According to a recent bulletin on the RNC08 twitter feed, donations to Cold Snap Legal Collective are urgently needed for the purposes of bailing out the hundreds of wrongfully arrested protestors. You can donate here. Please give generously!
Here's how you don't fight injustice occurring right before your eyes:
...the crowd of 50 or 60 students, outraged at the police's ongoing assault, and doing nothing about it other than yelling at the cops and indignantly demanding their badge numbers-apparently in the fantastical belief that a The Law is somehow going to protect them from violence at the hands of its own rampaging hired goons.
If you've been paying attention, you've been witnessing a huge leap forward towards a police state over the past week. In addition to the preemptive raids, extralegal break-ins, illegal detentions, disappearing citizens, news media harassment, and general displays of unprovoked violence by law enforcement, we've witnessed a very aggressive strategy of mass arrests. Here's some choice documentation on their strategy for trapping and processing as many people as possible - protestors or not.
While apologists for cops may represent indiscriminate arrests as necessary, it's actually incredibly sloppy police work. They just declare a "national security event" and suddenly there is no need for self-discipline or judgement whatsoever. Why should people take cops' authority seriously when they prosecute their jobs so carelessly? If national security is truly at stake, why sweat a few broken windows?
Imagine if this was their response to any suspected crime: just arrest everybody near the scene! Why not just arrest everybody in the city, or the state - surely if everybody's under arrest, there's nobody to get in the way of the convention. Cities are a lot safer if you get rid of the people, law enforcement seems to think.
Well, I'm sure you've heard about the preemptive raids on groups planning to protest at the Republican convention in Minneapolis. I don't really have much to add to what's being said elsewhere on the net. It's an outrage and it breaks my heart that I can't stand with them, but my place was definitely in Louisville this weekend. And with the convention being toned way down, I wonder if the protests will have the same effect.
It's therefore important that, as much as I hate to repeat news better reported elsewhere, we all talk about the horror that's occurring in Minneapolis on our own outlets. Better yet, call the jail where many are held to demand their release; the number is (651) 266 - 9350. Don't be silent - bring this up in conversations, and let people know exactly how free we are in this country! The police are going to keep pushing the envelope of oppressiveness unless we can build a broad consensus that their actions are simply wrong.
This post was rejected at DivineCosmos.com on the grounds that it was denigrating towards the quoted participant:
If we don't have a good leader how do we get to 2012 easily?
Do you really think that we need a leader to get to fourth density?
That's the saddest thing I've heard in a long time.
You gotta love moderation by intuition.
The point is that the problem of power is never going away. There is no magical system or set of institutions that will solve that problem. It doesn't matter whether we have rule by private fiefdoms, or public states or anarchist communes or theocratic religious enclaves, the human being is still a predatory animal, most people are still creatures of the herd, and it is the wolves rather than the sheep that get to the top. So the question is how do we keep the wolves at bay? And this includes the police wolves, politician wolves, and businessman (or union boss) wolves as well as the common criminal wolves.
I actually think the polycentric / decentralist / federalist / subsidiarity principle is a helpful one, but I also think this can be reconciled with both the conservative and anarchist, libertarian and communitarian traditions. So we really don't need to spend a lot of time arguing about it.
- Keith Preston (the passage is from the comments of this article)
There hasn't been much to blog lately. I've needed to take a break from preaching from the pulpit and return to a state of potential and rest. Since a particularly nasty spat on the LeftLibertarian2 list I've reverted to thinking and reflection, taking stock of what it means to challenge myself intellectually. I hate the pattern I repeat over and over in my life where I have what I consider good ideas, and yet I somehow inevitably conflate them with my identity - to the point where I get my feelings hurt when other attack the ideas. It's something I've made progress on, but every once in a while I get shown that this vulnerability has not been overcome.
It isn't that I think I'm right or wrong so much as I realize that engaging in useful debate - debate from which one can learn - is largely a discipline, and one that I've been teaching myself. You have to be honest with yourself about your intentions in engaging in a contest of ideas, because it is easy for the discussion to disintegrate from an examination of ideas and propositions into dueling character attacks and insults. One must always be ready to state one's case plainly, but that comes with a corollary responsibility to both take the feedback seriously and not get your feelings hurt. An honest exploration of ideas is an exercise in vulnerability, because there is always going to be valid areas of truth to which your finite concepts do not extend.
So basically I'm continuing to think about what a politics based on taking responsibility for your opinions looks like. In the meantime, I've been pretty busy with my current contract. It looks like Sproutcore is going to be my bane for the next month or two as we redesign the web interface at work. I love the concept, but I'm not really looking forward to writing Javascript, and I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around the organizing principles of the framework. But I love a challenge!
If When I'm finally in court, in front of the military tribunal jury, I shall confidently recite this quote from Attorney General Robert Mukasey:
Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.
I agree with him - not every violation of the laws on the books is a crime. I'd wager that in the ten thousand or so federal laws out there just waiting to be inadvertently broken, any of us hapless citizens stand a way better chance on trial now that juries have a free pass from DOJ to judge not merely whether a law was broken, but whether the totality of the facts constitute a "crime" (something I fully support).
However, something tells me this is a judgment call to be made solely by bar members, not lowly plebs like us (excepting my favorite reader, Mr. X, of course).
Hat tip Radley's way.
The NYT had an article illustrating how intellectual property privileges afforded by the government are so much more likely to be exercised by the rich and powerful than you and me:
Like many in the art world he saw an uncanny resemblance between the iPhone commercial and his own 1995 video "Telephones," which opens with a similar montage of film clips showing actors answering the phone. That seven-and-a-half-minute video, one of Mr. Marclay's signature works, has been exhibited widely throughout Europe and the United States.
About a year before, Mr. Marclay said, Apple had approached the Paula Cooper Gallery, which represents his work in New York, about using "Telephones" in an advertisement.
If you've been following this story then you know just how frightening this passage is:
A jury verdict that cleared a police officer in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed woman will allow other officers to do their job without hesitation, police union officials said.
Because, clearly, unloading a hailstorm of bullets into a closed bedroom door in a house you know ahead of time has a family with children present is not something about which you should have the slightest hesitation whatsoever. And hesitation (in other words taking a moment to think about what you're doing) is something that cops have been told for years gets them killed; therefore, end of story, no possible competing interests worthy of consideration from a public policy perspective at all, period. Don't worry about that, officer; it's just a flesh wound, and you're just doing your job.
As I see it, the doctrines of democracy deal with the aspirations of men's souls, but the application deals with things. One hand in somebody else's pocket and one on your gun, and you are highly civilized. Desire enough for your own use only, and you are a heathen. Civilized people have things to show the neighbors.
Once again, Kevin nails it:
If management today solemnly claims its authority as stewards of shareholders, even though shareholders exercise no meaningful control and management in fact acts as de facto residual claimant in using the corporation primarily as its own means of support, I think it's fair to describe the corporation ... as a mass of unowned capital controlled by a self-perpetuating oligarchy, using shareholder power only as a legitimating ideology in the same way Soviet industrial management justified its authority with respect to workers' power.
Here's his speech from the Revolution March:
Thanks, Patrick!
I haven't changed my mind; I just want this shirt! You can get it at my Cafe Press shop. As with all my shirts, no markup is applied - it actually costs that much.
Last Saturday, Brady and I attended the Ron Paul Revolution March in Washington, D.C. I've been putting off this post for a while, as I've been going through one of those phases where I can't bear to blog. I've probably forgotten a lot, but I took notes, so this shouldn't be too difficult.
Brady and I drove up on Friday (thanks for driving, B) after we had made some last minute engineering alterations to our "Abolish the Federal Reserve" banner. We stayed at the Brickskellar Inn, which was conveniently located above the Brickskeller. I'd recommend the bar highly; it has a massive beer selection (no drafts, all bottles) and has a real old beer cellar ambiance to it. Great monte cristo sandwiches to boot. As far as the inn, it took us a little by surprise; we knew accommodations would be spartan (shared bathrooms for the entire floor) but the lack of towels surprised me. But if you're prepared, it's a cheap way to stay in the Dupont Circle neighborhood.
The highlight of Friday was meeting Darrin Knode and his friends Mike and Adrian. Darrin is a left libertarian blogger who had corresponded with me about starting a northern Virginia A.L.L. chapter, and we had a good time drinking and discussing left libertarian strategy and politics. I'm so used to those discussions occurring with people less like minded than me that it's hard to switch gears to "libertarian speak" sometimes, but we had a blast (once we found each other - the bar is two floors and pretty labyrinthine).
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