Shameless Self-promotion Sunday #30
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 16 years ago, in 2008, on the World Wide Web.
It’s the big 3-0 for Shameless Self-promotion Sunday.
What have you been up to in the past week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.
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Trying to break myself out of blogging funk. You and I have some outstanding, ongoing conversations between us that I’d like to jump back into at some point. I just don’t think I can have them on the LL2 list – I’ll be god damned if I let a bunch of fucking libertarians, of all people, bring me down.
I wrote about an encouraging case of workplace occupation in Chicago, and apparently there’s an IWW-affiliated truckers strike in N.C. occurring presently I heard about on the easternanarchists list.
I wrote about economic ignorance among scientists and the need for an economics revolution in the scientific research industry.
Charles,
I am wondering if you’ll post on the ethics and potential of a recent worker’s occupation in Chicago. When will the ruling class start screaming “commies”?
( :
I haven’t read about the details of the incident, so I am not sure what to say just yet. That said, I look forward to any posts you may write on the subject.
Last week I finished The Labor Theory of Value and Free Market Money. That is all, for now…
I’m finally posted my first blog, http://carnival-of-anarchy.blogspot.com/2008/12/grounds-above-all.html, partly in response to the recent disputes over think and thin libertarianism.
Nick,
The workers occupying the Republic Windows & Doors factory here in Chicago are doing to get management to pay the their $1.5 million in severance and vacation pay it owes them. In that sense, it’s less of a syndicalist-style takeover and more a temporary distraint of property to induce the company to honor it’s contractual obligations.
I’ve been mulling over the implications of this for a while, and I lean pretty strongly toward supporting it. I think some market anarchists would be more likely to support this than they would a full takeover, if for no other reason than its proportionality to the debt.
Now that I think about it, direct property distraint was a recognized means of compelling welchers to fulfill their obligations in the quasi-anarchic Brehon laws of Celtic Ireland, even if it was a case of tenants or debtors going after landlords or creditors.
Roderick’s article on equality for the Mises Institute goes well with Marja’s post here:
http://mises.org/story/804
I posted about a direct action i was involved in on Wednesday: http://biodiverseresistance.blogspot.com/2008/12/yes-my-friends-were-on-streets-again.html
I don’t have a blog or write on a regular basis, but recently I’ve been visiting all the prominent anarchist/libertarian networking sites (Bureaucrash Social, Anarch.me) and forwarding an announcement for the “National March for Sex Workers Rights” taking place next Wednesday, December 17th in Washington DC. It’s the first nation-wide event of this sort, commemorating the sixth annual “International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers“.
I don’t want to clutter Charles’s comments section, so check out the links if you want to know more. And if you’re in the DC area, please consider showing up and showing some support.
Hmm, using someone else’s blog for your own amateur blogging. Doesn’t get more shameless than that ;)
I will be there. Will you?
Soviet Onion-
OMG. Thank you. You give me at least a memory of hope for libertarianism.
Nick,
“I am wondering if you’ll post on the ethics and potential of a recent worker’s occupation in Chicago. When will the ruling class start screaming “commies”?”
Kinsella’s already pissing moaning about it over on LRC, so I’d guess the ruling class won’t be far behind.
Health and buses permitting, I’ll be there. I’m tempted to forward this to the DC@ list.
Forward it far and wide, Marja. Far and wide!
Anonymous,
Thanks so much for your kind words. If you are who I think you are, I actually borrowed/stole a few lines from one of your old blog entries and used them to explain the importance of cultural activism the end of each announcement. At least one person was moved by it.
Nick,
Unfortunately I’m in Chicago and can’t take time off work to go, so I’m attending the local events instead.
Soviet Onion-
Stealing is acceptable if done well. ;)
Oh well. You and I are friends on Facebook. Let me know if you’re ever coming this way.
And you beat me to mentioning your admiration of Aster’s writing. I was considering sending a brief impersonal message alerting her to it. I had seen you praise her on LL2 or some place before. I thought it would help her mental health to know.
You’re probably thinking of this piece. I reposted one of her old blog entries that I thought went a long way toward explaining why libertarianism (as presented by the Libertarian Movement proper) doesn’t have the kind of deeply-felt personal appeal it should, just to see what the response would be. The debate didn’t go very far, mostly because I failed to push it as far as I should have.
Lady Aster did a lot to shape the views I hold today with regard to market libertarianism, sex work and feminism, or at least directed me to others that did. And through her blog that I found Charles, Rod Long and Brad Spangler. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that she’s more directly responsible for my current politics than any other person out there, with the exceptions of maybe Kevin Carson and William Gillis.
So you can understand if I’m a little dismayed to see her forsaking us as hopeless. I feel like we’re are at a crucial juncture in history, where the libertarianism is either going to have to reconstitute itself or die. Any hope of taking the former depends on us providing guidance. We can’t afford to lose one voice of sanity in the woods.
Regarding the DC March, Pete Eyre from Bureaucrash was nice enough to set up an event page for us, although you probably have to register and log in to see it. You might have run into him at Anarchy Hour: muscular guy with lots of tattoos, wearing the “Anarcho-Capitalist” shirt. I notified another member of the local Bureaucrash crew a while ago and it looks (and I’ll get a definite answer a little later) like they’re going to give it some media coverage. Knowing that I wish I had told them about it sooner so they would have had more time to prepare.
Soviet Onion-
Goddess. Thank you for some of the more touching words that anyone has ever spoken of me.
I almost posted a long and rather emotional response to this list, but it’s quite complicated and personal and… I don’t know how much Rad Geek or others I respect would like to see it written here. My changes of perspective in the last year and a half are very deeply bound up with a number of life experiences, some of them unplesant. They are things I don’t want to share unless others wish to hear them.
On libertarianism:
To some degree I just don’t agree any more with my former libertarian convictions- or more precisely, on economic issues I just don’t know what to think any more. To some degree I think that libertarianism is an unclear or misdefined concept which doesn’t center on the essential love for individual liberty which first attracted me to the movement. But to some degree, I’ve just had so many bad experiences with libertarians over ten years that I feel entirely unsafe and scared in a society where half my energy is always spent getting basic human recognition. I simply can’t be part of a movement which welcomes people who want to hurt me and destroy everything I care for and need to live, and who personally often won’t grant me the grace of a pronoun. But something Nick said on another site (and I think Charles hinted at rhetorically at something like it in a private letter) is true: I’m losing my feeling for principles. And it feels terrible inside. But I just stop feeling anything when I find that what my mind told me was right and beautiful ends up becoming a place of horror, the opposite of what I wanted, and nobody else seems to see the difference. If concern for ideas which aren’t meaningfully applied to you will never make the world better then what does any of it matter?
Thank you, so much. I gave up because I thought I wasn’t reaching anyone, because I thought that the more I was myself the more people hated me, while apparently snuggling up with monsters vomited from old lightless ages. Hearing different words… I feel a little younger, and lighter. I so miss that.
Aster,
I hope you have read my latest comment in the thread you’re speaking of. You’re one of the last people I’d expect to become what I described. I did not want you to think that contextual support for certain factions over others per se would dent my respect for you. It’s more a fear of you becoming a typical politician or something — that would be a long way for you to go though.
I probably have some idea of what personal information you might divulge. You are free to do so as far as I am concerned. I very frequently take a revealing personable approach to blog conversation. I cannot speak for others though.
Soviet Onion,
Yes! I just searched for that post on LL2 today. I remembered it. It’s good you posted it. I have met the person you speak of. I missed the last anarchy hour, because I was really sick.
Speaking of cultural individualism, check out the article below:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/dancing-girls-of-lahore-strike-over-taliban-law-1062907.html
Am I the only one who senses the end of the world may eventually come from a clash of religious fundamentalisms? The War on Terror has become a religious crusade for some fundie types in the U.S.
At Thanksgiving dinner, my grandfather said something about the Muslims doing this or that. I pointed out politely that not all Muslims do that. He responded with another collectivist statement that went: “the ones in the U.S. are ok, but you have to watch them closely” or something.
Totally missing the implicit philiosophic point I was making!
*The Islamic world predominatly views the West or U.S. as attacking Islam. Unfortunately, if some establishment Christian crazies in our midst have their war, then that will be precisely what it is.
Aster,
If I may make a liberal associate esque recommendation for you: read Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women’s Resistance. You will find stories that would likely boost your mood. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan has survived over 30 years of civil war and marginalization.
The author interviews women who suffered from abuse in a free clinic and guess what? None of them accepted it as their “due” reward. There’s even an account of traditional tribal elders who approached RAWA members to thank them for fighting against the fundamentalists. The demand for their literacy courses usually exeeds supply! And this is in a country marred by conservative Islam.
Check out the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Veiled-Courage-Inside-Afghan-Resistance/dp/0767913019
And here: http://atheism.about.com/library/books/full/aafprVeiledCourage.htm
“The War on Terror has become a religious crusade for some fundie types in the U.S.”
The usage of has become here would imply that it was something else at some point, which I am not certain it was.