Monday, May 12th, 2008

Time	Event
12:28a	The neocon within Facing the Enemy A platformist interpretation of the history of anarchist organization Review by Jason McQuinn from Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968 by Alexandre Skirda, translated by Paul Sharkey (AK Press, POB 40682, San Francisco, CA 94140-0682, USA; AK Press, POB 12766, Edinburgh, EH8 9YE, Scotland; & Kate Sharpley Library, BM Hurricane, London, WC1 3XX, England; 2002) 292 pp., $17.95 paper. Any history of anarchist currents and movements must also be a history of their organization. Radical ideas and practices are nothing if not aspects of a social engagement whose own content and structure both anticipate the new society that is desired. In fact, the theory and critique of organization has consistently been one of the most central and contested concerns of anarchists since Stirner, Proudhon, Bakunin, Faure, Malatesta, Kropotkin and many, many others gave world-historical shape to the anarchist movement in the 19th Century. It thus remains extremely important to this day for all anarchists to fully understand not only the major anarchist theories and critiques of organization, but also the history of the actual forms of organization used by anarchists around the world in well over a century of often highly-effective practice. Unfortunately, Alexandre Skirda in Facing the Enemy isn’t going to be the person to write this history, despite Paul Sharkey’s misleading English translation of the subtitle of the book as A History of Anarchist Organization from Proudhon to May 1968. (The original French title and subtitle actually translate more literally as "Individual Autonomy and Collective Force: Anarchists and Organization from Proudhon to our time.") What Skirda is equipped to do is something much narrower, that is to write a polemical platformist interpretation of the history of anarchist organization. Facing the Enemy is certainly not without value in providing a revealing look into the machinations of Marx in the First International, the various incarnations of Bakunin’s secret societies, the effects of police interventions, and the manipulative mindsets and practices of those adopting platformist ideology, primarily in France. However, as a history of anarchist organization in general the book is often biased, intentionally incomplete, and occasionally illogical—quite clearly reflecting the limitations of the platformist ideology it preaches. Every anarchist (and every would-be revolutionary) should take some time to study the history of the First International. However, given the apparent decline of interest within the anarchist milieu in unearthing its own history (paralleling a decline in interest in history within the larger media-saturated, spectator/internet society), even reading a short account like Skirda’s would improve on most anarchists’ knowledge of the situation. Of particular interest here is the period following the demise Marx’s rump First International after he safely deposited it’s General Council with stooges in New York—a period of anarchist agitation too-often ignored in most of the full-scale accounts of the Marx/Bakunin, centralist/federalist conflict in the International. Skirda’s quick review of a few of Bakunin’s various organizational schemes and programs for his Alliances and International Brotherhoods is another worthwhile contribution to anarchist history, especially since most biographical and historical studies of Bakunin and those he influenced were done before important source materials were excavated in recent decades. However, Bakunin’s penchant for invisible, "collective dictatorship" (p. 15), always unsettling to anti-authoritarians who study his ideas, is played down a bit too unconvincingly here. Secret societies of revolutionaries make much more sense when anarchists operate in countries where all radical speech is suppressed (as Bakunin most often did). But the invisible "dictatorship" of anarchist revolutionaries from within the masses is a formulation just as much given to authoritarian tensions as the more well-known and oft-criticized Marxist formulation of "the dictatorship of the proletariat." Another valuable aspect of Skirda’s account of anarchist history is his periodic focus on the effects of police surveillance, infiltration and provocation. This has huge implications for contemporary anarchists. There are the obvious dangers for autonomous, small-group activities (primarily the odd provocateur urging worthless or suicidal acts of violence, since widespread infiltration and surveillance are more difficult in such groups). While there are also many dangers for larger sectarian groupings or the various types of federation (more obviously revealed in accounts of the COINTELPRO destabilization of the ’60s & ’70s New Left in the US, particularly aimed at the Black Panthers and AIM), in which surveillance and infiltration are much easier, as are attempts to incite internecine strife. However, like most platformists (and like authoritarians in general), Skirda considers many important historical anarchist ideas and criticisms of organization to be impractical or inefficient because under free self-organization there is nothing to compel anarchists to fall into line as a disciplined mass of followers under a unitary ideology at the call of their leadership. Like too many organizationalists he prefers to condemn any anarchists who balk at attempts to discipline and control them, ridiculing their refusals to subordinate their own judgments for those of more-or-less democratic processes or less-than-transparent organizational directives. This is where sneering efforts at manipulation of the reader enter his narrative more and more frequently, as in chapter 8: "Anti-organizationists and bombers." Skirda is as well aware as anyone else that political bombings have been by far more often the work of organizations than of isolated, demoralized individuals, and that even within the anarchist milieu around the end of the 19th century attentats weren’t predominantly the work of anarchist individualists, much less the semi-mythical "anti-organizationists." Relying on a piece of testimony at a trial as his only flimsy evidence, Skirda concludes that all the anarchist groups in 1880s Paris were really non-existent except as "temporary get-togethers," with "no connection and no coordination involved" even between groups in federation. If a formal platform, membership cards or dues, and a secretariat didn’t exist, then, for the organizational fetishists, obviously there was no organization involved! Similarly, for the authoritarian left, without formal offices of leadership and means of controlling members, only chaos can ensue. Both views oppose the full range of anarchist self-organization, which can be formal or informal, depending upon its purposes and the situations in faces. Neither is Skirda very clear in his analysis of the various illegalist, insurrectionary, "propaganda of the deed" tendencies which came to prominence in the anarchist milieu of the 1870s and 1880s, at times mixing the various ideas, and portraying them as a single phenomenon centering on the coincidental movement-wide infatuation with dynamite and attentats. In its most general meaning, of course, "propaganda by deed" signifies, as Malatesta said, the "act of insurrection, designed to assert socialist principles by deeds" (p. 39), or in more contemporary terms, the potentially exemplary nature of direct action. And anarchist illegalism at its most basic refuses to acknowledge capitalist laws as in any way valid limits to anarchist activity. While insurrectionary anarchism advocates support for the immediate break with all hierarchical, capitalist institutions and social relations whenever and wherever possible. Clearly, the most effective anarchist propaganda will always be the actual, direct implementation of anarchist social relationships, and in this sense "propaganda by deed" has always been a core practice of most anarchists, despite the ill repute gained by the term itself after it became much more narrowly associated with bombings and attentats in the popular mind. And the most effective anarchists have always refused to be limited by the laws imposed by state and capital to maintain our slavery, though the term "illegalism" has also fallen into ill repute after being associated with a few particular French anarchists whose law-breaking tended to stretch the credulity of their commitments to anarchism. While every form of social revolutionary anarchism has always advocated insurrectionary practice, since without a complete break with capitalist social institutions revolution is clearly impossible—though the question of appropriate timing for insurrectionary acts remains widely contested. To criticize any of these three aspects of anarchist practice should always call for careful distinctions to be made in what is being criticized. Ignorant claims that "propaganda by deed" necessarily requires bombings or tyrannicide ignore the fruitful history of anarchist direct action (as well as the fact that some bombings and tyrannicides have at times been appropriate and effective). While condemnations of illegalism often ignore the fact that every genuine revolt necessarily involves the repudiation of all illegitimate, capitalist laws. And categorical repudiations of insurrectionary practice always in imply the defense of the institutions of capital and state, which will never wither away without our active participation in their demise. Just as importantly, no one should lose sight of the that the relatively brief anarchist craze for dynamite and fulminates of mercury, along with assassinations by dagger or pistol, in the decades immediately before and after the turn of the 19th to the 20th century has little to do with the more general validity of extra-legal direct action and insurrectionary or revolutionary violence. While individual and small-group attentats have sometimes been the work of despairing solidarity (like Alexander Berkman’s attempted assassination of the industrialist mass-murderer Frick), they have often been tactically and strategically effective (like the activities of some of the anarchist pistoleros in Spain). Which brings up the strangest aspect of Skirda’s platformist interpretation of anarchist organizational history. The FAI (the Iberian Anarchist Federation) is almost absent from his analysis, despite the fact that this notorious federation may be the one example of an anarchist organization that is admired by social revolutionary anarchists of all tendencies—at least so far as I’m aware. I’m sure the fact that the FAI’s practice in the decade leading up to the Spanish Revolution was contrary to platformist dogmas has a part to play in Skirda’s avoidance of the subject, but no platformist interpretation of history will ever convince anyone by ignoring the most historically important example of a large anarchist federation. However, rather than discussing the actual organizational structure and dynamics of the FAI, Skirda is content to complain that the FAI ought to have followed the Platform instead of ignoring it. And after this he gives a confusing account of the CNT refusal of social revolution and policy of collaboration with political authorities. And this without indicating the faintest understanding that the only genuine revolutionary question posed in 1936 was whether the people in arms would organize their own social revolution (which they attempted throughout much of the countryside) or submit to authorities, whether those authorities were constituted in Madrid, the Catalan Generalitat, or the CNT and UGT (as they largely did in Barcelona and other cities). The usefulness of Skirda’s history plummets with his account of the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Suddenly the poor, misunderstood Organizational Platform is portrayed as the be-all and end-all of anarchism. The general opposition within the international anarchist movement to the more unsavory aspects of the Platform must be explained away, distorted, undermined with personal innuendo and accusations of petty plots. And a minority organizational practice which has never accomplished much of lasting value within the international anarchist movement becomes the complete center of attention for Skirda, as though the vast majority of non-platformist and anti-platformist anarchists count for little or nothing. In fact, Skirda often demeans the vast majority of anarchists, their ideas and practices as chaotic individualist nut-cases of one sort or another. This despite the fact that platformists, for all their delusionary bombast about organizing "all of the wholesome elements of the anarchist movement into one umbrella organization" (p. 211), have almost always attracted only a small minority of anarchists to follow their sectarian tenets, often only those least committed to anarchist principles to begin with. In one of his illogical tirades against opponents of the Platform (p. 142), Skirda exclaims: "If one wanted to reject [the Platform], then one also had to throw out ‘the baby with the bathwater,’ that is, repudiate what was...the most radical revolutionary experiment of the century." Which of course is nonsensical in the extreme. The Makhnovist experiment was one of the most radical of the century, but that experiment had nothing directly to do with injecting authoritarian leftist organizational practices into the anarchist milieu ten years later! Skirda continues, not understanding how any anarchist could ever oppose the incoherent synthesis of leftist organization and anarchist ideology proposed by the Platform: "Who could challenge that? Always the same old figures, the usual ditherers, the incorrigible blatherers, all those who in the end had something to lose, be it their petty vanity, or ultimately cozy position in established society. That said, the loudest opposition came from the Russian émigré community...and a handful of anarchist elders." But all was not lost for Skirda, since years later a few platformist-inspired groups managed to organize themselves and carry on the ever-misunderstood, ever-persecuted cause. Of course, the actual practice of some of these platformist groups proved to be a pathetic travesty, with platformists taking secret control of the French post-World War II Anarchist Federation with a manipulative scheme worthy of any power-hungry Marxist-Leninists (recounted in Chapter 18). Despite its many failures, Facing the Enemy is an important book and I recommend that every anarchist seriously committed to encouraging social revolution read it. Along with chronicling an episodic, Eurocentric and polemical (but still worthwhile) history of anarchism, it provides a fairly comprehensive catalog of the most tempting authoritarian, leftist compromises that cut the heart out of anarchist practice and turn anarchist theory into a rigid ideology. Ultimately, the unintended message of Skirda’s book is that not only is the platformism it pushes hopelessly anachronistic in today’s anarchist milieu, but historically it has been the ideology of demoralized losers. FROM http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/facing.html (Comment on this)
12:44a	Neo-capped and neo-conned NEFAC is a champion of the Platform. Regardless of their criticisms of specifics (what is not included in it), NEFAC members find the overall idea of a highly structured organization with written bylaws and other formal disciplinary measures to be a positive development for anarchists. The Platform was written by several veterans and supporters of the Makhnovist insurgent army of the Ukraine, which was active from 1918-1921. Having successfully beaten the Whites (counter-revolutionaries fighting for the restoration of the monarchy and private capitalism), the Ukrainian anarchists had to face Trotsky’s Red Army. The Makhnovists were finally defeated. Makhno and several of his general staff eventually escaped to Paris, where, after a number of years of recovering and establishing contacts with other anarchist exiles from the Soviet Union, they began a project that culminated in the publication and circulation of the Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists. In this document, they attempted to explain and understand the reasons for their loss in particular, and the more general loss of an antiauthoritarian people’s revolution to the Bolsheviks. They decided that among the main causes were that the anarchists were not disciplined and dedicated (and ruthless?) enough. As a result, they attempted to emulate the political formation of the victorious Bolsheviks (democratic centralism, an untouchable central committee) without using the terminology of the Bolsheviks. They wanted to out-Bolshevize the Bolsheviks, in the hopes of winning the next round of the struggle. It was for these reasons that the Platform was publicly condemned by ex-Makhnovists (including Voline), anarcho-communists (like Malatesta), and others as being a sectarian attempt to create an anarchist program with a Bolshevik organizational structure. The Platform project was unsuccessful. There is a nagging question in this organizational discussion: why have the promoters of formally structured membership organizations taken an example from a historically unimportant document, an example of unrivalled ineffectiveness? Why have they not used as a model the most "successful" anarchist mass organization—the FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation)? From the time of its official founding in 1927, the FAI was feared by government agents, and cheered by a majority of Spanish anarchists. In the decade of their revolutionary activity the members of the FAI many mistakes, most notably the entry of some of its members into the Catalan and Spanish governments in 1936. Despite that extremely serious lapse in judgment, the fact remains that the FAI was a real and functioning anarchist federation, and commanded a lot of respect both inside and outside the Spanish anarchist movement. A practical issue that makes the FAI a better example of anarchist organization is that it was based on real affinity groups, developed as an extension of members’ familiarity and solidarity with each other. This is in stark contrast to the Platform model, which proposes a pre-existing structure that collectives are supposed to join; it puts the cart before the horse, creating a federative project where there may be no need and no interest in creating a federation in the first place. Members of the FAI had known and been active with each other for many years before they decided to create the Federation, mostly as a response to legal repression against the broader anarchist movement during the 1920s. Its members maintained their ties to a traditional and recognizable form of anarchism. After it was allowed to operate openly, only its reformist rivals condemned it as being anarcho-Bolshevik; other anarchists sometimes condemned it for being too liberal (i.e. generous to its enemies). The Platform, on the other hand, did not result in anything concrete, other than its condemnation from almost all contemporary anarchist activists and writers as a call for some bizarre hybrid of anarchism and Bolshevism. No actual General Union of Libertarian Communists was formed after the Organizational Platform was circulated. The project of creating a semi-clandestine militarized vanguard (complete with an executive committee) of anarcho-communists was soon after abandoned by the Russian exiles. For almost 70 years the document itself languished in relative obscurity, a curio from anarchist history, something to titillate the trivia-minded. What made it worth rediscovering? The anarcho-communism of the Platformists is eerily similar to the authoritarian communism of various Leninist gangs. From a cursory examination of their published rhetoric, it is difficult not to conclude that they have taken the "successful" aspects of a Leninist program, a Leninist vision, and Lenino-Maoist organizing, and more or less removed or modified the vocabulary of the more obviously statist parts. The promoters of this hybridized anarchism—should it be called anarcho-Leninism?—draw on the Platform the same way that the writers of the Platform drew on Leninism. In doing this, the Platformists are in turn trying to reclaim a moment in anarchist history that had been largely (and well-deservedly) forgotten as an embarrassment. By fabricating a "Platformist tradition," they hope to give themselves an impeccable anarchist pedigree, allowing the discussion of "anarchist dual power" to occur without needing to justify such a contradictory concept. Unfortunately for them, however, there was never such a "Platformist tradition." - EXTRACT FROM http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/dual.html (Comment on this)
12:50a	Nuts in the ranks RATS SACKED '...A full investigation into anti-Liberal activities would be the first key task of incoming state director Tony Nutt, who begins his new job on Monday, Mr Baillieu said. And he warned anyone else found to be involved in anti-Liberal activities within party ranks would also be disciplined. "It is time to clean house," Mr Baillieu said. "We have some cancerous elements within our party and they are destroying the Liberal Party for all of its members. We have genuine, deep-seated problems and it is time that we confront them. "Those who are found to have been involved in these activities will be disciplined. "The Liberal Party belongs to its members and it belongs to Victoria. I intend to make sure this remains a strong, vibrant and open party, true to its members, true to Victoria and a strong alternative to the ALP." Victorian Premier John Brumby said the staffers' blog was an example of "gross disloyalty" in the Liberal Party. "You're talking about gross disloyalty, you're talking about a party that's completely lacking in policy direction, you're talking about a leader that doesn't enjoy the confidence of his party. "But these are all matters for the Liberal Party, and I don't intend commenting on them," Mr Brumby said on Sunday..' - END Age extract Classy John. Very classy. Allow me? "You're talking about gross disloyalty, you're talking about a police force that's completely lacking in anti-torture policy direction, you're talking about a chief that doesn't enjoy the confidence of her force. But these are all matters for the Alternative Liberal Party, and I don't intend commenting on them' (Comment on this)
1:07a	G.U.A.M General Union of Anarchist Masochists report to the RAT Institute '...After some acceptable if simplistic strictures upon democracy, the social democrats, and the Bolsheviks, the Platformists aver that, contrary to the Bolsheviks, "the labouring masses have inherent creative and constructive possibilities which are enormous" . But rather than let nature take its course, before the revolution the General Union of Anarchists (not to be confused with the Union of Egoists) are to prepare the masses for social revolution through "libertarian education" -- but that is not sufficient . After all, if it were sufficient, there would be no need for the General Union of Anarchists. The GUA is to organize the worker and peasant class "on the basis of production and consumption, penetrated by revolutionary anarchist positions" . This choice of words is either revealing or unfortunate. Organized "consumption" means cooperatives, but what organization around production means is surprisingly unclear for a workerist platform. The comrades are anti-syndicalist, although, with obvious insincerity, they profess to be agnostic about choosing between factory committees or workers' soviets (their preference) and revolutionary trade-unions to organize production. However, syndicalist unions are to be used as a means, "as one of the forms of the revolutionary workers movement". Anarchists from GUA are supposed to turn the unions in a libertarian direction, something which even revolutionary syndicalists, having no "determining theory," and dealing with ideologically diverse union members, cannot be counted on to accomplish. But isn't that just more "libertarian education"? This much is clear, anarchists "must enter into revolutionary trade unions as an organized force, responsible to accomplish work in the union before [?] the general anarchist organization and orientated by the latter". In other words, take over the organizations of others for your purposes, not theirs. Of course, it's for their own good. This part of the Platform is not much use to contemporary organizers, since the revolutionary unions they are supposed to infiltrate nowhere exist, and even they must know better than to try to start some, since they never do...' - FROM http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/bblack.html Stay tuned for the latest G.U.A.N.O. update from Hernesto Hay Guava (Comment on this)
1:28a	Slit from his gurgle to his zatch All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first. James Thurber '...closely watched Republican primary in Indiana's 2nd Congressional District. Loop favorite Tony Zirkle, who had lost two primaries to former congressman Chris Chocola-- albeit with 30 percent of the vote against incumbent Chocola in 2006 -- was soundly defeated. Zirkle, whose top campaign issue is opposition to pornography and prostitution, finished a distant third behind Goshen, Ind., businessman and GOP establishment candidate Luke Puckett and Culver, Ind., newspaper delivery man Joseph Roush. Puckett won with 48 percent of the vote; Zirkle drew 16 percent. Unclear why he did so badly this time. Maybe it was that outreach effort April 20 when he spoke at an Adolf Hitler birthday celebration sponsored by the National Socialist Workers Party, also known as the Nazis. More at http://www.washingt onpost.com/ wp-dyn/co ntent/article/ 2008/05/06/ AR2008050602698. h tml I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere. James Thurber (Comment on this)
9:49a	Gilead state There are at least two threads of reptilian brained conservative thought that inevitably foster hostility and disrespect for the rule of law - one from the military wing of the Republican party, and the other from the religious wing. To socialist military conservatives, military law is the ultimate form of regulation, which everybody knows encourages killer growth and attrition efficiency and must be rolled forward wherever possible. Just as they claim that UN treaty regulations tie their hands and cripple the covert military, so too do they claim that laws tie the pentagon's hands and cripple America's security by making it harder to spy, detain and torture. But to hardcore religious conservatives, the law is simply irrelevant, because America is a Christian nation, and the Bible is the true source of all American law. Consider Judge Roy Moore of Ten Commandments fame saying things like, "[Homosexuality is] abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature's God upon which this Nation and our laws are predicated," and "This is not a nation established on the principles of Buddha or Hinduism. Our faith is not Islam. What we follow is not the Koran but the Bible. This is a Christian nation." There is nothing intrinsically populist about policy planks like this. When all the world is military then 'not-killing' will be a crime should orders necessitate killing. And mixing religion back into government merely results in a return to the worst days of the Dark Ages. Since around May 2005 democratic and libertarian socialists have been slowly taking over the net narrative from the lunar right. This is mainly by persuading the center where there best interests lie. If we keep it up using the truth as our revolutionary weapon we should soon be able to corral the hard-core Gilead statists and radically minimize the violence they unleashed. There is even a respectable and growing school of thought that posits the right-fascism of Hilter and the left-fascism of Lenin as basically totalizing religious movements. Looked at in this light we clearly see the insanity of yet more holy wars. Bakunins intuition was almost peerless and he hit the nail on the head with God and the State as the revolutionary subject. Later for capitalism. (Comment on this)
10:13a	Blood and soil The Soil Association, the principal lobbying group in the UK for organic food: The Soil Association sometimes claims that anyone who questions the value of organic farming works for chemical manufacturers and agribusiness or is in league with some shady right-wing US free-market lobby group. Which is ironic, considering that a number of British fascists were involved in the founding of the Soil Association and its journal was edited by one of Oswald Mosley's blackshirts until the late 1960s. Then what is this thing fascists share with dirt anyway? Marx and Engels were Lamarckians -- they believed that acquired characteristics could be inherited. That fact is no doubt part of the reason why Stalin so heavily sponsored the ideas of the Lamarckian Trofim Lysenko right into the 20th century -- long after Lamarckian theories had been generally discredited in the West. And the particular strand of Lamarckian thinking that appealed most strongly to both Marx and Engels was that the type of soil and landscape in which a nation grew up could influence their national character. Just what the relationship between geology and national characteristics was, however, they did not fully agree. The following commentary on the matter may also be helpful: To cite one final anecdote, the scholarly literature frequently cites Marx's great enthusiasm (until the more scientifically savvy Engels set him straight) for a curious book, published in 1865 by the now (and deservedly) unknown French explorer and ethnologist Pierre Tremaux, Origine et transformations de l'homme et des autres etres (Origin and transformation of man and other beings). Marx professed ardent admiration for this work, proclaiming it "einen Fortschritt uber Darwin" (an advance over Darwin). The more sober Engels bought the book at Marx's urging, but then dampened his friend's ardor by writing: "I have arrived at the conclusion that there is nothing to his theory if for no other reason than because he neither understands geology nor is capable of the most ordinary literary historical criticism." I had long been curious about Tremaux and sought a copy of his book for many years. I finally purchased one a few years ago--and I must say that I have never read a more absurd or more poorly documented thesis. Basically, Tremaux argues that the nature of the soil determines national characteristics and that higher civilizations tend to arise on more complex soils formed in later geological periods. If Marx really believed that such unsupported nonsense could exceed the Origin of Species in importance, then he could not have properly understood or appreciated the power of Darwin's facts and ideas. FROM http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_marxwords_archive.html (Comment on this)
10:37a	When all is said and done A lot more gets said than done LIBCON - zarathustra "Productivist-Workerist-Syndicalist " Posts: 176 Joined: 08-12-07 24 February, 2008 - 21:15 yuda wrote: A friend of mine who posts on here a bit when we were discussing the state of anarchism locally reckoned that anarchists aren't sectarian enough. I tend to agree with him. That's what Albert Meltzer always said. re: political violence. Violence is, as Clausewitz said, the continuation of politics by other means. You can't just just dismiss it off hand. I wouldn't have put a bullet between Lenin's eyes because he was violent, but because he was being violent to my side. The Bolshevik execution of the royal family was the only thing they did right. Freedom is self-responsibility, and self-responsibility implies self-empowerment. When an individual carries out violence, 100 tons of self-responsibility are put on their shoulders, and it is up to them and others to determine if they did right or wrong. (Comment on this)
11:27a	Committed for journalism The rise and rise of the Paultard revolution and popularity of anti-warstate writers like Jacob Hornberger has led to the fat Left actually committing investigative journalism. First 'Nation' with the big racist expose of Ron Paul's newsletters...then this Kos piece on the ' Frontiers of Freedom' front*. Hoyer's and Rockefeller's Strange Corporate Bedfellow by mcjoan @ Tammany Hall Now while Google has made this sort of thing a lot easier can I still get a little credit for exposing a rotten little corrupt shill for the Cato institute? ( Hi Deccy!) Entertainment journalism - its not a job...its an ADVENTURE! *Not to be confused with the 'Future of Freedom Foundation'. I am Freedom! So can you! (Comment on this)
1:23p	Where is our anarchist Hawala? System transfers funds to radicals Richard Kerbaj | May 12, 2008 AN "underground" banking system - investigated by the US for allegedly transmitting funds for terrorist operations - is suspected of being used in Australia to channel money to extremists in Africa. Counter-terrorism agents and African community leaders have warned that Hawala - a remittance system used to transfer money overseas, especially tocountries lacking traditional financial structures - is being used to funnel private and community-raised funds to terrorist groups in Somalia and other African nations. The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre - the financial intelligence authority that monitors the thousands of Hawala outlets - yesterday also admitted it was unable to determine the final destination of transactions and largely relied on Hawala dealers to report suspicious clients. Somalian Muslim spiritual leader Hersi Hilole said Hawala was abused by community members to bankroll al-Qa'ida-linked terror networks in Somalia. "There are people who are collecting money from the community and sending that money through this Hawala system to terrorist organisations or organisations that are linked to terrorists," the Sydney imam said yesterday. He said that while Hawala - meaning transfer in Arabic - was largely used by ethnic communities in Australia to subsidise their families' living expenses overseas, authorities needed to do more to track down anyone misusing it. Hawala is an ancient financial transfer system widely used in Asia and Africa. The funds given by clients to Hawala dealers are often not physically transferred. Instead, a Hawala operator would contact their counterpart overseas by phone and ask them to pass on the sum of money to the third party. The Hawala dealers square up at a later date. Austrac chief executive Neil Jensen said Hawala was a "high-risk" system open to exploitation by terrorism financiers. He said Austrac was wary that Hawala dealers may refuse to tip off the body about untoward transfers - despite risking jail sentences and thousands of dollars in fines - to protect clients. "Hawala is generally related to an underground type of activity outside of the normal financial system," Mr Jensen said. "Through financing of terrorists' studies, facilitators have been found to use alternative remitters services to move money for money laundering or terrorist financing-related issues. As a consequence, they are considered globally to be a high risk for those activities." He said Hawala operators were required by law to be registered with Austrac, a process that obligates them to report all electronic transfers, including those done by phone. Unregistered dealers risk being locked up or fined under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act. But security agents said Hawala operators were not rigorous with keeping records of transactions. "No one knows where the money ends up," one source said. "It's a good system when there's no other system in place, but it's open to being abused. There's no track record or paper trail, so it makes things hard for security agencies trying to track certain transactions down. It's largely self-regulated." A Hawala operator in Melbourne, al-Barakat, had its funds frozen in 2001 and was subsequently shut down after its US business arm was investigated by the Bush administration for allegedly helping terror organisations fund their activities. While al-Barakat was cleared of any wrongdoing, the Melbourne branch was closed. END Maybe a few of those anarchists who are so fond of organizing could organize a little Chamian cash for the anarchist movement? This would show everyone we're serious. (Comment on this)
5:41p	Accommodating anus Right click ' save link as' http://galleries.blingbucks.com/movie/15/aaralynbarra/?a=13278 Aaralyn Barra From DVD Squirters also starring: Persia Decarlo, Taylor Nix, Peyton Lafferty, Chloey Morgan, Annette Schwarz, Aaralyn Barra, Mark Davis, Mark Wood, Mr. Pete Aaralyn Barra Takes it up the Ass! In honor of all that is obscene and naughty, I thought it would be a good time to honor the anus. After all - to Those that Have, Much Shall Be Given (Comment on this)
6:25p	The Texas Vibrator Massacre The Texas Vibrator Massacre DVD Description: ***Shot In High Definition*** A group of friends take a detour while traveling through rural Texas and encounter a vibrator wielding maniac and his family. what happens next is beyond anyone's darkest imagination and will leave you speechless and horrified..far better to contemplate Penrose tilings and a possible connection ( Nash equilibrium? Wolfram praxis?) with the E8 pattern. http://asymptotia.com/2007/03/19/e8/ (Comment on this)
6:32p	Three Gorges full sir http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam As the huge reservoir behind China's controversial Three Gorges dam begins to fill up this weekend, an urgent rescue operation is being launched further upstream to save the dam from being choked by silt. The final go-ahead has been given for a new generation of four dams which are supposed to trap the silt on the Yangtze river's longest tributary, the Jinsha (Golden Sands) river. The scheme has been almost completely ignored so far in China and abroad. Alarmingly, it lies on the edge of a recognised seismic zone, a potential danger not mentioned in the few published Chinese accounts, the Guardian discovered during a visit to the site. At Xiangjiaba, the site of the furthest downstream of the four dams, the height of the dam will be 160 metres: an even larger one upstream at Xiluodu will reach 270m. Work on Xiluodu will begin this year. Both dams are scheduled for completion before 2020. Two smaller dams are also planned. However, the Jinsha river lies on the edge of a recognised earthquake zone - identified by the global seismic hazard assessment programme - stretching from the western edge of the Sichuan region to east Yunnan. - MORE ON http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2003/may/30/china.naturaldisasters (Comment on this)
7:04p	Cherry Torn at Backdoor Bondage http://www.backdoorbondage.com/updates.php PLEASE READ THIS FIRST! It may improve yr abysmal conversational record. Quantum genesis '... quantum mechanics is key to explaining the riddle of the origin of life was first raised as far back as 1944 by the Austrian quantum pioneer Erwin Schrödinger's in his book What is life? Dr Davies said that quantum theory fills a missing link in existing models of the origins of life, of which there are many. While all traditional theories suggest chemistry provides the hardware of life, quantum mechanics could provide the software, he said. "Today the cell is regarded not as magic matter but as a computer - an information processing and replicating system of astonishing precision." In the beginning, Dr Davies speculates that once "Q life", in the form of self replicating information at the atomic level, got going on Earth, this paved the way for replicating chemicals, the best known of which is DNA. "What we don't know is whether life has evolved over billions of years to the "quantum edge" to exploit those tricks, or whether it's the other way: quantum mechanics was the midwife of life and a few quantum tricks are left as a hangover," he says. Another advantage of quantum theory was put forward to the meeting by Johnjoe McFadden at the University of Surrey. Even with all the chemical ingredients needed to build life, the odds of them combining in the right sequence to create a primitive self-replicating structure are slim, with one favoured scenario involving the genetic material RNA enzyme requiring more shuffling of ingredients than the number of electrons in the universe to achieve a highly improbably combination that is capable of life. But work on the theoretical properties of quantum computers, which exploit the exotic properties of the theory, process information orders of magnitude more rapidly than it can with a traditional computer. A classical computer shuffles information in the form of binary numbers, those containing only the digits 1 and 0, which it remembers as the "on" and "off" positions of tiny switches, or "bits". By contrast, the switches in a quantum computer can be both "on" and "off" at the same time. A so-called "qubit" could do two calculations at once, two qubits would do four and so on. This process of superposition could speed up the process of sorting through and discarding unwanted chemical structures to settle on one able to spawn life. The one problem, said Dr Davies, in this is that, to tap their special properties, quantum computers must be protected, because any disturbance upsets them. Its qubits are said to "decohere": to fall completely into one or another of their possible simultaneous states, to the exclusion of the others, and stop exploring all possibilities. Dr Davies said there is already evidence that this may be possible to overcome in nature, in the process of photosynthesis. Through the process, green plants and cyanobacteria are able to transfer sunlight energy to chemical energy with nearly 100 per cent efficiency. Speed is the key - the transfer of the solar energy takes place almost instantaneously so little energy is wasted as heat. How photosynthesis achieves this near instantaneous energy transfer is a long-standing mystery and recent experiments at The University of California, Berkeley, suggests the answer lies in quantum mechanical effects. This can explain the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer because it enables the system to simultaneously sample all the potential energy pathways and choose the most efficient one. Dr Davies said another study could shed new light on how life was forged in a kind of quantum crucible. Prof Asoke Nath Mitra, at the University of Delhi in India, and independent researcher Gargi Mitra-Delmotte, were struck by how such an environment could be created near undersea volcanoes, where chambers of iron sulphide could allow quantum effects to occur without disruption, harnessing the magnetic properties of the iron sulphide mineral (Greigite) to control the quantum property of entanglement in qubits. The magnetic field helps offset the way heat accelerates the rate of decoherence, says Prof Mitra. "Gargi who picked up this general idea and she very cleverly grafted this vital ingredient into this huge canvas where it seems to fit best," he adds. Dr Davies believes that this idea, inspired by an idea proposed by Prof Michael Russell at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, Glasgow, could provide a niche where quantum magic really could be at work, though emphasises that it remains conjecture at this stage. Even if we can't reconstruct the precise details of life's emergence, quantum mechanics could help define what life could do, said Dr Davies. Proving a quantum mechanical theorem that puts a bound on the probability that such-and-such a system can replicate to a certain accuracy, and evolve to a particular level of complexity, might answer one of the biggest issues of all, says Dr Davies: Was the origin of known life a freak accident, or the expected outcome of intrinsically bio-friendly laws of physics? Is life a cosmic phenomenon, or are we alone in the vastness of the universe?" Meanwhile, chemists are still trying to find what lit the blue touchpaper of life. Earlier this month, the American Society for Cell Biology was told by Helen Hansma of the University of California, Santa Barbara that the narrow, confined spaces between nonliving mica layers could have provided the right conditions for the rise of the first biomolecules. (Comment on this)

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