• 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.)

Hey all,

It’s Sunday; you know what that means. Sing you Shameless sinners.

I’ve been a bit quiet this weekend, even though there’s lots going on, with the Reader Question and elsewhere, that I’d like to comment on. But family is in town this weekend and I’ve been trying to clear out work in preparation for my being out of town most of next week. (L. and I are looking forward to celebrating our fourth wedding anniversary. Somewhere other than Vegas.) I’ll try to catch up on as much as I can before I leave town.

Anyway, the past week, I’ve been working on some Food Not Bombs projects, a couple of articles that I have in progress, a major new release of FeedWordPress, making steady progress on transcribing old Anarchist periodicals for the Fair Use Repository, and of course keeping up with you all here at the blog.

And you 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.

• Dedicated to "the mutualists of the world" Shawn P. Wilbur, Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth (2010-05-17). Charles T. Sprading’s 1930 Mutual Service and Cooperation is available for download from Google Books. (Linked Wednesday 2010-05-26.)

• Watch Out, Facebook. Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-05-26). “The business press may be filled with rhetoric about ‘participatory media’ and ‘user-generated content,’ but the country’s most prominent Web 2.0 company treats its participants like a bunch of CompuServe subscribers circa 1994. …” (Linked Wednesday 2010-05-26.)

• Oh No! Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2010-05-23). Conservatives won’t want to hear it, but the libertarian alternative to antidiscrimination laws is: COMMUNITY ORGANIZING!Atom (Linked Wednesday 2010-05-26.)

• The Welfare State. Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2010-05-23). Despite what you may read at other libertarian sites, the welfare state is not the result of efforts by lazy poor people to enslave and live off the productive classes. Rather, it is the result of efforts by the political-social-corporate elite to subordinate and control the poor for a variety… (Linked Wednesday 2010-05-26.)

• Free George Donnelly Handbill. DarianW, DarianWorden.com (2010-05-24). Thanks to ALLy James Tuttle for creating a solid handout in support of George Donnelly. Download the .pdf at LibertyActivism.info. (Linked Wednesday 2010-05-26.)

• here's a sortof interesting piece of political/cultural. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2010-05-13). here's a sortof interesting piece of political/cultural commentary by mark lilla. he frames the whole thing in terms of "radical individualism"="the libertarian mob," as against…well, what? obviously the basic contrast of individualism is to collectivism, but it's hard to sit there and squarely endorse that term: there are too many… (Linked Thursday 2010-05-27.)

• Arrivals Lounge. Dorothy, Cat and Girl (2010-05-27). (Linked Thursday 2010-05-27.)

• Gimme Your Best Just-World Play. cherylcline, der Blaustrumpf (2010-05-27). Come on.  I need it after reading this: Jiang Chun Geng is one of 15 elderly Chinese men and women whom Zhu is treating in his simple village clinic for what locals label "rotten leg disease." A definitive diagnosis is no longer possible so many decades after the initial exposure… (Linked Thursday 2010-05-27.)

So, hey, reader question. (Not the kind you ask me so I can show off my expertise on my blog. The kind of question I ask you, gentle reader. Why? Well, I’m not a big fan of open threads, but I am a fan of y’all, and I’ve been kind of inspired by the conversations we’ve been having by riffing on a simple, open-ended question down at Vegas Anarchist Cafe; makes me curious about how some of these things go in other communities I’m part of).

Anyway, what I’m wondering right now, is–If you think of yourself as an Anarchist, how did you become an Anarchist? (Take that as you will — how you came to accept the ideas, or how you came to call yourself an Anarchist, or ….)

Or, if you don’t think of yourself as an Anarchist, what do you think of yourself as? And how did you get to be that?

What do you think? Let’s talk in the comments.

Denial of the Day. Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-05-26):

The British Royal Navy “does not maintain any form of central repository of information purely devoted to sea monsters.”

Good to know.