From The Raw Story.  

The Tea Party, the Ron Paulistas, and the Occupiers represent the sinking middle class, the populist right, and the lumpen left respectively. A political movement that is able to tie these together under the same anti-state, anti-empire, anti-plutocratic umbrella will have something.

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In an interview with GritTV’s Laura Flanders, author and MIT professor Noam Chomsky discussed the potentially bleak future facing both the United States and the European Union. Both, he said, are facing historic crises and are going about trying to resolve them in exactly the wrong ways.

According to Chomsky, we are currently living in a period of “pretty close to global stagnation” but that the world’s great powers are reacting to the lack of growth in exactly the wrong manner. “The United States and Europe are committing suicide in different ways, but both doing it.”

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From CNN. 

The FBI released photos of five men who allegedly plotted to blow up a bridge in Ohio.

(CNN) — A mohawk-wearing anarchist nicknamed “Cyco” was among five men arrested after allegedly conspiring to blow up a bridge about 15 miles south of Cleveland, the FBI said Tuesday.

Douglas L. Wright, 26, joined alleged co-conspirators Brandon L. Baxter, 20, a.k.a. “Skabby,” and Anthony Hayne, 35, a.k.a. “Tony” and “Billy,” in a plot that authorities say honed in on the Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge, which spans the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and carries a four-lane highway.

The men were arrested Monday evening in an FBI sting, but posed no real danger to the public because the explosives were inert and were controlled by an undercover FBI agent, the bureau said in a statement.

The men have been charged with conspiracy and attempted use of explosive materials to damage physical property affecting interstate commerce.

Connor C. Stevens, 20, and Joshua S. Stafford, 23, were also arrested. Their charges remain pending.

“Clearly this was a sting operation,” said Fran Townsend, a CNN National Security contributor, describing the use of at least one covert agent in the operation.

Authorities said at least three of the men are self-proclaimed anarchists who had considered “a series of evolving plots over several months.”

“The complaint in this case alleges that the defendants took specific and defined actions to further a terrorist plot,” said U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach. “The defendants stand charged based not upon any words or beliefs they might espouse, but based upon their own plans and actions.”

The men allegedly conspired to acquire C-4 explosives and build two improvised explosive devices to be remotely detonated.

At first, officials said, the men had considered using smoke grenades to distract local law enforcement in an effort to “topple financial institution signs atop high rise buildings.”

Article by Kevin Carson.

I may be writing under false pretenses. Although I was invited here to make a case for the “occupancy-and-use” or usufructory land property theory of P.J. Proudhon, J.K. Ingalls andBenjamin Tucker, I’m going to devote most of this article to what it has in common with other libertarian land rights theories.

Although I still favor the occupancy-and-use standard, I do so much less stridently than I once did. I believe that what the principled land rights theories have in common is more important than what separates us.

I still agree with Bill Orton’s argument, stated about ten years ago, that no particular set of property rules can be logically deduced from self-ownership and nonaggression. (His arguments were set forth on several now-defunct libertarian message boards, but you can find his website here.)  Orton argued that the basic principles of self-ownership and nonaggression were compatible with any number of different property rules systems. Those principles had to be applied to a particular property rights template to determine who the “aggressor” and “victim” were in any instance. In a mutualist, occupancy-and-use system, a self-styled landlord attempting to collect rent would be the aggressor, invading the property rights of the occupant-user. But in an identical instance, in a non-Proviso Lockean system, the occupant – or squatter – might well be considered the agressor.

Since no particular set of land property rules can be deduced from fundamental moral axioms, they must be evaluated on utilitarian or practical grounds: i.e., the extent to which they maximize other, fundamental moral principles.

The chief normative values I believe a property rights regime should optimize are to guarantee to the greatest extent possible the ability of the owner to recoup her labor input (in the form of buildings and improvements) from the land, and to minimize the amount of overall privilege and rent extraction.

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Article by Kevin Carson.

Several weeks ago, Julian Sanchez announced his intent to leave the Cato Institute if the Koch brothers’ attempted takeover was successful. Corey Robin seized the opportunity to chide libertarians for our alleged inconsistency on the job culture (“When Libertarians Go to Work,” March 7).

Sanchez didn’t challenge the Kochs’ right to take over Cato if they could. He simply criticized a Koch takeover as undesirable. After such a takeover, he argued, he would likely face constraints on his autonomy and integrity from the new owners, with his freedom to seek out and speak the truth subordinated to their political agenda.

All well and good, says Robin. But why don’t libertarians like Sanchez follow such analysis to its logical conclusion? The Left has consistently criticized not only the culture of subordination in the workplace, but the economic power structures on which it depends.

Sanchez mentions lack of constraints from mortgage or family as a factor in his decision. Aha! says Robin — that’s just it! The vast majority of workers do experience such economic constraints, given the wealth and power differentials that the wage system depends on, and therefore don’t have the luxury of walking away from an authoritarian workplace. So Sanchez, typical libertarian that he is, ignores the ways in which the less privileged are subjected to coercive working conditions as a result of the economic structure.

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Article by Anthony Gregory.

Nineteen years ago, just outside Waco, Texas, the FBI demonstrated once again that the state at its core is a killing machine. Monarchy, democracy, or republic – any government as conventionally defined is a legal monopoly on violence. The state is always inclined toward oppression, division, conquest, and bloodshed, because these are its tools of trade.

Matters are no different here. The myth of a free America was always seen with bitter irony by those not blessed by such freedom. In the founding generation, as half a million labored in slavery, many who fought in the Revolution genuinely believed in liberty, but for the ruling elite who chided them on, liberty was hardly more than a slogan. This has always been true of our political leaders. The Father of the Country was a centralizing slaveowner. Old Hickory talked up freedom as he threatened war on South Carolina and forced the Cherokee to flee from their ancestral land on a barbarously murderous walk of shame. The Great Emancipator turned America into a military dictatorship and abolished the revolutionary right of secession. Wilson’s New Freedom was cover for a Prussianized war machine generating revenue for his profiteering buddies on Wall Street. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms failed to include the freedom not to be drafted or interned in a concentration camp. Ronald Reagan threw the wordfreedom around as he trained Latin American torturers and raped the Bill of Rights in the name of fighting drugs. The United States has never lived up to its rhetoric.

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