Monthly Archives: March 2015

Singapore Teen Arrested For Video Criticizing Former PM Lee Kuan Yew 2

by • Police State/Civil Liberties

Let this be a lesson to those “libertarians” who praise fascist Singapore as some kind of “free market” paradise because of its friendliness to Western business interests. This kid is a hero.

A 17-year-old Singapore resident has been arrested for criticizing the recently deceased PM Lee Kuan Yew and the extreme income inequality in Singapore. The teen, who’s been identified as Amos Yee, was apparently taken into custody after posting a YouTube video of his thoughts about the death of longtime authoritarian leader Lee Kuan Yew.

YouTube blogger Amos Yee uploaded the eight-minute video, called ‘Lee Kuan Yew Is Finally Dead!’ on 27 March.  Amos Yee begins his video with “Why hasn’t anyone said fuck yeah the guy is dead, Lee Kuan Yew was a horrible person, because everyone is scared, that if they say something like that, they might get into trouble.” Amos Yee continues “give Lee Kuan Yew credit that was primarily the impact of his ‘legacy’.” More…

“The realities and revolutionary necessities of our age” 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Left and Right

An interesting reply to the Western “anti-fascist” Left from a Maoist perspective.

By Efe Can Gurcan

Socialism and Democracy

Matthew Lyons, using emotional language, targets me rather than the original arguments that I advanced in my essay.

Lyons accuses me of “completely whitewashing Alexander Dugin,” whereas I make clear from the outset that Dugin’s Eurasianism is replete with severe problems. I do not claim that Dugin’s Eurasianism relies on revolutionary values. After summarizing the position of the Russians, I note their irrationalism and esoterism. I then turn to my central focus on NATO and Turkish Eurasianism. I explain that Eurasianism is not a uniform movement, and that the emerging Turkish Eurasianism may effectively counter NATO if bottom-up and cultural strategies prevail.

As for the so-called “ethnic chauvinism” of the Workers’ Party (WP), I described how in fact the WP rejects ethno-nationalism both in Turkey and elsewhere; for example, it condemns Turkic-Uyghur terrorism and separatism in China as well as the ethno-nationalism of the PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party).

I drew a clear line of difference between Russian and Turkish Eurasianists, yet Lyons describes the WP as if it was part of a neo-fascist movement just because it interacts with Dugin’s movement through institutional channels. Contrary to Lyons’s claim that the WP is ultranationalist, the WP interacts not only with Dugin but also with the Russian Communist Party. The WP has openly critiqued Dugin’s project of ethno-pluralism and his notion of “empire,” arguing that the real solution lies in “popular-democratic nation-states” or at least “civic regimes” rather than “archaic empires” and ethnic or non-secularist movements. More…

Obama’s Legacy: Permanent War and Liberal Accommodation? Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

A must read.

By Ajamu Baraka

Global Research

The announcement by the Obama administration that it will seek congressional authorization to expand the war on ISIS in Syria and possibly send more heavy weapons to its client government in Ukraine did not generate the kind of muscular opposition and sense of urgency that one would expect from the anti-interventionist liberals and significant sectors of what use to be the anti-imperialist and anti-war left.

Outside of a few articles written by some of us confined to the marginalized and shrinking left, the reports that the administration was considering both of these courses of action were met with passing indifference. It is as if the capitalist oligarchy’s strategy of permanent war has been accepted as a fait-accompi by the general public and even significant numbers of the left.

The fact that the U.S. President could launch military attacks in Syria, supposedly a sovereign state and member of the United Nations, for six months without any legal justification and not face fierce criticism in the U.S. and internationally demonstrates the embrace of lawlessness that characterizes the current epoch of Western imperialist domination.

And the acquiescence of much of the left in the U.S. and Europe on the issue of Syria and the U.S. supported coup in Ukraine reveals the moderating and accommodating forces within the faux left that attempts to bully and intimidate anti-imperialist critics. More…

1.3 Million Casualties: Causing genocide to “protect us from terror” Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

By Neil Clark

Russia Today

A report called Body Count has revealed that at least 1.3 million people have lost their lives as a result of the US-led “war on terror” in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s a report which should have made front page news across the world.

In the comprehensive 101 pagedocument ‘Body Count,’

Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, have produced figures for the number of people killed from September 11, 2001 until the end of 2013.

The findings are devastating: the in-depth investigation concludes that the ‘war on terror‘ has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan. As awful as that sounds, the total of 1.3 million deaths does not take into account casualties in other war zones, such as Yemen – and the authors stress that the figure is a “conservative estimate”.

“The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely,” the executive summary says.

Even if we take the lower figure of 1.3 million deaths, that’s still approximately 10 times greater than the figures propagated up to now by the media and NGOs. 1.3 million Iraqis equates to 5 percent of the population, the equivalent to 3.2 million Britons being killed following a foreign invasion. More…

A Middle East Holocaust Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Military

Dr. Roberts should rightfully be the executive figurehead of the Pan-Secessionist Meta-Party.

By Paul Craig Roberts

Foundations and corporations do not support truth-tellers. American foundations underwrite war and US imperialism. Foundations support subversion of countries that are not Washington’s puppet states. Your website has no foundation support, no corporate support; it only has your support.

I have been around for a long time and have experienced more than most. The current situation in my experience is the most dangerous time of all for humanity.

Nuclear weapons are no longer restrained by the Cold War MAD doctrine. Washington has released them into pre-emptive first strike form.

The targets of these pre-emptive strikes–Russia and China–know it, because Washington proudly proclaims its immorality in public documents describing its war doctrine.

The result is to maximize the chance of nuclear war. If you were Russia and China, and you knew that Washington had a war doctrine that permits a surprise nuclear attack, would you sit there waiting while Washington cranks up its anti-Russian and anti-Chinese propaganda machine, demonizing both countries as a threat to “freedom and democracy”? More…

The Ass-Backward Left vs A Serious Radical Left Reply

by • Left and Right

Looking over the website of the Political Research Associates, a leading critic of Attack the System, I found it to be rather ironic how much the order in which the list on their “Issues” page mirrors the normal hierarchy of priorities found on the Left. In order, the PRA issues are

1. Reproductive Justice-(“Keeping abortion safe and legal”)

2. LGBTQ Rights-(Mostly pushing same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws)

3. Immigrant Justice-(Serving the interests of capital while attempting to create a larger constituency for the neoliberal center-left)

4. Racial Justice-(Advancing the interests of middle class and elite minorities within the context of capitalism and the state)

5. Civil Liberties-(An issue the Left generally ignores except for racial disparities)

5. Economic Justice-(Which for most leftists just means a larger welfare state)

6. Exporting the Culture Wars to Africa (This is the only foreign policy issue mentioned, and predictably it mostly involves gay rights in Africa). More…

Is Salon Right? Is Honduras a Libertarian Nightmare? Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations

Tom Woods interviews Michael Strong. Listen here.

Salon’s latest attack on libertarianism involves blaming it for poor conditions in Honduras, of all places. We respond in this episode. Show notes below!

About the Guest

Michael Strong is an author, a co-founder of Radical Social Entrepreneurs, and the founder of numerous Socratic, Montessori, and Paideia schools.

Article Discussed

“My Libertarian Vacation Nightmare: How Ayn Rand, Ron Paul and Their Groupies Were All Debunked,” by Edwin Lyngar

Articles in Favor of Free Zones

“The Blank Slate State,” by Brian Doherty
“The Legal Autonomy of the Dubai International Financial Centre: A Scalable Strategy for Global Free-Market Reforms,” by Michael John Strong and Robert Himber

Guest’s Book

Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems

Guest’s Website

Radical Social Entrepreneurs

Guest’s Blog

The Purpose of Education

Guest’s Twitter

@flowidealism

Related Episode

Ep. 61: The Poverty Cure (Michael Matheson Miller)

Robert Stark interviews Aleksey Bashtavenko about Education Reply

by • Uncategorized

Robert Stark interviews Aleksey Bashtavenko about Education

2015 / / Leave a comment

Alexey Bashtavenko

Aleksey Bashtavenko is the owner and principle writer for Academic Composition

Topics include:

The History of Education

How education was originally reserved for the elites

Voltaire’s statement that the masses should be guided and not educated

How Senator Horace Mann modeled the American education system on the Prussian Model that was compulsory and based on regimentation, obedience, and conformity

How the value of a College Diploma has vastly decreased

How Student Loan debt is greater than the National debt

Education as a profit making industry

Online Degree Mills

How Public Education is becoming more like the Online Degree Mills

How Education prepares people for the corporate world

Why Alexey supports the abolition of compulsory education

Why Alexey advices people learn a skilled trade rather than attend College

How unemployment and income inequality have increased as more people have College degrees

How Nietzsche viewed religion as a slave morality and how after the elites created a secular version of slave morality in education

Why Alexey views ghost writing as an act of subversion against the system

Coming Home Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

By William T. Hathaway

(Warning: This one is not for the easily offended.)

RADICAL PEACE is a collection of reports from antiwar activists, the true stories of their efforts to change our warrior culture. In this chapter a mother tells of her son’s return from combat. She wishes to remain anonymous.

My son spent a year fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq in Delta Force. It was the worst year of his life … and of mine. As he told me later, there were times he thought he’d never come home. That was also my constant fear. For 365 days, every time the phone rang I thought it would be a voice from the Pentagon telling me with well-practiced condolence that my son had died a hero.

Jim had joined the army after college. I think he was trying to finally win his father’s approval. The old man was a West Pointer who had served a long military career, including two tours in Vietnam, and retired a colonel. He probably would’ve made general if it hadn’t been for his drinking. He never showed much interest in Jim and me, preferring the camaraderie of his soldier buddies.

We divorced when Jim was in high school. The colonel didn’t ask for visitation rights, and Jim was crushed when it became obvious that his dad didn’t care about seeing him.

Jim and the colonel had little in common. Jim wasn’t the military type — he didn’t go in for rough sports or violent movies. He was a sensitive boy who liked to read. He and I had similar interests and could communicate well together, much better than most mothers and teenaged sons. More…

Where Are the “Markets Suck” Libertarians? Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations, Religion and Philosophy

This post certainly raises some interesting theoretical questions

By Jason Brennan

Bleeding Heart Libertarians

Some libertarians claim that the good consequences of markets and private property form part of the moral justification of these institutions. However, others endorse absolutist or near absolutist deontological political philosophies. They hold that by following certain procedures we can come to acquire stringent and robust libertarian property rights, rights that cannot be overridden or outweighed by almost any competing moral concern. They think that the consequences of private property markets–in terms of promoting welfare, positive liberty, cultural progress, etc.–form no part of the moral justification of markets.

Where are the “markets suck!” libertarians? For instance, are there libertarians out there who accept Murray Rothbard’s theory of natural law, but who also accept something like Naomi Klein’s view of markets? Are there libertarians who think that justice requires strict libertarian property rights, but who accept Brian Barry’s contention that libertarianism will starve 10% of the population? Are there at least some libertarians who think that libertarianism is required by justice, but who think that almost all people would be better off in a highly regulated, tax-and-transfer social democracy?

Note, I’m not asking if there are libertarians who say that justice requires libertarianism even if markets suck. I’m asking if there are any libertarians who actually think something like, “Let’s have markets, even though Marx was right about markets.”

This isn’t a rhetorical question. I’d genuinely like to know if there are such people, especially prominent activists, writers, or published academics.

If there aren’t such libertarians, it’s a bit puzzling, isn’t it? After all, if you sincerely believed, say, Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s argumentation ethics argument for libertarian self-ownership (with all that Hoppe thinks this leads to), you would be a libertarian even if you rejected Austrian economics, even if you thought that libertarian economic systems led to massive market failure, even if you thought that the economy works the way Corey Robin thinks it does.

Consider, in contrast: David Estlund thinks that epistocracy would probably lead to better consequences than democracy, but he thinks epistocracy is ruled out on deontological grounds. G. A. Cohen at one point said that mainstream econonomics is basically sound, but still said that capitalism was unjust on deontological grounds.

Note: I have not criticized and am not insinuating any criticism of Rothbard or Hoppe here.

An Interview with William S. Lind Reply

by • American Decline, Fourth Generation Warfare, Left and Right, Military

There are some good nuggets in this. Listen to the interview at Traditional Right.

As an anarchist, I am sometimes asked why I am interested in the work of “right-wing reactionaries” such as Lind, an unreconstructed Hapsburg monarchist. First of all, it’s not a terrible idea to be informed about and familiar with a wide variety of opinions and beliefs, not the just ones closest to one’s own milieu. Lind, for example, is a fascinating theorist of fourth generation warfare.

Also, as an anarchist, I regard authoritarian leftism to be one of the primary and most insidious enemies of anarchism. For example, what’s most funny about the anarchists who identify as antifa is the fact that they claim all this solidarity with communists against fascism, without recognizing that historically there’s been just as strong a rivalry between communists and anarchists as between fascists and anarchists. The Marxists expelled the anarchists from the First International, the Bolsheviks suppressed the anarchists in revolutionary Russia, the Communists back-stabbed the anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. It’s always been this way. I know of no exceptions. I recognized this very early in my “career” as an anarchist, and early on developed the view that anarchists needed to carve out a political identify for themselves that was independent of the conventional Left (social democracy and Leninism). To the degree that anarchists identify with other ideologies or political currents, it should be about recognizing libertarian, decentralist, anti-statist or anti-authoritarian tendencies wherever they appear whether left, right, religious, indigenous, etc. Obviously, anarchists need to be against fascism but no more so than anarchists need to be against communism.

Much can be learned about authoritarian leftism by studying the work of its critics on the far right (because they have spent much more time than most thinking about the question). During the Cold War, one could probably find out more about the true nature of Communism from Readers Digest than from most leftist publications. Likewise, the real nature of totalitarian humanism can be understood more easily through studying the works of critics such as the paleoconservatives or the New Right.

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Breaking: “The Gist” of Rand Paul’s Controversial Defense Budget Amendment 940 Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Electoralism/Democratism, Military

Good critique of Rand Paul’s flip-flopping unpredictability by Nick Gillespie. I’m glad to see Reason is not merely sucking up to Rand. Still, Reason is considerably to the right of ATS on foreign policy

“More than ever, we need a strong voice to argue that $600 billion is more than enough to secure the safety and security of U.S. citizens and interests.”

Ugh, that might be a little too much.

By Nick Gillespie

Reason

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) submitted a budget amendment calling for increased defense spending in fiscal years 2016 and 2017. As Time originally reported, the amendment called for increasing spending by a total of about $190 billion over those two years, or a 16 percent increase over current totals.

While the specific language of the amendment is not yet available, the senator’s office has sent me the following summary of its provisions:

Background information on Paul Amdt 940:

Sen. Paul has offered an amendment to increase the levels of national defense spending (budget function 050) in both 2016 and 2017.  The levels reflect the projected FY2016 levels, before BCA caps became law.

Amdt. 940 will increase, defense spending by nearly $190 billion over the next two years. This amendment continues to fulfill the President’s OCO request and mandatory defense spending.

In the proposed amendment, Sen. Paul provides an increase in defense spending with offsets from the following accounts:

•             $21 billion from Foreign Assistance accounts (budget 150 function)
•             $14 billion from the National Science Foundation and Climate Change research under the General Science, Space, and Technology (budget 250 function)
•             $10 billion total from the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Commerce activities under Natural Resources and Environment (Budget 300 function) and Commerce and Housing Credits (Budget 370 function)
•             $20 billion from Department of Education
•             $41 billion in discretionary spending from the Department of Housing and Urban Development

These reductions would occur in both FY2016 and FY2017.

More…

Twilight of the Right Reply

by • Left and Right

I first read Alan Pell Crawford’s Thunder on the Right in the late 1980s, and to this day I continue to think he is one of the very best critics of so-called “movement conservatism.” I have certainly spent more time in recent years criticizing the Left rather than the Right, and I do this for good reason. The Left (as least in its progressive-liberal form, rather than its historic anti-capitalist form ) is a rising force in Western societies, while the Right mostly represents dying forces (e.g. social conservatives, traditional religion, the 1950s model of the nuclear family, “whiteness”). The present day Left is created a whole new authoritarian paradigm in the form of totalitarian humanism. Further, the Left has a much tighter grip on the general anarchist milieu than the Right (which has only a marginal presence, at best).

However, I have always been 100% opposed, and zealously so, to the Republican-oriented “conservative movement.” In fact, having grown up around it and having a strong motivation to oppose it is in part what led me towards radicalism in the first place. In fact, the criticisms of “movement conservatism” offered by Noam Chomsky here, here, and here are largely the same as my own. I included three chapters in my book criticizing “mainstream” American conservatism, all of which are available online. See here, here, and here, along with a critique of what Kevin Carson calls “vulgar libertarianism” (see here).

Of course, there are strands of the U.S. Right that I might have a more favorable view of including the anti-statist or anti-ruling class strands of the populist right (e.g. sovereign citizens, the militia movement, right-wing secessionists, Alex Jones-style anti-elitists), the “unpatriotic conservatives” so hated by the neocons, the Burke-influenced “traditional Right,” sincerely anti-statist libertarians, the libertarian-populism of “The American Conservative,” and the Nietzscheanism, anti-totalitarian humanism and opposition to U.S. imperialism of the neo-reactionaries, dark enlightenment, and alternative right (even if I find the racialism and neo-monarchism often found in those circles to be a bit, well, “over the top.”).

By Alan Pell Crawford

The American Conservative

 

illustration by Michael Hogue

It is the night of August 15, 1973. I’m at Washington’s Sheraton-Park Hotel, now the Marriott-Wardman. The occasion is the annual convention of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), formed 12 years earlier by, among others, William F. Buckley Jr. While nearly 1,000 YAFers are elsewhere in the building, I, by special invitation, am at a reception hosted by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. Tyrrell—who had been kind enough to help me land an internship that summer at the right-wing weekly Human Events—was then the dashing editor of The Alternative, a magazine for undergraduates with Tory sensibilities.

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The Colour Brown: De-colonising Anarchism and Challenging White Hegemony Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Race and Ethnicity

This article and the discussion that follows are an interesting discussion of ethnic and national conflict within and between anarchist movements around the world both historically and today.

By Budour Hassan

The appearance of the Egyptian Black Bloc in Cairo’s streets in January 2013 triggered gullible excitement in Western anarchist circles. Little thought was given to the Egyptian Black Bloc’s political vision – or lack thereof – tactics, or social and economic positions. For most Western anarchists, it was enough that they looked and dressed like anarchists to warrant uncritical admiration. Facebook pages of Israeli anarchists were swamped with pictures of Egyptian Black Bloc activists; skimming through the US anarchist blogosphere during that period would have given one the impression that the Black Bloc was Egypt’s first-ever encounter with anarchism and anti-authoritarianism.

But as American writer Joshua Stephens notes, the jubilant reaction many Western anarchists have towards the Black Bloc raises unflattering questions concerning their obsession with form and representation, rather than content and actions. And in this regard, these anarchists are not different from the Islamists who were quick to denounce the Black Bloc as blasphemous and infidel merely because they looked like Westerners. Further, many Western anarchist reactions to the Black Bloc unmask an entrenched orientalist tendency. Their disregard of Egypt and the Middle East’s rich history of anarchism is one manifestation of this.

As Egyptian anarchist, Yasser Abdullah illustrates, anarchism in Egypt dates back to the 1870’s in response to the inauguration of the Suez Canal; Italian anarchists in Alexandria took part in the First International, published an anarchist journal in 1877, and took part in the Orabi revolution of 1881; Greek and Italian anarchists also organised strikes and protests with Egyptian workers. Yet these struggles are nonchalantly shunned by those who act today as if the Black Bloc is the first truly radical group to grace Egyptian soil.

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Did the Early Factory Workers Welcome Their Fate? Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations

The issues raised in this piece from 2012 by Sheldon Richmond are extremely important. Like it or not, libertarians are widely regarded by critics from the Left and Right alike as mere apologists for the nineteenth century model of capitalism. As long as libertarians are regarded as a movement that wants to abolish minimum wages, dismantle the social safety net, and deregulate capitalism while offering no alternatives other than “Let the free market take care of it!” (which sounds an awful lot like “Let them eat cake!” to outsiders), then libertarians will never have more than a minor audience.

By Sheldon Richman

Center for Stateless Society

Kevin Carson has an interesting post in his occasional “Vulgar Libertarianism Watch” series. This time he critiques Thomas Woods’s comments on distributism, the Catholic-related idea, associated with Belloc and Chesterton, that the means of production should be widely dispersed, rather than concentrated in the hands of a few bureaucrats or capitalists. A distributist economy would presumably be filled with single proprietorships and worker co-ops. Carson quotes from Woods’s article “What’s Wrong with ‘Distributism,’“ in which he states that for family reasons, “it is by no means obvious that it is always preferable for a man to operate his own business rather than to work for another.” To which Carson responds,

This makes the unwarranted assumption that working for someone else is the only way of reducing risk, as opposed to cooperative ownership, federation, etc. It assumes, as a basic premise, the very thing that distributism objects to: that capital is concentrated in the hands of a few owners who hire wage labor, instead of widely distributed among the general population who pool it through cooperative mechanisms.

More…

If All Those State Secession Movements Got Their Way, America Would Look Like This Map Reply

by • Secession

By Nate Cohn

The New Republic

The electoral map divides the country neatly into blue states and red states. But blue states include vast conservative stretches; and most red states harbor liberal enclaves, too. In recent years, as partisan polarization has grown, some political minorities in these disaffected areas have proposed a radical solution: state partition.

It has happened before. Maine, for instance, was once part of Massachusetts. And while none of the current movements really has a shot, the eleven instances mapped here (including that to grant the District of Columbia statehood) have at least attracted the support of elected officials.

What would happen if all of them succeeded? Each new state would get two senators and its share of electoral college votes. We ran the numbers and recalculated the 2012 presidential race.

In this bizarro United States, the GOP would have a structural advantage in the expanded Senate, and Barack Obama would have had a tighter fight against Mitt Romney in the electoral college (which he won, in reality, 332–206).

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The 124 states of America: What would the U.S. look like if all of the secession movements in U.S. history had succeeded? Reply

by • Secession

If only…

By Chris Cilliza

The Washington Post

Secessionist movements are all the rage these days. A handful of counties in Colorado tried to secede from the rest of the state earlier this year.  There’s an attempt to create the State of Jefferson (northern California/southern Oregon) via ballot initiative in 2014.  And there’s plenty more.

What would the U.S. look like if all of the secession movements in U.S. history had succeeded?  Well, Mansfield University geography professor Andrew Shears built a map to answer that question. (It covers secession movements through the end of 2011.)

The War on Drugs is Over and Drugs Have Won Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Law/Justice, Police State/Civil Liberties

Nobel Laureate economist Gary Becker’s article from the Wall Street Journal from two years ago.

Right now, the War on Drugs appears to where the Vietnam War was in the period between 1971-1973. The war was still going on, but it was obvious it was a doomed effort. Public opinion was starting to turn away from it, and more and more public officials and mainstream figures were speaking against it. Reforms like phasing out the draft were starting to take place.

Likewise, the War on Drugs is still going on, but it is obvious it is a doomed effort. Public opinion is starting to turn away from it, and more and more public officials and mainstream figures are speaking against it. Reforms like decriminalizing marijuana are starting to take place.

By Gary Becker and Kevin M. Murphy

Wall Street Journal

The American "war on drugs" began in 1971. ENLARGE
The American “war on drugs” began in 1971. Stephen Webster

President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in 1971. The expectation then was that drug trafficking in the United States could be greatly reduced in a short time through federal policing—and yet the war on drugs continues to this day. The cost has been large in terms of lives, money and the well-being of many Americans, especially the poor and less educated. By most accounts, the gains from the war have been modest at best.

The direct monetary cost to American taxpayers of the war on drugs includes spending on police, the court personnel used to try drug users and traffickers, and the guards and other resources spent on imprisoning and punishing those convicted of drug offenses. Total current spending is estimated at over $40 billion a year.

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Insight into the little-known ‘anarchist’ revolution underway in Rojava (western Kurdistan) 1

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Fourth Generation Warfare, Military

The picture says it all.

UndercoverInfo

Rojava Revolution

Towards the end of last year reports filtered through of an ‘anarchist’ revolution underway in the Kurdistan province of Rojava. It appeared to have all the trappings in place – equality of gender, redistribution of wealth, levelling of hierarchies – and even, purportedly, taking inspiration from the Zapatista revolution of Mexico. More recently there is news of practical support for this revolution from established anarchist organisations in neighbouring Turkey. Over the last three years, especially, the Iraq/Syria region has seen a range of ethnic and religious based militias and alliances (some purely tactical) and while this experiment in Rojava is not without its flaws (see links at end of the article) in the context of the wider region it is arguably unique…

The Kurdish people are a nation who for centuries have existed without a recognised state and who live in regions of Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey. In their resistance against repression in Turkey they formed the PKK, which is essentially a Stalinist-based guerilla movement. But then, the story goes, their imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan, happened upon some books by the celebrated American anarchist, Murray Bookchin, and apparently changed his political views. It wasn’t long afterwards that in parts of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq the guerilla movement there – known as the Movement of the Democratic Society (Tev-Dem) – began to organise differently – in an anarchist way, stressing lack of hierarchy, equality of gender and social revolution. And when Syria collapsed into civil war, the northern Kurdish area of Rojava started to collectivise industry and services in a way probably not seen since the successful, though short-lived, Spanish Revolution in 1936.

However, it was not long after that when ISIS came about and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) took the opportunity to attack the Kurds (though later the Kurds and the FSA formed a tactical alliance). It was also around that time when the Kurdish PYD and its armed militias – the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) – began to implement a programme of what it calls ‘democratic autonomy‘. (It was the YPJ, along with their male counterparts the YPG, who eventually rescued the thousands of Yazidis stranded and encircled by ISIS on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq.)

More…

Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Strategy

As I would have predicted, it would appear that the youth should be our primary demographic target as far as age is concerned.

Pew Research Center

Even in an increasingly Red vs. Blue nation, the public’s political attitudes and values come in many shades and hues.

The 2014 Political Typology: Polarized Wings, a Diverse MiddlePartisan polarization – the vast and growing gap between Republicans and Democrats – is a defining feature of politics today. But beyond the ideological wings, which make up a minority of the public, the political landscape includes a center that is large and diverse, unified by frustration with politics and little else. As a result, both parties face formidable challenges in reaching beyond their bases to appeal to the middle of the electorate and build sustainable coalitions.

The latest Pew Research Center political typology, which sorts voters into cohesive groups based on their attitudes and values, provides a field guide for this constantly changing landscape. Before reading further, take our quiz to see where you fit in the typology.