• Embracing Traffic From Those Darn Aggregators. Techdirt (2009-10-29). Next up, somebody is going to be surprised that the Associated Press and Reuters somehow manage to get by OK even with folks like Martin Nisenholtz shamelessly reprinting all their content in full. (Linked Thursday 2009-10-29.)
• Acoustic Kitty. Best of Wikipedia (2009-10-29). Today at Anarchist Cafe, one of the less productive questions that got asked was, without government, what would keep totalitarian governments from taking over and ruling forever. The simple answer to this question is that it wildly overestimates the efficiency and competence of government to maintain itself in power. I mean, look, dude, bad-ass James Bond government spy agencies spend $20,000,000 trying to train a spy cat only to have it get run over by a taxi. These guys aren’t as omnipotent as they’d have you believe. (Linked Thursday 2009-10-29.)
• How Is the Free Market Going to __________? S¢â’¶++, Everyone's Blog Posts – FR33 Agents (2009-10-12). I’m sure everyone gets that question. But see, that’s the beauty of it. You yourself don’t have to know how the free market will solve any given problem. Entrepreneurs will assess the problem and come up with solutions. And you don’t even have to pick one solution, you can have… (Linked Thursday 2009-10-29.)
• Wikileaks Decides: If The US Gov't Won't Create A Real Shield Law, We'll Shield Journalists Instead. Techdirt (2009-10-30). Of course, if you wanted to be “practical” you could waste years of your time and millions of dollars trying to vote away the problem or trying to out-lawyer the Department of Justice at the Supreme Court. Or you could just do this instead.
  
  Counter-economics gets the goods. (Linked Friday 2009-10-30.)
• HOW OBAMA CAVED TO BIG PHARMA. UNDERNEWS (2009-10-30). In which the new sheriff in town turns out to be a lot like the old sheriff in town. (Linked Friday 2009-10-30.)
• My New 10-Year Old Hero. Dispatches from the Culture Wars (2009-10-30). How about a 10 year old kid in the 5th grade from Arkansas who refuses to say the pledge of allegiance and got sick and tired of having a teacher push him to do so every day and “talked back” to her? Their son told them last weekend he had… (Linked Friday 2009-10-30.)

• Fantastic Photos of our Solar System. The Big Picture (2009-10-28). The Universe is awesome. (Cont’d.) (Linked Wednesday 2009-10-28.)

• Nokia Sues Apple, Claims iPhone Infringes on Slew of Patents. Daring Fireball (2009-10-24). In which government-imposed patent monopolies once again promote science and the useful arts by rewarding innovative research and development. (Linked Saturday 2009-10-24.)
• Would-be bounty hunters nab innocent woman in Bristol. State & Regional Politics for Richmond Times-Dispatch (2009-10-25). 1. The bounty hunters didn’t just “nab the wrong woman.” They strip-searched and sexually assaulted her. 2. As a result, these three rampaging rapist thugs are facing arrest and multiple charges of abduction, robbery, and sexual battery. As well they should be — and I hope they rot. But care to guess how many charges they would be facing if they really were on that government police “drug task force” they pretended to be on, and did exactly the same thing to exactly the same innocent woman?
  
  (If your guess is “any,” guess again.) (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Sexist Beatdown: The Happy Hooker, Or Why Doesn't Steven Levitt Suck Dick For a Living? The Sexist (2009-10-25). In which Econo-Creep Central Junior Partners Levitt and Dubner examine the economics of sex work with a sample size of N=2. (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Soviet Shoes, by David Henderson. EconLog (2009-09-30). I mentioned in Tuesday’s post that one of my favorite passages from Scott Shane’s Dismantling Utopia is the passage about shoes. Commenter Bill asked me for the passage. Here it is: My informal survey suggested that some of the longest lines in Moscow were for shoes. At first I assumed… (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Miroslav Pa?@c5;a1;ek's work, in pictures. Mike Gogulski – nostate.com, Anarchoblogs in English (2009-10-23). A couple of post-police attack photos, taken on 6 September 2009, the day after. Bruising to right upper arm showing finger impressions of Miroslav Pa?@c5;a1;ek Slovak State Police hired thug Miroslav Pa?@c5;a1;ek has learned how to inflict great pain with his hands while leaving few if any marks on the… (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• How an insurance mandate could leave many worse off. Marginal Revolution (2009-10-26). In which it is discovered that forcing working folks to pay for big corporate health insurance, whether they want to or not, and whether they can afford to or not, might turn out to prop up big corporate health insurers at the expense of working folks. (Linked Monday 2009-10-26.)

Hey everyone, it’s Sunday Shameless Sunday.

If you’ve been reading here lately, you may know what I’ve been doing over the past few weeks: helping with the organizing for the Living Without Borders encuentro coming up in Vegas.

And y’all? What have you been up to this 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.

November 6–8, 2009

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Sponsored by U.C.I.R.

Register to attend!

livingwithoutborders.org

The 2nd Annual Living Without Borders / Viviendo Sin Fronteras encuentro will be held the weekend of November 6-9, 2009, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Spread the word to anyone you think might be interested! Register to attend if one of the folks who might be interested is you yourself!

Living Without Borders is an activist and community meeting devoted to freedom and dignity for all immigrants, to the struggle against international apartheid, to envisioning and working to build a world without government borders, and to radical social transformation that tears down all the walls, including both the coercively-imposed boundaries of nation-states and also all the other, interconnected forms of oppression, exploitation and domination that confine and constrain us. The encuentro is organized by the United Coalition for Im/migrant Rights in Las Vegas; after the success of the first conference in August of 2008, we decided to make it an annual event, in the hopes that it will bring folks together, start conversations, make connections, and establish itself as an ongoing, transformative presence in our communities.

Here’s what the organizers* have to say about this year’s goings-on in Vegas:

This year’s encuentro will be devoted to the theme of Building Autonomous Communities y Celebrando Cambio Social.

We’ll be starting conversations, sharing knowledge, meeting, connecting.

There’ll be keynote addresses by author Rinku Sen (The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization), and by Hilda Garcia from La Mujer Obrera (an autonomous women’s community in El Paso, Texas).

There’ll be workshops on immigration freedom, the criminalization of immigrants, the interconnection of struggles, community organizing, activist skill-shares, defending social justice through language, and more.

There’ll be tabling space for participants to connect with artists and organizations in the community.

There’ll be meals to share, with a free breakfast and lunch for registered participants.

And there’ll be cultura, entertainment, and engagement — art, music, a bit of teatro rascuache, and hands-on activism for social justice.

We welcome anyone interested in freedom, equality and dignity for immigrants — in a discussion of how borders limit consciousness and how to break through them — in building autonomous communities and activism for social transformation. We hope to see you there!

Sound good? Then register and come on down. Consider signing up to table for your project or your organization. I think it’d be great to see a strong left-libertarian and anarchist presence at the encuentro.

Radicals, ALLies, agitators, Anarchists, left-libertarians, border-crossers, counter-economists, and everyone committed to tearing down the walls — see you there!