Category: Liberty

Anarchism, the Opposition of Invasion

I’ve been reading some works by Benjamin Tucker, one of the last individualist anarchists from the 19th century. One of his quotes does a better job of explaining anarchism than any other definition I’ve come across. According to Tucker:

This distinction between invasion and resistance, between government and defence, is vital. Without it there can be no valid philosophy of politics. Upon this distinction and the other considerations just outlined, the Anarchists frame the desired definitions. This, then, is the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will. And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.

The state really is the embodiment of invasion for it is a gang of individuals who call themselves masters inflicting their will at the point of a gun onto those who live in its claimed territory. Anarchism, being a philosophy of anti-statism, is the opposition of invasion. Those of us who oppose statism don’t do so because we desire to see the person with the most guns ruling, we oppose statism because we desire the opposite. When you boil it down the state is the embodiment of the person with the most guns ruling. Without a doubt the state has the most guns and it uses those guns to inflict its will onto the general population. It is an invasive force that works to trample individual liberty.

Strong Leaders

One phrase that is beginning to piss me of is, “We need to elect strong leaders.” Why is everybody looking for something to lead them? Whey is everybody obsessed with finding the best master to serve? Why are children taught that the best thing they can do is go to college and work for somebody else? Why do people run to politicians to solve their problems? Why do people believe politicians have a right to rule over the people? From our earliest years in school we’re taught to obey those who claim authority and to follow those who lead. Litte, if any, time is spent encouraging children to become entrepreneurs. Teachers never tell their students to disobey those who claim authority. In fact they’re told that those who claim authority have a legitimate claim and that that claim should be recognized.

Truth be told we don’t need leaders, we are leaders. We don’t need to elect strong leaders, we can lead ourselves. If I could only give one piece of advice it would be this: stop seeking masters to serve, become your own and refuse to comply with anybody who tries to make themselves your master.

Prohibitions Are Business Opportunities

In the state’s war on obesity public schools around the country are either severely restricting or outright banning soda. Statists still believe they can control behavior through prohibitions but history reminds us that isn’t the case. During Prohibition entrepreneurs setup businesses where individuals could purchase alcohol in a social environment. These businesses eventually became known as speakeasies, as individuals discussed them quietly in public in order to avoid tipping off the police. Although the public school system has tried to beat all forms of creativity and historical knowledge out of American children they continue to overcome their oppressors and bypass school prohibitions:

A School is believed to be the first in London to become “water only” and ban fizzy drinks for pupils.

[…]

Some entrepreneurial teenagers have spotted the “business potential” of smuggling in contraband cola, lemonade, orangeade and other soft drinks to sell at inflated prices. The ban was announced in a newsletter to parents. No food was banned, with sweets and chocolate cleared for consumption in the grounds.

Pupil Jake Phillips, 15, said that “speakeasies” are starting up selling the prohibited drinks. “There is business potential now there’s a gap in the market,” he said.

“Gangsters sold alcohol in America when that was banned. Prohibition always leads to supply and demand. That means anyone who sneaks it in can make a lot of money.” Pupils under 16 are not allowed out at lunchtimes so they cannot buy drinks elsewhere.

It’s good to see students learning from history and ignoring draconian mandates. Perhaps, someday, these children will be the destroyers of the state.

National Day of Civic Hacking

The state has decided to declare June 1st and 2nd as National Day of Civic Hacking:

This summer, on June 1-2, 2013, citizens in cities across the Nation will join together to improve their communities and governments as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking.

Civic Hacking Day is an opportunity for software developers, technologists, and entrepreneurs to unleash their can-do American spirit by collaboratively harnessing publicly-released data and code to create innovative solutions for problems that affect Americans. While civic hacking communities have long worked to improve our country and the world, this summer will mark the first time local developers from across the Nation unite around the shared mission of addressing and solving challenges relevant to OUR blocks, OUR neighborhoods, OUR cities, OUR states, and OUR country.

I’m probably going to surprise you but this is actually an idea I can get behind. Hackers have the means of greatly improving our communities by developing new mechanisms to help individuals bypass the state’s watchful eye. Hidden services, such as Silk Road (if you’re on Tor you can access the site via this link), allow individuals to conduct business without having to concern themselves with taxes, regulations, and laws. If somebody needs some electrical work they could use a hidden service to find people in their community with experience in electrical work and hire them (under the table of course). The same could be done for any good or service, you would be surprised to discover the number of skilled individuals living in your community.

In keeping with the spirit of the day such hidden services can also help improve governments by depriving them of resources and therefore making them either scale back operations (wouldn’t it be nice if your local police department didn’t have a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team standing by to squash any potential dissidence) or increase their rate of expropriation, which would push more people to use state avoiding hidden services. Overall I think National Day of Civic Hacking could be a boon for everybody.

I encourage hackers to spend National Day of Civic Hacking working on projects that help their local communities avoid the tyranny of the state. Even if you don’t have the knowledge to create hidden services you can help the cause by running a Tor relay on your computer. Donating a portion of your bandwidth to help dissidents in your local community and around the world is certainly a good cause.

The Slow Death of Intellectual Property

I’ve haven’t had time to write about the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz but his death demonstrated much of what is wrong with business models that rely on intellectual property. Aaron Swartz committed suicide while facing a potential 35 years in prison for the act of “stealing” electronic academic journals for the purpose of making them publicly available, for free, to everybody. I put the term stealing into quotation marks because I don’t believe what Aaron did qualifies as theft. Theft implies that another person was deprived of something. If I steal your car you are deprived of the use of your car. Aaron’s act of “theft” didn’t deprive anybody of those journals as they were still available to subscribers of Journal Storage (JSTOR).

Why does the state enact such harsh punishment for intellectual property violations? Because intellectual property lobbyists have invested a great deal of money in getting strong intellectual property laws enacted and the state takes care of its customers. People seldom stop to consider the fact that the state has customers and most people who consider this fact mistakenly believe that the people, that is to say you and me, are the state’s customers. In reality the state’s customers are those who purchase protection from the state. Lobbyists are in the business of buying such protection. Walt Disney, the Recording Industry Association of American, and the Motion Picture Association of American are examples of the state’s intellectual property customers. They purchase intellectual property laws through campaign contributions, giving former state agents cushy jobs as lobbyists or advisers, and other benefits to those comprising the state. In exchange the state grants those entities mafia-like protection. Anybody caught violating the intellectual property lobbyist’s laws can find themselves the victims of kidnapping, extortion, assault, and even murder. Unfortunately for intellectual property lobbyists their business model, which relies entirely on purchased intellectual property laws, is dying and the Internet is its killer.

In order to succeed a business model must be built around scarce goods. This is why nobody has tried building a business model around selling ice to Eskimos or air. Eskimos are surrounded by ice so they have little incentive to buy it and air is all around us so we have little incentive to buy it. The Internet has made things like music, literature, and movies superabundant, that is to say they are no longer scarce goods. Once a song, book, or movie is posted online it literally becomes infinitely reproducible. Intellectual property lobbyists have tried to create artificial scarcity through the purchase of intellectual property laws but to little avail. Even increasing punishments for violating intellectual properly laws has failed to create the lobbyists’ desired scarcity. The death of intellectual property is inevitable and businesses based on intellectual property will either adapt or die themselves.

Sadly many people fail to see the inevitability of intellectual property’s death so individuals like Aaron Swartz will continue to face the state’s violence for some time. What makes matters more depressing is the fact that intellectual property laws aren’t necessary. Just as the Internet has killed intellectual property it has empowered the producers of art. Bands, authors, and movie producers no longer need the assistance of the record, publishing, and movie industries in order to reach their audiences. With a little additional creativity a band, author, or movie producer can still make money off of their art, they just need to change their business model. Kickstarter is an example of a potential new business model for creative individuals. Once an idea has been made public it becomes superabundant but it remains scarce so long as the originator keeps his or her mouth shut. Consider an author. An author could release a title for free and make any future titles pend on whether or not they receive enough donates from a service such as Kickstarter. The first title would be used to build an audience who would fund future titles. The same business model would work for bands and movie producers. In fact the movie Iron Sky was heavily funded in such a manner.

The sooner businesses relying on intellectual property come to terms with the death of their business models the sooner tragedies like what happened to Aaron Swartz will stop. There is no reason state violence is necessary for creative individuals to make money and the fact that violence is still used in order to profit creative individuals demonstrates an ill in our society.

A Different Way of Doing Business

As an agorist I’m always interesting in learning how other cultures do business. I came across a very interesting article that discusses how Somali immigrants in Minneapolis have overcome many of the issues that traditional American entrepreneurs suffer. It’s pretty insightful and I think agorists and those looking to start “legitimate” businesses could learn a thing or two:

One marked difference between Somali immigrants and other Minnesota business owners is their devout adherence to the beliefs and practices of Islam. A recent survey, conducted out of the University of Minnesota, titled Achieving Success in Business: A Comparison of Somali and American-Born Entrepreneurs in Minneapolis, found that 98.9% of Somalis described their religious beliefs as ‘extremely important’ whereas only 48.9% of non-migrants surveyed expressed this level of commitment to their faith and 15.6% reported their religious beliefs to be ‘not important at all’.

Many Muslims, Somalis included, believe that Islam strongly discourages or even strictly prohibits the use of credit or accepting loans that include the payment of interest. Obviously, this belief has a significant impact on how Somalis must go about funding their businesses.

Luckily for Somalis, Minnesota has the highest number of immigrants as a result of second-migration than any other state and is home to several organizations and nonprofits that work to provide loans and ways of financing that are sensitive to those of varying cultural backgrounds. Thus, Somalis have the opportunity to start businesses without having to worry about large loan and interest payments haunting them years into the future.

One of the biggest hurdles prospective business owners face is acquiring the capital needed to get a business idea off of the ground. Traditional banks generally charge a great deal of interest but such practices are not allowed under the teachings of Islam so many of the Somali immigrants in this country have found an alternative, which is very reminiscent of mutual banking systems often advocated by mutualists. A mutual bank works differently from traditional banks in the United States. The idea is to lend money to prospective business owners and charge just enough interest to cover overhead. In effect it grants potential business owners a method of acquiring capital without suffering years of crushing debt.

Somalis aren’t the only ones who can benefit from mutual banking, prospective agorists could stand to benefit greatly from agorist mutual banks. Most agorists that I’ve talked to have plans to start small businesses but even small businesses require investment capital. Investment capital, especially for those looking to establish businesses seen as illegitimate by much of society, is difficult to come by this day and age of high unemployment Agorists also, unlike “legitimate” prospective entrepreneurs, don’t have the option of seeking a small business loan from traditional banks. This is where agorists could practice a form of mutual aid by pooling their available resources for the purpose of assisting fellow agorists wanting to start new businesses. Consider how well such a system has worked for Somali immigrants who often come to this country with no money or credit.

Living your entire life in one country and under one culture has negative side-effects, the biggest of which may be a lack of creativity. People who grow up living a certain way often get trapped into thinking that that way is the only way that works. When you look at other cultures you learn that isn’t the fact though. Every culture has managed to get by using various different methods. Because of this it’s valuable to look at how other cultures do things and consider adopting ideas that work well.

In Lieu of Jails, Alternatives to Incarceration

In our society, and in most societies that suffer under a state, the use of prisons as a form of punishment is very popular. When I discuss anarchism people often want to know who will run the jails or, if there were no jails, how could evildoers being punished. Historically when societies privately developed legal systems (that is to say legal systems that were developed outside of state decrees) they tended to focus on two qualities: efficiency and reparations. Bruce L. Benson wrote an excellent book titled The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State that covers the history of legal systems. At one time a majority of legal systems were privately developed, not state created. Instead of focusing on enforcing the state’s decrees, as legal systems do today, historical legal systems, such as the lex mercatoria, focused on preventing behavior that was detrimental to the community and correcting aftermath of such behavior. Laws were developed against murder, assault, property damage, thievery, and other crimes that involve an aggressor and a victim. Another notable feature of historical legal systems is the lack of incarceration.

Incarceration is an extremely inefficient and ineffective method of dealing with criminals and crime. Consider the results of imprisonment. The victim of a crime gets no reparation from the act of incarcerating his aggressor other than the fulfillment of the human desire for petty revenge. In fact incarceration can prevent an individual from working, which prevents them from obtaining income, which in turns deprives them of ability to pay reparations to their victim. Another undesirable requirement for prisons is the expense. Prisons must be developed in such a manner that escape is extremely difficult (and ideally impossible). Constructing a facility that is difficult to escape from isn’t cheap since every possible method of escape must be made impossible. On top of the costs involved in constructing a prison one must also staff it with full-time guards. If prisoners are left to their own devises they will most likely begin acting on a plan to achieve escape. Therefore prisons don’t fulfill the desired goals of historical legal systems.

How could a society without prisons hope to prevent individuals from aggressing against one another and compensate the victims of aggression? Instead of relying on the threat of incarceration societies relied on the threat of outlawry. Today the label outlaw generally means a fugitive from justice but the historical definition of the word literally meant outside of the law, specifically outside of the protect of the law. When somebody proved to be a danger to society, whether through repeated crimes, refusal to pay reparation to victims, or perpetrating extremely heinous crimes, an individual was labeled an outlaw. Once labeled an outlaw an individual no longer had the protection offered by the law meaning any action taken against them by another was entirely legal. Stealing from or killing an outlaw would not lead to charges of theft or murder. Such a threat obviously would encourage cooperation with the legal system or vacating of the area, which would remove the threat from the community.

Another aspect of the outlaw label was the general unwillingness of the community to interact with individuals labeled as such. Think about all the things you enjoy that require the cooperation of members of your community. Getting served at a restaurant, buying food at a grocery store, buying clothing at a clothing store, getting your vehicle repaired, renting a place to live, etc. all require another person to cooperate with you. If nobody in the community is willing to interact with you your only real option is subsistance, which is a miserable condition to live under.

Even if any individual hasn’t been labeled an outlaw but is generally disliked by the community that individual may find themselves fending almost entirely for themselves. People often talk about public shaming as an effective punishment but it is only effective if individuals in the community are also unwilling to cooperate with the person being shamed. If members of a community are willing to publicly shame a wrongdoer and revoke their cooperation until the wrongdoer has made proper reparations then an incentive exists for abiding by the established legal system. Once again this is historically how privately developed legal systems operated.

The legal system we live under today isn’t efficient and doesn’t focus on compensating victims. In fact the way our legal system works today is by punishing every member of society for the actions of criminals. Part of the taxes expropriated by the state go to the construction and maintenance of prisons. In addition to that tax money is also used to clothe and feed prisoners, pay prison guards to watch over prisoners, pay police officers to gather up suspected wrongdoers, and pay courts to rule whether or not a suspect should be imprisoned at society’s expense. It really is the worst of all worlds.

Opposing the Claim that Expensive Research Won’t Occur Without Intellectual Property

One of the issues many branches of libertarianism disagree on is intellectual property. Some branches of libertarianism, such as constitutional libertarianism, believe that intellectual property is just while others branches of libertarianism, such as anarchism, oppose the idea of intellectual property. Even anarcho-capitalists can’t agree entirely on the topic. Murray Rothbard believed certain forms of intellectual property, specifically copyrights, were valid if they took shape in the form of contractual agreements between a producer and a consumer. Objectivism is another school that generally advocates of very strong intellectual property rights.

I belong to the school that oppose intellectual property in all forms. It is my belief that enforcing property rights can only be justified in the case of scarce resources. If a resource is infinitely reproducible one has no justifiable claim to use force to protect it. Ideas by their very nature are infinite resources. Consider the difference between an idea and an apple. An apple is a scarce resource in as much as it can only be enjoyed by a fixed number of people. Once an apple has been consumed it is gone forever. Ideas are not scarce resources as they can be enjoyed by an infinite number of people. If I have an idea and tell you that idea I do not lose that idea, instead we both have that idea.

Many people support intellectual property for, what they believe to be, pragmatic reasons. One of the most common arguments I hear in favor of intellectual property involves the cost of developing new technologies. Advocates of intellectual property will claim that producers won’t risk the large expense involved in developing new technologies if they aren’t guaranteed some kind of exclusive period to recoup their costs. This argument is most often made in regards to intellectual property laws regarding medical technologies. If these advocates are correct pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t invest the resources necessary to develop new drugs without the monopoly guarantees patents offer. This argument is historically unprecedented.

Intellectual property is a fairly modern concept. If advocates of intellectual property were correct, if producers were entirely unwilling to invest resources to develop new technologies without the temporary monopoly granted by intellectual property laws, then the human race would never have developed the wheel. In fact many technologies we take for granted today were developed at a time when intellectual property laws didn’t exist. When I point this out advocates of intellectual property are quick to claim that such an argument is invalid because modern technologies, such as new pharmaceuticals, require many more resources to develop. Such refutations are the result of historical ignorance.

Students of viking history have likely heard of Ulfberht. Ulfberht was the name inscribe on many high quality viking age swords and is believed to be the name of the blacksmith who created them. Today one would believe that producing a sword is a rather simple affair, which is true. Back in the viking age producing a sword was a difficult task that required a great deal of time. There is a good video created by Google engineer Niels Provos that demonstrates how viking swords were created:

The primary difference between Provos’s method and the methods used during the viking age is that the blacksmiths of the viking age didn’t have access to powered tools. Instead of a power hammer blacksmiths of the viking age had to rely on manually operated hammers. What took Provos a few days to complete would have taken a viking age blacksmith far more time, even with several people under his employ. Producing swords was an extremely time and energy consuming affair. But Ulfberht’s swords weren’t merely swords, they were superior swords. Most swords of the era were made from an inferior steel:

Medieval blacksmiths in Europe didn’t make slag-free steel, because their fires weren’t hot enough to fully liquefy the iron. In modern times, metals are melted at temperatures over 3,000 degrees. This separates out the slag and allows more carbon to be mixed in evenly. But in the Viking era, carbon could only be introduced incidentally, mainly through the coal in the fire, and the only way to remove the slag from the metal was to try to hammer out the impurities with each strike.

Of the thousands of European swords from the Middle Ages that have been found, all were thought to have been made from this inferior steel, until Williams analyzed the Ulfberht.

One of the things that set the Ulfberht apart from other swords of the day was the use of superior metal, steel:

Produced only from about 800 to 1,000 A.D., this Viking sword was made from a pure steel, not seen again in Europe for nearly 1,000 years.

This high-tech weapon of its time was inscribed with the mysterious word “Ulfberht.” Carried by only a few elite warriors, the Ulfberht represented the perfect marriage of form and function in the chaos that was a Viking battle.

Medieval Europe did not have the ability to produce steel. The steel used to produce Ulfberht’s swords came from many thousands of miles away:

But the genuine ones were made from ingots of crucible steel, which the Vikings brought back from furnaces thousands of miles away in modern Afghanistan and Iran. The tests at Teddington proved the genuine Ulfberht swords had a phenomenally high carbon content, three times that of the fakes, and half again that of modern carbon steel.

Today it seems inconceivable that creating a sword could compare to creating new pharmaceuticals. With our modern technology creating swords is fairly trivial and the task has been mostly automated. Back in the viking age creating a sword was a difficult task that could only be performed by individuals with a great deal of knowledge and skill. The secret of Ulfberht’s swords lied in the material, which had to be imported from thousands of miles away. That metal, also created in a time when intellectual property laws didn’t exist, would have been expensive and likely difficult to work with. Shaping crucible steel into a sword would have required a great deal of time and specialized knowledge in working with that particular steel. Combining the expense of importing the steel, the time needed to gain the necessary knowledge to work with the steel, and the time and physical labor required to shape the raw steel into a sword lead to a product that only the wealthiest warriors could afford.

Writing off historical technological progresses as easily achieved when compared to modern technological progresses show a lack of historical knowledge. Crafting a better sword required a massive investment, one that was undertaken in spite of intellectual property laws not existing. When an advocate of intellectual property claims that technological advancements wouldn’t occur without intellectual property laws you can kindly inform them of their error by pointing out historical events that contradict their claims. If they claim that those historical events are irrelevant because modern technological advancements require far more resources than historical technological advancements did you can kindly inform them of their error by explaining the processes required to achieve those historical technological advancements.

Another Reason Why I’m an Anarchist

People are often surprised to hear that I’m a self-proclaimed anarchist. Society still seems to hold the stereotype of anarchists being molotov cocktail throwing, graffiti spraying, bomb making, angst-filled teenagers. Reality is far different. A vast majority of anarchists I know are extremely peaceful, in fact they are anarchists because of the state’s reliance on force to make others obey its commands. There are many reasons why I’m a proponent of anarchism, one of those reasons is the way lawful individuals can be redefined as unlawful individuals with the stroke of a politician’s pen. Look at the current fiasco happening in Illinois:

An Illinois Senate committee approved restrictions Wednesday on semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, despite criticism from gun-rights groups that the measures go too far and amount to an assault-weapons ban “on steroids.”

This entire fiasco in Illinois is insane. First of all the legislation in question isn’t coming in the form of separate bills, it’s coming in the forms of amendments to other bills. One of the amendments is attached to HB0815, which purports to:

Amends the Illinois Nuclear Safety Preparedness Act. Makes a technical change to a Section concerning the short title.

The other amendment is attached to HB1263, which purports to:

Amends the Unified Code of Corrections. Provides that for a person convicted of criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual assault, predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, criminal sexual abuse, or aggravated criminal sexual abuse when the victim of any such offense at the time of the commission of the offense was under 18 years of age and the person had within the previous 20 years been convicted of any of those offenses when the victim of the offense at the time of the commission of the offense was under 18 years of age, the sentence shall be a term of natural life imprisonment.

Why does an amendment restricting shooting ranges, semi-automatic rifles, and standard capacity magazines have to do with nuclear safety or sexual assault? Not a damned thing. But making these amendments to other bills increases the chances that the restrictions will pass, which is the sole goal of the gun control movement at the moment. Make no mistake the legislatures in Illinois are not concerned about what is best for the people living within that state. Their goal is to punish all gun owners and that punishment is coming in the form of changing the state’s status of gun owners from lawful to unlawful. With the simple stroke of a pen the lawful can be changed into the unlawful.

At no point did Illinois gun owners begin performing mass acts of violence. Nothing has changed between the time prior to the Connecticut shooting and after the Connecticut shooting that justifies labeling all gun owners as unlawful individuals. But the state claims the authority to turn anybody into a criminal at any time and for any reason. I can’t support such ideas. There is no way to justify changing somebody from a lawful individual to an unlawful individual without that person having done harm. This is one of the reasons I’m an anarchist. I believe somebody should only be labeled unlawful if they have brought actual harm against another. Somebody shouldn’t face punishment because somebody else did nothing more than sign a piece of paper.

A Country Divided

It’s fairly obvious to anybody paying attention to current debates in the United States that this country isn’t as united as its name implies. Numerous ideological camps have developed but they can roughly be divided into advocates of a strong state versus advocates of a weak or nonexistent state. Whenever a debate arises the general answers seem to be either increase the state’s power or decrease the state’s power. Gun control is a prefect example of this divide. After every high profile shooting the gun control debate rears its ugly head once again. One camp wants to the state to increase its power and prohibit private firearm ownership whereas the other camp wants the state to reduce its power and liberalize (using the classic definition of the word) gun laws. The former camp believes these tragedies can be reduced if we just implement one more law whereas the other camp believes these tragedies can only be reduced by increasing the cost of performing violent acts. Little common ground exists between the two camps and their ultimate end goals are mutually exclusive.

As this country has become more and more divided I propose a solution. Those of you wanting to live under an extremely power state should be allowed to do so. I have no interest in preventing somebody achieving happiness. I do ask that you return the favor and consider my happiness by allowing me, and anybody else wanting to, to peacefully seceded from the United States. That’s it. We’ll take it from there. You can have a society devoid of privately owned firearms and we can have a society where individuals are allowed to make their own decisions on what they want to buy. I would like to maintain peaceful relations and maintain a free exchange of ides, travel, and trade but if such an idea truly disgusts you then you can opt out of such an amenable breakup. If treating us like Rome treated the “barbarians” surrounding it brings you joy then who am I to judge?

It’s sad that our differences are so stark because I would really like to live together in harmony or, at least, with an gentlemen’s agreement to disagree by leave each other alone. Unfortunately your side seems determined to rule at the point of a gun (How ironic!). Having a state screaming orders at me while pressing a gun to my temple fills me with unease and is far from preferable. If you would merely do me the service of aiming your state’s violence elsewhere I would be eternally grateful.

I firmly believe that we can work together to make this breakup a friendly ordeal.