Audio, direct from Radio Slovakia International, unedited, 12.3MB, 26min 52sec (my segment begins around 15:00): streaming MP3 — downloadable MP3 (no longer available)

Google Video, trimmed to just my segment (11min 2sec):

TRANSCRIPT

Commentator: On the eighth of December, 2008, there was a press release that was different from the rest. A 36-year-old American, Mike Gogulski, started a process to become a stateless person and renounced his American passport and citizenship. This is not an everyday thing, so we talked to him on his feelings about the US and soon being a person of no state. Christopher George met him in our studio.

Christopher George: Before the interview, I must state that Radio Slovakia International, as an institution, does not share the ideas and ideology of Mr. Gogulski, but feel he has the right to express his own opinion via our broadcasts.

Mike Gogulski: My name is Mike Gogulski, I’m 36, a former American living here in Bratislava.

CG: How long have you been here?

MG: I’ve been legally resident for about two and a half years, and I’ve been visiting the country since about 2004… mid-2004.

CG: When did you start the process of becoming a person of no state?

MG: Well, in very real terms, the process only began a couple of weeks ago when I first visited the American embassy here in Bratislava…

CG: A few weeks ago?

MG: Two weeks ago, to actually start filing the paperwork. The mental process is one that started quite a long time ago… I suppose — really about ten years — when I first had this idea that said, “I want to leave America, go live somewhere else.”

CG: What is your idea of the US government… or the US in general, as an American?

MG: Well, the …

CG: …as an ex-American…

MG: …as an ex-American? Well, like every government, the United States government in my view is a criminal organization, it just happens to be one of the most powerful ones in existence today. So, where I see American politicians talking loudly about ideas of freedom and democracy and free markets, the reality, I think, is rather different.

CG: Do you believe in the system? Do you believe in American politicians when they go electioneering and so on? Do you believe that … they’re a politician and they have a set of beliefs that they will follow?

MG: With respect to politicians there’s a couple of important things that I believe. The first is that the desire for power over other human beings really ought to be considered a sort of mental illness. The other is that politicians, especially at the national level… they don’t hold the real power in the system. The real power is held by what you could call plutocratic interests… the politicians are the instruments for the implementation of their policy.

CG: Do you think this is problematic in the system in that most politicians are sponsored by various companies and lobbyists and so on before they even get into office, and when they are, they…?

MG: Well, yes, sure, there are any number of cases that you could look back on and see politicians taking campaign contributions from certain industries or from certain companies then later repay the favor by sponsoring or signing on to legislation that favors those entities, even when those acts of government are contrary to the interests of the people. So, sure.

CG: Your attempt to become a person of no state in relation to Slovakia… is this a place where it is possible and easy to fulfill this goal?

MG: From my reading of the law and the treaties regarding statelessness and stateless persons, I believe that in Slovakia it is possible to become a stateless person, if one thinks that’s desirable. Is it easy? I don’t know yet. I’m just beginning a bureaucratic process with the Interior Ministry, by way of the Aliens’ Police, to become documented as a stateless person. Slovakia is signatory to one UN treaty on the status of refugees and two on the treatment of stateless persons which set up a number of conditions that give congruent rights to stateless people legally in the territory as are enjoyed by citizens and legal residents with citizenship.

CG: I have here in front of me a scan of your trvalý pobyt, which means your residence permit…

MG: My residence permit.

CG: And it says that it expires on the 21st of the fifth [sic], 2010…

MG: Correct.

CG: Do you see this as problematic? What is the process? You’ll have to go there and renew it, of course…

MG: My understanding right now is that… I’ve sent a letter to the Foreign Police saying I forfeited my American passport, which contained my povolenie na trvalý pobyt… na prechodný pobyt, actually, it’s temporary, not permanent…

CG: Oh, it’s not even trvalý…

MG: Yeah. My understanding is that my legal residence here is tied to my person, not to my citizenship. So, I’m still a legal resident by virtue of a file entry having been made at the Foreign Police office. I’m applying now for them to issue a 1954 Convention Travel Document for me as a stateless person and then re-issue the visa sticker.

CG: So, do you see any problems in the future with extending your residency permit?

MG: If the Slovak government decides that I am “undesirable”, for whatever reason, and makes a notation in my residency file with the Foreign Police, the Foreign Police have broad discretion to refuse to renew or grant a residence permit. So it is possible that they would refuse to renew it. What position would that put me in? I’m not exactly certain. I would be a stateless person now no longer legally present in the Slovak Republic. Would I be deportable to America? I’m not quite sure.

CG: And with regards to your application, do you see it being just a formality, and it’ll be accepted?

MG: I hope so. That’s certainly the impression that I got from a letter that I received from the Foreign Police in response to an inquiry about applying for a Stateless Person’s Travel Document, and in which I mentioned that I would renounce my American citizenship. Of course, you know, the bureaucracy likes to answer questions directly, so there may be other factors that come into play when I actually face the application and approval process. But I don’t expect anything dramatic.

CG: So your application went in on the 8th of December, if I remember, right?

MG: Well this was my application to renounce my US citizenship. I haven’t yet filed the application for these other documents from the Slovak government because I am waiting for a certificate from the American government certifying that I’ve actually lost my citizenship.

CG: How have the few days since then been? Has it been a normal average day, normal average week?

MG: Normal average days, normal average week… I go to the grocery store and I buy food and nobody asks me for ID. I go to the bank machine and withdraw cash and there’s no problem. I ride the bus and eat in restaurants and do my work. [ed: my final comment here, stating that my cat doesn't even realize anything has changed, was edited out of the broadcast.]

CG: Do you see this being a long, drawn-out process?

MG: I hope not. What I’ve been led to expect by the American embassy is there will be a period of up to 30 days while they process my application to renounce. By the end of that period I should either receive the Certificate of Loss of Nationality or receive a letter stating that my application has been rejected for some reason, together with my passport returned to me. After that, I will apply immediately to the Foreign Police for this Travel Document and my new visa… my replacement visa. That’s a process which can take up to three months. So, there’s a possibility that it might be March 8 or April 8 before I’m documented again.

CG: So, you obviously don’t see yourself going back to America.

MG: No plans…

CG: And, Slovakia? Are you interested in staying here?

MG: Well, I’ve been here for some time already and I feel quite at home here. My professional work as a translator is connected directly to the Slovak language. I have a small community of friends here. I don’t have any real desire to leave or to go anywhere else.

CG: And to other people, would you suggest this as something to do if they feel that they are against, or that they clash with the system?

MG: Well, it’s a terribly dangerous and risky kind of step to take, I think. I wouldn’t go out preaching that Americans ought to renounce their citizenship as a means of protest. However, if there are some who think they might want to do that, well, they’re certainly welcome to contact me through my website and ask me about my own experience. But there are limitations and restrictions that anybody doing that is going to have to accept.

CG: What about the current change that has been happening in America? Where do you see this, where do you see the new presidency going?

MG: There was a comedian back in the 1980s named Bobcat Goldthwait who once had a great line in one of his stand-up routines that said, “Blaming Ronald Reagan for how screwed up the country is is a little bit like blaming Ronald McDonald when you get a bad cheeseburger. Neither of them really run the show.” Barack Obama, a very charismatic politician who has rode himself into office kind of on a wave of messianic fervor, is already being revealed as a tool of the plutocratic elite that really controls American politics and American policy. So, as far as “change”? Maybe they’ll move some soldiers from Iraq to Afghanistan instead.

CG: So no administrative problems, really? Because it seems you have letters from most … embassy, and banks, and … I guess the list goes on. People and institutions that are happy with the situation, really.

MG: There were two main concerns for me in renouncing my citizenship. One is with respect to the identification function that a state passport provides. So, for example, if I walk into Tatra banka, where I’m a client, and ask to withdraw money in cash from my account, they want to see my passport. At the moment I don’t have a passport or a stateless person’s Travel Document, so what I have for this interim period while I’m undocumented, in order to manage the ID function, is, one, this notarized copy of my passport and visa. The second is I executed a power of attorney designating a friend of mine as being able to sign for all legal acts in my name. So, if I needed to withdraw cash from the bank, I would take her along to the bank branch and she would present her ID and sign for me, based on the power of attorney.

The other function of the passport, obviously, was to hold the residence permit sticker. Right now I don’t have that, so I could have a real problem if I were stopped by the police.

CG: If anyone out there wants to visit, or to find out more information about yourself, could you please give them the link?

MG: My personal blog, my website, is www.nostate.com, just n-o-s-t-a-t-e-dot-com.

Victoria must pay tethered teen $30,000

Friday, November 28, 2008

VICTORIA – Willow Kinloch has been granted half of the $60,000 she won in a lawsuit after being tethered in Victoria police cells, with the payment of the rest hinging on an appeal of her case by the City of Victoria.

The city had applied for a stay, or suspension, of payment until the appeal is heard, perhaps sometime next spring. But Justice Mary Saunders of the B.C. Court of Appeal ruled Thursday that Kinloch is entitled to $30,000 now.

Kinloch’s case dates to 2005 when she was 15. A B.C. Supreme Court jury came up with the award earlier this year following a decision that officers had violated Kinloch’s charter rights.

Kinloch had been picked up by police in the downtown area for being drunk and was taken to police cells.

She spent about an hour screaming and banging on the walls before two officers tried to take her home to the apartment she shared with her mother.

The apartment intercom was broken and officers wouldn’t let Kinloch yell up to a window, so she was brought back to the police station. She did not want to return to a cell, and police described her as uncooperative. She ended up being bound at the ankles, tethered and left in the cell for four hours.

Kinloch is now in Thailand.

Here’s to hoping Ms. Kinloch is safe, given the unrest in Thailand at the moment.

See also:
The further education of Willow Kinloch
Victoria, BC citizenry to pay $60,000 to brutalized teen (includes video)

Hey there,

You know, it’s funny, after reading your recent interview, I feel as though essentially you and I believe in the same (or a very similar) ideal world. I never realized that might even remotely be the case. I guess that could be because we rarely if ever engaged in political debate with one another, assuming the other felt very differently.

One day not too long ago, I was describing my ideal ‘political’ system and basically it hearkens back to my teenage fascination with communes and dropping out of society at large in order to live with like minded people who create their own guidelines to live by – growing their own food, caring for one another’s children – communally. Ideally, small groups/communities would ‘govern’ themselves: everyone could sit in a room together and have a vote and the group would be small enough that each voice would be heard. I think that’s what government was meant to be (or at least should have been), but it got all fucked up when it grew – it wasn’t scalable.

Although, you’d likely leave out all the warm fuzzy hippy-sounding bits of what I’ve said, I think we seem to essentially have very compatible ideal visions of the future.

And I respond:

Okay, I’m stunned by the synchronicity here, because literally at the same time you were likely writing this I was playing a video game and thinking to myself that it’s a pity that we find ourselves so divided on political questions, and that if you understood more of the background – or if I were better at explaining it to you – that we would find we have much more common ground than we thought.

Agorism is a revolutionary strategy for achieving a voluntary society. Intellectually, it grew out of the anarcho-capitalism of Murray Rothbard. The principles of that philosophy are not entirely compatible with more “socialist” forms of anarchism, in that anarcho-capitalism rejects almost everything which flows from economics based on the Labor Theory of Value in favor of Austrian subjective value theory (marginal utility), rejects the notion that hard titles to land are immoral or indefensible, and rejects the propositions found in many schools of thought which say that profit, rent and interest are either immoral or would disappear in a stateless society.

What is interesting is that the ancap model, I believe, is capable of subsuming all of the other models within itself, and serving as an overall framework under which any given philosophy of property and economics could be freely tried out within areas inhabited by people who wanted to adopt their own, so long as agencies for resolutions of disputes between communities with different philosophies could be agreed upon.

Within the anarcho-capitalist panarchy communities could choose to organize themselves along whatever lines they wanted to. Communes? Fine, have at it. Rugged individualists? Great, just don’t come stuffing it at the rest of us. Worker self-management and a society of independent contractors? That’s permissible. Syndicalist communes where the workers control the means of production? Fine, so long as they acquire their property legitimately. Corporations? Absolutely, but good luck maintaining anything even remotely like the predatory corporate forms of today or the past without State-backed limited liability, corporate personhood and the massive subsidies and externalizations of costs granted to big businesses by States today. Any or all of these could exist side by side – and of course, there’s a lot more to it than just a general permissiveness.

Overall, and perhaps of great interest for you, who I believe approaches questions of what ought to be in society more from a “harmonious human systems” approach than from an egoist individual rights approach, is that a society of this nature would naturally entail the disappearance of the corrupt, predatory, coercive and downright evil practices used by today’s ruling classes and wealthy elites via today’s States against poor and repressed people all over the world and throughout the horrible history of humanity. Revolutionaries everywhere want to overthrow their ruling class, but usually seek to replace it with their own familiar personal despotism, and let there be blood. The Agorist seeks to subject the bloated, loathsome carcasses of State and ruling class to the merciless creative destruction of the marketplace.

Agorism implies a great many things which challenge the ruling classes and what is called today by many “the Capitalist system” (though it ought better be called something like “the neo-Mercantilist system”) at fundamental levels. People who make money smuggling human beings from one country to another ought to be celebrated as heroes provided they are not selling people into slavery and they take necessary safety precautions. The real crime is that since the activity of smuggling people across artificial State borders is illegal, there’s no effective way to drive evil or careless operators out of the business. If the evil ones could be identified and excluded, the remainder are the Agorist’s allies if they are susceptible to an Agorist ideological conversion.

Likewise the drug dealers of today. Not the top layers of the extremely violent organized crime rings and their State accomplices, but the far more numerous minor dealers who form perhaps the one or two levels of connection to the ultimate drug user and who are rarely involved in violence or fraud. The same with the pimps and the whores and the bookies and the loan sharks and all the tradesmen willing to do a household repair job “under the table” and all those unlicensed day care centers operating in suburban homes and all other people engaged in nonviolent activities which are prohibited by States or done in ways States do not permit. All of these people are allies against the State if they accept the basic contract: Don’t tread on me, honor your agreements, and, if we fall into dispute, pledge to find a non-State solution. The Agorist is anyone who, at least part of the time, trades in markets the State prohibits, or does so in manners which aren’t permitted by States – such as without complying with ridiculous regulations that serve to create barriers to market entry for the benefit of existing participants and/or wealthier entrants, or without reporting the activity for taxation.

I’m attaching two fairly brief and highly influential works [ed: attached were Konkin's New Libertarian Manifesto and Agorist Class Theory]. Keep in mind that Agorism is a theory of revolution. Though it grew out of anarcho-capitalism and is grounded in that theory, it is quite distinct. You will not find a description of Utopia here (though I can tell you where to find plenty). In my mind, the Agorist praxis can be employed by a social revolution toward pretty much any Utopian vision, so long as the State and all of the privilege connected to it is eliminated along the way.

Enjoy

These sweethearts don't share your definition of property rights. Should they be killed?

First of all, everyone knows I love cats, right? KITTIES!!! You go, kitties!

Now, to serious matters.

With homeowner in doghouse, bobcats move in

Cute uberkitties challenge capitalist property rights

A family of feline squatters has moved into a foreclosed home in Lake Elsinore. Residents of the Tuscany Hills development first noticed the bobcats about a week ago.

With real estate values plummeting and foreclosed homes sitting empty, a family of bobcats apparently decided the time was right to pounce.

So last week, they slipped out of the parched foothills of Lake Elsinore and into a spacious, vacant home in well-groomed Tuscany Hills.

Residents of the development got their first look Aug. 27 when the feline squatters — at least two adults and three kittens — lolled atop a wall outside the Spanish-style house.

There arises now a moral question, the resolution of which sits at the base of your conception of property rights.

Get offa mah property!

Very likely there is a bank that is presently the legal owner of this house. Can the bank come around randomly shouting “get offa mah property!” like Fuzzy Lumpkins, and if the cats disobey and refuse to vacate the property be justified in shooting them? Regardless of whether they were cats, moral actors, Randian ubermenschen or even Republicans, I should say no, and not wish to share my table with the type of folk who would believe that was really okay. Can the bank transfer legal title to the place to another party, and therefore be justified in killing the bobcats if they fail to timely vacate? I say that the bank may transfer title, but it may not evict the tenants (assuming that, quite characteristically, the bobcats have executed no auditable contractual agreement with the bank). Could the new owners evict the bobcats? To be consistent with the values that underlie the foregoing, I can’t permit them to do that. Could any of the foregoing (presumptively) evil owners delegate killing the bobcats to a disinterested third party charged with handling such matters, in the interests of all? It would all be legal, of course, approved by democracy of the highest quality and refinement.

If you’re the bank, is killing the cute, fuzzy kitties okay? If you’re the new owner? If you’re a delegate elected by the neighbors? If you’re the employee of Bob’s Ancap Defense Services and Pizza Company, Ltd.? If you’re the toppermost of the topmost federated syndicalist committeemen?

It is not okay to kill the kitties in these scenarios. If you kill the kitties under any of these scenarios, I don’t want you around me.

There are other scenarios. Maybe I’ll think about them while I go hunting for more photos of these adorable anarcho-cuties.

From the Stanwood/Camano News, Camano Island, Washington:

Troubles brew for island coffee stand

16 September 2008

They say “no man is an island,” but on Camano Island, at least one man has claimed himself sovereign. Randy Harless has declared sovereignty by renouncing his citizenship and claims his status prevents him from being held accountable for laws of a government he is no longer a part of.

“Privileges are not to be granted by the government,” said Harless. “Our government has overstepped its bounds extremely.”

Now, big troubles are brewing.

Sovereign Coffee: The Randy Lee Harless espresso stand

When Harless bought Log Cabin Espresso, located on SR 532 near Good Road, earlier this year, and renamed the establishment Randy Lee Harless, he put his declaration of sovereignty to the test. At the end of July, Harless was notified by Island County Public Health of the suspension of his 2008 food service establishment permit. Failing to respond to notification of continued violations of health codes, Harless was notified he must immediately cease all food service operations.

“It’s my right to own a business,” said Harless. “I don’t need permission.”

However, when the permit was revoked, Harless was advised that he could not request a new permit to operate a food service establishment in Island County for a minimum of six months. Nonetheless, the stand remains open for business, offering coffee, espresso and other drinks, along with muffins, homemade donuts, croissants and bagels.

“I think Roger Case is grasping at straws,” said Harless. “He has no legal standing here.” According to Harless, his actions are a stand against tyranny. “Nobody stands up for their rights anymore,” he said. “The health department comes along, and they want to have power to control every move of what goes on here.” Harless said he has taken back that control over his establishment. “Under my sovereignty, I have granted myself a health permit,” he said. The sovereign espresso stand owner said he is ready for a legal challenge. “I’m expecting it,” said Harless.

Dr. Roger Case, Island County health officer, disputes the validity of Harless’s sovereignty claim. “He’s in violation of public health code,” said Case. According to Case, anyone operating a business in Island County has to follow the law. “The place needs to be closed,” he said. “It’s not safe for people to eat there.”Case said that the matter could have easily been cleared up months ago. “We’ve been trying to work with him for some time,” said case. “He has not been willing to comply with code.” Harless’s failure to comply with the order to cease food service operations will result in Superior Court action, said Case.

(my comment left at the newspaper’s website)

Leaving aside the inanity and delusion that is democracy along with the hysteria from the annoying county bureaucrat, bravo for Mr. Harless. He’s a real agorist (agorism.info) revolutionary. He’s going to suffer from a poor choice of tactics, though, as one of the prime criteria for the US government to accept a renunciation of citizenship is that there be no demonstrated intent on the part of the renunciant to live inside the territory claimed by said government.

I’m kinda doing the same thing, though without the coffee stand and the same class of tactical error. I hope Mr. Harless manages to stay out of prison, but this doesn’t look good for the man.

More on how to actually renounce your US citizenship here: http://www.nostate.com/

Entry to nostate.com (hereinafter the “Website”) is restricted by contract. By pressing “Submit” below you freely, fully, explicitly and expressly agree:

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• that you shall not, by act or omission, fail upon the Website owner’s request to surrender all energy patterns, tactile sensations, auditory stimuli, mass-energy distribution changes or other media of phenomenal transmission incident to your use of the Website to the Website owner, to become the exclusive property thereof;
• that you shall not, by act or omission, link to, cite, quote or reference the Website or any part thereof;
• that you shall not, by act or omission, speak or otherwise divulge to third parties your knowledge of the Website’s existence, your knowledge of its contents, the contents themselves or the existence of this WEBSITE ACCESS AGREEMENT (hereinafter the “Agreement”) or the Agreement itself, or any part thereof, despite being legally and morally bound by it;
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• that you shall not, by act or omission, recall, remember, recount, retain, reconstitute, recreate, receive, recover or retransmit the Website or any part thereof or this Agreement or any part thereof;
• that you shall not, by act or omission, fail to exercise due care and prudence in excluding third parties from taking part in your use of the Website in any fashion, including but not limited to by blocking all energy patterns, tactile sensations, auditory stimuli, mass-energy distribution changes or other media of phenomenal transmission incident to your use of the Website such that they cannot pass to third parties;
• that this Agreement is the totality of all contractual relationships between you and the Website owner and that this Agreement supersedes, replaces and annuls all prior contractual relationships between the aforementioned parties;
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• that you shall not, by act or omission, attempt to or actually transfer, surrender, hypothecate, pledge, encumber, subordinate, abandon or pass by gift, inheritance or other means any of your rights or duties under this Agreement without prior written consent of the Website owner;
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• that you have entered into this Agreement freely and without duress after careful consideration and understanding of all its contents.

The Slovak post sent back a form letter listing the documents they accept. Worthless, as none of the options I presented were addressed. No big deal, I went yesterday and executed a power of attorney entrusting my friend with picking up any certified or “hand deliver” mail pieces I might receive in the next year.

My ISP basically told me that there shouldn’t be much call for me to identify myself to them, but that if I needed to then my driver’s license should be acceptable. Of course their letter didn’t address whether or not my Florida driver’s license would be, so there will be another power of attorney to handle that relationship.

Very likely I’ll use the same power of attorney to delegate authority to deal with my relationships with several other companies as well. The bank is the tricky one, as I’d like to make the power of attorney specify that my agent shall only be able to act in my name if I am present and assenting, perhaps with reference to an incorporated photo. I don’t think I’ll be hand-rolling that one, but will get some counsel.

Meanwhile, from the agency responsible for my visa, a somewhat incomplete but relatively soothing reply:

So, assuming that they believe I am the person in the photos of me they have on file and accept the other various documents I have related to who I am as valid, now I know where to apply for the 1954 Convention Travel Document.

Could be worse.

It is not often, here, that I praise men, but I will do so in this case. Christian exudes both a deep-rooted self-confidence and a genuine interest in the people around him, their lives and their truths. To hear him speak of his travels, of his history and the history of others, of art, of his belief and of his loves is an education in what it is to be a human being. That he does this with neither pretension nor hyperbole is a testament, I believe, to his character. I do find him admirable.

During the Liberty English Camp last week, I heard him say something several times which resonated deeply with me, both for what the message contained and for tone and context in which it was delivered. Both because my memory is poor and because I heard several different versions of the same idea, I will paraphrase, with any necessary apology in advance if I distort Christian’s meaning:

I used to be a libertarian, and one who believed that liberty might be delivered through the action of States. Over the years, however, I have come to embrace a higher moral philosophy, and thus today call myself an anarchist without reservation.

Bravo, sir. Encore!

I have been reading and digesting a speech that Christian delivered several years ago, from the title of which the title of this post is derived. So long as we are to have State-mandated “education”, the entire thing should be made a rote-memory exercize for slavesstudents everywhere. Surely it less harmful than, say, what passes for a high school history curriculum in America these days.

A few glittering gems catch my eye:

Politics does not exist to eliminate violence but to legalise it.

Even in the Cold War-flavored, American exceptionalism-tinged milieu in which I grew up, I heard from an early age in school that “politics is the institutionalization of violence”. Here, though, the analysis came to an end, diverted from what might have been a valuable clarity of thought into a muddled and worthless utilitarianism.

Did you vote this year, last year? Were you able to ignore the blood on your hands as you did so? Or were you perhaps blinded by the dogma you clutched most dear to the blood’s very presence? Or, even worse, did you eagerly pull the wool over your own eyes, seizing the vaunted vote as that which might bring you deliverance in choosing which wolf might have you for dinner?

Democratic law does not say, “Thou shalt not kill”. Instead, it designates certain people who have the right to kill — soldiers and State police. Democratic law does not order, “Thou shalt not steal”. It says that only certain people have the right to steal — tax and customs agents. What does “power to the people” mean when the people enjoy fewer rights than their supposed servants?

Because I am a language geek, I shall go farther than Christian does in deconstructing the State’s (and the Bible’s) “thou shalt nots”. Thou, in archaic modern English, is the second-person familiar pronoun. It is cognate with the Spanish tú, the Slovak ty and many other Indo-European forms besides. The historical, linguistic sense of the informal construction is one of intimacy and/or condescension. We have lost the taste and meaning of it in modern English, and the missteps and awkwardnesses we face in communicating with those of cultures that have preserved the distinction are endless. The implication in using thou, or tú, or ty is that the speaker need express no deference to the listener, that he is either superior to or equal to the listener. In terms of the Biblical Commandments and the laws and institutions derived therefrom, the sense is always condescending.

Yet democracy pretends to put all of us on the same level. We gather periodically in celebratory binges to praise such sacred cows as “popular sovereignty” and “the will of the people”, but we still retain this disrespectful, condescending, patronizing thou. How is it that a group of free individuals get together and, by an act of collective decision, create a greater being, worthy of speaking down to us?

Michel speaks to the process:

[W]e still encounter magical practices today in our modern societies. [...] We adore our idols. It is reassuring to believe that things we control, like amulets and charms, have more power than they really do. The institution of the democratic State is a remarkable example of modern idolatry. By ritually celebrating elections that are played out like a great social mass, the State allows us to participate in a religion that will influence the idol in our favour. If we make the idol an offering of the right ballot, it will bring us security, lifetime employment, a guaranteed pension, free medical care, environmental protection and a good school for our children. All these favours will rain down on us. We will not have to do anything to earn them. What could be more magical than that belief?

In closing, he gives us a formula:

The priesthood of government officials and its protégés are able to perpetuate their exploitation through this myth of the people’s political power upon which the democratic order is based. The best way to protect oneself from their violence, and especially to protect one’s soul, is to deny their basis for power. Don’t give it legitimacy. Don’t vote. Refuse to be part of their system. A just society will not be built from above by the magic of a good government, but from below by the emancipation of each individual, one conscience at a time. [emphasis mine]

With that, I bid you a safe journey on your own road to liberty.

McClatchy yesterday kicked off a series of reports on the people held at the US Guantánamo Bay military prison and elsewhere, saying:

An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.

"Guantamo Graffiti" by burge5000 @ flickr.com

From Sunday’s article, We got the wrong guys: America’s prison for terrorists often held the wrong men,

Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo’s Camp Four who hissed “infidel” and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn’t: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.

And from today’s, ‘I guess you can call it torture’: U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases:

American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, the kind that’s used to corral livestock.

The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.

[...]

The brutality at Bagram peaked in December 2002, when U.S. soldiers beat two Afghan detainees, Habibullah and Dilawar, to death as they hung by their wrists.

Dilawar died on Dec. 10, seven days after Habibullah died. He’d been hit in his leg so many times that the tissue was “falling apart” and had “basically been pulpified,” said then-Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the Air Force medical examiner who performed the autopsy on him.

Had Dilawar lived, Rouse said in sworn testimony, “I believe the injury to the legs are so extensive that it would have required amputation.”

I am somewhat conflicted as to whether to split this off as a separate item completely divorced from the original conversation and my reaction to Mr. Warner, or to let it flow. Since the hour is late and the path of least resistance is often attractive, I will leave it as a personal response.

Dear Lee,

You wrote:

[A]s a matter of pragmatism, none of the other definitions [of murder] or standards can deprive me of property, liberty, and life. Their value is purely symbolic, as they are not based upon force or coercion.

Of course definitions have no power on their own. They gain power only as they are accepted and applied by people in their relations.

If I read you correctly, you don’t necessarily accept the definition of murder as defined by legislature, religion, or “analysis of the rightful place of self-defense,” but you aren’t making clear exactly what your philosophical standard, legal principle, and definition is. If it’s not too legalistic of me, could I ask you to explain what YOUR higher law is, and how it would apply to me, or any other non-participant in your belief system?

In the Muslim world, the law is what the Sheik, Caliph, or Imam says it is. It tends to vary, notwithstanding the Koran or Sharia Law. I wouldn’t want that for me, and I hope that isn’t what you are talking about.

I wouldn’t want Sharia or literal Biblical law for anyone, and even I can agree that, as an example, the organic law based in the English Common Law is a morally superior system. That doesn’t make it a good system, however.

The question is not too legalistic, this is a fundamental and critical issue, and one which I and hopefully most of the world use to examine and judge the question. My philosophy is something of “self-defense plus”. I believe mine to be an extension of the philosophy described by the “Philosophy of Liberty” video I posted previously.

To the narrow question of what is a criminal murder and what is a justified killing — be it in self-defense, in the service of delegation of the right to self-defense or as retaliation for tortious damage or infringement — I am not a philosopher, and I won’t be able to put together a comprehensive intellectual argument which will unassailably support my beliefs. What I can offer, though, is a set of principles (though some may be loose and slippery) which speak to the issue, and examples that support and illustrate their application. I will gleefully and recklessly make assertions here without proof, use terms without definition and attempt to exploit proof by intimidation. I don’t have time for much else.

First, we own ourselves. Our bodies are our rightful and natural property. When someone attempts to damage us or kill us, we are justified in using whatever force necessary to prevent or interrupt that. That force may even be disproportionate. If a kidnapper has me tied up and is preparing to saw off my leg, if I manage to get a free hand and deliver an ice pick to his brain, that also is justified. We may be justified in certain circumstances in conducting proportionate revenge upon those who injure us as well.

Next, we own our property (define it as you will, and this is a broad and deep and vague philosophical area in which I have mixed opinions and in which there are many views), and that property is an extension of ourselves. We are justified also in using force to protect and defend our property, and may be justified in extracting proportionate retributive compensation or a proportionate forced cure for damage to or infringement upon our property. Our bodies are our property as well, as are our lives.

Next, we own our liberty. Liberty is the space in which one may move and act and be without infringing upon the equally inviolate liberty of others. Our liberty is also our property.

We have the duty to respect the equal rights of others with respect to their own persons, property and liberty. No action that we or they take can abridge or abolish this duty. This duty arises as a practical consequence of our own desire and need for our persons, property and liberty to be respected.

We have the ability, and the moral justification, to delegate the defense of our persons, property and liberty to other persons, organizations or institutions, exclusively or non-exclusively. When we make such an intentional (and explicit) delegation, we are not creating any right, entitlement or duty that did not exist before, we are merely expanding it and inviting others to enforce our own rights. Such a delegation is almost always carried out for reasons of reciprocity: familial love, kinship, fraternal association, commercial transaction, etc. If we, say, delegate our defense to a neighborhood association which sets up an armed patrol to safeguard our homes and defend our lives, property and liberty, we are not empowering those who carry the weapons and go on patrol in our names with any new entitlement, we merely concentrate it in them and agree to support and defend their actions insofar as those actions are in accordance with those of our own rights which we have delegated.

Additionally, other people to whom we have not specifically delegated our powers of self-defense also are justified in acting to defend us or to exact retribution from those who aggress against us. The onlooker to an escalating argument who breaks my debating partner’s nose when he sees that my debating partner is about to stick a knife in my belly is entirely justified, whether I know him or not.

What I think I have given here is a rough outline of libertarian/anarchist theory at a fundamental level. Looks a bit like Mosaic law, doesn’t it? It’s also the basis for the justified functioning of a volunteer military (the scaled-up version of the neighborhood patrol) whose services are contracted for and supported by a group of people who wish it. I’ve also given the barest toe-hold to the “preemptive strike doctrine” under which the war in Iraq today is being waged, though I disagree entirely with its extension to cover that war and almost every other instance where it is used in the world today.

Thus: an unjustified killing, a murder, is one which violates these principles. This is how I see the issue.

You came along, though, telling us that you’d killed people, and that though it haunts your conscience, you believe those killings to be just. I will submit, respectfully, that it should be impossible for a sane man to simultaneously hold close the principles I have outlined above and the belief that those killings were just.