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.

Graduate school was challenging and required a great degree of commitment. Was it worth it? I think I’ll be able to firmly answer that question in a year or so, but right now it definitely looks like it was worth it. My historical knowledge has expanded significantly thanks to my interactions with the excellent faculty and students of The City College of New York. I can tell that my research, analytical, and writing skills have greatly improved.

Bonus: Studying Russian led me to discover Russian rock music!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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’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: