Wednesday Lazy Linking
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 15 years ago, in 2009, on the World Wide Web.
Dialogue.
- Libertarians Against Property Rights and Freedom of Association. (Cont’d.) Vin Suprynowicz Vs.
Rad Geek
on so-calledillegal immigration
. In which I arguekeep your borders off my property
and Suprynowicz argues that a libertarian community ought to have the government constitutionally policing people’s political views. Democracy, you know.
News and Comment.
Legal lynching. (Cont’d.) In which the liberal democratic state protects the accused from being railroaded by unreliable criminal justice procedures by convicting innocent people on the testimony of a magic police dog (the state is, of course, taking no steps to systematically review cases where the fraudulent testimony was entered into evidence). And also by refusing to review a provably false rape and murder conviction for nine years because the imprisoned innocent man’s lawyer filed his paperwork four days late. (The federal judge who signed off on the court order denying the review is, of course, now a nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States of America.)
The War on the Informal Sector. (Cont’d.) quasibill, The Bell Tower (2009-06-12): Sometimes, they don’t hide it very well. Multimillion-dollar restaurants only, please.
The Bulldozer Brigade deployed to raze 50 cities in defense of the economic status quo. Tom Leonard, Daily Telegraph (2009-06-12): US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive.. Because it is absolutely unacceptable for urban housing to become cheap, ever, the federal government has decided that it has become necessary to destroy U.S. cities in order to save them. (Via Nick Manley. Cf. also GT 2008-11-24: How the local government in Las Vegas deals with the worst housing crisis in the United States.) Anyone who’s seen Roger and Me ought to know that when the Feds start taking advice on
development
from the Flint city government, things are about to get a lot stupider.Urban Homesteading and Counter-Farming. Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation (2009-06-10): Peer producing agriculture with Crop Mobs
Not The Final Word. No Pretence (2009-06-15) — responses to No Pretence’s anarcha-feminist intervention at last week’s Anarchist Movement Conference 09, and a call to action
Basher-Statism in Virginia prisons. Feminist Daily News (2009-06-15): VA Prison Allegedly Segregated Women on Basis of Sexual Orientation. The segregation was actually based on who looked butch and who looked femme, in the eyes of the prison bosses; the purpose was to segregate and punish women seen as being too
butch.
The segregated wing was called thelittle boys wing
and thebutch wing
by the guards. One guard overheard a boss sayingWe’re going to break up some of thee relationships, start a boys wing, and we’re going to take all these studs and put them together and see how they like looking at nothing but each other all day instead of their girlfriends.
Pro-Choice on Everything. (Cont’d.) Wendy McElroy, iFeminists (2009-06-13): 9 implications of anti-abortion arguments
Extremism in defense of abortion rights is no vice. Sunsara Talor, Online Journal (2009-06-08): After Dr. Tiller’s murder, where to for abortion rights?.
None of this [federal anti-terrorist legislation] can or should be strengthened or relied on to protect the rights of women. But, even if you were willing to ignore all this, the fact is relying on the state has never worked. … The lesson to draw is NOT that there should be more reliance on law enforcement. It is that there needs instead to be a powerful mobilization of pro-choice people from below, relying on ourselves to reverse the whole culture and dynamic in this country. … And we must reverse the demobilization of pro-choice people who've been told to rely on ineffectual law enforcement and to seek
common ground
with religious fanatics. We must seize the moral and ideological high ground, declare abortion on demand and without apology, and go on the political offensive out in the streets and once again to the clinics.Men in Uniform (cont’d.) — Rape as a weapon of war. Feminist Daily News (2009-06-08): Incidence of Rape in Democratic Republic of Congo Soaring. Right now the attacks are primarily being carried out by men in the Democratic Forces of the Liberation [sic] of Rwanda.
How the Money Monopoly destroyed an alternative currency and forced its creator to defraud his customers out of millions of dollars. Wired (2009-06-09): Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold. Note especially:
(Via Jesse Walker.)No matter how innocent a person is you can always find a law that government agents can use to convict him of something,
[Richard] Timberlake says,And this is a perfect example of it. Any time anybody tries to produce money, the federal government is going to be on their tail.
Look how well it’s worked out. Wendy McElroy, WendyMcElroy.com (2009-06-15): A letter from Murray Rothbard, which Wendy recently rediscovered while reorganizing her files. The letter was sent back in 1983 in response to a then-recent issue of The Voluntaryist (which, as a voluntaryist publication, had a hard editorial line against libertarians voting or running for office). In which Murray declares the Dallas Accord, and the next three years of
titanic struggles
to keep the official text of the Libertarian Party platform at least minimally libertarian,a great triumph for anarchists in the party.
Well, yeah; look at everything that’s accomplished.The Good Old Days Were Rotten. Wendi Muse, Racialious (2009-06-15): Nostalgia: a Sport for the Privileged. I think the lesson applies just as much to libertarian nostalgia for the Gilded Age or the Old Republic as it does to more aesthetically-focused romances for the past.
Arts.
Who needs a literary supplement when you can have a literary newspaper? Daniel Estrin, The Jewish Daily Forward (2009-06-10): Literary Lesson: Authors, Poets Write the News: Letter from Jerusalem.
Awesome. Now how about Firefly? Michael Ausiello, Entertainment Weekly (2009-06-09): It’s official:
Futurama
is reborn!
Communications.
J. Neil Schulman’s Alongside Night. The 30th anniversary edition of J. Neil Schulman’s revolutionary agorist science-fiction classic, Alongside Night, is now available for free on the Internet. Download! Enjoy! Spread the word!
Anarchy Summer Camp. July 17-19. Northern Virginia. Anonymous, Infoshop News (2009-06-12): Virginia: Anarchy Summer Camp 17th-19th, Nova.
As we prepare for the upcoming G20 summit in Pittsburgh, the Spring World Bank and IMF meetings, the ebbs and flows of our respective local campaigns, and anything else under the sun, we’ll be congregating in the woods of Northern Virginia for an action-packed Anarchy Summer Camp.
2009 Northeast Anarchist People of Color Conference. August 6 – August 9, 2009. Philadelphia, Pennslvania. The conference announcement, mission sttaement, and Principles of Unity are all available from http://illvox.org/.
Follow
Great job handling Vin’s collectivist lapse. One problem though – your most recent, and best, comment there seems to have disappeared.
re: Basher-Statism in Virginia prisons.
Thank you. I do not know how to convey how personal my thanks are here. I remember that hideous world. I deeply appreciate seeing a left-libertarian taking the side of the victims instead of knowingly enabling precisely the bent worldview of those prison guards.
If anyone ever wishes to understand why I have and can show such rage: there it is. I grew up in that kind of culture and was trapped in it for the first 18 years of my life- in some ways, for the first 25 years. When I see cultural relativists turning a blind eye to this evil and excusing it on every possible grounds, I see the blood, the broken spirits, the snide superiority of those who would humiliate love and authenticity and make a moral virtue of their petty ignorance. I got out of that world, but it took me three decades to wrench the last of my body and soul entirely from their reach, and even then I had to do it at irrevocable spiritual cost.
And today libertarians are, as often as not, knowing aiding and abetting this thing. I became a radical because I couldn’t live in a world like this and because I refuse to believe that their kind of world is the only possible one- which, in this case, it demonstrably isn’t in better places outside of their Christian collectivist hellholes. But I came to find that radicalism- and find that there isn’t a corner in the intellectual world where people don’t smile and nod and offer blithe evasions in defense of this torture, all in the service of their own precious concessions in their own souls to absurd traditional irrationalisms that ruin human lives.
I remember how my father tortured my mother, and watched as the whole world turned its back, pretended not to see, and gave every sanction to an oppressor because he was lord of his own dark castle, because they didn’t want to ‘interfere‘ and get ‘involved’. And today much of our movement plays the same game, and who confronts? Who speaks up? Who raises the power of their voice?
What Russia was to Ayn Rand, Virginia is to me. Rand didn’t become a radical to hear irresponsible and literati clueless hippies painting pretty pictures of Soviet totalitarianism. And I didn’t become a radical to listen to evaders paint Christianist patriarchy and village fascism as ‘just the way it is’ or ‘just another culture’.
WHEN DOES THIS END? When will people who respect reality enough to know the difference confront these apologies for evil? Only those with the training, the stature, and the privilege have the power to say anything and have anyone listen. Stand.
Thank, you, Charles. Perhaps the answer to ‘who speaks up?’ is: ‘well, here’s one’.
I never realized Suprynowicz was such a jerk. I guess I just never paid that much attention to him before.
“Illegal” immigrants are as a general rule, he implies here, the equivalent of “runaway rapists, murderers, and stickup men.” Now that’s some thoughtful analysis.
Is Freeman right? Did he delete your most recent comment?
A lot of people say that these struggles aren’t important, or that they have nothing to do with the struggle against the state, but these are matters of life or death.
freeman,
Thanks. Viewing the page from my frame of reference reveals that the comment has been dropped into the moderation queue, for whatever reason. Well, whatever comes of it, the content is mirrored at http://elsewhere.radgeek.com/.
Bob,
Well, they violated a law. And, as everyone knows, if the Constitution says anybody who doesn’t shout is a goddamned looter socialist.
What is a constitutional immigration law? I see rules for naturalization in there, but immigration?
Well, Article I, Section 9 provides that “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.” Famously, the intention had primarily to do with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but the literal text would seem to allow for Congress to pass general immigration laws.
Of course, my own view is that the fact that such a system as we have could be is as good an argument as you could like that the Constitution is a covenant with Death and an agreement with Hell.
“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.” -Etienne de La Boétie. The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. 1552.
For what it’s worth (admittedly not much, given Spooner’s absence from the Supreme Court), you could derive a ban on interference with free migration from the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause (which applies to persons, not merely citizens).
Aster, re: basher-statists in Virginia prisons. I’m very much with you on this one. The gratuitous sadism in the language of those guards is appalling…..and takes me back to some of my own worst experiences under that southern culture.
More later; busy day ahead.
Victoria
Hmmm… two days later, and Charles’s comment still hasn’t been approved by Vin, although one new comment has appeared by someone else. I’m of the opinion that Vin censored the comment. How cowardly!
I don’t like pushing the same issues again and again. A trans activist in New York was outed. She received death threats. Now she has been gang-raped and buried alive. She dug her way out of her grave before dying of her injuries.
via Bilerico: http://www.bilerico.com/2009/06/anotherbrutalmurder.php
Jeeze, that’s just so cruel it almost sounds unreal.
Another link got mixed up:
http://www.bilerico.com/2009/06/another UNDERSCORE brutal UNDERSCORE murder.php
The underscores are so common in urls, that it’s insane that the software here reads them as text formatting.
Imagine this done on a systematic scale by the U.S. government…
Shudders
The Bush admin. was trying to “privatize” social services in the U.S. through contraction out to Christianist groups. Does anyone know of sites documenting the effects on LGBT people?
There have been some questions about the story I’ve linked above. I’m still awaiting more information. Most of the questions have focused on the lack of mainstream media coverage; however, one cannot expect coverage, or read much into its absence.
Marja,
An absolutely horrifying killing in Iran too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjQxq5N–Kc
Not for the faint of heart. This shows what happens when you fight a dictatorship.