Now that’s entertainment!

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I’m trying out a new feature for my blog, what with all the entertaining politics of late, mainstream and fringe. So sit back and relax, its popcorn time.
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East Bay @ publisher Aragorn of Little Black Cart invited one of his authors, post-left anarcho Bob Black, to speak at the Long Haul in Berkeley on August 7. Aragorn had gotten wind that there might be some disruption at the event due to a few leftist anarcho types objecting to Bob Black as a police snitch as a consequence of his involvement in the 1995 Jim Hogshire kerfuffle. Heated words just before the talk turned into an exchange between Bob Black and one Morgan Le Fay/Elliot Hughes, with Black turning a deft insult and Fay/Elliot then punching Black three times in the head.

That seemed to be the end of the matter. Black was helped up after momentarily losing consciousness. Fay/Elliot was ushered out of the Long Haul and barred from re-entry. And the event continued without further incident. Then, on September 9, persons unknown glued the LBC office door shut in the Long Haul in “solidarity” with Fay/Elliot’s action against Black. Right around that time, Black contacted Aragorn and others through an “open letter” denouncing Aragorn as complicit in the attack: He does not deny that he knew about the danger in advance. He does not denying knowing the assailant, a nut case named Elliot Hughes, who I am told goes to every anarchist and leftist event in the Bay Area. [Aragorn] Moser does not deny recognizing the thug when he entered the Long Haul building; Moser was at a table by the front door. But he calls me a snitch. The previous person who called me a snitch, moments before slugging me, was Elliot Hughes. People who call me a snitch (which I am not) are licensing violent attacks on me. Moser is one of them. This is actually from the Facebook war that followed, with Bob Black here, and Aragorn here. And here’s the ongoing exchange on the incident on anarchynews dot org. Black has since severed all relations with LBC and demanded the destruction of any inventory of his books, and Aragorn has written Black’s obituary, er, eulogy.

Now, isn’t this fun!
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6 Comments

  1. THE EPISTLE TO ARAGORN

    Sadly, I cannot put this message off any longer. I expected that by now I would long since have answers to the questions I have to repeat now. I’m not the only one interested in these answers.

    I visited the East Bay August 5-8, en route to Manila where I made three presentations and met many anarchists and others. I was always received courteously and, usually, warmly. Anarchy after Leftism, Chomsky on the Nod and Debunking Democracy had been republished locally to coincide with my visit. My reception at the event you arranged was, however, dramatically different.

    You called me, where I was staying, to invite me out to lunch the next day with some comrades. You also spoke, mysteriously, about some vague threat to my Long Haul “book launching” party.(1) When I asked what you meant, you said, “I’ll tell you tomorrow.” However, at lunch, you didn’t elaborate much. Your source was apparently some Facebook Friend who was threatening me in language you have yet to repeat to me. Skree, who was present, confirms my rcollection. But you assured me that this would be, at most, heckling. I can make a fool out of any heckler, especially before a sympathetic audience.

    I arrived at the appointed place and time, recognizing some old friends, and meeting some others I only knew by correspondence. This was in the Long Haul in Berkeley, the anarchist space in which I have most often spoken. Shortly before I was to begin, I was seated (the seats having been rearranged, non-hierarchically, in a circle). Someone well-known to you, and probably to others at the door – who you knew to be the source of the FB threats, correct? — where there was a table with my new book on it, breezed in.

    This demented wretch, whom I had never heard of and never seen before, swaggered up to me, got in my face, and rapidly delivered some incomprehensible diatribe. The only word I could make out was “snitch.” I glanced up at face, contorted with rage. In the poor light, all I saw was a garishly painted face, sort of a goth/glam look. I said: “Your mascara is smudged.” He then slugged me in the head. I blacked out, for how long, I don’t know. When I regained consciousness, my assailant had been dragged away, screaming (I am told), and thrown out.

    It takes guts to sucker punch a seated, 64 year old man with health problems. (For those who didn’t know, I have cancer, among other infirmities.) He must have been wrong about the “snitch” thing. Unlike Lierre Keith and Derek Jensen, I did not call the police. But, the thug might have counted on that. The attacks on Lawrence Jarach and later on the Anarchy magazine table at the Anarchist Bookfair by Qilombo remain unavenged and indeed ignored. For my protests (where were yours?) I was called a racist. Now the line has been crossed to bodily violence. Since it was accomplished with impunity, the line will be crossed again. I hope you’re next.

    Nonetheless, I made my presentation (based on topics from the afterword to Zerowork). I made the same presentation later at the University of the Philippines. I didn’t tell most people in the Philippines about the attack. Apparently, you haven’t told many people about it either. You would have some explaining to do. And you do . . . in the first place, to me.

    Before I began my presentation, I did announce, that I wanted my assailant to be identified, and I asked for as much information as possible about him, his name, his address, his phone number, his mother, his probation officer, etc. All I ever heard was that he is named “Elliot” and I didn’t get even that much from you. I want that information. If you and the anarchists cover up for this guy, I’ll hire a detective to find out. Why would I want to know these facts? Use your imagination. In the first place, to publicize them as widely as possible. I notice that nobody is even considering any retaliation. On behalf of your friends and yourself, you have dismissed the possibility.

    If we were ever friends, we are not friends now.

    Bob Black

    ————
    (1) Previously, by E mail, I half-seriously expressed concern that this should not be a SubGenius-type “head-launching party.” My head was not, in fact, launched. But I was hit hard enough – in the head — that I blacked out. The launch was abortive.

  2. BB’s a known drama quieen. People who were there said that there was no evidence that he was “passed out”, And other closer sources to little black cartz said nothing about doors being glued.
    While this story is funny on the face of it you’r egetting enough of the facts wrong that I’m doubting this is anything more than a frame for BB’s acid. I would’n’t have thought you were a BB fan, Lefty!

  3. Here’s a copy of Bob Black’s letter to MRR, FYI:

    October 3, 2015

    To: Editor, Maximum Rocknroll:
    In his column, George Matiasz recounts, with unconcealed delight, the assault on me on August 7, 2015 by a leftist lunatic, Elliot Hughes, at the Long Haul in Berkeley. This was a book-launching event sponsored by LBC Books, publisher of my latest book Instead of Work, on the eve of my very successful 17 day visit to the Philippines where I delivered three speeches, and where I was warmly received by the local anarchists. No other foreign radical (i.e., anarchist – anarchists the only radicals) has ever visited. This was at my own expense.
    I welcome “Lefty”’s account, as the only media account so far. But I have to correct it in some details.
    Matiasz reports (without quoting the words) an exchange of “heated words” between myself and Elliot Hughes, a locally well-known leftist nut-case whom I had never heard of. Nobody remembers any “heated words” from me. What I remember, and what others remember, is this Hughes getting in my face (I was seated) and spouting an incoherent diatribe in which the only word some of us made out, was “snitch.” I looked up into a garishly painted face, contorted with rage. I said, “Your mascara is smudged.”
    He then slugged me (according to witnesses) three times in the head, although I was knocked out by the first punch, so I know nothing about what happened after that.
    What disturbs me about the Matiasz column – by an old man, as old as I am, who is arguably the world’s crusty – is his conclusion: “Now, isn’t this fun!” Is it? He doesn’t suggest that he finds anything to dislike in my being beaten up by one of his fellow leftists. That was also his stance when his friends at Processed World repeatedly assaulted me in 1984-1985 (as well as acting as “snitches,” to which he has never had any objection).
    Matiasz is a Marxist, and an apostate anarchist. He has never been such a fool as to engage me in any discussion or argument about ideas, any more than was Elliot Hughes. He and Hughes, and too many others, belong to a solipsistic Bay Area toxic left. Violence is their only argument.

    Bob Black
    P.O. Box 3112
    Albany, NY 12203
    Abobob51@verizon.net

  4. And the Little Black Cart version of events:

    On the recent controversy with Bob Black

    The impact of Bob Black’s writing on our project is significant. We continue to applaud his writings on work and conflict and his critiques against people who deserved worse. This is why we have published two books by him and why we hosted a speaking event with him this past August.

    In the days proceeding the speaking event the Berkeley Anarchist Study Group read Bob’s famous essay “The Abolition of Work.” Local gadfly Morgan La Fey intervened in the discussion with a stated desire to talk about Bob’s actions (from 20 years prior), to which the study group, pretty much with one voice, responded “no, thank you” and continued discussing the text.

    This information–that someone had come to the study group to complain about him–was conveyed to Bob, with the warning that a similar interaction was likely to happen at the event. This anticipation was correct. However, in addition, after Bob made fun of Morgan’s physical appearance (with the comment “Your mascara is smeared”) Morgan punched Bob three times. No other witness to the event saw Bob fall unconscious or even stagger. Two people, Carrie and Ariel (who is an LBC person) were quick to ask Bob if he needed ice, if he wanted to lie down, if there were anything he needed. His response was to dismissively brush them both off. Furthermore Bob spoke, without pause or apparent ill effect of any sort, for the next two and a half hours, which included an engaging Q&A. He then had drinks and more conversation, still with no apparent impact from Morgan’s strikes.

    If the events ended here there would have been no reason to write this statement. Morgan isn’t a Consequential Figure Terrorizing Elder Anarchists in the name of justice. Bob wasn’t physically hurt. Bob was hurt in other ways, apparently, and has come out blaming the entire altercation on the machinations and poor security of LBC. We are here attempting to clarify a few points.

    LBC is sorry that Bob was attacked by MLF. If we had imagined that MLF was capable of this we would have prevented their entry into the event. Moreover if we had understood Bob’s capacity to hold onto pain for a full month before expressing it publicly (and not to us directly) we would have immediately rushed them to the hospital. We absolutely appreciate our authors and are willing to suffer on their behalf. Anyone who understands Bob’s history understands that, right or wrong, we have stood by him even though his popularity is… low. We agree with Bob on many things, which is why we publish him, and is why we have been willing to be tarred with the broad brush that his enemies paint him with. This is why it is with great chagrin that we receive his accusations that we were somehow in cahoots with MLF in regards to his attack. As soon as MLF raised their hands against Bob they were unceremoniously carried out of the Long Haul. There has been no support of their actions (before or since).

    Ideas around vengeance, justice, or retribution are the worthwhile discussions to be had after this event. LBC is part of those discussions. How to respond to ill-doing is a situational and emotional process and deserves more theoretical and practical response.

    We are experienced enough to know that, for many people, Bob’s actions (of 20 years past) are considered a singular and complete representation of his political position, and that a person in the prime of their physical strength attacking a sickly 60-odd-year-old person should be considered to be but a portion of the justice he has coming to him. This isn’t a reasonable position but one based on political and social disdain, a desire for Bob to just disappear. At LBC we are absolutists on this point: if there is such a thing as justice it will not be served until the day that the last bureaucrats are hung by the entrails of the last priest. It has nothing to do with the bad behavior of our friends, comrades, and rivals. Vengeance is the pursuit of small minds who don’t get out often enough. Retribution is best done by doing and living better than those who one despises.

    We will miss Bob, who taught us more with venom than we ever learned from the sickly-sweet, cotton candy emptiness of those left anarchists who remain. We still have his words, which were perhaps the best of him. We will continue his legacy of provocation and intensity although perhaps with better table manners and by picking up our share of the check.

  5. “The first word, the last word, and the most words” from Bob Black:

    BAY AREA ANARCHISTS: CODDLERS OF COP-CALLERS
    by Bob Black

    Unless you have lived, as I have, in Berkeley, California, “hypocrisy” is only a word to you. Until you have experienced the pustulate politics of the Bay Area left, you don’t know the depths to which the left is capable of plunging when there are too many leftists around. The self-styled anarchists there are no better than the other leftists, merely weaker. This was painfully obvious when I wrote The Baby and the Bathwater in 1985(1) and in 30 years there has been no improvement. None.

    As I’ve explained,(2) on August 7, 2015, I was to speak at a “book launching party” for my latest book Instead of Work, at the Long Haul infoshop in Berkeley. Aragorn knew of specific violent threats against me made by his Facebook Friend, Elliot Hughes, a local leftist paranoid schizophrenic (a not too atypical figure in the Bay Area). He has not denied it: he is too important. Only 3 days before my “party,” Hughes crashed the Anarchist Study Group – which meets at the Long Haul (another Aragorn enterprise) — whose topic was my “The Abolition of Work,” to demand an opportunity to denounce me as a “snitch.” The group declined. But Aragorn never told me this, when we had lunch two days later. Was it any surprise that, knowing that I would be there, Hughes showed up in the same place the next day? Only to me.

    This Hughes, reputedly homeless, with no visible means of support, attends almost every local anarchist event, as well as flying around the country to get himself arrested (briefly). One might reasonably suspect him of police ties. But he assaulted me for being a “snitch,” mischaracterizing an incident of 19 years before involving another violent lunatic, Jim Hogshire.(3) Leftists have tirelessly exaggerated and promoted this private matter to justify banning my books and refusing to engage my ideas. Anyway, Aragorn & Co. knowingly allowed Hughes into the building where he brutally beat me up, and then they hustled him out to safety before I could regain consciousness and deal with him.

    The Undertheorized Anarchist Police Phobia

    It’s past time to be rid of this senseless and hypocritical pretext for censorship and violence. Nearly all normal people sooner or later, for good or bad reasons, have occasion to call the police. Anarchists do it too, although they rarely admit it. If normal people knew that anarchists, who provide no alternative, object to their calling the police for protection, normal people will dismiss anarchists as lunatics, which in some cases is the right diagnosis. As I’ve said, “every time I phone the anarchist militia, the line is busy.” I did in fact call Seattle anarchists for help after Hogshire nearly killed me. They did nothing. They did worse than nothing. One, Jim Koehnline, refused me shelter after Hogshire drove me out into the night at gunpoint. The other, my publisher Mike Hoy of Loompanics, whom I considered a personal friend, sided with Hogshire. I’ve since suspected Hoy of complicity, as I now suspect Moser of complicity. Indeed there are uncanny parallels in the situations. In both, my publishers set me up in those situations. In both, they knowingly failed to inform me of possible danger. In both, my assailants were aware that I was only in town for a brief visit and could never react directly.

    Now, I am better read in anarchism than most of my friends, and probably all of my enemies. I have found nothing in the scriptures forbidding the calling of the police. Not that I respect any scriptures. I cannot be accused of hypocrisy because you will not find a prohibition on this practice in my scriptures. It’s easy to foreswear calling the police if you are too insignificant to have enemies. I reject moralistic and doctrinal abstractions, which unpleasantly remind me of my legal education. Nothing is more to me than myself.

    In the early 1990’s sometime, I was once mailed a bomb by a close friend of Ivan Stang of the Church of the SubGenius, which I had criticized in a review of High Weirdness by Mail. John Hagen-Brenner, who did a lot of the art for the book, was an old friend of Stang (real name: Douglass St. Clair Smith) from prep school. I called the police because the bomb, which was apparently only partially exploded, was sitting on the floor of my living room. They asked who might have sent it. I was initially baffled. But then I thought of a possible SubGenius tie-in.(4) I mentioned the book review. Police aren’t noted for their sense of humor, but this cop remarked that, this sure was “high weirdness by mail.” I didn’t mention Hagen-Brenner, but I mentioned a name which led back to him. The postal service is quite humorless when it comes to bombs in the mails. H-B pled guilty to a misdemeanor and got off with community service – teaching art classes at a community college! Nobody has ever publicly criticized me for calling the police that time. What else was I supposed to do? Forever tiptoe around the bomb? I received one private criticism from an anarchist. I told him that there was no anarchist bomb squad in my vicinity.(5)

    What – and Who? – Is a Snitch?

    The only intelligible word that I or anyone understood out of Hughes before he slugged me up to three times in the head was “snitch.” When later I complained to Aragorn Moser about the trap he set, he called me a snitch – and then had the effrontery to call himself my friend. I kid you not: I would rather destroy Aragorn Moser than Elliot Hughes. If even my friends repeat this ancient lie, no wonder I am fair game for crazies. I am not a snitch. A snitch is a paid police informer. Someone who just calls the police is not a snitch, he is just someone who calls the police. I remember people who say things like that about me.

    Hughes may be a snitch. Hogshire, according to one of his many inconsistent versions of our encounter, is a snitch, in the Hughes/Moser sense of the word – he claimed he called the police on me. Caitlin Manning of Processed World may be, in that sense, a snitch. Chris Carlsson of Processed World is, in that sense, a snitch. He got me arrested in 1985, and he publicly announced that he would press charges. That was why I left town, never to return. Yet he has been a keynote speaker at the San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair. (He’s not an anarchist, but, their keynote speakers never are.) Why, after 30 years, has he not ever been called out, much less beaten up? Because he is a leftist.(6) Why have I been castigated, censored, libeled, and beaten up many times? Because I am an anarchist.

    Lierre Keith: A Case Study in Anarcho-Leftist Hypocrisy

    Like Chris Carlsson (and Ward Churchill, and other statists), Lierre Keith has been a keynote speaker at the San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair – a place so dangerous to me that, when I visited it a few years ago, Aragorn & Co. provided a bodyguard. And Carlsson had previously been warned that, if anything happened to me, something would happen to him. Why weren’t similar precautions taken at the Long Haul? Keith is published and promoted by Ramsay Kanaan’s PM Press. She is (with Derrick Jensen) co-dictator of a cult called Deep Green Resistance, which has proven itself to be very good at fund-raising, but no good for anything else. She is a lesbian “radical feminist” authoritarian of the type I’ve long since criticized.(7) She is publicly and viciously transphobic.

    After having long been a fanatic vegan, she became a fanatic anti-vegetarian and wrote a book about it. As I have never been a vegetarian, her change of opinion is of no interest to me. I’m not a food fanatic. I eat what I like. My vegan friends have never been self-righteous about it. But people with authoritarian personalities are always self-righteous even if they have switched ideologies. It’s less important to them what they believe in, than that they have something to project their will-to-power with. To me, militant proselytizing for meat eating is much more preposterous than advocacy of plant eating. I do a lot of that too.

    At the Bookfair, where Keith was speaking to promote her PM Press anti-vegetarian book, somebody pied her. No one has ever claimed responsibility. I object to that. If you do something like that, you should take responsibility for it, and explain your reasons. I would not have pied her. But it was what she did next that matters.

    After the pie hit, her first words were, “Call the police.” Call the police! And, at the (Politically Correct) Anarchist Bookfair, somebody did! And the police arrived. Several online accounts describe her as talking to the police, and as signing some paper for them. (Just like Chris Carlsson.) She claimed that the pie included “cayenne pepper.” This is what they always say. There is no evidence of that. There’s a photo of her a few minutes later, with wet hair, but not otherwise exhibiting any harm to her eyes or anywhere else. Compare this to my being knocked unconscious.

    Peter Werbe, the oldest old fart at the decrepit Fifth Estate, wrote a letter to Anarchy magazine which credulously repeated this phony story. Unfortunately for Werbe, one of the editors of the magazine, Lawrence Jarach, is an EMS first responder who is familiar with what happens to eyes when they are exposed to hot pepper irritants (such as pepper spray, which the police freely use). In the photo taken a few minutes later, Keith looks bedraggled, but her eyes are neither swollen nor red.(8)

    And this occasioned a flashback for me. In 1985, I threw some rancid yogurt in the face of Chris Carlsson in downtown San Francisco.(9) This was when he beat me up, spit in my face, stole my ID and $120 out of my wallet, and got me arrested. He claimed that there were “steel pellets” in the yogurt, which were never found. As Lawrence said at the time, “maybe they dissolve on contact?”

    Calling the Cops: The Double Standard

    Now then, Lierre Keith’s cop-calling, in 2010, is an undisputed fact. It follows that, as Aragorn and Hughes and “Lefty Hooligan”/George Matiasz (in Maximum Rocknroll) understand the word, she is a snitch. As such, she should not be suffered to speak in the Bay Area or anywhere that Bay Area leftist avengers may get to. However, she has since spoken many times in the Bay Area, many times in California, and a few times also elsewhere on the West Coast – all after she called the cops. She was pied on March 14, 2010. This is a very incomplete report on her subsequent California speaking schedule (taken from her website):

    2010:
    Sept. 11: Petaluma, CA, spoke at Terra Firma Farms.
    Sept. 12. Carson City, CA, spoke at the Nevada City (CA) United Methodist Church! I’ve never stooped that low.
    Sept. 17-18. Spoke at Redwood Writers’ Conference, Crescent City, CA.
    2011:
    Feb. 15. Arcata, CA, speaking at Humboldt State University.
    Feb. 18 & 19. Spoke in San Francisco and Oakland at film screenings.
    May 13-15, San Francisco Co-led a Deep Green Resistance workshop.
    Nov. 12. Spoke at Occupy Oakland.
    Nov. 13. San Francisco. Spoke at a Deep Green Resistance workshop.
    2012:
    June 16, San Diego. Spoke at the “Stop Porn Culture” 4th annual conference.
    Oct. 23, Crescent City. Spoke at Wild River Coast Food Day.
    Nov. 5, Crescent City, CA. Spoke at a film showing.
    2013:
    Dec. 13, Crescent City. Book signing.
    Carmel Valley, CA. Guest on KRXA radio.
    (Many other radio interviews; I don’t know where the stations are.)
    2014: Many interviews. (Nothing listed for 2015.)

    I now learn that the snitch lives in northern California – probably Crescent City, where she has a post office box and makes frequent public appearances. A well-travelled young man like Hughes could easily find here there. She lives there, but it’s not even safe for me to visit.

    The Paradox Resolved

    We may immediately dismiss the hypothesis that Bay Area leftists are principled opponents of calling the police. They never cared that Chris Carlsson got me arrested, or that I got John Hagen-Brenner arrested. Why not? Because Chris Carlsson is a leftist whereas John Hagen-Brenner was an apolitical dupe whose motivation I will, to spare his feelings, not reveal. I have never called the police on a leftist or anarchist. This may soon change. That’s the first part, and a major part, of the explanation: leftists are self-serving hypocrites.

    But there is more. In the 1960’s, the Bay Area was a hotbed of deviance and dissent, which owed its vitality to being a part of a national oppositional culture of hippies, New Leftists, draft resisters, black militants, women’s liberationists, gay liberationists and others. Very soon, they all ceased to exist except in degenerated forms in enclaves like Berkeley. Where there had been New Leftists, now there were Maoists and “progressives.” (And now, AK/PM Press, anarcho-leftists, “anti-state communists”and oppression workers.) Where there were hippies, now there were yuppies, Peoples Park junkies, bullying Telegraph Avenue panhandlers, and New Age scam-artists and their dupes. Where there were black militants, now there were jive hustlers and black separatists (such as APOC). Where there were women’s liberationists, now there were radfems and liberal feminists. Where there was gay liberation, now there was a smug, wealthy subculture claiming its equal rights because they were just like everybody else. Where there were occasionally radical public intellectuals, now there were Cultural Studies departments.

    All the original movements, except the draft resisters, had been completely defeated, but their degenerate fragments persisted by mutual collusion. There was an implicit division of labor among specialists in oppression. There was friction, but generally, like labor unions, they respected each other’s jurisdictional boundaries. As I once put it: you sign my petition and I’ll sign yours. Some anarchists gradually pulled themselves partway out of this morass – significantly, in the Bay Area, almost always they came from somewhere else. A vaguely anarchist punk movement developed which went out of its way to set up tribal boundaries. It was just one more enclave within an enclave. In general, these anarchists, punks or otherwise, dropped out or assimilated to one or more of the other scenes, whether or not they retained the anarchist label. Like the others, at best, they agreed to disagree. At worst, they agreed to agree. That included the mobs of post-1989 leftist orphans who found that changing from Marxist to anarchist was almost as easy as changing clothes, something they should have done more often. My criticisms of this smothering hegemony, which began as soon as I encountered it in 1978, produced enough enemies to run me out of town by 1985, but no friends to stand by me. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

    It’s the same today. In fact, it’s worse. The Bay Area left and “post left” anarchists(10) are business owners, spouses, parents, state pensioners or else they have respectable jobs. The prominent, dominant ones have been there for many years. They all, more or less, know each other – certainly better than maybe two of them know me. Even if they regret what happened to me, I am far less important to them than remaining on peaceful terms with rival teams playing in the same league. I am expendible. They themselves have already experienced violence or threats from the same kind of people they exposed me to. Now I have been beaten up, and the chorus of hate and joy at Anarchist News (always signed “Anon”) should scare them, because our enemies know that my former friends are devoid of courage, honesty, loyalty and honor.

    ——-

    (1) Which my publisher, LBC Books, declines to post online, citing technical difficulties. This book is a wooden shoe which fits LBC impresario Aaron “Aragorn” Moser like an iron fist in a velvet glove.

    (2) “The Epistle to Aragorn,” available from me at abobob51@verizon.net. When may we expect to see it posted, with 40 other of my texts, at The Anarchy Library? Not anytime soon. Aragorn controls that too. This is under revision.

    (3) “My Date with Jim Hogshire,”widely available online.

    (4) When I publicized the bombing, an inner-circle SubGenius, Pastor Buck Naked, guffawed that Bob Black has really lost it this time! My insanity is an ancient trope, from Processed World to some clownish Boston-area small press publishers (not worth discussing) to SubGenius to countless anarcho-leftists to – Aragorn. Nobody ever notices I am insane until after I criticize him. This is what Thomas Szasz called “defamation disguised as diagnosis.”

    (5) Some people have claimed it wasn’t a” real” bomb, it was just a joke – intended to, as Hagen-Brenner told the judge, “startle the recipient.” In other words, terrorism. However, in Federal District Court in Los Angeles (where he lives), he pled guilty to mailing me an “improvised explosive device.” I have his plea bargain hearing on cassette.

    (6) In 1993, Carlsson was given a Local Hero Award by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, one of those obnoxious weekly events-listing and reviews throwaways with some “progressive” political filler. I believe it is defunct, as is the East Bay Express, which I once tricked into paying me (I used a pseudonym), $100 to publish my review of – the Loompanics Catalog! It’s the one which appeared, as “The Best Book Catalog in the World,” in my book The Abolition of Work and Other Essays (Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited, n.d. [1986]), 153-158.

    (7) Black, “Feminism as Fascism,” The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, 133-138.

    (8) This whole thing seems so phony that I suspect that Keith arranged this as a publicity stunt. She was there to promote her latest book.

    (9) Why yogurt? Because one of his Processed World flunkeys, Boni Thoreson, previously tried to pour a carton of yogurt over my head in a Haight-Ashbury supermarket. She had a big crush on Carlsson. My then girl friend Donna Kossy thwarted the attack. I later made a poster, “The Yogurt and the Commissar.” Donna made one too. In San Francisco, it was usually my Last International posters which got me laid.

    (10) Conceptually, the distinction is important. Behaviorally, it is irrelevant.


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