Abortion on Demand and Without Apology

From GT 2009-08-20: Tonight, in News of the Obvious:

And in breaking news from NARAL Pro-Choice America, it turns out that government provision of healthcare means that women’s healthcare will be allocated through a political process, and when women’s reproductive healthcare is allocated through a political process, women’s reproductive healthcare ends up being subjected to the vicissitudes of political debate over abortion.

NARAL may not draw the conclusion from its report, but the editorial board here at News of the Obvious will: setting aside outright political prohibitions, which aren’t likely to pass in the near future, a broad expansion of political control over women’s healthcare is the single worst thing that could possibly happen towards undermining women’s access to abortion and reproductive medicine.

—GT 2009-08-20: Tonight, in News of the Obvious

The House of Representatives just recently passed an omnibus health insurance bill which includes extensive new government involvement in health insurance and a strong public option of broad-based government-provided health insurance. The explicit purpose of this bill is to expand political control and political funding in the health insurance industry — to expand government’s role and responsibility in directly paying for healthcare and medical procedures, and to shift more of the money coming in to for-profit health insurance companies away from private sources, and towards government funding sources.

So-called Progressive While so-called Progressive organizations on the male Left — groups like MoveOn and SEIU and the AFL-CIO — have been celebrating the passage of the House bill as a great big win. MoveOn.org calls it historic health care reform and headlines their front page Victory!; now they are staging Countdown to Change rallies to thank those representatives who stood with the American people (by this, they mean those that voted for expanding the scope of the American government). In an e-mail circulated to their mailing list, the AFL-CIO called it a truly historic movement and called on supporters to pressure their Senators to pass a similar bill in order to ensure final victory.

Well, wait.

Just one little problem about this Huge Step Forward: turns out that, if it passes the Senate too, it will strip millions of women of access to abortion, by using strings attached to the new government funding to stop both the public option health insurance plans and plans offered by existing insurance companies from covering abortion procedures.

Oops.

From the National Organization for Women:

The House of Representatives has dealt the worst blow to women’s fundamental right to self-determination in order to buy a few votes for reform of the profit-driven health insurance industry. We must protect the rights we fought for in Roe v. Wade. We cannot and will not support a health care bill that strips millions of women of their existing access to abortion.

Birth control and abortion are integral aspects of women’s health care needs. Health care reform should not be a vehicle to obliterate a woman’s fundamental right to choose.

The Stupak Amendment goes far beyond the abusive Hyde Amendment, which has denied federal funding of abortion since 1976. The Stupak Amendment, if incorporated into the final version of health insurance reform legislation, will:

• Prevent women receiving tax subsidies from using their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;
• Prevent women participating in the public health insurance exchange, administered by private insurance companies, from using 100 percent of their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;
• Prevent low-income women from accessing abortion entirely, in many cases.

NOW calls on the Senate to pass a health care bill that respects women’s constitutionally protected right to abortion and calls on President Obama to refuse to sign any health care bill that restricts women’s access to affordable, quality reproductive health care.

—Terry O’Neill, National Organization for Women (2009-11-08): NOW Opposes Health Care Bill That Strips Millions of Women of Abortion Access Says Bill Obliterates Women’s Fundamental Right to Choose

Once again, this should come as no surprise. Government health insurance means political allocation for women’s healthcare — for any and every one of the women who is moved over to public options and public-private partnerships on the public health insurance exchanges.

Political allocation of women’s healthcare means that women’s healthcare will be subjected to political debate and sacrificed in the name of political compromises — which, in this country, means being subjected and sacrificed to the Gentleman’s Agreement between anti-choice partisans, on the one hand, and, on the other, the doughface politicos, who just don’t give much of a damn about women’s lives or health or freedom, and are happy to treat them as optional as long as they’ve got a bill to pass or a Democrat to elect.

This healthcare bill, authored by Democrats, pushed by Democrats, and supposedly a key aspect of the male liberal’s agenda for Progressive social change, will almost certainly mean a massive government-sponsored assault on women’s access to abortion. Women’s bodies are not public property; women’s health should not be subject to public controversy or dependent on the approval of the public (which means, in fact, the loudest and most belligerent voices in politics). But as long as government is calling the shots on women’s healthcare, women’s healthcare is always going to be compromised and sacrificed in the name of political agendas. The only way to make sure that women’s healthcare will no longer be treated as public-optional is real radical healthcare reform — not by preserving the government-regimented corporatist status quo, but rather by getting government out of healthcare entirely — by cutting the government strings that always come attached to government money — by getting rid of government subsidy and government regimentation and replacing them with grassroots mutual aid, abortion funds, community-supported free clinics, and other forms of low-cost healthcare free of political control because they are supported by free association and community organizing, rather than taxation and political allocation. That is to say, by taking the funding for women’s healthcare out of the hands of politicians, and putting in the hands of women themselves.

Expanding government control of healthcare funding is anti-choice, anti-woman, and would represent the single biggest assault on women’s access to abortion in the last 30 years.

See also:

• GT 2009-08-20: Tonight, in News of the Obvious
• GT 2007-10-25: Radical healthcare reform
• GT 2005-11-03: Goodbye to all that. Again.

• one correlate of the idea that time is progressive and that we. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2009-10-04). one correlate of the idea that time is progressive and that we are it which should give progressives pause is the way the idea has articulated cultures. so, for example, hegel held that africa had no history, was outside of history. in anthropology into the midlate twentieth century, you got... (Linked Saturday 2009-10-17.)
• it's amazing that when people discuss genocide, as in daniel. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2009-10-17). it's amazing that when people discuss genocide, as in daniel goldhagen's new book (at least as it's represented in the review; i intend to read it), or in the alternative views mentioned in the review ('“Mobilizing the Will to Intervene,” a study by leading Canadian and American figures, identifies “poverty... (Linked Saturday 2009-10-17.)
• Economies of Scale in Compliance, by David Henderson. EconLog (2009-10-11). This morning, after a highly-productive Liberty Fund seminar in Santa Fe, I went over to Pasquale's for breakfast. I sat with a woman who runs a Mexican restaurant in a small town in Colorado. We talked about various things, including her criticism of "factory farms" that, in her view and... (Linked Saturday 2009-10-17.)
• The Pill makes you attracted to pansies. Jill, Feministe (2009-10-13). Or so says perpetually off-kilter Jill Stanek — except she uses the term “quiche-eaters.” Basically, a study says that women who use birth control tend to be attracted to men with more boyish features with caring personalities, versus “rugged” men with controlling personalities. The study itself is questionable, and the... (Linked Saturday 2009-10-17.)
• RRND/FND Bleg. Kn@ppster, KN@PPSTER (2009-09-16). I don't usually talk much about my day job here at KN@PPSTER, and when we run a fundraiser over there I usually give it at most a mention here. This one's a bit different and I figure it's a "hit hard, everywhere" situation. So:Dear readers,Over the years, we've tried various... (Linked Saturday 2009-10-17.)
• Berlusconi Hides Nipple of Truth. Kerry Howley, Kerry Howley: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2008-08-06). Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi likes the painting to the right, a Giambattista Tiepolo work called "La Verità Svelata dal Tempo." (The Truth Unveiled by Time.) He likes it so much that he gives news conferences with a reproduction of the painting as backdrop. Truth, the young woman, is front... (Linked Monday 2009-10-19.)
• A bad attitude -- the new felony. wendy@nospam.com (Wendy McElroy), WendyMcElroy.com : News (2009-10-16). A bad attitude -- the new felony (Linked Monday 2009-10-19.)
• the best version of this story i read ended with the moral "some infinities are bigger than others". HOW TRUE. Dinosaur Comics (2009-10-19). archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about– ← previousOctober 19th, 2009nextOctober 19th, 2009: The talk went well! Or at least, I hope it did. A CONFESSION: I queued up all these comics and posts way back when it was last Wednesday, because I was worried I'd... (Linked Monday 2009-10-19.)

• one correlate of the idea that time is progressive and that we. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2009-10-04). one correlate of the idea that time is progressive and that we are it which should give progressives pause is the way the idea has articulated cultures. so, for example, hegel held that africa had no history, was outside of history. in anthropology into the midlate twentieth century, you got... (Linked Saturday 2009-10-17.)
• it's amazing that when people discuss genocide, as in daniel. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2009-10-17). it's amazing that when people discuss genocide, as in daniel goldhagen's new book (at least as it's represented in the review; i intend to read it), or in the alternative views mentioned in the review ('“Mobilizing the Will to Intervene,” a study by leading Canadian and American figures, identifies “poverty... (Linked Saturday 2009-10-17.)
• Economies of Scale in Compliance, by David Henderson. EconLog (2009-10-11). This morning, after a highly-productive Liberty Fund seminar in Santa Fe, I went over to Pasquale's for breakfast. I sat with a woman who runs a Mexican restaurant in a small town in Colorado. We talked about various things, including her criticism of "factory farms" that, in her view and... (Linked Saturday 2009-10-17.)
• The Pill makes you attracted to pansies. Jill, Feministe (2009-10-13). Or so says perpetually off-kilter Jill Stanek — except she uses the term “quiche-eaters.” Basically, a study says that women who use birth control tend to be attracted to men with more boyish features with caring personalities, versus “rugged” men with controlling personalities. The study itself is questionable, and the... (Linked Saturday 2009-10-17.)
• RRND/FND Bleg. Kn@ppster, KN@PPSTER (2009-09-16). I don't usually talk much about my day job here at KN@PPSTER, and when we run a fundraiser over there I usually give it at most a mention here. This one's a bit different and I figure it's a "hit hard, everywhere" situation. So:Dear readers,Over the years, we've tried various... (Linked Saturday 2009-10-17.)
• Berlusconi Hides Nipple of Truth. Kerry Howley, Kerry Howley: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2008-08-06). Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi likes the painting to the right, a Giambattista Tiepolo work called "La Verità Svelata dal Tempo." (The Truth Unveiled by Time.) He likes it so much that he gives news conferences with a reproduction of the painting as backdrop. Truth, the young woman, is front... (Linked Monday 2009-10-19.)
• A bad attitude -- the new felony. wendy@nospam.com (Wendy McElroy), WendyMcElroy.com : News (2009-10-16). A bad attitude -- the new felony (Linked Monday 2009-10-19.)
• the best version of this story i read ended with the moral "some infinities are bigger than others". HOW TRUE. Dinosaur Comics (2009-10-19). archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about– ← previousOctober 19th, 2009nextOctober 19th, 2009: The talk went well! Or at least, I hope it did. A CONFESSION: I queued up all these comics and posts way back when it was last Wednesday, because I was worried I'd... (Linked Monday 2009-10-19.)

Shared by heather
so right on. oh em gee.

…er, okay, actually the article is called “Lady Parts,” by William Saletan. He doesn’t really talk about any lady parts in it, though, so I thought the above title was a far more accurate descriptor of his latest offering of emergency toilet paper (just hit “Print!”).

You know, that observation is worth pursuing a little. William Saletan, in this article about abortion, in vitro fertilization, pregnancy and surrogate motherhood, manages to discuss them all without once referring to a mature human female uterus. He does manage to refer seven times to a developing human embryo, though. What a surprise!

Clearly I (and Amanda*, and others) are not the only ones who have been steadily repulsed by Saletan’s concern trolling about abortion for, well, years now. Apparently, he has gotten a flood of inquiries on the subject!

…I’ve had a few curious exchanges with friends, readers, and bloggers who wonder why I keep writing about this stuff: abortions, pregnancies, IVF, surrogates—what some of my critics jokingly call “lady parts.” What’s my agenda? Do I have a problem with women controlling their bodies? Am I a frontman for the religious right, a useful idiot who pretends that compromise on these issues is possible when, in fact, it isn’t? Even Vorzimer, in a tweet posted on his blog, initially responded to my article by remarking, “The lengths (or depths) abortion foes will go to make a point.”

(Answers, in order: Saletan’s agenda is shaming anyone who disagrees with him about the evils of abortion on demand, clearly he has a real problem with women controlling the fate of anything lodged in their uteruses, and no, he’s not a frontman for the religious right, though I would venture to say that he is, indeed, quite useful to them.)

Saletan goes on to give one of the best descriptions I’ve ever read of the workings of the mind of a anti-choice concern troll. A masterpiece!

This may sound strange, but I don’t consider myself a real abortion foe. I have friends and sparring partners who think abortions should be illegal or at least heavily restricted. To me, that’s the chief dividing line in the debate. I don’t feel comfortable crossing that line. I don’t think a regime of abortion restrictions enacted in the name of life would make this world a better place. I think it would cause a mess—hypocrisy, deceit, interrogations, amateur home surgery, moral crudity backed by the force of law—as ugly as any war fought in the name of peace.

I don’t equate abortion with murder. I don’t even think it’s the worst option available to a woman facing unintended pregnancy. Every abortion dilemma is different, because every situation is different. The person best situated to make the right decision is the pregnant woman. A few years ago, I wrote a whole book on this point.

So why do I keep bringing up abortion as a moral problem? Because it is a moral problem. It’s the destruction of a developing human being. For that reason, the less we do it, the better. When I say abortion is bad, I’m not saying it’s necessarily worse than bringing a child into the world in lousy circumstances. I’m saying it’s worse than avoiding unintended pregnancy in the first place. That’s why I keep pushing contraception. If you cause an unintended pregnancy and an abortion because you didn’t want to wear a condom, you should be ashamed.

I mean, it’s beautiful in its perfection. I don’t get to see these too often in the world of choice debate; the place where I usually see them used over and over is in the gay/lesbian debate world, under the rallying cry of “Of course we don’t hate homosexuals themselves! What we hate is homosexuality. Hate the sin, love the sinner!”

Let’s recontext what Saletan has to say, and see if it starts to sound awfully damn familiar to you too:

This may sound strange, but I don’t consider myself a real abortion homosexuality foe. I have friends and sparring partners who think abortion same-sex marriage should be illegal or at least heavily restricted. To me, that’s the chief dividing line in the debate. I don’t feel comfortable crossing that line. I don’t think a regime of abortion restrictions enacted against homosexual relationships in the name of life morality would make this world a better place. I think it would cause a mess—hypocrisy, deceit, interrogations, amateur home surgery,** moral crudity backed by the force of law—as ugly as any war fought in the name of peace.

I don’t equate abortion homosexual intercourse with murder. I don’t even think it’s the worst option sin available to a woman person facing unintended pregnancy an attraction to a member of the same sex. Every abortion homosexuality dilemma is different, because every situation is different. The person best situated to make the right decision is the pregnant woman person having the homosexual feelings. A few years ago, I wrote a whole book on this point.***

So why do I keep bringing up abortion homosexuality as a moral problem? Because it is a moral problem. It’s the destruction of a developing human being the traditional family unit. For that reason, the less we do it, the better. When I say abortion having a homosexual relationship is bad, I’m not saying it’s necessarily worse than bringing a child into the world in lousy circumstances never marrying someone of the opposite sex. I’m saying it’s worse than avoiding unintended pregnancy in the first place having homosexual desires in the first place. That’s why I keep pushing contraception conversion therapy. If you cause an unintended pregnancy enter into a homosexual relationship and an abortion get married to that person because you didn’t want to wear a condom you didn’t want to undergo conversion therapy, you should be ashamed.

In other words, frothing at the mouth on the subject doesn’t really impress anyone who doesn’t already agree with me, so why not try to subtly ooze into the debate by affixing a large-eyed, sorrowful look to my visage and offering up some gentle-voiced shaming? As long as you listen to me and bob your head and agree that yes, you have done a terrible, monstrous thing and you are a bad, wicked person and you are very, very lucky that Lord Saletan is such a noble person that he is willing to restrain himself from campaigning to have you put into prison for your actions!

Best line in the whole piece:

And I write about the value of unborn life because that’s the problem my fellow pro-choicers don’t like to talk about.

Pro-choicers talk about the value of unborn life all the time. They love to talk about the value of unborn life. They simply don’t assign it the same value that Saletan does. Given that, one might consider the entire sentence to be one flaming whopper, except that there are no such people as Saletan’s “fellow pro-choicers.” There are such people as his “fellows,” and there are “pro-choicers,” but William Saletan can’t have fellow pro-choicers, because he’s not really pro-choice. Tout finis!

*I mention Amanda because I was bragging on Facebook to her just yesterday that even though I did see Saletan’s two latest pieces on the soul-rending tragedy that is aborted fetuses, I didn’t give in and blog about them. Clearly I underestimated my own strength and Saletan’s ability to deliver the final straw up so quickly afterwards.

**Probably not amateur surgery–the only real FAIL in the comparison, though.

***He hasn’t written one about homosexuality. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that there was one in the works.

****If you don’t want to read the entire blog post, the short answer is, Because he’s both smarmy and pro-life.

A new Guttmacher Institute report makes a strong case for contraception — and legal abortion — as a way to reduce the 70,000 deaths from unsafe abortions that occur every year. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church still isn't listening.

As we mentioned yesterday, the report found no correlation between abortion rates and legality of abortion. That is, regions where abortion is banned don't actually have lower rates of abortion — they just have lots of women getting unsafe abortions. Unfortunately for women all over the world, the pro-choice argument that women will seek back-alley abortions if the procedure is forbidden turns out to be totally true. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that 70,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions, another 5 million need to be treated for complications, and 3 million suffer such complications but never get treated at all. The sample methods of unsafe abortion the Institute lists are chilling, and include drinking manure and jumping off a roof.

What does reduce the rate of abortions? Contraception. Worldwide, the rate of unintended pregnancy has dropped, just as the rate of contraceptive use among married women has risen. And Eastern Europe, where the greatest decline in abortion was reported, has seen a corresponding rise in contraceptive use. Unfortunately, only 28% of married African women use contraception, and one in four has an unmet need for contraceptives — meaning she is fertile and sexually active but does not currently want to have a child. Most commonly, the problem is lack of availability.

The Catholic Church, which has a lot of influence in many of the developing countries where the most unsafe abortion occurs, is pretty much holding its hands over its ears and singing through this news. Deirdre McQuade of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities says, "We need to be much more creative in assisting women with supportive services so they don't need to resort to the unnatural act of abortion." This stance is pretty unsurprising. A little more disturbing is McQuade's take on contraception. According to the AP, she says "that use of artificial contraception could increase a women's health risks and said they would fare better using natural family planning methods approved by the church." Given that "natural family planning" can require careful timing on the part of both partners, it may not be an effective method in places where women's status in a relationship is low. And of course, it doesn't protect against STDs. It would have made sense for McQuade to cite religious objections to contraception, but describing as a "women's health risk" the very thing that can protect women from both unsafe abortion and disease just seems ridiculous. Luckily, Guttmacher Institute president Sharon Camp says,

The Catholic Church has informally at least stopped fighting against contraception to the degree it once did and put more of its energies into fighting abortion. On the ground there are priests and nuns who refer people to family planning services.

It's important to remember that unsafe abortions don't happen only in developing countries. Yesterday a 17-year-old Utah girl was released after being charged with murder for paying a man to beat her in order to induce abortion. Why would an American teenager resort to this? Maybe because as of 2005, Utah had only six abortion providers, and 93% of counties had no provider? Or because Utah has a parental consent law that would have required the girl's parents to agree to the abortion? The Guttmacher Institute report makes three recommendations: improve postabortion care, expand access to contraceptives, and expand access to safe and legal abortion. These measures are just as necessary in the US as they are around the world.

Abortion And Unintended Pregnancy Decline Worldwide As Contraceptive Use Increases [Guttmacher Institute]
Facts On Induced Abortion Worldwide [Guttmacher Institute]
Unsafe Abortions Kill 70,000 A Year [Guardian]
Unsafe Abortions Kill 70,000 Annually [AP]
Girl Who Tried Killing Her Fetus Released [UPI.com]

Matt Cockerill at the Young Americans for Liberty blog wants to know why there aren’t more libertarian women. By which he apparently means that he wants to know why more women don’t read his own personal libertarian blog and why more women don’t go to the libertarian political events that he personally goes to. (Which is actually a separate question, although men posting Where’s the women? posts never quite seem to recognize that.)

The first point in Matt’s discussion is to ask whether this might be the result of intractable forces predisposing women to be anti-libertarian. (Along with a link to an LRC article arguing, based purely on anecdote and appeal to conventional wisdom, that women are instinctually anti-libertarian because they are too emotional and mostly incapable of abstract thought.)

The second point in Matt’s discussion is to wish for more women to show up for his Sausage Party because libertarian men are currently being driven insane by the lack of young libertarian women to hit on.

But I do know that a proportional increase in libertarian women would do well to preserve the sanity of libertarian men. As it stands, the young female “itinerary” [sic! —R.G.] is mostly composed of Obama zombies, fully-blown Marxists, and “murder-all-Iranians” type chickenhawks. This undoubtedly needs to change.

The first commenter, Anonymous, adds: Most women/girls are more emotional than logical. The ones who think with their brain and not their heart are libertarians. But at the same time most libertarian women have a hard time being libertarian with ALL issues.

The third commenter, John M., adds: I think many of the libertarian women that read this site would take offense to being labeled as more emotional than logical. A more scientific distinction would be to argue that the ratio exists because men are naturally more skilled at mathematics and science whereas women are more skilled in the disciplines of reading and writing. This gives men an advantage at comprehending and anaylzing the ramifications of policies. But he does want more women in the movement, because he believes (based on the experience of Sarah Palin, who he insults as having little … brain-power or charisma) that having a few women on the ticket (a few women who he believes will need to be politically educated by libertarian men) they will be useful for getting out the vote.

Commenter Jack, in reply to John M.’s mention of a female professor who once chewed [him] up for saying that women are more emotional than logical, adds: LOL. More indoctrination. I hate to hear stories of culturally marxist academia. It would be one thing to politely disagree, but professors these days will eat you up if you try to say that any two people are different than each other in any way. Matt Cockerill comes back around to use this as an opportunity to tell us what he thinks is wrong with the modern women’s movement: The result of the egalitarian, denialist feminist indoctrination of the last few decades has been a generation of guys afraid to act like guys, and women who hate most of us for being fakers.

Matt Cockerill also comes back around to mention that he opposes a woman’s right to abortion, and that he considers this position compatible with the politics of individual liberty.

Sometimes, when women don’t show up for your parties, the best thing to do is not to ask whether there’s something wrong with women that makes them naturally predisposed not to dig the things you think they should dig. Because, dude, sometimes the reason that women don’t want to hang out with you is because there’s something wrong with you. And, specifically, because there’s something wrong with the way that you treat women.

And if you want a good example, why not start with the way you approached your original question?

Incidentally, be sure to read through the comments thread on the original post — not because the bulk of the comments are enlightening or even maginally original, but rather because radical feminist, left-libertarian Drunkenatheist’s commentary on the bulk of the comments is. Props.

(Link thanks to Drunkenatheist [2009-08-28].)

See also:

• GT 2008-08-08: Proof by ostention

Las Vegas correspondent Walter E. Gunther writes in to the Las Vegas Sun, Politicians mostly put their own needs first.

And in breaking news from NARAL Pro-Choice America, it turns out that government provision of healthcare means that women’s healthcare will be allocated through a political process, and when women’s reproductive healthcare is allocated through a political process, women’s reproductive healthcare ends up being subjected to the vicissitudes of political debate over abortion.

NARAL may not draw the conclusion from its report, but the editorial board here at News of the Obvious will: setting aside outright political prohibitions, which aren’t likely to pass in the near future, a broad expansion of political control over women’s healthcare is the single worst thing that could possibly happen towards undermining women’s access to abortion and reproductive medicine.

Dialogue.

• Libertarians Against Property Rights and Freedom of Association. (Cont’d.) Vin Suprynowicz Vs. Rad Geek on so-called illegal immigration. In which I argue keep your borders off my property and Suprynowicz argues that a libertarian community ought to have the government constitutionally policing people’s political views. Democracy, you know.

News and Comment.

• Legal lynching. (Cont’d.) In which the liberal democratic state protects the accused from being railroaded by unreliable criminal justice procedures by convicting innocent people on the testimony of a magic police dog (the state is, of course, taking no steps to systematically review cases where the fraudulent testimony was entered into evidence). And also by refusing to review a provably false rape and murder conviction for nine years because the imprisoned innocent man’s lawyer filed his paperwork four days late. (The federal judge who signed off on the court order denying the review is, of course, now a nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States of America.)

• The War on the Informal Sector. (Cont’d.) quasibill, The Bell Tower (2009-06-12): Sometimes, they don’t hide it very well. Multimillion-dollar restaurants only, please.

• The Bulldozer Brigade deployed to raze 50 cities in defense of the economic status quo. Tom Leonard, Daily Telegraph (2009-06-12): US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive.. Because it is absolutely unacceptable for urban housing to become cheap, ever, the federal government has decided that it has become necessary to destroy U.S. cities in order to save them. (Via Nick Manley. Cf. also GT 2008-11-24: How the local government in Las Vegas deals with the worst housing crisis in the United States.) Anyone who’s seen Roger and Me ought to know that when the Feds start taking advice on development from the Flint city government, things are about to get a lot stupider.

• Urban Homesteading and Counter-Farming. Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation (2009-06-10): Peer producing agriculture with Crop Mobs

• Not The Final Word. No Pretence (2009-06-15) — responses to No Pretence’s anarcha-feminist intervention at last week’s Anarchist Movement Conference 09, and a call to action

• Basher-Statism in Virginia prisons. Feminist Daily News (2009-06-15): VA Prison Allegedly Segregated Women on Basis of Sexual Orientation. The segregation was actually based on who looked butch and who looked femme, in the eyes of the prison bosses; the purpose was to segregate and punish women seen as being too butch. The segregated wing was called the little boys wing and the butch wing by the guards. One guard overheard a boss saying We’re going to break up some of thee relationships, start a boys wing, and we’re going to take all these studs and put them together and see how they like looking at nothing but each other all day instead of their girlfriends.

• Pro-Choice on Everything. (Cont’d.) Wendy McElroy, iFeminists (2009-06-13): 9 implications of anti-abortion arguments

• Extremism in defense of abortion rights is no vice. Sunsara Talor, Online Journal (2009-06-08): After Dr. Tiller’s murder, where to for abortion rights?. None of this [federal anti-terrorist legislation] can or should be strengthened or relied on to protect the rights of women. But, even if you were willing to ignore all this, the fact is relying on the state has never worked. … The lesson to draw is NOT that there should be more reliance on law enforcement. It is that there needs instead to be a powerful mobilization of pro-choice people from below, relying on ourselves to reverse the whole culture and dynamic in this country. … And we must reverse the demobilization of pro-choice people who’ve been told to rely on ineffectual law enforcement and to seek common ground with religious fanatics. We must seize the moral and ideological high ground, declare abortion on demand and without apology, and go on the political offensive out in the streets and once again to the clinics.

• Men in Uniform (cont’d.) — Rape as a weapon of war. Feminist Daily News (2009-06-08): Incidence of Rape in Democratic Republic of Congo Soaring. Right now the attacks are primarily being carried out by men in the Democratic Forces of the Liberation [sic] of Rwanda.

• How the Money Monopoly destroyed an alternative currency and forced its creator to defraud his customers out of millions of dollars. Wired (2009-06-09): Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold. Note especially: No matter how innocent a person is you can always find a law that government agents can use to convict him of something, [Richard] Timberlake says, And this is a perfect example of it. Any time anybody tries to produce money, the federal government is going to be on their tail. (Via Jesse Walker.)

• Look how well it’s worked out. Wendy McElroy, WendyMcElroy.com (2009-06-15): A letter from Murray Rothbard, which Wendy recently rediscovered while reorganizing her files. The letter was sent back in 1983 in response to a then-recent issue of The Voluntaryist (which, as a voluntaryist publication, had a hard editorial line against libertarians voting or running for office). In which Murray declares the Dallas Accord, and the next three years of titanic struggles to keep the official text of the Libertarian Party platform at least minimally libertarian, a great triumph for anarchists in the party. Well, yeah; look at everything that’s accomplished.

• The Good Old Days Were Rotten. Wendi Muse, Racialious (2009-06-15): Nostalgia: a Sport for the Privileged. I think the lesson applies just as much to libertarian nostalgia for the Gilded Age or the Old Republic as it does to more aesthetically-focused romances for the past.

Arts.

• Who needs a literary supplement when you can have a literary newspaper? Daniel Estrin, The Jewish Daily Forward (2009-06-10): Literary Lesson: Authors, Poets Write the News: Letter from Jerusalem.

• Awesome. Now how about Firefly? Michael Ausiello, Entertainment Weekly (2009-06-09): It’s official: Futurama is reborn!

Communications.

• J. Neil Schulman’s Alongside Night. The 30^th anniversary edition of J. Neil Schulman’s revolutionary agorist science-fiction classic, Alongside Night, is now available for free on the Internet. Download! Enjoy! Spread the word!

• Anarchy Summer Camp. July 17-19. Northern Virginia. Anonymous, Infoshop News (2009-06-12): Virginia: Anarchy Summer Camp 17th-19th, Nova. As we prepare for the upcoming G20 summit in Pittsburgh, the Spring World Bank and IMF meetings, the ebbs and flows of our respective local campaigns, and anything else under the sun, we’ll be congregating in the woods of Northern Virginia for an action-packed Anarchy Summer Camp.

• 2009 Northeast Anarchist People of Color Conference. August 6 - August 9, 2009. Philadelphia, Pennslvania. The conference announcement, mission sttaement, and Principles of Unity are all available from http://illvox.org/.

• … but the streets belong to the people! Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-06-10): The People’s Stop Sign. In which people in an Ottawa neighborhood take nonviolent direct action to slow down the traffic flying down their neighborhood streets — by putting up their own stop signs at a key intersection. The city government, of course, is now busy with a Criminal Investigation of the public’s heinous contribution to public safety.

• Abolitionism is the radical notion that other people are not your property. Darian Worden (2009-06-09): The New Abolitionists The point is that the principles of abolitionism, which held that regardless of popular justifications no human is worthy to be master and no human can be owned by another, when carried to their logical conclusion require this: that no human is worthy of authority over another, and that no person is owed allegiance simply because of political status. When reason disassembles the popular justifications of statism, as advances in political philosophy since the 1850’s have assisted in doing, the consistent abolitionist cannot oppose the voluntaryist principles of the Keene radicals.

• Mr. Obama, Speak For Yourself. Thomas L. Knapp, Center for a Stateless Society (2009-09-09): Speaking of the State

• A campaign of isolated incidents. Ellen Goodman, Houston Chronicle (2009-06-08): Sorry, but the doctor’s killer did not act alone

• Let’s screw all the little guys. Just to be fair. (Or, pay me to advertise my product on your station.) Jesse Walker, Reason (2009-06-09): The Man Can’t Tax Our Music: The music industry wants to impose an onerous new fee on broadcasters.

• Some dare call it torture. Just not the cops. Or the judges. Wendy McElroy, WendyMcElroy.com (2009-06-08): N.Y. Judge Rules that Police Can Taser Torture in order to coerce compliance with any arbitrary court order. I think that Wendy is right to call pain compliance for what it is — torture (as I have called it here before) — and that it is important to insist on this point as much as possible whenever the topic comes up.

• On criminalizing compassion. Macon D., stuff white people do (2009-06-05), on the conviction of Walt Staton for knowingly littering water jugs in a wildlife refuge, in order to keep undocumented immigrants from dying in the desert.

• Freed markets vs. deforesters. Keith Goetzman, Utne Reader Environment (2009-06-04): Do You Know Where Your Shoes Have Been?, on the leather industry and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Utne does a good job of pointing out (by quoting Grist’s Tom Philpott) that the problem is deeply rooted in multi-statist neoliberalism: because of the way in which the Brazilian government and the World Bank act together to subsidize the cattle barons and ‘roid up Brazilian cattle ranching, the report is really about the perils of using state policy to prop up global, corporate-dominated trade.

• Well, Thank God. (Cont’d.) Thanks to the Lord Justice, we now know that Pringles are, in fact, officially potato chips, not mere savory snacks, in spite of the fact that only about 40% of a Pringles crisp is actually potato flour. Language Log takes this case to demonstrate the quasi-Wittgensteinian point that, fundamentalist legal philosophy to one side, there’s actually no such thing as a self-applying law. (Quoting Adam Cohen’s New York Times Op-Ed, Conservatives like to insist that their judges are strict constructionists, giving the Constitution and statutes their precise meaning and no more [linguists groan here], while judges like [Sonia] Sotermayor are activists. But there is no magic way to interpret terms like free speech or due process — or potato chip.) I think the main moral of the story has to do with the absurdity of a political system in which whether or not you can keep $160,000,000 of your own damn money rides on whether or not you can prove to a judge that your savory snack hasn’t got the requisite potatoness to count as a potato crisp for the purposes of law and justice.

• Small riots will get small attention, no riots get no attention, make a big riot, and it will be handled immediately. Loretta Chao, Wall Street Journal (2009-05-30): In China, a New Breed of Dissidents. The story makes it seem as though the most remarkable thing about the emerging dissident movement is that they are safe enough for the State to tolerate them, rather than launching all out assaults as they did against the Tienanmen dissidents in 1989. Actually, I think that that misses the point entirely; and that the most interesting thing is that they have adopted such flexible and adaptive networking, both tactically and strategically, and that they now so often rise up from the very social classes that the Chinese Communist Party claims to speak for (not just easily-demonized students and intelligentsia, but ordinary farmers, factory workers, and retirees) — that the regime isn’t tolerating them; it just no longer knows what to do with them.

• Counter-Cooking and Mutual Meals. Julia Levitt, Worldchanging: Bright Green (2009-06-03): Community Kitchens (Via Kevin Carson’s Shared Items.) If I may recommend, if you’re going to work on any kind of community cooking like this, particularly if you’re interested in it partly for reasons of resiliency and building community alternatives, you should do what you can to make sure that it is strongly connected with the local grey-market solidarity economy, through close cooperation with your local Food Not Bombs (as both a source and a destination for food) and other local alternatives to the state-subsidized corporate-consumer model for food distribution.

• Looking Forward. Shawn Wilbur, In the Libertarian Labyrinth (009-06-06): Clement M. Hammond on Police Insurance. An excerpt on policing in a freed society, from individualist anarchist Clement M. Hammond’s futurist utopian novel, Then and Now which originally appeared in serialized form in Tucker’s Liberty in 1884 and 1885. (Thus predating Bellamy’s dreary Nationalist potboiler by 4 years.) Hammond’s novel is now available in print through Shawn’s Corvus Distribution. The good news is that, while Bellamy’s date of 2000 has already mercifully passed us by without any such society emerging, we still have almost 80 years to get it together in time for Hammond’s future.

• Here at Reason we never pass up a chance to have some fun at the expense of Pete Seeger. Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-06-09): They Wanna Hear Some American Music. On brilliant fakery, the invention of Country and Western music, the cult of authenticity, and the manufacture of Americana. For the long, full treatment see Barry Mazor, No Depression (2009-02-23): Americana, by any other name…

• Anarchy on the Big Screen. Colin Firth and Kevin Spacey have signed on for a big-screen film adaptation of Homage to Catalonia. The film is supposed to enter production during the first half of 2010.

Technological civilization is awesome. (Cont’d.)

• Freezers are awesome. J.D., Get Rich Slowly (2009-06-06): 3 Easy and Delicious Ways to Preserve Your Berry Harvest. My plan is to make some freezer jam.

• Toward usable e-mail. Leah Chaney, OtherInbox (2009-06-05): Organizer By OtherInbox now available with Yahoo! Mail apps!. Even where technological civilization is not yet awesome enough, it soon will be.

Communications

• IMPACT! Strategies for Social Change Forum, Thursday, June 18, Sonoma County, California. Infoshop News (2009-06-08): Strategies for Social Change Forum on June 18th in Sonoma County IMPACT!, an independent and radical youth organization in Petaluma is turning one year old this month. Part 1 of the celebration is a forum, entitled Strategies for Social Change, where organizers from labor, immigrants’ rights, and anti-police brutality groups will be discussing their projects and strategies for achieving radical social change locally. This event will be bilingual and free. … As one part of the celebration of IMPACT!’s one-year anniversary, we are excited to announce a forum on Thursday, June 18th at 7pm at the Peace and Justice Center in Santa Rosa (467 Sebastopol Ave) … After hearing from all the different organizations, we hope to have an open dialogue about how we can build real people power in our communities and what methods, strategies, tactics, we can implement to achieve long-lasting and radical social change.

• Tasered While Black Internet Radio Show. Tasered While Black @ Blog Talk Radio. (Via Electrocuted While Black 2009-06-09.)

• Anarchist Movement 09, East London, England. Anarchist Movement Conference 09 was held last Saturday at Queen Mary, University of London. About 300 attended. Some reportbacks from Anonymous @ Infoshop News (2009-06-09), Nestor Makhno @ indymedia london (2009-06-07), Paul Stott (2009-06-08), and No Pretence (2009-06-07). One of the major events at the conference was anarcha-feminist group No Pretence’s appearance at the closing plenary to deliver a statement and project a video presentation calling out sexism in the U.K. movement:

• SPEAK! Listening Party. Sunday, June 14th, 2-5pm. Long Beach, California. Julie, feministe (2009-06-05): SPEAK! Listening Party in Long Beach, CA! Remember that awesome CD that’s out right now? The spoken word collection that features the work of BFP, Black Amazon, Little Light, and so many others? The one that combines personal history and movement making in truly inspiring ways? If you live in or around Long Beach, CA and haven’t heard it yet, now’s your chance! (Via bfp, flip flopping joy 2009-06-05.)

• New subscriptions. Served & Protected, @InjusticeNews, No Pretence

Don’t forget.

• The world is awesome.

• People are awesome. You don’t need plans, or politics, or power. Put them up against people, and people will win every time. People came up with that video. Also, other people came up with this.

• Technological civilization is awesome. (In case you’re wondering, it’s awesome because it’s made of people.)

• Books are awesome. Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times (2009-05-29): Some Thoughts on the Pleasures of Being a Re-Reader

• To-day is awesome. It’s an anniversary. My love and I were married three years ago today. If the normal online rounds are held up for a while, well, that’s why.

Solidarity.

• In memory of George Tiller. feministe (2009-05-31): In honor of Dr. Tiller (if you would like to donate in memory and in honor of Dr. Tiller’s work). Among others, the National Network of Abortion Funds has established a George Tiller Memorial Abortion Fund.

• IQSN, L.A. I.M.C. (2009-05-27): Solidarity with Queer Bulgaria on 27 June 2009. A day of international actions in solidarity with the LGBTQ Pride march in Sofia, Bulgaria. Last year’s march was attacked by neo-Nazi groups who decided to Keep Our Children Safe with a campaign of roving basher gangs and by slinging molotov cocktails and small explosives at the marchers. International Queer Solidarity Network calls for a European mobilization, with support from the United States, that will stand in solidarity with Queer Bulgaria for this year’s march.

News.

• Underground abortion networks in Chile. Feminist Daily News Wire (2009-05-29): Abortion Hotline Launched in Chile. The Chilean government inflicted a categorical abortion ban in 1989. A coalition of pro-choice feminist groups has now launched a phone hotline which gives women information about how to use Misopristol (usually used in the U.S. together with Mifepristone; in Chile it’s legally available to treat ulcers) to give themselves safe DIY medical abortions in defiance of the law.

• Shoot an unarmed old man, get a four-month paid vacation. Vickie Welborn, Shreveport Times (2009-05-24): NAACP questions Homer officers’ leave status

• The question is who is to be the master — that’s all. The Status of Forces Agreement requires all U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by the end of June. A Senior U.S. Commander [considers] the security agreement a living document, so he intends to comply with the deadlines by withdrawing the political boundaries of Baghdad from his occupation patrol forces

Comment.

• On knowledge problems and management make-work. quasibill, The Bell Tower (2009-05-28): Scene 3

• On free-market mutualism and open source solutions to the social question. Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-05-27): Mutual Aid: A Factor in Cyberspace. (As for whether the word socialism is the best tag for the kind of mutualist projects under discussion, I reckon that it depends on your intended audience. I use it happily, but then, my intent in doing so is deliberately provocative, as is my use of freed market language around anti-authoritarian Leftists: given the right audience, you can pull some philosophical aikido by using a term’s very unpopularity in order to provoke a conversation about some fundamental premises.)

• The State is male in the political sense. (Cont’d.) Alderson Warm-Fork, Directionless Bones (2009-05-26): The State is Incapable of Submissiveness. (This particular article deals mainly with the external relations among many states; for discussion of the male State in the context of the internal relations between the government and the country that it occupies, cf. GT 2006-05-11: Quidditative essence.)

• The George Tiller I Knew. loree920, Daily Kos (2009-05-31): The George Tiller I Knew

• A Loatian American teen protested No Child Left Behind and Won. Mandy Van Deven, ColorLines: She Said No To The Test. In which a second-generation Laotian-American who speaks, reads, and writes fluent English and graduated 7th in her class was declared illiterate by school officials for refusing to retake a basic English-proficiency test that she’d already aced — and how she and her fellow students protested and won.

• Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes. (Cont’d.) Chris Bradford, Austin Contrarian (2006-05-16): Do roads pay for themseles? (Cf. GT 2008-12-01: Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes.

• On public space and the microphysics of male power. Norma, Happy bodies. (2009-05-25): Fighting Unwanted Attention

• On neuro-jargon as modern mumbo-jumbo. Crispin Sartwell, eye of the storm (2009-05-31) […] the problem is that these approaches work backwards from social categories to neurology and enshrine momentary social formations, which are essentially created by power, as inescapable bio-destinies. the entire scientificness of the thing is usually presented in a few phrases - ‘medial prefrontal cortex,’ say - which function essentially as authorities: they’re supposed to show you that you’re too ignorant to assess what’s being said, to put the actual ethical/political/economic conclusions beyond the realm of disagreement, to flummox you into nodding vaguely along. if you don’t, you must be a dolt. they function like phrases from the koran or something. they actually do no work except to assert a kind of prestige. […]

• Against psychiatric coercion and psychiatric contempt. anarchafemme (2009-05-11): I Am Crazy, Yet I Am Human

• On standing up for the marginalized and the enemies of the State. Wendy McElroy, WendyMcElroy.com (2009-05-31): The strategic wisdom of defending prostitutes

• The Conservative (Hive) Mind. Will Wilkinson’s The rise of collectivist conservatives is right-on in almost every respect, particularly in emphasizing how belligerent nationalism (I’d add sadistic law-n-orderism and anti-immigrationism) poison any attempt by the pseudopopulist Right to come out with a consistently individualistic position. Towards the end, Will asks Conservatism must stand for something. But here’s the big question: Can a politics of individual freedom be revived? Can it win elections? As you may know, I’m an optimist about the first question, a pessimist about the second, and mainly concerned that people realize that the two are importantly distinct. If you want to know why the substance of Beck’s politics is so much like the substance of Brooks’s politics, underneath the pseudoindividualist rhetoric, well, part of the answer is the structural limitations that you necessarily accept when you start out hitching the success of your political philosophy to victory in government elections.

Historicize.

• Jourdon Anderson authenticity update. Laster Hunt, E pur si muove! (2009-05-14): Jourdon Anderson’s Letter to His Former Master. (Cf. GT 2009-05-06: Wednesday Lazy Linking for my reprinting of the original letter.)

• We apologize for the fault in the historicity debate. Those responsible have been sacked. Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-05-31): Dragonquest; or, A Voyage to Arcturus

Communications.

• ALLiance Issue #2 (Beltaine 2009) is now available. Thanks to awesome editor Chris Lempa. This issue features articles by Chris, Darian Worden, Fred Foldvary, Kevin Carson, Michael Kleen, Sharon Presley and Lynn Kinsky.

• Portland Anarchist Bookfair, June 6-7 at Liberty Hall, 311 N. Ivy in Portland, Oregon. The event is free to attend; childcare will be provided. Also, keep an eye out for Northwest ALLy Shawn Wilbur, who will be there to promote his new radical publishing project, Corvus Distribution.

• The Cop Watch LA Radio program is looking for volunteers interested in recording, producing, interviewing and researching material for the Cop Watch LA radio program which airs every evening on the Raise the Fist Radio Network.

• An IRC network for liberty builders: agora.anarplex.net:14716. The time for waiting for others to do things is over. … Learn, create, cooperate, advance. (Via Wendy McElroy.)