Daily Shaarli
December 12, 2012
Mormonism in Boston during the 70s and 80s
Transcript of the Mormon South Park episode.
Laura Jane Grace gives the backstory to Against Me!'s song “I Was a Teenage Anarchist”
“Music has changed in a generation — the bands, the industry. Oh, and me”
Some comments on the FLDS theocracy in Colorado City in light of speculation that church members tortured a kitten.
My first experience being arrested and some comments on the liberal/radical divide within the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Interesting thoughts on the unintended consequences of vegetarianism: killing animals to eat them versus killing animals to eat vegetables.
“We have said that marriage is instituted for the sanctification of love: it is a pact of chastity, charity and justice, by which the spouses declare themselves publicly to be freed, both of them by one another, from the tribulations of the flesh and the cares of gallantry. Consequently, it is sacred to all and inviolable. That is why, apart from some stipulations of interest also require publicity, the family and the city appear in the ceremony: the engagement of the couple, made in view of Justice, carries farther than their persons; their conjugal conscience becomes part of the social conscience, and, as the marriage insures their dignity, it is for the society that proclaims it a glory and a progress.”
“The basic tenet of Simulationism — its 'Central Dogma' — is that the entire universe is nothing more than a simulation that’s been constructed by a highly intelligent being who resides in a place called Noumenal Reality”
A nice post by the Rustbelt Radical sampling some of the music that has come out of the Occupy movement.
This is an interesting instance of a curated Wikipedia spin-off project. It consists of Wikipedia articles re-written with a value-biased policy (to promote “happiness, prosperity, and world peace”) by a much more closed group of editors. I read the article on Tolstoy, which is adapted from a 2005 Wikipedia article, and thought it was well edited (and conveniently shorter than the current WP version).
George Donnelly’s account of being attacked and framed by US Marshals while filming his friends passing out jury nullification pamphlets outside a federal courthouse. This is the kind of thing that will make you hate cops.
An English interview with some members of Pussy Riot, an anti-Putin, feminist-punk, Russian performance group. In Feburary several [alleged] members were arrested after the group performed a "punk prayer" in a Russian Orthodox church. Three members were convicted of "hooliganism" for the act and sentenced to two years imprisonment.
“And your old buddy Ronald Reagan! Now there’s a lesson in liberty for you. On one side of People’s Park there is the State of California with its right of eminent domain. It took the land. I would say it stole the land. How, I wonder, do you describe the right of eminent domain? On the other side are people who have an exotic notion about ownership. They don’t think it should be exercised at the point of a gun or a bayonet. They worked that land. They homesteaded it. They owned it in a sense far deeper than any government proclamation. Think of it that way: a scrap of government paper on one side; real people on the other, and your old friend Ronald Reagan, so help us, now supporting that scrap of paper against the people, with as much bloodcurdling diligence as any man you ever fought in the political arena. Senator, are you really sure you want to be a deputy sheriff for state power? That’s just what you are on the other side of the fence at the People’s Park!”
An article arguing that “Democratic socialism is the very essence of Mormon theology and scripture.” See also my list of Mormon anarchism links: http://americancynic.net/log/2011/4/18/mormon_anarchism_/_some_links.html
Rap song with great lyrics: “No one is illegal / We’re all people / We’re all equal / No borders / No fences / No nations / No prisons / No deportations”
Reportedly, the FBI search warrant was for black clothing, paint, sticks, computers and cell phones, and ‘anarchist materials or literature.’ According to an FBI Domestic Terrorism guide published by greenisthenewred.com, “anarchists are criminals seeking an ideology to justify their actions,” and are “not dedicated to a particular issue.” Common meeting places are “college campuses, underground clubs, coffee houses/ internet cafes.” The implication is that owning “anarchist” literature is enough to indicate to the FBI that one is a criminal – even if that person happens to be a student studying political thought. Or maybe particularly if you are a student – the FBI document states that anarchists are “educated persons of various backgrounds, often students.”
“The historical impact of The Ego and Its Own is not easy to assess. However, Stirner’s book can plausibly be claimed to have had an immediate and destructive impact on contemporary left-Hegelianism, to have played a significant role in the intellectual development of Karl Marx (1818–1883), and to have influenced the tradition of individualist anarchism.”
My fellow teetotaler gives a righteous rant on the Obama administration’s hypocritical drug policies: “it’s not a god damned joke! People who smoke marijuana must be set free. It is insane to lock people up.”
"President Obama’s inability to simply state whether he’s for or against gay marriage is unacceptable," Obama said during a spirited 30-minute address in which he sharply criticized the president for failing time and again to articulate his beliefs.
¡Yo Soy 132!
Also: http://americancynic.net/log/2012/6/4/north_america_is_stirring.html
A good interview with Kristian Williams about abolishing the police and stuff.
Illustrating the difference between direct- and indirect-action.
Police behaving poorly at political protests.
"Fortunately, it won’t work. If you think the music industry has a hard time combating file-sharing, just wait till the old-line manufacturing companies try to prevent hundreds of thousands of hardware hackers in neighborhood garage factories from replicating 'pirated' industrial designs on CAD files from The Pirate Bay.
"This is a desperate, last-ditch effort by the rentier classes, the lords of scarcity who’ve lived off our sweat for five thousand years, to stave off their inevitable demise."
Jill Stein pulled a Ralph Nader.
“Mormonism is not so simple as a quirky version of American conservatism, and both Mormons themselves and their fellow Americans would do well to notice.”
I’m pleased to discover that this is a thing.
Larry Norman’s ‘666’ was the NPR song of the day June 5, 2008
A non-profit focused on improving access and exposure to music by creating free resources and educational materials. We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.
Denver’s Police Chief Robert White and Councilman Brooks praised the Church of Scientology at the opening of the church’s new Denver headquarters.
A brief history of homebrew transhumanism, from computer hacking to grinding.
“Run, philosophers, run (everyone else, too!) with whatever part of the anti-plutocracy message you find most urgent or salient; find whatever allies you can; make noise or pursue quiet changes as suits you and the means at hand.”
“Franciscan poverty does not mean that the monk must make every effort to avoid owning any particular thing, but rather that the monk completely abdicates any right to claim ownership. They don’t just lack all possessions, they lack the very ability to "possess."”
These guys think they’re so funny. “Here’s an exchange of letters between Russell and his namesake, Lord Russell of Liverpool, which took place in February 1959.”
“I’d go Rothbard one further. Why is the criterion for de facto government status the amount of profits directly subsidized from state revenue? What about corporations that function within a web of state regulatory protections, and artificial property rights like Bill Gates’ ‘intellectual property,’ without which they couldn’t operate in black ink for a single day. Anyone who’s read much of my work for any length of time knows that I consider the entire Fortune 500 a pretty good proxy for such de facto branches of the state. As I already argued in an earlier post, the largest corporations are so intertwined with the state that the very distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ becomes meaningless.”
“Without a concept of mutual aid, solidarity, and common struggle against an oppressive system, libertarianism is no more than a way to whitewash privilege and sweep injustice under the rug of 'free choice'. It’s not enough to defend a hollow freedom, because people need more than that. We can help each other achieve more than just freely choosing the best in a set of options the powerful and wealthy provide us.”
Three members of Pussy Riot are serving two year prison sentences for creating this video.
“The best currently available public aggregate data on drone strikes are provided by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), an independent journalist organization. TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children.[3] TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228-1,362 individuals. Where media accounts do report civilian casualties, rarely is any information provided about the victims or the communities they leave behind.”
See also Kevin Gosztola’s summary: http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/09/25/life-for-pakistanis-in-us-drone-war-detailed-in-new-report/
[May 25, 2017]: The livingunderdrones.org domain is currently not resolving. But the Standford project page and the wayback machine cache are available: