autonomous alternatives to the statist quo | a collection of Anarchist blogs
This is the global Anarchoblogs. It collects articles from many smaller community hubs within the Anarchoblogs network. For stories from particular places, groups, or other communities within our movement, check out some of these sites.
diary
My appearance earlier today on RT News, via Skype.
Click here to view the embedded video.
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Closing in on its three-thousandth signature, the “Justice for Bradley Manning” petition gets a signature today which, for some reasons, generated an admin email.
Could be because the signatory was attempting to spam something into the petition, I’m not sure yet.
But the domain name used is a treat:
virtualgoodsexchange.tk
So, is that “virtual good sex change” or “virtual goods exchange”? Inquiring minds wanna know!
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Henry died yesterday, 27 June 2010, at the age of 18 in Bratislava, Slovakia. I miss you, buddy. I first met Henry in mid-1994, when my girlfriend-and-future-wife’s mother reported she’d met someone with a cat up for adoption. We went to visit him and found him adorable. Apparently, Henry was the terror of the household, though, [...]
I live on the 4th (or 5th, depending on how you count them in your country) floor of a 4-story (or “storey”, depending on how you spell the word in your country) building in central Bratislava. There’s no elevator (or “lift”, depending on what you call them in your country).
For the past five days, the lights in the stairwell have been out of order. Either a fuse blew or something went wonky in the wiring which serves to link all five levels’ lighting up to the same five switches.
I did the eight-landing journey, up and down, twice, in the darkness, thinking all the while, “gee, I should have brought my flashlight” (or “torch”, depending on what you call them in your country). On a few later journeys I used my cigarette lighter, which is somewhat problematic given how hot the thing gets.
It finally occurred to me just now, coming back home, to use the display on my mobile (or “cell”, depending on …) phone as a light source. Two flights up, I met a couple on their way down, also using their phones for illumination.
“Náš moderný svet,” (“Our modern world”) I remarked, with a sigh, thinking how ridiculous it was to be living without lights in the stairwell for five days.
“No veľmi moderný!” (“Very modern!”) replied the man, thinking how decidedly modern it is to light one’s way with a phone.
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I’m l33t! or 1337! or something!
Speaking with some friends, somehow the topic of which animals it’s okay to eat came up. My friend suggested an intelligence-based metric, allowing for cows and chickens to be eaten but not, say, dogs and cats.
Someone asked, “what about dolphins?”
My friend replied that they’re very intelligent, and may be capable of savings and investment. He related a story in which a dolphin was trained to retrieve a piece of paper in order to receive a reward. On a later iteration the dolphin was observed to take the paper, tear it into scraps and hide them under a rock, and later present the multiple scraps in hopes of more rewards.
My friend asked, “now, you couldn’t possibly want to eat an animal that can do that, right?”
And I said, “heck no! I think that dolphin should be given a job at Goldman Sachs!”
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Smash Capitalism, Comrades!
From comrade Charles “Rad Geek” Johnson comes “Free Market Anti-Capitalism?”, an exploration of, well, what I’m really all about. That’s not to say I agreed with every single thing Charles wrote before I read it — I lernt sum stuff here.
I’m presenting the links to the individual sections here both so my Dear Readers see them and so that reading from start to finish is a perhaps bit easier than just working off the links in the final entry in the series.
This is the final instalment of the remarks that I gave as part of my presentation at the Free Market Anti-Capitalism?
panel at the Association of Private Enterprise Education on 13 April 2010.
markets
Go read, y’all, this is really good stuff. Some day I might be persuaded to do a podcast recording of it.
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Coming up on the second anniversary of nostate.com’s inception, I’ve now received a number of inquiries from people considering renouncing their US citizenship, for various reasons.
These were coming to me at a rate of one every three to four months, until last week. In this past week, I’ve been contacted by three different people aiming to renounce US citizenship. Sure, that might just be random cluster in the data, but it seems significant.
And then there’s this:
More Americans Give Up Citizenship As IRS Gets Aggressive Overseas
By Martin Vaughan, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
The number of American citizens and green-card holders severing their ties with the U.S. soared in the latter part of 2009, amid looming U.S. tax increases and a more aggressive posture by the Internal Revenue Service towards Americans living overseas.
According to public records, just over 500 people worldwide renounced U.S. citizenship or permanent residency in the fourth quarter of 2009, the most recent period for which data are available. That is more people than have cut ties with the U.S. during all of 2007, and more than double the total expatriations in 2008.
The author, Martin Vaughn, contacted me via Facebook, having found his way to my blog. Since he was looking specifically for people who had or who were considering expatriating for tax reasons, I couldn’t really help him, and the article came out a few days later.
There’s one factual error I spotted in the article:
In order to give up U.S. citizenship, a person must obtain or have citizenship in another country.
Ah, facts…
Do you know how many time zones there are in the Soviet UnionRussia? ElevenNine. From Wikinews: Russia removes two timezones Monday, March 29, 2010 The Russian government has decided to remove two of its eleven timezones, in the country’s first step towards time reform, first started by president Dmitriy Medvedev in last November. The affected regions were Chukotka, the easternmost [...]
As some of you know, I have a cat. His name is Henry, and today, 1 April 2010, is is 18th birthday!
Henry was adopted from an animal shelter in Kansas by a couple who later moved to Florida. My then-girlfriend and I adopted him from them in mid-2004 and, except for a 10-month stint in Vilnius, Lithuania, he’s been with me ever since. So far, he’s lived in Kansas, Florida, Minnesota, Connecticut, California, Wisconsin, Florida again, Slovakia, Lithuania, Spain and Slovakia again.
18 is getting old for a cat, and unfortunately Henry’s beginning to show his age. Late last year, he gave me several scares. It seems that Henry’s kidney function is in decline. In August, September and December he had urinary infections. In the first two cases, I took him to the vet for a bunch of tests, antibiotic injections and overnight infusions to flush out his poor tired old cat kidneys. He hated it, of course, perhaps more than anything else he’s experienced (and he’s no fan of travel). When it happened again in December, I monitored him, but he fought it off by himself. Since this started he’s been moved completely onto a special diet for cats with kidney issues, and he seems better. Hooray!
Alpha chordate Henry wrestles a puppy
However, in the past month or so, Henry’s vision has really started to go. I first noticed that he had cataracts (CATaracts, get it?!) about three years ago due to a bluish coloration in his pupils, but they haven’t affected him until recently. Now, however, when he’s not curled up comfortably sleeping on the bed or amidst my clothing, he often either bumps into the wall or things on the floor, or comes close enough to doing so to need to catch himself.
At the same time, Henry is more and more lovable as he gets older. He sleeps against my side or chest now instead of exclusively at the foot of the bed. He comes to me regularly hoping to receive (and sometimes to give) affection, whereas some years ago he was really quite aloof, preferring to be admired from a distance and generally left alone.
So, happy birthday Henry! It’s time for the hookers and cocaine, yeehaw!
In closing, I’ll leave you with this photo. Henry was always the alpha chordate, but this picture — from before I knew him — really sums it up. Poor puppy. Maybe that’s why the folks who gave him to us wanted rid of him!
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