John P. Willis

Opinions presented here are held in all of my roles and capacities, both personal and professional.

Summary

Social Networking

Organizations

Computers & Programming

Genealogy

Hobbies

Other Sites

Geek Code

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K- w++ O+++ M V+++>$ PS+++ PE-- Y+ !PGP t+++ !5 !X R tv b+++ DI++ D--- G e 
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Site Info

This site is hosted on a Sun SPARCserver 20 running Apache 2.2, Perl 5, and a home-built CMS.

RSS feed generation is done with a BASH script I have implemented, called Syndicator.

This site contains no JavaScript, no CSS, and should render in any HTML 2.0-compliant browser.

Political Views

"It is a natural paradox, that in the formative days of a socialist society, elements opining for a return to reactionary exploitation must be duly and fiercely suppressed, until a brighter dawn arrives where such notions appear as quaint and lamentable to all as they rightly ought." - John Willis

Table of Contents

1. Left Values
2. Political Compass
3. Guiding Principles
4. What Is Socialism?
5. What Is Communism?
6. Essential Documents
   1. Truman Doctrine, supporting the U.S. foreign policy of undermining foreign sovereignty through accusations of communist sympathies
   2. Monroe Doctrine, elucidating U.S. doctrine of hegemony in the western hemisphere
   3. USA PATRIOT Act
   4. National Security Act of 1947
   5. The Powell Memo
   6. Alan Greenspan on the benefits of Job Insecurity
   7. Bill Clinton raging against immigrants in 2000 State of the Union address
7. Democratically-elected governments overthrown to protect U.S. interests
   1. Panama (1941)
   2. Syria (1949)
   3. Iran (1953)
   4. Guatemala (1954)
   5. Congo (1960)
   6. Brazil (1964)
   7. Chile (1973)
8. Jollitics Podcast
9. My Writings
10. Audio Recordings
11. The Importance of Academic Tenure
12. Software & Technology Freedom
    1. Licenses
    2. The GNU/Linux Problem
    3. The Cloud Problem
    4. The Google Problem
    5. The Apple Problem
    6. The Broadcom Problem
    7. The Amazon Problem
13. To Whom Should I Donate?
14. Statements on Politicians
    1. Donald Trump
    2. Nancy Pelosi
    3. Bill & Hillary Clinton
    4. Barack Obama
    5. Bernie Sanders
    6. Elizabeth Warren
    7. Tulsi Gabbard
    8. Joe Biden
    9. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
    10. Ilhan Omar
    11. Beto O'Rourke
    12. Ron Paul
    13. Marianne Williamson
15. Favorite Authors & Intellectuals
    1. Karl Marx
    2. Vladimir Lenin
    3. Noam Chomsky
    4. Cornel West
    5. Malcolm X
    6. Mikhail Bakunin
    7. Jacques Ellul
    8. Brian Zahnd
    9. Ernesto Guevara
    10. Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente
    11. Brian McLaren
    12. N.T. Wright
    13. Rosa Luxemburg
    14. Anton Pannekoek
    15. Richard Wolff
    16. Richard M. Stallman
16. Key Issues
17. Donations
18. Voting Record
19. Party Affiliation
20. Revision History
21. Citations

Left Values

Political Compass

Guiding Principles

I am a fairly straightforward Marxist with some anarcho-transhumanist tendencies.

My personal system of ethics is best outlined in Matthew 25:31-46. Beyond that, the following are my core political beliefs.

1. Peace: the "just war" is a myth. There is no such thing as an acceptable level of "collateral damage".
2. Individual Liberty: you should be able to do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't bring physical, financial, or emotional harm to the community or the environment.
3. Full, Direct Democracy: Society should be organized around full democracy in every area.
4. Absolute Realism: no law should be based on arbitrary arrangements.
5. Economics: Straight Marxist-Leninist.
6. Law: cannot be absolute. Justice must be informed by circumstances. All crimes must have a clear victim.
7. Property: I do not believe in private capital/private property. However, personal property (your home, your car, your computer, that which you use) should be inviolable.
8. Money: is a utility enabling trade. Trading in money itself is illegitimate. Any venture requiring the levying of interest is unworthy of pursuing.
9. Human Disposition: basically good; not basically evil. Systems should be erected around the idea of nurturing our basic goodness.
10. Coffee: is essential for the success of items 1 through 9. Coffee should probably be socialized. ;-)

What Is Socialism?

Socialism (see Wikipedia) is a system characterized by social ownership of the means of production. It is the natural inclination of humanity.

Socialism and Fascism are on opposite ends of the spectrum. The fact that the Nazis were "National Socialists" does NOT indicate anything meaningful. It was simply a misdirection tactic of Adolf Hitler. Socialism absolutely requires the common ownership of the means of production by the general population. Fascism never allowed this.

What Is Communism?

Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society where all members work together for the good of the community. The first 300,000 years of human history were organized in a primitive proto-communist arrangement.

No nations which have been administered by a Communist party have ever achieved full communism: due to western capitalist imperialism and encirclement, none have been able to do so. This is not a failure of the communist ideal itself, but only further evidence to point to the evils of capitalism.

Communism does not disincentivize productivity. The notion that profit is the sole motivation for human productivity is fallacious and easily debunked. Personal fulfillment, boredom, survival, and creativity (among others) are all strong motivators for human productivity. Humanity--and thus human nature--is not monolithic, and thus not monolithically greedy.

Communism does not mean a doctor and a janitor will have equality of economic outcome when it comes to wages.

Communism does not result in starvation. Scientific studies done in the post-McCarthy era have shown that average caloric intake in the Soviet Union was as good as, or better than, the capitalist west. What does result in starvation is capitalist countries placing crippling economic sanctions and trade embargoes on countries administered by communist parties. Venezuela has faced that, as well as suffering from the loss of oil money due to price instability stemming from the inherent volatility of capitalist markets.

I would encourage readers to check out the Constitution of the USSR. It is a masterpiece of social justice and civil liberties, and makes James Madison look like a rank amateur by comparison.

Please see The Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism for more information.

Democratically-Elected Governments

The United States, in spite of claims to the contrary, is a colonialist empire. Following the vile Monroe Doctrine, the United States would prefer to see nations suffer under brutal military dictatorships rather than attempt to form a government where ordinary working people's concerns might threaten the property "rights" of major U.S. multinational corporations.

These are just a few examples.

Panama (1941)

The United States backed a coup to overthrow President Arnulfo Arias, who had refused to allow the U.S. government to construct military bases in the country.

Syria (1949)

Over concerns of a growing, popular movement with socialist leanings, the U.S. backed Col. Za'im in overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Shukri al-Quwatli.

Iran (1953)

The democratically-elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh had wished to nationalize Iranian oil to weaken foreign influence in Iran. The imperialist governments of Churchill and Eisenhower collaborated to overthrow Mosaddegh, giving dictatorial powers to the Shah of Iran. The United States prefers Islamic extremism to Arab nationalism in every case.

Guatemala (1954)

Jacob Arbenz, the democratically-elected president of the country, engaged in agrarian reform, redistributing fallow land to poor peasants. United Fruit Company, as usual, didn't much care for this, and lobbied the US government to intervene, replaced in the usual way by a brutal military dictatorship under Carlos Castillo Armas. Armas was assassinated, causing a civil war in which 200,000 people were killed by US-backed government forces.

Congo (1960)

When the U.S. refused to help Patrice Lumumba reduce Belgian interference in Congolese affairs, Lumumba turned to the USSR for support. The US and Belgium backed Mobutu Sese Seko in a military coup, overthrowing Lumumba and securing Congo's future poverty and instability.

Brazil (1964)

As president Joao Goulart could not be persuaded to protect US corporate interests in Brazil, John F. Kennedy authorized a military coup to install a brutal military dictatorship that would last until 1985.

It is interesting to note that the government of Brazil from 1985 until 2019 was quite successful in enhancing Brazil's prosperity and egalitarian position, but the ascendancy of right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro has threatened this. Bolsonaro is an ardent supporter of the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, and is unsurprisingly supported by the US.

Chile (1973)

Salvador Allende came to power via democratic election in Chile on an agenda of securing rights for working people, and a socialist economic plan. The US government promptly backed a right-wing military coup by the Chilean army, which established a junta under Augusto Pinochet. The coup was extremely violent.

U.S. diplomat Edward Korry is quoted as saying: "Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty."

Jollitics Podcast

A podcast about leftist ideas (mostly dormant now).

My Writings

Audio Recordings

A note on media formats: I would highly encourage you to make use of Ogg Vorbis audio, which is a free and unencumbered format, not subject to predatory patent litigation. Fraunhofer IIS, owner and patent-holder for MPEG Audio Layer III (the MP3 format) is a fascist patent trolling organization, and files here are only made available in MP3 format for widest possible dissemination. If MP3 is the only format available to you, please consider downloading and using a player capable of handling Ogg Vorbis. This will send a message to patent trolls that we, as users, will not stand for their abuses.

The Importance of Academic Tenure

Academic tenure and tenure-track positions have been steadily eroding over the past few decades. As the concept of academic tenure was designed to promote independence of academics, even when such academics teach or conduct research on controversial topics, uncomfortable to institutional administration, this should not come as a surprise.

This is one small--but crucial--arm of the class warfare being waged by corporate interests against the general population. As tenure and tenure-track positions disappear by attrition, they are invariably replaced by college-track, adjunct, and graduate assistant positions, who, by virtue of the lack of any protections against retaliation for voicing a dissenting viewpoint from the neoliberal party line, will reflect a certain complacency and ready obedience to institutional administration and its corporate masters.

Although the tenure system has its weaknesses, its benefits far outweigh them, as our academic institutions are invaluable in opening young minds to the importance of critical analysis, civil disobedience, and all the tools necessary to invoke a change in this era of thinly-veiled fascism.

Also, teachers at every level should be paid orders of magnitude more than they are. These are the very people entrusted with the noble task of educating young people who represent our future. They should not have to stress about making ends meet on their meager salaries, while also having to use those salaries to purchase needed supplies for their classrooms.

Software & Technology Freedom

Codes of Conduct

Please avoid the Contributor Covenant at all costs for your projects. Militant anti-freedom crusaders like its author, Coraline Ehmke, are seemingly unconcerned with freedom of speech, and seem to want to infringe upon the free speech rights of free software contributors, even outside of the communities of their free software projects.

When we say "free as in speech" and not "free as in beer", we mean it. If we don't protect freedom of speech, then software freedom is both irrelevant and impossible.

Licenses

AVOID ALL SO-CALLED "ETHICAL SOURCE" LICENSES! These are trying to solve very real and important global problems, but at the absolutely wrong level. Software licenses cannot solve geopolitical and humanitarian crises, and should not try to. In addition, these licenses' methods of attempting to solve humanitarian problems through oppressive and authoritarian tactics.

If you are a software developer, please try to release your software under some flavor of the GNU General Public License (GPL) or, in the case of written works, the GNU Free Documentation License.

These licenses place the power in the hands of users and developers, rather than unaccountable and anti-democratic corporations and patent trolls.

The GNU/Linux Problem

First, when referring to desktop and server operating systems that use the Linux kernel, it's important to refer to it as "GNU/Linux". I pronounce this as "GNU Linux", and others pronounce it as "GNU plus Linux". This ensures that we give credit to the userland as well as the kernel and avoids credit theft. No kernel is useful without a userland, and all Linux-kernel-based desktop and server operating system distributions of any consequence use a GNU userland.

Although GNU/Linux is an ostensibly free operating system (as defined by the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation), its ubiquity threatens its position as a means of empowering users. The IBM acquisition of Red Hat, Red Hat's unilateral push (aided by the fascist-like anti-choice behaviors of Lennart Poettering) to force systemd down everyone's throats, and the fact that projects in the GNU/Linux ecosystem are starting to look like an electronic Who's Who of faceless, amoral American multinational corporate sponsorship. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, et. al., have vested interests in limiting user and citizen choice, un-democratizing free and open-source software, and crippling resistance to their exclusively profit-centric goals. It would be naive to assume that--even with the protections of a relatively strong copyleft license--that corporate sponsorship of free software will not result in the direction of such software projects being turned towards the interests of the sponsor, at the expense of user choice and developer independence.

By accepting such great levels of corporate sponsorship (remembering also that Linus Torvalds himself is no actual ally of the ideals of software freedom, instead choosing the free software model for what so often is described as "pragmatic" reasons), GNU/Linux, in its near-ubiquitous state of deployment in large enterprises, is being commoditized and homogenized as it is press-ganged into the service of unaccountable corporate interests at the expense of its users. This has propelled Mr. Torvalds to fame and earned him a very comfortable salary in the corporate-dominated Linux Foundation, but I fear this position leaves the GNU/Linux ecosystem alarmingly open to fascist exploitation.

I encourage all users and developers to consider the implications and ramifications of the use of proprietary software--as well as free software corporatization--and do attempt to use alternatives if at all possible.

One such alternative would be NetBSD, which, although it suffers from its adoption of a license that is weak against corporate assault, has not itself realized the same the same level of corporate infiltration and exploitation as the GNU/Linux ecosystem. I would ideally like to see a GPL-licensed fork of a BSD, if such a thing is even legally possible.

It is important to adopt a strong copyleft license, such as the GPL, as the ethical concerns of free software are even more important than the practical concerns of the milder "Open Source" movement. Please see the Philosophy of the GNU Project for more information, especially Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software.

I do use GNU/Linux as a daily driver, as some of the software I require is not yet available in the BSD ecosystem. However, I am keenly working towards changing this as I move forward.

The Cloud Problem

The so-called "cloud" is arguably a huge boon for unaccountable corporate interests. It allows corporations to avoid much of the expense of on-premises hosting, on-premises IT staffing, and allows them to shift risk to a third party. It is also a boon for corporations like Amazon and Microsoft, whose cloud platforms (AWS and Azure, respectively) are nearly ubiquitous. However, it is highly problematic, as it centralizes and concentrates control of critical server infrastructure in the hands of these unaccountable corporate interests, commoditizes and devalues the labor of IT workers, and contributes to the rapid, ongoing erosion of consumer choice.

We must also consider the human abuses of the corporations running these infrastructures: Amazon is heavily involved in the technology side of prosecuting Donald Trump's illegal and unjust war on Mexican and Central and South American immigrants at the United States border, is known to exploit and subject its employees--few to none of whom are unionized--to horrific working conditions, insultingly low wages, and minimal benefits.

This is not to say that off-premises hosting or subscription-based software is, in and of itself, an unmitigated evil. Such services (see, for instance, Geodigraph), can be provided by socially and environmentally-responsible cooperatives, and social networking platforms like Mastodon and diaspora* are inherently empowering to their users, while preserving user privacy.

The Google Problem

Google--as well as Alphabet, its parent company--have engaged in censorship on behalf of totalitarian regimes, have regularly engaged in anti-choice behavior, and treat their user base as little more than a source of data for their corporate advertisers. Brin and Page have become obsecenely wealthy from these practices, but, unlike much of the dire situation in other areas, there is absolutely nothing provided by them that lacks a suitable (and less offensive) alternative. Please use DuckDuckGo for search.

The Apple Problem

Though Apple has made some strides in favor of user choice, such as pressuring record labels to drop their insidiously evil DRM schemes, the company is far from a good citizen. They have engaged in patent trolling, privacy debacles, predatory pricing, deceptive marketing, and other such foul shenanigans. Their smartphones are arguably the best on the market, but their computers are overpriced, underpowered, of minimal quality, and are produced by what amounts to slave labor.

A new breed of smartphone really needs to be developed as a via media alternative to the abusive excesses of both the iOS and Android evils.

UPDATE: The Purism Librem 5 smartphone, which is expected to ship in the third quarter of 2019, seems to provide exactly such an alternative. The extent to which it respects user freedoms and privacy cannot, of course, be known until the device has shipped and been evaluated by experts in the field.

The Broadcom Problem

This is a particularly nasty and virulent intellectual property troll, worming its heavily proprietary silicon into the very fabric of the Internet. Performant, open chipsets are needed for high-speed networking to provide a way to outflank this undeserving, monopolistic behemoth.

The Amazon Problem

Amazon has essentially reinvented the retail sector of the economy, pushing out traditional brick-and-mortar storefronts at an alarming rate. They also own a giant and ever-expanding segment of the Internet hosting market by way of Amazon Web Services (AWS), which aids the masters of our economy in their perpetual class war by concentrating Internet hosting into the hands of a tiny number of self-interested, private corporations. This has a chilling effect, un-democratizing the Internet, which began (and should have remained as) a public utility in service of the general population.

Amazon is also well-known for the exploitation of its workers, for crushing attempts at labor organization, and providing brutal working conditions in their warehouses.

Amazon is also a major ally of the Trump administration in its Draconian border enforcement efforts, supplying its AWS cloud hosting infrastructure and other technology enablement to those ends. This is, of course, justified by the notion that Amazon is simply seeking profits and bears no moral culpability for the actions of its clients; this is entirely predictable, and strictly follows the party line of amoral State capitalism. Of course, the notion that capitalism is morally neutral is essential to the prosecution of fascism and class warfare.

To Whom Should I Donate?

There are a few organizations and individual politicians I would recommend:

• Democratic Socialists of America
• Industrial Workers of the World
• Amnesty International
• The American Civil Liberties Union
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation
• The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
• UnidosUS (Formerly the National Council of La Raza)

Here are a few organizations/candidates to avoid at all costs:

• The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (responsible for coordinated, fascist attacks against Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Tlaib, and Pressley)
• The Democratic National Committee (long since bought and paid for by fascist interests; engaged in heavy class warfare)
• The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (due to its strong endorsement of the corrupt, false progressive presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren)
• Joe Biden
• Nancy Pelosi

Statements on Politicians

Donald Trump

Donald Trump is essentially a vacuous opportunist. He's a grave danger to our society, in the sense that he has energized and legitimized white supremacy to an alarming degree, as well as legitimized even further the environment of climate change denial, being an existential threat to human life itself. However, the real and actual political difference between Trump and his predecessors is minimal, in spite of media coverage to the contrary. This is intentional. Trump serves the same neoliberal interests of Obama, both Bush's, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, and the rest. The primary difference is in his willingness to conduct in the open the same vile and predatory behaviors his predecessors conducted in subterfuge.

There is some degree of truth to the statement that labor interests--such as the marginalized and disenfranchised members of the domestic manufacturing sector--played a large role in Trump's 2016 victory, but this plays directly into the neoliberal abandonment of labor interests as a whole. The Democratic Party abandoned labor at least four decades ago, and the alarming drop in labor organization and solidarity coincides directly with this. Trump, however, will not in reality address labor's concerns, but rather panders to its interests with the same double-talk that both parties have engaged in for decades.

Nancy Pelosi

Pelosi, along with the rest of the mainstream Democratic Party, is in essence what would have been described 40 years ago as a moderate Republican. Beholden entirely to the interests of U.S. multinational corporations, and dedicated firmly to furthering the anti-democratization of the economy and the further widening of the income gap, Pelosi has proven time and time again that her party does not serve its consituency. Under her speakership, policy issues that have striking majority support, such as Medicare for all, a green new deal, college debt relief, and an end to U.S. imperial expansion and subjugation in the middle east and Latin America, have not been given the courtesy of so much as open debate.

Bill & Hillary Clinton

The Clintons actually personify neoliberal evil. NAFTA, Bill Clinton's brainchild, is--along with the so-called War on Drugs--the cause of so much death in Latin America that it has created the wave of immigration to the United States. If one examines his positions on immigration, they are remarkably indistinguishable from Donald Trump. Let's also not forget that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children at the orders of Bill Clinton were termed by Madeleine Albright--his Secretary of State--as "worth it".

Hillary Clinton is just as bad. I, personally, applaud Julian Assange and Wikileaks for leaking the Podesta e-mails, as it made it clear that, on behalf of her beloved corporate owners, she was more than willing to rig the 2016 election against Bernie Sanders, in a manner not dissimilar to the way that the United States has routinely rigged elections in Latin American countries for decades, to prop up brutal military dictatorships that would prevent such nations from democratizing or progressing to the extent that they would pose an economic threat to U.S. corporate interests. I would not vote for this woman for any elected position whatsoever. She has more blood on her hands even than Donald Trump himself.

The election of Bill Clinton in 1992 was the defining moment in which the Democrats gave themselves permission to elect any lying, hawkish, anti-immigrant, adulterous, pro-capital-punishment conservative candidate they liked, as long as that candidate ran on a blue ticket.

Barack Obama

Yet another evil, neoliberal corporate shill, dedicated to killing children in foreign countries for the benefit of his corporate owners. Failed to deliver on any kind of change, other than massive executive overreach, cowardly killing of children via drone strikes, the increase of torture, the escalation of pointless foreign wars, and the continued widening of the income gap. Sarah Palin, though truly mind-bogglingly stupid in every possible way, got it right when she snarkily expressed doubt about "all that hopey-changey stuff". There was no hope, and there was no change.

Bernie Sanders

Contrary to the extreme portrayal of his Republican contemporaries, Sanders is really a mainstream New Deal Democrat as we'd see in the 1930s. He is really quite a centrist.

Joe Biden

Another vile neoliberal in the vein of Obama and the Clintons. Avoid this one at all costs.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

AOC seemed to have promise, but is too entrenched in capitalism to secure meaningful change. However, she and the rest of "The Squad" do provide some level of resistance to the most extreme elements of right-wing American politics.

Please consider donating to AOC, to ensure that this resistance--as meager as it is--can continue.

Ilhan Omar

Seems like a good person, with high ideals. Feel that the smears and accusations of antisemitism are largely unfounded, and are just part of the neoliberal tendency to smear anyone who poses a threat to their corporate interests. I have donated small amounts of money to both her and AOC, in support of their efforts to steer the democratic party towards the desires of its consituency and away from corporate interests. She is, sadly, not a true socialist, but like AOC, provides some useful resistance to the farthest right elements of American politics.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, equating criticism of Israeli policies and politicians with antisemitism is just part of the neoliberal machinery.

Favorite Authors & Intellectuals

Noam Chomsky

• Refutation of Right Libertarianism
• Chomsky vs. Buckley Debate (Firing Line, 1969)
• Chomsky explaining real anarchism

Key Issues

Donations

For each year, rated from largest donation to smallest.

2008

• Barack Obama (I know, stupid)

2012

• Ron Paul

2019

Note that I have significant policy differences with both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, as their platforms are far from true Democratric Socialism, but support their overall attempt at a progressive political insurgency towards the goal of eradicating fascism and anti-egalitarian class warfare.

• Justice Democrats
• Progressive Change Campaign Committee
• Marianne Williamson
• Ilhan Omar
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Beto O'Rourke (unwise in retrospect)
• Bernie Sanders
• Democratic Socialists of America

Presidential Voting Record

Party Affiliation

• Democratic Party (1999-2006)
• Socialist Workers Party (2006-2008)
• Democratic Party (2008-2012)
• Republican Party (2012-2016)
• Libertarian Party (2016-2018)
• Democratic Party (2018-2020) Please note that I am highly opposed to the Democratic Party leadership, in its foul attempts to rig elections in favor of middling centrists. I was only thusly affiliated in the faint and fading hope that I could make my voice heard in the primaries.
• CPUSA (2020-present)