Bearcat Rejected by Berkeley, Albany CA

by | Jul 7, 2012 | 5 comments

It was in the cards that Uncle Sam would be delivering a Ballistic Engineered Armoured Response Counter Attack Truck for dual use to the communities of Berkeley and Albany, California. The respective city committees had earlier in the year approved the measure at the behest of the police. But since Berkeley Copwatch released the details in May, city officials have distanced themselves from the expensive war machine, and on July 4th, the news broke that the cities would be rejecting the Bearcat, with Berkeley mayor Tom Bates and Albany mayor Farid Javandel signing cancellation statements.

The news is a major victory against police militarization in those communities, and comes months after Keene city officials’ controversial decision to accept a free Bearcat. The UC Berkeley Bearcat was to have been purchased under the (Orwellian) Urban Area Security Initiative. The UASI is a Department of Homeland Security program that has its own creepy blog and funnels money from federal tax dollars to fund the domestic military industrial complex. Keene is certainly not the high density urban environment Berkeley is, and it is encouraging that such a metropolis was able to resist the introduction of offensive weaponry into their neighborhoods.

The news has been covered by the Daily Californian, Berkeleyside, and CBS San Francisco.

Reason’s Excellent Article on Porcfest 2012 Promotes Keene

by | Jul 6, 2012 | 0 comments

Roger'sReason magazine’s Garrett Quinn has filed this excellent report on his first visit to the Porcupine Freedom Festival:

Every summer since 2004, hundreds of people belonging to and interested in the Free State Project, an effort to move 20,000 libertarians to New Hampshire, gather at a remote campground in the northern part of the state for a weeklong event called the Porcupine Freedom Festival. The outdoorsy extravaganza, more commonly known as PorcFest, is one of the biggest libertarian gatherings in the entire country.

The libertarian stereotype of the nerdy, balding, middle-aged white guy goes out the window at PorcFest. The attendees are so diverse, one wonders how organizers managed to get everybody together in the same place without burning the forest down in a fit of rage. If you want to see what happens when you bring together libertarian politicos, voluntaryists, and off-the-grid family farmers that love raw milk for a week to celebrate one of the more quixotic elements of the libertarian movement, then you have to go to PorcFest. (more…)