Anarchoblogs from Occupied Cascadia

Arthur Silber brings us a satire of the Obama administration’s belief that they can kill anyone, anywhere, for opposing American foreign policy. In this, they are admittedly no different from any other American administration, but their power is ever-increasing. Soon drones will be deployed against American citizens. How long will it take until Americans are declared “enemy combatants” and killed inside the US, as they are currently outside the US?

ENORD: I mentioned that I had a meeting with DO-DON’T recently. They reminded me how important my program is, and how important debates like this are to America, the greatest country in the history of the world! And they explained how they wanted to show all of you how transparent, open and serious this process is. The government’s expert panel of psychiatrists has been watching this program, and they tragically had to conclude that Johnny Mebbenuts satisfies all the criteria required for a finding that a person is a “lost cause.” Not just one or two of them, but all of them. If Mebbenuts continued to live, he’d be taking food out of your mouths, out of the mouths of your children! This crisis demands action. No one is happy about any of this, but the government wants only what is best for us, that is, those of us who are good, normal Americans. Your lives and well-being, and the lives of those you love including your children, are threatened by people who consistently demonstrate that they are Enemies of the State. And [his voice rises triumphantly] that’s the name of our new program segment: Enemy of the State! [On cue, the audience begins chanting: "Enemy of the State! Enemy of the State!" The chant grows louder and louder during the following.]

ENORD: I want to emphasize that all of this has been done in a completely open manner. You’ve seen all of it. You’ve heard Mebbenuts condemn himself with his own statements. No one made him say any of those things. He said what he truly and genuinely believes. He believes the worst of our government, the best government the world has ever seen! He believes the government is murdering people when it doesn’t have to! Can we have that — in America? [The audience screams: “NO!!!” Immediately followed by further, unanimous screams of: “Enemy of the State! ENEMY OF THE STATE!”

Meghan Murphy, who always writes stellar entries at Feminist Current, points out that the whole anti-”slut-shaming” movement is very silly because the idea of a “slut” is an invention of the Patriarchy.

The solution to the sexual double standard that shames women for having casual sex, being promiscuous, enjoying sex, having female bodies, leaving the house, whatever, is not, as a very smart lady on Twitter put it recently, to “turn ‘sluts’ into a special-interest group“. You see, there is no such thing as a ‘slut’ or a ‘non-slut’. There are women. This whole ‘slut-pride’ thing and terms like ‘slut-shaming’ reinforce the very dichotomies feminism works to destroy. Us vs. them. Good girls vs. bad girls. Reinforcing the idea that some women are ‘sluts’ and that ‘sluttishness’ is attached to female sexuality (i.e. that whole — now ‘slut’ means a ‘woman who likes sex‘ crap) is not useful in terms of defining our own lives and sexualities. Like sex, don’t like sex, whatever. You aren’t a ‘slut’ either way. You’re a woman.

From our friends at Creativity Not Control: On Thursday Aug 8th, I attended a packed meeting at the Horace Mann school building on 24th and Cherry in the Central District of Seattle.  People gathered to discuss the fate of this building, which the African/Black community has turned into a vibrant educational facility called the Africatown Community […]

From American Extremists.

Since liberals and conservatives monopolize the political debate, they concentrate on their differences in order to maintain group cohesion, distinctiveness and relevance. However, it has been often noted that there’s not that much difference between them, or at least that the differences are minor compared to the similarities.

In what ways are liberals and conservatives similar?

- The most obvious similarity is that they both believe in hierarchies as an organizing principle of society.

This is not to say that they believe in hierarchies in the same way. They support different hierarchies and withdraw support from different hierarchies: for example, conservatives support religious power but doubt union power, while liberals do the opposite. They also support and withdraw support from different parts of government (e.g. the military-industrial complex versus the welfare state).

In general, liberals and conservatives believe in hierarchies: they merely disagree on who should be in charge (people who think like they do, of course). They agree that there are superiors and inferiors, and that the inferiors should obey the superiors’ power; they merely agree that there is such a thing as “excessive” power (like “unhealthy competition”) and an excessive amount of differentiation between inferiors and superiors (e.g. liberals want “the poor” to be supported financially, but they support the continued existence of poverty).

Another, less obvious, consequence of this fact is that they support all hierarchies, including government, the patriarchy and capitalism, even though they may profess to disagree with them. Conservatives shout loudly that government is not a good organizing principle of society, but their own worldview depends on government to implement neo-liberalist policies at home and abroad. Liberals claim to be against “unbridled capitalism” and corporations but support the capitalist system. They also claim to support women but support gender roles and systems that exploit women. Since the power elite is almost exclusively composed of men, liberals or conservatives can only be feminists despite their liberalism or conservatism.

- They both believe in boundless economic growth and neo-liberalism. Not only do they believe in it, but they see no possible alternative. The bizarre belief that economic growth is always good monopolizes discourse about economic news because both liberals and conservatives have complete unwavering faith in it.

And this means that they cannot criticize neo-liberalism, even though neo-liberalism is responsible for decimating entire economies, compromising the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and the mass kidnapping/murder of critics in many countries (for more on this, see The Shock Doctrine). Liberals oppose neo-liberalist policies at home (while having no clear alternatives), but they don’t mind inflicting them on innocent people elsewhere.

- They both believe in equality of opportunities.

- They both believe that radicalism is a crime, is evil in nature, and is inevitably violent. We see this in their support of the neo-liberalist murderous suppression of criticism; in their rationale for war, where the pro-democracy agenda justifies the deaths of innocent people and opponents alike; and in the way liberal and conservative governments violently deal with, and talk about, opponents of democracy and capitalism in their own country.

- They both believe that children are not full human beings.

- They both define freedom as the absence of coercion. As I argue in “Free will as an ideological weapon…”, the dichotomy between coercion and conditioning is illusory and leads to the acceptance of tyranny as long as it’s not openly violent. This probably explains how Americans can describe their country as “the free world,” while living in a society which has the greatest inequality and penal population in the first world, as well as one of the most conformist and anti-individualist. To call this delusional would be generous.

- They both believe in the “middle class.” Sustaining the “middle class” serves the (implicit or explicit) role of suppressing discontent or rebellion against the government by creating an entire segment of society that buys into the economic and social games and has a lot to lose.

Positive and negative self-interest are clearly powerful factors in fostering consent. Nonetheless, at any given time, it is likely that there will be a number of people who are seriously disaffected with the current structure- most obviously the bottom 20 percent who have almost nothing to lose by change. Given that the middle 60 percent are receiving less than their equal share, it is likely that their consent will be unstable as well, at least insofar as it arises from rational or calculated self-interest alone.
The Culture of Conformism, p58

The last part is key, especially since this is a whole book that seeks to explain why people conform. We do not act our of calculated self-interest alone, and there are a host of reasons that explain why we do not rebel. One of them is the absence of class consciousness, as George Carlin succinctly expresses:

That’s the way the ruling class operates in any society. They try to divide the rest of the people. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the fucking money!… Anything different–that’s what they’re gonna talk about–race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other, so that they can keep going to the bank! You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep ‘em showing up at those jobs.

A great deal more could be said about this, but I think you get the idea.

- They both believe that human life is basically worthless. Their policy discussions, whether it is on welfare, war, “reproductive rights” or the economy, treats individuals as means to an end, instead of beings with rights and dignity.

Any issue will do as an example, so let’s take immigration. Conservatives believe that “immigrants” “steal jobs” from documented citizens and that “immigrants” weaken the national culture, while liberals believe that most “immigrants” are hard workers who deserve to join “the economy.” In all cases, we are treated with rhetoric which, in addition to being racist, treats “immigrants” as means to an end. The values, desires or needs of “immigrants” are irrelevant.

We can also use the war on drugs as another example (using drugs as disturbing the social order v making drugs legal and taxing them to get more money). In fact, you can do this for every issue that concerns liberals and conservatives.

***

These are, I think, the fundamental similarities between liberals and conservatives (in general, not only in the United States). Post in the comments if you think I missed something.

Exapologist proposes the hypothesis that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet, and then provides 15 pieces of evidence which are best explained by his hypothesis.

Indeed, conservative scholars of the likes of none other than Ben Witherington and N.T. Wright largely admit this line of reasoning. Why are they still Christians, you ask? I’ll tell you: by giving unnatural, ad hoc explanations of the data. For example, Meier gets around the problem by arguing that the false prediction passages are inauthentic (i.e., Jesus never said those things; the early church just put those words on the lips of Jesus, and they ended up in the gospels); Witherington gets around the problem by saying that what Jesus really meant was that the imminent arrival of the eschatological kingdom might be at hand(!); Wright gets around the problem by adopting the partial preterist line that the imminent end that Jesus predicted really did occur — it’s just that it was all fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem (Oh, really? So are we also to think that since he’s already come again, he’s not coming back? Or perhaps there will be a *third* coming? But even putting these worries aside: why does Paul tell various communities very far *outside* of Israel about the same sorts of predictions of an imminent end that would affect *them* — one that, like the one Jesus talked about, involved judgement, destruction, and the gathering of all the elect? And again, what about the author of Revelation’s detailing the end-time judgment, which includes the Roman Empire *outside* of Israel, during the reign of Nero?). Are you convinced by these responses? Me neither. And now you know why nobody outside of orthodox circles buys them, either.

Thanks to Against All Evidence.

Tom Engelhardt reminisces in a letter to Obama on what a person Obama used to be and what a person he has become.

After all, you were a community organizer and a constitutional law professor and now, if you stop to think about it, here’s where you’ve ended up: you’re using robots to assassinate people you personally pick as targets. You’ve overseen and escalated off-the-books robot air wars inPakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, and are evidently considering expanding them to Mali and maybe even Libya. You’ve employed what will someday be defined as a weapon of mass destruction, launching history’s first genuine cyberwar against a country that isn’t threatening to attack us. You’ve agreed to the surveillance of more Americans every which way from Sunday than have ever been listened in on or (given emailing, texting, and tweeting) read. You came into office proclaiming a “sunshine” policy and yet your administration has classified more documents (92,064,862 in 2011) than any other in our history. Despite signing a Whistleblower Enhancement Protection Act, you’ve used the Espionage Act on more government whistleblowers and leakers than all previous administrations combined, and yet your officials continue to leak secret material they see as advantageous to the White House without fear of prosecution. Though you deep-sixed the Bush administration name for it — “the Global War on Terror” (ridding the world of GWOT, one of the worst acronyms ever) — you’ve accepted the idea that we are “at war” with terror and on a “global battlefield” which (see above) you’re actually expanding. You’re still keeping uncharged, untried prisoners of not-quite-war in an offshore military prison camp of injustice that, on the day you came into office, you promised to close within a year. You’re overseeing planning that, according to recent reports, will continue the Afghan War in some form until at least 2017 or possibly well beyond. You preside over an administration that has encouraged the further militarization of the CIA (to which you appointed as director not a civilian but a four-star general you assumedly wanted to tuck safely away during campaign season). You’ve overseen the further militarization of the State Department; you’ve encouraged a major expansion of the special operations forces and its secret presidential army, the Joint Special Operations Command, cocooned inside the U.S. military/ You’ve overseen the further post-9/11 expansion of an already staggering national security budget and the further growth of our labyrinthine “Intelligence Community” — and though who remembers anymore, you even won what must have been the first prospective Nobel Prize for Peace more or less before you did a damn thing, and then thanked the Nobel Committee with a full-throated defense of the right of the U.S. to do what it pleased, militarily, on the planet! And if that isn’t a weird legacy-in-formation, what is?

Breaking: The Seattle Free Press News Team went to the Kshama Sawant Primary Election Night Party. After inquiring about where to find the free food, one of the party attendees waved their hands and stated “There’s a noodle-thing near the back,” before quickly darting out of the room. “What keeps you going?” reporters asked in […]

From Atheism Meme Base.

I wrote an entry on the contradiction of Christian Anarchism, where I argued that Christianity is inherently hierarchical and therefore fundamentally incompatible with Anarchism, which seeks the end of hierarchies. I’ve already written a clarification of what I said, but I wanted to address the comments as well.

Some theologians argued with me that I was misrepresenting Christianity. Far from me to argue with these eminent thinkers. The thing is, though, I am not talking about theology, I am talking about politics.

As an Anarchist, the first thing I need is a working definition of hierarchy and thus to be able to identify them. My definition of hierarchy is: any social system where control is used in a way that is both 1. systemic and 2. directed. I can now use this definition to differentiate between what is and is not a hierarchy. For example, a government is a hierarchy. Are there modes of government that are less hierarchical than others? Sure, but that doesn’t refute the conclusion.

Now, if I read the Bible, the conclusion I naturally draw is that, for Christians, reality itself must be a hierarchy, with God as the ultimate superior. The morality of the Bible is not justified as anything but orders, which demonstrates that the control is systemic (it is not incidental but part of the very structure). God’s genocides, or his creation of Hell, are justified based on his ownership of man and with the same language. The Bible clearly tells us the layout of this hierarchy:

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
Ephesians 5:23

But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
1 Corinthians 11:3

This proves that moral control in Christianity is directed, as well. This is all the evidence I need to declare Christianity a hierarchy, and therefore contrary to anarchism. I do not need to apply a standard of proof greater than anarchists apply to any other institution or system. Any attempt to impose a greater burden of proof in the case of Christianity is nothing more than special pleading.

So that’s from the political standpoint. But what about the theological standpoint? We have to distinguish between theoretical Christianity and actually-existing Christianity. Sure you can say that Christianity is about love or the Golden Rule or anything you want it to be. But when I look at actually-existing Christianity, especially by reading the Bible, I don’t see a system that has as its primary aim love or fairness.

I realize it is a generalization. Some Christians do try to be more loving or more fair, and some strands of Christianity are more loving and fair than others (otherwise there wouldn’t be such a thing as liberation theology, for example), but they do so in spite of their religion, not because of it. Of course they don’t believe that, but I have no particular reason to believe them; after all, as an atheist, I reject their theological claims a priori anyway.

Again, I want to emphasize that this process is purely political in nature and cannot be informed by theological considerations. There really is nothing a theologian can argue that changes the process any more than a politician could argue away the conclusion that governments are hierarchical. The anarchist, by his revolutionary nature, cannot leave to authorities or “experts” the power to decide what is hierarchical and what is not.

There is also an inherent contradiction in theologians claiming that I can’t make claims about Christianity because there is no such thing as a uniquely defined Christianity, and then telling me what the fundamental principles of Christianity are:

Nor do I make any claims about “real Christianity”, (your term, not mine). The fundamental principles of Christianity are two, and neither implies a hierarchy – love your neighbour as yourself explicitly denies one.

This is something you see in many areas. On the one hand, it is declared that anyone can be anything, and that there’s no real definition for any ideology. On the other hand, it is then declared that there are these fundamental principles that represent what the ideology is really about. This is a stupid self-contradiction, and the theologian who posted it could only mock me for pointing out a logical contradiction. He could not correct it, of course, since it is the basis for his “non-hierarchical Christianity.” This is the stupid way of doing it, but others are more skillful at it (never mind that “love your neighbour as yourself” can fit perfectly within a hierarchical frameowrk, especially depending on how you define “neighbour”).

As an atheist, I look to Christians and other theists to learn what God is supposed to be about. Likewise, I trust them when they tell me what their religion is about. Let’s be honest, theologians are not run-of-the-mill believers: they have a vested interest in building systems of thought which are not necessarily related to what anyone actually believes. They are not the kind of people I should be expected to trust in explaining to me what Christianity is about, any more than I trust politicians or political scientists to tell me the truth about democracy, or CEOs to tell the truth about the corporate structure.

Their very job is to make something relatively simple into something that requires (their) expertise to construct and defend. Christianity in itself is not very complicated: we can talk about the history and culture of Christianity for a very long time, but being a Christian itself is not something that requires a college education in theology. If that was so, there would be very few Christians indeed. In the same way, understanding evolution does not require a college degree and one may grasp its basics in a short period of time. But the main difference is that evolution is about reality, while theology is about a self-contained, inter-subjective delusion. As such, you can make it as complicated as you want, and it really doesn’t matter.