BLL Session

Five more Blogosphere of the Libertarian Left sites, five more interesting posts:

- Diane Warth updates on the continuously brewing Iran "situation" at karmalised.

I confess to a bit of mental blockage on the prospect of war with Iran. It's just really, really hard to believe that Bush is that insane or that the neocons are that stupid. Hint: The US has so far failed to pacify either Afghanistan or Iraq, each of which has 1/3 the population of Iran; each of which had, even prior to the US invasions, a fairly primitive military compared to Iran's; and each of which will become additional fronts for Iran in the event of war.

There's just no upside anywhere to courting open conflict with Iran. The Iranians would likely have tacit, perhaps even open, support from Russia. The US has just rewarded a rogue nuclear state (India) with a nuclear agreement, so it's going to be hard to make the case for bullying a state which, so far as anyone can determine, has at least nominally honored its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (Iran).

If the US invades Iran, the US will lose -- probably far more spectacularly than it has lost in Iraq and is losing in Afghanistan. If the US bombs Iran without invading, there will be retaliatory strikes of one form or another, and those strikes will be seen as justified just about everywhere outside of the US itself.

The only rationale for attacking Iran that makes any sense at all is to keep the American public focused on an external enemy rather than giving it leisure to notice, and possibly turn on, the internal enemy (our political class). Which, now that I think about it, resolves my doubts about whether or not it's likely to happen. BOHICA.

- Kevin Carson continues pounding on Who Moved My Cheese? over at the Mutualist Blog.

I've never read the book, because when it was first becoming all the rage I was a union factory worker. Instead of reading the book, I got to sit through a bunch of "team meetings" during which the fresh-faced MBAs whom the company I worked for were trying to make feel better after setting them to ride herd on us assembly-line drudges raved about it and stumbled through PowerPoint presentations about it and threatened us with pop quizzes about it.

The end result was pretty much what one would expect: The fresh-faced MBAs felt important and knowledgeable for a few minutes. Then, for about the next month, every half hour or so, some wit (occasionally me) would look around like he was confused and then yell "Hey! Who the f^&% moved my f^&%ing cheese?!?" And we'd all laugh. And the fresh-faced MBA would turn into a red-faced MBA and storm off to check the color of his parachute or something. A month later, it was "JIT" ("Just In Time") shipping, which was even more fun. "Hey, Charlie, where are the pallets?" "Hey, we're on JIT -- they didn't arrive. Just In Time for a break!"

- Upaya's MDM holds forth on dialectical libertarianism and the prospect of a "left-libertarian unification." This one is way meaty -- the kind of thing that makes me want to shut the puter down, reach three feet to my right and grab my copy of Dr. Chris Matthew Sciabarra's Total Freedom for some more mind-diving. But I know that if I do that, I'll get off the realpolitik track I'm grooving in right now, so I'll stoically deny myself, take a cold shower, and if necessary re-read this gem from Murray Rothbard, which gives lie to the notion that we anarchists are the obstacle to a political Libertarian Party.

- Eugene Plawiuk at La Revue Gauche is amazed at what an Oscar or three can do for an anti-gay, anti-union, anti- ... well, pretty much anti-everything mindset. I haven't been able to get excited about Brokeback Mountain (although I'm sure I'll watch it some time), so I'm glad someone provided something thoughtful I could link to about it.

- The blog formerly known as Freedom is Free seems to have been retitled: This Blog is a Pipe Bomb. It works. After Matthew Bryan's latest rant on the Evil Bushevik Menace, I feel like I should have a cigarette, put my clothes back on and go buy the author flowers or something. Way good. I have to believe that "jug-eared kaiser boy" and "scarlet-naped, Faux-News-dupe-monkeys" will eventually work their way into the American vocabulary.

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