Jessica Ahlquist

For those of you who do not know about Jessica Ahlquist, she is a teenage girl from Cranston, Rhode Island that led the charge to remove a prayer banner from her high school. A banner which read:

Our Heavenly Father.

Grant us each day the desire to do our best.
To grow mentally and morally as well as physically.
To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers.
To be honest with ourselves as well as with others.
Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win.
Teach us the value of true friendship.
Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.

Amen.

This being the ‘school prayer’ did not sit well with Ahlquist, who is an atheist. She eventually won a court case, Ahlquist v. Cranston, and the school was forced to remove the prayer banner this past March.

Recently, she received a very threatening letter, a decidedly ‘un-Christian’ letter at that.

Apparently, gang-rape will make her see the error of her heathen ways.

The cops will not watch you forever.
We will get you good.
Tell your little asshole sister to watch her back.
There are many of us, “Crusaders,” we have a better pool going to see who gets you first!
Your fuckin old man better move or keep you locked up if you know whats good for you.
We know where he works, what kind of cars you have + the plate numbers of the cars.
Get the fuck out of R.I. you bitchin whore. You are nothing more than a sex-toy of a slut. Maybe you will gang-banged before we throw you out of one of our cars.
WE WILL GET YOU — LOOK OUT!

I grew up with a lot of kids like this. The popular, aggressive, testosterone-fueled meat-heads were some of the Lord’s most outspoken champions at my school, so this is not very surprising.

While I may be an atheist, I am usually a little more defensive of people’s religious beliefs than most. A lot of militant atheists talk about all of the evil that religion has caused in the history of the world, but conveniently ignore the good. Many great works of art and literature came from many different religions.

As an example, many will turn to the Spanish Inquisition as a showcase of the evil that the Christian religion is capable of, but while the Catholics were busy torturing the belief in Jesus into the native South Americans, but either ignore, or are unaware of the fact that the Jesuit monks were laying down their lives defending the rights of the indigenous South Americans and their right to their beliefs.

This is my usual argument, anyway. The reality is, the Jesuits lost and the vast majority of South Americans are now devout Catholics. As abstract as the ideas of good and evil can be, it was not ‘good’ that prevailed in that situation.

Personally, I spent five years of my childhood in a very repressed, religious atmosphere. Five of my teenage years, actually, and I am a little more than bitter about that. The religion that I was forced into practiced the concept of ‘disfellowshipping’ (disowning) family members who have sinned in certain cases. I have watched this religion tear families apart – my own included. They also covered up for a child-molester within their own ranks – in that they did not bring the case to the authorities, and the perpetrator is still out there, free to strike again.

While my personal experience with religion may make me a little jaded, I do recognize that the majority of the people that belong to that particular congregation are good people. So I have come to the conclusion that while the people may be good, the evil that they practice comes from the institution itself.

Or, in the words of Steven Weinberg,

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. “

The Occupy Movement and the Tea Party

I was recently invited to attend a roundtable discussion at the local college. The topic to be discussed is The Occupy Movement and the Tea Party. What are their differences? What are their similarities? Can they ever find common cause together?

This is a hard question, especially in a day and age when more emphasis is put on labels and belief systems and especially on what are differences are than what we have in common. We should work together. We should be a unified people, working together to make this world a better place.

Differences… Who Cares?

I still don’t really know a whole lot about the Tea Party. When I think of a Tea Partier, I think of a stereotypical far-right conservative – white, older than 40, Christian, and more likely to be male. To be fair, when a Tea Partier thinks of an Occupier, they probably think of your stereotypical far-left liberal – college-educated, younger than 30, non-religious.

If you look through the Internet, you can find plenty of nastiness from both sides. Tea-partiers are a bunch of bigoted, homophobic rednecks. Occupiers are a bunch of dirty, communist hippies. This rhetoric detracts from the conversation, and the only people that are served well by this are the ruling class.

It is one of the oldest tricks in the book, for the ruling class to sew division amongst its subjects. The fact that it still works says more about our society than about our government. When we spend all of our time fighting amongst each other about social issues like gay marriage and contraceptives (when we are done being preoccupied by the death of some celebrity), we will never find common cause.

This is important to recognize. Instead of calling each other liberals or conservatives, or taking things farther and calling each other pinko-commies or fascist pigs, we should look at what we have in common.

Common Interests, Common Enemies

The biggest similarity is the mere act of protesting. Both movements feel that there is something seriously wrong with the direction that this country is heading. Both movements have taken to the streets. Both movements have taken to the Internet as well, using social networks and blogs as tools for their cause.

A big issue around both groups is this: the bailout was bullshit. From a country that preaches liberty and freedom, it was hypocrisy. A handful of the corporate elite failed in their little game of casino economics. The free market really isn’t so free when the burden of the mistakes falls not upon those who make them, but on the taxpayer.

Looking at how to fix it may be a different story. My take on things is that deregulation (i.e. the repeal of Glass-Steagal) is a big part of how things got this bad. Wanting a freer market doesn’t make much sense to me – as it is now, it’s a very ‘free’ market – just not for you and me.

The government does not represent the people. It hasn’t for quite some time. What about civil liberties? What I know of the Tea Party movement is that it started as a grass root, libertarian movement. I am sure that we can find common cause on issues like SOPA/PIPA (and now ACTA), the NDAA 2012, or Homeland Security… even the war on drugs.

This all may be quite a stretch. Maybe the core belief systems of both groups are too different for them ever to find common cause on anything, to ever look past their base principles. There are far too many people out there who believe what they believe because they want to, regardless of truth, but when it comes down to it I think that if both movements could put their differences aside for the time being, maybe they could work together and accomplish something.

I found this on the internet yesterday - this is why I like Venn Diagrams.

Tyler Durden

I found this on the internet. Haven’t had much time to blog, so I thought I’d share it.

Show Your Support

There are two bills regarding getting corporate money out of politics that are currently going through the Alaska Legislature:

1. HB 244: “An act providing that for-profit corporations and limited liability companies organized in this state are not persons for purposes of influencing the outcomes of public office elections, initiatives, referendums, or recalls.”
2. HJR 33: Urging the U.S. Congress and the President of the U.S. to work to amend the Constitution to prohibit corporations, unions, and individuals from making unlimited independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates for public office.

Both bills are currently in the Alaska House Affairs Committee and could use your support. Show your support by contacting committee members and telling them that this is a good bill for the People of Alaska.

For more information, and a list of contacts, please visit http://occupykenaisoldotna.org/

Self-Reliance

A while ago I had a good discussion with some family on self-reliance. The topic came up because we know this rather large family that lives nearby. They live ‘off the grid’. They have a kind of farm, and seem to really be trying to focus on some ‘Little House on the Prairie’ type of lifestyle. Except that they really only live ‘off the grid’ in that they are not tied to the utility grid. They rely on trips to the grocery store in town for food (though they grow a lot of their own), and probably spend more money fueling their generator than I spend on my electric bill every month.

This raised the question – how easy would it be? To go cold turkey, to quit society altogether and strike it out on your own. Complete and total self-reliance.

I think it would be easy for me, but only if it was just me. And only if nothing disastrous ever happens. (Which it will. We are talking about a guy who fed this computer an entire cup of steaming hot coffee). Also, it would be boring. But add a wife and a few kids to the picture, and it gets that much more exciting – and difficult. A family faces a lot of challenges that a single person does not – you no longer have to worry about just yourself, but now your family. You are all individuals, but you are all in this together. Everything that happens, happens to all of you.

The concept is not very appealing. You would likely have to put in 16-hour workdays almost every day just to survive – to have food, water, heat, shelter. As appealing as it is not have to worry about bills, mortgages, getting pulled over, being late for work or wearing holy jeans. All of the annoyances of society would be gone, and life would be much simpler. It wouldn’t be any easier though.

Unless there was more than one family doing this. An autonomous community. Such as Freetown Christiana, a self-proclaimed ‘anarchist community’ of around 850 people within Copenhagen, Denmark. Hell, any commune that is functional is largely self-reliant. Historically there have been many examples of this – Catalonia, Spain during the Spanish Civil War for one, or the Paris Commune. People who lived without leaders, who governed themselves – and did so successfully (for a while). But they did this as a group.

I find examples with wildlife as well – where I live, coyotes are solo creatures that seldom pack up. I’m not sure why this is, but they usually are not very healthy. Lice-ridden, bone-thin scavengers. The wolves on the other hand, are not. A solo wolf would do just as poorly as this coyote, but when they pack together, they are a powerful unit, and their chances of survival are much greater. They are larger, healthier, and more well-fed. The only thing that they really have to worry about is being shot from an airplane.

So I guess my point is, self-reliance is a great idea, and one that I try to practice as much as I can, but pales in comparison to cooperation, to mutual aid.

Thoughts?

The Internet Fights Back

The internet has spoken. The corporate oligarchy may control most of the world, but the internet is a part of the world that belongs to the people, and with the people it shall remain.

The world-wide web is a sea of anarchy, a place where one can find all of the information that they want about any given subject with but a few keystrokes. There is a plethora of knowledge, ideas and opinions. There are dark places too, places that will test even the strongest gag reflexes, with images that will forever imprint themselves on our minds. It is a double-edged sword, a Pandora’s box that will never be closed again.

It is truth.

This is why they want to stop it. The big pushers behind SOPA - the MPAA, the RIAA and big media - aren’t really that concerned about copyright infringement. At least, they shouldn’t be – according to the Swiss, people who ’pirate’ copyrighted files are the same people who spend the most money within the entertainment sector.

Many of these companies are falling behind. Some of the problem lies with the media’s failure to adapt to the Information Age. If most companies followed the example of Netflix and Vudu, this never would have happened. Instead of adapting to internet culture, they expect internet culture to adapt to them. Hell, even comic books are going digital. Most people will spend the money for these services for convenience, rather than browsing for torrents to download a tv show that is going to be deleted after watching anyway.

The same can be said about big media. Even about the United States government. Failure to adapt to the Information Revolution. Losing the ‘propaganda war’. Hillary Clinton made a big speech about it:

I started losing faith when the last NDAA garbage was passed. Signatures were gathered and petitions were signed, but someone forgot to read the memo that we don’t have a say, not that way. Not through legislation. Not through voting.

But boycotting? Blackouts? Hacktivism? That can work. Wikipedia, Reddit, Anonymous, people like you and me and various other internet organizations banded together and fought against the governments blatant attempt to take the internet and hand control over to private corporations.

This is a great beginning. But it IS a beginning. Please, people of the internet… don’t stop there.

Broken Machine

So about a month ago, my laptop decided to drink an entire cup of steaming hot coffee. It promptly shut down. After two days of a hair dryer pointed right at the guts, I reassembled it and it worked perfectly fine!

Right after the holidays though, my hard drive crashed.

I guess what I am trying to say, is this:

I have been busy. Now I am all caught up. My machine is broken. Give me a week, I will return.

I really want to talk about SOPA and PIPA, and anarchism in cyberspace.

How to Prevent Your Local Occupy Movement from Being Co-opted

It has often been pointed out by political scientists that the US is basically a one-party state -- the business party. with two factions, Democrats and Republicans. Most of the population seems to agree. A very high percentage, sometimes passing 80%, believe that the government serves "the few and the special interests," not "the people."

I recently read an article on truth-out.org that talks about the Occupy Wall Street movement, drawing examples from a statement that Gandhi once made, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” The article then goes on to detail what many of us already know . The media ignored the movement at the beginning, hoping that it would just go away. Then came the ridicule, mostly from News Corp affiliated sites, propagating the ‘dirty, jobless hippy’ stereotype. We know what came next – the violence. The pepper-sprayings and beatings. While it is nothing compared to what protesters in Egypt have been facing, police violence towards peaceful protesters actually caused the movement to gain a lot of momentum.

Then it goes even further to something that Gandhi did not foresee in his statement: co-optation. MoveOn.org, Van Jones’ ‘Reclaim the American Dream’ movement, the Center for American progress… there is no shortage of Democratic Party groups that are trying to turn Occupy Wall Street into a voting arm in order to get Obama back in office. They are infiltrating the movement. Even in the small group that I belong to, there is the ever-present Democrats that are constantly trying to get Occupiers to vote Democrat, constantly praising Obama, laying the blame elsewhere when the conversation turns critical, or just straight downplaying the decisions by the Obama administration.

A good example is the NDAA Bill that has stirred up all sorts of controversy – and rightfully so. Our group talked long about this on more than one occasion, and even drafted letters to send to the President in order to encourage him to veto this bill. When he did not, some in the group changed their stance on the bill all of a sudden. It went from a blatant violation of civil rights, to something that was not a big deal, and was being overblown. I call this ‘Bipartisan Civil Liberties Disorder’.

To some of these conversations, I reacted emotionally instead of logically, and I feel foolish about this now. Instead of trying to reason with them, I went on a rant about how Obama is a ‘imperialist corporate sock puppet’, and this got me nowhere.

I just find it hard to believe that in a movement against corporate oligarchy, there are still many that are supportive of a man who populated his cabinet with the same folks that helped Clinton repeal the Glass-Steagal act and orchestrated NAFTA. As a wiser man than myself once put it, Wall Street has heavily invested in Barack Obama. They have already seen a massive return on that investment.

The truth is, there are going to be Obama supporters in the Occupy Wall Street movement, just like there are going to be Ron Paul supporters. As much as it annoys me, these people are a part of the 99%, and they have a voice too. What we need to keep in mind, is that this is a movement with a horizontal power structure that operates outside the current political system. The movement cannot make decisions without consensus from everyone at the General Assembly.

In other words, there is a really effective way that you can help prevent co-optation of your local Occupy movement. Be a leader in this movement.

Occupy your General Assembly.

Foreclosure Defense

Foreclosures rose steadily in 2008 nationally, and though Alaska was affected as well, our numbers remained somewhat low. But there is a problem. I know there is a problem because I have seen with my own eyes the trouble that people are having. Finding a job is harder than it has been in years, especially in the winter months. Homelessness is on the rise, the Kenai Merit in was converted into a homeless shelter, and it is full. The once festive and burgeoning town of Kenai is now slowly migrating towards Soldotna with it’s ‘Box Store Avenue’, leaving a swath of abandoned business buildings in it’s wake. (You know your town has some economic issues when it finally gets a Walmart, right?)

The house price declines, increasing unemployment and turmoil in financial markets nationally has an effect locally as well. In Alaska alone, approximately 1 in 5 loans during the sup-prime boom were high-cost, and most of these were targeted at minority groups (african-americans were hit the hardest). I’m not trying to be pessimistic, it’s just that the data that is out there is very concerning. Alaska may appear be relatively insulated from a lot of the economic crises that befall the rest of the nation, but often it is more of a delay.

Wether it is because of predatory lending practices, unfair property tax increases or unstable employment… nobody should be homeless. The stereotype of the homeless person is that they are chronic inebriates or have drug problems, and this is just not true. Some of them do, and they are probably the more ‘in your face’, but most of the homeless Alaskans at the moment are families, unemployed or under-employed, ex-cons, and teenagers.

This disturbs me. I have been homeless before, and I will tell you – being homeless is some of the hardest work that you will ever do. I’m not really sure where else to go with this rant, but if you or anybody that you know is about to be foreclosed upon, message me. Banks are incredibly vulnerable to civil disobedience in the form of foreclosure defense, and I know folks who would gladly lock arms with us in front of a house that is being wrongfully foreclosed.

Occupy Fox News!

Fox News has a poll out (since 7 October, but I just found out):

Do ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protesters Represent Your View of the Economy? 

Everyone should vote and share, if only to chuckle when they pull this from their website. It’s already at 41.99% yes.