leftlibertarian.org

Go read this chapter of Murray Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty.

Then recall what you were told about the “heroic” Washington in school.

Then tell me if it bears any resemblance to the above.

Voltarine De Cleyre had this nailed down 100 years ago. To quote her:

Ask any child what he knows about Shays’ rebellion, and he will answer, “Oh, some of the farmers couldn’t pay their taxes, and Shays led a rebellion against the court-house at Worcester, so they could burn up the deeds; and when Washington heard of it he sent over an army quick and taught ’em a good lesson” – “And what was the result of it?” “The result? Why – why – the result was – Oh yes, I remember – the result was they saw the need of a strong federal government to collect the taxes and pay the debts.” Ask if he knows what was said on the other side of the story, ask if he knows that the men who had given their goods and their health and their strength for the freeing of the country now found themselves cast into prison for debt, sick, disabled, and poor, facing a new tyranny for the old; that their demand was that the land should become the free communal possession of those who wished to work it, not subject to tribute, and the child will answer “No.”

Who today, would stand up for liberty for these farmers like De Cleyre did? I fear that the number would be far too few.

Go read this chapter of Murray Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty.

Then recall what you were told about the “heroic” Washington in school.

Then tell me if it bears any resemblance to the above.

Voltarine De Cleyre had this nailed down 100 years ago. To quote her:

Ask any child what he knows about Shays’ rebellion, and he will answer, “Oh, some of the farmers couldn’t pay their taxes, and Shays led a rebellion against the court-house at Worcester, so they could burn up the deeds; and when Washington heard of it he sent over an army quick and taught ’em a good lesson” – “And what was the result of it?” “The result? Why – why – the result was – Oh yes, I remember – the result was they saw the need of a strong federal government to collect the taxes and pay the debts.” Ask if he knows what was said on the other side of the story, ask if he knows that the men who had given their goods and their health and their strength for the freeing of the country now found themselves cast into prison for debt, sick, disabled, and poor, facing a new tyranny for the old; that their demand was that the land should become the free communal possession of those who wished to work it, not subject to tribute, and the child will answer “No.”

Who today, would stand up for liberty for these farmers like De Cleyre did? I fear that the number would be far too few.

". . . I was there the morning that Cox-ey struck the town. It was fun to see the plu-to-crats and hear the gold-bugs squeal, As they march'd along three hundred strong the Coxey Commonweal." I've posted an 1898 pamphlet from the Coxey Good Roads and Non-Interest Bond Library. The "library," despite appearances, may not have had more than an issue or two, or perhaps Coxey's publications, of which there seem to have been many, have been particularly ephemeral. This appears to be the most common issue, and it is a nice introduction to Coxey's economic proposals.

It is certainly true
anarchist ideas are spreading across the world. Everywhere new groups are starting up, bookfairs are being organized, demos planned including many that DO NOT involve starting fistfights with the police just to get on the six o'clock news. Across the globe ANARCHISM is now the only radical left, NOT social democracy, not trotskyism, not fifty-eleven variants of marx-ism (Yeah, I know Groucho was okay) nor primitivism nor various "non-aligned" bimbo-cults which function primarily as an employment agency for members of the "New Class". So-oooo ... let's begin with the United States ... up New York way... [All information is courtesy of A-infos]. Other items, and countries, will be covered in later postings. If your organization has some event you'd like to see publicised on this, the number one blog of literate anarchism, (well actually the other guys aren't that bad) then leave a comment after this posting or reply to my email address listed in blogger profiles.

The 2008 NYC Anarchist Bookfair
is scheduled for Saturday, April 12 in the state capital. Following up its very successful debut last year, the 2nd Annual NYC Anarchist Bookfair is scheduled to be held on Sat., April 12, again at Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. Last year's Bookfair attracted over 1,500 visitors and featured 60 independent publishers, booksellers, infoshops, zines, record labels, media creators, and labor and other activist groups, plus an art show, live performance, and 12 panels, presentations, and workshops over two days. ---- This year's Bookfair will be an even bigger event, with more panels, workshops, and skillshares extending over both Saturday and Sunday at Judson Memorial Church and a second venue to be announced shortly. Last years bookfair attracted over 1,500 visitors and featured 60 independent publishers, booksellers, infoshops, zines, record labels, media creators, and labor and other activist groups, plus an art show, live performance, and 12 panels, presentations, and workshops over two days. This year's Bookfair will be an even bigger event, with more panels, workshops, and skillshares extending over both Saturday and Sunday at Judson Memorial Church and a second venue to be announced shortly. Topics will include the ABCs of anarchist theory and practice, anarcha-feminism, anarchist publishing, anarchist education, urban and indigenous social movements, and anarchist/queer activism. Alongside Saturday's exhibitors will be an expanded show of Anarchist Art. An Anarchist Film Festival and an Anarchist Cabaret are planned for the afternoon and evening of Fri., April 11. The 2008 Anarchist Bookfair is organized by The Bookfair Collective. Food and free childcare will be available. For more information on the Bookfair and related events as they develop, please email mediarequests@anarchistbookfair.net or visit our Website at http://anarchistbookfair.net. For direct contact telephone: Eric Laursen, at (917) 806-6452

In California, the land of sun ...

The Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair has become one of the largest annual gatherings of anarchists and radical books in the world. As always, everyone is welcome, from long-term anarchists to the merely curious!

Time:
Saturday, March 22nd 10 am -6 pm
Sunday, March 23rd 11 am - 5 pm
Place:
County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way, SAN FRANCISCO CA. The event is free - presented by Bound Together Anarchist Collective. The Bookstore is open 7 days every week from 11:30 am - 7:30 pm and is located at

(Please also see below for info on the Anarchist Cafe, the BASTARD Conference, 8 Days of Anarchy and other news about other stuff going on during the week of the fair.)

The main room will have over 50 booksellers, distributors, independent presses and political groups from the Bay Area, the west coast and North America. Speakers and panels will be featured in the auditorium, with some discussions and speakers in the cafe area as well.







12:30 – 12:50…Jules Boykoff
1:00 – 1:20… Jen Angel
1:30 – 1:50 …. Diane DiPrima


After being gone for a year (yes, of course, the government was responsible) the Anarchist Cafe will once again happen on Friday March 21st from 7-10pm, the night before the Anarchist Bookfair. We will have food and performances indoors and hang out space outdoor (it is covered). We are serving dinner until 9pm or until the food runs out, whichever comes first. As in past years, the cafe will happen at 225 Potrero Avenue in San Francisco. We are asking for a donation of up to $20 at the door, but no one will be turned away. The money will go to fund the host space and to support political projects.


is an all-volunteer run bookstore dedicated to promoting anarchist ideas and making available anarchist and other literature seldom found in most traditional bookstores. We are located in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district, on Haight just east of Masonic Avenue. Bus lines 43, 33, 37, 71, 7 and 6 all stop nearby. We'll be happy to help you find stuff in our store or try to answer any questions you may have about anarchism or other topics. Our selection includes anarchist theory, history, biographies, other political literature, budget editions of classic books, zines, CDs, DVDs, comics, pamphlets and poetry, plus a free section with the best Bay Area alternative news and miscellaneous other stuff people have left to share. When you visit the store check out the newly restored mural http://www.boundtogetherbooks.com/mural by artist Susan Greene, on the side of our building. Depicted are famous and well-known anarchists from the Americas, including Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Alexander Berkman, Sacco and Vanzetti, Albert and Lucy Parsons, Brad Will and many others.

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

About a decade ago, much-missed Randian philosopher George Walsh (who once gave a student an A for showing up to his exam naked) offered the following remarks on Islamic history:

The forces of Islam quickly conquered the southern and eastern Mediterranean basin. There they encountered the Hellenistic culture which was already absorbed into Christianity. Translations of Aristotle had been made into Syriac in the sixth century by Eastern Christians, and these translations were in turn translated into Arabic in the ninth century. Other writings in Greek philosophy also became available. The Greek viewpoint was at first admired in Islam, unaware of what they were getting into, and it was advocated up to a point by a party called the Mutazilites, the pro-reason party in Islam. Greek philosophy, however, especially Aristotle, contradicted the whole Islamic viewpoint. The points of conflict were the following:

The Greek point of view was based on reason, the Islamic on faith and revelation. Greek philosophy regarded all of reality as knowable – this was true even of divine beings like the Prime Mover – knowable by reason. Whereas Islam believed that God was transcendent and unknowable. That is the second conflict. First is reason versus faith, second is the knowability of divine beings. Third, the Greeks believed the universe was fundamentally orderly and subject to regular law, but the Muslims believed that each event was separately decided by God’s arbitrary predestination. Fourth, the Greeks believed in an ethics and politics based on reason. For the Muslims, ethics and politics were based on the Qur’an and sacred tradition.

Those who subscribed to any Greek philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, were soon in deep trouble. This is especially evidenced by the fate of the largely pro-Greek party, the Mutazilites. The sect of the Mutazilites represented a strong pro-reason reaction against the traditional doctrine of Islam. The traditional doctrine about the Qur’an was that it was part of the mind of God and therefore co-eternal with God. The real meaning of this doctrine is that it is a blasphemy to raise the slightest question about the Qur’an. The Mutazilites rejected this doctrine, and they said that it is making the Qur’an into a second God to make it unquestionable. The Qur’an, they said, is a creature just like a beast of the field, therefore it does not necessarily express the essential nature of God any more than a cockroach does (they didn’t put it that way). The Qur’an must be subject to the interpretation of reason. If we find that a given thing is irrational and seems to be taught in the Qur’an, we conclude that God didn’t really mean it this way; he merely talked obscurely at that point. If anything in the Qur’an seems contrary to reason, we must then reinterpret it in accord with reason.

This had an influence on the Christian Middle Ages. In this Mutazilite doctrine, we do not erect a second God and, at the same time, reason is saved. This is called the doctrine of the unity of God; it is really the doctrine of the priority of reason. Secondly, we apply this immediately to sections of the Qur’an which seem to teach predestination. Now predestination takes away moral responsibility and man, the Mutazilites said, is morally responsible. A good God would not reward or punish eternally unless man were morally responsible. This the Mutazilites called the doctrine of the justice of God and they presented themselves as defenders of the justice of God. But of course it was really the assertion of man’s free will. These two pro-reason doctrines were accompanied by a strong emphasis on moral virtue and uprightness.

The Mutazilite position began to make some headway when, unfortunately, their own zeal proceeded to fanaticism, as does indeed happen sometimes with people advocating reason, as well as anything else. They sabotaged their own cause. They came into power and issued a requirement that all public officials swear that the Qur’an is created and not divine. Some who refused this doctrine were put to death. This is sometimes called the Muslim Inquisition, from 830 to 845 (ironic that the only real inquisition in Islam was initiated by the pro-reason faction). Of course there was a religious reaction and the Mutazilites were thrown out of power.

What strikes me as interesting about the final paragraph is the suggestion that the reason the liberal/secular/rationalist-leaning faction lost out is that they tried to impose these values by force and so created a backlash. A lesson, perhaps, for those today who think the way to liberalise/secularise the Islamic world is to force liberal/secular values down their throats?

I recently wrote the following:

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)

I am usually much more restrained in my criticisms. I just lose it when I read accounts like the one I quoted though.

I mean, this is the reality of what the U.S. is doing in Iraq, and nobody with any major political power in America will acknowledge it. Instead, we get treated to odious comments from Hilary Clinton about how “Those savage Iraqis won’t do what we want”, to paraphrase this:

Our troops did the job they were asked to do. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They conducted the search for weapons of mass destruction. They gave the Iraqi people a chance for elections and to have a government. It is the Iraqis who have failed to take advantage of that opportunity.

– Hillary Clinton, New Hampshire Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate, June 3, 2007

You know, because Americans would have constructed a Jeffersonian republic by now. It’s really easy when your infrastructure is shot to hell and military checkpoints abound. Furthermore, even if Iraqis don’t want to construct a Jeffersonian republic, why should the U.S. government be allowed to bomb them into dust?

A very intelligent person I know once told me that most Americans are on the ethical level of Germans during World War 2 or something. The nation’s main complaint with a war tends to be that Americans are dying and “we” aren’t winning. For god’s sake, what about the lives of the people on the receiving end? I don’t give a fuck about the nonexistent credibility of the United States. I don’t care if anyone turns up their noses at the U.S. government. In fact, I’d encourage them to do so. What matters to me are the lives of the dead and injured. Yes, it’s important to revolt against an unnecessary war, because the government is treating the lives of “its” citizens as expendable, but it’s not all about us.

As much of an egoist as I am, I still quite egoistically believe in the preservation of human life. I feel joy at knowing that others are alive and not dead. This cuts across national boundaries, and I will not reflexively take the side of “my” country over the preservation of human life.

The United States of America is a political entity that deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of history. In its place, a free America could take root.

Note: to be entirely clear, I am not advocating violent revolution in this post. I am talking about an ideological shift among the populace, and the subsequent creation of new social relations. I don’t really expect the people in Washington to care about the distinction though.

Or at least there’s a plug for our Anarchism/Minarchism anthology on the Atlas Objectivist Studies Institute Center Society website, thanks to Will Thomas’s appearance (on behalf of minarchy) therein.

I see that the excellent 1942 Italian movie version (in VHS) of We the Living, which usually goes for $70, is currently (whether temporarily or longterm I don’t know) being offered for $40.

I wonder whether this price reduction means they’re finally planning to release a DVD version?

If Barack Obama gave a speech that used someone else’s words – with the other writer’s permission and even encouragement – is that “plagiarism”? Or is it just having a speechwriter – something pretty much all politicians do? (For example, it’s no mystery why George Washington’s farewell address is more eloquent than any other speech he ever gave; you can do worse than having Madison and Hamilton ghosting for you.)

As far as I can tell, Obama’s alleged sin differs from the ordinary use of speechwriters only in that the words he used had been aired previously rather than being created exclusively for him.

So is it just the social faux pas of appearing in a certain dress when someone else has been wearing the same style?