The best essay I’ve read on the purpose of breaking windows as a form of propaganda of the deed: “when an activist tamely busts some window they’re obviously not trying to win by depriving the state of glass surfaces. This too is outreach of a form. But you are not the target audience … That’s why politicians and police consistently go apeshit over things like measly storefront windows. Their control is dependent in no small part on being seen in control. Certain boundaries to what’s considered feasible must be secured at all cost lest they begin to loose the illusion of invulnerability that dissuades the subjugated from rising up. No one in power gets hysterical when a common thief, for example, breaks a window because thieves are perceived as part of the same ecosystem of exploitation in which cops and CEOs position themselves as the apex predators. Political vandalism is potent in part precisely because it risks much for no personal gain. It announces a violation of the established rules"

Some photos and a first-hand account of being arrested at the 888 Turk squat in San Francisco yesterday.

This is a protest I went to back in November. State troopers under Governor Hickenlooper and Denver police under Mayor Hancock had just arrested dozens of people at the Occupy Denver camps and confiscated food and supplies from the kitchen, and then they were made the “guests of honor” at a Denver homeless shelter’s Thanksgiving dinner. It was pathetic.

Cops really hate tents; but they also don’t care much for books.

I disagree with her: protest chants almost never feel meaningful.

An interview with Justin Lee, the director of The Gay Christian Network. Some good questions and answers.

After I posted three links to a video of a Dateline episode featuring a small Arizona religious group, two of the three hosts received DMCA take-down notices from the group’s lawyer and took down the video. So I pulled out my stenotype keyboard and made this quick transcript of the 40-minute program. Corrections welcome.

User-submitted links to information on various religious groups.

Fred Clark on why some church people like to believe silly things.

Asthon Kutcher on SOPA

Mikhail Bakunin on social contract theory.

“That sound you don’t hear — the absence of outrage over marriage rights, and gay spokespeople for middle-American companies — is the sound of social change.”

Nice short introduction to neomedievalism. The rest of this weblog is fun to read, too.

The DA recently added a charge of trespassing and one of interfering with a law officer to my case (and offered me a deferred judgment, which I refused).

James Grimmelmann’s fascinating condensed history of Sealand, a micro-nation on a platform in the North Sea, and the attempt to run a data center there.

Wow. A speech given by Don Mitchell to students at Syracuse University learning how to rule the world: “I find the construction of the American Empire to be utterly reprehensible. I find our diplomatic and military hypocrisy not only on the world stage but at home too to be abhorrent. I find our - that is my and your state’s - role in the world, a role defined by the raw exercise of power, a startling ignorance of what other peoples are like and what they want, to be a sheer exercise not only in arrogance, but in violent bloody-mindedness. I find our reliance on force, on arms, on the technology of death, coupled with our disregard for others' lives - the thousands of Afghani civilians directly killed by our bombs as they missed Mohammed Omar and Osama bin Laden; the at least ten thousands Iraqis so far killed; the fifty to hundred thousand killed in Dresden; the more than a hundred thousand incinerated or condemned to a cancerous death in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the two million Vietna

Kevin Carson gives the standard left-libertarian view of the state as an economic siphon to make possible a parasitic rentier class.

My “I Was Arrested at Occupy Denver” essay is included as page 6 of this publication.

A satire of the entertainment industry’s rent-seeking, set in the first century near the Sea of Galilee.

Free trade is not free, money is debt, and people do not prefer to be wage labourers.

I was there. I wrote about it! (http://americancynic.net/log/2012/5/6/my_may_day_2012.html)

A cute story made up of photographs of little plastic people. I like how the ducks are wearing the red square… and how the anarchist saves the day :)

Good article about Montreal’s Anarchopanda. It turns out he’s a philosophy professor.

A good rundown of several of the new and proposed anti-camping laws aimed at the homeless and the Occupy movement.

Give us this day our daily bread Ⓐnd forgive us our trespasses

Thank you, NLG!

I’m the thumbnail image for this article!

A photo, quote, and brief bio of 20 people arrested at OWS. My favorite quote: “I think that everyone should be arrested at least once.”

Vermin Supreme is a candidate for the President of the United States of America. Free ponies for all.

On Karl Hess’s move to the Left.

By Andy Alexis-Baker of JesusRadicals.com. This paper is relevant to Christians beyond Anabaptists, and to people beyond Christians.

This site aggregates some good religious content.

Mormon channel: http://www.patheos.com/Mormon.html
Atheist channel: http://www.patheos.com/Atheist.html

Nate Phelps, who left the Westboro Baptist Church when he was 18, answers redditors' questions

One of the Pussy Riot defenders, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, said at the trial yesterday, “We are freer than those who are prosecuting us. We can say everything we want, and they have their mouths shut and are puppets.” Every Christian in the world should be cheering her on.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court has issued an opinion affirming that California’s Proposition 8 is unconstitutional! From the majority (2-1) opinion: "The People may not employ the initiative power to single out a disfavored group for unequal treatment and strip them, without a legitimate justification, of a right as important as the right to marry."

If nothing else, the Occupy protests have helped bring attention to laws aimed at criminalizing homelessness and the authoritarian restriction of public spaces.

No Border camp sticker from a 2009 Lesbos camp.

There was a No Borders camp at the US-Mexico border for five days in 2007! I wish I had been there. Though they did get beat up pretty bad by the US Border Patrol on the last day. Check out the videos. There is also a series of three videos on YouTube summarizing the entire event:

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccePCNfEsQ0
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNJxYgEduSs
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9wGm6VA208&feature;=youtu.be

This is the issue by which I became associated with Occupy Denver in the first place.

Of everything Howard Zinn has written, this is my favorite.

Once again, good on the NLG. Note the protesters in San Diego charged with felony conspiracy for interrupting a political speech.

“The reason I’m wrong isn’t because gay people shouldn’t join the Army. It’s because no-one should join the Army.”

Anarchy is the radical notion that other people are not your property.

A glimpse at sleeping on Denver’s 16th Street Mall in face of the urban camping ban being discussed.

Chomsky’s assessment of Obama’s presidency: "In many ways, it’s a little worse than what I expected, but I didn’t expect anything."

Quebec criminalized protest in wake of the Montreal student strikes. This is how the people of Montreal responded.

I went to a few protests/marches last fall associated with Occupy Denver. It seems like it’s always the guy with the megaphone who least represents everybody else present.

Kevin Carson weighs in on the controversy over the legitimacy of violence in protests: "The state is simply a group of human beings cooperating for common purposes — purposes frequently at odds with those of other groups of people, like the majority of people in the same society. And violent actions by an association of individuals who call themselves ‘the state’ have no more automatic legitimacy than violent actions by associations of individuals who call themselves ‘the Ku Klux Klan’ or ‘al Qaeda.’"

Zakk Flash responds to Chris Hedges' criticisms of the black bloc tactic.

Although the charges and disputed facts in his case are different than mine, this is encouraging!

Pancho was arrested while meditating at Occupy Oakland and nearly deported. As far as I know after his release he has not been deported to date. See also his interview on Democracy Now! (http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/18/occupy_oakland_protester_pancho_ramos_stierle)

This is disturbing. Some in the OWS movement think the focus should be on corporate influence over politics (instead of police misconduct). But here Graeber reports the NYPD being violent, targeting women, and doing it for the sake of the banks. They’re not separate issues.

I responded to a questionnaire from the citizen journalist who wrote this article, and am quoted in it along with two other activists who were arrested at Occupy-related events (one from the West Coast and one from Australia). I think I came off sounding like I was trying to be insightful without actually being very insightful (someone remind me never to talk to a reporter in real life!), but at least she used my ‘cops hate tents’ quote to close the article. (I don’t know what the ‘police brutality’ bit in the title has to do with anything; I don’t think any of us were brutalized or witnessed brutality.)

This anti-religious fashion police stuff is stupid authoritarianism dressed up as enlightened thinking.

“Candy canes occupy an awkward place in the candy taxonomy.” I don’t quite understand the urge to invent history in an attempt at authenticating an idea. Whether it’s Joseph Smith and his Native American wars, so many gurus and their past lives (usually as famous historical figures), or “a candymaker in Indiana.” It doesn’t help.

When atheists sound like fundamentalist Christians.

A fairly concise introduction to Christian anarchism by one of the most active academics researching the topic.

Expanding on Tucker’s four monopolies of the state

Count me in the left-wing market anarchist school.

Don Mitchell coined the phrase ‘annihilation of property by law’ to describe the legal exclusion of the public (including the homeless) from ‘public’ spaces. Last year’s Occupy evictions show the violence cities are willing to inflict to so annihilate their public spaces.

Even Pat Robertson sees the problem.

A short essay on the criminalization of homelessness, with a focus on the inherent dignity of persons.

Glenn Greenwald’s introduction: “At some point in the future, I believe history will be quite clear about who the actual criminals are in this case: not Mehanna, but rather the architects of the policies he felt compelled to battle and the entities that have conspired to consign him to a cage for two decades”

Detroit high school suspends 100 students for walk-out protest. Those kids respond by starting a Free School while they’re suspended.

"I’m astounded that adults argue this so-called philosophy." There’s also a part 2 where you can learn about the silly notion of "libertarian/socialism": http://www.opednews.com/articles/Delusional-Anarchists-Part-by-Joe-Giambrone-120513-310.html

Paul Graham on property. His idea of property as that which “works” is slowly getting back to Max Stirner’s common-sense definition: “Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property.”