I’m back from the Denver Regional, which was fun; here are the powerpoints from my prison- abolition talk.
It was nice seeing a western skyline again – mountains on the horizon, different kinds of weather visible in different directions. Eastern skylines are generally so claustrophobic.
Tomorrow at 9 Eastern, C4SS comrade Cory Massimino is interviewing me; catch it live.
This coming weekend: the Oklahoma Regional, with an anarchy focus and a large Molinari/C4SS presence.
[cross-posted at BHL]
Want to support a left-libertarian presence at the 2015 APEE Prison Abolition panel? Then luck is with you.
The Auburn Philosophy Club is hosting another public forum today (Wednesday, 13 November, 5:00, at Mama Mocha’s II, behind the Hound). The topic is Applied Ethics. I’m on the panel and will be talking about punishment.
So this guy made £35,000 selling forged celebrity autographs, and they caught him. Good. But they’ve also charged him with copyright violations, which is crap; and they’ve decided to lock him in a cage for 21 months, which is absurd. He should be forced to pay back the people he ripped off, to be sure; but he poses no serious danger to anybody. And even if I believed in retributive punishment, which I don’t, how could anyone think nearly two years’ imprisonment was a proportionate response to selling fake autographs?
Of course there is nothing unusual about this case.
The third issue (Spring 2013) of The Industrial Radical will be back from the printers and on its way to subscribers shortly, featuring articles by Less Antman, Jason Lee Byas, Kevin Carson, Nathan Goodman, Anthony Gregory, Trevor Hultner, Charles Johnson, Joshua Katz, Thomas L. Knapp, Abby Martin, Chad Nelson, Sheldon Richman, Jeremy Weiland, and your humble correspondent, on topics ranging from NSA surveillance and whistleblowing, the Turkish revolt, the Boston lockdown, the Keystone XL pipeline, intellectual property, and the futility of gun control in an age of 3-D printing, to compulsory schooling, American militarism, conscription, worker exploitation, property rights, prison ethics, rape culture, the pros and cons of communism, and the dubious legacy of Margaret Thatcher.
With each new issue published, we post the immediately preceding issue online. Hence a free pdf file of our second issue (Winter 2013) is now available here. (See the first issue also.)
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The New York State report found students as young as nine years old subjected to sudden, painful, repeated electric shocks for ‘refusing to follow staff directions’, ‘failing to maintain a neat appearance’, “stopping work for more than ten seconds”, “getting out of seat”, “interrupting others”, “nagging”, ‘swearing’, ‘whispering’ and ‘slouching in chair’, and ‘‘moving conversation away from staff”. …
“These devices are much stronger than police stun guns (1-4 milliamps),” says Gregory Miller, former teacher at JRC. … In McCollins’ case, school staff used the powerfully painful electric shock device (45 – 91 milliamps, at 66 volts) on McCollins over the course of seven hours for not taking off his coat in class. After his “therapy” was over, McCollins was admitted to a nearby children’s hospital ….
(More.)