Obama, the far left radical. This Modern World (2010-06-12):

Left Flank (Cont’d).

Read the rest of Re: Obama, the far left radical …

• Fun with Android. James, snellspace.com (2010-06-03). I started a new fun android project last night... think of it as something along the lines of a peer-to-peer version of twitter where you can post status updates to specific groupings of contacts. If the contact is also using the app, they'll get a stylized notification, there will be… (Linked Wednesday 2010-06-09.)

• songs listened to while writing this comic: martha (tom waits), if rap gets jealous (k'naan), around the corner (sarah harmer). all pretty much entirely unrelated, but Here We Are. Dinosaur Comics (2010-06-10). T-Rex has not yet heard of the work of Elinor Ostrom. (Linked Thursday 2010-06-10.)

• A Few Million Bodies Between Friends. the Medium Lobster, Fafblog (2010-06-03). Well now. Israel, the Palestinians, and Gaza. It's a sad story, and we're terribly sorry about it all, of course, feeling pronounced Official Regret in our pronounced Official Regretbones, and we feel compelled at this juncture to demand a request for an investigation into the possibility of an inquiry into… (Linked Friday 2010-06-11.)

Officer J. Smith, Las Vegas Metro, responding with a handstrike to the face

According to a story printed in the Las Vegas Review Journal, Officer J. Smith, a police officer working for the local governments in Las Vegas and Clark County, beat a captive prisoner in the face while the man was handcuffed. I’ve scare-quoted the name because that’s the most that the R.-J. could glean from the police reports; the police department is officially refusing to release the name of the cops accused of beating the hell out of a handcuffed prisoner. The cops were there late at night because of a noisy party and reports of a fight. James Akins didn’t want to talk to the police, and when they arrested him for not coming out of his apartment, Akins tried to stand his ground, while a pair strangers forcibly dragged him away in handcuffs to be driven off to jail. (The dragging away is dignified as escorting Akins to the car by the Las Vegas Review Journal.) So James Akins spat at the armed strangers hauling him off in the middle of the night. Officer J. Smith was apparently in no physical danger at all, but he did get spit at, and this insult to his dignity was enough to for him to have responded with a handstrike to Akins’ face. The report in the R.-J. makes it seem as though Officer J. Smith just smacked James Akins once; what actually happened is that Officer J. Smith handcuffed Akins, repeatedly slammed him into a door, forced him downstairs, and then threw him to the ground and punched him in the face several times.

The Incident is being Internally Investigated by Officer J. Smith’s coworkers at Las Vegas Metro, but cop spokesman Officer Marcus Martin is helpfully explaining to the press that There is no department policy that prohibits officers from striking handcuffed suspects. (No doubt there isn’t. What does that say about the policy?) In the meantime, Officer J. Smith, whose full name and identity Las Vegas Metro refuses to release, is still out on patrol on the streets of Las Vegas while being Internally Investigated for beating handcuffed prisoners.

Confronted with those who refuse to recognize themselves in our conspiracies of destruction, we offer neither sympathy nor criticism, but only our scorn. We must destroy all impotentiality–for once and for all. The pathetic passivity proposed to us is like a bad joke, and instead of laughter we respond with rupture. Our need to riot is less the setting forth of a concept than the elaboration of an event.

Leaving activism behind: Notes on social war / It is necessary commence absolutely; not to dream of new ways to make demands, but to make manifest the subterranean communes in the heart of each car set aflame. What’s needed is not impotentiality, and even far less *mobilization*, but a putting-into-practice of singular rupture, a rejection in all forms of the being of totality. In the setting forth of multiplicities, we shatter those who would have us give up the radical ecstasy of insurrection for the catastrophe of passivity. This is a call to indifference, not an insistence on fossilization of our desires.

AGAIN

about the authors

(Thanks to skobrin at /r/Anarchism.)

See also:

• GT 2008-12-04: Internet Anarchist Revision Brigade #2: Django at LibCom on the Stonewall/Bindel affair and the politics of transsexuality
• GT 2008-09-20: Internet Anarchist Revision Brigade: how Burt Green tried to write about statist anti-imperialism and blocked his sink with tea leaves

• i very much like the current phrase "sovereign debt," which. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2010-05-21). i very much like the current phrase "sovereign debt," which appears simply to mean government debt. but it's hard not to hear it as "the debt which exercises complete, legitimate power over each of us." and hard in turn not to see this as a kind of summary of human… (Linked Friday 2010-05-28.)

• Should Whites-Only Lunch Counters Be Allowed? Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2010-05-28). Okay, let’s get right down to it. Our side is asked, incredulously, “Do you mean that someone should be allowed to have a whites-only lunch counter?”The standard libertarian answer is, “Yes, although I don’t approve of the racist policy.”I say, “No. He shouldn’t be allowed.”What?! Heresy!Chill out.He shouldn’t be allowed,… (Linked Friday 2010-05-28.)

• Update on Julian Heicklen's 2010-05-25 arrest. bile, blog of bile (2010-05-27). http://a072-web.nyc.gov/inmatelookup/inmateDetailAction.do?bookcasenumber=7001000078 Julian_Heicklen_inmate_details_-_2010-05-27-1232.pdf Inmate Details: Julian Heicklen NYSID: 02569223L Age: 78 Sex: Male Race: White Height: 5 ft 10 inches Weight: 195 lbs Hair Color: White Eye Color: Brown Nativity: Unknown Booking Information: Book & Case Number: 7001000078 Facility: Anna M. Kross Center Arrest Date: 2010-05-25 Arrest Number: WARRANT Next Court… (Linked Friday 2010-05-28.)

• State Backs Off. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-05-29). Good news – as far as it goes – for civil liberties in Malawi, as their president has (reluctantly) pardoned a same-sex couple, Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, who'd been sentenced to 14 years of prison for their role in the country's "first recorded public activity for homosexuals." The pressure… (Linked Saturday 2010-05-29.)

• Sustainable Food and Privilege: Why is Green Always White (and Male and Upper-Class) Guest Contributor, Racialicious – the intersection of race and pop culture (2010-05-20). by Guest Contributor Janani Balasubramanian When asked to name the heroes of food reform and sustainable agriculture, who comes to mind? Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin, Eric Schlosser, Peter Singer, Alice Waters maybe? Notice any patterns? The food reform movement is predicated on rather shaky foundations with regards to how it… (Linked Saturday 2010-05-29.)

• Getting it Backward. Kevin Carson, Center for a Stateless Society (2010-05-27). You can learn a lot about people's unstated assumptions just by looking at the way they frame their questions.  Take the debate over genetically modified foods, for example.  It's generally presented as a controversy over whether the government should "allow" GM foods to be sold without proper labeling.  But that's… (Linked Saturday 2010-05-29.)

• Rand Paul and Positive Law in a Stateless Society. Brad Spangler, BradSpangler.com (2010-05-20). I've previously mentioned one of the biggest drawbacks of a reformist approach to implementing libertarian ethics is that politics makes you stupid — because by looking at things in terms of government policy, you tend to lose the ability to explain and advocate something very important. Now Rand Paul is… (Linked Saturday 2010-05-29.)