Don’t forget.

• The world is awesome.

• People are awesome. You don’t need plans, or politics, or power. Put them up against people, and people will win every time. People came up with that video. Also, other people came up with this.

• Technological civilization is awesome. (In case you’re wondering, it’s awesome because it’s made of people.)

• Books are awesome. Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times (2009-05-29): Some Thoughts on the Pleasures of Being a Re-Reader

• To-day is awesome. It’s an anniversary. My love and I were married three years ago today. If the normal online rounds are held up for a while, well, that’s why.

Solidarity.

• In memory of George Tiller. feministe (2009-05-31): In honor of Dr. Tiller (if you would like to donate in memory and in honor of Dr. Tiller’s work). Among others, the National Network of Abortion Funds has established a George Tiller Memorial Abortion Fund.

• IQSN, L.A. I.M.C. (2009-05-27): Solidarity with Queer Bulgaria on 27 June 2009. A day of international actions in solidarity with the LGBTQ Pride march in Sofia, Bulgaria. Last year’s march was attacked by neo-Nazi groups who decided to Keep Our Children Safe with a campaign of roving basher gangs and by slinging molotov cocktails and small explosives at the marchers. International Queer Solidarity Network calls for a European mobilization, with support from the United States, that will stand in solidarity with Queer Bulgaria for this year’s march.

News.

• Underground abortion networks in Chile. Feminist Daily News Wire (2009-05-29): Abortion Hotline Launched in Chile. The Chilean government inflicted a categorical abortion ban in 1989. A coalition of pro-choice feminist groups has now launched a phone hotline which gives women information about how to use Misopristol (usually used in the U.S. together with Mifepristone; in Chile it’s legally available to treat ulcers) to give themselves safe DIY medical abortions in defiance of the law.

• Shoot an unarmed old man, get a four-month paid vacation. Vickie Welborn, Shreveport Times (2009-05-24): NAACP questions Homer officers’ leave status

• The question is who is to be the master — that’s all. The Status of Forces Agreement requires all U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by the end of June. A Senior U.S. Commander [considers] the security agreement a living document, so he intends to comply with the deadlines by withdrawing the political boundaries of Baghdad from his occupation patrol forces

Comment.

• On knowledge problems and management make-work. quasibill, The Bell Tower (2009-05-28): Scene 3

• On free-market mutualism and open source solutions to the social question. Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-05-27): Mutual Aid: A Factor in Cyberspace. (As for whether the word socialism is the best tag for the kind of mutualist projects under discussion, I reckon that it depends on your intended audience. I use it happily, but then, my intent in doing so is deliberately provocative, as is my use of freed market language around anti-authoritarian Leftists: given the right audience, you can pull some philosophical aikido by using a term’s very unpopularity in order to provoke a conversation about some fundamental premises.)

• The State is male in the political sense. (Cont’d.) Alderson Warm-Fork, Directionless Bones (2009-05-26): The State is Incapable of Submissiveness. (This particular article deals mainly with the external relations among many states; for discussion of the male State in the context of the internal relations between the government and the country that it occupies, cf. GT 2006-05-11: Quidditative essence.)

• The George Tiller I Knew. loree920, Daily Kos (2009-05-31): The George Tiller I Knew

• A Loatian American teen protested No Child Left Behind and Won. Mandy Van Deven, ColorLines: She Said No To The Test. In which a second-generation Laotian-American who speaks, reads, and writes fluent English and graduated 7th in her class was declared illiterate by school officials for refusing to retake a basic English-proficiency test that she’d already aced — and how she and her fellow students protested and won.

• Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes. (Cont’d.) Chris Bradford, Austin Contrarian (2006-05-16): Do roads pay for themseles? (Cf. GT 2008-12-01: Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes.

• On public space and the microphysics of male power. Norma, Happy bodies. (2009-05-25): Fighting Unwanted Attention

• On neuro-jargon as modern mumbo-jumbo. Crispin Sartwell, eye of the storm (2009-05-31) . . . the problem is that these approaches work backwards from social categories to neurology and enshrine momentary social formations, which are essentially created by power, as inescapable bio-destinies. the entire scientificness of the thing is usually presented in a few phrases – ‘medial prefrontal cortex,’ say – which function essentially as authorities: they’re supposed to show you that you’re too ignorant to assess what’s being said, to put the actual ethical/political/economic conclusions beyond the realm of disagreement, to flummox you into nodding vaguely along. if you don’t, you must be a dolt. they function like phrases from the koran or something. they actually do no work except to assert a kind of prestige. . . .

• Against psychiatric coercion and psychiatric contempt. anarchafemme (2009-05-11): I Am Crazy, Yet I Am Human

• On standing up for the marginalized and the enemies of the State. Wendy McElroy, WendyMcElroy.com (2009-05-31): The strategic wisdom of defending prostitutes

• The Conservative (Hive) Mind. Will Wilkinson’s The rise of collectivist conservatives is right-on in almost every respect, particularly in emphasizing how belligerent nationalism (I’d add sadistic law-n-orderism and anti-immigrationism) poison any attempt by the pseudopopulist Right to come out with a consistently individualistic position. Towards the end, Will asks Conservatism must stand for something. But here's the big question: Can a politics of individual freedom be revived? Can it win elections? As you may know, I’m an optimist about the first question, a pessimist about the second, and mainly concerned that people realize that the two are importantly distinct. If you want to know why the substance of Beck’s politics is so much like the substance of Brooks’s politics, underneath the pseudoindividualist rhetoric, well, part of the answer is the structural limitations that you necessarily accept when you start out hitching the success of your political philosophy to victory in government elections.

Historicize.

• Jourdon Anderson authenticity update. Laster Hunt, E pur si muove! (2009-05-14): Jourdon Anderson’s Letter to His Former Master. (Cf. GT 2009-05-06: Wednesday Lazy Linking for my reprinting of the original letter.)

• We apologize for the fault in the historicity debate. Those responsible have been sacked. Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-05-31): Dragonquest; or, A Voyage to Arcturus

Communications.

• ALLiance Issue #2 (Beltaine 2009) is now available. Thanks to awesome editor Chris Lempa. This issue features articles by Chris, Darian Worden, Fred Foldvary, Kevin Carson, Michael Kleen, Sharon Presley and Lynn Kinsky.

• Portland Anarchist Bookfair, June 6-7 at Liberty Hall, 311 N. Ivy in Portland, Oregon. The event is free to attend; childcare will be provided. Also, keep an eye out for Northwest ALLy Shawn Wilbur, who will be there to promote his new radical publishing project, Corvus Distribution.

• The Cop Watch LA Radio program is looking for volunteers interested in recording, producing, interviewing and researching material for the Cop Watch LA radio program which airs every evening on the Raise the Fist Radio Network.

• An IRC network for liberty builders: agora.anarplex.net:14716. The time for waiting for others to do things is over. … Learn, create, cooperate, advance. (Via Wendy McElroy.)

(Via Roderick Long @ Austro-Athenian Empire 2009-05-30.)

For the moment, I’ll set aside the contemptuous mocking that Bruce Bartlett richly deserves for prolonging the life and expanding the scope of the utterly vile portmanteau liberaltarianism. Let’s focus on the content of his article, instead; here’s Bartlett’s advice to libertarians on libertarian priorities

The reason [libertarians don’t typically vote for Democrats] is that most self-described libertarians are primarily motivated by economics. In particular, they don’t like paying taxes. They also tend to have an obsession with gold and a distrust of paper money. As a philosophy, their libertarianism doesn’t extent much beyond not wanting to pay taxes, being paid in gold and being able to keep all the guns they want. Many are survivalists at heart and would be perfectly content to live in complete isolation on a mountain somewhere, neither taking anything from society nor giving anything.

. . . [T]here is a theoretical case to be made for liberals and libertarians at least continuing a dialogue. But for it to go anywhere, libertarians must scale back their almost single-minded focus on economic freedom as the sole determinant of liberty. They must work harder to defend civil liberties and resist expansion of the police state whether it involves suspected terrorists, illegal aliens or those who enjoy smoking marijuana.

Libertarians should also be more outspoken about America’s disastrous foreign policy, which Obama seems to be doing very little to fix. This would seem like an obvious area for cooperation. The main problem seems that neither liberals nor libertarians are up to challenging the loudmouthed bullies on talk radio and Fox News who equate anything less than a 100% commitment to the war on terror as treasonous.

It’s a fair cop: after all, libertarians hardly ever talk about encroachments on civil liberties, the police state, onerous immigration laws, the War on Drugs, or interventionist foreign policy. It’s true: I read it on the Internet.

I mean, look, dude, if your point is just that libertarians need to put more rhetorical and political distance between themselves and the Right, including even supposed small government conservative types, then, hey, I dig. But if your impression of what the modal libertarian is like is something that could be refuted by picking up a couple issues of reason (reason-fer-Christ’s-sake) at your local Barnes & Noble — or, hell, just walking by the newsrack and looking at the cartoons on the damn cover — well, then, sir, you have definitely earned a place in the R.S.W.

P.S. Also, there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to pay your taxes.

• Checking out the competition.

  

  Via Wendy McElroy (2009-04-29): The Farce is strong with this one. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: write your own caption in the comments.

• Mutual Aid. bfp, flip flopping joy (2009-05-26): Help bring single mamis to the Allied Media Conference. So dig deep into your pockets and spread the word. We need these mamis here, and as such, we need your help. SPREAD THE WORD. Demand people buy the CD’s. Refuse to free people’s pet rocks until they have donated.

• Established churches only, please. Drew Zahn, WorldNetDaily (2009-05-22): Home: No place for Bible study. In which a San Diego home Bible study group is confronted by the county government’s war on the informal sector.

• The War on the Informal Sector, cont’d. Brad, WendyMcElroy.com (2009-04-26): Book Rental Is Illegal?

• Against the Intellectual Enclosure Movement. Kevin Carson, Center for a Stateless Society (2009-05-15): Copyright Communism?

• Gagsters in Blue. Kevin Carson, Center for a Stateless Society (2009-05-22): Gangsters in Blue and William Grigg, LewRockwell.com Blog (2009-05-13): Gang-Bangers in Blue. The Gangsters are still on their game. If we hope to resist it, the first thing to do is to understand it, and in that interest, I encourage all anti-statists to make as much use of this phrase as possible. And not just because I run GangstersInBlue.org (Rather, I run the website because I think it’s important to get the phrase out there.)

• We’re like a tick. Hey man, you said it, not me. Birmingham, Alabama is getting its own storm-trooper elite saturation squad to swarm targeted neighborhoods, apparently with a special focus on socioeconomic cleansing (street corner issues like narcotics and prostitution). (Cf. GT 2008-12-05: Don’t turn your back on the Wolfpack on saturation tactics.)

• On principles. Julian Sanchez (2009-05-04): Morality Isn’t Free

• Pull the other one. Sheldon Richman, Free Association (2009-05-19): The CIA Wouldn’t Lie! Reality dials Washington, D.C. and gets sent straight to voicemail.

• Today in news of the obvious. Las Vegas Sun (2009-05-23): [A government] Safety program goes awry and Las Vegas Sun (2009-05-19): Bank bailout does little for those who need help most . Don’t look so surprised.

• State socialism means never having to say you’re sorry. @ndy, Andy the Slack Bastard (2009-05-25): Dear President Chávez. In which Hugo Chávez, revolutionary President-for-Life, continues his far-sighted socialist leadership by having 14 union steelworkers sent to prison for 5 to 10 years as punishment for going on strike. He was able to do this because their boss is the Venezuelan government, due to a nationalization which state socialists hailed as a triumph for the working class. Meanwhile, Australian Anarchists reply by sending an open invitation for Citizen Chávez to come to Australia for a special fraternal greeting from the Biotic Baking Brigade.

• The Two Socialisms and the Revenge of Proudhon. Coming to a theater near you this summer. Shawn Wilbur, In the Libertarian Labyrinth (2009-05-07): French mutualism beyond Proudhon

• You say pissed-off, man-hating, dykes with an excess of body hair like it's supposed to be a bad thing..., cont’d. Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-05-25): How to convert a big tent into a small one.

• Unbreaking the business model. Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-05-25): Contingency markets and IP Want to reward innovation? Don’t fall back Intellectual Protectionism to force others to support your broken business model; instead, use the web to discover demand and pay for supply.

• On the web as distributed computing platform. Tim Bray, ongoing (2009-05-25): HTTP and the Fallacies of Distributed Computing

• On living with summer stars and dystopia. soul searching with christ and gacy (2009-05-25): the dead flag blues

Communications:

• Modesto Anarcho #11. Issue #11 of the valley’s insurrectionary journal of class struggle is out and now available for reading online.

• 2nd annual Hamilton Anarchist Bookfair (June 6). Pat Murtagh, Molly’sBlog (2009-05-24): CANADIAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT-HAMILTON: POLICE KEEPING A BEADY EYE ON THE HAMILTON ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR. Check it out both for the announcement of the bookfair (which is coming up on June 6 in Hamilton, Ontario), and also for a report on and reply to Ontario hate-cops who have lots of government funding and nothing better to do with their time than nose around for hate crimes at anarcho book bazaars.

• San Jose Anarchist Cafe (June 7). The Anarchist Cafe is not a place, it’s an event: an informal meet-up for folks interested in hometown anarchy. There’s a new A-Cafe getting started in San Jose, California; the first-ever meeting is happening on Sunday, June 7, 2009. See http://sanjose.anarchistcafe.org/ for details and contact information.

• Winter Soldier: Just Another Tuesday. From Ryan Endicott, formerly a United States government Marine stationed in Iraq.

  Via Clay Claibourne, L.A. I.M.C. (2009-05-13): Winter Soldier Southwest on YouTube #1

• The regulatory State versus freed markets and the human future: A quote from Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, via B.K. Marcus at Mises Economics Blog:

  To expect the government to prevent such fraud from ever occurring would be like wanting it to provide cushions for all the children who might fall. To assume it to be possible to prevent successfully, by regulation, all possible malpractices of this kind, is to sacrifice to a chimerical perfection the whole progress of industry; it is to restrict the imagination of artificers to the narrow limits of the familiar; it is to forbid them all new experiments; it is to renounce even the hope of competing with the foreigners in the making of the new products which they invent daily, since, as they do not conform to our regulations, our workmen cannot imitate these articles without first having obtained permission from the government, that is to say, often after the foreign factories, having profited by the first eagerness of the consumer for this novelty, have already replaced it with something else. … Thus, with obvious injustice, commerce, and consequently the nation, are charged with a heavy burden to save a few idle people the trouble of instructing themselves or of making enquiries to avoid being cheated. To suppose all consumers to be dupes, and all merchants and manufacturers to be cheats, has the effect of authorizing them to be so, and of degrading all the working members of the community.

  –Turgot, Éloge de Gournay (1759), translated by P.D. Groenewegen

Outrage

• All Bizarro News that am unfit to print. In which a argument against an imaginary, Bizarro World version individualism is set to fight with a completely imaginary Bizarro GOP which somehow became the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice (?!). For more on an earlier installment in David Brooks’s concerted efforts to liberate the Republican Party from moral principles that it never held, cf. GT 2009-01-28: How to be social while staying civilized

• On intersections, boundaries, and fortifications. bfp, flip flopping joy (2009-05-01): northern territory, sexual activity, teens and police state. In which Ozzie territorial governments set out to create a territorial sex-Stasi to coerce reports of any and all sexual contact by Aboriginal teenagers. Including consensual sex or fooling-around between one teenager and another. Quote: This sort of nation/state targeted monitoring of the sexuality of teens/young people is something most people of color are vividly aware of. When you through in queerness, disability, and nationality (among others), and community expectations, things for especially teen girls of color get even worse. How do we learn, engage in, and trust ourselves to build a healthy fabulous sexuality when from the time we reach reproductive age, the nation/state literally owns the first and final say as to what happens to our bodies? How do we learn to say no or yes when the nation/state insists on doing it for us?

• We need democratic governments instead of private protection agencies to ensure that political decision-making remain transparent and decision-makers are held accountable to the people: Molly Ball, Las Vegas Review-Journal (2009-05-10): SECRET GOVERNMENT: Lawmakers keep public out as session winds down with most important decisions looming

• On planes as prisons and terrorizing as security: Jessica Bautista & Kitty Caparella, Philadelphia Daily News (2009-05-12): Blind interpreter detained at Philly airport says he has nightmares from arrest (On which, cf. also GT 2008-05-07: Airport security.)

• On legal lynching, part 2. For part 1, see last week, where I said this: When Anarchists propose that all the functions currently controlled by the authoritarian State, including the judgment of cases involving disputes or violent crimes, we are inevitably told that without a State-controlled, hierarchical system of courts, you’d have nothing more than the justice of the lynch mob. This is actually a classic example of statist inversion: by focusing on the dangers that informal and irregular efforts at seeking justice will lead to a disregard for objectivity or evidence, the statist completely blanks out the ways in which formalization and enforced hierarchy oblige government courts to disregard evidence themselves in the name of formal procedures, and to elevate authority above objectivity, by standing on ceremony or respect for turf at the expense of substantive justice. If the state’s plans to murder Troy Anthony Davis are not an example of a slow-motion lynching, what is? To which we will add, this week: Radley Balko, The Agitator (2009-05-18): Prosecutors Blocking Access to DNA Testing In which government prosecutors make active efforts to block access to DNA tests that could potentially exonerate the innocent, all in the name of you-had-your-chance jurisdictional turf wars and statist legal finality.

• The police are here to keep us safe. By driving their cruisers at 109 MPH in a 45 zone, on a major commercial thoroughfare, late at night, with no sirens and no flashing lights. Then, when this predictably leads to a fatal crash that kills one of the cops, by lying about it to the media in order to make your dead buddy look like more of a hero, and by arresting the poor innocent man that the cop slammed into at 90 MPH for his allegedly reckless driving.

• The police are here to keep us safe, part 2. Radley Balko, Hit & Run (2009-05-18): Cops Gone Wild, in which cops from around the country celebrate National Police Week in D.C. with wine, weapons, and reckless driving.

• The police are here to keep us safe, part 3. Commentary from Center for a Stateless Society news analyst Tom Knapp (2009-05-18): To Serve and Protect (Themselves)

• Name your own salary. Las Vegas Sun (2009-05-16): City, county may lose say in police pay negotiations. Las Vegas Metro is currently working to get a new state law passed which would allow Vegas cops to get a salary set unilaterally by their own boss cop, and then send the bill, whatever it may be, to folks who had absolutely no say whatsoever in the negotiations.

• The Gangsters in Blue come to Philly. Radley Balko, The Agitator (2009-05-01): Update on Bodega Raids by Rogue Philly Narcotics Unit Balko asks, apparently non-rhetorically, Why did no one in the department ask why an elite narcotics unit was wasting its time busting immigrant shop owners with no criminal record for selling bags instead of pursuing actual drug distributors? Come on, really? The reason is that the State as such is essentially irresponsible, and this kind of thing is Standard Operating Procedure for elite narc squads. There’s a lot here to justify outrage, but very little to justify surprise.

• On terror-famines for the international narco-crats. Jacob Sullum, Hit & Run (2009-04-30): U.S. Intensifies Campaign to Wipe Out Afghan Economy. Cf. GT 2004-11-20: The tall poppies and GT 2007-01-13: The tall poppies, part 2.

Think.

• Austro-Athenian Virtue Ethics versus Moral Fictionalism. Neverfox, Instead of a Blog (2009-05-17): Pulp Non-Fiction

• How political control of schools produces terrible textbooks. Tamim Ansary, Edutopia (November 2004): A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education. (Via B.K. Marcus, lowercase liberty (2009-05-18): What’s wrong with textbooks?)

Left-Libertarianism

• On dialectical jujitsu: Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-05-19): How to annoy a conservative

• Ownership failures, not market failures Chris Dillow, Stumbling and Mumbling (2009-05-01): Markets, the poor & the left. Dillow makes two really important distinctions: one of them the familiar left-libertarian distinction between freed markets, on the one hand, and actually-existing corporate capitalism, on the other; the other a less familiar, but very important, distinction between market processes and patterns of ownership. Quote: In many ways, what look like ways in which markets fail the poor are in fact merely ways in which a lack of assets fail the poor. Exactly; and the many cases where there are not really market failures, but rather ownership failures, have everything to do with feudal, mercantile, neoliberal, and other politically-driven seizures and reallocations of poor people’s land, livelihoods, and possessions — and nothing to do with genuine market exchange.

Counter-Economics

• Against tax-and-regulate reformism, and in praise of a thriving black market economy: Crispin Sartwell, eye of the storm 2009-05-18

• Law among the pirates. Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-05-19): To Live Outside the Law You Must Be Honest

• Urban farming. Milagro Allegro Community Garden, L.A. I.M.C. (2009-05-12): Highland Park Adds a Garden

• Package-dealing portable double-key encryption for web browsing and web mail: Chris Acheson (2009-05-05): Firefox Portable + GnuPG + FireGPG = CryptoFox. (Via @H+ [2009-05-20], via Human Iterations 2009-05-21.)

Movement

• On freeing the MHD3 and all political prisoners. By way of follow-up to the recent report on the bullshit arrest and jailing of the Motorhome Diaries crew, see Motorhome Diaries (2009-05-15): Jones County Sheriff's Department Falsely Arrests MHD Crew, which recounts the full timeline of their arrest, jailing, and release. See also Motorhome Diaries (2009-05-17): Thanks for springing the MHD3 from Jones County (with Allison Gibbs), Motorhome Diaries (2009-05-20): The "Grumbling Old Fart" Addresses Jones County Sheriff Alex Hodge's Statements, Motorhome Diaries (2009-05-20): MHD on Freedom Watch

• Don’t vote. Secede and repudiate. Stewart Browne, Strike the Root (2009-05-18): A New Strategy For Liberty – Part 2: Secession in Three Easy Steps

• You say pissed-off, man-hating, dykes with an excess of body hair like it’s supposed to be a bad thing… Kevin Carson @ Mutualist Blog (2009-05-21): An Open Letter to Keith Preston, Mike Gogulski @ nostate.com (2009-05-21): Taking sides on the right to be a complete jackass, Darian Worden (2009-05-21): Perverts Versus Preston, and Brad Spangler (2009-05-22): Bigotry and Revolution

Communications

• Boston Anarchist Reading Group. Jake, Anarkismo.net (2009-05-17): Anarchist Reading Group at the Boston Anarchist Picnic! June 6th, 2009

• Iconoclasta for Colombian anarquistas: Revista Iconoclasta – Anarcol, Anarkismo.net (2009-05-15): New anarchist periodical in Bogota – Iconoclasta. More information online at http://prensaiconoclasta.entodaspartes.net/.

• New subscriptions. Anarchy in the Garden

• Quote for the Day: Via Brad Spangler 2009-05-02, Mikhail Bakunin on spontaneous order and the utopia of utopias:

  ... [W]e neither intend nor desire to thrust upon our own or any other people any scheme of social organization taken from books or concocted by ourselves. We are convinced that the masses of the people carry in themselves, in their instincts (more or less developed by history), in their daily necessities, and. in their conscious or unconscious aspirations, all the elements of the future social organization. We seek this ideal in the people themselves. Every state power, every government, by its very nature places itself outside and over the people and inevitably subordinates them to an organization and to aims which are foreign to and opposed to the real needs and aspirations of the people. We declare ourselves the enemies of every government and every state power, and of governmental organization in general. We think that people can be free and happy only when organized from the bottom up in completely free and independent associations, without governmental paternalism though not without the influence of a variety of free individuals and parties.

  —Mikhail Bakunin, Critique of the Marxist Theory of the State

• Obama’s Earth Day: Crispin Sartwell, eye of the storm (2009-05-07). In the spirit of this administration.

• The War on the Informal Sector: Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-04-10): Air Force Unable to Hold Bake Sale to Buy Bomber, in which, thank God, the Professionalizing State saves us from the menace of unfettered pie-baking at the Friday fish-fry.

• The War on Urban Homesteaders: Daniel Santana, Los Angeles IMC (2009-04-25): Never Forever 21 Action: Round 3 4/25/09, in which the South Central Farmers continue their fight to reclaim their homesteaded land from the city government bulldozer-brigade Development schemes (cf. GT 2006-06-14: Enclosure comes to Los Angeles), currently slated to be turned over for a Forever 21 clothing warehouse. They’re calling for protests to the city government and a boycott of Forever 21.

• On Libertarian Fissionism and open Anarchism: Brad Spangler (2009-04-30): Left Libertarian Terminology and Strategy: Obama the statist and more

• Congratulations to Jeff Riggenbach: his fine little book, Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism is now available for free online (or you can pay to get it in print or on Kindle, if you prefer).

• On Patriotic Correctness run amok: Dennis Perrin (2009-05-02): Just Kidding! Ltd., on corporate liberal pressure-valve Jon Stewart, the nuclear terrorist, war criminal, and President Harry S. Truman, and the horizons of acceptable satire in the American Patriotically-Correct media.

• Anarchy in L.A. a Report-back: Rockero, Los Angeles IMC (2009-04-24): The Resistance is Not Quiet: 2009 Anarchist Activist Conference at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.

• Anarcho-Nerdery: Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-05-11): Dilithium Dynamite, in which a bunch of us anarchists get together to geek out (including the time-honored geek tradition of lodging endless nitpicking quibbles) about the new Star Trek.

• On home cookin’: Jennifer Reese, Slate (2009-04-22): Scratch That: How cost-effective is it to make homemade pantry staples? Answer seems to be that it’s mostly a win, although not always. My own experience is that it becomes even more cost-effective compared to store-bought when you get all your vegetables for free through Food Not Bombs.

• War news: While on patrol in Baghdad in 2007, Master Sergeant John E. Hatley, Private Michael Leahy, and Sergeant First Class Joseph P. Mayo, soldiers in the U.S. government’s army, murdered four Iraqi captives by shooting them in the back of the head at point-blank range while they were tied up and blindfolded. Then they dumped the bodies in a canal. Major General Qassim Atta, a general in the U.S.-approved Iraqi government’s military, is filing suit in order to get the government to forcibly shut down a major newspaper and an Iraqi television station for publishing claims that the government claims to be false.

• On legal lynching: Joshua Holland, AlterNet (2009-04-01): Ted Stevens’ Charges Dropped: A Tale of Two Justice Systems. When Anarchists propose that all the functions currently controlled by the authoritarian State, including the judgment of cases involving disputes or violent crimes, we are inevitably told that without a State-controlled, hierarchical system of courts, you’d have nothing more than the justice of the lynch mob. This is actually a classic example of statist inversion: by focusing on the dangers that informal and irregular efforts at seeking justice will lead to a disregard for objectivity or evidence, the statist completely blanks out the ways in which formalization and enforced hierarchy oblige government courts to disregard evidence themselves in the name of formal procedures, and to elevate authority above objectivity, by standing on ceremony or respect for turf at the expense of substantive justice. If the state’s plans to murder Troy Anthony Davis are not an example of a slow-motion lynching, what is?

• On tearing down the walls (of Facebook): Martin Blaabjerg, Kaplak Blog (2009-05-10): When The Garden Walls Come Crumbling Down, Or what would happen if Facebook went GPL. One thing I would like to see more of is a discussion not only of using Facebook’s code, and of exporting its data for open reuse, but also the kind of architectural and structural changes you might expect to see as a result of those garden walls crumbling. If the data moves freely and exchanges between countless networking tools, you can expect to see emergent networks that aren’t dependent on any single site, and that provide real polycentric social networking, where the platform is the Internet, not one company’s server grid, with the rich features of social networking sites dispersed out to billions of far-flung nodes and hubs. What might it look like, and what would be the implications? Technologically? Socially?