I wrote the following article on nationalism and anarchism for the celticanarchy.org site, which may or may not be getting taken down in the next few weeks. I liked it though and it provoked some interesting responses - as well as outrage from at least a couple so-called “national anarchists” - so i’d like to repost is here so i don’t lose it if/when celticanarchy.org goes down.

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Posted: June 29th, 2008 under culture war.
Comments: 2

I’ve held off on Barrack Obama for the most part up to this point; partly because I had trouble believing the democrats would actually make a black man with a muslim name their nominee (not that those things should be a barrier, but because there are plenty of racist democrats who are just plain not down to vote for a black man), and partly because Hillary Clinton’s extraordinarily petty and dishonest tactics – spreading rumors that he was a closet muslim, constantly bringing up his skin color as a negative and then accusing him of being a racist, and her attempts to paint him as an elitist (this from a woman who can afford to lend herself millions of dollars for her campaign and who’s talking about a man who’s mother had to rely on foodstamps when he was a kid).

Watching her and McCain grasping at straws and throwing everything they could think of at him, I almost felt like rooting for him. Almost, but not quite.

The fact is, Obama is a fraud. He may have started out working as a street-level community organizer in Chicago – and that’s one hell of a tough job, I know because I’ve done the same job here in Oakland – but whatever claim he might have had to be an advocate for poor and working class people is gone as of right now.

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Posted: June 27th, 2008 under politrix.
Comments: 1

It’s one of those years, first we lost Utah Phillips and now George Carlin. I’m not going to write a eulogy for him, instead i’m going to post a bunch of his videos and let him sum things up himself. So here it is, a few choice words from one of the greatest comedic minds in America.

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Posted: June 23rd, 2008 under culture war, economics, personal, video.
Comments: 1

Chomsky, doing his thing.

Posted: June 19th, 2008 under culture war, politrix, video.
Comments: none

’sup folks -

this one goes out to hip hop artists in particular.

i’ve had this idea for a concept album floating around in my head for a while but haven’t had the time to sit down and write it all out, and as i was thinking about it again yesterday i realized it would make a great compilation.

the comp would be called ‘letters from the underground’ and the idea is an album made up of songs that are all letters from members of an underground revolutionary cell.  the setting is a dystopian not-too-distant future where the threat of ‘terrorism’, rising oil prices, and looming economic collapse have allowed corporations to seize control of everything directly and set up a ‘ruling committee’ made up of the heads of all the biggest corporations that rules all of north america (and from there most of the rest of the world) by direct decree.  it’d be light on the sci-fi ish, heavy on politics.  Something like an updated version of 1984, but told with personal stories and a variety of perspectives and in the form of music.

the letters could be about anything - how much someone misses their family, a poem for a comrade who’s been killed by the pigs, political rants about the system, ballads about if and how nonviolent resistance is still possible, songs about direct action and underground organizing in the face of heavy repression, even accounts of hunting down and assassinating members of the ruling committee, anything.

it’d be distributed online for free as a promo over the rapanarchists.net site and include links to websites and info for all of the artists who contributed.  i’d like to have it be a compilation of only explicitly anarchist hip hop artists, but if there isn’t enough interest I’ll open it up to other genres of music as well.

If you’re interested, let me know.  we need 8-14 tracks total to make this work.  feel free to forward this if you know someone who’d be a good addition to the comp.

the deadline to send in tracks would be end of july, august at the latest.

Posted: June 19th, 2008 under hip hop, music.
Comments: 4