Bakunin’s “Political Theology of Mazzini” 1:22 am / 11 March 2010 by Shawn P. Wilbur, at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth
Posts tagged liberty
ASYLUM SEEKERS DEATHS. 2:49 am / 09 March 2010 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.
Three people fell to their death on Sunday morning from one of the tower blocks in Red Road. We understand they were asylum-seekers who had received a negative decision from the UK Borders Agency (UKBA). They are thought to have lived in Red Road for two months. Questions must be answered not the usual waffle and whitewash. This is a family wiped out in one tragic moment, why? What pressure were these people under? What support were they getting? UKBA must be forced to reveal all the circumstances in this tragic case, what was their full involvement with this family, the details must be made public.
*** 11am Tuesday 9 March - Protest outside the Home Office, Brand Street, Glasgow - called by the Unity Centre, Glasgow (0141 427 7992, info@unitycentreglasgow.org )
*** 6pm Tuesday 9 March - come to Petershill Drive, Glasgow with banners demanding freedom and safety for all asylum seekers. - requested by a residents of Red Road Flats.
ann arky's home.
*** 11am Tuesday 9 March - Protest outside the Home Office, Brand Street, Glasgow - called by the Unity Centre, Glasgow (0141 427 7992, info@unitycentreglasgow.org )
*** 6pm Tuesday 9 March - come to Petershill Drive, Glasgow with banners demanding freedom and safety for all asylum seekers. - requested by a residents of Red Road Flats.
ann arky's home.
Categories: Anarchism
This Week in Libertarian Movies and Misguided Laws 2:31 pm / 08 March 2010 by cherylcline, at der Blaustrumpf
No, not Hurt Locker, at least not until I’ve watched it. (When will Kathryn Bigelow be recognized for her real achievement, her work on Point Break?) Over at The Agitator, Radley Balko has a poll on the “best liberty-themed movie of all time.” I reflexively clicked on Braveheart, as I accidentally overlooked Cool Hand Luke, which I have reviewed in a previous post. (Please, if you read the review, kindly overlook my incorrect usage of “beg the question.”)
The poll is here: Monday Morning Poll: Oscar Edition | The Agitator.
You can also write in an option. My vote for the best feminist libertarian movie of all time is Dirty Pretty Things, in spite of its highly misleading, eroticized poster. The movie doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention, even though it starred Audrey Tautou of Amélie fame, probably because the public prefers to see her, and probably most actresses, in the role of apolitical sprite.
The movie is a dramatic example of how laws that protect the vulnerable in theory are in practice instrumental to their destruction. Tautou plays Senay Gelik, an illegal Turk immigrant in Britain who hopes to make her way to America. Because undocumented immigrants are illegal, Senay fears immigration service thugs, who terrorize her at her own home. Her employer, a sweatshop owner, extorts sexual favors from her in return for employing her under the table and for concealing her illegal status. In her quest for a forged American visa and passport, she is again sexually exploited by the unscrupulous Juan, who then attempts to harvest her kidney for sale in the illegal organ trade. Throughout the movie, we are shown how Juan profits handsomely from organs sold to him by poor donors who are then left without proper medical attention.
There is an unlikely plot twist in which Juan is drugged and his kidney removed instead, perhaps to relieve the unrelenting grimness of the tale (Senay’s story is only one of several anguished threads), and eventually Love Conquers Most, but the main points remain: laws allegedly intended to protect the vulnerable, such as women in danger of sexual exploitation and poor people desperate enough to sell an organ for cash, ultimately facilitate the exploitation of the weak.
For more on a misguided law in keeping with this theme, see this paper on prostitution, “An Empirical Analysis of Street-Level Prostitution” by Steven D. Levitt and Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh (h/t Chris Rasch): “There is a surprisingly high prevalence of police officers demanding sex from prostitutes in return for avoiding arrest. For prostitutes who do not work with pimps (and thus are working the streets), roughly three percent of all their tricks are freebies given to police…A prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get officially arrested by one.” In Dirty Pretty Things, what amounts to Senay’s forced prostitution would be nominally illegal, but obviously an illegal immigrant would have no recourse, and would herself be the most likely target for prosecution.
This movie by no means presents an exhaustive list of the laws that are passed in the interest of the poor and vulnerable. To my knowledge, however, it’s the best recent dramatization of the ways that such laws inadvertently jeopardize women in unexpected ways, such as coerced prostitution.
Filed under: Anarchocapitalism, Feminism Tagged: anarchism, Feminism, liberty, movies, organtrade, prostitution, reviews
Categories: Anarchism
KICK BACK, IT’S SELF DEFENCE. 1:42 pm / 08 March 2010 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.
The media is now full of all those well heeled “experts” calling for deep cuts in government spending. We are bombarded with headlines reading; “Business leaders have demanded that the government start making public spending cuts this year to reduce the UK's £178bn deficit.” Not only are they calling for deep cuts but they want them now, or even yesterday. At least two employers’ groups, the CBI and the Institute of Directors have spouted that faster cuts in government borrowing are needed to restore credibility in public finances.
It sounds all very scientific and fair, except that there is no science behind these statements, just greed. Savage cuts in government spending means more out-sourcing to the private sector, (the CBI mob) and of course eventually less tax for them to pay as government spending drops. As for the “fair” part, well, not one of those mouthing off about cuts in government spending will be in the least hurt by those cuts. No that honour falls on you and I, we are the ones that will suffer under any government spending cuts, health, education, pensions, social benefits, the young, the elderly, the unemployed, (and that army is set to grow) the low paid, even those who may think they are reasonably comfortable, they also will feel the pain. Yet not one of those who will be harshly treated by these cuts is in any way responsible for the government’s debt. The debt is there because a bunch of greedy sleaze groomed parasites blew billions in their blind quest for pots of cash for nothing, sometimes called fancy accounting. They blew it, they screwed up big time, and it looked like some of them would go out of business. So their minders, the equally sleazy parliamentarians, over burdened with their expenses, came running to the rescue and handed them billions of our money. Our generosity is now to be repaid with a kick in the balls, to which we are supposed to say,”thank you kind sirs, for saving the financial spivs, of course this should be said with a slight curtsey.
Well why don’t we kick back and refuse to accept any cuts in our living standard, refuse to accept working longer to get our reduced pensions, refuse to see our kids education going done the tubes, refuse to see our national health system decimated and privatised, refuse to accept wage freezes or wage cuts that would return this generation and the next back to the Victorian era. What would function in this world if it was not for the working class, we built this world, it is our world, it’s time to take it back.
Categories: Anarchism
Molly’sBlog 2010-03-07 15:07:00 3:07 pm / 07 March 2010 by mollymew, at Molly'sBlog
INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY:
DON'T TOUCH THAT PILL- THE GESTAPO WILL GET YOU:
Here's a sad tale from the USA via the Care2 site about one student;s experience with that part of the working class whose product is pretty much social control. to be sure I have yet to get to this on this blog ie how I see little difference between teachers and prison guards and policemen. Rest assured I will get to describing my view of how people whose main function is to keep a segment of the population in one place through a good part of the day are in the same category as prison guards. Until then here's a horror story about political correctness gone wild.
PCPCPCPCPCPCPCPCPCPC
Seventh Grader Suspended For Touching Pill
Judy Molland
It all happened on February 23 at River Valley Middle School in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Seventh grader Rachel Greer was in the locker room during fifth period gym class when a fellow student walked in with a bag of pills.
Judy Molland
It all happened on February 23 at River Valley Middle School in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Seventh grader Rachel Greer was in the locker room during fifth period gym class when a fellow student walked in with a bag of pills.
"She was talking to another girl and me about them and she put one in my hand and I was like, ‘I don't want this,' so I put it back in the bag and I went to gym class," said Rachel. The pills were the prescription ADHD drug, Adderall, and after years of training under the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program, Rachel knew she had to "Just Say No.
"But that wasn't the end of it. During sixth period, an assistant principal came and took Rachel out of class. It turned out that the girl who originally had the pills and a few other students got caught. Then came the shocker: "We're suspending you for five days because it was in your hand," the administrator told Rachel. Apparently he told the girl that he was very sorry he had to do it, but the rules are the rules. District officials later said that if they're not strict about drug policies no one will take them seriously.
What lesson can Rachel learn here? Because she said NO to illegal drugs and told the complete truth about what happened in the locker room, she was punished. Presumably she would also have been punished if she had said YES, so maybe next time she'll choose that route.
What does it take for school administrators to use some common sense? A policy, zero tolerance or any other, is a guideline. Every situation is different, and school officials need to be able to approach each situation individually, and make an appropriate decision, based on the relevant facts.
After hearing the news, Patty Greer, Rachel's mother, went to school officials to complain. "That's not a good policy," Greer said. "We're teaching our kids if you say no to drugs you're going to get punished; it's not right."
District officials were not impressed. Martin Bell, COO of Greater Clark County Schools, replied that the girl should not have put out her hand. "Someone hands them a pill or a drug or something like that and they say well I said no I didn't participate. Well the act of saying no is not to be there, not to be involved in the handling the, you know, they didn't have to put their hand out." (In case you're wondering, I am quoting Mr. Bell verbatim here.)
According to Greater Clark County Schools district policy, even a touch equals drug possession and a one week suspension. Wanna get a five-day vacation from school? Just say no, and get yourself suspended!
And this just in: When Mason Jammer, a kindergarten student at Jefferson Elementary in Ionia, Michigan, curled his fist into the shape of a gun Wednesday and pointed it at another student, school officials suspended the 6-year-old until Friday, saying the behavior made other students uncomfortable. Really? Couldn't the school find any other way to teach Mason not to make a gun with his hand? When will this madness stop.
PCPCPCPCPCPCPCPCPCPC
What can I say ? Insofar as propaganda has any effect such liberal attempts at social engineering will have the definite effect of convincing young people that aggression is OK as long as it is mediated through authority . It will convince a subset of young people to become good Nazis. To another subset it will convince them that 'anything goes" provided they don't get caught. While I may disagree with the later possible effect it is better than aggression mediated through authority like what the social engineers want to "teach".
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY. MARCH 8TH. 1:32 pm / 07 March 2010 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.
INFO HERE,
Date & time: 24 February 2010 13.00 End date: 30 March 2010 15.00
Event: FIREBRAND WOMEN
About:
Women have fought for their rights and others throughout the decades and are still doing so. Glasgow Women’s Library is teaming up with the Workers Educational Association to offer 6 sessions showcasing some real Firebrand Women and the campaigns that they worked on which have allowed us the rights that we have today. Come along to hear the inspirational stories of the role women played in these campaigns.
Venue:
Various venues across the city, Glasgow, G1 5RH
Organisation:
Glasgow Women's Library: Glasgow Women’s Library is a vibrant information hub housing a lending library, archive collections and contemporary and historical artefacts relating to women’s lives, histories and achievements. We deliver an innovative Lifelong Learning Programme, an Adult Literacy and Numeracy Project and a dedicated Black and Minority Ethnic Women’s Project.
MORE INFO ON THE EVENT.
ann arky's home.
Categories: Anarchism
SHALL WE SWIM OR DROWN? 1:51 am / 07 March 2010 by ann arky, at annarky's blog.
A NEEDLESS SEA OF TEARS.
Though we live in a world of callous commerce
and know justice
is an altar where the caring are sacrificed,
see freedom as a river that runs parched
in the fierce desert of poverty,
our thoughts cannot be chained
our dreams will not be caged.
We will think beyond the profit race
dream beyond the market place
in friendship clasp each human hand
with compassion try to understand
our differences, our hopes, our fears,
dragging this world from its needless sea of tears
Categories: Anarchism
Liberty, Equality, Solidarity: Toward a Dialectical Anarchism 3:31 am / 02 March 2010 by Rad Geek, at Rad Geek People's Daily
It’s March 2010. It has now been two years since my essay Liberty, Equality, Solidarity appeared in Roderick and Tibor’s Anarchism/Minarchism anthology. Which means that those of you who recently ordered now have a shipment in the mail, which should arrive within the next few days. And it also means I can now do this. [...]
Categories: Politics, Smash the State
Robert Byrd On The Abuses of Majorities 10:55 am / 24 February 2010 by Lila, at LILA RAJIVA: The Mind-Body Politic
“Minorities have an illustrious past, full of suffering, torture, smear, and even death. Jesus Christ was killed by a majority.”
– Senator William Ezra Jenner of Indiana speaking in opposition to invoking cloture by majority vote on January 4, 1957, cited by Senator Robert Byrd, Senate speech on March 1, 2005, warning against a [...]
Random Thoughts On My Return 11:45 am / 23 February 2010 by Lila, at LILA RAJIVA: The Mind-Body Politic
My thoughts on the last leg of my schlepp back to the US were mixed….how did my 4 month jaunt get stretched to double the length, for starters..
And why does a continent as rich in natural resources as South America have poverty of any kind….and why is customer service such a difficult concept for some [...]