now and swiftly

To combat the dangers of crime and of stealing we’ve crafted some unique solutions for dealing with persons who appear to gain pleasure from absconding with precious items and cash sums. First we teach our children that nothing is theirs, that kids are happier when they give and share; we then reinforce this by assisting they who request our help on a money-short day. We barter with labor and barter with goods and barter with things that we picked in the woods and thus we avoid the trap that many feel when wondering whence might come their next hot meal. Few doors remained locked for long due to this lesson: worry less and donate unwanted possessions to a local shelter or kids’ charity then bask in the warmth of true humanity. By helping out others when they need it most and acting the part of a welcoming host we create communities healthy and vibrant without using methods reserved but for tyrants such as police forces or too many laws (therefore Grigovia garners much applause). We here are anarchists and raise our kids thus - we teach them to care less for wealth or for stuff; we cultivate in them such notions, you see, as kindness openness goodness charity. The sick receive care here the homeless some shelter the weak and downtrodden a sound timely helper (if this should sound like your own hot cup of tea then make for Grigovia now and swiftly).

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

our foundations lean

This here is our mantra this here is our verse - there’s nothing that beats the power of the purse. In order to avoid the bane of corruption Grigovia won’t sanction much regulation of foodstuffs or services, cars or clothing - we allow the market to handle such things. If local bank houses should be poised to fail our government doesn’t get ready to bail - instead it sits back and chooses to relax then nature dictates which house should get the ax. If crime or malfeasance is clearly rife though we won’t hesitate to let dark colors show - we’ll punish the parties or persons who dare to cheat others out of proportionate share. Such punishment might take the form of a fine or in severe cases a spell of jail-time but such extreme measures as assigning blame are not part of our standard governing game. For most part all is fair we don’t intervene it’s upon liberty our foundations lean which means that now more than anytime before this ancient rule applies: caveat emptor.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

on Grigovian anarchy

Much has been said of late in the international press about the merits of anarchy and the benefits that this complete and total liberty bestow upon all persons lucky enough to have lived it even once. The citizens of the United States of America gave up their liberty in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks for the fleeting assurance of safety, thereby proving themselves worthy of neither liberty or safety; luminaries from various universities and myriad walks of life point to the months and years following those tragic events as the period during which the last vestiges of Ynki anarchy were bashed to bits by the batons of terrorism-addled police officers, when they were steamrolled to nothingness under the massive weight of rapidly expanding federal power.

Compare the sad state of liberty in the western hemisphere to the abounding freedom and joyous prosperity in which the people of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia wallow. Here, in modern, high-speed Grig, the nation's capital, people of all ages do as they please to their own bodies and minds so long as they are not directly violating their neighbors' person, freedom, or property; here, from the smallest cottage sitting in the highest high-valley village to the largest apartment complex set firmly into the low granite cliffs of the rushing Yalung river, people leave their doors unlocked in the knowledge that true lovers of liberty would never dare to enter the home of another with sinister purpose, take things without paying for them, or do anything to harm his meager belongings or physical health without written and notarized permission. This notion of liberty-through-responsibility does not just govern interpersonal relationships: it is alive and well also in business, where environmental pollution is virtually nonexistent, contracts are rarely broken, people live up to their word, and a company in a position to monopolize a market will choose rather to encourage competition than to face the wrath of an army of babushkas willing to boycott anyone trying to make them pay a single kopper more than something is worth.

The roots of total liberty extend deep into Grigovia's past. Beginning with the nation's spiritual founder, Krikuv the Watchful, who came to the area to escape European plague-rats and to breed tubers for his mythical green-tuber borscht (the recipe for which is said to have survived to his day in the spicy concoction of the late Queen Pylta the Terrible), nearly all subsequent leaders – with the exception of a few puppet-kings installed by meddlesome proto-Russian czars in the 19th century – have turned away supplicating emissaries and invading armies alike, in no small part because of a rabidly-allegiant populace and the freedom and democracy it has enjoyed since wise Krikuv first started applying the lessons he'd gleaned from his vast collection of old Greek and Latin texts. Grigovia's modern anarchy stems from King Hyu-Yennd Yündlennd, who abdicated in 1912 after attending a series of lectures held in Vienna by famed Hungarian anarchist Dr. Wilhelm D. Tomaz; it continues to this day in the likes of Erya Rovend – who recently broke Grigovia's boycott of the United Nations in order to tell the U.S.A. to, “Kindly go fuck yourselves and leave my fellow Grigovians alone” – and in the smiles and shouts of legions of school children who begin in preschool to learn the basics of close-quarters-combat instead of being allowed to run around mindless during their lunch break. The Glorious Republic of Grigovia proves every day that anarchy foments liberty, and her people prove that liberty is the wellspring of Happiness, a phoenix rising from the ashes of fear and oppression. Praise be to anarchy, and to old man Krikuv.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

CDC & DEA announce joint venture

Working closely with specialists in Atlanta, Georgia, the Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) top brass has expanded its rules and guidelines for regulating nearly every aspect of Americans' lives. In addition to persecuting individuals who affect the body with drugs, the tyranny-minded DEA is adding a suite of new parameters for regulating and punishing persons with excess or insufficient body weight, strange or unconventional haircuts (think mullet, Iroquois, and tonsure), tattoos and other bodily modifications, poor dental health, and an overall lack of proper hygiene. While it already has the power to force the People to take any pills they may not have been taking, and to make sure that they are eating their recommended daily allowance of fiber and grains, and to make sure they do not exceed their weekly ration of hard spirits, this most recent expansion of the DEA's power surprises no one – not anarchists, not neo-anarchists, not even communists, socialists, republicans, neo-republicans, libertarians, nihilists, or vegans.

Said DEA junior press agent Yhett Redunindab, ”It has long been legal for the individual to cut off his nipples, to seal those nipples in airtight containers, and to insert and display the severed discs of flesh in translucent plugs that fill his stretched-out earlobes – but no more. Upon consideration, we, and our fabulous colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), concluded that such external disfigurement is no different than the internal disfigurement caused by smoking dope or snorting crank, and that, therefore, we can punish anyone who should remove and display his man-teats in such fashion, and anyone doing anything of which we do not personally approve.” An information packet handed out after the briefing outlined additional regulations, such as a prohibition on tattooing designs other than those approved by one's state legislature, an outlawing of the wearing of religious attire (such as the bonnet, the habit, or the hijab) by women, the forced consumption of one's recommended daily allotment of pork, and bans on bulimia, obesity, sloth, jaundice, and the wearing of baggy or sagging pants, shirts that bunch up in the back, popped collars, magenta-colored silk blouses, and socks that are visible above the shoe-rim.

“If a person should think she can just go out and get a unicorn design cut with ink into her left forearm, that person would be thinking wrong,” Mr. Redunindab said while being escorted by heavily-armed civilian contractors to a row of idling black vehicles. “The body is not the individual's property to do with as she pleases, nor do the parameters of Liberty cover activities such as mainlining horse or not eating healthily while within the privacy of one's home. We are watching, we are listening, we do not need warrants, and we shall be making sure that everyone plays to whichever tune we decide, arbitrarily, is best.” When asked how he thought the public would respond once they found out the extent to which the federal and state governments were violating the Constitutional directive to secure the Blessings of Liberty equally to each and every citizen, the agent simply pointed to the individual who had asked the question and laughed as two unsmiling, teeth-grinding contractors dragged her by the hair and threw her in a nearby river.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on dating & economics

  The intricate dance within a romantic relationship can be compared to the efforts of economists struggling to contain erratic market fluctuations. In either situation, the party that responds to the sweeping changes taking place in his counterpart will find himself on the losing side, forever racing to keep up, forever implementing new methods to bring to heel the unfathomable maelstrom he thinks he has the capacity to control. Whether this unfathomable maelstrom be the mind of a woman or the global crude-oil market, the economist, an outside observer inherently blind to the vast and incalculable influences that shape the mood of his counterpart, will enact measures he hopes will soothe the fury of that which he holds dear, often sacrificing long-term stability for the brief elation of short-term gain.
  I have learned one thing about relationships, one truth I have had to relearn time and again: the less you try to control your counterpart, the better off you both will be. When done with patient persistence, attempts to fathom your lover and to steer him in a direction you think best can indeed effect change; the nature of this change, however, will likely range from intensive introspection, over increased volatility, culminating in full-blown systemic meltdown. It is impossible to predict accurately how your counterpart will react to the pressures you have applied – any action will have an appropriate and equal reaction, but its full scope will forever remain known only to the reactive party.
  Imagine for a moment your closest friend, the innumerable events and countless little decisions that helped to mold him into the person you (think you) know today, the environmental and gentic forces that influence continuously the shaping of his being. Now imagine hundreds, thousands, millions of individuals of similar complexity who by going about their daily rounds become what we call markets, with every act shifting the fortunes of various businesses, with each transaction affecting the cycles of supply and demand, their every decision impacting and being impacted upon by unique and innumerable forces. It is all but impossible to know the mind of your closest friend – how could anyone claim to know the minds of thousands of strangers in thousands of different locations across the globe?
  Controlling your lover is a Sisyphean struggle full of complications that subside one day only to reappear the next, a cruel practice that will gut your lover's soul, leaving behind a mindless and docile golem content to do your bidding, within her no room for independent thought, no capacity for abiding Happiness, the dark promise of future abuse her only constant. The controlling lover exhibits deep insecurity and persistent self-loathing every time he endeavors to bend another to his will; the controlling economist exhibits appalling arrogance and damnable small-mindedness every time she endeavors to shape the course of markets influenced by forces far beyond her ability to reckon.
  Just as in dating, attempts to control the market are bound to cause unforeseen complications, new trials that slither forth from the stumps of those just severed, new issues that reduce the economist to the point of mindless docility, her energies sapped by the despair that comes with the realization that, as a single piece of an enormous, shifting puzzle, her actions are unlikely to have the desired affect. In a romantic relationship, the supposedly dominant party can achieve an approximation of control, whereas in the economic arena, a market will defy all attempts at subjugation, the sheer number of influencing factors contributing to its enduring volatility.
  Every economic theory, be it that of John Keynes or Adam Smith, Milton Friedman or Joan Robinson, has proven incapable of condensing the markets into manageable and predictable entities – invariably, each falls short of stabilizing that which cannot be stabilized, causing long term damage greater than the short term benefits with which it is credited. In the romantic as well as in the economic relationship, the method that promises the greatest liberty to the individual is that which disposes of all restrictions on thought and deed, the one that allows for the unfettered fluctuation of markets, the one preferred by humanity since we stood upright and learned to use our thumbs: anarcho-capitalism.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp