Last night around 8pm I was at a house party here in Oakland getting ready for my band’s set when somebody across the room shouted out “Obama won!  he did it!” and the whole room broke out in cheers and clapping.   I pulled out my cellphone and sent a text message to my friend Labrie (who’s been pulling hard for an Obama victory and recorded a couple songs supporting him and his candidacy) saying “Grats to ya boy” and went back to working on getting our sound set up.  Later that night as we closed our set with ‘None of the Above’ several of the Obama supporters, including my bandmates wife, waged a bit of a counter-insurgency, shouting out “Obama!” every time the chorus of “Which one?  None of the Above!” came up.

Such is the fate of an Anarchist among Liberals.

Seriously though, I know this is a big day for a lot of folks who’ve put time and energy into getting dude elected, and in particular - as even McCain acknowledged - it’s a big day for black folks in America.  For over 200 years black folks have watched white Presidents completely ignore their issues and support policies that hurt them.  Now, thanks to Obamas historic win, poor and working class black folks get to have their issues and their needs ignored by a person with the same color skin as them.  That’s an honor that poor and working class white folks have enjoyed in isolation for far too long.  It’s only fair to spread the joy around a bit. Read more »

Posted: November 5th, 2008 under political theory, politrix, race & racism.
Comments: 7

The brand new animated music video from Beltaine’s Fire about the elections.

Help us get the word out & re-post the video on your blogs, pages, myspace/bebo/facebook/etc profiles. We’re counting on ya’ll to get the word out!

<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”640″ height=”480″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″><param name=”src” value=”http://beltainesfire.com/BeltainesFire_NoneOfTheAbove.swf” /><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”480″ height=”360″ src=”http://beltainesfire.com/BeltainesFire_NoneOfTheAbove.swf”></embed></object>

Posted: October 9th, 2008 under political theory, politrix, video.
Comments: none

An interesting article on the evolution of inteligence and it’s impacts on Hierarchy vs. Egalitarianism in early human societies.

… great apes’ societies are very hierarchical with each animal occupying a particular place in the existing dominance hierarchy. A major function of coalitions in apes is to maintain or change the dominance ranking. When an alpha male is well established, he usually can intimidate any hostile coalition or the entire community.

In sharp contrast, most known hunter-gatherer societies are egalitarian. Their weak leaders merely assist a consensus-seeking process when the group needs to make decisions, but otherwise all main political actors behave as equal. Some anthropologists argue that in egalitarian societies the pyramid of power is turned upside down with potential subordinates being able to express dominance over potential alpha-individuals by creating large, group-wide political alliance.

What were the reasons for such a drastic change in the group’s social organization during the origin of our own “uniquely unique” species? Some evolutionary biologists theorize that at some point in the Pleistocene, humans reached a level of ecological dominance that dramatically transformed the natural selection landscape. Instead of traditional “hostile forces of nature”, the competitive interactions among members of the same group became the most dominant evolutionary factor. According to this still controversial view, known as the “social brain” or “Machiavellian intelligence” hypothesis, more intelligent individuals were able to take advantage of other members of their group, achieve higher social status, and leave more offspring who inherited their parent’s genes for larger brain size and intelligence. As a result of this runaway process, the average brain size and intelligence were increasing [sic] across the whole human lineage.

Also increasing were the abilities to keep track of within-group social interactions, to remember friends and their allies and enemies, and to attract and use allies. At some point, physically weaker members of the group started forming successful and stable large coalitions against strong individuals who otherwise would achieve alpha-status and usurp the majority of the crucial resources. Eventually, an egalitarian society was established.

from Eureka Alert

And, for all my poli-sci nerds, here’s the link to the original studfy that the article is about: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003293.

Posted: October 3rd, 2008 under political theory, science and history.
Comments: none

I re-posted my essay Anarchism as an IR Theory the other day in my post On Anarchism. It’s my own personal attempt at a succinct primer on anarchist thought and theory from a non-sectarian viewpoint. One of my favorite sections - and likely the most controversial among the “anarchy means I can do whatever I want!” crowd - is the section on Social Contracts & Law in a Stateless society and the difference between Natural Law and State law. That section was written with some reference to Goldman and others, but mostly from my own thoughts. So I was pleasantly surprised today when I was reading through some of Bakunin’s work and found his essay on Rousseau and Social Contact Theory. Mikhael doesn’t agree with me on everything, of course, but I wanted to repost his essay here for ya’ll. Read more »

Posted: April 29th, 2008 under political theory.
Comments: none