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Defend Red & Black Cafe

By on June 4, 2010 163

My friend William Gillis writes to me:

For over a decade I’ve frequented The Red & Black Cafe in Portland – an IWW, explicitly anarchist, worker-owned coop – and over the years they’ve faced all the sort of police harassment and surveillance you’d expect for a venue catering to radical activists.

Police Not Welcome

Recently a uniformed police officer entered the cafe ostensibly to buy a cup of coffee – I can only imagine the horrified looks – and was politely asked to leave by one of the workers/managers. PDX police have recently committed more than a few outrageous murders and the worker explained with infinite patience that a cop made his clientele feel like they were in danger.

For some reason this seems to be setting off a shitstorm of national-level outrage with coverage on major news networks and blogs. I have good friends on staff and their phones are ringing off the hook with death threats. Mainstream conservative and liberal pundits have talked of showing up with weapons to start a confrontation. Frankly my brain clouds over with rage every time I read the fractally idiotic comments or threats.

My friends could really use some support; in this environment some kind words or awareness from those who aren’t fanatical devotees of the police state would go a long way. I’d really appreciate it if you could use the magical reach of your blog.

Here are some links that don’t directly send me into a rage-coma: 1, 2, 3

I have nothing to add except ditto. Please let’s do what we can to support the Red & Black Café against this crap.

Rothbard on Dukakis

By on June 4, 2010 17

In addition to what you can find at Liberty magazine’s official site, there’s a trove of back issues of Liberty on Mises.org. (CHT Jesse Walker, who has a good labortarian piece on pp. 53-57 here.)

Dukakis tank porn

It’s been pointed out that “G. Duncan Williams,” the pseudonymous author of a sort-of-pro-Dukakis piece about the Bush-Dukakis presidential race on pp. 12-14 of the November 1988 Liberty, was actually Murray N. Rothbard, not yet in full paleo mode. (In addition to Rothbard’s distinctive style, having the same number of letters per name could be a clue.)

Ah, memories. I also wrote a sort-of-pro-Dukakis piece that year; it was my declaration of independence from the Republican Party. (Rothbard’s farewell to the GOP had obviously come much earlier.)

Stateless U.

By on June 4, 2010 1

Center for a Stateless Society

There’s been a lot happening with the Center for a Stateless Society these days, and more is coming. For a preview of some of our academic plans, see here. (And, of course, please help if you can.)

Fun With Mommy

By on May 31, 2010 7

Last night I watched, on and off, most of a 1928 John Ford silent movie called Four Sons. It wasn’t a great movie (it’s gaggingly sentimental, for one thing), but it was surprisingly anti-war and anti-government for a Memorial Day movie.

Four Sons (well, two of them)

It’s about an elderly Bavarian woman whose four sons all go off to fight in World War I, three on the German side and one, who has emigrated to America, on the American side. The three who fight for Germany are all killed one after another (the third dying in the arms of the fourth), but despite this the mother is bullied and treated as a pariah by the local military authorities (played with entertaining villainy) because the fourth son is a “traitor.”

After the war her only surviving son invites her to come live with him in America, but the u.s. immigration authorities refuse to let her in because the bereaved and traumatised woman can’t pass the literacy test.

The ending doesn’t make much sense – panicked and bewildered, she wanders away from Ellis Island and onto the streets of Manhattan (how she “wanders” across New York Harbor is never explained, unless she is even more saintly than she appears), and when a policeman learns her story he implausibly delivers her to her son rather than back to Ellis Island; cue happy-ish ending.

The German military brass are portrayed as treating civilians with contempt and taking petty revenge on them for tiny slights; the American authorities seem nicer, but try to keep the woman from her surviving son anyway, explaining that they’re just following orders. The war is portrayed as utterly pointless. So, all in all, not a bad Memorial Day movie.

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