absolute immunity for everything. He is President, and he has war crimes of his own that he may some day want immunity for.

Some people, when asked to read the word “asked,” will tend to spontaneously say “ax’t.” Other people, when asked to read the word “asked,” will tend to spontaneously say something that is much closer to “ass’t.” Both of these represent a significant difference between the way the word is pronounced (a metathesis of the /s/ and /k/ in one case, and a complete elision of the /k/ in the other, not even getting in to what’s going on with that last syllable). Yet it’s only the people who say “ax’t” who routinely get mocked, or get judged as ill-educated, or ignorant of the standard pronunciation, or who are assumed to lack basic literacy skills, just because of the way they happen to pronounce the word. I wonder why that is.

Of course there were certain excesses . . . . “According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials like Francona, the U.S. had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks beginning in 1983. At the time, Iran was publicly alleging that illegal chemical attacks were carried out on its forces, and was building a case to present to the United Nations. But it lacked the evidence implicating Iraq, much of which was contained in top secret reports and memoranda sent to the most senior intelligence officials in the U.S. government. . . . “It has been previously reported that the United States provided tactical intelligence to Iraq at the same time that officials suspected Hussein would use chemical weapons. But the CIA documents, which sat almost entirely unnoticed in a trove of declassified material at the National Archives in College Park, Md., combined with exclusive interviews with former intelligence officials, reveal new details about the depth of the United States’ knowledge of how and when Iraq employed the deadly agents. They show that senior U.S. officials were being regularly informed about the scale of the nerve gas attacks. They are tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched. . . .” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/25/secret_cia_files_prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran I predict that, like the recent open admission of complicity in the removal of Mossadeq, this announcement will also have exactly no effect at all on how anyone in mainstream political commentary talks about the motives, or the moral status, or the likely outcomes, of the U.S. government’s foreign policy or intelligence apparatus. The very worst offenses of the U.S. government are largely openly-admitted matters of public record, and public-affairs commentary mostly proceeds on the assumption that there is nothing worth saying about any of that, except to wave it off with an impatient roll of the eyes and a suggestion that you are immensely childish and un-Serious for even mentioning such things as if they should matter. Via Nathan Goodman

http://funnie.st/310962/awkward-family-photos/3/ You make fun, Funnie.st, but seriously, this kid is my new hero.

Someday I will probably fall out of love with this new printer. To-day is not that day.

To-day: Help Markets Not Capitalism and the ALL Distro get to Libertopia (Aug. 30-Sep. 2, San Diego, CA.)! We are looking for help to cover some traveling costs, and get a strong presence for market anarchism and free-market anti-capitalism at Libertopia. Help us if you can! http://www.gofundme.com/all-libertopia-2013?pc=fb_cr

“Nothing to worry about here. We checked us out and it looks like we’re pretty much doing fine.” #SeemsLegit