Life, Love, and Liberty

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.

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power:”

~ Benito Mussolini

Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity (11). It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts

~ Benito Mussolini

“Toward the conclusion of a recent essay, I wrote:

The Bush administration has announced to the world, and to all Americans, that this is what the United States now stands for: a vicious determination to dominate the world, criminal, genocidal wars of aggression, torture, and an increasingly brutal and brutalizing authoritarian state at home. That is what we stand for.

And who says otherwise? The Democrats could — and the most forceful means of doing so, the only method that is appropriate to this historic moment, the method that is absolutely required if we are to turn away from this catastrophic, murderous course, is impeachment. That is the one method the Democrats will categorically, absolutely not utilize — because the Democrats are a crucial, inextricable part of the identical authoritarian-corporatist system that has led us to these horrors. They have all worked toward this end over many decades, Democrats and Republicans alike, and now the horrors manifest themselves explicitly, without apology, even with the sickening boastfulness of the mass murderer who is proud of what he has done, and who vehemently believes he is right.

So the dare goes unanswered. These horrors are what the United States now stands for.

I repeat once more: these horrors are now what the United States stands for. Thus, for every adult American, the question is not, “Why do you obey?” but:

Why do you support?

Or will you refuse to give your support? Will you say, “No”? These are the paramount questions at this moment in history, and in the life of the United States. We all must answer them. Our honor, our humanity, and our souls lie in the balance.”

~ Arthur Silber

Please donate to Arthur’s continued existence.

“We have a strong civil society that could, in theory, overcome the entrenched interests of the armed forces and the military-industrial complex. At this late date, however, it is difficult to imagine how Congress, much like the Roman senate in the last days of the republic, could be brought back to life and cleansed of it endemic corruption. Failing such a reform, Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us.”

~ Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire [2004]

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“Except, oh sweet Jesus yes, for the terrorist watch list, that little red flag o’ fascism, another warning light on the nation’s jumbled dashboard, blinking frantically to let us know that something is indeed deeply wrong with our unstable, overheated engine.

But wait, maybe it’s not all that dire after all. Maybe we are merely looking at this all wrong.

After all, Rule No. 1 in the Eternal Karmic Guidebook says that like attracts like, violence begets violence, dark creates only more dark. Hence, the minute you set up a nasty government system designed to screen for hate and fear and violence, well, the more hate and fear and violence the system will find, and the more that must be created for it to find, and the larger the system will get. And on it goes.

But here is the good news: This truism also works in reverse. Or rather, inverse.

Which is to say, I am here to suggest an alternative. I am here to offer up a new plan, a devious little scheme that will run directly counter to the vile U.S. database of death.

I am here to suggest that we can override this insidious system and create a database of our own, one so goddamn radiant and slippery and omnipotent it shall overshadow the TSC’s list and hack into its operating system and stab at its violent little heart and, to put it gently, shut that f-er down.

We shall invent a new algorithm. We shall begin a new list using a complex formula made of simple truisms of delight and honest pain and unquenchable love. We shall call it the Bliss Watch List.

I am only ¼ joking. Our screening process will be rigorous and incontrovertible and true. The BWL will contain only the names of people widely suspected of being savvy, titillating, open-hearted, deeply lovable, sexed-up geniuses of divine intent and hot self-exploration and ravenous intellectual curiosity.

It will contain the names of anyone who is suspected of daring to understand that life is not, in fact, a clenched and harrowing slog, but an actual ongoing, incessant, stunning manifestation of the divine, even when it’s dirty and violent and obnoxious and horribly dressed and seems to contain only a bleak never-ending rundown of doom and decay and Dick Cheney. It’s just that kind of list.”

- Mark Morford

The interesting thing is that he actually bought the domain name. See for yourself here.

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.

What is safety without freedom? It is the life of a man in a jail cell, free from the cares of the world, without responsibility and without choice.

If liberty is the price of safety, I don’t want to be safe. I want to be free.

~ Burt Frazier

I couldn’t agree more.

Long live anarchy!

Please consider signing this Free Burma! petition.

Hat tip to Matt Jenny.

When you read about President Bush denouncing tyranny, you really have to acknowledge the hypocrisy. I mean; seriously.

Bush denounces tyrants from Cuba to Zimbabwe

James Bone for The Times in New York

US President George Bush urged UN members today to join in a “mission of liberation”, denouncing tyrants in Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe and announcing tightened US sanctions on the junta in Burma.

“This great institution must work for great purposes: to free people from tyranny and violence; to combat disease, illiteracy, and ignorance and poverty and despair,” Mr Bush told the 192-nation UN General Assembly. “Every member of the United Nations must join in this mission of liberation.”

Making only a glancing mention of the violence in Iraq, Mr Bush saluted “young democracies” in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan and called on the world to support the “moderate” leaders of the Palestinian Authority.

Avoiding any specific reference to al-Qaeda, the president warned that extremists were trying to impose a “hateful vision.”

“The followers of this violent ideology are a threat to civilised people everywhere,” he said. “All civilised nations must work together by sharing intelligence about their networks and choking off their finances and bringing to justice their operatives.

“In the long-run, the best way to defeat extremists is to defeat their dark ideology with a more hopeful vision - the vision of liberty.”

As protests grow in Burma, Mr Bush announced that expanded financial sanctions and an extended visa ban on members of the ruling junta and their families.

“Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear,” he said. “Basic freedoms of speech, assembly and worship are severely restricted. Ethnic minorities are persecuted. Froced child labour, human trafficking and rape are common. The regime is holding more than 1,000 political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi.”

“The military junta remains unyielding, yet the people’s desire for freedom remains unmistakable,” he said.

He excoriated the “brutal regimes” in Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe and said “the long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end” in Cuba.

“The Cuban people are ready for their freedom,” he said. “As that nation enters a period of transition, the UN must insist on free speech, free assembly and ultimately free and competitive elections.”

Although he was speaking just hours before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr Bush made no specific mention of Teheran’s suspected nuclear weapons programme.

He also call for the reform of the UN Human Rights Council, which was only created this year after a revamp that failed to earn Washington’s support.

“With commitment and courage of this chamber, a world where people are free to speak, assembly and worship as they wish, a world where children in every nation grow up healthy, get a decent education and look to the future with hope,” he said.

And I read the above on the day that the Drug Enforcement Administration conducts another Gestapo raid on medical marijuana collectives in California.

Dear Friends of MPP:

Right now, the DEA is currently raiding the River City Patient Center in Sacramento, California — the longest established medical marijuana dispensary in the city. Protesters have gathered outside the building in support of the collective.

And yesterday, the DEA began threatening landlords in the Santa Barbara area who lease space to medical marijuana dispensaries — activity that’s legal under California state law — with federal prison time and forfeiture of their properties. Several dispensaries closed right away.

This follows a similar move in Los Angeles in July — a maneuver that was condemned in a Los Angeles Times editorial as “a deplorable new bullying tactic.”

No matter what state you live in, will you please take a few minutes to write all three of your members of Congress to protest this federal interference in state law? MPP’s action center is easy to use: You can send one of our pre-drafted letters, or you can personalize the letter.

This is just the latest in the campaign of terror the DEA is waging on the sick. In June and July, the DEA conducted extensive medical marijuana raids in several California counties and in Oregon, including raids on at least 10 Los Angeles clinics in late July. Most were aimed at medical marijuana dispensaries operating legally under state and local laws, and in several cases the DEA detained and terrorized individual patients.

If this outrages you like it does me, would you help MPP hire a new grassroots organizer in California, as well as to retain a lobbyist to help push legislation in Sacramento to protect these dispensaries? If enough supporters on this e-mail list donate today, MPP will be able to fully pay for both positions.

These reprehensible DEA attacks — which run counter to state law, as well as the 78% of the American people who support “making marijuana legally available for doctors to prescribe in order to reduce pain and suffering” — are preventing effective local regulation of medical marijuana: Cities and counties in California are passing ordinances to ensure that medical marijuana dispensaries follow the law and serve patients properly. But by treating all who provide medical marijuana to the sick as common drug dealers, the DEA has become the single largest obstacle to effective regulation of these establishments.

A major Los Angeles raid actually occurred at the exact moment that members of the city council were holding a press conference to discuss an ordinance to regulate medical marijuana providers.

Local officials and major newspapers are outraged by the DEA’s actions. After the July raids in Los Angeles, L.A. City Councilman Dennis Zine — a Republican and former police officer with the L.A. Police Department — said, “I am greatly disturbed that the Drug Enforcement Administration would initiate an enforcement action against medical marijuana facilities in the City of Los Angeles during a news conference regarding City Council support of an Interim Control Ordinance to regulate all facilities within the City. This action by the DEA is
contrary to the vote of Californians who overwhelmingly voted to support medicinal marijuana use by those facing serious and life threatening illnesses. The DEA needs to focus their attention and enforcement action on the illegal drug dealers who are terrorizing communities in Los Angeles.”

After a series of DEA medical marijuana raids in San Francisco, the city’s health director, Dr. Mitchell Katz, wrote to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, “These actions have resulted in 4,000 persons with chronic illness left without access to critical treatment upon which they rely. Certainly in this post-September 11 environment, it seems that a DEA priority punishing organizations for distributing cannabis for medical purposes to chronically ill individuals is misplaced.”

Would you help us fight back against the DEA’s deplorable attacks on sick patients? Please write your three members of Congress now, and then consider making a donation to MPP today.

Sincerely,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.

Could politics get anymore ridiculous? Probably.

Hat tip to the Times Online UK via Antiwar.com, and the Marijuana Policy Project on MySpace.