Recently I have discovered a renewed interest in left libertarian and anarchist concepts of community solidarity. My interests lie in finding ways to build community relationships and institutions that devolve important decisions to the interpersonal, neighborly level - rather than counting on government bureaucrats and politicians to fix all our problems. I believe that this reliance on an outside force to manage us - a top-down, progressive-era holdover - has damaged what was once a bottom-up, dynamic consensus. This breakdown in neighborliness is partially responsible for many of our present social ills, and reflects the dark side of the centralized, managerial State that so many Americans seem to want.
Inviting cops into our neighborhoods should be a last resort, because law enforcement professionals view everybody - not just the elements you find undesirable - as a potential criminal. They write traffic tickets; they harass citizens; they conduct reckless raids against innocent citizens; the list just goes on. Residents should be very careful when inviting outsiders - such as police officers - to make decisions on how the neighborhood's business should be conducted. Ideally, cops should be called only as an alternative to a neighborhood resident employing force himself in self-defense, and only in reaction to a particular threat.
Maybe there was once a time when police officers lived in the neighborhoods they patrolled, knew everybody by name and whose kid was whose, and exercised a form of reasonable discretion (even if that discretion was poisoned by racism, classism, etc.). Maybe they policed on the basis of what was best for the community rather than maximizing their arrest statistics to secure federal funding. Those times, however, are no more: police are intervening in neighborhoods more and more, with less and less of a sense of statutory limitation, and a growing sense of entitlement to dictate to people the most mundane details of their lives. This dependence on such authoritarian elements is surely brought about by the increasing atomization and isolation of residents, who cannot look to the community to realize their values. When neighbors are strangers, there isn't even the opportunity to establish an authentic sense of shared interests or common concerns, let alone the true security situation.
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If you've never really listened to Uncle Tupelo's Anodyne, you need to. Everytime I listen to it I marvel at the fact that something this authentic and intense could possibly be made in this day and age. I'm just thankful that Tweedy and Farrar could hold it together long enough to see this done. I can't think of many hardships that wouldn't have been worth enduring to make this wonderful piece of art take shape in the physical world.
On the Attack the System mailing list we're always exchanging horror stories of political correctness gone wrong. To set the context, take a look at this video on the history of P.C., and then look at these articles we've been discussing:
This is disturbing on many levels.
As the participants viewed the tax scenarios, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Surprisingly, whenever the students read the taxation scenarios, scientists saw a spike in activity within two of the brain's reward centres -- the nucleus accumbens and caudate nucleus.
Harbaugh says that people probably like paying taxes more than they admit. He believes the results of his new study help explain the widespread compliance with tax laws. "We like to complain about it, but based on what we do, we are not as opposed to it as we like to say," Harbaugh says.
I'm not even sure where to begin.
Well, as y'all know I'm looking for a new web host. I thought I'd be going with a company one of my friends recommended, but then I remembered that that's how I got involved with Dreamhost in the first place. I've heard such good things about Slicehost that I thought I'd go ahead and give 'em a try.
More expensive than Dreamhost shared hosting, to be sure, but hopefully that translates into better control and quality. I get my own "slice" of a nuts and bolts server that works like a VPS complete with root access. I get 256 MB of RAM guaranteed, with more when necessary, and the flexibility to add on slices as needed. And Slicehost is run by Rails developers, so I know I have support in that department.
It'll be good to finally have my own server that I have complete command line control. I have a lot to learn about *nix machines and systems administration, but I guess this is the best way to learn. It's been a long time coming since first getting on the web with free hosting from Matt.
For non-techies, all of this is to say that I will be moving all of my sites - including blog.6thdensity.net and leftlibertarian.org - to the new host over this week. Expect interruptions in service. I'll advise when finished.
Jeez, with an opposition party like this, who needs Republicans to fuck up? Hillary Clinton is for the Iraq war, and Ron Paul is not, which renders statements like this absurd:
Unlike Ron Paul, Hillary has a more realistic stance on foreign policy. In order for the Democrats to be credible on national security issues we need to prove that we are both good internationalists and that we also support the troops.
Invading harmless countries is being "good internationalists"? Staying in a country, steadily losing lives and money without any end in sight is a "realistic strategy"? Who are these people - Republicans?
And this is the really money quote right here:
A large segment of the American people agree with the Democratic domestic agenda but vote Republican because of foreign policy. With Hillary as our standard-bearer, we can change that perception.
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Trying to be better about keeping up with my life, as part of the function of this blog is to serve as a personal journal of my activities and experiences. That's right, it's not all about you, the reader. Deal.
Well, last weekend we had out first summer cookout of the season, with great attendance. Thanks to everybody who came out. For those who didn't, we'll have another one real soon. Tasha has more pictures online at her flickr site. And I have lots of leftover beer.
This past week has been pretty intense at work. I've been churning out web application code at my day job. It feels like a death sentence returning to J2EE and WebWork / Spring / Hibernate after doing Ruby on Rails development, but I'm finally back in the swing of things (though I do find myself writing wierd java/ruby hybrid syntax sometimes, which is annoying - I guess I'm all ready for JRuby, which actually is pretty damn exciting).
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Matt lost his father last night after a long battle with cancer. I'm not sure of the right way to express my deepest sympathy on a blog; it seems so impersonal. When Matt first told me over a year ago about his father, it really shook me up to hear his grief at the time. There's been ups and downs since, and I'm reasonably certain that this most recent decline in health came about pretty suddenly for his family, just as it started (is there ever enough time to prepare for such suffering?).
Rolling with the punches is a trait with which Matt has always been blessed, but the loss of a parent is a particularly awful and heartbreaking experience. Having seen him cope with such a drawn-out tragedy has made me wonder whether the same strength is in me. However, Matt has had to deal with a situation much more complicated than it needed to be, and throughout he has done right by his dad all the way.I would be honored to have as devoted a son as Matt has been, and as hard as this is for him, he at least has the comfort of knowing he was there for his father till the end. You've done your part, Matt - now it's time for friends and family to be there for you, and we will be.
Well, it's not my best commentary, but fuck... this is Paris Hiton that we're actually talking about here. Not the absurdity of the police state or the justice of DUI / government licensing. With all the problems going on day in and day out, we focus our time and attention not on the abuses by the State, but on locking up some airheaded twit? For the "crime" of government disapproval?
C'mon, Richmond - you can do better than this.
Well, I'm not big on voting, but I've decided that I'm much more inclined to participate in local elections than national ones. Maybe it's a middle of the road approach for an anarchist. Maybe it's a cop-out. I'm not entirely comfortable with that position, but then again, there's not a lot about the State with which I'm comfortable. It's important to have a position even if you later realize you're wrong.
"Inclined to participate" does not, however, mean "solemnly pledged to fulfill my patriotic duty". Example: the Virginia Senate primary race between Republican incumbent Walter Stosch and challenger Joe Blackburn. Strategic non-voting is crucial for anarchists and all other opponents of the State, even when voting is accepted as a tool, because it reinforces our true power to de-legitimize institutions where our purposes are not served at all.
I met Blackburn when he spoke at the Patrick Henry Supper Club meeting, and his agenda of cutting spending and taxes seemed quite attractive. He painted his opponent as a tax raising RINO and himself as a true blue conservative from a political Virginia family who loved Atlas Shrugged and saw lots of common ground with libertarians.
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From the very day after the Virginia Tech massacre I could smell marketing, what with all the Hokie flags, sweatshirts, and bumper stickers on display. At the time, I saw it as an opportunistic attempt to shore up an impersonal institution's image while giving people a chance to "care in public". The problem with this is that it downplays the personal tragedies of those murdered, who are far, far more important as human beings than as students who attended a university with a turkey for a mascot. However, many thought I was being too cynical.
As it turns out, I wasn't being cynical enough, because where there is massive marketing, there is also money to be made. Finally, some of the families of those murdered at Virginia Tech are speaking out against the commercialization of their loved ones' senseless deaths - for which the VT Administration bears a good deal of responsibility. I guess I felt it went without saying that VT would be selling all this merch and taking all this pity money and put it in their general fund for their own purposes. But I'm glad that the people who really knew the victims are speaking out against the university. Here's their statement:
We, as family members of the Virginia Tech victims, are both angry and disappointed. We are angry about being ostracized from a government-chartered panel investigating a government-sponsored university (Virginia Tech), and about how the university has used the names and images of our loved ones to raise millions of dollars without any consultation. We have many unanswered questions. We don't speak for everyone, but in addressing these issues we are speaking to issues and outcomes that affect families across this nation. We seek accountability to make our campuses safe for all our children and their teachers, and to remember that all the victims of this act were good people doing great things - that is our focus. We are of one mind that we must, and will, be represented by membership in the work of this panel. This is, in our minds, non-negotiable and the minimum this panel owes to us, the memories of our loved ones, and the future safety of our campuses across the Commonwealth, the nation, and the world. We want this panel to uncover the unbiased truth about the events and decisions of April 16th which took the lives of our loved ones, the events prior, and the reactions following, as the Governor's charge at the first meeting tasked. By collecting all the facts, the panel will be able to expose the flaws in Virginia Tech's academic student conduct, procedural, and mental health actions. Through such exposure, the university will be able to identify necessary changes to handling students with severe emotional and behavioral problems. The panel needs access to all of Cho's records, including immigration and mental health records, and we strongly support use of Crime Commission subpoena power to get them. The health privacy laws must be addressed in terms of the balance between patient privacy and the safety of those patients and the public around them; we do not accept that patient privacy is (or should be) the sole overriding criterion in making records available to those charged with public safety and security of our college campuses. Although not a focus of this meeting, we cannot let pass the point that sensible gun control measures are in no way incompatible with anyone's Constitutional rights and are at least as likely as some other recent suggestions to help prevent future tragedies of this nature. We are not advocating any particular solutions, but we are sure that having more guns more readily accessible on college campuses is not part of it. We are very concerned about the accountability of the Hokie Spirit Fund. We expect that a university which takes the names and images of 32 victims for vast fundraising purposes will, at the very least, consult with the families on how this money is raised and how it is being disbursed. This is not only a moral but a legal duty. Finally, we believe this goes well beyond the Commonwealth of Virginia, and that a federal commission needs to be empanelled to address the larger issues that affect all families and students across the nation.
While I don't agree with everything they're saying (especially the gun control stuff) they have a lot more of a right to bring it up than anybody else. Not enough to convince me, but enough to at least be respected. And I'm glad somebody with credibility is finally challenging the University's use of the massacre as a marketing ploy.
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UPDATE: I'll be sitting this one out (at least for the first day) but I encourage everybody else to attend this evening!
I just found out about beCamp this weekend, June 15-16, 2007. Looks cool, here's what it's about:
beCamp is Charlottesville's version of the BarCamp unconference phenomenon-organized on the fly by attendees, for attendees. Realizing that the most energizing parts of any tech conference are the ad hoc conversations that take place in the hallways between the sessions, beCamp facilitates these types of interactions for an entire event. We provide the venue (the funky, historic Fry's Spring Beach Club), the wireless, the projectors, the food, da beer-you show up to teach, learn, and participate.
Each attendee has to talk about something or volunteer (registration, set-up, teardown, etc.). There will be a number of sessions which will be picked by the attendees at the start of the event. For example, if lots of people want to hear about Blacklight, then that will be on the agenda. If no one wants to hear about HTML5, then it won't be on the agenda.
I'm thinking of doing a quick demo on Yahoo!Pipes, and I'm hoping to explore some ideas that can be incorporated into ThreadSpinner. I'll also bring Scrabble, my guitar, and my melodica (and my MacBook).
First order of business, though: find a puppysitter for Tela.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. So why should we believe you a third time, Democrats?
"On Iraq, we're going to hold the president's feet to the fire," said Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, saying debate would start in two weeks time.
Less than a month after bowing to Bush's demands and approving a 100 billion dollar war budget, Democratic leaders pledged a new challenge to the White House on withdrawal timelines, troop readiness and curtailing the president's authority to continue the fight.
Reid said however that Democrats, saddled with a thin majority in Congress, had raised unrealistic expectations about their ability to end the war, among supporters who powered their takeover of Congress last year.
"We set the bar too high," he said, noting that under Senate rules, Democrats needed 60 votes in the 100 seat chamber to thwart Republican blocking tactics.
Well that's great for you and all, but you lied.
Does it surprise me? No. Are people's lives at stake? Fuck, yes, you shifty bastards.
Via Francois Tremblay's excellent blog I found this outrageous article. I had heard about stuff like this before, but the quote of the bureaucrat really captures the truth here:
"With the high cost of fuel right now, the department does recognize that a lot of people are looking for relief," said Reggie Little, assistant director of the motor fuel taxes division. "We're not here to hurt the small guy, we're just trying to make sure that the playing field is level."
Make sure the "playing field is level"? For whom? Is Mr. Little seriously suggesting that the oil companies need to be protected from one guy not buying their product? One man in North Carolina is impacting the wealth of the most profitable industry in the world?
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A friend and I had lunch a few days ago, and somehow the subject of the Democrats' unconditional capitulation to the Bush war agenda came up. Both of us lamented the inability of Democrats to stand up to a clearly unjust policy - especially with such supermajority opposition to it among the population. Where we ended up disagreeing was on how the war should be ended. Specifically (and correct me if I'm wrong, anonymous friend), he objected to any measure that would decrease funding "to the troops on the battlefield", whereas I supported such a measure.
My friend's reasoning, which I find unobjectionable in the abstract, is that this is an all-volunteer force that has sacrificed and risked much to serve their country. Above all else, our government owes these people the best we can afford. While the war must be ended, defunding operations only puts soldiers at greater risk, thereby forcing them to bear the overwhelming cost of withdrawal, which he finds unjust. To end the war by increasing their vulnerability is unconscionable.
There is no doubt about the justice of the situation: soldiers are always the ones that suffer as a result of policy. The question is not the truthfulness about this argument, but what in fact we can do about it. Both of us acknowledge that pursuing the current strategy of police actions, local military training and support, and anti-insurgent operations is going nowhere. As I see it there are three basic options:
- Increase the intensity of our operations, which raises the costs of this war to the taxpayer and increases the danger to soldiers, or
- Decrease the intensity of our operations in preparation of withdrawal, which my friend argues increases the danger to soldiers even as it lowers the ongoing costs of the war, or
- Continue on our present course with which nobody is satisfied, and from which we can expect a steady stream of casualties (tragic, but at least Congress can't be blamed for growing the rate of dead and wounded).
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