BroadSnark

Hello all.  Sorry that I disappeared again last week.  I had every intention of posting while on vacation, but once we busted out that bottle of vodka on the train up there, it was pretty much over.  Who was I kidding?

If you haven’t seen it already, the results of the anarchist survey are in.  No real surprises.  Respondents are overwhelmingly male, white, and fairly privileged.  I think it’s time to dust off that draft post I have about women and anarchism.

This report just cracked me up.  Apparently, some people were arrested for dressing like zombies and wandering around Minneapolis to protest consumerism.  They sued re the arrest and it looks like Minneapolis has to pay them $165,000.  Wonder what they’ll buy with it.

Really liked this Cooperative Manifesto.  Huet makes a strong case for prioritizing cooperative development.

Also really liked this post on anarcho-pluralism.  Indeed, we cannot kill them all.

This article really pissed me off.  It’s bad enough that NGOs are filled with only those privileged enough to have been able to work for free when they started out.  Now people are actually paying thousands of dollars to some service to get a spot.  I have an idea.  How about Buffy or Biff just hand that $9,000 to one of the people those nonprofits are ostensibly around to help?  Grrr.

So here is a question for you.  I know many of you abstain from voting.  But even if you abstain, do you support the right of prisoners to vote?  And if you think everyone should have the right, even if actually exercising the right won’t do much good, how far would you go to support a change in policy?

And finally, I wonder if hitwomen get paid less than their male counterparts?

Really important post over at Womanist Musings on the rape of an elderly woman and how we treat rape in general – in society, in the media… Read it.

And then there are the perpetrators.  Or are they victims?

Smoke em if you got em, ladies.  Looks like weed might treat breast cancer.

Speaking of smokes.  I am on the NY State Dept. of Taxation and Finance email list for work.  (Exciting stuff, I know.) I have been noticing quite a few arrests related to trafficking in untaxed cigarettes.  Here’s the last notice I got.  Apparently, these guys might get up to four years in prison.  Prison for cigarettes.  I believe a few people predicted this one.  Also, one of the guys is being deported.  Anyone out there know if these arrests have been picking up?

Oh, and when New York State isn’t deporting immigrants for selling cigarettes, they are talking about going all cowboy on the Seneca so that they can no longer sell tax free cigarettes.  (Treaties?  What treaties?)  The Seneca are not pleased.

In other news of govt peeps gone mad – An out of control city administrator in Kansas has arrested someone for placing a critical sign in their own yard.  And the city administrator actually said, “People and individuals have an absolute right to free speech. But however, when they do it and continue to do it within the realms of what we believe is actual malice for the purpose of holding me accountable to the public, we believe that crosses a line.”  I mean really people.  You can’t expect to hold government accountable.  HT @JamesTulsaALL

I think maybe that sign maker didn’t quite absorb all the lessons of his schooling.  Specifically, he has clearly not learned to be completely indifferent.  That would be lesson number three from this excellent  article on schooling from John Taylor Gatto.  HT Aretae.

Foreign Policy has a good article about the Iranian hikers.

The New York Times did a piece on the free store in Brooklyn.  Very nice.

Reason has a great response to Ross Douthat’s ridiculous op-ed on the Islamic Culture Center brouhaha.  But even better is this daily show clip on the madness.  Friggin hilarious.  Should we allow Catholic churches to be built next to playgrounds?  Too soon?

You have probably heard about the seven year old whose lemonade stand was protected by anarchists and who subsequently raised enough cash to go to Disney.  Somehow I think that little girl will never have a bad view of anarchists.

And on the opposite end of the spectrum, this article explains perfectly the kind of dumbshit and self defeating things that anarchists do.

Speaking of dumb shit.  What on earth were they thinking in Merida, erecting a statue to a murderous conquistador in the middle of the land of the Maya.

This article about the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is interesting.  I wonder how far the powers- that-be will be able to go before there’s actually a backlash.  Don’t worry, I’m not holding my breath.

Also interesting is this (old) article on the history of the University of Bologna.  I can only imagine what my school would have been like if the professors actually had to answer to the students.  I went to a “research university” so most of them didn’t even want to teach.  It showed.

This post on Mondoweiss made my skin crawl.  I have had almost this exact conversation with an Israeli before.

I know that news about the Islamic Community Center is everywhere, but I just have to point out two articles – this one about opposition by the Museum of Tolerance (WTF!) and this one about Fareed Zakaria returning his award from ADL.  Zakaria shouldn’t have accepted an award from those people to begin with, but that is a major slap.  Not many mainstream media people would have done it.  So one for Zakaria.

A Latina in Florida was arrested, presumably because people at a water park were able to see her bra through an accidentally wet t-shirt.  Racism?  Sexism?  Religious BS?  I’m going with a trifecta.

Twenty-one sex workers might not have been murdered if anyone actually saw them as human beings.  Protect and serve?  Not so much.

Greta Christina breaks down the recent Girls Gone Wild Controversy and talks about how to deal with problems in the porn industry.

And I really, really wish this Alternet article about the strippers protesting outside a church had come with pictures.  I don’t even need to see the protestors, just some close up shots of the looks on those churchgoers faces would be fine.

Hello people.  Did you miss me?  I missed you.  I think I have finally gotten things under control now.  I’m going to have to cut my posts to two a week, instead of three, in order to make time for my literacy tutoring.  But I should be able to get back on a regular schedule.  So here’s what I’ve been reading the last few weeks.

First and foremost, this article on anarchist tactics should be required reading prior to being issued your face bandana and molotov cocktail kit.

Also required should be viewing this new documentary on the freedom riders.  There is so much to process about tactics and how movements get co-opted.  It will be playing on t.v. for the 50th anniversary in 2011.

One of the issues front and center in that movie is police misconduct – brutality, prejudice, negligence, and collusion.  It always kills me when people want to use my safety as an excuse for more policing.  Even if the police aren’t out raping women themselves, they certainly aren’t doing anything to protect women.

While women in the U.S. may not have realized that yet, these women in India most definitely have.  I’m not so keen on the extrajudicial murder, but otherwise they are heroic.

And speaking of judicial.  Foreign Affairs has an excellent article on human rights law enforcement.  I have a lot of problems with the justice system as it is, but I agree that having access to justice is a requirement for any kind of peaceful society.  Thoughts?

Here is an interesting take on the conundrum us anti-statists face when it comes to certain types of government spending.

Several good articles having to do with sex work; specifically on false arrests, the belief that a sex worker deserves whatever shit treatment she gets, and the idea that sex work is always more degrading than a straight job.

If you want to talk about degrading jobs, how about the eight lowest paid jobs in the country.  What does it say about our priorities that the person who will take care of you when you are dying won’t even make $10/hour?

Oh and here’s a good one.  Those “union” protesters you see picketing?  They don’t actually work for that company.  In fact, they are probably the non-union labor that the union workers hired to picket for them.  I kid you not.

Kids, not usually the subject of my posts, unless I’m bitching about their rights being violated by the prison/school system.  But I’m feeling a little inspired this week.  Kids in Toronto are protesting a cop being assigned to their school.  This eleven year old is making me feel truly inadequate.  And Renee is clearly bringing up some kick ass sons, “vagina power!”

A less happy kid story is this one about international adoption, particularly in Guatemala.  Pretty fucked up.

Also fucked up is the media coverage on Haiti, as MediaHacker so perfectly points out.

Amnesty International has picked up the case of the hikers who have been in jail, without charges, in Iran for the last year.  Good news, I think.  Hopefully, the attention will get something going.

City Paper had a pretty nice write up of Positive Force.

I think that’s about enough for now.  Next post on Thursday.  I hope to do Tuesday and Thursday posts from now on.

Peace.

It still burns, the treatment I got as a teen.  I think the guy who wrote the Case Against Adolescence is still pissed too.  Glad he did something constructive with it.

This article on reconciliation is a must read for anyone who cares about ending conflicts, especially genocidal ones.

I hope you all are still keeping up with Haiti news.  The mainstream isn’t following it much anymore, but MediaHacker is still out there doing his thing.

Also out of the news cycle, but still very relevant, is Honduras.  All kinds of shit going on down there, including this hunger strike.

Have you seen the trailer for this HBO documentary?  An inmate smuggled a camera into prison and filmed for six months.  Do you think Baird, Edison, and whoever else helped invent those gadgets ever imagined something like that?

Thank goodness the health department is around to help keep us safe from those criminals feeding the hungry.  (Ripping food out of the hungry person’s hands?  Really?)

Remember the days when, if a business wanted people to help them earn money, the business actually had to provide training.  Remember apprenticeships?  Cooperative Education?  (That’s how I got my first real jobs.)  Now people are all supposed to go into debt training ourselves.  And then you have to work for free interning (after getting into all that debt) cause we won’t hire you without experience.  This really irks me, so I was glad to see Kilkenny bring it up.

James is working with CSS on their Intro to Anarchism course.

Sparky wrote a post about safe spaces that brings up some really important issues.

And finally, I want to apologize for light posting.  I have about ten million projects going on right now.  I bit off way more than I can chew.  I’m trying to fulfill my commitments, wrap up some of these projects, and finish some longer posts that I’m working on.  But it means neglecting BroadSnark a bit.  I’ll be back in the swing of things soon.

This article kinda freaked me out.  I’m going to have to step up my training a la Sarah Connor. (HT @PunkJohnnyCash)

Very cool video on Spontaneous Order.  (HT @JamesTulsaALL)

So here is a question for you.  Can you have multiculturalism – respect for other cultures – without succumbing to moral relativism at every level?  This op-ed in the New York Times is a good example of why multiculturalism and moral relativity seem to go hand in hand.  But must they?  The commenters on this post over at The Freethinker seem to think so.   I think not.

Here’s another example of the kind of shit that our communities better start learning how to handle.  I mean if we can’t manage a bunch of ass hats on a football field, what can we manage?

We might take notes from this woman, who clearly knows a thing or two about resolving problems.

Many of you are anarchists and aren’t inclined to celebrate the election of anyone to public office.  But you gotta love the new mayor of Reykjavik.

I am also loving Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon who wrote this kick ass article on the absurdity of women who think they should be chaste to catch a husband.

You may have read my post defending graffiti.  This article touches on some issues that I missed.  And I must admit that I haven’t quite broken free from the idea that only paid work is “real” work.  The bfriend refers to my writing as my “work” now.  But I still don’t even call myself a writer.  I just say I write.  I have no idea what magical thing needs to happen for me to cross that barrier.

And finally, are we the nasty, brutish descendants of chimps?  Or the cooperative, peaceful descendants of bonobos?

I don’t know how I never heard about Spot.us.  I love that.

Also loving that India plans to seek extradition of the former chairman of Union Carbide for the Bhopal disaster.  What amazing things could happen if states no longer gave protection to businesses.

This article Against School that has been making the rounds is just excellent.

Also excellent is this imminently readable piece over at Chop-tensils on the tyranny of the majority.

Are people finally getting fed up.  Only 21% of us think that the government has the consent of the governed.  People are beginning to take things into their own hands.  I wouldn’t be surprised if people really did head down to the gulf to storm BP.

And finally, I had been seriously considering moving to Brazil.  But WTF.

I don’t often get to say nice things about my home state of Florida.  Usually it is only in the news when somebody is stealing an election or trying to ban transpeople from bathrooms.  So I would just like to give props to my fellow Floridians who have decided to take matters into their own hands regarding the oil spill.

Remember the 1980s?  High bangs!  Leggings! Covert operations in Latin America!  Well, the eighties are back, baby.  O.k., they never really went away.

And as long as we are on the topic of violence in Latin America.  Let’s remember that Colombia is still the most violent country in the region.  By a strange coincidence, they are also one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid.  Huh.  Fancy that.

Does anyone else get the feeling that the government of Mexico just gave the prisoners guns and told them to go to town?

Did you think it was only liberals and neocons in the U.S. that used humanitarian relief and social programs as justification for taking over land for corporations?  Oh no, my friend.  It is in India too.  This article in the Hindustan Times is just rich.

I don’t follow European politics too closely.  But this article about the recent elections in Belgium has such a catchy title.  And I love the irony that the seat of the EU might not even be able to keep the country together.

I haven’t looked into the details of this yet.  But I am intrigued that the Choctaw Nation and the Chickasaw Nation are offering to pay a debt on behalf of the state of Oklahoma.  The state owes the federal government a wad of cash over construction of a lake.

I really wish I wrote this article on marriage.

Here is an inside look at boot camp.  Seem to be quite a few people out there who became anarchists because of their military experience.  Perhaps we should station ourselves outside forts and hand out copies of anarchist texts?

Just kidding.  Pretty sure we’d end up in jail.  And then probably working a call center for a few cents an hour.

And if that jail is in Minnesota, we might have a cell mate in for not paying their credit card bill.

Great article in Gizmodo about how scared police are of cameras, and how much shit people are getting in for recording cops.

If you are a Kiva fan, you should read this post by db0.

One of the most disturbing articles this week, and there were a lot of disturbing articles, was this one about WWII bombs still going off in Germany.

Mediahacker has a post up with video on the Haitian anti-Monsanto protests.

And finally, the story that really made me want to punch a wall this week, a girl was made to confess her sin of being raped and then whisked away by her church so that no prosecution of her rapist could take place.

Issue number 5 of the ALLiance journal is out.  This issue focuses on radical labor, especially the IWW.  Some good stuff in there (and I’m not just saying that because they included one of my articles).

I wanted to stand up and cheer when I read this article about misogyny in radical movements.  If you ever wonder why orgs can’t keep people around, especially women, read it.

I’ve been interested in indigenous political systems since long before I figured out I was an anarchist.  This study of the Rotinonshón:ni (Iroquois) is fascinating.  Thanks Flint.

In case you missed it with all the Israel news, Central America is getting pummeled.  At least 86 people died in floods and landslides from all the rains.

If you want to understand how privilege is reproduced and passed on without the the privileged having the slightest clue of the significance of what they do, read this post on native appropriations.

Those of you who live in the DC area and are involved in the anti-authoritarian and/or punk community will know Mark Anderson.  People’s District did a nice profile.

And finally, there are three U.S. hikers who inadvertently crossed over into Iran and are stuck in an Iranian prison.  Some people have gotten the wrong impression about them.  This article in outside magazine does a good job of covering it.  This could happen to any of us travelers who like to go off the tourist routes.  Be great if you all could help keep this in the spotlight.