Life, Love, and Liberty

“I remain a bisexual or pansexual or multisexual, or whatever word you like to use person. I’d love to dance with the boys, but I have no objection to being led away by the ladies.”

Hehe. This is a line from an upcoming post of mine. I really love the imagery of the last part of it!

0 comments Natasha | Personal, Sexuality

Thursday 13 Dec 2007

My First Play — Till Death Do Us In?

This is my first attempt at playwriting!

Venus Cassandra aka Nick Manley

Creative Writing 1

19 November 2007

Your one act play OR your last writing assignment.

One Act Play – Till Death Do Us In?

(The scene takes place in a bustling cafe)

Act 1

{At curtain rise: the stage is filled with people eating and drinking at the cafe. A short time goes by before two people enter. One of them is a very tall woman while the second is a fairly tall woman. They are both dressed in hippieish skirts. They sit down at the nearest table from their entryway. They begin to speak.}

Venus: Quite the busy place in here. Is it really the best place to speak of…well, you know what I am thinking of.

Natasha: No. Care to enlighten me?

(Venus leans over to whisper in her ear.)

Venus: Is it really the best place to speak of getting into tax resistance? You never know who is listening these days.

Natasha: As far as I know, the NSA isn’t staking out every cafe yet. They haven’t been smart enough to decide to put a listening device in every potential meeting place for resistors yet.

(Natasha says the above without whispering.)

Venus: And we can only hope it remains that way. Even if it didn’t, I’d still have the pleasure of knowing I am not paying for it.

Natasha: As would I, and our friends would be able to take delight in it too.

Venus: Indeed. By the way, where are Aster and Victoria? Weren’t they supposed to meet us here?

Natasha: They couldn’t make it but they are quite on board with the idea of tax resistance.

Venus: Good to hear, we may bring the warfare state to its knees yet.

Natasha: Laughs not by ourselves though.

Venus: Of course, of course.

Natasha: Well, I have to get going but ring me if you want.

(The scene shifts to an apartment room where Aster and Victoria are meeting. The apartment room was rented by Victoria and Aster is visiting)

Aster: Would you like to sample this green tea? I’ve had it sent from a very special tea business out of New Zealand.

Victoria: Quite kind of you! I’ll have a spot of it.

(Aster pours a meager amount of tea into a lavishly decorated pink and greenish glass and then hands it to Aster)

Aster: Always wonderful to have good tea around when you’re discussing troubling topics in dreary times.

Victoria: Indeed. Shall we get down to “business” now? It’s getting close to my bedtime

(Aster gives a hearty and deep laugh) Aster: Your such an early bird when it comes to settling down. What will you do when the revolution requires you to be up for nights at a time?

Victoria: Look, I am going to coin a new saying here: it’s not my revolution, if I can’t hit the sack early enough, and you can quote me on that.

(Aster gives a refreshing smile) I’ll have to include it in my future little black book of anarchically inclined statements. But enough talk of future best selling books for now. It’s imperative that we talk about whether or not we’re going to join Venus and Natasha in their tax resistance campaign. That’s part of the strategy for a peaceful taking down of the present system. It’s a good rule of thumb to avoid violence in these types of things when you realistically can.

Victoria: Isn’t that the truth! No need to repeat the bloodthirsty purges of past revolutions. I hope there are no future Lenins among us.

Aster: You always have to watch out for people like that. They’ll stab you in the back faster then you can say viva le revolution.

Victoria: I’ve always dubbed it the changing the guard at the entrance to the concentration camp phenomenon.

Aster: Speaking of which, do we want to disrupt the day of the present guards? By refusing to fork over further cash for continued global mass murder? Plenty of other people are doing it.

(In a clearly tired voice) Victoria: That’s never been a reason for you to do something before. What happened to your arch-individualism?

(Aster gives a big smile) Aster: You know me all too well, Victoria. Sometimes, it’s good to go along with what others are doing when you have a good reason to do so.

Victoria: Well, these are revolutionary times, and it would be wonderful to do something that could help the decay of the Federal regime in Washington accelerate. You do know that the warfare tax resistance movement is still only about 5 to 10 percent of the population, don’t you?

Aster: I hadn’t heard those figures before, but they don’t surprise me. Look, I know they are cracking down left and right, but there must be some kind of struggle that would be effective. The IRS and other assorted agenicies of statist destruction can only process so many cases at a time. And if the going gets too tough, too emotionally shattering, or just futile; we can always pack up and leave. I have tickets for 4 one way trips to New Zealand, so we could always head there.

Victoria: All that exotic flora and fauna…it would certainly be a treat to live there.

Aster: Quite true, but do you want to head there or make a stand?

Victoria: Oh god, I have no clear idea, but I am leaning towards just leaving this godforsaken tyranny.

Aster: Where have your ideals gone? So many people are partipcating in the revolt these days. Why not join them? Why not put more pressure on the system?

Victoria: What type of effect will there be? How can you expect an oligarchy engaged in direct exploitation of nations abroad to care about the loss of 30 million people or so refusing to furnish them with revenue.

Aster: People will be angry enough eventually. They will see how these imperial adventures affect their livelihood at home and lead to the quashing of their liberties. They cannot remain entirely apathetic forever. An egoist tide will wash over them when they realize the destruction is directly affecting them. And having said that, I must return to my household. We shall meet again tomorrow with both Venus and Natasha. I’ll see you at the cafe!

Victoria: Rest well, Aster.

(The scene shifts to the cafe where Venus and Natasha first met. An anxious looking Venus is waiting at a table for the rest of the group to show up. Natasha enters with Victoria and Aster coming in shortly afterwards)

Venus: Welcome! Please order what you would like to drink. The bill is on me.

Natasha: Not much time to talk, I have a meeting to get to around 11:30 A.M. or so.

Aster: As do I and Victoria.

Victoria: I have become an advocate of fleeing rather than trying to do anything to change the current situation here.

Venus: Just yesterday, I discovered my phone line being tapped and would not want to continue either. I feel that a new sense of life has overcome me, so I want to save my own skin, and realize my potential in a safer place.

Natasha: How can you desert our friends when they need you more than ever? How can you leave them here to die at the hands of the American state? We have to try to do something.

Aster: There will still be things we can do to help the rebels here while we live in New Zealand. I will to continue to write about events, and provide my contributions to the development of strategy from afar.

Natasha: Then let us depart tomorrow. I must go off to my meeting of secessionists now.

0 comments Natasha | Fiction, LeftLibertarian.org, Personal

Wednesday 12 Dec 2007

My Prescription for 2008

The Last Thing America Needs Is Another President

For as long as I can remember, this country has gotten itself all worked up every four years or so trying to pick just the right person to be in…

1 comment Natasha | Humor, LeftLibertarian.org, Personal

Tuesday 11 Dec 2007

Keith Preston Talks About His Sources and Defends His Work

I have been very pleased by the increase in comments recently. Its been especially gratifying to see people leave comments that question the validity of information in my posts. One of my next steps is going to be deciding how I can turn this site into more of a money maker. I’ll be striving to provide more original content in the hopes of enticing people to donate on the basis of being able to read things here that they may not find so easily elsewhere. It helps to know that people are reading and commenting.

Anyhow, I did want to use this post to respond to a commenter who recently had the following to say:

I have to disagree with the author of the original piece. Of course any rational person is going to oppose violence, abuse, or mistreatment of any human regardless of their chosen profession. The accusations against the police and the justice system are pretty damaging, yet they provide no evidence. I think most people would require some sort of proof of these allegations before believing them or acting on them. Personally, I feel they are exaggerated and potentially false and slanderous statements. But, if you can prove me wrong by publishing some facts, reports, eyewitness accounts, or any other evidence your case will be much stronger and you will get much more support from the community.

However, their comparison of prostitutes to Jews, homosexuals and orphans is a stretch, considering prostitution is a choice and the others are something people are born into through no choice of their own.

I have an internet and phone correspondence with the author of that piece, so I was able to ask him about what his sources were. His response in a Yahoo Group called attackthesystem has been copied and pasted below:

Re: [attackthesystem] Send Me Your Stories of Police Abuse

Thanks for sending me this, Nick. The sources for this information were interviews conducted by myself and others of approximately fifty street-level prostitutes in the Richmond, Virginia area between 1994 and 1999. Additional sources include statements made by several dozen other people concerning their own observations of police activity and court procedures during this time.

There are no “documented sources” of the kind found in a scholarly work for the simple reason that this research (except for some very general background material like the comments about eugenics) did not come from books, newspapers, etc. This material is based on a hands-on experiential method of gathering information. For obvious reasons, the identities of the prostitutes who were interviewed personally cannot be revealed. For one thing, they spoke to us in confidence. Second, some of them were fugitives at the time. Third, they had reason to fear legal if not directly violent retaliation if they publicly implicated powerful persons. Some of them are now deceased.

I would say that someone who is looking for endnotes and footnotes of the kind found in an academic paper simply doesn’t know much about the realities of the situation we were dealing with. Would one expect that kind of documentation of information gathered from refugees in a war zone? Of course not. As for questions of credibility, no information was included in that essay that had not been confirmed by at least two independent sources. Most of it was confirmed by many more sources than that.

As for the specific individuals named, much of what was said about them is relatively common knowledge in this area. In fact, you can do a google search on some of these people and find some rather interesting facts about them.

As for the specific analogy to German Jews, the actual comparison given was between the “Prostitute-Free Zone” signs that appeared in this area in the late 1990s and the “Judenfrei” signs that appeared in Germany in the Nazi era. The argument that prostitution is a choice while ethnicity is a fact of birth, therefore persecution of the former is less heinous than the latter, is a shallow one. Political affiliation, religious belief and practice, interracial marriages or romantic relationships, homosexual activity (as opposed to preference or orientation), extramarital affairs, premarital sex, consumption of alcohol, and many different kinds of economic activities are also volitional in nature. If Lutherans, Socialists, adulterers, alcoholics, gays, feminists, race car drivers or bartenders were treated by the state in the same manner as prostitutes and a few other comparable groups, then professions of outrage by the entire array of do-gooder groups and much of public opinion would certainly be forthcoming. Prostitutes are a class of persons that are considered subhuman by the state and much of the public at large, subject to criminalization and persecution for their very existence. This is precisely the status that many religious or ethnic minorites have historically been relegated to. The analogy is an appropriate one.

Keith

—–Original Message—–
From: Venus Cassandra
Sent: Dec 2, 2007 1:10 PM
To: Attack the System Yahoo Group
Subject: [attackthesystem] Send Me Your Stories of Police Abuse

Keith,

I received this comment in response to an article of yours that I posted on my blog. I already know what I am going to say in response, but I thought you might want to respond yourself too.

http://www.lifeloveandliberty.com/2007/11/30/predule-to-a-defense-of-prostitutes-post/

“I have to disagree with the author of the original piece. Of course any rational person is going to oppose violence, abuse, or mistreatment of any human regardless of their chosen profession. The accusations against the police and the justice system are pretty damaging, yet they provide no evidence. I think most people would require some sort of proof of these allegations before believing them or acting on them. Personally, I feel they are exaggerated and potentially false and slanderous statements. But, if you can prove me wrong by publishing some facts, reports, eyewitness accounts, or any other evidence your case will be much stronger and you will get much more support from the community.

However, their comparison of prostitutes to Jews, homosexuals and orphans is a stretch, considering prostitution is a choice and the others are something people are born into through no choice of their own.”
Actually, I think they make a good point about the lack of sources. I trust you from having read many of the books that you cite for your anti-drug war piece, and discovering the facts in them, yet I can see why someone who is less skeptical of the benevolence of the American system would be more likely to disbelieve.

I’ve read about police tasering, raiding, and killing for quite some time now, so I was going to cite a lot of those stories. You can’t visit Charles Johnson’s blog without reading about horrific taser incidents.

Anyhow, they miss the point of your comparison of prostitutes to Jewish individuals in Nazi Germany. I read it as arguing that both were scapegoats who were blamed for “problems” in the community and then persecuted.

In both cases, people who are committing no genuine crime were made victims.

–
Venus Cassandra
http://www.lifeloveandliberty.com/
Philosophical Anarchism, Free Market Economics, and Cultural Bohemianism
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Anarcho_Nick/
Alliance of the Libertarian Left
http://all-left.net/

If you don’t notice where I’ve made a word into a link to the post that the comment was left in response to, then just click on the following: Predule to a Defense of Prostitutes Post.

0 comments Natasha | Civil Liberties, LeftLibertarian.org, Personal, Prison-Industrial Complex, Sexuality

Monday 10 Dec 2007

Digest 39

I am afraid to report that there isn’t much to provide in the way of links this week. I’ve decided to go ahead with a digest anyway though.

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker, Part 1 by Wendy McElroy

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker, Part 2 by the same author.

Danger Is My Middle Name — And So Is Yours by Glen Allport

Guns Reduce Accidents and Other Fascinating Facts and Figures To Amaze Your Friends by Greg Perry

Lies Upon Lies
When Will Bush Come Clean? by Paul Craig Roberts

Homeschooling and the Myth of Socialization by Manfred B. Zysk

The Conservative Welfare State by Anthony Gregory

0 comments Natasha | LeftLibertarian.org, My Net Digests

Saturday 08 Dec 2007

Why the Lack of Blogging? You Ask

I did mean it when I said I would do at least one blog post a day. It’s just the end of the college semester, and I am also tackling a lot of important questions. I’ll have a lot more time now that college is completed, so I’ll be back to blogging more often. One of my goals is to try to turn the website into more of a moneymaker.

0 comments Natasha | LeftLibertarian.org, Personal

Wednesday 05 Dec 2007