Among the medications seized were estrogen, insulin, tramadol and many other drugs with no recreational value. These substances were stolen by the FDA under the guise of consumer protection. “Consumers have little or no legal recourse if they experience a reaction to the unregulated medication or if they receive no therapeutic benefit at all. In addition to health risks, these pharmacies pose other risks to consumers, including credit card fraud, identity theft or computer viruses,” said one FDA parrot. No word on why they continue to impose these risks on consumers through the strict regulation of these chemical compounds rather than opening them up to the stabilizing forces of the market.

Laid bare, the actions of this federal gang are wholly unsympathetic. After the seizure, the online pharmacies were reported to internet providers and domain registrars, effectively shutting down the consumer’s ability to obtain their medical supplies. These people are not the junkies the FDA so easily demonizes. These are people medically restricted by government decrees. These are people priced out of the official prescription drug market. These are the disempowered, but the FDA has unknowingly empowered them through their theft.

I have a question for the FDA: How long do you think this can last? How sustainable is your policy of controlling what we put in our bodies? Surely at this point, the DEA has learned that online drug markets are a Hydra. Cut off one head and two shall appear. How long until you give up the vain attempt of managing our lives? It is becoming, everyday, more and more impossible.

By swiping the medication of thousands, the FDA has in fact acted in the best interest of those who have already moved to a world free of control. The online pharmacies which dealt in illegal prescription drugs have made their home on the clear web. To the credit of our federal foes, these pharmacies have remained under their influence and will indeed become an extinct species soon enough. But those seeking their medication will remain, and will be left with two options: to acquiesce to your will or to join those of us who have descended into the Darkweb.

The undeniable, unpreventable fact our would-be central planners must face is this: There will be markets. Over the past four years, the online narcotics trade has proven this time and again. Through takedowns and arrests of vendors and market kingpins, the federal government has been unable to slow the traffic of this burgeoning agora and not a second goes by that any heroin user cannot within a matter of minutes purchase her own stash in almost any personal quantity she desires.

By pushing online pharmacies off the clear web, they empower young entrepreneurs with new opportunities. These victims of yours, they will receive their medication again, and they will have the black market to thank for it. They will contribute to the revolution which is increasingly making you irrelevant. We have the Food and Drug Administration to thank for this.

These are our bodies. These are our minds. You can no longer control them. We are taking them back and there is no amount of guns or legislation which can stop this. Your best move in this waning game of chess is to back down, to cease driving more and more people to a world you cannot hope to control or participate in.

Presa nel mezzo, la popolazione dello stato di Michoacán è insorta contro i suoi aguzzini, non con striscioni e slogan ma armi in mano, e ha messo in fuga gran parte del temibile cartello dei Cavalieri Templari. Ma i cartelli della droga non sono stati gli unici a temere la reazione dei cittadini armati: quando sono entrati nella città di Nueva Italia, nello stato di Michoacán, i vigilantes non si sono fermati ai Cavalieri Templari ma hanno disarmato anche la polizia locale, assumendosi così la responsabilità della sicurezza della città. Questi uomini sanno bene quali sono i loro nemici. Sanno per esperienza che il governo messicano, alimentato dalla corruzione e consumato dalla violenza, non è meglio dei cartelli, dai quali forse non differisce affatto.

È chiaro che anche il governo messicano capisce la minaccia che si ritrova davanti. Invece di cooptare le milizie cittadine come hanno fatto gli invasori americani con i gruppi iracheni insorti contro la brutalità dei combattenti islamisti, il governo messicano ha deciso di schiacciarli; e con buona ragione, dal suo punto di vista strategico. Implicitamente, e in alcuni casi esplicitamente, questi gruppi hanno ripudiato la pretesa fondamentale su cui si basa l’esistenza dello stato: l’offerta di sicurezza. Quando le sue legioni non riuscirono più a proteggere le province dagli attacchi e dalle razzie, l’impero romano cominciò a vedere la sua fine. Il governo messicano certamente capisce che se non può garantire la sicurezza dei suoi cittadini (ovvero, se non può tenere le pecorelle nel recinto) perde il diritto e la possibilità di tosarli e macellarli.

È evidente che per il governo messicano questi gruppi di autodifesa sono una minaccia molto più grave di quella che i cartelli della droga rappresentano, o anche solo desiderano rappresentare. Gli stati combattono chi vuole entrare in competizione con loro nello sfruttamento della popolazione, ma suppongono che gli sfruttati restino vittime passive. I cartelli, in questo gioco delle parti, possono rappresentare una minaccia per lo stato, ma cosa possono contro un’insurrezione popolare? È questo che mina il loro gioco.

Il mutuo soccorso non è soltanto aiuto reciproco, anche se questo è ovviamente un aspetto importante e fondamentale. Il mutuo soccorso serve a mostrare ai padroni che non abbiamo più bisogno di loro, che possiamo cavarcela benissimo senza elemosinare le loro briciole. Quando le amministrazioni cittadine cercano di impedire che si dia da mangiare ai vagabondi, quando il governo americano interviene per tenere alti i costi dell’assistenza sanitaria, quando le autorità locali fanno di tutto per impedire la produzione locale di beni alimentari, quando la FDA (l’ente americano che si occupa della sicurezza degli alimenti e dei farmaci, es) interviene per impedire alla gente di comprare latte crudo prodotto localmente, e quando l’esercito messicano e la polizia federale cercano di schiacciare le forze di autodifesa dei cittadini, non stanno solo applicando sprezzantemente leggi stupide e antiquate. Stanno cercando di mantenerci atomizzati e in condizioni di dipendenza. Mutuo soccorso non è soltanto aiutarsi tra fratelli e sorelle. È il terrore dei nostri padroni.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Caught in the middle, the people of Michoacan have risen up against their tormentors, not with signs and slogans but with rifles in hand, and have put much of the infamous Knights Templar cartel to flight. But not only the cartel has felt the sting of these armed citizens —  upon entering the town of Nueva Italia in Michoacan, the vigilantes did not stop after expelling the Knights Templar, but disarmed the local police, assuming responsibility for the town’s security themselves. These men clearly understand who their enemies are, knowing from long experience that the rule of the Mexican state, fueled by corruption and consumed with violence, is hardly preferable — perhaps even hardly distinguishable — from rule by the cartels.

The Mexican government clearly understands the threat it faces as well. Rather than trying to co-opt the citizens’ militias as the American occupiers did local Iraqi groups that arose in response to the brutality of Islamist fighters, the Mexican government means to crush them, and rightly so from its strategic perspective. These groups have implicitly, and in some cases vocally, repudiated the state’s fundamental claim on existence — the provision of security. When its legions could no longer protect the provincials from raiding and pillage, the days of the Roman Empire were numbered. The Mexican government clearly realizes that if it cannot secure its citizenry — keep the sheep safe in the folds, as it were — then it will lose its claim on them and its ability to shear and slaughter them.

Clearly, these self-defense groups are a far graver threat to the Mexican state than anything any cartel has attempted or likely even desires. States expect to fight with competitors over populations to exploit, but the exploited are supposed to remain passive victims. The cartel may threaten to defeat the state at its own game, but a rising of the people themselves? That threatens the game itself.

Mutual aid isn’t just about helping one another, although helping one another is of course an important and fundamental aspect. Mutual aid is about showing our masters and each other that we don’t need them anymore, that we can get by just fine without begging for scraps from master’s table. When cities try to hamper efforts to feed the homeless, when the United States government steps in to keep health care costs high, when local governments act against locally grown food, when the American FDA steps in to stop people from buying and drinking raw, local milk, and when the Mexican Army and federal police strive to crush citizens’ self-defense forces, they aren’t merely mindlessly enforcing dumb, often antiquated laws. They are acting to keep us atomized and dependent. Mutual aid doesn’t just help our brothers and sisters. Mutual aid terrifies our masters.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Mutuo Soccorso Contro lo Stato.

Our betters in the Food and Drug Administration know better. They know what my teachers and peers did not, and are prepared to implement a nationwide cookie-cutter pain management plan for every single one of three hundred million Americans. In their infinite wisdom, they have decided to make hydrocodone/acetaminophen combinations — the most well-known of which is Vicodin — harder to come by and to require patients to see their doctors — and pay for an office visit, of course — every time they need a refill of these fairly mild drugs.

And mild drugs they are. Opioid pain killers are measured by how they compare to morphine taken orally. Hydrocodone is 1.5 times as potent as oral morphine, which compares very poorly to some of our modern pain killers, such as hydromorphone (Dilaudid) — five times as potent — and fentanyl, which delivered via patch on the skin is eighty times as potent as morphine. And in Vicodin, a mere 5mg of this weak tea opioid is combined with a standard, over the counter dose of acetaminophen (Tylenol) to provide a pretty mild analgesic effect.

But of course it’s not their pain relieving power that concerns our betters. The real issue is that some people use these pills to feel good, and sometimes go too far and suffer for it. No one is shoving pills down anyone’s throat. These unfortunates are taking the pills because they want to, because medicating themselves into oblivion seems like their best option. But in true progressive fashion, rather than wonder what it is about the suffocating state capitalist system that drives people to such fates, our betters in the FDA would rather plunge even more innocents into misery in the name of preventing a few of their victims from using chemicals to escape for a little while.

We can tell it’s pleasure that is the problem, as some of the most dangerous drugs on the market are available freely over the counter even to small children. Tylenol, for instance, sends 80,000 people to the emergency room every year, but it does not make anyone high, so it does not draw the interest of our Puritan masters.

Among the dangers lurking in the doctor’s office and the hospital Vicodin still does not impress — the most lethal thing that happens in our health care system is not people getting high but doctors and nurses screwing up. 98,000 of our fellow Americans die from simple mistakes every year, mistakes often made by overworked nursing staff on inadequately staffed floors run at a substantial profit by politically connected businesses and executives paying themselves absurd salaries. But this too does not exercise our progressive friends, as that most insidious of dangers — people feeling good — is not here lurking.

No, our progressive friends in the FDA and the Obama administration want to save you from the danger that you might use a chemical to feel good, might like the experience, and might want to repeat it. And they will not even blink at the thought of trampling over the care of people in pain to stop us from getting high. Suffering, after all, purifies the soul, while demon pleasures tempt us away from the puritan, progressive path.

Unfortunately, many people living in nations ostensibly governed by “the people” do believe that the government should do exactly what the majority says. Anytime the enormous power of government is controlled by a fickle group of people, it is liable to swing from one extreme to the other, damaging everything it was intended to protect along the way.

That is why, instead of a democracy, where the people have a direct voice in all decisions, they created a republic, where the people elect trusted representatives to make political decisions. In order to make sure even a majority of those representatives didn’t disrespect the rights of the minorities, they created a three-branched government interlaced with checks and balances.

Still, however, despite the best intentions of the Founders, the rights of minorities, even those represented in the electorate, have been consistently ignored with the express consent of the majority, and still are today. Americans are forced to pay for wars they abhor, financial aid to countries that they believe will squander the money, money to the United Nations, a world government that nobody elected, charity to their fellow Americans that they might have given anyways in a form they believe to be more effective. All this follows the will of the majority while blithely denying the rights of the minority.

Is there any way around this problem? Yes, in fact there is — anything that the government can find a way to not do, it shouldn’t do. The fewer things the government does, the fewer minority rights it will be violating, and the closer we will be to a government which truly rules by the will of all the people.

But can any government which has the final say on any issue be trusted to “color inside the lines”? In a system where government can interpret those lines however it likes — which is the situation in every state, past and present — it cannot be. Some special interest group will convince some legislator that only the government can take care if some problem (even though it has been taken care of without government for the lifetime of the nation) and suddenly, the government will have a new power.

This is how, for example, the world’s longest-lasting so-called limited state now regulates under what circumstances one can sell novel chemicals for human ingestion. The United States Food and Drug Administration, Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, among others, now impose the prudish opinions of what is at least a majority in Congress on what individuals may consume.

In essence, those living under the auspices of the government of the United States no longer own their own body. Of course, that is not how it is presented to us — we are being “protected” from ourselves and from drug companies that want our business and therefore…will sell us drugs that kill us. Clearly there have been some tragedies with side effects of drugs, but the recent Vioxx scandal demonstrates that the FDA’s regulations have failed to protect Americans from dangerous drugs. We still must make our own conclusions about what we put into our bodies, based on either our own judgment or the advice of the experts we each select for ourselves.

Some will agree that these regulations clearly constitute a transgression against individual liberty, and that we must work to eliminate it and similar infringements on our inherent rights. But the state is always fallible. Governments will always tend to expand until they are either abolished or face so much effective competition from market-based sources that they are no longer a monopoly of law and security services — and thus are no longer truly a government.