Evening Briefing—11th June 2010

News and views from around the web posted to the Wonderland Wire:

Daily Briefing—10th June 2010

News and views from around the web posted to the Wonderland Wire:

U.S.-Backed Kyrgyzstan Government Steps Down Following Massive Disobedience

The opposition movement claims the Parliament has been dissolved and over 100 are dead at the hands of Kyrgyz police. The government claims the amount is around 40. Reportedly, the main cause for the opposition is the corrupt, dictatorial government’s high taxation blocking the marketplace and skyrocketing utility bills. Al Jazeera’s Robin Forestier-Walker, reporting from Bishkek, said Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the country’s president, has now fled the capital and relocated to the country’s south (5:43):

Left: Against The Capitalistical Imperative

[This article is available to view or download in .pdf format]

A facebook friend, Andrew Taranto, posted:

Ayn Rand was, at least rhetorically speaking, a capitalist and an anti-libertarian. Shouldn’t we, libertarians, regard this as significant when considering the value of the term “capitalist”?

Against Block Against ‘Libertarians Against Capitalism’

In response to Professor Walter Block’s response to the ‘anti-capitalist’ proponents of free markets.

The Cold War is Over and We Lost

Brad Spangler disscusses “the case for understanding free market anarchism as ‘socialism‘ and the status quo we oppose as ‘capitalism‘”.

Statism ≠ Socialism; Pro-Market ≠ Pro-Business

Kevin Carson on this cognitive dissonance within conventional wisdom.

Chomsky’s Lectern: The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism (Video)

Prof. Chomsky delivers the 5th Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University School for International Affairs for the Heyman Center for the Humanities. After paying homage to Edward Said stressing imperialism as central to our culture, Prof. Chomsky builds his case with telling quotes of American leaders rationalizing and denying genocide of indigenous ‘new worlders’ through U.S. terrorism in Latin America—Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, Colombia—and the Middle East (1:03:46):

Scott Horton: Antiwar Because ‘Killing People is Wrong’ (Video)

Scott Horton, anarchist host of AntiWar Radio, spoke to the Young Americans for Liberty chapter at the University of New Hampshire on why libertarians should be antiwar, the history of oligarchs lying the U.S. into wars, the becoming of the Empire, blowback, how Osama bin Laden baited the U.S. into Afghanistan to end the Empire as the U.S. did to the Soviets, and irrational American exceptionalism—introducing Thomas Woods – 6 November 09 – (27:36):

Murray Rothbard, Days After the Soviet Collapse (Video)

At the 1990 Mises University at Stanford, Professor Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) spoke on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the future for freed markets in a lecture titled, “The Future of Austrian Economics.” Educational and always humorous, he shows the flaws of the U.S.S.R. weren’t practical blunders, but ideological and methodological flaws of “planning the modern industrial State” which made its demise inevitable from the start and why compromising radical philosophy with the irrational “doesn’t work”. (49:39):

U.K. Ambassador: Renditioned Detainees ‘Raped With Broken Bottles’ in ‘Soviet-Style Gulags’

The U.S. and U.K made extensive use of Uzbekistan’s the torture regime in its extraordinary rendition program, Craig Murray says, exporting interrogations to a country that “left the Soviet Union in order to maintain the Soviet system” of Gulag oppression.

Brzezinski on Afghanistan

Zbigniew Brzezinski—former national security adviser, co-founder of the Trialteral Commission and (which might come to a frequent reader’s surprise) one of the scholars I’ve avidly studied most on geopolitics—discusses the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan (4:20):

Chomsky’s Lectern: What’s Ahead for the U.S.? (mp3)

Professor Noam Chomsky discusses his coming book—Hopes and Prospects, to be released 1 January 2010—the military coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, his meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, mainstream media’s “narrow criticism” of state power, U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, and the meetings between world “leaders” and Iran with Matt Martin and listeners at KALW 91.7 FM in San Fransisco (52:11):

Reagan’s Torture Regime in Latin America (mp3)

Consortium News founder Robert Parry discusses Latin America as the political training ground for Neo-Con torture regimes, bashing moral relativism to ‘manufacture consent’ for moral relativism, statist journalism, blowback in the Middle East, the lie of Charlie Wilson’s War, Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ role in the Former President Reagan’s C.I.A., and media scare tactics used to lie the U.S. into war with Iran with AntiWar Radio host Scott Horton (63:13):

Analysis: Zbigniew Brzezinski Interview with Press TV (Video)

Brzezinski on Afghanistan, diplomacy with Iran, Palestine-Israel, Chas Freeman, the Israel Lobby, and the current state of international disorder.