Odio quei sostenitori della violenza che si spacciano per avvocati della nonviolenza. Ad esempio, quei liberal che condannano una protesta violenta ma poi invocano leggi che autorizzano un poliziotto armato ad arrestare una persona per possesso di un’arma da fuoco. O quel presidente che usa le bombe a grappolo contro i civili ma poi condanna la violenza di chi protesta e degli altri governi.

La semplice verità è che molti non considerano violenza quella sostenuta da loro. Anche se comporta un atto violento, raramente la nostra società parla dell’incarcerazione come di una violenza. E lo stesso vale per l’arresto, che se fatto da un privato sarebbe un rapimento. Nella maggior parte delle discussioni, la violenza viene nascosta con eufemismi che hanno il compito di ammorbidirne la dura e brutale realtà.

La questione, semplicemente, è che molte persone sostengono l’uso della violenza in determinati casi. Il problema è che non sta bene dire che sei a favore della violenza, soprattutto negli ambienti liberal, ed è per questo che si ricorre agli eufemismi. Ho scoperto che in quei rari casi in cui si fa notare il fatto, molte persone implicitamente (o in alcuni casi esplicitamente) dicono: “Non è violenza perché è giustificata”. Come se la violenza cessasse di essere violenza quando alla sua base c’è una buona ragione. Il problema, quando fai della nonviolenza una parte della tua identità, è che neghi la natura della violenza che tu ritieni giusta, invece di riconoscere che ci sono casi in cui la violenza può essere giustificata e accettare l’onere della prova richiesto per giustificare la violenza che tu ritieni giusta.

Questo è uno dei rari casi in cui conservatori e marxisti-leninisti appaiono più coerenti di molti liberal. Conservatori e marxisti-leninisti, invece di cercare argomenti liquidatori, tendono ad ammettere la loro violenza in maniera diretta e sfrontata. Molti conservatori difendono apertamente, e addirittura elogiano, la tortura, la guerra, la brutalità della polizia, e il comportamento violento e offensivo. Molti marxisti-leninisti scherzano sulla gloria dei gulag, i plotoni di esecuzione, e la guerra rivoluzionaria. Sono opinioni che mi ripugnano, ma almeno la violenza è davanti a tutti, non è nascosta. Nascondendo la violenza dietro eufemismi, invece, se ne impedisce la discussione franca, si alleggerisce implicitamente l’onere della prova celando i costi, sostenendo che qualunque costo non è mai troppo alto rispetto ai benefici.

Detto questo, ci sono pericoli fin troppo reali quando si affronta il tema della violenza glorificandola piuttosto che nascondendola dietro gli eufemismi. Ad un certo punto si smette di considerare la violenza un male, si tende a nasconderne la vera natura perché in quel momento fa comodo. È allora che si comincia a glorificare la violenza, perdendo tutta quella cautela che si dovrebbe avere nel valutarne la giustezza. È improbabile che questo avvenga in una società aperta al dibattito, perché c’è sempre qualcuno che fa notare quanto è orribile, o quantomeno opinabile, la violenza. È però più probabile che accada se ci si chiude in una bolla, o in quello che Julian Sanchez chiama un “recinto epistemico”, dove è molto più facile trovare sostenitori. Parla con persone che sostengono apertamente la violenza, disumanizza le vittime e la violenza cessa di essere un male necessario per diventare qualcosa di glorioso. La guerra allora non è più il tragico prezzo della libertà, ma l’estremo atto eroico. La tortura non è più un male inevitabile per fermare il terrorismo, ma semplicemente quello che meritano i musulmani che tu hai condannato come barbari. I gulag e i plotoni d’esecuzione non sono solo una spiacevole ma necessaria difesa dalla controrivoluzione, ma la gloriosa ed esaltante giustizia contro i porci capitalisti.

Data la sua natura distruttiva, penso che dobbiamo essere molto cauti quando cerchiamo di giustificare la violenza. Io vedo la violenza come qualcosa di eticamente limitato dalla teoria liberale classica dei diritti individuali. Sostengo soprattutto il principio di non aggressione, secondo il quale la violenza è giustificata solo come forma di difesa da un’aggressione contro la persona e le cose. Ma anche quando questo principio non preclude un atto violento, penso che dobbiamo sempre essere molto cauti nello stabilire se la violenza è desiderabile o meno. Ci sono azioni aggressive che possono essere risolte in maniera non violenta, ad esempio dialogando, facendo leva sulla reputazione, ricorrendo all’ostracismo, le sanzioni graduali, o una giustizia basata sul concetto di indennizzo.

Forse le mie teorie sono sbagliate. Chiunque sostenga la necessità dello stato dovrebbe disapprovare le mie teorie, che a loro volta disapprovano l’esistenza dello stato. Ci sono anarchici che non approvano le mie teorie, visto che prevedono l’uso della violenza per difendere il diritto di proprietà ma escludono certe forme di violenza rivoluzionaria. Ma per capire se sono sbagliate dobbiamo giudicarle onestamente. Dobbiamo riconoscere la violenza ammessa dal mio pensiero come violenza, e cercare di capire se è giustificata. Distorcere il linguaggio per nascondere la violenza non aiuta a capire. Se tu sei favorevole alle prigioni, la polizia, il controllo delle armi, o anche se sei come me e semplicemente sei favorevole all’autodifesa, allora sei favorevole alla violenza. Riconoscilo e sostieni le tue ragioni con onestà.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

When I was researching my recent article on Nathaniel Branden, who died last month, I came across an audio file of a talk Branden gave at the 1979 Libertarian Party national convention in Los Angeles. I was at the convention, but I don’t remember attending the talk. I might have been busy with other things; on the other hand, I find it hard to believe that I had anything more important to do during that hour.

At any rate, the talk, “What Happens When the Libertarian Movement Begins to Succeed?,” is remarkable in more than one respect. For one thing, Branden was commenting on all the attention libertarianism was getting — in 1979! At that time, the media were covering the libertarian movement more than ever, although that isn’t saying much. Ed Clark, a libertarian who was listed on the ballot as an independent, had run quite a successful campaign for governor of California the year before, by libertarian standards, winning 377,960 votes, 5.46 percent of the total.

The party in California had also gotten publicity earlier that year for supporting ballot Proposition 13, a cap on the state’s property tax, and for opposing Proposition 6, the Briggs Initiative, which would have denied jobs in the government’s schools to gay people. The LP’s position prevailed in both cases. Because of things like this, the Los Angeles Times sent a reporter to the convention, and other prominent newspapers and magazines later published stories. The 2,000-plus conventioneers were filled with excitement.

So Branden was justified in thinking that something good was happening. It wasn’t the first time some of us felt that way. In 1971, the year before the first LP presidential ticket, John Hospers and Tonie Nathan, got an electoral vote, the New York Times Magazine published a five-thousand-word article by two libertarian college seniors: Stan Lehr and Louis Rossetto Jr., later a co-founder of Wired magazine. The article was titled “The New Right Credo — Libertarianism” (I gag on the title too), and it discussed the political and economic ideas of Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Karl Hess, and others. Here’s a passage:

While conservatives preached that all laws should be obeyed until repealed, libertarians placed the welfare of the individual over that of the state and argued that an individual is morally justified, for instance, in resisting the draft or smoking marijuana. Moreover, while traditionalists placed a premium value on stability and order, the libertarians were not all that opposed — in principle, at any rate — to the basic idea of shaking up or even overthrowing the liberal state. Most important, libertarians did not want to become apologists for and defenders of the existing order.

Rossetto and Lehr even reached back to Spinoza, a favorite of mine, to trace the roots of the libertarian philosophy:

All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men’s thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden.… He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.

The article closed with this quote, playing off the famous John F. Kennedy line, from David Friedman, author of the excellent The Machinery of Freedom, which will soon be out in a new edition: “Ask not what government can do for you … ask rather what government is doing to you.”

What was going on eight years later made those earlier years pale in comparison. Imagine what Branden must have thought in his last years, as the word libertarian became a recognized, if not fully understood, political category routinely included in public discussions of politics. (No doubt Ron Paul deserves much credit for this, though other sources of this recognition could be identified.)

As a psychologist, Branden was interested in how success might be received by libertarians. He had no doubt that as advocates of liberty, most libertarians would welcome the increasing public notice and growing number of adherents. But at the same time he realized that some number of libertarians had mixed motives and were attracted to the movement at least in part precisely because it was a minority, or fringe, movement that was ignored when not disparaged by most people. (Branden regarded such persons as having a “negative self-concept.) Thus someone with merely a rebel temperament, who never expected his ideas to prevail among the benighted masses, might be put off by the mainstreaming of libertarianism. If this libertarian saw himself as heroically fated to be on the righteous but losing side, how would he react to success?

Branden suggested that this might explain some of the infighting the movement (like other movements) was experiencing; anxious about impending success, some may feel the need to compensate by creating destructive factions within the movement. (I am reminded — along with many others, I’ll bet — of the hilarious scene in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian in which members of the People’s Front of Judea explain that the only things they hate more than the Romans are the Judean People’s Front and the Judean Popular People’s Front.)

If you’ll bear with the longish quote, here’s what Branden said (hat tip to David Boaz):

So it becomes very interesting to ask ourselves — and obviously I don’t wish to imply this applies to all of us, it doesn’t — but these are trends to watch for in ourselves and in our colleagues…: “Okay, suppose that I or my friends or my colleagues, while genuinely believing in these ideals, at the same time have this unrecognized negative self-concept of which Branden speaks. That means that my self-sabotaging behavior wouldn’t happen on a conscious level, but it would happen. How would it happen? What kinds of mistakes might we make?”

Well, for example, suppose that you’re talking with people that don’t already share your views, and yet you believe your views have evidence and reason to support them. Now, if you really believe that you’re in this to win; to see your ideas prevail, then you give a lot of thought to how to become a good communicator, how to reach human minds, how to appeal to human intelligence.

What do you do if you’re really in it to keep proving that you’re a heroic — but doomed — martyr? What do you do if your deepest belief [about people that don’t already share your views] is, “You’re never going to get it. You’re hopelessly corrupt. I may be one of the two or three last moral people on Earth. What am I doing at this party anyway?”

You engage in a lot of flaming rhetoric — you talk about statists, you talk about looters, you talk about parasites in contexts where you know this language is Greek to your listener. Why should you care? Your dialogue isn’t directed to him anyway — it’s directed to the spectator-you watching you being a hero. He knows what you mean — don’t get confused over the fact that your listeners don’t. The show isn’t for them anyway.

Branden was appealing to libertarians to be ruthlessly honest with themselves about why they were activists. If the reason was something other than achieving a free society through persuasion, then self-examination would be in order. If one’s motives were mixed, then introspection might identify why one engaged in self-sabotage, such as intentionally alienating nonlibertarians.

Branden’s observation about the use of words that nonlibertarians don’t understand is important. Among ourselves, “statist” is the severest term of condemnation. But who else gets that? We need to pay more attention to what we say. For example, when we talk about decentralizing power, which of course is a good thing, we must not forget that many people reasonably associate local authority with slavery, Jim Crow, and lynching with impunity, and central authority with the abolition of those evils. That doesn’t mean we should abandon the idea, only that we should think carefully about how we explain it. Let’s make sure people hear what we say. If our goal is to persuade others of the value of freedom, it’s a mistake to assume that any confusion is the listener’s problem. It’s our problem.

What Branden was doing in his speech was applying his “art of living consciously” to libertarian activism. He urged us to ask ourselves explicitly what we are trying to achieve when we talk to nonlibertarians, most of whom are actually at least half libertarians. Are we trying to win people over or merely trying to feel good about ourselves, to feel more righteous than thou, or to display our erudition?

So, one of the signs that we want to look out for, and one of the most important signs, happens in how we approach communication. Are we really out to reach human beings? Are we really out to build a bridge to somebody whose context may be very different from our own? Do we still remember that a lot of what we now regard as self-evident once upon a time wasn’t self-evident? Or do we walk into a conversation on the premise: I’ll give you one chance, after which you’re irredeemably evil?

You see, that could be called a communication problem, but I think it would be too superficial to describe it in that manner. I would call it a “phony image” problem: you’re not in it to win, you’re not in it to persuade, you’re not in it to convince, you’re not in it to reach out and touch another human mind; you’re out to make yourself out as the lowly unappreciated misunderstood heroic martyr you always knew you were, ever since your mother gave more attention to your brother.

Branden went on to note that some libertarians “cannot seem to come off the level of extreme generality” and that this could indicate that martyrdom, not persuasion, is their goal. I recommend that we all pay close attention to that part of the talk.

Through this speech Branden once again demonstrated his value to the libertarian cause. We would all profit by taking his advice.

El 14 de enero, el Departamento de Justicia de Estados Unidos anunció que la Fuerza de Tareas Conjunta contra el Terrorismo había interrumpido el último “complot terrorista interno”, esta vez por parte de “un hombre del área de Cincinnati… que pretendía atacar a la capital de los Estados Unidos y matar funcionarios del gobierno”. El vocero del senado John Boehner inmediatamente citó la interrupción del complot como evidencia de que el Congreso debe sopesar muy bien la decisión de negarse a renovar los poderes de recopilación masiva de datos de la NSA. Pero olvidó mencionar que los agentes federales son al menos tan responsables de planear el ataque que el supuesto conspirador, Christopher Cornell.

El investigador del FBI se enetró de los comentarios pro-EI de Cornell en Twitter gracias a un chivatazo de un informante anónimo que “comenzó a cooperar con el FBI con el fin de obtener un trato favorable respecto a su actuación criminal en un caso no relacionado”. El informante, por orden del FBI, mantuvo dos reuniones con Cornell donde discutieron los ataques a la capital, después de las cuales el FBI lo arrestó para “prevenir” los ataques. En otras palabras, el FBI identificó a Cornell como sospechoso exclusivamente en base a su expresión de opiniones políticas radicales, con la ayuda de un soplón carcelario que se volteó por el chantaje de la fiscalía. Y el “complot” como tal fue elaborado exclusivamente en reuniones posteriores en el que una de las partes – que trabaja para el FBI – bien podría haber manipulado a Cornell. No fue por nada que la activista ecológica Judi Bari dijo que “la primera persona que proponga traer dinamita puede que sea un federal”.

En esto el caso Cornell tiene bastante en común con muchos otros de los llamados “complots de terrorismo interno” que han sido “interrumpidos” por el aparato judicial federal y que se remontan a los “Seis de Lackawanna”. Un buen ejemplo es el llamado “complot” de los “Cuatro de Newburgh”, que supuestamente conspiraron para volar sinagogas y atacar una base militar. El juez comentó que el Gobierno “inventó el crimen, proporcionó los medios y eliminó todos los obstáculos relevantes,” fabricando un terrorista a partir de un hombre “cuya bufonería es absolutamente shakespeareana” (“Estados Unidos: Los enjuiciamientos sobre terrorismo suelen ser delirantes“, Human Rights Watch, 21 de julio de 2014).

Esto me recuerda una historia que leí – creo que del dibujante de Dilbert, Scott Adams – sobre una compañía de software que ofrecía a los programadores un bono por cada error que detectaran en el código. Como era de esperar, la creación de errores para “detectar” se convirtió en una importante fuente de ingresos para los empleados. HL Mencken comentó la tendencia del gobierno “a mantener alarmada a la población (y por tanto ansiosa de que se le brinde seguridad) amenazándola con una serie interminable de duendes imaginarios”.

Esto lo vemos en la patética narrativa mediática que presenta a cualquier funcionario armado y uniformado del gobieron como un personaje de Las brigadas del espacio. La película más taquillera del fin de semana pasado en los Estados Unidos no fue Selma (que trata del pueblo oprimido que se organiza para luchar por su libertad), sino American Sniper, que glorifica a un miserable que se regodeaba de todos los “salvajes” (su adjetivo para cualquier individuo de sexo masculino con una edad comprendida entre los 16 y los 60 años de edad) que asesinó en Irak, con el argumento de que estaba impidiendo que disparasen a soldados estadounidenses, obviando el hecho de que la gente en Irak le estaba devolviendo los disparos a un ejército invasor en su propio país. En el plano interno, vemos el mismo fenómeno en programas de televisión como COPS, y en las noticias locales sobre policías con equipo paramilitar (olímpicamente identificados como “las autoridades” por los periodistas más tontos) asaltando supuestos “laboratorios de metanfetaminas”.

Y recordemos que el concepto mismo de “operación encubierta” (también conocido como “encerrona”) invoca el principio de que algunos seres humanos son superiores a la ley. Las primeras fuerzas policiales profesionales se justificaron con el argumento de que simplemente se les pagaba para ejercer los mismos poderes de “arresto ciudadano” que la Ley Posse Comitatus garantizaba a cualquier otro miembro de la sociedad. Según esa norma, si es ilegal que un ciudadano de a pie incite o instigue a alguien para que lleve a cabo una actividad ilegal, dicha incitación o instigación debería ser ilegal para cualquier persona, incluyendo a los funcionarios estatales uniformados.

Pero lo más importante es que este es un ejemplo de cómo el estado muy frecuentemente “resuelve” los problemas de su propia creación, y de que tiene un incentivo para seguir creando problemas y así justificar que se le dé el poder y los recursos para “resolverlos”.

Artículo original publicado por Kevin Carson el 21 de enero de 2015.

Traducido del inglés por Carlos Clemente.

Iain Levison’s A Working Stiff Manifesto (2002) reads like a less political and more sardonic version of Barbara Ehrenreich’s tale of the working poor in America, Nickel and Dimed. The subtitle, A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine that Fired me, and Three I Can’t Remember means that Levison gives a more detailed account of the working poor than Ehrenreich’s book just in terms of pure numbers. Levison’s experiences range from being a bartender in the freezing cold, being an (unintentional) agorist by providing illegal free cable, and to an assortment of blue collar jobs in Alaska — which he discusses at length.

Throughout the book Levison maintains a bit of distance from things. He’s engaging in what’s going on and makes copious bitter, and often simultaneously chuckle-worthy, observations about the work world that are worth paying attention to. Readers who are already familiar with the absurdity of modern corporate culture will not find much in Levison’s account surprising or astonishing. Most of the intrigue for me came from how Levison dealt with the obstacles that bosses and the corporate structure would put in his way and not the obstacles themselves.

In that sense, Levison’s tale really is a story and thus feels most at home when it is not attempting to diagnose the world’s problems or prescribe possible solutions to them. These attempts usually fall short and reinforce the notion that if Levison is going to play the fool for us throughout his narrative then he’s at his best when not breaking character. The most foolish thing he could do would be to make some sort of policy proposal or grandiose political statement at the end of the book. Fortunately, Levison does not attempt either and in keeping with the tone and themes of this book it is likely for the best.

Levison presents himself as a lower class working guy who wants to see if he can make it on his own through both freelance, minimum wage and other jobs in the general service area. His start often comes from the classified sections of newspapers. Early in the book Levison shows off his cynical understanding of corporate newspeak:

The problem is the guaranteed overtime. They are obviously understaffed and are trying to make it look like keeping me at work for fourteen hours a day will be doing me a favor. They’ll think because I answered this ad that I’m going to be enthusiastic about showing up on Sundays and holidays. “You wanted overtime,” they’ll crow, “isn’t that why you answered the ad?” I move down the page. (pp. 2-3)

And even when he has the job this only deepens Levison’s mental distance from the corporate world. Levison seems to know most of the tricks of the trade. For example, Levison discovers that a fish cutting store he works for is not willing to fire him despite his lack of relevant skills. He suspects this employer is not being honest about their reasons for keeping him on the job and argues that it is due to their need of people more than they actually need experienced people. He reasons that by the time the managers realize he doesn’t really know what he’s doing they’ll have to admit they made a mistake and they definitely can’t do that.

In the interview for the job itself no questions about fish cutting are even asked, and he is told he just needs to “present” himself well to customers. Which really means that you should bend your individual style to the management’s preferences and what they think customers respect or want. Other interviews consisted of a simple call up to a friend and making sure Levison can be in one place at a certain time. And in an interview for being a lobster catcher someone just asks him if he wants the job — it’s as simple as that.

But the interviews almost never determine how qualified levison is or how likely he is to actually enjoy the job. No matter how easy the interview, whether it’s for a friend, a small shop or a corporate chain Levison usually has pretty big problems with given job.

A particularly interesting example is when Levison decides to help a friend who is trying to set up a movie. Despite being a small-scale, independent project, done by people who seem to know each other to some extent, most people involved treat each other with hostility.

Levison’s summary of the situation is frank and stunning in its verbal potency:

Corey, the lighting guy, the actors, they’ve all given up. This crap film is to them what applying for a job a a fish counter is to me. But here, there is some unwritten rule that you can’t admit that you’ve given up. A very strict rule. Rule One: Whatever you do, never stop bullshitting yourself that you’re important. Rule One keeps a lot of people sane. (9)

What does Levison do to get away from this job? He walks away in the middle of performing a task for some people who he thinks are being incredibly rude to him and decides he’ll be at a nearby coffee shop and just watches the carnage from the steps.

This illustrates two frequent occurrences in Levison’s book: emotional distance and knowing when to walk away.

Unlike Ehrenreich who seems to really feel for her fellow workers, Levison often seems to understand but either does not really care, will write it off or just adds a cynical note to the suffering going on around him. Not that he does this to obnoxious extents. He’ll make friends where he can and he’s not out to get any one or kick them while they are down. But there are certainly times when Levison decides it’s best if he doesn’t risk his own hide or get too involved.

For example, when he works an outside oyster bar in the cold with a younger guy named Patrice. Patrice asks for some coke mixed bourbon (Levison remarks he’s unsure if this is legal but also wonders how legal the working conditions are) and before you know it Patrice is yelling about winning their boss’s daughter’s affections. Levison, at first, tries to calm him down and get him to help break down the cart that they have outside. But after he gets paid and comes back outside to see that Patrice is up near the daughter’s window he decides to get out of there.

Knowing when to walk away also comes in handy when you’ve got money schemes every where you look. Levison comes across multiple listings or recalls tales of other listings that turn out to be fakes. Examples include ads that promise money for bartending, but which turn out to be from a bartending school.

There’s also a job listed with the credentials of an English degree being preferred and ex-military being a plus only to have it turn out to be one of the most cult-like sales pitch for selling water filters ever seen:

Mike walks over to a tap and pours some tap water into a beaker, then screws on a water filter and pours some more into a different beaker. He takes a full syringe full of clear liquid and squeezes two drops of whatever is in the syringe into each beaker. The tap water turns purple. The filter water stays clear.

“THIS IS WHAT YOUR CHILDREN ARE DRINKING!” he thunders.

You can’t get much more scientific than that. (36)

Levison has a great response to what he sees going on around him and it sums up a lot of his attitudes towards the jobs he constantly keeps walking off:

People after my money always have an interesting way of describing it, as if my money was just a pain in my ass. Nobody who wants you to buy something from them reminds you how many days you had to get up early an drag your ass into work, how much humiliation you had to endure from abusive bosses and the eternally irritated public, just so you could earn that money. (38)

This distrust of authority colors Levison’s general experience and makes the reader much more interested in his journey as he goes from one job to the next. He knows the rules of the corporations, he knows how jobs works, but damn if he won’t try to make them work for himself too. And when they don’t? He walks.

Situations in which the job in question does not result in Levison walking or being let go are few and far between, but one of the more promising jobs that he held was hooking people up with illegal cable television. Often theses are people who simply wanted free cable or were previously harassed by the cable companies.

Here, Levison offers a perfectly good service, for a low rate (he charges one guy only $50 for a job that takes him only a few minutes to do and will give the client many hours of entertainment) and doing so rather casually and informally.

First, he does it for a friend and then a friend of that friend and then their cousins and well, you get the idea. Eventually Levison is providing free cable to the community and with no regard for government regulations, paying taxes on his income or following any legal codes that may be involved.

Levison’s rationale for this enterprise fits very comfortably within the tradition of agorism:

Contrary to what the ads would have you believe, stealing cable is an act of civil disobedience which would make Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi proud. The word “pirates” is often ascribed to cable thieves, a word used by the media, most of which are owned by the same people who own the cable networks. They try to convince us that the cable thieves are eroding American morality. Closing profitable factories, laying off hundreds of workers and reopening the factories in Mexico with cheaper labor is not indicative of an erosion of morality. Paying mushroom pickers four dollars an hour is not illegal. Watching Pop-up Video for free, now that’s a crime. (47)

Here, Levison shows an interesting mix of criticizing the illegality and morality conflation that many people often make but also implies that things like workers wages should be authorized by law instead of community organizing. Regardless, Levison’s point about illegal cable is definitely on point and helped him justify his agorist activities. Unfortunately this job does not last long for him, due to having a limited reach, audience and transportation ability.

As the book goes on though Levison tries to play the game more and more to see just how well off he can be.

At first he tries to just get by and see if he can get away with stealing, being generally disinterested in moving up or ascending to any certain role. But as we get to chapter three we see Levison acquiescing (albeit unenthusiastically) to a chance at moving up the corporate ladder in a restaurant. And before Levison knows it, one of the managers hears he is “interested” in a management position. When asked how much money he would like to make as a manager he list an outrageous amount far above and beyond what any of the other managers are making. Somehow they not only take it under consideration (even though Levison meant it as a signal that he was not serious), but give him the job.

Ironically, within two days of this promotion, Levison is let go/quits. This is partly due to all of the blame being put on him for anything that goes wrong — even if he had nothing to do with it. He is given way too many duties and not enough time to do them. Consequently the higher-ups blame him for not being able to keep up even though they probably would not be able to do it themselves.

Levison tries to keep up but he just can’t compete with, what Kevin Carson has called, “authority’s tendency to engage in magical thinking“:

“We’re not paying you this kind of money to just wander around,” he tells me. “Call another restaurant and get them to lend us some grease.”

This makes sense, and while I am doing it, he comes in and screams about the lettuce.

“We’ve got lettuce rotting in the back of the freezer! Why aren’t you rotating it?”

“I’ve been making onion rings, I tell him. You’re not supposed to be making onion rings. You’re supposed to be managing. Get someone else to make the onion rings I want you watching the lettuce and fry oil quality!”
He’s living in a dreamworld. We’re fresh out of employees. He thinks we have prep cooks lined up drying to work. In reality, if we’ve got three prep shifts a week covered, I’m happy. (59)

The bottom line for Levison is that he’d rather scratch by and have more time to himself, than be a manager, over-worked, have too many duties and responsibilities, and then blamed when he can’t keep up. I’ve heard other people who, when promoted, only get marginally more pay and just end up being saddled with disproportionately more things to do than otherwise. You may be higher up the hierarchy, but that doesn’t mean you’re still not being shit on.

It turns out though that even Levison’s attempts to be distant from hierarchy, but still gaming it, eventually subsumes him while in Alaska.

Working in Alaska is probably the biggest part of the book, it covers Levison working multiple jobs. Working at Rayford Seafoods doing fishery work, loading boxes on a ship, putting fish onto a conveyor belt and trying to net crabs on the rough oceans.

A shift in Levison happens during his time of working on a ship called the Royal Garden while he is working the freezer room with a kid named William. William has a bad home life and seems to be there because he wants the money to get away from his bad home life. He has a reputation already for being a slow worker and fairly apathetic about most things.

Instead of wanting to show some slacker solidarity with William, Levison in his role as a supervisor of the freezer room takes it as a challenge:

I’m gonna turn this kid around. By the time I’m through with him, he’s going to love these boxes, he’s going to protest when they tell him to take a break. This is my freeze and down here we work or we freeze. (p. 120)

This is a total 180 from where Levison was coming from before. He would slack, lie, cheat, steal and do just about whatever it took to get into a job, stay at a job or get away from a job. Levison was not concerned with dirty hands but he sure didn’t seem to want to dirty other people’s hands unless they wanted to get involved. In this case though he seems to have accepted his institutional role as supervisor (of a freezer) and use that role to its fullest advantage.

That full advantage consists of Levison first trying to reason, then yelling and finally being loud and obnoxious towards William.

Eventually, Levison breaks down:

I stack my box and another of his falls. “Dickhead, pick up your boxes! This isn’t break time!” I’ve never worked with anyone before who has achieved his level of apathy. I’m not giving up. He’s my personal experiment, and I’m going to turn him into a finely tuned, box-stacking machine. “Get your box!”

He sits and stares. I walk over to him and put my face in his face. “Get your box! Get your box! Get your box! GET YOUR GODDAMNED MOTHERFUCKING PIECE OF SHIT BOX!

He gets up and wordlessly gets back to his work. (pp. 120-1)

Here, Levison has completed his transition.

He has gone from a slacker, a short-lived agorist and a general embodiment of skepticism and rebellion towards work to the person who is only begrudgingly going along with going up the ladder and, now, to someone who has embraced his role as a supervisor. Those of us who are rebelling against this system can only shake our heads in disappointment.

Levison then proceeds to enthusiastically embrace it by going on and on about what work can do for William and what it will do for Levison himself. He admits that he is too wrapped up in his own enthusiasm, but makes no other self-aware commentary in retrospect.

This situation highlights the biggest flaw with Levison and his book: He doesn’t seem to recognize the inherent flaws that come with hierarchy, corporations and the modern economy. He treats work as an annoyance. Something that is systematically wrong, but, in the end, not something that should be subverted but placated or weaseled around in minor ways. Levison, towards the end of the book does not give us any answers or try to, unlike Ehrenreich does in Nickel and Dimed. He does not give any insight on policy reforms, any bottom up labor movements that could spring, how to revitalize some sort of unionization of workers or how to turn the world around from the way it seems to be going.

In the end Levison stops short of offering much in the way of solutions. He gives us much to think about, to complain about and things to grapple with that he notices on his travels. But offers us little solace, besides the chuckles, we can have for ourselves. All the while we try to convince ourselves that we’re not just laughing at our own lives that seem so dominated by work.

To be sure, it is not an entirely bad thing that Levison doesn’t engage in trying to advocate solutions. It seems probable that his failure to call people to action is part of his own sardonic sense and his lack of interest or hope in a future. There are no long-term investments in the world for Levison. And with that in mind it makes no sense for Levison to give out breadcrumbs to the rest of us insincerely. Levison is anything but insincere about his opinions throughout the book when he addresses us, so why stop there?

It’s hard not to come away from the book rather dazed and confused about what exactly there is to be done or what Levison wanted us to get out of it. We may now recognize work as a systematic problem, that contracts in the current market are largely constructed by and for the benefit of employers, that state regulations only do so much to protect workers from exploitation (read: not much) and so on. But what’s to be done about this? Again, Levison offers us little in the way of solutions or solace and perhaps that’s for the best.

Because Levison’s book isn’t about solutions, raising political movements or trying to get out of being a “working stiff”. It’s instead recognizing the absurdity of it all and diving headlong into it with few regrets and just seeing how “stiff” you can be while still reclaiming your soul. Levison isn’t trying to start a revolution or even start local movements, he’s just chronicling the awful effects that work has had on people that he’s noticed. Giving us solutions would ruin the jester persona that Levison seems to have adopted.

Instead of taking his respectable place as another useful anti-authoritarian jester, Levison seems to prefer a two-piece suit.

On Saturday, January 17, the Yellow Stone River, perhaps the most celebrated aquatic system in North America, was heavily contaminated by nearly 1200 barrels of oil. Al Jazeera America reports the leak’s environmental damage stretches from the river to surrounding farmland in Glendive, Montana.

Particularly, the report tells the story of Dena Hoff, now experiencing tragedy at the hands of the oil industry once again. Al Jazeera notes: “When an oil pipeline burst in July 2011 and poured 63,000 gallons of crude into the Yellowstone River 200 miles upstream from Dena Hoff’s farm … she felt disgusted. When it happened again … she felt terror.”

She felt terror for good reason. Benzene, a carcinogen, made its way into the municipal water system. With the stench of diesel heavy in the air, disaster and uncertainty once again lingered over this small prairie town. It was not until Friday, January 23, that the town’s folk could once again cook with, bathe in and drink water from their own faucets.

Industrial disasters are particularly damaging. The uncertainty and terror experienced in Glendive mimics emotions felt by the Elk River, West Virginia community who experienced a slurry spill last year, or the countless rural communities above shale deposits that have lost their water to thermogenic bacteria linked to natural gas extraction. These atrocities continue despite growing and substantial scholarly research that notes severe environmental and public health concerns regarding the lack of oversight to such resource extraction.

This uncertainty leads to the production of quiescence.

But quiescence be damned. We need not accept the rule of the corporate sector, nor the desires of a few hundred bureaucratic suits in a congressional chamber.

The work of famed economist and political theorist Elinor Ostrom demonstrates that democratic governance is not only possible, but ultimately desirable. A growing consensus that we should not be subject to hegemonic institutions is growing like wildfire. In fact, ideas of adaptive governance and stakeholder approaches to natural resource management are now the norm among professionals practicing policy and conflict resolution. Ostrom, and the people she inspired, demonstrate that with agency we can re-imagine and manage the commons.

This is good for our communities. The commons redistributed power to where it should naturally lie: With place. Place connections are incredibly important. From the currents of Yellowstone to our still canyons, the great plains, mountain hollers and everything in between, land is legacy. Resources of course must be exploited, but with polycentric decision-making human beings will not be subject to the wishes of the state, but instead to community needs. Here, resources will be distributed by environmental pressures and a grand, renewed conservation ethic will emerge. We can reclaim the power that is rightly ours and build a society worthy of our future generations.

As good as adaptive governance is for us, just imagine the implications for the natural world. Vast landscapes no longer viewed for extraction, will instead be felt as a connection — an equal in governance.

I offer this ode to Yellowstone: You will continue to carve the land. Under the big sky and ever southward, from the mountainous north and across the plains, your currents will sing, your ice will whisper and your mists will eddy your banks. You will evolve wild and free, bound only by the depths of time. May your power be great, your adventures long and your liberty untamed.

Tutto questo parlare di terrorismo serve soltanto a mascherare l’impulso alla guerra con una retorica vittimistica. Vedete, la Francia non è “in guerra”, ma sta solo rispondendo ad attacchi “terroristici”. Quei vili, miserabili banditi non sono guerrieri o soldati, ma pazzi, cani sciolti del terrore.

Senza questo ragionamento, l’assalto agli uffici di Charlie Hebdo del sette gennaio dovrebbe essere considerato un’invasione, un attacco da parte di forze esterne a cui la Francia ha dichiarato guerra. Ma la guerra è troppo brutale per essere accettata nel ventunesimo secolo, un’epoca in cui la violenza sarebbe inevitabilmente in calo e la pace giusto dietro l’angolo se non fosse per gli atti di quattro cellule terroristiche.

Dire che questi eventi sono “terroristici” è solo un modo per alienare il concetto di guerra dalla popolazione. Un attacco nel territorio di una nazione occidentale è sempre terrorismo, è assolutamente immeritato, mai la conseguenza di un conflitto mondiale ma semplicemente il risultato dell’attività di pochi pazzi.

Non lasciatevi incantare da questa terminologia politicamente corretta. C’è una guerra, molte nazioni occidentali ne sono coinvolte, e gli attacchi sotto casa tua ne sono il risultato. Forse i neoconservatori sarebbero un po’ meno noiosi se la smettessero di mascherare la realtà. Se davvero ci si parlasse onestamente, forse la gente esiterebbe a scegliere di stare risolutamente da una parte e dire che gli altri sono semplicemente barbari impazziti. Questo servirebbe almeno a chiarire le intenzioni delle persone, e noi potremmo dare un giudizio più accurato sulla situazione.

Ogni atto di guerra comporta terrore. In guerra, l’orrore non è un prodotto secondario ma l’intenzione. Guerra e terrore non si possono separare più di quanto non si possano separare sesso e piacere. Trattare una delle parti in conflitto come il prodotto di un semplice scatto emotivo di una determinata costituente geopolitica rafforza il bigottismo della società, che così si convince di stare sempre dalla parte del diritto, e non vede che tutto il Medio Oriente è costantemente immerso in un ambiente terroristico creato dall’occidente.

Questa retorica vittimistica è forse un prodotto del mondo militare occidentale e dei media burattini perché loro conoscono la terribile verità: che i terroristi islamici sanno meglio degli altri come provocare un senso di impotenza. Se, da un lato, è bene non sottovalutare gli effetti psicologici delle guerre terroristiche occidentali sul mondo arabo (e oltre), non è difficile notare come la reazione degli occidentali agli attacchi sia molto più spaventata, e questo perché per tanto tempo sono stati protetti dagli effetti della guerra.

Questo non significa che il loro panico è ingiustificato. È perfettamente normale avere paura e diventare aggressivi quando si intuisce non esistono luoghi pubblici sicuri, che un qualunque gruppo estremistico potrebbe, in qualunque momento, decidere di trasformarli in un obiettivo dei loro programmi politici violenti. Ma poiché il loro è un atto di terrorismo e la nostra una guerra di difesa (o intervento umanitario, per usare un linguaggio più nauseante e distorto), noi come civiltà nei nostri discorsi non ci troviamo mai ad affrontare questa realtà tanto orribile.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

No último dia 14, a Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária (Anvisa) liberou o uso medicinal do canadibiol (CDB), um dos princípios ativos da maconha. A aprovação veio após mais de 9 meses desde que o vídeo Ilegal foi lançado no Youtube, o qual expunha como o estado brasileiro impedia uma mãe de tratar legalmente de sua filha de 5 anos que sofre de uma forma rara de epilepsia ao vetar o uso medicinal da maconha. A única alternativa da mãe, Katiele, era a desobediência civil, com a importação ilegal do remédio.

A mobilização que se seguiu ao vídeo foi impressionante e forçou o estado a ceder, mesmo que atrasado: enquanto os burocratas discutiam, Gustavo Guedes, de um ano e quatro meses, que sofria da Síndrome de Dravet e aguardava a liberação do CDB, morreu em junho do ano passado.

A recente aprovação foi uma vitória, mas parcial, como afirma Rafael Morato Zanatto (“CDB: vitória com sabor de derrota“, Cannabica). De acordo com Zanatto, o lobby reacionário pressionou para que a vitória fosse apenas parcial: o CDB foi aprovado, mas o THC não — embora não exista extrato de CDB sem THC. O objetivo desses setores é dissociar completamente o uso medicinal do uso recreativo da maconha, mesmo que para isso tenham de contradizer-se ou ignorar evidências:

Na reunião em que foi decidida [a] reclassificação do CBD, foi dito que não há evidências de que o THC possua qualquer atribuição medicinal. A Anvisa parece não conhecer ou ter raiva de quem conhece as funções medicinais do THC, como para dores crônicas e esclerose múltipla, como foi tratado detalhadamente no IV Simpósio Internacional de Cannabis Medicinal.

Também não há ainda qualquer possibilidade de produção nacional do CDB. É possível importá-lo legalmente, mas as perspectivas para sua produção no próprio Brasil são escassas.

De fato, o plantio por pessoas físicas continua completamente vedado; apenas pessoas jurídicas podem solicitar autorização e fazer o plantio, deixando os usuários à mercê das corporações.

Rafael recomenda que, em face dessa situação, deve haver um aprofundamento do debate e da mobilização da sociedade civil:

O que temos pela frente? “Devemos trabalhar pela base, mais e mais pela base”, a partir da difusão de ideias e modelos, paradigmas capazes de atender a demanda nacional pela maconha. Não falo aqui da divulgação midiática, […] mas de um profundo trabalho de organização da sociedade civil, a partir de associações, movimentos antiproibicionistas, pesquisas acadêmicas, condensando esforços para a ampliação das liberdades civis e do desenvolvimento de uma indústria competitiva de cannabis.

Mas a mobilização deve ir além. Todas as drogas devem ser descriminalizadas e legalizadas imediatamente. A guerra às drogas como um todo precisa acabar. E é preciso conscientizar o público que a insegurança de nossas cidades é causada pela criminalização dessas substâncias.

A tendência para o endurecimento das leis de drogas brasileiras é clara após as eleições de 2014, que elegeu vários congressistas com palanques estridentes antidrogas. O discurso é de endurecimento a legislação criminal para “garantir” segurança aos brasileiros. É uma receita demagógica para o fracasso e para a paulatina supressão de direitos individuais.

Portanto, é momento de celebrar que essa batalha pela maconha medicinal foi vencida. Afinal, a demora do estado em ceder à sua aprovação era medida pelo sofrimento e pela morte de crianças deficientes. Mas a guerra às drogas continua — outra guerra cujo impacto é medido em mortes pelo tráfico e pela polícia.

A bandeira da legalização das drogas — para uso medicinal e recreativo — é a bandeira da paz e da liberdade. Para o estado, o CDB e o THC são apenas siglas e o combate às drogas é só mais uma estatística. Para a sociedade, são vidas.

At roughly 5 pm CST (January 22, 2015), Brad Spangler confessed in a Facebook post to the 2004 molestation of a child and expressed his intention to turn himself in to the police. He has not posted anything, nor, so far as we know, otherwise communicated — to the contrary, or for that matter at all — in the intervening time. No other evidence or circumstances have come to light to suggest that his confession was false, fake or coerced.

The Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) finds his monstrous actions and the way in which he admitted them utterly abhorrent and completely counter to the values C4SS stands for.

There is absolutely no avoiding the elephant in the room: Spangler co-founded C4SS. He was a key builder of its infrastructure. But he has not been a part of C4SS for a long time, either publicly or behind the scenes. His biography on the website erroneously listed him as a Senior Fellow until yesterday; that description should have been changed long ago simply for accuracy’s sake. Due to this oversight, C4SS is working on approving a proposal for identifying and removing associates who have “abandoned” C4SS due to lack of communication or participation.

C4SS has changed substantially over the years as we’ve grown and Spangler does not represent us. Rather than continue to host the writing of a child molester and to make clear our strenuous disassociation we’ve removed his historical posts from our site. At the same time we do not mean to disingenuously “memoryhole” Spangler’s unfortunate legacy and will be archiving his historical content on another site, the Spangler Pensieve.

Spangler’s admission was a heavy blow to us, but whatever discomfort our organization experiences over the coming months is nothing in comparison to the pain the survivor of Spangler’s actions has suffered for a decade, nor the pain that survivor is surely being forced to relive as a result of his selfishness. The survivor deserves the chance to heal. We will respect the survivor’s space, and offer our assistance should it ever be needed or wanted. To further this end, C4SS will be donating $200 from our Entrepreneurial Anti-capitalism fund to generationFive. [G]enerationFive “works to interrupt and mend the intergenerational impact of child sexual abuse on individuals, families, and communities. It is our belief that meaningful community response is the key to effective prevention.”

We would like to close with some quotes from Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements:

Time and again heterosexual men in radical movements have been allowed to assert their privilege and subordinate others. Despite all that we say to the contrary, the fact is that radical social movements and organizations in the United States have refused to seriously address gender violence [1] as a threat to the survival of our struggles. We’ve treated misogyny, homophobia, and heterosexism as lesser evils—secondary issues—that will eventually take care of themselves or fade into the background once the “real” issues—racism, the police, class inequality, U.S. wars of aggression—are resolved. There are serious consequences for choosing ignorance. Misogyny and homophobia are central to the reproduction of violence in radical activist communities. Scratch a misogynist and you’ll find a homophobe. Scratch a little deeper and you might find the makings of a future informant (or someone who just destabilizes movements like informants do). …

As angry as gender violence on the Left makes me, I am hopeful. I believe we have the capacity to change and create more justice in our movements. We don’t have to start witch hunts to reveal misogynists and informants. They out themselves every time they refuse to apologize, take ownership of their actions, start conflicts and refuse to work them out through consensus, mistreat their compañer@s. We don’t have to look for them, but when we are presented with their destructive behaviors we have to hold them accountable. Our strategies don’t have to be punitive; people are entitled to their mistakes. But we should expect that people will own those actions and not allow them to become a pattern.

We have a right to be angry when the communities we build that are supposed to be the model for a better, more just world harbor the same kinds of antiqueer, antiwoman, racist violence that pervades society. As radical organizers we must hold each other accountable and not enable misogynists to assert so much power in these spaces. Not allow them to be the faces, voices, and leaders of these movements. Not allow them to rape a compañera and then be on the fucking five o’ clock news. […] By not allowing misogyny to take root in our communities and movements, we not only protect ourselves from the efforts of the state to destroy our work but also create stronger movements that cannot be destroyed from within.

[1] I use the term gender violence to refer to the ways in which homophobia and misogyny are rooted in heteronormative understandings of gender identity and gender roles. Heterosexism not only polices non-normative sexualities but also reproduces normative gender roles and identities that reinforce the logic of patriarchy and male privilege.

Translations for this blog post:

• Spanish, Libertad de desvinculación: Acerca de Brad Spangler

Yesterday, a statement was posted to the facebook wall of Brad Spangler, co-founder and former fellow of C4SS. It admitted to molesting a child.

We are floored, dismayed and horrified by this post. If it is genuine, we utterly condemn Spangler’s actions.

We are in the process of confirming facts and composing a more detailed statement.

The Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) has named Grant A. Mincy its first Elinor Ostrom Chair in Environmental Studies and Commons Governance.

Mincy holds a chair on the Energy & Environment Advisory Council for the Our America Initiative and an Associate editor of the Molinari Review. He earned his Masters degree in Earth and Planetary Science from the University of Tennessee in the summer of 2012. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee where he teaches both Biology and Geology at area colleges.

Mincy is a fellow of C4SS and has been writing with C4SS for almost two years. He has had commentaries published in many countries and in several languages. He has already published one academic study, Power and Property: A Corollary, with C4SS and is currently working on his second. His work has focused on issues of environment, ecology, commons governance, power of place, climate change, education, communication technology, resilient communities and the importance of anarchism to any social theory claiming justice, peace and prosperity as its values.

This chair is named in honor of the brilliant, prolific and passionate economist and political scientist Elinor Ostrom. Ostrom’s life, work, Workshop (research databases and libraries) and “a 50 year legacy of nurturing young scholars focused on solutions oriented research” demonstrates a powerful commitment to describing a a world beyond states and capitalism. A world where people are not at the mercy of the scarcity facts of the universe or the monocentric institutions desperately presumed as our only means of salvation. A world where people, communities, environments and resources are all important parts of governance problems and their quick-fix “Faustian Bargain” solutions are kept in view, in check, impossible and irrelevant.

We look forward to seeing how Mincy’s research and writing develops and enriches our understanding of Environmental Studies and Commons Governance for a stateless society.

Economist, political scientist, game theorist, professor, co-director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, detailed researcher, scholar of polycentric institutional systems, and Nobel Prize winner: Elinor Ostrom.

The Elinor Ostrom Chair in Environmental Studies and Commons Governance is the fourth academic position created by the Trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society. Each chair is designed and charged with advancing our understanding of what constitutes a flourishing stateless society. The Elinor Ostrom Chair in Environmental Studies and Commons Governance has a special focus on environmental-ecological concerns, common-pool resources, horizontal-collaborative governance and the polycentric structures that promise their viability and endurance.

It is named in honor of the brilliant, prolific and passionate economist and political scientist Elinor Ostrom. Ostrom’s life, work, Workshop (research databases and libraries) and “a 50 year legacy of nurturing young scholars focused on solutions oriented research” demonstrates a powerful commitment to describing a a world beyond states and capitalism. A world where people are not at the mercy of the scarcity facts of the universe or the monocentric institutions desperately presumed as our only means of salvation. A world where people, communities, environments and resources are all important parts of governance problems and their quick-fix “Faustian Bargain” solutions are kept in view, in check, impossible and irrelevant.

Kevin Carson described Elinor Ostrom as “characterized above all by a faith in human creativity and agency, and an unwillingness to let a priori theoretical formulations either preempt [her] perceptions of the particularity and “is-ness” of history, or to interfere with the ability of ordinary, face-to-face groupings of people on the spot to develop workable arrangements — whatever they may be — among themselves.”

This is the charge of The Elinor Ostrom Chair in Environmental Studies and Commons Governance, to communicate, in detail, not only the importance and benefits of a stateless society to environmental concerns and issues of common-pool resource governance, but its advantages.

To be awarded The Elinor Ostrom Chair in Environmental Studies and Commons Governance position signals a scholar’s energy and capacity to contribute, in outstanding ways, to that interdisciplinary field of social theory — drawing on resources in ecology, economics, philosophy, sociology, history, among other fields — known as Environmental Studies and Commons Governance.

As usual, the State of the Union address was a top to bottom massacre of verbiage. Every year the English language struggles to survive an onslaught of what can only be described as total verbal hangover from a year of rhetorical binge drinking. Somehow, some way, one man manages to stand on a platform (while two other guys sit awkwardly behind him clapping every now and then) and sum up a bunch of nonsense over the course of an hour or more.

The results are never pretty and picking out something objectionable is easier than shooting fish in a barrel. But if I had to pick one of the most egregious quotes from Obama it’s this: “[W]e defend free speech, and advocate for political prisoners, and condemn the persecution of women, or religious minorities, or people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.”

Mr. President, do you know who Chelsea Manning is?

I mean, you seem to know who she is. You’ve said in the past that Manning is guilty of  “breaking the law,”  thus implying that she deserves her sentence of up to 35 years in prison. And you’ve also commented that the Pentagon assures you that her conditions are “appropriate and are meeting our basic standards” when she was put in solitary confinement.

This, despite the fact that, at the time, she was being “… confined for 23 hours a day to a single cell, measuring around 72 square feet, equipped only with a bed, toilet and sink.” And the fact that it was an illegally lengthy pretrial detention didn’t seem to matter much to Obama either, despite there being pretty good grounds for it being a human rights violation.

As the Center for a Stateless Society’s Nathan Goodman wrote, “UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez investigated the conditions under which Manning was held and concluded ‘that the 11 months under conditions of solitary confinement … constitutes at a minimum cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of article 16 of the convention against torture. If the effects in regards to pain and suffering inflicted on Manning were more severe, they could constitute torture.'”

Given this history of knowing ignorance, how could Obama not know about Chelsea Manning? Obama’s history of protecting other big political dissidents is also abysmal. Just ask Edward Snowden, who had to flee the country to make sure he wasn’t detained like Chelsea Manning, before he released information to the public that the government found embarrassing. Is that a sign of a free society?

I suspect Obama does know who Chelsea Manning is, but for some reason she doesn’t count as someone who has been persecuted for her struggles as someone who is transgender — despite the fact that during her pre-trial hearing Marine Corps Master Sgt. Craig Blenis defended the pretrial detention on the basis of Manning’s gender dysphoria because “that’s not normal, sir.”

So does persecution of transgender people only count when governments aren’t the persecutors? Is Chelsea Manning not a victim of persecution much like the inordinate number of other trans people locked in prison? And what is Manning if not a political prisoner who has been locked away for up to 35 years because she helped an undefined enemy in some nebulous and apparently impossible to argue for way?

At the heart of this is Obama’s ability to both recognize and obfuscate. Sure he knows about Chelsea Manning, but the question is whether or not he cares. With statements like the one he made in his address, we can see the answer before us quite clearly.

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The State as Stay Puft Marshmallow Man” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford.

Sometimes the capitalist state’s internal rules and procedures, created to serve an economic ruling class, in specific cases wind up sabotaging the very interests they were created to serve. Much like the Catholic doctrine of concupiscence (the “war within my members” St. Paul wrote about), the legal framework and administrative machinery created to maintain capitalism takes on a life and internal logic of their own. Or if you’re more familiar with Ghostbusters, when the destructor assumes a form it’s limited by all the weaknesses the laws of its own nature impose on that form.

Authoritarian hierarchies will die because they’re built on conflict of interest. They can’t trust their subordinates with discretion to use their own judgment or situational knowledge, so they create standard operating procedures, “best practices” and Weberian work rules that degrade everybody’s effectiveness. In order to limit the discretion of subordinates to harm the system, they must limit their discretion to use their own knowledge most effectively. The system doesn’t know what the system knows; the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Feed 44:

• http://www.c4ss.org/
• http://www.youtube.com/user/c4ssvideos
• https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2
• http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smash-walls-radio/c4ss-media?refid=stpr
• https://twitter.com/C4SSmedia

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On January 14 the US Department of Justice announced that the Joint Terrorism Task Force had disrupted the latest “domestic terrorism plot” — this time by “a Cincinnati-area man … to attack the U.S. Capital and kill government officials.” House Speaker  John Boehner immediately cited the disrupted plot as evidence that Congress should think carefully before refusing to renew the NSA’s bulk data collection powers. Only it turns out the feds had at least as much to do with hatching the plot as did the alleged plotter, Christopher Cornell.

The FBI investigator became aware of Cornell’s pro-ISIS comments on Twitter thanks to a tip-off from an unnamed informant who “began cooperating with the FBI in order to obtain favorable treatment with respect to his criminal exposure on an unrelated case.” The informant, on FBI orders, arranged two meetings with Cornell where they discussed attacks on the capital, after which the FBI arrested him to “prevent” the attacks. In other words, it identified Cornell as a suspect entirely on the basis of his expression of radical political opinions, with the help of a jailhouse snitch who rolled over in response to prosecutorial blackmail. And the actual “plot” was worked out only in subsequently arranged meetings in which one party — working for the FBI — may well have been leading Cornell. It wasn’t for nothing that ecological activist Judi Bari said “the first person to mention bringing dynamite is probably a fed.”

In this the Cornell case has a lot in common with a great many other so-called “domestic terrorism plots” federal law enforcement has “disrupted,” going back to the Lackawanna Six. A good example is the so-called “plot” of the Newburgh Four, who supposedly plotted to blow up synagogues and attack a military base. The judge commented that the government “came up with the crime, provided the means, and removed all relevant obstacles,” in the process making a terrorist out of a man “whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope” (“US: Terrorism Prosecutions Often An Illusion,” Human Rights Watch, July 21, 2014).

This reminds me of a story I read — from Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, I think — about a software company that offered programmers a bonus for every bug they detected in code. Predictably, creating bugs to “detect” became a major source of revenue for employees. H.L. Mencken once remarked on government’s tendency “to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

We see this in the dismaying, Starship Troopers-like media narrative involving any and all armed government personnel in uniform. Last weekend’s highest U.S. box office receipts came not from Selma (the story of oppressed people organizing to fight for their freedom) but from American Sniper. The latter movie glorifies a vile wretch who gloated over all the “savages” (his word for any male age 16 to 60) he murdered in Iraq, on the grounds that he was saving American troops from being shot at. Never mind that the people in Iraq were shooting back at an invading army in their own country. Domestically, we see the same phenomenon with shows like COPS, and local news coverage of police in paramilitary gear (breathlessly referred to as “the authorities” by nitwit reporters) storming alleged “meth labs.”

And remember, the very concept of a “sting operation” (also known as “entrapment”) invokes the principle that some human beings are superior to the law. The first professional police forces were justified on the grounds that they were simply being paid to exercise the same posse comitatus powers of “citizen’s arrest” possessed by any other member of society. By that standard, if it’s illegal for an ordinary citizen to solicit or instigate illegal activity, it should be illegal for anyone — including uniformed state officials.

But most importantly, this is an example of how the state mostly “solves” problems of its own making — and has an incentive to keep creating more problems to justify giving it the power and resources to “solve” them.

Translations of this article:

• Spanish, El FBI es excelente para frustrar (sus propios) “complots terroristas”

Com a execução de Marco Archer na Indonésia no último sábado (17/01), por tráfico de cocaína, uma pergunta vem à tona: até que ponto a guerra às drogas irá reverter as conquistas do processo civilizatório com suas penas cruéis e desproporcionais?

Não é apenas a Indonésia que aplica pena de morte para a compra e venda de drogas proibidas. De acordo com relatório da Harm Reduction International, organização que defende políticas de redução de danos para as drogas, 33 países e territórios preveem pena de morte por crimes de drogas — em 13 deles a sentença é obrigatória.

A situação desses países é anômala até mesmo para os parâmetros internacionais da guerra às drogas, como definidos pelo Escritório de Drogas e Crimes da ONU. Em uma nota de 2010, o diretor executivo do órgão afirma que a política de drogas deve estar sujeita ao direito internacional dos direitos humanos: a pena de morte, se existir, deve estar restrita a crimes que atentam contra a vida.

O princípio do direito internacional é radical: o estado não pode ter a última palavra quanto a nossos direitos. Contudo, contraditoriamente, ele reconhece a legitimidade do estado para criminalizar as drogas e acaba autorizando sua brutalidade, tanto explícita como no caso da Indonésia como as mais sutis que encontramos em países do Ocidente.

Um relatório da ACLU (União Americana pelas Liberdades Civis), de 2013, mostrou que, no sistema penitenciário norte-americano, mais de 3.000 detentos estavam presos condenados à prisão perpétua sem direito à liberdade condicional por crimes não violentos, abrangendo desde delitos de drogas até contra a propriedade.

Casos como o de Dale Wayne Green são frequentes: condenado à prisão perpétua sem direito à liberdade condicional por seu papel como um intermediário na venda de maconha no valor de US$ 20. Isso porque essa seria sua “terceira falta”.

Em 2009, incrivelmente, a sentença média em casos de estupro era de 6 anos de prisão, enquanto a lei americana determina penas mínimas pela posse de determinadas quantidades de drogas em 10 anos de prisão, dobrando para 20 em caso de condenação anterior.

No Brasil, a situação é parecida.  Tramita no congresso proposta de lei, que contava com o apoio do candidato de oposição nas últimas eleições, de redução da maioridade penal para “crimes hediondos”, dentre os quais a legislação brasileira inclui o “tráfico ilícito de entorpecentes e drogas afins”.

A tendência para o endurecimento das leis de drogas brasileiras é clara após as eleições de 2014, que elegeu vários congressistas com palanques estridentes antidrogas. Enquanto isso, a presidente reeleita Dilma Rousseff também prometia fortalecer “segurança pública” com mais concentração de poder no governo federal, como durante a Copa do Mundo, defendendo uma integração entre polícias e forças armadas.

As consequências do combate às drogas no país são visíveis: várias cidades brasileiras entraram na lista de cidades com maior número de homicídios do planeta e o país tem uma extensa lista de execuções ligadas ao tráfico – embora extrajudicialmente, claro.

A criminalização das drogas cria o ciclo de violência relacionado à droga atualmente no Brasil. Precisamos lutar pela redução do papel do direito criminal justamente para reduzir a violência. O preço da liberdade é a eterna vigilância, e, em nosso próprio país, temos de ter consciência de que Marco Archer não foi a primeira nem será a última vítima brasileira da guerra às drogas.

A Indonésia é cruel, mas o Brasil não fica tão atrás. Marco Archer provavelmente não sobreviveria nem mesmo aqui.

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Should Labor be Paid or Not?” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Benjamin Tucker, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford.

“Labor” should be paid! Horrible, isn’t it?

Why, I thought that the fact that it is not paid was the whole grievance.

Unpaid labor has been the chief complaint of all Socialists, and that labor should get its reward has been their chief contention. Suppose I had said to Kropotkine that the real question is whether Communism will permit individuals to exchange their labor or products on their own terms. Would Herr Most have been so shocked? Would he have printed that in black type?

Yet in another form I said precisely that.

Feed 44:

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C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Wish You’d Stop Bein’ So Good To Me, Cap’n” read by Erick Vasconcelos and edited by Nick Ford.

Some people might see an internal contradiction between Hoppe’s repeated use of the term “dominated” to describe the role of certain privileged segments of society, and the idea that “libertarian” ideas were formulated by societies based on domination.

But obviously Hoppe does not, since he makes little effort to hide his salivation at the prospect that his avowedly principled belief in self-ownership, non-aggression and rules of initial acquisition will have the effect — just coincidentally, of course — of perpetuating the domination of these same white heterosexual males. So the primary beneficiaries of the ideas of liberty that straight white men invented will be those same straight white men.

Feed 44:

• http://www.c4ss.org/
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• https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2
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• https://twitter.com/C4SSmedia

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O anúncio da Suprema Corte dos Estados Unidos no dia 16 de janeiro que daria um veredito a respeito da constitucionalidade de proibições estaduais ao casamento homossexual tem incitado várias previsíveis reclamações a respeito do ativismo jurídico. Tony Perkins, do Family Research Council (Conselho de Pesquisa da Família, em português) afirma que “não há nada na Constituição que dê aos tribunais o direito de silenciar o povo e impor a todo o país uma redefinição do conceito de casamento”, mas não especifica em nenhum momento onde a constituição dos EUA dá ao governo o poder de se envolver na definição do que é casamento em primeiro lugar.

Na verdade, a trajetória de crescimento do movimento pelos direitos dos gays foi antecipada pelas palavras iniciais do livro The Greening of America (“O esverdeamento dos Estados Unidos”, em português), de Charles A. Reich: “Uma revolução está chegando. Ela não será como as revoluções passadas. Ela será individual e terá origem na cultura, mudando a estrutura política apenas em sua etapa final”. Como o editor da revista Reason Jesse Walker explica: “Ao contrário da retórica de alguns oponentes da ideia, o casamento gay não foi inventado em um laboratório em Washington e imposto ao país por engenheiros sociais. Foi uma ideia que cresceu de baixo para cima e estava viva numa época em que os engenheiros sociais mais típicos achavam que a homossexualidade era uma doença”.

De fato, a resposta política à crescente aceitação social de gays e lésbicas tem sido tão lenta, atrasada e prejudicada pela realpolitik que é difícil para os democratas tomarem crédito por ela. O escritor democrata S.T. Joshi, que assevera que o progresso social-democrata “fará com que a noção de um governo pequeno se torne não mais que uma excentricidade curiosa do passado”, afirma que “é uma ironia singular que, mesmo com administrações republicanas em 16 dos 24 anos entre 1981 e 2005, os direitos dos gays fizeram avanços quase tão revolucionários quanto o movimento pelos direitos das mulheres”. O que ele não menciona é a “ironia” que nesse mesmo período o presidente democrata Bill Clinton foi quem sancionou a Lei de Defesa do Casamento, que permitia que os estados banissem o casamento homossexual.

De acordo com Perkins, a defesa de um casamento somente entre homem e mulher é uma necessidade se o “autogoverno é algo que ainda importa num país que afirma que quem governa é o povo”. Os pioneiros da liberação dos gays, porém, ofereceram alguns ensinamentos a respeito não só desse majoritarismo tacanho, mas também sobre a necessidade social do “governo”. O escritor Oscar Wilde, preso quando vigoravam as leis de decência vitorianas, insistia que “autoridade e compulsão estão fora de questão; todas as associações devem ser voluntárias”. O crítico social Paul Goodman, despedido por sua aberta bissexualidade em 1940, era também não-conformista em sua identificação política, descrita por Casey Nelson Black como “não-marxista, não social-democrata, não ‘realista’ liberal — mas um anarquista” para quem, em suas próprias palavras, “uma sociedade livre não pode ser a substituição da antiga pela nova ordem, mas é a extensão das esferas de ação livre até que elas componham a maior parte da vida social”.

Charles A. Reich errou. O ato final da próxima revolução não será uma mudança da estrutura política, mas a sua destruição.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

Recently, the all-woman’s college Mount Holyoke in South Hadley Massachusetts decided to cancel the play production The Vagina Monologues. This, in turn stopped a tradition of having the play performed on Valentine’s day to raise awareness of violence against women. They cited the play as, among other things, transphobic and having an overly narrow and reductionist view of what it means to be a woman.

A representative of the Theatre Board had this to say:

At its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman… Gender is a wide and varied experience, one that cannot simply be reduced to biological or anatomical distinctions, and many of us who have participated in the show have grown increasingly uncomfortable presenting material that is inherently reductionist and exclusive…

In response, sites like Reason, The Daily Beat and The Guardian have all commented on the story, largely negatively.

One of the main misconceptions I see repeatedly in articles about this story is the accusation that the playwright group is “censoring” or “being censored” and that they’re “banning” discussion of women talking about their vaginas. I think it should be made absolutely clear that the playwright team are the ones who decided to cancel the production of The Vagina Monologues. There was no outside “PC” group of feminists, women or anyone else who told them to do it. As far as I can tell from the new stories I’ve read, the group came to a collective agreement on the matter and decided not to perform it.

The response to this action seems to be mostly based in the idea that this is some sort of censorship, Reason Staff Member Elizabeth Brown says this for instance:

Yet I am a woman with a vagina, and this becomes an area of my concern when people start saying that I shouldn’t reference or acknowledge that—that it’s in fact bad and intolerant so 20th century to even speak about it. … And now, in the name of feminism, “female-validating talk about vaginas is now forbidden,” as one anonymous writer on a Mount Holyoke messageboard put it. “That’s so misogynistic under the guise of ‘progress.'”

Unlike Brown it isn’t clear to me that the playwrights are saying that no one can do this play at other colleges or that they shouldn’t. They simply feel like they shouldn’t and have decided not to do it.

Would people with Brown’s opinion rather they do the show simply because most self-identified women have vaginas? It seems to me like it’s the best choice for the production team to produce what they want rather than simply conform to tradition and keep going with things that they find objectionable.

It also doesn’t seem like the production team has banned “female-validating talk about vaginas…” given that, according to the Campus Reform article on it:

Replacing the play will be Mount Holyoke’s own version that will be trans-inclusive and fix the “problems” supposedly perpetuated by Ensler.

…

The new production, comprised of students’ monologues, will be performed in a fashion reminiscent of the feminist classic.

If the women involved in the play were trying to somehow ban or even minimize female validation then why would they make a new play? Wouldn’t they just do no play at all? And does Brown and others of a similar mind set seriously think that a play that takes trans-inclusivity seriously isn’t going to also reasonably include some things about female empowerment?

Brown does make one solid point though, I don’t know that simply not having trans perspectives makes something trans-phobic. I agree that those perspectives are pertinent and worth having in a play that’s centered around gender and what it means to be a certain gender. I especially agree if the play in question trying to be radical or change how we see the gender dynamic. But I don’t know that having certain focuses is it self a sign of phobia. I may be taking the term too literally though and perhaps the fear is simply that it silences marginalized voices and we should instead be aiming to raise them.

If so, then I agree with this position and applaud the production team for their efforts.

Lizzie Crocker of The Daily Beast has some complaints of her own:

Well, here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: as a woman with a vagina, why shouldn’t I be able to watch this play? If the complaint is that The Vagina Monologues excludes certain women without vaginas and therefore must be struck from the stage, then my complaint is that you’re excluding me from watching something I want to see because my gender remains defined by my biological parts. Isn’t it “reductionist” to deny me the right to see something? When did censorship become a good look for the modern feminist?

One reason I’d offer is that the production team doesn’t want to produce it.

Why, exactly does Crocker feel (dare I say) entitled to see this play? Is she simply supposed to see this play because she has a vagina? Are men with penises suddenly supposed to see a Arnold Schwarzenegger movie every time they feel impotent? Is that their natural move-going right? If so, sign me up!

Regardless, I don’t agree with Crocker that her gender remains defined by her biological parts. I am sure that that’s how she sees them, but not everyone else sees it that way or should have to acquiesce to her view on gender. I’m also baffled by the claims of “reductionism” having much to do with denying someone the right (what right?) to see something. I can’t see what reduction has to do with that or how a production team deciding not to produce the play they have control over is somehow “censorship”.

Under Crocker’s definition, if I had decided not to write this piece because I felt it was too problematic would that now be called “censorship”?

But Crocker goes further:

If we follow Mount Holyoke’s logic, colleges should not stage any plays that are exclusive or derogatory in their representation of gender, race, homosexuality, or any other minority group — which would eliminate Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and yes, female writers like Jane Austen, where female characters may prevail, but only after enduring pain and indignity.

Crocker isn’t clear about how Holyoke’s logic leads to this for starters but even putting that aside why would it eliminate any of the authors she’s talking about? The Vagina Monologues is written specifically about gender issues and has to do with things like feminism and was specifically written to address the problems of being a woman in the late 20th century. If the playwrights don’t feel like it lives up to those specific intentions then why is it so problematic to do their own? Isn’t this just artistic creativity and competition at its finest?

Was Shakespeare and Charles Dickens reveling in gay liberation or focusing on it? Not last I checked.

One of the most interesting criticisms comes from the author of The Vagina Monologues herself, Eve Ensler.

She raises some good points and gives some food for thought:

“I think it’s important to know that I never intended to write a play about what it means to be a woman, that was not what the Vagina Monologues ever intended to be,” Ensler said. “It was a play about what it means to have a vagina. It never said, for example, the definition of a woman is someone who has a vagina … I think that’s a really important distinction.”

Ensler is surely right that we must “be very careful [with] what we say” and that means that, unfortunately, even if Ensler never intended for The Vagina Monologues to be about it, it’s culturally become much more synonymous with what it means to be a woman then what it means to have a vagina.

The cultural perception here is related to a trope called Death of the Author. Whereby the author’s intention have no real effect on the piece itself.

I don’t completely agree with this because, for example, I think it’s very relevant to keep in mind that, for instance, Taylor Swift’s fantastic song Blank Space is intended by her to be a statement of how other people see her and not about how all women are evil psychopaths trying to kill men.

But even with this, I still think Ensler overestimates how much her intention actually matter at this point. The Vagina Monologues took on a life of its own long ago and it seems naive to think that what it means to all of the audiences that have seen it would somehow interpret it how Ensler intended.

An interesting bit of information that the article gives though is that Ensler had added a new piece in 2005 called “They Beat the Girl out of my Boy” which was written entirely by a transgender person. Whether it was ever actually acted by one, it does not specify. It has remained an optional piece since and the Project Theatre group for Holyoke actually had performed it in 2010 but did not continue performing it in the following years.

Erin Murphy, the Project Theatre Chair explained that they,  “…felt that the play didn’t reflect all of the voices of the Mount Holyoke community; as such we decided to create our own…” and added that:

In our discussions among the board, we felt that the monologues in the current core that we perform offered one perspective on the experiences of people of colour, women of colour in society — we totally totally recognise the validity in that. But we felt it was maybe time to hear some other perspectives…

Ensler denies that the play has this general problem citing thousands of actresses who were people of color over the last 20 years. But Murphy may be more specifically feeling that way about the campus and just being unclear about that distinction.

If so, Ensler’s point about clarity and language remains reaffirmed.

It seems that the best position in this case is one of encouraging artists to go towards what creatively inspires them instead of getting bogged down in traditions that they don’t care to repeat anymore. And if that leads to new experimental plays about what gender consists of then I’m all for it.

More free competition, more artistic and creative passion, and way more genital organs on display than you could ever imagine all sound like the benefits of free speech to me. People having to force themselves to do a certain production because it’s “tradition” or the play in question is a “feminist classic” doesn’t sound like a benefit of free speech.

Maybe, when all is said and done, some of the opposition to this action are actually coming at this more from anti-feminist alarmism than an interest in preserving free speech.

The entire purpose of the language of terrorism is to cloak the sentiments of war in a victim rhetoric. You see, France isn’t “at war,” they’re merely responding to “terror” attacks. Those wretched, vile gunmen are not warriors or soldiers, they’re madmen, lone wolf terrorists.

The attack on Charlie Hebdo‘s office on January 7 might otherwise be considered an invasion, an attack from outside forces France has declared war on. But war is far too brutish for the 21st century, where of course violence is on an inevitable downturn and world peace is just around the corner if not for a few meddling terror cells.

Calling such events “terrorism” is just a way of defamiliarizing people with the concept of war. No matter what, an attack on any western nation’s soil is terror, wholly undeserved, never the result of an ongoing worldwide conflict but merely the work of crazed individuals.

Delude yourself no longer with these politically correct terms. There’s a war, many western nations are involved in it, and attacks on your home turf are a result of it. Maybe the neocons would be a little less annoying if they stopped trying to dress this up as something else. Maybe people would be more hesitant to simply pick a side and declare the other side nothing more than barbarous lunatics if we actually talked honestly. It would at least do us all the service of clearing up people’s intentions and allow those around us to judge the situation more accurately.

All acts of war involve terror. The horror of war is not a byproduct, it is the intention. One cannot divorce terror from war anymore than one can divorce pleasure from sex. Treating an entire side of a conflict as the mere triggering of emotions among a geopolitical constituency reinforces that society’s self-righteousness and blinds them to the environment of terror present constantly throughout middle eastern nations that the west has established.

Perhaps this victim rhetoric has been generated by western militaries and media mouthpieces because they know the painful truth: Islamic terrorists are simply more efficient in provoking a feeling of helplessness. While the psychological effects of the west’s war of terror on the Arab world (and beyond) cannot be overstated, it is not difficult to notice just how much more reactive and frightened westerners get when these attacks occur, because they have been sheltered from the results of war for so long.

This is not to say their panic is not without justification. It is perfectly normal to become fearful and aggressive when you realize that no public space is safe, that a group of extremists could, at any moment, decide to make you a target of their violent political agenda. But since theirs is an act of terror and ours an act of defensive war, or more sickeningly twisted, a humanitarian intervention, we as a civilization do not have to come face to face in our discourse on this most horrifying of realities.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, “Terrore” Come Retorica Vittimistica.