Reportedly, the FBI search warrant was for black clothing, paint, sticks, computers and cell phones, and ‘anarchist materials or literature.’ According to an FBI Domestic Terrorism guide published by greenisthenewred.com, “anarchists are criminals seeking an ideology to justify their actions,” and are “not dedicated to a particular issue.” Common meeting places are “college campuses, underground clubs, coffee houses/ internet cafes.” The implication is that owning “anarchist” literature is enough to indicate to the FBI that one is a criminal – even if that person happens to be a student studying political thought. Or maybe particularly if you are a student – the FBI document states that anarchists are “educated persons of various backgrounds, often students.”
My first experience being arrested and some comments on the liberal/radical divide within the Occupy Wall Street movement.
A brief history of homebrew transhumanism, from computer hacking to grinding.
Interesting thoughts on the unintended consequences of vegetarianism: killing animals to eat them versus killing animals to eat vegetables.
“Run, philosophers, run (everyone else, too!) with whatever part of the anti-plutocracy message you find most urgent or salient; find whatever allies you can; make noise or pursue quiet changes as suits you and the means at hand.”
“We have said that marriage is instituted for the sanctification of love: it is a pact of chastity, charity and justice, by which the spouses declare themselves publicly to be freed, both of them by one another, from the tribulations of the flesh and the cares of gallantry. Consequently, it is sacred to all and inviolable. That is why, apart from some stipulations of interest also require publicity, the family and the city appear in the ceremony: the engagement of the couple, made in view of Justice, carries farther than their persons; their conjugal conscience becomes part of the social conscience, and, as the marriage insures their dignity, it is for the society that proclaims it a glory and a progress.”
“Franciscan poverty does not mean that the monk must make every effort to avoid owning any particular thing, but rather that the monk completely abdicates any right to claim ownership. They don’t just lack all possessions, they lack the very ability to "possess."”
“The historical impact of The Ego and Its Own is not easy to assess. However, Stirner’s book can plausibly be claimed to have had an immediate and destructive impact on contemporary left-Hegelianism, to have played a significant role in the intellectual development of Karl Marx (1818–1883), and to have influenced the tradition of individualist anarchism.”
These guys think they’re so funny. “Here’s an exchange of letters between Russell and his namesake, Lord Russell of Liverpool, which took place in February 1959.”
“The basic tenet of Simulationism — its 'Central Dogma' — is that the entire universe is nothing more than a simulation that’s been constructed by a highly intelligent being who resides in a place called Noumenal Reality”
My fellow teetotaler gives a righteous rant on the Obama administration’s hypocritical drug policies: “it’s not a god damned joke! People who smoke marijuana must be set free. It is insane to lock people up.”
“I’d go Rothbard one further. Why is the criterion for de facto government status the amount of profits directly subsidized from state revenue? What about corporations that function within a web of state regulatory protections, and artificial property rights like Bill Gates’ ‘intellectual property,’ without which they couldn’t operate in black ink for a single day. Anyone who’s read much of my work for any length of time knows that I consider the entire Fortune 500 a pretty good proxy for such de facto branches of the state. As I already argued in an earlier post, the largest corporations are so intertwined with the state that the very distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ becomes meaningless.”
A nice post by the Rustbelt Radical sampling some of the music that has come out of the Occupy movement.
"President Obama’s inability to simply state whether he’s for or against gay marriage is unacceptable," Obama said during a spirited 30-minute address in which he sharply criticized the president for failing time and again to articulate his beliefs.
This is an interesting instance of a curated Wikipedia spin-off project. It consists of Wikipedia articles re-written with a value-biased policy (to promote “happiness, prosperity, and world peace”) by a much more closed group of editors. I read the article on Tolstoy, which is adapted from a 2005 Wikipedia article, and thought it was well edited (and conveniently shorter than the current WP version).
