On March 31, 1999, The Matrix was released upon the world. This amazing film blended the perfect combination of sci-fi, action, philosophy, and stunning imagery into a powerful and subversive thrill that nobody has been able to replicate.

I didn’t catch it while it was in the theater, but I VHS’d it like crazy in high school. It got my friends and me running on walls and ducking flying objects by bending backwards Neo-like.

The anti-authoritarian tone of the film is pretty obvious. Anyone who doesn’t get it needs to unplug.

The sequels were disappointing. But The Animatrix is definitely worth it for Matrix fans.

The Alliance of the Libertarian Left will attend this summer’s Porcupine Freedom Festival in Lancaster, NH. We hope a large band of ALLies will be there.

The Free State Project, an effort to get liberty-oriented people to move to New Hampshire to concentrate their political influences, holds “Porcfest” to showcase the Granite State in a fun atmosphere. This year the festival is officially June 25 through 28, though some Porcupines will be at the campground earlier in the week.

Even though it’s a Free State Project event, you don’t have to be planning to move to the shire to have a good time. If you’re into market anarchism, voluntaryism, or any free market radicalism, Porcfest is somewhere you want to be. Open bar, open carry, and open marketplaces will all be there in a clever ploy to lure libertarians to New Hampshire (fair warning: there’s a good chance you’ll want to stay). Plenty of fun activities will be planned by Porcfest organizers and self-organizing folks.

Alliance of the Libertarian Left people from a variety of locations will be there to have fun, promote agorism, add a distinctly left libertarian perspective, and represent ALL at a vendor table. We’ll contribute shirts, buttons, mounds of subversive literature, and our cheery personalities to the festivities.

If you need a ride or want to join a rideshare, try the FSP forums. If you’re coming from the Chicago area, Soviet Onion is getting a rideshare together and you can contact him at crimsonavalon[at] gmail.com. If you need to find a ride or have any other questions, you can also email nj.libertarianleft[at] gmail.com. If you’re curious about the Alliance of the Libertarian Left, check out all-left.net. If you’re not familiar with the libertarian left and you see us at Porcfest, we hope you’ll stop by and chat with us.

Don’t miss out on the fun this revolutionary year!

The metal for today’s Metal Monday is provided by Alestorm, True Scottish Pirate Metal.

In the words of keytar-rampaging frontman Christopher Bowes, “This song is about wenches and mead. It is called ‘Wenches and Mead.’”

I had the great experience of seeing them with Tyr and Suidakra last night, and I got some ideas for promoting my writings. The prospect of more people actually being aware of my work makes me want to spend more time on it. So expect some announcements on that end this week.

Speaking of my work, there will be no charge for shipping Bring a Gun to School Day to anywhere in the U.S. for as long as I feel like. So essentially, your savings depend fully on the whim of a madman. Take advantage.

If you’re interested in more current pirates, see this interview of Somali-American rapper K’naan, who also makes good music.

A serious effort to adapt J. Neil Schulman’s award-winning novel Alongside Night into a movie is underway.

The 1979 novel describes the collapse of a broke and desperate United States into peaceful and productive market anarchism. An organization called the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre protects underground networks of trade and works toward the US government’s downfall. Elliot Vreeland, the son of a famous economist based on several real-life figures provides the vantage point for the revolution as he does everything he can to help his family and friends through the crisis.

Agorism is a subset of anarchism which Brad Spangler of the Center for a Stateless Society describes as follows:

Agorism is revolutionary market anarchism.

In a market anarchist society, law and security would be provided by market actors instead of political institutions. Agorists recognize that situation can not develop through political reform. Instead, it will arise as a result of market processes.

As the state is banditry, revolution culminates in the suppression of the criminal state by market providers of security and law. Market demand for such service providers is what will lead to their emergence. Development of that demand will come from economic growth in the sector of the economy that explicitly shuns state involvement (and thus can not turn to the state in its role as monopoly provider of security and law). That sector of the economy is the counter-economy – black and grey markets.

Agorism grew out of the radical free market scene of 1960’s America. Samuel Konkin, the primary architect of agorism, saw the philosophy as a true path to maximizing individual liberty, as opposed to minimal-government movements and political parties which he derided as sellouts to the state capitalist establishment and derisively labeled “minarchy” and “partyarchy.” J. Neil Schulman, author of Alongside Night, was a close associate of Konkin.

Like all books, Alongside Night has things that can be complained about. It lacks a little in depth, for example. However, the book accomplishes everything it sets out to do. Schulman presents a lively and entertaining tale of a bleak future displaced rapidly by a bold and beautiful revolution that had been brewing under the surface for years. The reader is brought into the underground world of the Agora as the main character quickly becomes more involved in the revolution.

J. Neil Schulman is heavily involved in the film project. He wrote the screenplay, which stays true to the novel while incorporating issues ripped from today’s justifiable fears of expanded tyranny and economic collapse. The screenplay is reportedly under serious consideration by a production company with connections to a major studio. A graphic novel based on the screenplay and a massive multiplayer online game are also planned.

This project shows great promise, and if it makes it to the screen I’ll be there. I cannot think of a better time for a film like this to come out.

Soviet Onion recently posted an interview of Penn Jillette in the Forums of the Libertarian Left:

Jillette’s opinion can be briefly summarized.

Real libertarians worship the US Constitution, a document that was written by a conspiracy of reactionaries and recognized as useless by libertarians in the mid-nineteenth century.

Only a savage would ever break a window. The only respectable way to fight oppression is with think tanks underwritten by wealthy capitalists and with marketing gimmicks. It’s a good thing private companies make the tear gas those Libertarian(tm)-Approved government cops are using. Otherwise imagine how many more banks and police cars would have broken windows.

I’m a libertarian because I don’t want someone ruling me personally. Who cares about anyone else?

Laugh at statements that radically condemn the status quo. Do not address their substance.

Tacitly approve anarcho-capitalism by reassuring the establishment that it stands for privatizing oppression.

Reinforce statist distinction between ineffective “peaceful” protestors and offensive “bad” protestors.

Keep your Illusions to yourself Penn. I hope the fat line between you and reality thins out.

Rational Review News Digest carried an interesting story from the Washington Post today.

The government of Pakistan, facing pressure from the West and increasing concern among its own citizens, has been struggling for months to contain an epidemic of religiously cloaked mayhem that is spreading from tribal havens along the Afghan border into the surrounding belt of “settled” areas that are theoretically protected by the state.

Authorities have tried various methods, first using the army to attempt to quash the [fundamentalist and criminal] rebels, and more recently negotiating truces with individual militia groups. Thousands of conflict-zone inhabitants, terrified by government bombing and insurgent brutality, have fled their homes. Few local officials dare visit their constituencies without military escorts.

A few tribal leaders, however, have refused to budge and are urging others to do the same. One of the first was Anwar Kamal Marwat, a former member of Parliament, who decided to organize a self-defense force in 2007 after Taliban militias began kidnapping and threatening people in his native Lakki Marwat district, demanding their support for a holy war.

“We are Muslims, and we know what holy war is. What they were doing was committing crimes,” Marwat, 60, said last week in Peshawar. “They kept threatening us, but our tribe is very united and every village went on alert. We wanted to stop them before the cancer spread. It took many months, but now all their camps are gone, and they have not been back.”

Marwat’s success has been both an inspiration to other vulnerable communities and an embarrassment to the government, whose police are supposed to keep order and whose army is supposed to fight extremists.

A statement likely to resonate with anti-authoritarians came from village council head Fahim ur Rahman, who would probably be called a “warlord” by Western media if he wasn’t fighting against the same people the United States is:

If our tribe were not so united, we would have no hope of defending ourselves. We do not have permission to do this, but we have no choice.”

I really need to find my copy of Elvenking’s Heathenreel. I don’t normally post videos that are just one picture with sound, but this time it’s worth it.

I call shenanigans on the Washington Times article “Study Finds Eating Red Meat Contributes to Risk of Early Death”. What the study actually found was that eating excessive amounts of red meat increases the mortality rate of people over fifty.

The times article says that the study accounted for “other variables that might confound the findings, such as smoking and physical activity.” Since I didn’t find a link to an actual overview of the study, I’ll take that as probably true.

It’s also probably true that people who get most of their nutrients from meat aren’t eating enough of other foods. I have read that the healthy effects of the Mediterranean diet were not decreased at times when meat consumption in Mediterranean countries increased, but I can’t find a source now.

I would also suggest that the dietary needs of the average active twenty-something are different from the needs of the average sixty-something.

The Washington times also notes that “a major reduction in meat consumption would probably have a host of other benefits to society: reducing water shortages and pollution, cutting energy consumption, and tamping down greenhouse gas emissions — all of which are associated with large-scale livestock production.” That sounds like a call for more hunting to me! Break out the buckshot, and remember to plant your veggies.

So, yeah, it’s a good idea to not eat too much red meat, but please don’t act like meatballs are cancer pills. And give me the grape juice that hasn’t spoiled yet.

There is a rally outside of the Israeli embassy going on tonight. I didn’t end up attending. So I’ll attend from the blog.

On March 13, Tristan Anderson, an activist from Oakland, CA, was critically injured when he was shot in the head with a high-velocity teargas projectile by thugs in Israeli Defense Forces uniforms. By all accounts, he was nonviolently protesting the Israeli system of apartheid, perhaps taking pictures, at the time he was attacked. The IDF reportedly fired more teargas into the crowd while well-identified medical personnel attended to Anderson.

According to The Washington Post, the IDF stated that “A full investigation will ensue.” The violent organization’s investigation of its own members’ actions likely centers on how the word “investigation” will take the heat off them for shooting a non-threatening individual in the head.

The US Consul General assures us in bureaucrat-speak that the US government is concerned about its citizens (and apparently not concerned about Palestinians who get killed using weapons the US taxpayer is forced to buy). Perhaps the US government will learn things it will find useful when stealing peoples’ land to build that border wall that Ron Paul approves of.

Hopefully Anderson will recover and not be another notch in the gunstock of the state, a dangerous form of social organization that directly killed over 300 million people in the twentieth century alone, and killed countless more due to conditions it creates.

Here’s Iron Maiden playing The Wicker Man, one of my all time favorites. The video is from Rock in Rio.