ovo

Previously published in OVO 11 CONTROL (September 1991).

THE STATE CREATES ITS OWN ENEMIES

Goulishly capitalizing on the tragedy of a mass murder, the anti-gun forces are surging forward with their plans for total gun confiscation. If law-abiding private citizens were disarmed, they claim, criminals and crazies would be unable to kill and maim. That’s an obvious lie–criminals, by definition, disobey laws, and madmen can kill with knives, cars, or champagne bottles as easily and as senselessly as they can with guns. The not-so-secret agenda of the State and its apologists is clear: disarm peaceful citizens to render them powerless. Turn law-abiding Americans into criminals with the stroke of a legislative pen. Anyone who refuses to surrender his or her weapons would become an Enemy Of The State, much the same as any armed citizen is right now in the Soviet Union, or Communist China, or Socialist Nicaragua, or Fascist El Salvador, or Monarchist Great Britain. Gun confiscation is non-partisan–it is always and forever aimed at anyone disliked by the current gang in power.

GUN SEIZURE SPARKED 1776 REVOLUTION

The American Revolution began in a dispute over gun control when British Redcoats marched toward Lexington and Concord to disarm farmers there. London claimed to be the “legitimate” government ruling America, just as Washington or Sacremento or Albany claims to be today. And their attempt to disarm us, stems from the same power lust that drove King George. We must, therefore, hold onto our guns–legally or illegally–for the very same reason the colonists did.

THE TRUTH ABOUT GUN OWNERSHIP

The anti-gunners, certain that the role of government is to grant privileges and dictate behavior, shout that citizens have no reason to be “allowed” to own assault rifles, which have “no legitimate sporting use.” The Constitution, though, says nothing about “a well-regulated sporting club” being necessary. We do not own handguns, assault rifles, shotguns, and other powerful weapons because we are hunters or plinkers or collectors. We do not even own guns because the Constitution “allows” us to. The Constitution does not “grant” rights. It recognizes rights already and irrevocably held forever by the people themselves (individuals), and forbids government from trampling on them. We have a right to keep and bear arms regardless of whether the Second Amendment exists or not! All Article Two guarantees is that we shouldn’t have to defend that right against “our” federal government. We’ve seen that simple guarantee erode, though, haven’t we?

The real reason for gun ownership is to protect the individual from the State, whether it be an invading State from accross the seas or a domestic State grown tyrannical and oppressive. The goal of total, repressive confiscation is clear in the subtle, shifting arguments of the anti-gun forces. When handguns were the target, they clamored prohibition because handguns were not militia-type weapons protected by the Second Amendment. Now they cry for assault rifle bans because “mere citizens” have no business possessing “military-style” weapons!

These eager confiscators rightly point out that assault rifles, handguns, and indeed all “weapons” have only one purpose: to kill. Again they speak a truth, but only partially. The unasked question is, “To kill whom? And under what circumstances?” The answer is, “To kill any who attempt to rob, maim, rape, or kill us.” Even that answer, though, does not fully express the most important reason for gun ownership. Only a small number of people are actually touched by criminal violence. The State, though, touches each and every one of us every hour of every day. People in government seek to tax our earnings to pay for their whims, to draft our children to fight in wars they start, to regulate and interfere with our lives out of pure love of power and their desire to wield it. They have become as tyrannical as any Tory redcoat, Soviet Commissar, or Nazi Gestapo. And they are coming to steal your last line of defense against them. Will you meekly obey?

GUN CONTROL ENFORCED AT GUNPOINT

When any law against guns is passed, how is it backed up? How will the State remove banned weapons from private hands? How will agents of the State disarm the citizenry? Why, by the use of guns, of course! This contradiction has never bothered statists. Why are handguns and assault rifles evil and wicked in the hands of private citizens, yet perfectly fine in the hands of employees of the State? If this is truly “government by the people” why do we see the servants disarming their masters by force? What do they fear from us, if theirs is a legitimate, benevolent government? If the State does not seek to control us, why does it want us disarmed?

The usual answer–stripped of equivocation–is that “mere citizens” are like half-witted children, incapable of safely handling “dangerous” commodities such as weapons or explosives or medicines or information. And only when some half-witted children pass a civil service exam or are elected by other halfwits to work for the wise and benevolent State do they magically become smart and honest and trustworthy enough to carry weapons and decide whom shall be “allowed” to possess guns and what sort of design, shape, or weight such weapons shall be.

Sounds pretty condescending and paternalistic, doesn’t it? That’s how they view us. Sheep for the shearing at tax time, cannon fodder during war time, and dangerous idiots the rest of the time.

And they dare ask us to obey their decrees?

GOVERNMENT CREATES CRIME

What many gun owners refuse to face, usually by saying “it can’t happen in America,” is that the government can and does create new classes of criminals with the mere stroke of a pen. In 1919, Prohibition turns millions of people overnight from sociable drinkers to Enemies Of The State. The victimless crime of ingesting alcohol turned neighborly, peaceful people into fair game for imprisonment, fines, and seizure of property. Some fought back, often with simple shotguns against “revenooers” armed with assault rifles (the Thompson sub-machine gun) in a modern version of the Whiskey Rebellion. The Prohibition amendment created crime by definition. If, tommorow, smoking or drinking coffee or owning a book were declared illegal, the State would suddenly point to a new “criminal underworld” of massive proportions. In the eyes of the State they would become “a new breed of criminal” to be weeded out of society and thrown into prisons. So it is with any prohibition of popular activities, including gun ownership.

GUN PROHIBITION DISARMS THE POOR

Let’s face it–police respond faster to calls from Beverly Hills than they do to calls from Watts. And the rich can afford armed guards, to boot! When so-called Saturday Night Specials are banned, does it affect those who can spend hundreds on a fine pistol? No. Does it prevent criminals from stealing whatever weapon they want or buying it on the black market? No. The only people harmed by a “cheap handgun” ban are the honest poor who have hardly enough money to feed their children, let alone defend them from inner-city marauders. Any form of gun control disarms those least able to defend themselves. And what good is a 15 day waiting period to someone who is threatened by an armed criminal coming by tonight? When one perceives a threat, one should be able to aquire protection immediately.

GUN PROHIBITION IS RACIST

The Gun Control Act of 1968 was rammed down the throats of the American public, blatantly exploiting then-current fears of gun-toting black rioters by implying that the law would help to disarm American Blacks, other minorities, and all dissenters at a time of civil upheaval. to paraphrase a popular slogan, “If the government does not trust minorities with guns, minorities cannot trust government.” Ask any Native American.

In a mirror image case 20 years later, assault rifle bans are being ramrodded through legislatures by appealing to fears that gun-toting white racists are on the loose.

The real and only purpose of gun control is to disarm the innocent and the peaceful, of whatever race, creed, or social status.

GUN PROHIBITION IS SEXIST

The same goes for women. Police and purported feminists urge women to resist rape with fists, fingernails, keyrings, and screams. But why should any woman allow an assailant to get within arms length of her? Why don’t Women’s Rights activists in or out of government reveal the most effective way for a woman to defend herself: to buy a gun and learn to use it? The truth is, they want women to feel weak and perpetually threatened so that they will beg the State for protection. A woman standing proud, armed, and fearless is the last thing most self-proclaimed “feminists” want (since that would undercut their perverse longing for a huge paternalistic government!)

GOVERNMENTS KILL MORE THAN ANY MASS-MURDERER

How can people who work for or worship the State–statists–point to the murder of five children in a schoolyard or twenty people in a restaurant and claim that as sufficient reason to disarm tens of millions of Americans? Are they so presumptuous as to suggest that we are capable of such violent madness? Perhaps there is a degree of psychological projection going on here: statists feel within themselves the urge to kill and project it onto the people they fear the most–us, the victims of the State. For while tens of millions of people own guns, only a minuscule fraction ever use those guns to aggress against others. Every State, however has guns and even more powerful and terrifying weapons in its clutches and every State has used them, will use them, and are using them to murder hundreds, thousands, and millions of innocent, unarmed people.

How can the insane mind of a Patrick Purdy ever dream of matching the death toll of the most minor skirmish in the smallest of wars or “police actions?” The murder of five innocent children is heart-rendingly tragic, but how many thousands of innocent children were roasted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? How many unarmed, peaceful, young people were slaughtered in Tienanamen Square? How many women, children, and old people have been shot by the bullets of “their own” government in Vietnam, Cambodia, Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador, India, Israel, Afghanistan, Tibet, Argentina, Libya, Ireland, Russia, South Africa, Chile, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Iran, and on and on and on for every State you can name, even “our” United States. For statists to use the “mass murder” of a few people as an excuse to disarm Americans when the State is the largest, bloodiest, longest-lived institution of mass-murder in all of history is appallingly hypocritical. Do we owe allegiance to the apologists for such atrocities? NEVER!

Private ownership of weaponry is the last defense against all tyranny, foreign and domestic. The thought that there might come a time when peaceable gun owners (even members of the patriotic NRA) must take arms against an American Li Peng commanding the local police and the US military is anathema to nearly everyone. The possibility, however, must be faced. A lot of American colonists were horrified at the thought of defending themselves against “their” king’s army, too.

CIVILIAN-BASED DEFENSE PREFERED TO STANDING ARMY

Some say that the Constitution “granted” the right to keep and bear arms to provide for a “well-regulated militia.” Since we have a standing army, the argument goes, civilians no longer need to own guns. Yet that amendment was written precisely because the British used that exact argument in their attempts (from 1768 to 1777) to disarm the colonists. Americans detested the standing armies of the British government and knew that civilian-based defense was the ultimate, perhaps the only protection against any threat to liberty, whether from London, Moscow, or Washington, D.C.

DEFYING UNJUST LAWS IS RIGHT AND PROPER!

When the day comes (and it will, if we don’t raise our voices in protest now) that the Imperial State commands its subjects (that’s how they view you and me, regardless of what they say) to turn in our weapons, what will we do? Make no mistake–if people refuse to surrender or destroy their weapons, they will be dealt with by heavily armed police; they will be imprisoned, fined, perhaps even shot if they try to defend their Constitutional–nay, their human–rights.

Of whom should we be more wary–invading troops whose rule we would never sanction, or “our own” government, to which most of us grant some legitimacy and which is right here, right now, all around us? Perhaps paraphrasing a parent’s question will help provide an answer: If the State passed a law telling you to jump off a cliff, would you? No fair answering that “good, pure, sober, honest politicians wouldn’t let that happen.” With guns, it is happening right now.

And when that friendly cop on the beat (whom most gun owners exalt as a good man just doing his job and who may even be a fellow NRA member!) comes around to your house, he will come armed with “good government” handguns and assault rifles. “Sorry pal,” he’ll say, “but the law is the law.”

That possibility is something many gun owners–staunch defenders of law and order and supporters of local police–refuse to face. They blank out the fact that even–perhaps especially–in America, they may have to choose between owning their guns and facing the full implication of the Declaration of Independence,

“…that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it…”

Some would rather surrender meekly to the State, giving up their last shred of defense against tyranny, rather than face that choice. But if they do surrender their firepower, the choice will have been made. And it won’t matter whether our new masters speak Russian, Chinese, Japanese, English, or American Bureaucratese. They will be our masters nonetheless.

WHAT TO DO

First of all, keep your guns! Do not turn them in just because some law is passed ordering you to do so. That’s just what they want–sheeplike compliance. you are not a criminal. Don’t let the State treat you like one. The colonists who turned in their weapons to their Tory town governments soon learned the folly of their actions. Any government that outlaws gun ownership is an outlaw government! It is no more necessary to obey an oppressive, tyrannical State than it is to obey any thief who demands that you turn over your property under threat of death. We know the free person’s answer to such a demand. So does the State. That is why statists seek to browbeat us into disarming without a fight. They need the sanction of the victim. They cannot hope to disarm us by force. That would tip their hand and guarantee a revolution. But by stealth, instilled guilt, and appeals to our peaceful, law-abiding natures will they attempt to expropriate our only defense against their continued and increasing predations.

Resist the urge to obey the edicts of self-proclaimed rulers. Don’t walk timidly into a concentration camp filled with once-free men and women. Decry with every fiber of your being this trampling of our fundamental human rights!

THE RIGHT TO OWN GUNS IS A CIVIL RIGHT, WITHOUT WHICH ALL OTHER CIVIL RIGHTS ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO DEFEND.

THE RIGHT TO OWN GUNS IS THE RIGHT TO OWN–AND PROTECT–YOUR BODY AND YOUR PROPERTY.

THE RIGHT TO OWN GUNS IS THE RIGHT TO RESIST TYRANNY.

ANY WHO SEIZE GUNS ARE THIEVES OR TYRANTS.

Every law restricting free, immediate access to firearms is a direct attack on individual freedom. The course of action is up to you. Demand the repeal of all such laws or ignore them with impunity. But never accept them as legitimate restraints upon your liberty. Nothing legitimate can issue from the pen of tyrants.

Today (25 November) was a special day in the life of Yukio Mishima.  Men, take upon your shoulders now the portable shrine…

When l was small l would watch the young men parade the portable shrine through the streets at the local shrine festival. They were intoxicated with their task, and their expressions were of an indescribable abandon, their faces averted; some of them even rested the backs of their necks against the shafts of the shrine they shouldered, so that their eyes gazed up at the heavens. And my mind was much troubled by the riddle of what it was that those eyes reflected. As to the nature of the intoxicating vision that I detected in all this violent physical stress, my imagination provided no clue. For many a month, therefore, the enigma continued to occupy my mind; it was only much later, after I had begun to learn the language of the flesh, that I undertook to help in shouldering a portable shrine, and was at last able to solve the puzzle that had plagued me since infancy. They were simply looking at the sky. In their eyes there was no vision: only the reflection of the blue and absolute skies of early autumn. Those blue skies, though, were unusual skies such as I might never see again in my life: one moment strung up high aloft, the next plunged to the depths; constantly shifting, a strange compound of lucidity and madness. I promptly set down what I had discovered in a short essay, so important did my experience seem to me. In short, I had found myself at a point where there were no grounds for doubting that the sky that my own poetic intuition had shown me, and the sky revealed to the eyes of those ordinary young men of the neighborhood, were identical. That moment for which I had been waiting so long was a blessing that the sun and the steel had conferred on me. – Mishima, Sun and Steel.

Wikipedia: Yukio Mishima.
Yukio Mishima Museum.
Wax figure of Mishima (where is it now?).
Yukokio (The Rite of Love and Death), a 1966 film by Mishima.
Mishima conducting the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony.
Eirei No Koe (Voices of the Heroic Dead), an LP by Mishima.
Justin Raimondo: Mishima – Paleocon as Samurai.
Stephen Mansfield: A Life Less Ordinary.
… and more.

OVO triumphus for Yukio Mishima for 2008.

France bans internet Nazi auctions – A French judge has ruled that the US Internet Service Provider Yahoo! Inc must make it impossible for French users to access sites auctioning race hate memorabilia. In a landmark ruling, Judge Jean-Jaques Gomez gave Yahoo! Until 24 July to comply with his order. Existing French law prohibits the selling or display of anything that incites racism. [...] Yahoo said it condemned all forms of racism but added the case raised significant questions. A lawyer for the internet service provider said the real question was whether a French court had jurisdiction over the English-language content of an American website.

Yahoo!, Inc. v. LICRA, 169 F.Supp. 2d 1181 (N.D. Cal. 2001) – “Although France has the sovereign right to regulate what speech is permissible in France, this Court may not enforce a foreign order that violates the protections of the United States Constitution by chilling protected speech that occurs simultaneously within our borders. The reason for limiting comity in this area is sound. ‘The protection to free speech and the press embodied in [the First] amendment would be seriously jeopardized by the entry of foreign judgments granted pursuant to standards deemed appropriate in [another country] but considered antithetical to the protections afforded the press by the U. S. Constitution.’ Bachchan v. India Abroad Publications, Inc., 585 N. Y. S. 2d 661, 665 (Sup. Ct. 1992). Absent a body of law that establishes international standards with respect to speech on the Internet and an appropriate treaty or legislation addressing enforcement of such standards to speech originating within the United States, the principle of comity is outweighed by the Court’s obligation to uphold the First Amendment.”

Convicted Murderer Sues Wikipedia, Demands Removal of His Name – Wikipedia is under a censorship attack by a convicted murderer who is invoking Germany’s privacy laws in a bid to remove references to his killing of a Bavarian actor in 1990. Lawyers for Wolfgang Werle, of Erding, Germany, sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding removal of Werle’s name from the Wikipedia entry on actor Walter Sedlmayr. The lawyers cite German court rulings that “have held that our client’s name and likeness cannot be used anymore in publication regarding Mr. Sedlmayr’s death.” [...] Jennifer Granick, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says German publications must also alter their online archives in a bid to comport with laws designed to provide offenders an avenue to “reintegrate back into society.” [...] Granick said the First Amendment protects San Francisco-based Wikipedia.

Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle are citizens of the United Kingdom who operate a web site in California, USA called heretial.com (previously at OVO).  The content of their website is considered illegal ‘hate speech’ in the UK but is not illegal in the USA. Sheppard and Whittle applied for asylum in the USA but were instead extradited and are now in prison. The ‘Heretical Two’ did not enjoy the protection of the First Amendment that others have found in similar situations.  No evidence was presented at their trials that any ‘racial hatred’ had resulted from their website. No evidence was presented at their trials that anyone had accessed the website other than the single police officer who had downloaded the website for the purpose of the prosecution.  Is free speech only for those in the right who speak with a pleasant tone?  What nation’s laws govern US websites?

Wikipedia, Smedley Butler:

Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed “The Fighting Quaker” and “Old Gimlet Eye”, was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.

During his 34 years of Marine Corps service, Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor twice. Notably, he is one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, and one of only three to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two different actions.

In addition to his military career, Smedley Butler was noted for his outspoken anti-interventionist views, and his book War is a Racket. His book was one of the first works describing the workings of the military-industrial complex and after retiring from service, he became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.

In 1934, he alleged to the United States Congress that a group of wealthy industrialists had plotted a military coup known as the Business Plot to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Wikipedia, War is a Racket:

War Is a Racket is the title of two works [...] by retired U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler [...] in which Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests have commercially benefited from warfare.  After he retired from the Marine Corps, Gen. Butler made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech “War is a Racket”. The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as a small book with the same title that was published in 1935 by Round Table Press, Inc., New York. The booklet was also condensed in Reader’s Digest as a book supplement which helped popularize his message.

War is a Racket as a free text online, a book to purchase from Feral House or in a dramatic reading.

Wikipedia, Business Plot:

The Business Plot was a reported political conspiracy in 1933 which involved wealthy businessmen plotting a coup d’état to overthrow United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1934 retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified to the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional committee that a group of men had approached him as part of a plot to overthrow Roosevelt in a coup. In the opinion of the committee these allegations were credible. One of the purported plotters, Gerald MacGuire, vehemently denied any such plot. In their report, the Congressional committee stated that it was able to confirm Butler’s statements other than the proposal from MacGuire which it considered more or less confirmed by MacGuire’s European reports. However, no prosecutions or further investigations followed. While historians have questioned whether or not a coup was actually close to execution, most agree that some sort of “wild scheme” was contemplated and discussed. Contemporaneous media initially dismissed the plot, with a New York Times editorial characterizing it as a “gigantic hoax”. When the committee’s final report was released, the Times said the committee “purported to report that a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler’s story of a Fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true” and “It also alleged that definite proof had been found that the much publicized Fascist march on Washington, which was to have been led by Major. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, retired, according to testimony at a hearing, was actually contemplated”.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was no stranger to fascism.  He was a friend to Sir Oswald Mosley, as shown in this photograph (mirror) as well as Lady Mosley.  Sir Mosley was the founder of the British Union of Fascist.  Fascism as an economic plan, as a ‘third way’ that was neither communism nor capitalism, is not unlike what President Roosevelt established in his New Deal.  No implication is made or should be understood that the New Deal or Sir Mosley’s BUF also included the excesses of fascism found in Germany or other fascist-by-name countries.  No implication is made or should be understood that OVO supports fascism as an economic plan or in any other manifestation.

“War is father of all, king of all. Some it makes gods, some it makes men; some it makes slaves, some free.  We must realize that war is universal, and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.” – Heraclitus.

When openly gay college student Matthew Shepard was targeted, tortured and murdered in 1998 the story made national headlines. Soon after, MTV sent a camera crew down to Charleston, South Carolina searching for a redneck or two who might offer some insensitive remarks about homosexuals for their “True Life” series. They found one. Me. I was a student at the College of Charleston and as the lone conservative writer at the school paper, was asked to participate in the television tapings. I remember telling MTV I believed Shepard’s murderers should receive the death penalty. I also told them, when prodded, that I believed homosexuality was “against God.” It’s a comment I’ve regretted ever since. My first regret stems from the blasphemous assumption that I could know the mind of God and secondly, that I had portrayed gay men and women as somehow lesser children of that God. Despite my youthful ignorance, there is nothing more obvious to me today than the fact that the overwhelming majority of homosexuals are born gay. It is nature, not nurture and certainly no choice. [...]

Most violent crime is born of some sort of hatred and examining motive is certainly crucial in any criminal investigation. But “hate” – for gays, minorities, women, chivalrous men – is still just a thought, and should not be itself, a criminal action. Criminalizing the thought behind a violent act sets dangerous precedent and gives special justice to special groups and lesser justice to victims of similar crimes who do not belong to those groups.

Article continues at link.  How is freedom of speech defended on the left, on the right, and at the extremes of each?  How does that change over time?  Are you ready to go this far to defend freedom of speech?  How about this far?  How far, my friend?

The Guardian, Iraq nets handsome profit by dumping dollar for euro (16 February 2003):

A bizarre political statement by Saddam Hussein has earned Iraq a windfall of hundreds of million of euros. In October 2000 Iraq insisted on dumping the US dollar – ‘the currency of the enemy’ – for the more multilateral euro. The changeover was announced on almost exactly the same day that the euro reached its lowest ebb, buying just $0.82, and the G7 Finance Ministers were forced to bail out the currency. On Friday the euro had reached $1.08, up 30 per cent from that time. Almost all of Iraq’s oil exports under the United Nations oil-for-food programme have been paid in euros since 2001. Around 26 billion euros (£17.4bn) has been paid for 3.3 billion barrels of oil into an escrow account in New York. [...] The marked appreciation of the euro, higher interest rates, and the ability to pay mainly European suppliers in euros is believed to have made hundreds of millions for the Iraqi oil-for-food programme.

The US went to war with Iraq in March 2003. “Since currently worldwide oil sales are denominated in U.S. dollars, changes in the value of the dollar against other world currencies affect OPEC’s decisions on how much oil to produce. For example, when the dollar falls relative to the other currencies, OPEC-member states receive smaller revenues in other currencies for their oil, causing substantial cuts in their purchasing power. After the introduction of the euro, pre-invasion Iraq decided it wanted to be paid for its oil in euros instead of US dollars causing OPEC to consider changing its oil exchange currency to euros, although after Iraq’s invasion, the interim government reversed this policy, and the subsequent Iraq governments stuck to the US dollar. Member states Iran and Venezuela have undergone similar shifts from the dollar to the Euro” (Wikipedia).

The Independent, The demise of the dollar (6 October 2009):

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.  Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

Will the US go to war with Iran soon? Maybe not, maybe these talks never happened.  Still… William Clark wrote: “Although completely unreported by the U.S. media and government, the answer to the Iraq enigma is simple yet shocking – it is in large part an oil currency war.”

Previously in OVO on the topic of currency wars… Klint Finley contributed “The New Currency Wars” [revision] to OVO 18 MONEY (April 2008). This essay is reprinted in Digital Gold Currency Magazine (January 2009).

Terror suspect refuses to stand in court: the men were seeking a fatwa, or religious ruling, to justify their plot.
Kidnapped boys ‘brainwashed’ to die as suicide bombers: They had all been kidnapped by the Taliban and taken to camps where they would be trained to kill; trained to be suicide bombers.
Woman journalist rejects offer of immunity from prosecution for wearing trousers: She was arrested in a restaurant in the capital with other women earlier this month for wearing “indecent” clothing – trousers. She said ten of the women arrested with her, including non-Muslims, each received ten lashes and a fine.
Muslims welcome police scarf move: Avon and Somerset Police is issuing head coverings to its female officers so they can enter mosques. The force says the move will help its officers respect Muslim religious customs while carrying out their job.
Man loses his tongue, and blinded in one eye after Muslim ‘honour’ attack in London: Two men have appeared in court after the suspected lover of a married Muslim woman in east London had acid thrown in his face and was stabbed twice in the back in a possible “honour attack”.
Arrests in submerged car deaths: The Whig-Standard learned that Kingston Police have been investigating, for at least two weeks, the allegation that the deaths were an honour killing.
Taliban buying children for suicide bombers: Pakistan’s top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, is buying children as young as 7 to serve as suicide bombers in the growing spate of attacks against Pakistani, Afghan and U.S. targets, U.S. Defense Department and Pakistani officials say.
Syria amends honour killing law: The new law replaces the existing maximum sentence of one year in jail with a minimum jail term of two years.
Ezra Levant talks about his fight for freedom of speech: Canadian magazine publisher Ezra Levant became famous as the first and only person prosecuted for printing the controversial “Danish Mohamed” cartoons.
Somalis watch double amputations: Hardline Islamists in Somalia have carried out double amputations on four men for stealing phones and guns. They have each had a hand and foot cut off after being convicted by a Sharia court in the capital earlier this week.
Muslim Countries Lead in Human Trafficking: Muslim countries in the Middle East and north-central Africa lead the world in human trafficking, according to a new U.S. State Department report. Of the 17 countries that were given the “Tier 3″ listing reserved for the worst offenders, nine were Muslim countries or countries with a large Muslim population from these two regions.
Police arrest ‘homosexuals’ at party: While the kingdom has faced criticism from human rights organisations, it insists that it always acts in accordance with Sunni Islamic law.
Taliban beat musicians, shaved their heads and left them tied to trees overnight because they performed at a wedding: They believe music is un-Islamic. Why? Hadith Qudsi 19:5: “The Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance.”

Here is hope for the Muslim world: secular reform, in the way that Christianity has undergone secular reform in the West.  The Bible of Christianity contains all manor of absurd and atrocious commandments, but the Christian world has found it possible to ignore them.  Leading the way out of darkness are Irshad Manji, the Institution for the Secularization of Islamic Society, and the nation of Turkey among others.  The alternative is for the Muslim world to keep on killing its own, keep on killing others and keep on its mission to conquer the world or die trying.

A Roman Catholic bank in Germany has apologised after admitting it bought stocks in defence, tobacco and birth control companies.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Catholic bank owned pill shares

Nigerian atheist attacked by a mob of Christians at a child witchcraft conference: Nigerian atheist Leo Igwe was attacked this week by a mob of Christians at a conference he staged to discuss Child Rights and Witchcraft.
Murder-defendant Houston brothers may represent selves: “We’ve got the best counsel in the world,” Leon Houston said. “We’ve got God on our side.”
Abstinence-Supporting GOP State Lawmaker Admits To Sex With 22-Year-Old Intern: According to his website is “a member of Christ United Methodist Church, where he serves as a Sunday school teacher and board member of their day school.” He recently sponsored a bill designed to prevent gay couples from adopting children. Also quoted as saying he ‘didn’t believe young people should have sex before marriage anyway, that his faith and church are important to him, and he wants to promote abstinence.’
100 Huntley Street hosts suspended during Ponzi scheme probe: Ron and Reynold Mainse have been relieved of their duties as hosts of Christian program 100 Huntley Street after allegedly becoming involved in a $14.1-million Ponzi scheme.
Pastor and sons face fraud charges: They allegedly ran a multi-million dollar, faith-based affinity fraud for at least five years that duped thousands of investors into buying bonds that raised at least $120 million. The Reeves allegedly stole $6 million for themselves in the process.
Priest held for selling body parts: The Zion Apostolic Church priest and a casual worker for at least two mortuaries were arrested after police were called to a home in Acornhoek, where they found a white woman’s breast and hand on Saturday.
‘I was only giving the boy anatomy lessons’, said paedophile priest: The 79-year-old ex-priest from Melbourne refused to apologise for the assault on the boy for fear of a compensation claim being made against the church.

COMRADES!

Recently some confusion about “Chaos” has plagued the A.O.A. from certain revanchist quarters, forcing us (who despise polemics) at last to indulge in a Plenary Session devoted to denunciations ex cathedra, portentous as hell; our faces burn red with rhetoric, spit flies from our lips, neck veins bulge with pulpit fervor. We must at last descend to flying banners with angry slogans (in 1930’s type faces) declaring what Ontological Anarchy is not.

Remember, only in Classical Physics does Chaos have anything to do with entropy, heat-death, or decay. In our physics (Chaos Theory), Chaos identifies with tao, beyond both yin- as-entropy & yang-as-energy, more a principle of continual creation than of any nihil, void in the sense of potentia, not exhaustion. (Chaos as the “sum of all orders.”)

From this alchemy we quintessentialize an aesthetic theory. Chaote art may act terrifying, it may even act grand guignol, but it can never allow itself to be drenched in putrid negativity, thanatosis, schadenfreude (delight in the misery of others), crooning over Nazi memorabilia & serial murders. Ontological Anarchy collects no snuff films & is bored to tears with dominatrices who spout french philosophy. (”Everything is hopeless & I knew it before you did, asshole. Nyahh!”)

Wilhelm Reich was driven half mad & killed by agents of the Emotional Plague; maybe half his work derived from sheer paranoia (UFO conspiracies, homophobia, even his orgasm theory), BUT on one point we agree wholeheartedly – sexpol: sexual repression breeds death obsession, which leads to bad politics. A great deal of avant-garde Art is saturated with Deadly Orgone Rays (DOR). Ontological Anarchy aims to build aesthetic cloud-busters (OR-guns) to disperse the miasma of cerebral sado-masochism which now passes for slick, hip, new, fashionable. Self-mutilating “performance” artists strike us as banal & stupid–their art makes everyone more unhappy. What kind of two-bit conniving horseshit… what kind of cockroach-brained Art creeps cooked up this apocalypse stew?

Of course the avant-garde seems “smart” – so did Marinetti & the Futurists, so did Pound & Celine. Compared to that kind of intelligence we’d choose real stupidity, bucolic New Age blissed-out inanity – we’d rather be pinheads than queer for death. But luckily we don’t have to scoop out our brains to attain our own queer brand of satori. All the faculties, all the senses belong to us as our property–both heart & head, intellect & spirit, body & soul. Ours is no art of mutilation but of excess, superabundance, amazement.

The purveyors of pointless gloom are the Death Squads of contemporary aesthetics – & we are the “disappeared ones.” Their make-believe ballroom of occult 3rd-Reich bric-a-brac & child murder attracts the manipulators of the Spectacle – death looks better on TV than life – & we Chaotes, who preach an insurrectionary joy, are edged out towards silence.

Needless to say we reject all censorship by Church & State – but “after the revolution” we would be willing to take individual & personal responsibility for burning all the Death Squad snuff-art crap & running them out of town on a rail. (Criticism becomes direct action in an anarchist context.) My space has room neither for Jesus & his lords of the flies nor for Chas. Manson & his literary admirers. I want no mundane police – I want no cosmic axe-murderers either; no TV chainsaw massacres, no sensitive poststructuralist novels about necrophilia.

As it happens, the A.O.A. can scarcely hope to sabotage the suffocating mechanisms of the State & its ghostly circuitry – but we just might happen to find ourselves in a position to do something about lesser manifestations of the DOR plague such as the Corpse-Eaters of the Lower East Side & other Art scum. We support artists who use terrifying material in some “higher cause” – who use loving/sexual material of any kind, however shocking or illegal–who use their anger & disgust & their true desires to lurch toward self-realization & beauty & adventure. “Social Nihilism,” yes – but not the dead nihilism of gnostic self-disgust. Even if it’s violent & abrasive, anyone with a vestigial 3rd eye can see the differences between revolutionary pro-life art & reactionary pro-death art. DOR stinks, & the chaote nose can sniff it out – just as it knows the perfume of spiritual/sexual joy, however buried or masked by other darker scents. Even the Radical Right, for all its horror of flesh & the senses, occasionally comes up with a moment of perception & consciousness-enhancement – but the Death Squads, for all their tired lip service to fashionable revolutionary abstractions, offer us about as much true libertarian energy as the FBI, FDA, or the double-dip Baptists.

We live in a society which advertises its costliest commodities with images of death & mutilation, beaming them direct to the reptilian back-brain of the millions thru alpha-wave-generating carcinogenic reality-warping devices – while certain images of life (such as our favorite, a child masturbating) are banned & punished with incredible ferocity. It takes no guts at all to be an Art Sadist, for salacious death lies at the aesthetic center of our Consensus Paradigm. “Leftists” who like to dress up & play Police-&-Victim, people who jerk off to atrocity photos, people who like to think & intellectualize about splatter art & highfalutin hopelessness & groovy ghoulishness & other people’s misery – such “artists” are nothing but police-without-power (a perfect definition for many “revolutionaries” too). We have a black bomb for these aesthetic fascists – it explodes with sperm & firecrackers, raucous weeds & piracy, weird Shiite heresies & bubbling paradise-fountains, complex rhythms, pulsations of life, all shapeless & exquisite.

Wake up! Breathe! Feel the world’s breath against your skin! Seize the day! Breathe! Breathe!

(Thanx to J. Mander’s Four Arguments for the Abolition of Television; Adam Exit; & the Moorish Cosmopolitan of Williamsburg)

(first published in OVO 10, later collected in T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone)