At the AltExpo last February I delivered a talk on left-libertarian ideas. With some minor revisions, the talk has now been published in ALLiance Journal as To Disperse Power: A Left-Libertarian Approach to Politics. The essay explores definitions, issues, and implementation.

A left-libertarian approach is to build from the bottom up to displace the rule of political and economic elites and social authoritarians. It is for a society of free, autonomous, and flourishing individuals and the communities they create together.

My latest commentary at Center for a Stateless Society, The President Versus Human Rights, describes foreign and domestic abuses of the Obama administration and the dismal state of US presidential politics.

With the completion of my March commentaries, I have decided to take a hiatus from writing for Center for a Stateless Society in order to focus on other things that require attention. I expect to do more political writing later in the year.

Center for a Stateless Society remains a fantastic organization for exploring and publicizing anarchist alternatives to the current political situation. Thanks to our writers and staff, not least of which our media coordinator Thomas L. Knapp, we have made it to 500 newspaper pickups. Not bad for a relatively new anarchist organization on a low budget. And we’ve published studies and represented left-libertarian market anarchism online and in person. Expect more great things from the Center.

My latest commentary at Center for a Stateless Society takes on Alexander Lukashenko, the big man in charge of Belarus.

But is it possible to hold egregious offenders of human rights accountable without pressure from outside states? With a vibrant political culture that values liberty and solidarity, it is possible.

I’m happy to see that it was published in the Baltic Review.

My latest commentary is online at Center for a Stateless Society.

Syrians continue to face torture and death at the hands of the Assad regime as international sanctions have either been blocked or shown to have little effect. Lives are lost as global powers thumb their noses at each other in a game of expanding influence. The continued violence shows that when it comes to preventing mass murder it is better to rely upon an armed populace in solidarity than on the state.

Read the rest: Preventing a Syria Scenario.

My latest commentary is now online at Center for a Stateless Society.

Healthcare, taken out of the people’s hands, then becomes a political issue. Politicians aren’t good at addressing problems of economic stratification and stagnation — they’re typically part of the elite that is struggling to stay on top. What they are good at is making stands in culture war issues, and this is where they want to get attention, regardless of how many backs they stand on behind the podium.

Check it out: Contraception Debate Misses a Basic Question

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.

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:

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.”