official state media for a secessionist republic of one
Center for a Stateless Society
Rad Geek, to-day:
Roderick Long, Questions and Answers on Workplace Democracy
Questions and Answers on Workplace Democracy
My BHL colleague Chris Freiman has three questions for left-libertarians concerning how we reconcile our "commitment to workplace democracy!!!@@e2;20ac;2026;
Roderick Long @ c4ss.org
The websites of the Center for a Stateless Society and Students for a Stateless Society are under attack by an anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant racist, named Olivier Janssens.
The websites have been temporarily suspended by their web hosting company, Bluehost, because of a spurious takedown notice apparently sent by the attorney J. D. Obenberger, apparently on Janssen’s behalf. According to the lawyer’s takedown notice to Bluehost, “Your hosting customer, who operates http://s4ss.org, decided to embarrass Oliver Janssens[1] in the worst and most effective way – by words out of his own mouth.[2] Words of his own creation which, when reduced to the tangible medium of a FaceBook page, acquired a copyright. recognized by the United States Copyright Act and international conventions concerning copyright.” In other words, Obenberger claims that S4SS (and apparently C4SS, even though C4SS’s website never even quoted Olivier Janssen’s name) ought to be legally censored for truthfully reporting the man’s own words about Muslims and immigrants. Specifically, his words when he wrote — on Facebook — “HHH[3]has the balls[4] to say that, thanks to our welfare state, our genetic pool is fucked. Exactly my thoughts. The only reason the Muslim parasite[5] can breed at a 10 times faster pace than us. Totally love this guy.”[6]
Olivier Janssens is a bigot, a bully, and now would like to add “censor” to his list of credentials, with a lawyer e-mailing legal threats and spurious takedown notices to C4SS and S4SS’s web host.
Here is a copy of the Students for a Stateless Society post that Janssens and his lawyer are trying to censor. It was retrieved from Google’s web cache on September 23, 2013, and represents the page as it appeared on September 13, 2013. The original post included several image screen caps of the original Facebook comment threads, which unfortunately are not preserved in the cached copy. Hopefully the s4ss.org website will be back soon, with those images intact.
In the meantime, Nazi Punks Fuck Off. If you are willing and have the web space, please consider re-posting a copy of the statement below on your own site, so that we can spread the word, and make it clear that we will not isolated, intimidated or silenced by bigots using these copy-fascist tactics.
ETA: @c4ssdotorg adds, “If you are interested in helping us out during this period of time, please consider a $5 donation.” Cached copy of C4SS donation page here PayPal: iradical@praxeology.net or Bitcoin: 129pipr12a5UUZ447bLYjx1paRnCXqG5vi.
The following is a post that appeared at the Students for a Stateless Society website on September 11, 2013.
Content warning. Please be forewarned that the post exposes the activities of a group of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant racists, and it quotes comments made by them that include extremely disturbing discussions and brutal racial slurs.
S4SS’ UGent Not Anarchists (or Comrades)
From the inception of Students for a Stateless Society we have strived to provide a space to learn about liberty and engage in projects to further its cause. We seek to provide a networked structure that will allow for maximum autonomy of our chapters while fostering maximum inter/intra-chapter participation, communication and coordination. Although we do not !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;own' the S4SS !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;trademark' we feel it is necessary to emphasize that we do decide for ourselves which individuals, groups and chapters we recognize as being part of our network.
For the last few months we have been observing a rapid change of subject and tone in the discussions held at the facebook group of the S4SS chapter in Belgium; Students for a Stateless Society UGent. The atmosphere present in that group is becoming increasingly hostile towards fellow liberty-advocates, liberty-oriented organizations, and –most clearly- those of the Islamic faith. In accordance with our organizational orientation which states:
"3. S4SS spaces are safe and valued spaces. We are dedicated to not only identifying agents of aggression, but dissolving institutions of oppression."
We feel S4SS U-gent is not representing this orientation in their structure or discussions. In fact we feel they are actively promoting oppression of Muslim minorities, as evidenced by the following facebook-conversations:
Piece 1: https://www.facebook.com/groups/452955004728164/permalink/637332409623755/
Everaert: According to Lode Cossaer and his fellow Trotskyists it is "redundant to talk about the problems in the Arab world" and "we should focus ourselves on signs of hope." I propose sending him on a one way trip to Syria. He can go and ignore the bullets and beheadings (they're redundant anyway), and look for hope. Surely he won't return. That kid won't even survive reality.
Arnaert: Cossaer denies reality? Behold the most important attitude of the left!
Everaert: Reality is redundant, so not relevant and pointless. Bleri Lleshi = Lode Cossaer (ed. Bleri Lleshi is a leftist Belgian philosopher, documentary filmmaker and political scientist who focuses on things like identity, equality and neo-liberalism)
Janssens: It would be relevant enough if you know that the SPA/PS (Leftist political parties in Belgium) are growing in power because of the muslims, and that the Arab world is helping them accomplish this. Unless his hope is is !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;not being beheaded in 20 years because he is a Christian'.
Verdyck: He has no capital and his ambition to work for the government all his life.
Xavier Everaert, Brecht Arnaert, Olivier Janssens and Yannick Verdyck share very islamophobic viewpoints as visible from the above conversation. Let us be clear; We do not believe the Muslim world is helping leftist political parties gain power. Muslims are individuals with their own thoughts, their actions and political beliefs are not a result of their skin color or belief in a certain deity. Additionally:
Piece 2: https://www.facebook.com/groups/452955004728164/permalink/636924376331225/
In response to a story involving a recommendation to the government to change public holidays to involve more multi-cultural festivities instead of just Christian ones.(http://m.gva.be/nieuws/binnenland/aid988952/pasen-hemelvaartsdag-en-allerheiligen-geen-wettelijke-feestdagen-meer.aspx) A selection of comments has been translated.
Janssens: Men, it's time for revolution
Kint: !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;recommendation'
Jacobs: Funny how the result of !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;inter-cultural dialogue' always comes down to giving Muslims more advantages while Catholics get doused in shit every day by our regime's media.
Janssens: Enough is enough.
Arnaert: I don't think they're taking it far enough. I think western names like John, Peter and Paul are quite upsetting as well.
Verdyck: And of course, everyone who thinks this will cause trouble between original-Belgians and muslims is obviously a xenophobe.
Everaert: Guns. Guns to kill all those sand-niggers and their servants like Lode Cossaer, just like the animals they are.
Verdyck: I have never been able to find the difference between Mein Kampf and the Koran, but according to Lode Cossaer and Joelle Milquet there is definitely a difference. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in German, that xenophobic nationalist!
Let us highlight Everaert's comment: "Guns. Guns to kill all those sand-niggers and their servants like Lode Cossaer, just like the animals they are." Do we really need say more? In no way can you call this critical of religion. This is pure racism. S4SS is supposed to provide safe spaces for students of all sorts, including individuals with minority religious and ethnic backgrounds. In addition this comment is a threat to initiate violence against peaceful people; S4SS should not associate itself with people who make threats to the life and liberty of others. If this wasn't enough, here is more:
Piece 3: https://www.facebook.com/groups/452955004728164/permalink/628664343823895/
Janssens: HHH (ed. Hans Herman Hoppe) has the balls to say that, thanks to our welfare state, our genetic pool is fucked. Exactly my thoughts. The only reason the Muslim parasite can breed at a 10 times faster pace than us. Totally love this guy.
Kint: Truefax. A virus can't survive without a host.
And finally:
Piece 4: https://www.facebook.com/groups/452955004728164/permalink/619657114724618/
In response to: http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=dmf20130723_00667877 A selection of comments has been translated.
Kint: My problem is that mohammedan promise 5 times a day that they will chop my head off, and that I have to pay for them to do this.
Kint: Under normal circumstances people like that would be institutionalized, or better yet: deported. Because the kuffar (unbeliever) keeps paying to finance and maintain that fascist death-cult. Stop welfare checks and the problem is solved.
Kint: Mohammedans who do not promise this are not good mohemmedans. The !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;existence' of the so-called moderate muslim is irrelevant in this discussion. The question is: what side will the moderate muslim take when all hell breaks loose?
Kint: Servititude is the worst. Breivik had the idea.
(ed. Breivik: Anders Behring Breivik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik )
Kint: Mohammedans must practice Jihad in multiple ways. One of the techniques is to soothe the Kuffar to sleep by becoming !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;moderate' or becoming your friend.
Everaert: !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;I know friendly muslims, so there is no problem" , how cute.
Everaert: I know how you will defend yourself. You will convert and collaborate and decapitate your mother and father because your moderate friends ask you nicely, just like in Syria.
Kint: Collaborators of islamofascists will be the first targets. The fear has to spread to the other side. http://wiki.artikel20.com/
Kint: Moderate muslims are a fiction created by Mohammed himself. They are the first wave of the Jihad. The anthrax in your carpet. This is where the discussion ends for me, you are in a deep comatose sleep. You won't care if your head is removed. Insh'allah! (ed. If god wills it!)
Everaert: First point is to get rid of collaborators like you because we have the suspicion that you will pick their side. Just like the liberals have picked the side of the salafists in the middle-east, is there any reason to think why they won't do that here?
Again, there is no conspiracy of world domination by which !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;the Muslims' are seeking power. Suggesting that people are automatically part of a plot just because of their religion or ethnic ancestry is racism. Also, posting references to kill-lists set up by racist groups does not qualify S4SS UGent as a safe space, which S4SS chapters should be.
We would like to take the opportunity to point out the continuous hostility towards Lode Cossaer, president of the Murray Rothbard Institute in Belgium. Throughout multiple conversations he has been ridiculed, verbally attacked and his life has been threatened. As S4SS members we feel deeply ashamed that personal attacks like this have happened in a chapter that we consider part of our network. If you're reading this, Lode, we would like to apologize for not taking action on this at a sooner date. We empathize with the possible fear and under appreciation you feel because of S4SS UGent.
In response to the evidence provided above we have decided to dissociate ourselves with S4SS UGent as well as the members that most prominently voiced racist opinions and threats; Xavier Everaert, Brecht Arnaert, Olivier Janssens, Yannick Verdyck and Peter Kint. We suggest that the members of S4SS UGent who are not part of its racist core to start a different chapter, a safe and valued space, so that the idea of a stateless society may continue to grow in their university and their country.
Finally, we would like to provide the opportunity for anyone else to sign this message with or without additional comments. As a closing statement let us reiterate our orginizational orientation:
The Students for a Stateless Society (S4SS) agree to the following four design principles:
1. "Student" does not mean subservient, submissive, or subordinate. A student is anyone who desires knowledge. A student can be either a teacher or a learner.
2. A stateless society is anarchy. Students have a right to contribute to and have a voice in the institutions they participate or constitute. As anarchists we will actively pursue and support hierarchy dissolving and mutual aid projects. Our time as students is not a time of passivity or mindless discipline, but a time for activity and creativity.
3. S4SS spaces are safe and valued spaces. We are dedicated to not only identifying agents of aggression, but dissolving institutions of oppression.
4. All chapters of S4SS, to be considered active, must have at least one volunteer "point of contact" that can be reached by interested students or encouraging chapters. There is no limit to the number of S4SS chapters that can be on any one campus – swarm and take over!
Olivier Janssens and his crew deserve to be exposed. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, both for what they said, and for stooping to use the state censorship of “Intellectual Property” law to retaliate against those who exposed what they said. Please spread the word, and keep copies of this statement alive. We can’t give in to this kind of shameful legal intimidation and censorship.
ETA: @c4ssdotorg adds, “If you are interested in helping us out during this period of time, please consider a $5 donation.” Cached copy of C4SS donation page here PayPal: iradical@praxeology.net or Bitcoin: 129pipr12a5UUZ447bLYjx1paRnCXqG5vi.
Here’s an announcement / call to action from InterOccupy.net.[1] They are helping to coordinate information about shelters, drop-offs, donations, food banks, communications & connectivity for folks affected by the Oklahoma tornados. From the post:
The absolutely devastating impact of the Tornados in Oklahoma has prompted a concentrated relief effort for those who have suffered in this region. There is no limit to who you can help or what you can do... but please do something. Many #AmeriSec members and other humanitarian groups will be on scene to help in anyway we can. This is an operation that all can assist with and if money, transportation or any issues that would hinder you from being able to help please, use social media, video and any other means to KEEP the word moving. As we have seen with #OccupySandy the impact of individuals helping with natural disaster has a tremendous impact... So Please assist in any way you can. WE ARE LEGION and WE have the ability to assist in the suffering on the ground so please help!
Please make video and pastebins with information that could assist independent relief workers and all others
–andrea @ InterOccupy.net (May 21, 2013). #OpOK Update: Oklahoma Relief
See the whole thing here, including lists of relief information and contact points.
There’s also a Community Action meeting gathering to-day (Tuesday, May 21) in Norman, Okla. From scott crow:
Today Tues May 21at 12 noon
Will be a meeting of decentralized coordination efforts: CSBI Building 1155 E Main Norman, OK 73071
Including: COBRA,[2] Food Not Bombs ,Occupy, C4ss, IWW and Rainbow folks
Hopefully a place will be set up to send donations, for people to contact them and for volunteers to gather.
Edit (12pm). And here’s some more from Zakk Flash:
Tornadoes touched down last night in Moore, Oklahoma, killing at least 51 people (20 children among them). We can't control the weather, but we can try to stop climate change before it gets worse, and we can definitely help build solidarity networks to respond to emergency situations.
Central Oklahoma Black/Red Alliance (COBRA) will be hosting a gathering of folks who are interested in the People’s response to the disaster. Folks are invited to come by my offices at Community Action (1155 E Main, Norman OK 73071) at noon today to discuss the current response from the Red Cross, organized labor, faith-based communities, and the like.
We’ll also be discussing decentralized relief and creative opportunities to help folks most affected by the storm. Not everyone is connected or comfortable working with NGOs and there are independent efforts that can make a huge difference. Look at Occupy Sandy as an example.
In the meantime, if you have any type of medical background/credentials and want to help relief efforts, get to the Warren Theater. If you don't have medical credentials but want to help, get to the Home Depot in Moore.
If you want to help people in the area affected by the tornados, strongly consider offering support wherever possible, and wherever they ask for it, from decentralized, grassroots mutual aid groups like these. (They need your help a lot more than well-funded, bureaucratically organized efforts like Red Cross or Salvation Army.) Ordinary people working together in solidarity can accomplish remarkable, life-saving things.
This Wednesday (March 13) at Memorial Student Union in Norman, Oklahoma, there’s going to be an Ask an Anarchist event hosted by the University of Oklahoma Students for a Stateless Society. Here’s the details, courtesy of Jason Lee Byas and Grayson English.
“Who will build the roads? Doesn’t anarchism just mean breaking stuff? Isn’t it hypocritical for you to be a club at a state university?”
Come visit us at Ask an Anarchist Day on March 13th (next Wednesday) and find out.
Free information about anarchy and anarchism, provided by the Students for a Stateless Society at the University of Oklahoma!
We will be providing free pamphlets about various anarchist ideas, and we’ll be discussing our reasons for being anarchists.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
9:00 am – 5:00 pm Memorial Student Union, near CrossroadsHosted by the Students for a Stateless Society.
For more, see the Facebook event page. I’m happy to mention that the pamphlets will include several items from the ALL Distro.
Here’s a great op-ed from Jason Lee Byas at C4SS, in which he takes sometime libertarian Nick Gillespie to task for a recent pro-business op-ed in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline: One Reason Not to Build the Keystone XL Pipeline: Justice. From the column:
The Keystone XL pipeline has inspired a lot of controversy. For defenders of freed markets, however, it shouldn't. Libertarians should emphatically and unequivocally oppose the pipeline. . . . Since beginning to plan Keystone XL, TransCanada Corporation has used eminent domain to steal more than a hundred tracts of land in Texas alone. If it gets the green light, the pipeline will run up through the plains like a burglar on a spree. Of course, the company does initially offer those who have what they want a chance to make the transaction voluntarily. When that doesn't work, though, unsuspecting landowners receive letters like the one Julia Trigg Crawford got, saying
If Keystone is unable to successfully negotiate the voluntary acquisition of the necessary easements, it will have to resort to the exercise of its statutory right of eminent domain.As Lysander Spooner once remarked, at least a highwayman
does not pretend that he has any rightful claimto your property.If you're like the Crawfords, any deviation from that final offer and you'll hear nothing from TransCanada until your land's condemned. As word spreads, landowners feel threatened. They scramble to agree with whatever crumbs they're offered, before their land just gets taken instead.
. . . Whatever justifications are offered for a hypothetical, peacefully acquired pipeline do not justify the real world pipeline. At least no more than justifications for a hypothetical parking lot would justify one built by taking a wrecking ball to Nick Gillespie's home. If the title
libertarianis to mean anything, it must mean a defense of justice. It cannot, and must not, mean endorsing feudalism wheneverit's good for the economy.
Read the whole thing. It’s great.
A couple of quick additional comments from me that I originally posted on the Facebook thread from my sharing the story. As a sidebar to a comment I made about Gillespie’s rhetorical approach, and Jason’s response to it, I mentioned:
. . . My own view is that it is probably pretty near impossible to build a pipeline like Keystone XL without exercising some aggressive government powers; for similar reasons to my reasons for thinking that in a free market probably nobody would have built the Hoover Dam. Not because there’s any reason to think it would be prohibited de jure but because there are reasons to think that, de facto, substitute goods would more or less always be preferable without significant political externalization of the costs of the projects. So justice is a reason to oppose the project as it is actually being conducted, and practicality is a reason to oppose an imaginary free-market version of the same project.
Stephan Kinsella and Nathan Scott both asked me what I thought about the use of market means (such as options payments) to assemble rights of way for a long pipeline non-coercively, without resorting to eminent domain in order to coerce holdouts. Now I actually don’t think that high-priced holdouts are the only problem here, but even if they were, I think it would still pose a pretty serious problem for this sort of continental-scale, massively capitalized extractive-industry projects no matter how much fancy contracting you try to do to route around the problem. Emphasis and paragraph breaks added:
Sure, but purchasing options carries a cost. It’s possible for the cost to be outweighed by the benefit of avoiding problems with holdouts. But if the cost of purchasing the options in the first place outweighs the potential benefits of the project as a whole, it won’t matter. So what we have to look at is, either the path of options purchases will be relatively narrow and tied to the concrete details of the project (in which case you replicate the risk of holdouts — the point of failure becomes someone who sees that you need an option from them, and holds out for a higher price on the option) or else will be relatively broad and include multiple possible paths (in which case you allow for routing around the holdouts, but you have to sink more money into paying for options from people whose property you don’t actually end up using).
Now, there may be some discount rate on the options at which the costs of paying for the unused options come out to be less than the costs of of paying for a single-point-of-failure holdout, and also come out to be less than the profits from running the pipeline. But the longer you make the pipeline, the more you multiply those transaction costs, and they don’t necessarily scale linearly with the length of the pipeline either (the longer the path, the wider the possible divergence you have to account for). I think this is a general problem for heavy infrastructure under free market conditions — you’d tend to see a lot more mesh networks and a lot fewer hub-and-spoke networks.
But setting that aside I also have independent reasons for thinking that demand schedules for petroleum would shift significantly leftward, while the costs of extracting and refining petroleum would be significantly higher, with the removal of various state subsidies to oil TNCs. If so there’d be considerably less profit in putting together an oil pipeline and relatively greater investment in producing energy by other means.
I will just add here that mega-industrial projects like Keystone XL, the Hoover Dam and all the rest of them are in many ways deeply undesirable, ecological catastrophes and massively centralizing economic power (either in the hands of the corporate owners or in the hands of the political monopolists who control them, as the case may be). So even if there were some feasible way to build such projects without massive state subsidies in seizing the land and eating the costs — I don’t think there is, but even if there is — they would still, nevertheless, be worth calling out, organizing against, and using freed-market social activism against. But as things stand, as Jason rightly points out, these kinds of massive-scale projects are entirely dependent on the political means of state capitalist confiscation and monopoly.
Another commenter, rather less pleasant, told me that my priorities were obviously insane because, eminent domain or not, The US system is totally dependent on pipelines. . . .
I replied:
That sounds like a problem with the US system, not a problem with property rights. If the former come into conflict with the latter, the latter is always more important. Of course, it is ludicrous to claim that in any given case on the margin it is somehow
utopianto just suggest that somebody’s house ought not to be condemned by the state in order to force a sale. It’s easy not to do that: you just stop doing it. Nobody’s going to die and no “system” is going to suffocate or instantly evaporate as a result of respecting a homeowner’s rights on the margin. Now it is true that consistently doing this on the whole would eventually produce some radical transformations to business as usual and the infrastructure of everyday life, as people are forced to develop alternatives. But I see that as a benefit of the proposal, not as a drawback. If theUS systemsurvives only at war with the human-scale property rights of homeowners, then people need to work out a new system, because the US system sucks, and the sooner they find they have to get on that, the better.
