Anarchoblogs

From KOMO News: TACOMA, Wash. – Immigrant-rights activists rallied outside the Northwest Detention Center on Saturday, while at least 750 detainees protested their treatment and called for an end to deportations with a hunger strike. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement department said on Saturday morning that 750 detainees had refused to eat and said […]

By Cody Lestelle [NOTE: this article is an adaptation of an email I originally sent to the CHID program at the University of Washington, Seattle of which I am (sorta) an alumni. I am sharing it now in hopes of provoking wider discussion and appropriate actions on these themes] Dear whoever is reading this, I […]

As we approach the New Year, we naturally think of ends, and of beginnings; what has changed, and what we have lost. So hey, libertarians, let’s all get together and feel sorry about the golden age of Limited Government and Individual Liberty we have lost. Remember the ancient liberties that we all enjoyed only 60 years ago, back in the 1950s? Back when all military-age men were subject to the draft, people were being interrogated before a permanent committee of Congress over their political beliefs, the FBI was conducting massive illegal wiretapping, surveillance and disruption against nonviolent civil rights activists, the National Security Agency was established as a completely secret surveillance arm of the federal government, it was illegal for married or unmarried women to buy basic birth control, it was made illegal for anyone to buy any scheduled drug without a doctor’s prescription, government was conducting medical experiments on unwilling human subjects^[1], Urban Renewal was demolishing the core of every major U.S. city to build government highways and housing projects, and massive community-wide immigration raids were terrorizing undocumented migrants throughout the Southwest.

Or like back in the 1940s when government spending was over 50% of GDP, nearly the entire consumer economy was subject to government rationing, Japanese-Americans were forced into internment camps, and a secret government conspiracy was building an entire network of secret cities in order to build atomic bombs to drop on civilian centers.

Or like back in the 1930s when the entire institutional groundwork of the New Deal was being implemented, Roosevelt was making himself president-for-life, government attempted to seize all gold or silver bullion in private hands, the federal government first instituted the Drug War, Jim Crow was the law of the land, Congress created the INS, Jews fleeing the incipient Holocaust in Europe were being turned away by immigration authorities, and psychiatrists were using massive electric shocks or literally mutilating the brains of women and men confined to asylums.

Or like the 1920s when it was illegal to buy alcoholic drinks anywhere in the United States, tariff rates were nearly 40% on dutiable imports, Sacco and Vanzetti were murdered by the state of Massachusetts, the Invisible Empire Second Era Klan effectively took over the state governments of Colorado, Indiana, and Alabama, hundreds of black victims were massacred in race riots in Tulsa and Rosewood, when Congress created the Federal Radio Commission^[2], the US Border Patrol, passed the Emergency [sic] Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924, and the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the authority of the state to forcibly sterilize women deemed “feeble-minded” or “promiscuous” for eugenic purposes.

Or the 1910s, when the federal government seized control of foreign-owned companies to facilitate production of chemical weapons, imposed the first-ever use of federal conscription to fight an overseas war, invaded Haiti, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico^[3], Russia, and Europe, passed criminal anarchy and criminal syndicalism statutes, tried and convicted hundreds of people for belonging to radical unions, imprisoned hundreds of people for protesting the draft during World War I (ordered by the President of the United States and upheld by the Supreme Court in one of its most radical anti-free-speech decisions), deported hundreds of people solely for holding anti-state political beliefs, the Mann Act made it illegal to “transport women across statelines for immoral purposes” [sic], the Colorado National Guard machine-gunned and burned alive striking miners and their families in order to break a UMWA organizing campaign, and Congress created the Federal Reserve, the Income Tax, the Espionage Act, and the Sedition Act.

Or maybe like the 1900s. … .

1. ^[1] See also the biological and radiological experiments documented here, and the Guatemala syphilis experiment conducted from 1946-1948. ↩
2. ^[2] Created in 1926; later converted into the Federal Communications Commission in 1934. ↩
3. ^[3] In 1914, and then again in 1916-1917 ↩

At a recent grandstanding speech on immigration reform, in which Barack Obama attempted to pass himself off as a supporter of immigrants while presiding over the unprecedented, relentless deportation of two million, immigrant families and activists confronted him over his record. He responded by passing the buck, and insisting that he was powerless.

Our families are separated, a young man yelled during remarks in San Francisco at the Betty Ann Ong Chinese Recreation Center. Mr. President, please use your executive authority to halt [deportations]. We agree that we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform, but at the same time, you have the power to stop deportations.

Actually, I don’t,^[1] the president replied, and that’s why we’re here.

Other people in the crowd began to yell as well: Stop deportations. Yes, we can.

. . . What you need to know, when I’m speaking as president of the United States and I come to this community, is that if in fact I could solve all of these problems without passing laws in Congress, then I would do so,^[2] he said. But we’re [sic] also a nation of laws. That’s part of our tradition.

So the easy way out is to try to yell and pretend like I can do something by violating our [sic] laws, he continued.

— Elise Foley, Obama Confronts Hecklers At Immigration Speech, in the Huffington Post (25 November 2013)

If laws command injustice, then those laws ought to be violation. A nation of laws is nothing more than a rigid structure of power; and when that power is turned against innocent families, it deserves no respect, and no loyalty. Those who administer that power inflict real evil on helpless victims, and when they excuse themselves for responsibility by pointing to the laws, by pointing to political etiquette, by pointing to the demands of their office, they are doing nothing less, and nothing more, than saying that their political ambitions and political interests are more important to them than the rights of innocent people.

A law that commands injustice should be treated as no law at all. There is no office that can nullify a man’s conscience, no order that erases moral responsibility. There is no higher law than human rights or common decency. We have here the most privileged man on the face of the earth lecturing disenfranchised immigrant families about how powerless he supposedly is to stop — the most privileged man on the face of the earth begging that he is supposedly powerless over detention and deportation quotas that he set; begging that he is supposedly powerless to restrain the force of agencies directly responsible to him and his appointees; defending his own political cowardice, and tossing around contemptuous lines about easy ways out, delivered to the victims of his own detestable politically-driven assaults on immigrants.

Barack Obama’s record on immigration has been shameful. And his endless political excuse-making for record mass deportations, is despicable.

Also.

• GT 2006-04-09: Freedom Movement Celebrity Deathmatch.
• GT 2009-08-28: Border politics.
• GT 2011-10-22: Change You Can Believe In (Vol. III, No. 10)
• GT 2012-10-24: Change You Can Believe In: Mass Deportation Edition
• GT 2013-03-07: Immigration police state.
• GT 2013-07-27: Immigration freedom is personal liberty. Borders are statism.

1. ^[1] This is, of course, a lie. Obama has repeatedly used executive power to unilaterally halt enforcement and to halt legal proceedings when he found it in his political interest to do so. ↩
2. ^[2] This is, of course, a lie. ↩

Here is an image that was recently being passed around on a conservative, Tea Party group on Facebook.

HERE IS ALL I WANT:

OBAMA: GONE!

BORDERS: CLOSED!

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH!

CULTURE: U.S. CONSTITUTION & THE BILL OF RIGHTS!

DRUG FREE: MANDATORY DRUG SCREENING BEFORE WELFARE!

NO FREEBIES TO: NON-CITIZENS!

ALSO…

BALANCED BUDGET!

TAX REFORM!

TERM LIMITS FOR CONGRESS & SENATORS!

ONLY 86% WILL SEND THIS ON. SHOULD BE 100%.

So, just to re-cap:

Conservatarian: Here’s all I want: a REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT, the harshest possible BORDER FASCISM. GOVERNMENT ENFORCED LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS. A culture of CONSTITUTION FETISHISM, PUBLIC REVERENCE FOR STATE FOUNDERS and LEGALISTIC NATIONALISM. DRUG PROHIBITION and RIGHT-WING SOCIAL ENGINEERING THROUGH THE WELFARE SYSTEM. Also, SAVING THE WELFARE STATE FOR U.S. CITIZENS WHO CONFORM TO MY FAVORED LIFESTYLE CHOICES. And 100% CONFORMITY ON QUESTIONS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IMPORT. I’m for small government!

So, seriously conservatarians, if this is what you want, what you want hasn’t got anything even remotely to do with liberty. If you thought that this did have something to do with liberty, then you need to re-think some of your life choices.

Nationalism is the death of liberty.

By Natasha Lennard of Alternet: At current rates, deportations enforced under the Obama presidency are set to hit 2 million by 2014 according to a new report from the University of California-Merced. Findings highlight that, if current deportation rates continue, nearly as many people will have been deported under this administration than during the entirety of years between 1892 […]

From the Associated Press: FALFURRIAS, Tex. — By the time the woman perished, she had probably slogged 25 miles through dry ranch lands in her quest to enter the United States. She was found just feet from a highway where she might have been picked up and taken to Houston with other migrants making the […]

The websites of the Center for a Stateless Society and Students for a Stateless Society are under attack by an anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant racist, named Olivier Janssens. The websites have been temporarily suspended by their web hosting company, Bluehost, because of a spurious takedown notice apparently sent by the attorney J. D. Obenberger, apparently on Janssen’s [...]

Continue reading at Rad Geek People's Daily …

We will remain ungovernable

Fri, 09/06/2013 - 22:48 -- Anonymous (not verified)

      The current border policies of the ruling elite are cruel, oppressive, revanchist. Over the course of the elction campaign we have vandalised the electorate offices of Kelvin Thomson, Martin Ferguson, Josh Frydenberg, Anna Bourke, Brendan O'Connor, Simon Crean, Mark Dreyfus, Kelly O'Dwyer, Mike Symon and Andrew Robb; they are complicit.

     The politicians and bosses have driven wedges between us, trying to convince us there is an enemy in people from across the sea. The real enemy, of course, is those who seek to rule us. Our sisters and brothers, the 'boat people', have been asking for our solidarity for years. They have petitioned, protested, hunger-striked, self-harmed and suicided. But help has not come. The only rational response left is to riot.

      We are privileged citizens in occupied land and we stand to benefit from this racist approach. But this won't do. We don't accept this reality and we never will. It doesn't matter who we are. What matters is that we resist. That we show resistance is possible. It's the right – the only – way to act in such terrible times. In doing so we hope to inspire others to break the spell of passivity, together we can turn the world upside down.

     We stand by the rioters, the 'boat people', the border-hoppers and 'illegals' in this land and throughout the world. We stand by them til all the prisons are ash and the borders finally broken.

Whoever is elected, we remain,

Ungovernable