Digging up Gov. Clinton

by Peter Lamborn Wilson

Recently waves of neo-conservative historical revisionism have been washing over us in New York, exalting as true patriots such Founding-Father figures as Alexander Hamilton, and his reactionary clique of bankers and would-be aristocrats. A conspicuous silence seems to have fallen over the real New York Revolutionaries, however. No fat new biographies and no big museum shows are being launched to puff the memory of genuine radicals like George Clinton.

Who?

George Clinton, Revolutionary hero and first Governor of New York (elected seven times between 1777 and 1800), bravely defended the Revolutionary Hudson Valley against the Brits and won General Washington’s undying admiration, gratitude, and friendship. Clinton hailed from Ulster County, and the Hudson Valley region never deserted him; he carried it in every one of his seven re-elections.

Governor Clinton was a genuine fire-snorting radical democrat. No “reluctant revolutionary,” he never gave up his adherence to the party of Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Sam Adams, Tom Paine, and the Sons of Liberty.

Henry David Thoreau later summed up this American tradition by praising “that government which governs least”—or preferably “not at all”—over all forms of despotism and centralized power. The founding documents of this tradition were the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. For its time the Articles of Confederation was undoubtedly the most radical constitution of any government in history. It seriously attempted to realize the goals of the Declaration—life, liberty, pursuit of happiness—as law. Each of the thirteen states remained independent. They federated together in a “league of friendship” (probably based in part on the Constitution of the Iroquois Six Nations) for defense and trade, but gave away no rights to the “continental” government: no right to tax or to keep a standing army, for example.

The reluctant revolutionaries, the rich, the self-proclaimed aristocrats such as Hamilton, Jay, Morris, and the big New York patrons and their ilk in other states all hated the Articles and accused it of leveling and anarchic tendencies, inefficiency, mob rule, and worst of all—flagrant “democracy.”

Richard Henry Lee of Virginia was probably the most distinguished radical president of the United States under the Articles. The presidents were limited to a one-year term, and no member of Congress was allowed to serve more than three years in six. Their salaries were paid by the states and they were “revocable delegates,” not “representatives” in the modern sense. In other words, this was not a republic, but a true democracy.

Radical democrats like Clinton realized that the Articles needed some amendment, and New York gladly sent delegates to the 1787 Convention called in Philadelphia to consider such changes. But when the New Yorkers arrived and discovered that the Convention intended to junk the Articles altogether and write a new Constitution, two of our delegates withdrew in disgust, claiming that the convention was “illegal.” And so it was. Technically speaking, the U.S. Constitution was to be a coup d’etat.

Right-wing conspirators like Alex Hamilton (the third NY delegate) now pre-empted the popular label “Federalist” for themselves, although in fact they despised real federation and wanted a “national” or powerful central government. These self-proclaimed “Federalists” had most of the money and controlled most of the press.

The democrats, the true federalists, became known paradoxically as “Anti-Federalists.” (In New York they called themselves Federal Republicans, but the name never caught on outside the state.) The Anti-Feds had little money or media access, but counted on mustering the poor, the mechanics and farmers, the honest revolutionaries—the People—to their just cause.

And in fact, in New York, the majority of voters were fiercely Anti-Federalist. While Clinton held office the aristo’s could do nothing except in New York City, which they partially controlled. Ulster County was the most Anti-Federalist of all counties, in part because it lacked big patronships and consisted mostly of small independent “yeoman” farms, the agrarian backbone of the radical revolution. And in part, of course, out of love and loyalty to George Clinton, local hero.

During the period of debate over the Constitution, the Federalists had all the advantages of wealth, education, ownership of the press, and superiority of eloquence. (In high school today we study the Federalist Papers, while the Anti-Federalist Papers are ignored and forgotten.) The true democrats were put on the defensive, out-maneuvered politically by the rightists, blamed for Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts, and depicted as dangerous rebels. Once in power the right passed the Alien and Sedition Act, the “homeland security bill” of its day, to censor and suppress their ideological enemies on the left.

The old standard biography of Clinton is called His Excellency George Clinton, Critic of the Constitution (E.W. Spaulding, 1938) because his opposition to that counter-revolutionary document was the high point of his career as revolutionary governor. The true democrats like Clinton, Sam Adams, and R.H. Lee are mostly suppressed and ignored by neo-conservative historians, or even slandered and libeled. Even in New York, Clinton is scarcely remembered as an ultra-radical. And yet, under the pen name “Cato” he attacked the Hamiltonian cabal as crypto monarchists. (Hamilton responded under the pen name “Caesar!”) Clinton as governor attempted to steer the state legislature along a path of militant resistance to centralism and authoritarianism—i.e., to the Constitution.

It was a losing battle, however. Hamilton pulled off a brilliant coup in the NY legislature. As state after state ratified the new Constitution, by 1789 the NY democrats were faced with the choice of capitulation or open revolt. New York tried to insist on amendments and attempted to reserve the right of secession.

It’s a little-known but curious fact that New York, along with Virginia and Rhode Island, actually did reserve the right to secede. These claims were made in the Ordinances to the Acts by which they ratified the Constitution and acceded to the new United States of America. New York declared that “the powers of government and may be reassumed by the people whenever it shall become necessary to their happiness.” These ordinances have never been rescinded, not even after the Civil War, and are presumably still valid.

But the Clintonians were finally defeated. The Revolution was truly ended now, and the Declaration of Independence reduced to a shibboleth. The Bill of Rights restored some measure of democracy. It was largely the work of R.H. Lee, not of Thomas Jefferson, who was off swanning around Paris at the time.

Most Clintonians now became radical Jeffersonians and pro-French Revolutionists. Clinton’s daughter married Citizen Genet. But Clinton distrusted Jefferson as a flighty aristocrat. In effect, Clinton was a better Jeffersonian than Jefferson.

Clinton’s enthusiasm began to wane. He was getting old. He served again as Governor and finally for two terms as Vice President of the United States. But bit by bit, he gave up the militant fight for the principles of 1776. Nearly dead, he roused himself for one last gesture, and used his VP’s deciding vote as president of the Senate to defeat the National Bank. (Unfortunately, the Bank eventually won this war, but that’s another story.) Shortly afterwards, in 1812, Clinton died in office and was buried in D.C.

Clinton was no plaster saint. He not only drank a lot, he also speculated in land—like absolutely everyone with any money in 18th century America, including T. Jefferson and even T. Paine. In a sense, bereft of its ideals, the Revolution sometimes looks to the historian like a gigantic real estate scam.

Clinton hated Ethan Allen, sad to say, and tried to prevent Vermont from breaking off from New York in 1777. He wasn’t very popular with the Iroquois, either—although Joseph Brant, the Mohawk Freemason, liked and trusted him. Clinton’s brave but amateurish defense of the Hudson Valley during the Revolution was so inept it almost failed completely. But it didn’t. He was no great intellectual, and the seven Cato Letters are not well written. But for his era Clinton was a towering figure of revolutionary purity.

Would it be too silly to call him a prophet as well? In fact the U.S. government under the Constitution turned out to be just what he and the other democratic rads predicted. Americans nowadays have good reason to know it. The patriotic rhetoric of the obscenely rich and powerful has never sounded so hollow as now. A regime founded in 1789 on counter-revolutionary reaction has finally reduced the word “democracy” to a synonym for the “Free Market Values” of greed and U.S. hegemony. America has lost its old reputation as “land of the free.”

The recent disintegration of the USSR, Yugoslavia, and the “United Kingdom” (Scotland and a part of Ireland independent, Wales on the road to devolution) has inspired many Americans with the idea of secession from the American Empire. In the next few years they foresee depression, ruin, neo-fascist tyranny, militarism, and convulsive break-up overtaking our unfortunate land. But the dissipation of the USSR was attained without much violence. Scotland freed itself without bloodshed. It could happen here.

If “Cato” Clinton were alive today there’s no doubt where his sympathies would be engaged. He’d be Populist-Progressive, intensely Green, mildly socialist, anti-Globalist, and extremely disgusted with the Money Interests and would-be aristocrats and imperialists of Washington D.C. He’d be FOR SECESSION. And he’d make a splendidly charismatic figurehead for such a movement.

Maybe we should dig him up—again. (See photo and caption.)

Despite its “conservative” reputation, the State of New York has produced some of the most revolutionary upheavals in U.S. history: the Anti-Rent War of 1845. (The latter was considered significant enough to rate a footnote to the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels in 1848.)

Today’s New York radicals and secessionists might at least consider a pilgrimage to the tomb of George Clinton (in Kingston’s Old Dutch Graveyard)—to meditate on our “lost history” of freedom.

Forced Sterilization in the US

from Al-Jazeera
June 24, 2012
Watch the video here

Tens of thousands were forcibly sterilised throughout the 20th century across the US as they were deemed "feeble minded" and "inappropriate candidates" for reproduction.

"More than 30 states who had laws like this and did sterilise people ... only seven of them have stepped up and even recognised that they did it, made some kind of apology or at least said that what they did was wrong."   - Paul Lombardo, a bioethics and legal scholar

In 1927, the Supreme Court upheld state statutes permitting compulsory sterilisation in the Buck versus Bell decision.

The Supreme Court ruling, which Nazis at the Nuremberg trials cited in their defence, has never been expressly overturned.

In it, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind .... Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

The so-called science of eugenics first emerged in Britain in the mid-19th century, as an offshoot of Darwinism.

It was embraced in the US, and by the beginning of the 20th century, many of the nation's prominent figures were avowed eugenicists.
"By 1960's ... it was a sham ... this [forced sterlisation] was going on in case after case and social workers were bullying these people into these operations and it's a monster hiding in plain sight .... They are sterlising the very story, this programme, they're telling people we are saving these people from 'parenthood'.... nobody knew just how aggressive the social workers were."   - John Railey, co-author of Against Their Will - a special investigative report into North Carolina's sterlisation programme

Their stated goal was to improve the health of the country by increasing births and immigration amongst what they called the "fit" and decreasing births and immigration amongst the "unfit".

Eugenic principles were widely included in academic work, and in federal, state and local laws. And research into eugenics was conducted in America, long before it was undertaken in Nazi Germany.

These enquiries were funded by some of America's wealthiest families, the Carnegies, the Harrimans, the Kelloggs and the Rockefellars.

Most US states abanonded the practice after World War II, amidst revulsion at the Nazi programme of eugenics.

North Carolina, however, ramped up its use of forced sterilisation, where more than 7,500 were sterilised.

However, the state did halt its program in 1974. And last year, it finally began taking steps to compensate those targeted. But on Thursday, the state's senate rejected the plan, arguing it was too expensive.

Elaine Riddick was one of those forcibly sterilised in North Carolina, when she was a young girl. Both she and her attorney, Willie Gary say they are disappointed with the senate's decision, but vow to continue the fight for reparation.

"I was a victim of rape, and as a result of the rape I became pregnant, had my son, went into the hospital and I was sterlisied. They sterilised me without my knowledge or consent," said Riddick. "My grandmother was coerced into signing for me to become sterlised but she didn't understand what sterlisation was at that time. All she knew, I believe is that her food supplements were being threatened ... if she did not consent."

So what were the origins of forced sterilisation and how widespread was its use across the United States?

To discuss this, joining Inside Story Americas, with presenter Shihab Rattansi, are guests: Steven Selden, the author of Inheriting Shame: The Story of Eugenics and Racism in America; Paul Lombardo, a bioethics and legal scholar; and John Railey, co-author of an investigative series titled Against Their Will - a special investigative report into North Carolina's sterilisation program.

"We all agree with the fact that an apology is certainly appropriate. But I don't think that makes us any more sorry because we attach a dollar figure to it."   -Chris Carney, Republican state senator, after North Carolina's senate blocked the measure to compensate victims of forced sterilisation

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A Common Dispute with Left Anarchists

from The Daily Anarchist Wendy McElroy
June 5, 2012

One of the most common disputes I have with left anarchists is whether 19th century individualist anarchists were really socialists. On the surface, it is not absurd to argue that such proto-libertarians as Benjamin Tucker are best classified within the socialist tradition rather than the libertarian one. They generally accepted the labor theory of value and, so, rejected stock trappings of capitalism. For example, Tucker, William Greene, Ezra Heywood and Josiah Warren considered the charging of interest on money to be an act of usury or theft.

Moreover, the individualist anarchists sometimes referred to themselves as “socialists” and flirted with organizations such as the International Working People’s Association (IWPA). In 1881, when a moribund IWPA revived in London, Tucker enthused, “To this momentous event, which marks an epoch in the progress of the great labor movement…, in the present issue, devotes a large portion of her space.” (Published by Tucker, (1881-1908)was the most influential libertarian periodical of its day.)

I maintain that the identification of individualist anarchists as socialists rests on a confusion regarding the definition and use of the terms “socialist” and “libertarian.”

The umbrella term “socialism” covers several different approaches to the core belief in a social ownership of the means of production and a co-operative management of society. A strong dividing line between the various types of socialism is how they view the role of the state in achieving those goals. The socialism with which individualist anarchists identified held no role whatsoever for the state. What drew many of them was the idea of social co-operation. Josiah Warren – arguably the world’s first individualist anarchist – was deeply involved in voluntary and socialistic utopian communities such as New Harmony because he believed in the social principle of co-operation. Warren became disillusioned, however, by New Harmony’s demand for the relinquishment of individualism; for example, in the demand for communal meals and disdain for privacy. In response, Warren evolved a principle known as “The Sovereignty of the Individual” or self-ownership that he believed had to underlie all social co-operation.

As late 19th century socialism in America became increasingly statist, individual anarchists increasingly put distance between themselves and it. In a speech that subsequently became his most famous essay “State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ,” Tucker stated, “The two principles…are AUTHORITY and LIBERTY, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought…are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism.” (Capitalization in the original.)

Other individualist anarchists rejected the term “socialist” altogether with some occasionally applying the label “libertarian” to themselves. Why the outright rejection? In his book, William B. Greene commented, “In socialism, there is but one master, which is the state; but the state is not a living person, capable of suffering and happiness. Socialism benefits none but demagogues, and is, emphatically, the organization of universal misery…socialism gives us but one class, a class of slaves.”

Here, then, is the first basic schism between socialism and individualist anarchism. The former increasingly embraced the state while the latter continued to repudiate it. Individualists also began to reject the surrender of sovereignty that seemed to be demanded even by non-statist socialism.

Another key and irresolvable difference: the individuals advocated private property and believed social co-operation had to be based upon its recognition. The towering figure Moses Harman, for example, answered whether he was a Communist with the words, “We have never advocated the abolition of private property. We have always maintained that the development of the highest and truest individualism in human character requires the possession and therefore the existence of personal property.” Confusingly, in the same quote Harman speaks well of “Mutualism” and “Co-operative Communism” – terms that were used differently in the 19th century than now.

In short, the individualist anarchists rejected the state, demanded respect for individual rights and advocated private property. The thread of ideology that bound them to socialists was their belief in the labor theory of value. This economic theory conditions the value of a good or service upon the labor used to produce it. The rightful owner of that value or property is seen to be the laborer who produced it.

And, so, it is necessary to analyze the individualist-anarchist approach to issues involving the labor theory of value.

Most 19 century American individualist anarchists rejected profit from capital, particularly in three forms: interest on money, the charging of rent, and profit in exchange. All of these were called “usury.” If their main political goal can be stated as “the abolition of the state,” then it is no exaggeration to say that their main economic goal was “the abolition of the money monopoly.” And by this term — “money monopoly” — they referred to three different but interrelated forms of monopoly: banking, interest, and the issuance of currency.

Focusing on the one issue of currency provides a fair sense of how most individualist anarchists approached “usury” in general. They believed that the solution to currency usury was the free market; they believed that the right to issue private currency would destroy the money monopoly and this alone could bring about the destruction of the state. The money monopoly was considered to be the means by which the banks sustained themselves and robbed the average man of economic opportunities. Through the act of incorporating, bankers became immune from personal obligations: they acquired the legal advantage of being able to contract while avoiding the responsibility for doing so. This was not only a money-raking scam that bankers ran on the public, it also denied credit to the working people by setting up prohibitive interest rates or criteria for acquiring credit.

Again, the remedy for this form of state-capitalism was the free market and privatization of currency.

The key question at this point becomes, “what if the issuer of private currency decides to charge interest on its use?” What if a private issuer engaged in usury? Would that practice be forcibly prohibited?

The answer to this question is what separated advocates of the labor theory of value who were socialists from those who were libertarian. The socialists would have banned such a practice. By contrast, the individualist anarchists answered, “If a lender can find someone foolish enough to voluntarily enter into such a contract, then the contracting parties must be left to their folly.” The right of contract — “society by contract” — was the higher law. The only remedies individualist anarchists would have pursued against those who charged or paid interest were education, peaceful protest and the establishment of parallel currencies that offered what they thought was a better deal. Individualist anarchists gave primacy to the free market and the right of contract — this is what made them libertarians rather than socialists.

As long as the default position of individualist anarchism was the primacy of contracts — and it always was — then the free market would have inexorably established the practice of charging interest as it has through history, with or without the state.

Were individualist anarchists actually socialists? The answer is most definitely “no.”

Freedom Now Maybe: The New Secessionism

By Peter Lamborn Wilson, 2005

from Arthur Magazine

Last November, right after the Election, I attended an odd event in Middlebury, Vermont—a two-day conference devoted to the question of whether Vermont should consider seceding from the USA and declaring itself the “Second Vermont Republic.”

The first Vermont Republic lasted from 1777 to 1791, during which time it recognized neither Britain nor the USA as sovereign. Thanks to Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Rangers the state has an old and still-lively sense of itself as unique and independent-minded, if not downright cranky.

The keynote speeches delivered at Middlebury by SVR founder Prof. Thomas Naylor and activist/historian Kirkpatrick Sale made it clear that any Vermont independence movement would be radical, Green, Populist non-violent and typically “Vermont-socialist.” (The Bread & Puppet Theater is already interested.) SVR’s underlying philosophy is derived from the “Small Is Beautiful” school of Leopold Kohr (his The Breakdown of Nations is the bible), “Buddhist economist” E.F. Schumacher, the UK-based Fourth World Movement, and ultimately from the minarchism of Thoreau and the American tradition of “unterrified Jeffersonians,” extreme democrats and even anarchists.

All this may be considered odd enough. But what really struck me as strange was the mood of the conference. Everyone there was cheerful, optimistic and pugnacious. Everywhere else in America that weekend leftists, liberals and libertarians were plunged in gloom. But in Middlebury the triumph of Bushite Pre-Millenialist idiocy was taken as a sign that the US Empire is about to disintegrate.

The conference voted unanimously to support the aims of the Second Vermont Republic. Delegates stomped and cheered. One woman, whose son was in Iraq with the National Guard, proclaimed herself ready to die for this new cause if necessary. Suddenly it felt kind of like 1968 again. Were all these people crazy?

Four More Years.

You know what I’m talking about already but let me spell it out. Imagine: Four more years of Neo-Con Jihadist slope-browed pseudo-Zionist McImperialism; four more years of stomping on Iraq and Afghanistan and possibly Iran, Syria and North Korea; of deficit spending and debt both national and individual; of ludicrous Red/Blue culture war; of inflation and unemployment; erosion of civil liberties; no tree left behind; more tax breaks for the rich and the corporations; blah blah blah; and to top it off, “JEB IN ’08!”—and another Four More Years.

Some of my friends are moving to Canada where they can join grayhaired draft-dodgers of the Vietnam era and suffer the bitterness of exile along with the compensations of socialized health care and quasi-legal pot. No one dares to dream of staying on and overthrowing the Empire. Not even us grayhaired really believe in The Revolution anymore. But the piffle of tepid reformism (the “left wing” of Skull’n’Bones, so to speak) makes many of us reel with nausea and depression, or anyway terminal boredom. What’s to be done?

Barely anything remains of the alternative economy and society of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Most of the food co-ops are gone, as well as most of the back-to-the-land communes, and the free schools. Low-rent bohemian enclaves have been yupped up, college campuses have grown quiet and dull (except for binge drinking), labor unions have been smashed or corrupted. The “peace movement” can mobilize millions in minutes but mysteriously nothing happens—war goes right ahead on schedule. The only force holding back environmental armageddon sometimes appears to consist of a handful of brave doomed eco-saboteurs. Leftist organization in the US takes place mostly in cyberspace, where nothing happens except more blahblahblah.

Third parties always end up as mere exercises in futilitarianism, hobby groups for the disgruntled, paper tigers sucking up all dissident energy and turning it into a politics of failure. As far as the Democrats—oh please, I can’t.

If not Canada or Holland or something, then what? Do we have to accept some sacred organic link between the landmass called Turtle Island and the regime called the “USA”? Let’s say we happen to love our land and our language, that we want to stay here. Yet somehow we also want to escape from the sleazy guilt feelings involved with citizenship in the Empire of Stupid Greed. Does this make us schizophrenic?

If a single person is possessed by two antagonistic personalities (call them Red and Blue), the usual solution would be a term in the bughouse. But if a whole state has a split personality, it can actually split. Part of it can secede.

Naturally the government is going to tell you this is a crazy notion, and treasonous as well. The Constitution is our holy founding document and can never be revoked. Too bad you were born too late to sign the Social Contract, but that’s how it is. The Civil War decided it once and for all. Thou shalt not secede.

This argument, delivered with a gun to the head, is persuasive and even conclusive. The US government is not going to allow itself to devolve. Only Indians are permitted to have “independent” reservations and only certain genes carry the right to tribal recognition (in other words race still defines political status in US law). If you don’t like it here go back to Russia…uh… or Sweden, or maybe some rogue nation in the Axis of Evil. What are you, a terrorist?

But wait.

Who would have dared to predict in (let’s say) 1984 that the Soviet Empire was about to break up into dozens of independent little countries?

Or—to take an even more astonishing example—who could’ve foreseen that Scotland (a part of Great Britain since 1707) would succeed in achieving independence again after 300 years? (It’s hard to get information on this, but I gather that the miracle was achieved by a strange coalition of Labour and Scots Nationalists.)

In any case devolution of the USSR and UK would not have occurred without prior economic collapse. A rich empire will tend to cohere, a bankrupt one to Decline and even Fall. With hindsight we can see this clearly. But foresight is always skewed by appearances. The US is believed to be the super-wealthy hegemon of the Global Market and land of total affluence, and so we see it that way.

But is it?

What about the deficit spending, that insane waste of war, that deep debt? America actually produces very little except weapons, data and entertainment—no shoes, no umbrellas, no pencils. Globalism demands that whole countries be proletarianized for the benefit of other countries that can then be called bourgeois or ruling-class. But what if Globalism itself has been derailed by US greed and revanchism? What if Europe gets so fed up with the US that it begins to elect leftoid governments that refuse to serve our interests? What if China went “off the dollar” and on to the Euro? What about a major depression in America? Would that make secession look more “realistic” and less crazy?

Under these conditions (…four more years…) the question of legality might become relevant. Is it in fact legal to secede? The SVR says yes, at least in theory. The Civil War did not decide the issue. In 1789 the Constitution looked like a very bad deal to the true revolutionaries and Jeffersonians, then called “Anti-Federalists.” These radicals liked the Articles of Confederation (based on the Iroquois Confederation, according to many historians) which recognized the thirteen states as independent entities. They made many of the same arguments as the Small-Is-Beautiful school—for instance, that only in small autonomous regions can practical direct democracy work fairly and efficiently.

But the Anti-Federalists were out-maneuvered by Alexander Hamilton and the big bankers. Eventually all the states acceded and ratified. However in three states the protocols of ratification included a guarantee of the right to secede—Virginia, Rhode Island and New York. These protocols have never been rescinded or even challenged in law. By the logic of the Constitution itself, a right that belongs to one state must belong to all. Ergo: secession is legal, q.e.d.

Tell it to the judge, you might say. Or quoting the German fascist legal philosopher Karl Schmidt: law is made by power, not reason or precedent. But if the US Empire loses its power to define law, then secession may become “legal” de facto in the act of secession. Civil war may not be necessary—again, see the case of Scotland, or Estonia. “Devolution” happens.

Although the result of secession would be a new state, many anarchists and anti-authoritarians have supported it as a tactic, a good first step toward small-region autonomy. During the Civil War the American anarchist Lysander Spooner shocked people by supporting both abolition of slavery and the right of secession. Proudhon believed in secession and anarcho-federation. Emma Goldman supported the secession of Catalonia from fascist Spain. Nestor Makno fought for a free Ukraine; and so on. In fact secession has a potential appeal across a wide spectrum of political creeds, since anyone can hope to gain power (or at least a voice) in a new small state.

If you don’t care for Vermont-style secession there are plenty of other movements afoot. Capital-L Libertarians (“Republicans who smoke dope,” as Robert Anton Wilson calls them) have organized the New Hampshire Project, hoping to live free or die. Texas has an old and rather wacky independence movement (I once met their “Ambassador to the Court of St. James” in Dublin after he’d been evicted from his London “embassy” for unpaid rent).

Hawaii has a sovereignty movement based on the old native monarchy, overthrown by US forces in 1893; and there are many other tribal separatist causes. Black nationalists and separatists have their visions of utopia. Alaska has a group, and in Maine a “militia” with secessionist ideals has been founded by novelist Caroline Chute (The Beans of Egypt). In New York City, the secessionists want to secede from New York State as well as the USA. And in the process they plan to have some fun.

Being urban cynics unlike the sincere Vermonters, the NYC secessionists don’t necessarily expect to succeed. But the City has always dreamed of independence—a tradition no doubt dating back at least to Dutch resentment of the Brits, and farmers’ hatred of feudal landlords. We New Yorkers (I speak here for at least a dozen people) simply feel that folks with no power have nothing to fear from the “politics of the very worst.” If the Empire’s going to implode, let it. At least we’ll be ready with some sort of Plan B.

In the meantime we expect a bit of political adventure, and some good parties. Maybe eventually the other kind of party, too. A good motto for us would be Fats Waller’s famous saying: “One never knows—do one?”

A Mass Action against Genetically Modified Wheat

Take the Flour Back

May 27, 2012

taketheflourback.org


European activists link up to draw the line against GM


The following statement has just been released from the crowd of around 400 people at Rothamsted Park this afternoon (27th May).

More than 400 growers, bakers and families from across England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Belgium marched against the return of open air GM field testing today. Take the Flour Back linked arms with their European counterparts, notably France’s Volunteer Reapersand walked calmly towards the site, before being stopped by police lines.

Kate Bell from Take the Flour Back stated that “In the past, kids, grannies, and everyone in between has decontaminated GM trial sites together. Here at the beginning of a new resistance to this obsolete technology, we see GM hidden behind a fortress. We wanted to do the responsible thing and remove the threat of GM contamination, sadly it wasn’t possible to do that effectively today. However, we stand arm in arm with farmers and growers from around the world, who are prepared to risk their freedom to stop the imposition of GM crops.”

People enjoyed a GM free picnic whilst listening to a range of speakers opposing the trial, including Graciela Romero, International Programmes Director of UK development charity War on Want. Lawrence Woodward, previously Director of Elm Farm Organic Research Centre, former head of standards at the Soil Association, and now involved in Citizens concerned about GM. Plus several British farmers including Peter Lundgren, a conventional wheat farmer from Lincolnshire.

Gathuru Mburu, co-ordinator of the African Biodiversity Network, spoke on the global fight for control of our food supply.

Mburu explained that:

“Experimenting with staple crops is a serious threat to food security. Our resilience comes from diversity, not the monocultures of GM. Beneath the rhetoric that GM is the key to feeding a hungry world, there is a very different story – a story of control and profit. The fact is that we need a diversity of genetic traits in food crops in order to survive worsening climates. Above all, people need to have control over their seeds”

This statement is released amongst growing calls for the scientists to demonstrate sensitivity to public concern by harvesting the crop before pollination, removing any risk of contamination with non-GM plants.

Listen to our debate with Rothamsted on BBC Radio 5 Live (starts 27 minutes in).

Did you watch the debate on Newsnight? Join in online on twitter using the #newsnight hashtag.

If you are coming to Take the flour back, please read a list of things to bring, important information on nearby non-GM research trials at Rothamsted, and the legal briefing. Transport is being organised from various parts of the country.

Statements of support:
Statement from African Biodiversity Network and Gaia Foundation
Statement from Bees Action Network
Statement from Joanna Blythman
Statement from Community Food Growers’ Network
Statement from Faucheurs Volontaires
Statement from Friends of the Bees
Statement from GMO-free Poland, the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside, EKOLAND, and other anti-GMO campaigners in Poland
Statement from Richard Higgins
Statement from Karnataka Farmers’ Association (KRRS)
Statement from Movement for National Land and Agrarian Reform (MONLAR), Sri Lanka
Statement from Dr. Vandana Shiva, Navdanya
Statement from Rising Tide

The position of other campaigns on this issue:
Statement from Real Bread Campaign
Stop the open-air release of GM Wheat that contains genes ‘most similar to that of a cow’

Rothamsted have planted a new GM wheat trial designed to repel aphids. It contains genes for antibiotic-resistance and an artificial gene ‘most similar to a cow’.

Wheat is wind-pollinated. In Canada similar experiments have leaked into the food-chain costing farmers millions in lost exports. There is no market for GM wheat anywhere in the world.

This experiment is tax-payer funded, but Rothamsted hope to sell any patent it generates to an agro-chemical company. La Via Campesina, the world’s largest organisation of peasant farmers, believe GM is increasing world hunger. They have called for support resisting GM crops, and the control over agriculture that biotech gives to corporations.

‘Take the Flour Back’ will be a nice day out in the country, with picnics, music from Seize the Day and a decontamination. It’s for anyone who feels able to publically help remove this threat and those who want to show their support for them.

Meet Rothamsted Park, Harpenden, Herts (30 mins from London by train) 12 noon on 27th May. At 1.30pm we’ll take a 20 minute stroll on public footpaths to the trial site.

Take the Flour Back is a grassroots network of individuals. It has no membership and no mandated representatives, but if you are press seeking a comment we will happily put in you touch with someone who will be attending.

OWS LATEST VICTIM OF PHONY TERROR PLOT

May 21, 2012
By the Staff at AFP


In late April, five Occupy Wall Street (OWS) teenagers from Cleveland were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism. An FBI agent had originally urged them to “blow up the headquarters of some Nazi or the Ku Klux Klan.” Instead, he framed the group for a plot to destroy a Cleveland bridge, marking the first known instance that the tactics used by the FBI to suppress Islamic and white-oriented political dissidents have been used against the OWS movement.


The phony, federally concocted terror conspiracy was immediately used by the city of Cleveland to revoke the permit under which the Occupy movement there had been operating. This announcement was then carried by newspapers across the country as evidence of the “danger” of the OWS threat.



Yet the script that the federal agents who made the arrests were reading from was a tired and old one, which AMERICAN FREE PRESS has been exposing for the past year, and which has even recently drawn the attention of establishment newspapers such as The New York Times.


In this most recent case, a federal informant was sent into an OWS encampment to try to recruit angry, foolish or mentally disturbed individuals and get them to agree to commit crimes. The informant happened upon a group of young anarchists, whose anger at what they viewed as the “racist capitalist patriarchy” he transformed into a “terrorist” plot involving fake bombs provided by the government—in this case, persuading the youth that the bombs, provided by the informant, could be detonated through the use of text messages sent by cell phone.


The operation was launched as part of a larger sting designed to “discredit” OWS in much the same way the federal government and its Zionist-bankster backers have sought to discredit so-called white supremacism and “Islamism.”



The inability of the government to recover from the economic collapse it and its Wall Street allies created in 2008 has caused the Obama regime to become increasingly desperate in its efforts to maintain control and distract the public from real problems, which it is unable to address. The Obama regime used a similar tactic near the end of 2011 to justify the imposition of sanctions on Iran. This scheme is being used to distract the public with a phony threat of war and is also used to discredit left and right-wing political activists who have raised questions and garnered public support in opposition to the regime’s agenda.


Traditional opponents of the Obama regime in the neocon movement of course hailed the arrests in an effort to persuade their readers that OWS is more of a threat to the ordinary American than the phony “war on terrorism” being instigated by the FBI. It’s all part of a plan to position people on both sides of a debate so they can frame and control it, and distract the people into cheerleading for one team or the other while both teams, knowingly or unknowingly, work toward the same goal—in this case, the goal of a world dictatorship.

How to Create an Occupy Tribe

From Global Guerrillas

By John Robb

There's no question that the Occupy groups have done a great job with constructing the outlines of resilient communities in the heart of many of our most dense urban areas.

People pitch in to do work. They are considerate despite the difficulty of the arrangement. Food gets served. The area gets cleaned. There is entertainment. There's innovation (equipment, tech, workarounds). There is education (lots of seminars being taught). There is open, participatory governance. All of this is great and this experience will definitely pay off over the next decade as the global economy deteriorates, panics, fails. It will make building resilient communities easier (there are lots of ways to build a resilient community, we're trying to document all of the ways how on MiiU).

However, is this experience building a tribal identity? An Occupy tribe? Something that can eventually (there's lots to do in the short to medium term) go beyond protest and build something new? One even strong enough to create new resilient economic and social networks that step into the breach as the current one fails?

How to Manufacture a Tribe

How do you manufacture a strong community that protects, defends and advances the interests of its members? You build a tribe. Tribal organization is the most survivable of all organizational types and it was the dominant form for 99.99% of human history. The most important aspect of tribal organization is that it is the organizational cockroach of human history. It has proved it can withstand the onslaught of the harshest of environments. Global depression? No problem. (for more, see: Tribes!)

To build a tribal identity, the Occupy movement will need to manufacture fictive kinship. That kinship is built through (see Ronfeldt's paper for some background on this) the following:

Story telling. Shared histories and historical narratives.

Rites of passage. Rituals of membership. Membership is earned not given due to the geographic location of birth or residence.

Obligations. Rules of conduct and honor. The ultimate penalty being expulsion.

Egalitarian and often leaderless organization. Sharing is prized.

Multi-skilled. Segmental organization (lots of redundancy among parts).

Two-way loyalty. The tribe protects the members and the members protect the tribe. If this isn't implemented, you don't have a tribe, you have a Kiwanis club.

It looks like they are building an identity. The general assembly is the story telling mechanism (the 99% stories are more). Going to an occupy location and helping out is the rite of passage. There are rules of conduct (a shame culture). It's definitely egalitarian and leaderless. It's segmented into different geographies. Given the efforts put in to keep the occupy locations intact, it appears that people have become loyal to the movement.

The only question is whether the tribe truly protects the members. Is the loyalty two way?