Life, Love, and Liberty

LabourStart informed me of two important things today.

And I quote:

ZIMBABWE: UNION LEADERS ARRESTED

Unions around the world are condemning the arrests yesterday of Lovemore Motombo and Wellington Chibebe, respectively President and General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). The two trade union leaders were charged with “inciting people to rise against the government and reporting falsehoods about people being killed” in speeches given on May Day.

The International Trade Union Confederation’s statement is here:

http://www.ituc-csi.org/spip.php?article2107

The IUF is calling for messages of protest to be sent to the Mugabe regime:

http://www.iuf.org/den5018

And the Education International is concerned about rising violence directed against teachers in Zimbabwe, noting that many teachers in rural areas are being killed, maimed, tortured and abused. Read more here:

http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/show.php?id=771&theme=rights&country=zimbabwe

I haven’t been following the recent events in Zimbabwe, but I know a repressive action when I see one. And these arrests are most definitely a cause for concern. I urge people to investigate the incidents.

You should also consider this message:

BURMA: UNIONS APPEAL FOR HELP FOLLOWING CYCLONE

Unions have begun to raise money to support the Burmese people following the catastrophic cyclone which hit the country several days ago. Here are links you can follow to donate in your country.

USA:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/05/06/help-provide-relief-to-burmese-workers/

UK:
http://www.tuc.org.uk/international/tuc-14740-f0.cfm

Australia:
http://www.apheda.org.au/news/1210217214_29405.html

If your national trade union center is raising money, let us know and we’ll publish the link on LabourStart.

Show these folks that mutual aid can work!

In reading this, I ask that people please understand the horror of what I went through. I was literally locked up, and at the mercy of doctors complicit in a psycharistic-state alliance. All I wanted was to go home, and I had to spend nearly all of a day waiting for them to approve my transfer to the hospital that my psycharistist is connected to. If I had not been working with him, then they may have held me for a longer period of time.

I’ve prefaced it with two quotes.

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

~ Ayn Rand

“Of all social theories Anarchism alone steadfastly proclaims that society exists for man, not man for society. The sole legitimate purpose of society is to serve the needs and advance the aspiration of the individual. Only by doing so can it justify its existence and be an aid to progress and culture.

The political parties and men savagely scrambling for power will scorn me as hopelessly out of tune with our time. I cheerfully admit the charge. I find comfort in the assurance that their hysteria lacks enduring quality. Their hosanna is but of the hour.

Man’s yearning for liberation from all authority and power will never be soothed by their cracked song. Man’s quest for freedom from every shackle is eternal. It must and will go on.”

~ Emma Goldman

I now know the meaning of confinement much more acutely. I now know the state’s destructive power much more personally. And I have had my convictions against coercion and anti-individualist ethics strengthened.

There is no justification for a therapy based on guns — metaphorically, of course — and bondage. In the future, I refuse to deal with any therapist or social worker who refuses to renounce their monstrous “right” to have me civilly committed. Whether they know it or not, they are my enemies. They are the people who accept the fundamental ideas that are destroying America and other parts of the world. They prop up the legitimacy of the creeds of morally mandatory self-sacrifice, the nationalization of human beings, and the exercise of coercive domination in the name of benevolence and charity.

Don’t you see the connection between the mentality that can justify the military draft, and the mentality that can justify coercive commitment? Both of them are based on the fundamental conceptual premise that man does not belong to him or herself, but to the society that he or she happens to live in. And it doesn’t change a damn thing when you dress it up in the language of helping the person being coerced. There is no equal power balance between the psycharistist and the person on the receiving end, so the talk of consent is all a sham. Most likely designed to help monsters sleep at night.

And they are monsters. Never forget it, and don’t let a Christian sense of “love thy neighbor” make you feel guilt for being profoundly angry at them.

In light of what they help make possible, they have earned it. And the path forward for the world is away from their anti-individualist ethics. The world needs an intellectual revolution in favor of the supremacy of individual rights and individual thought. The friend of liberty and individual rights is simultaneously the foe of the racially motivated lynch mob, the tyrannical employer who mandates intrusive drug testing, and the vice cop who helps destroy the life of a sex worker. And this promotion of individual self-determination should make no distinctions between private or public tyranny.

When the peoples of the world become consistent friends of liberty, then I will dance and make merry, until I can do so no more. Please consider joining us today! Not for my sake, but for your own.

(I threw in that point about opposing both private and public tyranny, because I want the libertarians to see that the oppression of employees by private employers should be met by us with a demand for social justice. In other words: the libertarian philosophy should be connected to a wider philosophical totality concerned with individual self-realization, rather than just starting from the premise that the state must be opposed)

Well, my updates haven’t been daily lately — and I didn’t have enough quotes to keep up the quote of the day feature. I do want to get back to that eventually, but I’ve been suffering a major depression. I even had a suicide attempt that got me involuntarily confined to a mental hospital for a good part of a day.

Needless to say, I wasn’t very pleased. I’ll have a beautiful and passionate denunciation of involuntary commitment written soon. I am hoping it will make me feel happier, because I absolutely adore passionate writing!

Tell me what you think, folks! It’s not done yet, but I am looking to finish it sometime this weekend or next week.

        Sex workers face violence from multiple directions. They not only end up dealing with abusive clients, but they also have to worry about the violence of the state being brought to bear against them. Every year, the violence against sex workers is spoken out against, and this year was no different. The annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers took place last December 17^th. This report was written to bring you the scoop on what went down last year.

        First off, I want to thank all the following organizations for being sponsors. The respective groups were:

1. SWOP (Sex Workers Outreach Project)

2. Desiree Alliance

3. SWANK (Sex Workers Action New York)

4. Scarlet Alliance

5. Stella

6. ESPU (Erotic Service Provider’s Union)

7. SWIRL (Sex Worker’s Internet Radio Lounge)

8. Spread

9. PONY (Prostitutes of New York)

10. Venus Envy

11. Charis

12. Star Light Ministries

13. Lady Monster

14. SWAN (Sex Worker’s Advocacy Network)

SWAN is a coalition of groups from Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. It includes:

Aksion Plus, Albania, www.aksionplus.net
HESED, Bulgaria, www.hesed.bg
Bliss Without Risk, Czech Republic, http://www.rozkosbezrizika.cz/01_htm/100_ENGLISH.htm
MPEE, Hungary, www.prostitualtak.hu
Kovcheg, Kazakhstan, fsz@mail.ru
Tais Plus, Kyrgyzstan, gkurmanova@yandex.ru
Dia+Logos, Latvia, dialogs@diacentrs.lv
I Can Live, Lithuania, www.galiugyventi.lt
HOPS, Macedonia, www.hops.org.mk
Tada, Poland, www.tada.pl
ARAS-Romanian Association Against AIDS, Romania, www.arasnet.ro
Humanitarian Action, Russia, www.humanitarianaction.org
Siberian Initiative, Russia, http://www.sibin.ru
Jazas. Serbia, www.jazas.net
Odyseus, Slovakia, www.ozodyseus.sk
All Ukrainian Association on Harm Reduction, Ukraine, www.uhra.org.ua

(I was able to copy and paste the above list from the SWAN press release on December 17th)

        The events that took place that day occurred in multiple venues. They were not only limited to the United States of America – my current country of residence. And one of them even occurred online – the Sex Worker’s Outreach Project held an online conference.

You can’t make this stuff up sometimes, honestly. And I quote:

U.S. Spies Want to Find Terrorists in World of Warcraft

By Ryan Singel

Be careful who you frag. Having eliminated all terrorism in the real world, the U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft and other massive multiplayer games, according to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence.

The Reynard project will begin by profiling online gaming behavior, then potentially move on to its ultimate goal of “automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.”

* The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.

* If it shows early promise, this small seedling effort may increase its scope to a full project.

Reynard will conduct unclassified research in a public virtual world environment. The research will use publicly available data and will begin with observational studies to establish baseline normative behaviors.

The publicly available report — which was mandated by Congress following earlier concerns over data-mining programs — also mentions several other data-mining initiatives. These include:

* Video Analysis and Content Extraction - software to automatically identify faces, events and objects in video

* Tangram - A system that wants to create surveillance and threat warning system that evaluates known threats and finds unknown threats to issue warnings ahead of an attack

* Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination - This tool is reminiscent of the supposedly-defunct Total Information Awareness program. It seeks to access disparate databases to find patterns of known bad behavior. The program plans to work with domestic law enforcement and Homeland Security.

The report gives no indication why the find-a-terrorist cell in Sims project is called Reynard, though that is a traditional trickster figure in literature.

Photo: CyberExtruder”

Call me crazy, but this seems like something straight out of 1984 — more or less. It feels like a long time since I read that book, but I may have to read it again.

I have fond memories of the first read; very fond memories.

Well, I lost the piece of paper I had the password for the first one written on, so I had to create another. Here’s the information you’ll need:

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If you want to send me an encrypted email, then you can find it on this key server. You just need to search for “Life, Love, and Liberty”.

Well, I penned another passionate piece! You may be wondering what “America” is doing to me. I shall elaborate more on that point later. I am making a commitment to start writing this kind of passionate stuff every time I post on here.

After that last outburst of mine, I realized that I am screaming like a lunatic for no reason whatsoever. Even a formerly more cheery friend of mine recently admitted that we won’t see change in our lifetime. And that American culture-politics is fucked up beyond belief.

And of course, the state of a culture contributes to the state of a political system. This is why I have no confidence in notions of “the people” resisting the status quo in America. The progressive adulation of the “masses” only has meaning when those “masses” embrace a fundamentally good perspective on the world.

How would most people you know react to a serious “insurgency” (and insurgencies are not necessarily violent) against the Federal regime? Would they support it or would they denounce the people as “troublemakers” or show indifference? Not simply resistance to a war here or there. Not simply resistance to laws against Cannabis here or there. I am talking about a comprehensive questioning of power and authority. I am thinking of the person who jokingly said they’d kick my ass for dropping out of school.

There you have it: the odious belief that says “follow the rules”. America is a dictatorship because people overwhelmingly believe in “going with the flow” and being “practical”. Is it a free country when not having a high school diploma or college degree can bar you from economic well being? No. And what do parents tell their children? Go to school and be practical. Get a good job. Telling an oppressed person to kowtow to their oppressors to better their condition is intellectual complicity in the perpetuation of an unjust system.

I can’t think of a historical example of a country that existed in the current state of America that pulled back from the brink. If you can think of one, then let me know about it.

Barring a miracle, America is a dead nation that will continue to implode. Some people have bought into the myth that such a miracle is coming from Obama or some other Democrat. A more dangerously mistaken belief could not be imagined. I have listened to those I respect speak, and I simply can’t justify their convictions.

I hate America with the passion that Ayn Rand hated the Soviet Union. I hate it for what it did to a person I hold dear. I hate it for what it’s doing to me.

Fuck the odious political entity known as the United States of America. Fuck its murderous wars. Fuck every member of the American populace that sees fit to defend this:

February 08, 2008
More Bombing Creates New Enemies

Inter Press Service
By Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail*

BAGHDAD, Feb 8 (IPS) - Now that the smoke has cleared and the rubble settled, residents of a group of bombed Iraqi villages see the raid as really a U.S. loss.

Many Iraqis view the attack Jan. 10 by bombers and F-16 jets on a cluster of villages in the Latifiya district south of Baghdad as overkill.

“The use of B1 bombers shows the terrible failure of the U.S. campaign in Iraq,” Iraqi Major General Muhammad al-Azzawy, a military researcher in Baghdad, told IPS. “U.S. military and political tactics failed in this area, and that is why this massacre. This kind of bombing is usually used for much bigger targets than small villages full of civilians. This was savagery.”

The attack on Juboor and neighbouring villages just south of Baghdad had begun a week earlier with heavy artillery and tank bombardment. The attack followed strong resistance from members of the mainly Sunni Muslim al-Juboor tribe against groups that residents described as sectarian death squads.

“On Jan. 10, huge aircraft started bombing the villages,” Ahmad Alwan from a village near Juboor told IPS. “We took our families and fled. We have never seen such bombardment since the 2003 American invasion. They were bombing everything and everybody.”

Residents said two B1 bombers and four F-16 fighter jets dropped at least 40,000 pounds of explosives on the villages and plantations within a span of 10 minutes.

“The al-Qaeda name is used once more to destroy another Sunni area,” Akram Naji, a lawyer in Baghdad who has relatives in Juboor told IPS. “Americans are still supporting Iranian influence in Iraq by cleansing Baghdad and surroundings of Sunnis.”

The cluster of Sunni villages was bombed just weeks after the U.S. military encouraged families to return to their village after heavy bombing earlier in which scores of people were killed. Many residents had fled fearing sectarian death squads, which they say were backed by the U.S.

Few people in the village now talk the language of reconciliation of U.S. President George W. Bush and of some Iraqis in the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad.

“We have no alternative but to fight this occupation and its allies,” a former army officer in Baghdad speaking on condition of anonymity told IPS. “We can see clearly now that Americans came with the idea that we, Sunni Arabs, are the enemies they have in mind no matter what we do to please them. We will fight for our existence, and this massacre will not go unpunished.”

“It was a miracle that I could evacuate my family at the last minute,” said Omar Hussein, who fled for Dora in Baghdad from the bombarded area. “My house and farm are on the outskirts of the village. I took my family out the minute I saw the aircraft in the sky.

“Apache helicopters later fired at the trucks that were carrying the families out of the area, and killed so many civilians. They took some wounded people to their military base. I am sure hundreds of people would have been killed. It is just like the Fallujah crime.”

Thousands died in prolonged attacks on Fallujah to the west of Baghdad, particularly in 2004 and 2005.

Taha Muslih al-Joboory, his wife and three sons were among those reported killed in the bombing. Juboory was an Iraqi journalist who lived all his life in the area. Many families were reported buried under the rubble of their houses.

The U.S. military said that the aircraft which bombed the area targeted “suspected militant hide-outs, storehouses and defensive positions.”

“We know they will get away with their crime now, but we will teach our children that America and the whole West are our enemies, so that they take revenge for these crimes,” 35-year-old Nada, a woman who has relatives in the village told IPS.

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East)

Can anyone read accounts like this and still talk about supporting the troops? There may be individual soldiers in Iraq who are quite wonderful individuals. I know there are troops who are caught in a terrible bind and can’t leave. I am not opposed to individual Iraqis and groups of Iraqis enlisting the services of Americans in defending themselves from Muslim statists, but I am not going to defend individual members in the military, who are acting as enforcers for the gang of thugs in Washington D.C. I am not going to defend the pilots who dropped these bombs. They are murderers, and they deserve no respect from anyone concerned with the sanctity of human life.

I’ve pulled an Arthur Silber with this post. I’ve stopped playing it nice, and I am speaking from the heart. Like Arthur said, I am prepared to go to Guantanamo now. Let me just kill myself before the state’s minions show up to cart me off.

If anyone is concerned about me actually killing myself, then I want to assure them that the above was a rhetorical flourish. Consider it very dark humor.

In closing, I want to make it very clear that I am most definitely not a supporter of anti-American terrorists. What happened on September 11th was truly horrific, and I have shed light tears in viewing a slideshow of what happened that day before. I am referring to the “United States of America” which is simply the idea that there should be a central Federal government with layers of authority beneath it. I am not advocating the violent destruction of Americans.

Any NSA or FBI people reading this should take note of that.

To be frank, I sort of still lean towards the more pessimistic myself. I see the Democratic candidates as being kind of to the left of the Republican wing of the ruling class, but there is plenty of common ground still. Obama and Hilary both can’t seem to imagine healthcare reform that doesn’t include threatening government violence against those who don’t want to buy insurance. Obama doesn’t go as far as Hilary, because he says only parents will be forced to buy it for children, but it’s still a wholesale attack on the principle of individual liberty.

So, Americans will have a choice between corporatist health insurance or neo-fascist “liberal” mandated health insurance. Hilary recently said she might garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy into it. What a great way to help the working class. If this be socialism, then I’ll pass. What happened to empowering workers rather than exercising control over them? Isn’t that what’s wrong with the present system? Being offered two varieties of fascism is not enticing.

I mean, we have to get beyond thinking of politics in terms of domination and coercion. A whole new paradigm needs to be developed, and the anarchist tradition holds the key to this.

People assume that either large corporations or large government agencies have to run things, but this is not true at all. Anarchist thinkers — among others — have developed conceptions of “order” that rely on decentralization of power, and there is a wealth of literature out there about neighborhood self-sufficiency, worker’s self-management, and so forth.

And, this is a crucial matter of survival for countless people. The planet is being devastated by countless tyrannical regimes and other oppressive entities. For god’s sake, is there no place free from this savagery? Am I doomed to abandon any political dreams, so that I don’t have to endure the pain of living in fear? Truth be told: I want to speak like Emma Goldman did. Not so much, because I want to create a celebrity persona, but, because I want to touch people with my words. I want to ignite the passions and intellect of others, so that they can begin the ceaseless journey for truth. Endlessly back and forth I go, between this desire to just refuse all constraints and speak my mind, and a desire to withdraw in preservation of my life.

Below is an article about the price we pay for centralizing power: http://fff.org/comment/com0802a.asp

What makes me despair is knowing that the above bill effectively criminalizes some of my thoughts. Just calling yourself an anarchist is enough for them to make a case of “promoting ideologically based violence”. Somehow, I don’t think that my serious reservations about the use of violence will be taken that seriously by them. Regardless, it is the grossest of hypocrisies for a government that routinely uses violence to promote its social objective of stopping people from enjoying pot, and slaughters people by the thousands in impoverished nations to preach about violent ideologies. And, the mere promotion of proportionate resistance to this is grounds for making someone’s life a living hell. Totalitarianism isn’t only about Nazi esque stormtroopers marching in parades. It’s also about forcing emotionally sensitive and aware people to cower in fear.

Politicians would be well advised to look in the mirror once in awhile. Who is really the violent one here? Me or George Bush? Or the Democratic senator (I can’t remember if there were multiple sponsors) who introduced this bill?

Enough for now. I love to write, but I have only so much tolerance for thinking about the United States regime right now. And, I imagine that you might be turned off by excessive length.

More to come!

The quote of the day feature is back!

“It’s no secret that after 9/11, the administration authorized the use of waterboarding, and that the technique was used on a number of detainees in 2002 and reportedly stopped in 2003. But the administration has never explicitly admitted that.

In fact, when Dick Cheney, seduced into loose talk by a friendly interviewer, confirmed that “a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives,” the White House furiously backpedaled, and Tony Snow did his best to proclaim that “a dunk in water” had not been a reference to waterboarding, but just “a dunk in the water.”"

~ Paul Kiel

Thanks, Tony. I feel much more reassured now.