My latest commentary is online at Center for a Stateless Society:
The experience of Egypt should drive home the fact that it could take more than a couple of weeks and a change at the top to make a substantial revolution that actually improves the lives of average people.
The Ad-Hoc Coalition to Defend the Egyptian Revolution will have information on solidarity actions in the US.
I recently came across the following video. I would like to see a transcript of the full speech and know when this was delivered.
A number of things are misleading here.
It’s misleading to cast Lysander Spooner as a Confederate-apologist. Spooner was a militant abolitionist who had advocated the expropriation of slave estates by slaves and partisan warfare against slaveholders. He was also involved in a failed plot to capture the governor of Virginia to exchange him for John Brown. Spooner’s No Treason doesn’t honor the Confederate government but criticizes the Northern government’s priorities in carrying out the war to keep the South in the union. It’s not exactly the kind of thing that should have a Confederate military flag flown behind it without further explanation.
Paul mentions that slavery elsewhere was abolished without war – as if it didn’t require two to make a war, that the whole thing was the north’s fault, and had nothing to do with the entrenched power of the Southern slaveholding elite.
Paul brings up the concept of compensated emancipation – to bribe slaveowners to free the humans they had kept as property. Besides inferring that it would be less costly than war he doesn’t go into the ethical concerns here. He also doesn’t address the practical concerns of how free labor could be implemented without re-organizing a society based on racial hierarchy. (Paul does not say it here, but Confederate apologists frequently exclaim “but the north – including Lincoln himself – was racist too!” It is true that racism was not limited to the South but there are certainly degrees in racism and degrees to which it defines society].)
A typical defense that Paul does employ is to highlight differences in economic organization and advantages given to northern manufacturers, without acknowledging that Southern industry, including sugar manufacturing centers, was based on slave labor. Federal enforcement of slavery was a massive subsidy to the big business of slaveholding.
Paul insists that Northern elites cynically used the issue of slavery to “cancel out individual choice” yet what individual choice did slaves have? There is a major difference between consent of the people and consent of the states, and coming down on the side of states is not very libertarian.
The political elite of the Confederate states didn’t secede just to see if they could, but because they were worried about the institution of slavery. See the statements made by Confederate elites worried that the national government would restrict slavery too much.The political elite of the North was more concerned with keeping the Union together and building their political power than they were with the freedom of black people, yet pressure from refugee ex-slaves, abolitionists, and international politics eventually brought the north largely on the side of abolition, though a struggle over what emancipation would mean continued.
My latest commentary, Urinating on Life is up at Center for a Stateless Society.
The release of a video showing four US Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghan Taliban fighters shocks people, and for good reason. Such a display of dominance and disregard for the dead prompts questioning what the killing really meant. When a life extinguished forever is devalued in this way, one must ask where the process of devaluation began.
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta quickly condemned the action caught on tape. Yet what shows a more callous disregard for life: What these Marines did or Panetta’s recent re-authorization of calculated drone strikes in Pakistan?
This article made it into two newspapers (Dhaka, Bangladesh New Age and Kuala Lumpur Malay Mail) before I even posted it here.
I just finished my semester, which is why there haven’t been any blog updates for a while. Now all I have to do (haha) is write my thesis and pass a translation exam and I’ll have my master’s degree, which I hope to finish in May.
I’ve written four Center for a Stateless Society commentaries since I updated the blog.
Egypt in the Next Stage of Revolution discusses ongoing protests and repression in Egypt.
In What Does Democracy Look Like, Actually? I examine what people mean when they say they are in favor of democracy, and why they should consider anarchism.
A Fast and Furious String of Government Failures takes a look at the not-so-surprising development that BATFE was trying to lobby for more power by citing guns it allowed to go to drug cartels .
A Year of Upheaval, A Year of Upping the Stakes is the first ever year in review article I’ve done, which apparently wasn’t so popular judging by the Facebook like statistics. But Facebook is lame anyway.
Calvin and Hobbes fans and people who should be Calvin and Hobbes fans will enjoy this video:
I hadn’t been to Occupy Wall Street for a while, until I was encouraged to come down last week. Friday night the square was packed with a lively settlement of dissent: a library, an anarchist literature table, a compost station, a bicycle-powered battery charger, a large communications center, a medical tent, a food area. Then in the small hours of the morning the NYPD attacked the park, arrested many occupiers, and removed or destroyed the possessions inside (right now it’s unclear if the property seized will actually be returned). According to a CNN reporter at the park, the NYPD had deliberately obstructed the media from covering the attack. Some reporters for Mother Jones did manage to witness the event.
But tonight the occupation returned. I was able to make it down there for a little while. I ended up using my Qik video account for the first time, which explains why things were shaky.
The first video is me walking the block north of OWS, showing all the police vehicles.
The second video is walking down Broadway and a quick view into the general assembly.
In the longer third video I walk around the block and into the back of the general assembly.
Some of my reports can be found on my Twitter feed. Follow OccupyWallSt for updates on the Occupation. NYCLU is also monitoring the scene.
And don’t forget about the actions on November 17!
My latest commentary is online at Center for a Stateless Society.
What we see in the clouds of teargas and the handcuffed crowds is the state doing its thing. The state is made of authoritarian power relations backed by force…
But the state’s power comes not only from force but from enough people accepting its exercise of force — believing it is legitimate or believing that they are helpless to stop it.
The state is more than a set of power relations; it’s also the people who make those relations function. And people have the power to decide.
Read the rest: Crackdowns Show What the State is Made Of
My latest commentary is online at Center for a Stateless Society: Alternative Currency: Coming to Stores Near You?
The opportunities that the network engenders are especially important at a time when news from Greece tends to be grim — most recently, massive wage cuts have been proposed for state-controlled publicly listed companies. When the system fails to deliver what it promised in exchange for power, alternative economic networks offer a real social safety net for people to fall back on.
But investing in alternative networks is beneficial not just as insurance, but as a means to greater individual and community autonomy. A Volos resident described the sense of empowerment that came from participating in the alternative economy. “The most exciting thing you feel when you start is this sense of contribution,” she told the Times. “You have much more than your bank account says. You have your mind and your hands.”
George Washington Williams,writing in 1882:
But the most effective agency in filling Southern prisons with Negroes has been, and is, the chain-gang system—the farming out of convict labor. Just as great railway, oil, and telegraph companies in the North have been capable of controlling legislation, so the corporations at the South which take the prisoners of the State off of the hands of the Government, and then speculate upon the labor of the prisoners, are able to control both court and jury. It has been the practice, and is now, in some of the Southern States, to pronounce long sentences upon able-bodied young Colored men, whose offences, in a Northern court, could not be visited with more than a few months’ confinement and a trifling fine. The object in giving Negro men a long term, of years, is to make sure the tenure of the soulless corporations upon the convicts whose unhappy lot it is to fall into their iron grasp. In some of the Southern States a strong and healthy Negro convict brings thirty-seven cents a day to the State, while he earns a dollar for the corporations above his expenses…No system of slavery was ever equal in its cruel and dehumanizing details to this convict system, which, taking advantage of race prejudice on the one hand and race ignorance on the other, with cupidity and avarice as its chief characteristics, has done more to curse the South than all things else since the war.
Axel Caballero, writing last week:
So, here is how it goes. First, the state passes a harsh immigration law. Then, it detains large numbers of immigrants. Third, private prisons (LCS, CCA, GEO) receive fresh inmates. And finally, the artificially created labor shortage is supplied by the new inmates.
Disgusting.
Philadelphia has a newsletter of occupation. Check it out:
[UPDATE - 9 Oct - Since this was posted, the person who wrote it has reported that much has changed, and their local Occupy action is doing well at including people from across the political spectrum. Others report that their local Occupy movements are essentially being run by Democrat Party people, and others still are excited by the experience of genuine grassroots, participatory democracy that addresses the concerns of concerned individuals from diverse political backgrounds.]
The following report is from an activist at an Occupy event inspired by Occupy Wall Street.
Several occupations are becoming seriously divided which is the first step toward becoming conquered. Ron Paul people, tea party members, and the full spectrum of libertarians are being indiscriminately shouted down at General Assembly meetings and in side meetings amongst individuals. Personally, I agree that signs promoting any political parties should be discouraged because they are not only divisive, they represent a method that has not worked to serve the people, however, alienating large segments of the population is not only inherently wrong, it is a bad tactic.
One of the things that makes this movement different from others is its intent to let everyone have their say about how they would like to see the economic situation addressed and create a public forum where people can safely engage in constructive, respectful dialogue.
I have not personally seen this happen on a large scale at our occupation yet but I was talking to one of the libertarian right last night and he said he was definitely being alienated. I think he has only bothered to stay around because he is determined to participate as a member of Cop Watch. The rejection of portions of the population who love the idea of participating in a democratic forum will turn this into a right/left thing rather than an underclass/overlords thing and a mob rather than a diverse group of individuals seeking solutions in a horizontal, democratic fashion.
I have heard many individuals saying that have to keep libertarians and tea partiers away, while in the same breath saying, “everyone has a voice, we are here to discuss everyone’s views on economic strategies”. To make matters worse, many people are making no distinction whatsoever between libertarian right and libertarian left.
I have been called naive for continuing to insist that everyone be welcome to come out and talk, but I feel that getting all kinds of different people together in the efforts to agree on one point is much more realistic than aiming to rebuild the world. If we can not manage to sit together, all of us, and find one thing we agree on, we are certainly not going to be able to build a new economic system for ourselves or follow through on any of the other lofty goals people are discussing.
The story below, “Brown Power at Occupy Wall Street”, really sums up, for me, how the occupations are supposed to function. It is about how one little voice can steer things in a better direction.
http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/03/brown-power-at-occupy-wall-street-92911/
And while the liberals are busy alienating the libertarians, the democrats are knocking on the occupations’ collective door. I got this from MoveOn yesterday…
“Wall Street isn’t the only place where greed is undermining the American Dream. By bringing these speak outs to as many communities as possible, we’ll help to spread and amplify the energy of the Occupy Wall Street protest across the country. . . .To build on this energy, we’re organizing a huge round of speak-outs nationwide next week to deliver the simple message that we need “Jobs Not Cuts” and to “Make Wall Street Pay.” It’s part of a massive week of action to show the human impact of the economic crisis. But we need public events in as many communities as possible to show that this is a national movement. We’ll provide everything you need to hold a successful event. Can you sign up to lead a speak-out?”
Also, people like myself, who are far left and latched onto this movement because of the horizontal, democratic participation that was being promoted, will likely become discouraged with the lack of respect for dissenting voices and begin to drop off, making the occupations even more susceptible to the democrats.
It is a shame when the meaning of democracy – of power vested in the people – comes to mean marginalizing people who leaders cast out of the majority. This is how the government operates and it is unfortunate to see this trend in a protest movement with potential to radically alter how decisions are made. There is potential for progress here. This is not the only trend in the movement and it still presents opportunities to get involved in conversation and change, and to continue to move things in a less authoritarian direction.
