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Monday, May 19th, 2008

    Time Event
    1:01a
    Bio-power
    Susan Maushart: Origin of the faeces

    Most days you open the paper and it seems like the same old crap. But on April 4 -- with news of the discovery of 14,000-year-old coprolites in a cavern in Oregon -- it really was. With reports of the fossilised faeces making headlines around the world, the toilet in the kids' bathroom has taken on a new dignity.
    But the ripple effect, as it were, did not end there. Because I read about the Poo That Time Forgot the same day I learnt about Bizarre Foods, a new show on the US Travel Channel that showcases the extremities of “contemporary regional cuisine” – think roasted Louisiana water rats and grilled yak penis. But enough of my relationship history.
    I haven’t seen the show yet, but just reading about it makes me feel better about my meatloaf. And that, I suppose, is the point. Watching Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern polishing off a lamb’s eyeball or munching on teriyaki cockroach could make even my Vegemite smoothies – a balanced, if blackened, meal in a cup – seem positively piquant.
    The show isn’t just a one-off, like that Coke Salad I made for a birthday party (take 1 can cherry pie filling, 1 box cherry jelly powder, 1 can crushed pineapple, 1 can Coke, 1 family-sized insulin pump). As recent books like Extreme Cuisine, The Nasty Bits, Fierce Foods and Gastronaut (which includes – presumably unrelated – tips on preparing fish sperm and cooking with aftershave) attest, there is a whole smorgasbord of f...ked-up food journalism out there, and a public who clearly can’t get enough of it.
    Is our craving for the vomitous – like other contemporary forms of self-harm – a reaction to the soul-stultifying safety of life in the Age of Affluence and the Culture of Climate Control? All I know is, when I was a girl, you didn’t call for a Japanese fugu chef if you wanted to dice with death. You just sat down to dinner.
    With recipes like Apricot Chicken (an American classic of its day, marrying the haunting flavours of a jar of apricot jam, a bottle of Thousand Island dressing and a packet of onion soup mix) and Mock Chicken Legs (“Aw Mum! Not prosthetic fried chicken again!”), we made our own gastrointestinal roadshow.

    Take Tuna Patty Surprise. I dare you. “See, it doesn’t taste like fish at all!” my mother would cry. (That was the surprise.) She served it with bread that didn’t taste like bread and peas that didn’t look like peas on a paper plate that didn’t feel like a plate, though it tasted pretty good, at least in relative terms.
    1:18a
    Foul stench of Borg on board
    http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=8764

    Another year - another insult to the intelligence of all anarchists from the Narks. Another year of ignoring the anarchists martyred exactly ninety years ago. Another year of conflating the Marxist project of attacking Capitalism with anarchism. Another year of ignoring the weakest points of power - god and the state - and trying to punch 'the top of the head' instead. As if capital could survive long without the state and religion to prop it up!
    Another year of dangerously valorizing the same class war that murdered more people in worse ways than even the holocaust. I'm talking about a bunch of mainly bourgeois types princing and posing as 'working-class' even as they manage to wage merciless war on the poor and the peasantry.
    Typical neo-Leninist Platformist rubbish.
    This is the shocking height of rampant irresponsibility and amounts to gross criminal negligence imho.
    If it was a product it would have to be labeled ' Toxic! ' and ' Unfit for human consumption'.
    Such lame Workerist drivel went out of fashion decades ago so why is it making a comeback now?
    Oh wait...its the Borg we are talking about here. Those 'recovering Marxist' nosebleeds come down from the upper-classes to fix our rotten ways. Like the neocons in the republican party - they're here to help!
    Thanks but no thanks losers. Arriving decades late with these toxic levels of arrogance and ignorance, you're the last reinforcements we need. Go back where you came from and tell them I sent you - and don't let the door hit yr butts on the way out.
    1:36a
    Nazis at Mi5
    Why am I not surprised. ( Sear Mosely scandal ) Peter Wrights book ' Spycatcher' and other works describe an attempt by Mi5 to launch a coup against a UK Labor government and some of Wrights activities bordered on fascist spying and the 'disappearing' of people in Cyprus and Ireland.
    This is why I'm relieved the present ALP regime is not going ahead with the crackpot scheme to start a Department of Homeland Security. There are enough Nazi spooks running around already without creating a new bureaucratic pig-pen for them to play in. Read ' Oyster' and how ASIS was part-founded by a Nazi double-agent* and how ASIS agents helped the CIA in Chile in 1973. More recently we have had the 'manifest failure' of intelligence for which the last head of ASIO then gets promoted! This dickhead failure is now our man in Washington!

    * Sold the Brits order of battle in 1940 to the Gestapo, later helped set up ASIS. The Sheraton raid ASIS.
    2:05a
    Who made Yoo?
    The video war says "Play me"
    Face it on a level but it takes you every time on a one on one
    Feeling running down your spine
    Nothing gonna save your one last dime - cause oil owns you
    Through and through

    TIA databank knows my number
    Says I gotta pay cause I made the grade last year
    Feel it when I turn the screw
    Kicks you round the world, there ain't a thing that it can't do
    Do to you

    CHORUS:
    Who made Yoo, who made you?
    Who made Yoo, ain't nobody told you?
    Who made Yoo, who made you?
    If you made them and they made Yoo
    Who picked up the bill, who? And who made who?

    Who made who, who turned the screw?

    Satellites send me picture
    Get it in the eye, take it to the world (take it to the wired)
    Spinning like a dynamo
    Feel it going round and round
    Running out of chips, you got no line in an 8-bit town
    So don't look down, no

    CHORUS

    Ain't nobody told you, who made who?

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/17/BAOK10OF9L.DTL&tsp=1
    2:28a
    Monsieur Le McCain!
    '...One top campaign official affected by the new policy is national finance co-chair Tom Loeffler, a former Texas congressman whose lobbying firm has collected nearly $15 million from Saudi Arabia since 2002 and millions more from other foreign and corporate interests, including a French aerospace firm seeking Pentagon contracts...'

    I'm shocked, SHOCKED! the Dembots aren't lighting out after Jean Claude Le McCain over this Airbus deal.
    I mean we all know they are protectionists so they may as well - the Dubai ports deal could be a template associated with all the Anti-French abuse stored up over there on the Lunar Right.
    Come'on Dembots - this is a no-brainer...and isn't his mother French?
    2:40a
    Exposure politics
    http://www.anarchistnews.org/?q=node/3828

    As one of the great drawbacks of anarchism is our obscurity and there is a heightened interest in politics in general during big election years I see some advantages to waving the black flag at these times.
    This is exposure politics similar to Seattle at its best but also capable of shutting down the WEF (Melbourne 2000 for one day) and the Stock exchange ( Melbourne 2001 M1) Its not perfect but its activism and actions will never be perfect. In fact the excellent is the enemy of the good if you do nothing waiting for some perfect day.
    There is also no shame in taking positions and any single issue or raft of issues - even the Platform if that floats yr boat. And if some of these positions align you with red-fascists or Catholics so what?
    We share this world with a lot of people that we violently disagree with yet even the worst of them will sometimes do something against one of our worst enemies. Thats the world as it is - not they way we might like it, so we have to work in with this situation.
    The fact is many people are taking a closer look at the Democratic socialist tradition and being turned off by it. This is a great opportunity for us to demonstrate that there is actually an alternative. That there is such a thing as libertarian socialism or anarchism. And we have a great story to tell!
    No ones forcing any Agoraphobic or chronically shy anarchists out in the streets to hand out pamphlets are they?
    That would be wrong - but voluntary activism is something we really can't get enough of imho. I just wish I was 10 years younger. I can understand activist burnout and would certainly never support a professional activist caste but , on balance, surely the case for hitting the bricks and getting on TV trumps political purity.
    In politics only the totally impotent are politically pure and exposure politics, for lack of a better term, is good.
    Exposure politics works and it concentrates and clarifies the essence of the rapid evolutionary spirit.
    Exposure politics help keeps anarchist head held high and even helped make me the man I am today.
    Deep down in places you don't like to talk about you want us on that wall. You need us on that wall.
    So long as the black flag waves over the wreckage then so long freedom shall never perish from this earth.
    3:06a
    Right regroupment
    Two alternatives

    1) Less government - lower taxes trad sort of libertarianism. ( Its a big lie- but it worked for 50 years)
    2) UK Cameron style pink-wet-and fluffy conservatism. Christian Socialism if you will.

    Debatable if Camerons style helped the Tories recently - all they really had to do was show up. The 'less government - lower taxes ' bait-and-switch does seem played out now. Even the dumbest hick redneck can see lower taxes just slowing down the rate of increase slightly and the worlds largest bureaucracies still growing like Louisiana neck-goitres.
    'Reason' wants the second failed prohibition to go away and for the retards to accept gay marriage is here to stay. This should be the minimal change that we anarchists wish to see. Ideally we would drive them all, like Whigs' into the sea, but unless and until we get more numbers and more political we'll just have to suffer this two ring circus a little longer.
    At night all US and Au conservative cats are gray - we'll see a little better by the light of a brand new day.
    9:50a
    Cap and trade
    The Plats seem to think they are not only entitled to their own opinion - they are entitled to their own facts!

    Two examples

    1) The Borg come down on high to elnighten us say that there's a ', ...general worsening of living conditions for millions of proletarians who are increasingly enslaved by capitalist exploitation...'

    Actually nothing raises the living conditions of millions faster than capitalism. If anyone is suffering it is peasants and indigenous NOT proletarians as generally understood. I don't know if these Marxist nosebleed enjoy looking like morons but I fully intend to rub this in. Even Engels and Marx themselves were not this stupid!

    2) '...( no State, government or market has any interest in fighting neo-liberalism);

    Well no state obviously but no market? Really? So what were Policy Analysis Markets? A figment of my imagination? ( Hillary described this proposed market as a ' Terrorist Casino'.) The state is prepared to spend millions putting the kybosh on these combinatorial net-based markets so the worlds largest state see's them as a clear and present danger. To ignore reality like this is worse than a crime...its a mistake.

    I think , as grown-ups... mostly, we recognize the limitations of drafts by committee. But surely gross errors of fact amounting to political mal-practise need to be fixed if they may tarnish the good name of anarchism?

    And any Marxists subverting and perverting anarchism be made severely unwelcome?

    Why we could even start a small ' cap-and-trade' market on when these neocon types will take it on the heel.
    ( my 2$)
    10:38a
    Trot Sub-bottom seeks Stalinist Top-Dom
    Whatever the truth about Peron/Chaves and the FARC one thing is for sure. Peron/Chaves had something to do with luring a leader of the Trotskyist ( compared to the FARC ) group ELN to Stalinist Cuba where he was locked up like so many Trots before him. Lest we forget the assassin of Trotsky had a little holiday in Cuba directly after that hit. This uncomradely-like behavior combined with a little scabbing with Lula and hob-nobbing with fascists in Belarus, China and Iran ought to mean ' three-strikes-and-yr-out' to anyone with the slightest shred of revolutionist pretentions. The fact this Peron figure is a fully paid up member of the Big Oil monopoly is the capper - this fat red pig is a dog. Anyone who backs him is an enemy of the human race.
    11:52a
    One more tin soldier rides away
    Lost amidst the already minimal coverage of the House Iraq funding bill defeat (though the vote to force Iraqis to pay for reconstruction passed) was the appearance on the Hill of a number of Iraq veterans. Telling Congress of their experiences and actions in Iraq - including their personal tales of abuse of Iraqi detaineed, these veterans called for an immediate withdrawal.

    Following their testimony, one soldier, Matthis Chiroux, made an even stronger statement standing in the Capitol Rotunda:
    Chiroux joined the army straight out of high school nearly six years ago, and worked his way up from private to sergeant.
    He served in Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, and the Philippines before he was honorably discharged and placed in the reserves.
    As a reservist, he was due to be deployed next month in Iraq.
    On Thursday, he refused to go.
    "I stand before you today with the strength and clarity and resolve to declare to the military, my government and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq," Chiroux said in the sun-filled rotunda of a congressional building in Washington.
    "My decision is based on my desire to no longer continue violating my core values to support an illegal and unconstitutional occupation... I refuse to participate in the Iraq occupation," he said, as a dozen veterans of the five-year-old Iraq war looked on.
    Chiroux joins a growing number of veterans and active military who are refusing to participate in war crimes. - FIREDOGLAKE
    12:16p
    Engels hellish factories
    And the petty-bourgeois con-artist Karl Marx
    '...In so far as English trade has had a revolutionary effect on the mode of production in India, this is simply to the extent that it destroyed spinning and weaving, which form an age‑old and integral part of this unity of industrial and agricultural production. . .'
    AND
    "As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America. Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. … Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance."
    - Karl Marx
    (Letter to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, December 28, 1846)
    AND
    '...More than that of any other nation, the history of English economic management in India is a history of futile and actually stupid (in practice, infamous) economic experiments...'

    Marx knew what Engels hellish cotton cloth ( Manchester) factories were doing but that never stopped him taking his cut of the brutally extracted surplus value - the alienated labor of slaves in the New World, starving peasants in the Third World and the super-exploited female workers that Marx and Engels literally screwed over for their wages. Bourgeois capitalist swine don't come much dirtier than these two.
    12:27p
    Okhrana agents under the bed
    Beginning in October 1853, the Tribune began reprinted large portions of Marx’s series of articles on Lord Palmerston, which charged that the Home Secretary was nothing more than a Tsarist agent (Marx 1853a). By 8 October, he congratulated Engels and himself on how much of their material the Tribune was using. Finally, on 14 December, Marx made his claim that he and Engels were virtually the editorial staff of the paper. FROM

    http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/
    \political-economy-and-the-press-karl-marx-and-henry-carey-at-the-new-york-tribune/

    So first Bakunin is a Tsarist agent...then Lord Pumice-stone! Maybe Queen Victoria and Lincoln were as well!

    What a fucking goose.
    12:55p
    Injustice in the Justice League
    '...Too often, our communities are passive. I could never understand how the same people willing to fight cops and brave violence for their beliefs suddenly lose their voice, spine and will when it comes to opposing injustice within our own ranks. WTF?!? The oppressor takes advantage of confusion and apathy...'

    http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=2008warcry-ef

    This problem of injustice within appears to be ongoing and requires a holistic approach to fix. It may seem bureaucratic and time-intensive but I think its overdue. We have a whole mediating layer dedicated to natural justice. A central ( though distributed over the P2P system) intelligence bureau and a investigative branch ready willing and able to tackle any major conflict and dispute within our ranks ( and even outside for those willing to participate without drinking the anarchist Kool-aid) We need a basic open-source justice system that is AT LEAST as good as the best of the bourgeois justice system. ( Roe V Wade , Miranda and etc)
    The benchmarks are clear ever since the Magna Carta and are conveniently laid out in the US constitution.
    Presumption of innocence, Habeus Corpus, due process, confronting accusers and so on. Under an anarchist system those involved might be offered mediation or a trial-by-a-jury of ones peers.
    We know from seminal essays like Jo Freemans ( The Tyranny of structurelessness) that oppression may exist even in small informal groupings. It's been decades since then and now we have the net there is a platform we can work together on and showing the masses how anarchism works in real time.
    No ones going to stop anarchists running their own little sites as virtual feudal Duchy's if they want to.
    There's no laws against being an asshole. But when you reach a certain critical mass then there is no denying that you become - in a sense - a virtual state. In order to manage and minimize the violence in that 'state' you need checks and balances. We need a justice system that we can roll out all over the present grossly flawed deal that creates gulags full of practitioners of victimless crimes. We are better than that and we deserve better. Lets get together and make it better.

    Our rule of law is bigger than their's.
    1:19p
    I'll take the fifth
    http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20080515223858421

    Time to memorize the fifth amendment. ' I cannae answer that on the grounds that my heart is in Scotland Och aye.' ( Takes shot) I'll have another fifth thank you bartender.
    The Demonic Jackass's are obviously , not only quite happy to institutionalize full blown fascism, but are in some respects even worse than the Repugnants. ( Like with the PAM business for example)
    This is the main reason I've turned 180' against Barry. I had no idea this arsehole was a fucking Leftist!
    The Left has traditionally been more dangerous to us than the Right for the last ninety years.
    If the macro-political gestalt is turning left - and worms like Bill Kristol are moving left - then anarchists will just have to dust off their Stirner and Proudhon to get their 'right-wing' game on. Net based markets have a lot of potential - if only by wasting millions in LEO's time and money. Also some of the last empires most dangerous external enemies are right-wingers. Together in loose association we could rip this teetering top heavy evil empire a new one. I think we would be remiss and lax if we didn't. Don't get caught short when yr child asks you ' What did you do in the planet-wide revolution Mummy and Daddy?' because a coward does die a thousand deaths...and that is no way at all to live fairly and breath freely.
    2:28p
    'Dave Antagonism' is Marxist
    AKA ' Grumpy cat'
    '...In any event, what of the junior burger version of the DSP, aka, Resistance? Well, apparently, the world-historic struggle between the DSP and LPF is having some small repercussions there too, with the launching of an investigation into the troublesome activities of Melbourne branch member James. The findings of the investigation into James’ activities are that he:

    1. Discouraged potential recruits from joining Resistance
    2. Failed to adequately inform the branch of political work carried out in the name of Resistance
    3. Continued public attacks on the DSP
    4. Failed to raise political differences in a democratic framework
    – and finally –
    5. Interfered with the investigating committee

    After noting James’ apparent disloyalty, and refusal to place his political work under the direction of Resistance, the investigation concludes that:

    4. Based on the evidence considered by the investigating commission it is clear that James is not willing to raise political differences in a comradely internal political debate. This is best illustrated by his public criticisms of the DSP.

    5. Moreover the commission believes James to be openly hostile to the DSP. This continues to undermine our work with the DSP and has impacted on our ability to recruit and train new members of Resistance.

    6. The investigating commission recommends the disciplinary action of expulsion from Resistance as outlined in Section 6, Rule 7 of the constitution.

    7. It is regretful that we recommend this course of action, however the decision is based on recognition of the following facts:

    a. James has been a long term member of Resistance for 9 years who understands Resistance’s decision making procedure.
    b. That James has continued these activities despite warnings from the leadership.
    c. And James has stated an unwillingness to adhere to a collective approach to our work as indicated in his email response to the notice of his formal charging.

    Melbourne Branch Executive Report to May 18 NC
    Presented by Trent H
    Investigation of Charges against Resistance Member James C

    Naturally, the investigation committee makes no mention on a fact that James himself appears to believe is central to their investigation: his membership of the LPF. According to James:

    The charges are on the most part administrative and petty, and despite best efforts to politically engage with the root issues, I fear that I need to respond to some of their ‘legalese’ to an extent. The charges are on the whole attempts to bureaucratically rather then politically deal with the fact that I have political differences with the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP). I resigned from the DSP in 2007 after having been in the Leninist Party Faction (LPF). My expulsion from Resistance comes shortly after the expulsion of LPF comrades… However this is the end of a long road in which the DSP has sought to marginalize those with dissenting views rather then building political consensus and unity. Having marginalised the ISO and the smaller affiliates in Socialist Alliance, the DSP alienated the Non-Aligned Caucus which represented what was left of the independent leaders in Socialist Alliance. Having stuck the boot into any broader Socialist Alliance layers, the DSP turned its focus on the significant minority of DSP members who raised political differences over the DSP’s orientation to the Socialist Alliance. Now having expelled the LPF, the DSP turns on young Resistance members like myself who have raised disagreements publicly.

    Resistance has historically served a different function to the DSP. While the DSP is a cadre party consisting of members who agree with the program and constitution of the DSP, Resistance is supposed to be a much looser organisation of people not necessarily convinced of the positions of the DSP. However, having failed to keep me quiet, the DSP youth cadre have sought to enforce administratively norms out of keeping with and unconstitutional in the youth organisation Resistance. Further I have recently been informed that I don’t even have the right to attend my own trial. According to Trent… “as outlined in the constitution you can request an oral submission of your report to the NC. This does not mean you can listen to the investigating commission’s report and the discussion. You will be logged on… when it is time to make your submission, and logged off after you have given it.” Sure there is no formal right for me to hear the report in the constitution, however this is just one more sign of the degeneration of the DSP spilling over into Resistance, in that they are no longer confident enough in their political positions to have me be able to directly respond to my accusers (something even allowed in bourgeois democracy). - EXTRACT FROM SB

    grumpy cat May 18th, 2008 at 11:45 pm

    James is a good comrade and a really decent guy. More fool the DSP leadership
    rebel love
    Dave

    My comment - if its 'bourgeois democratic' forms of justice you need James may I recommend the Anarchist BBS as run by the likes of @ndy? It has a truly impeccable system of natural justi...oh wait

    What can I say?

    'The plight of the Leninist's breaks my heart?' - George Foreman Grills
    3:31p
    Ron Vichy Wyden - FBI rat
    What is the JTTF?
    Bounty offered on Ron Wyden - dead or alive ( my 2$ )
    JTTF stands for Joint Terrorism Task Force. The JTTF is comprised of FBI agents and other local, state and federal law enforcement officers who work full time on both domestic and international terrorism matters. The JTTF is housed in the FBI office.
    How is the JTTF funded?
    The FBI provides funding for work spaces, overtime, training, travel, and vehicles. As with virtually all law enforcement task forces, each “parent agency” is responsible for the agent’s or officer’s base salary.
    How many JTTF’s are there?
    Throughout the country there are about 100 JTTF’s. The Portland Division of the FBI (whose territory includes the entire State of Oregon) has one JTTF, based in Portland, and five Joint Terrorism Working Groups (JTWG), located in Bend, Salem, Eugene, Medford, and Pendleton. FROM

    http://portland.fbi.gov/jttf/jttfqa.htm

    '...all JTTF matters are subject to oversight by various Congressional committees, including the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence among others. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence...'

    Ron Vichy Wyden ever complain about any of the CoinTelPro Gestapo tactics of the FBI in his state?

    Then his chief of staff works for Hillary Vichy Clinton ...and Ron Vichy Wyden just voted for the evil and unconscionable Farm Bill. Ron Wyden is a rat - rats like this need killing period.
    3:40p
    Creeping Jesus for president
    Presumably Barry the leftist thinks Mugabe is ok and Mbecki is the bees-knees...still waiting to hear from you on that AIDs denial thang Barry...* crickets*

    This makes Barry an accomplice of sort of the recent necklacings in SA. That is if any of the victims are from Zimbabwe I mean. It would be depraved indifference to be in a position to make a difference yet not speak up on this Barry. Bit like yr depraved indifference toward the separation of church and state for which millions died.
    Presumably Tutu and the SA Plats have already spoken up?
    If anyones heard anything please let me know in comments.

    I'm going deaf from silence.
    3:49p
    Asked and answered
    Mobs rampaged through poor suburbs of Johannesburg in a series of attacks against foreigners, mainly Zimbabweans, over the weekend, killing seven people, injuring at least 50 and forcing hundreds to seek refuge at police stations.
    Two of those killed were burned to death and three beaten to death. The injured suffered gunshot and stab wounds. Johannesburg police were warning motorists to avoid the city's business district. "It's spreading like a wildfire and the police and the army can't control it," said Emmerson Zifo, a Zimbabwean.

    President Thabo Mbeki announced a panel had been set up to discover what lay behind the violence and the leader of the ruling ANC, Jacob Zuma, condemned the violence, warning that "we cannot be a xenophobic country". He said he could not understand how South Africans could be hostile to foreigners when the same foreign countries had given refuge to South Africans during the liberation struggle.

    The violence started last week in the old Alexandra shanty town. Those taking part in the attacks complained of the "theft" of jobs by foreigners. Zimbabweans have been flooding into South African in search of work following Robert Mugabe's destruction of the local economy.
    The clashes spread from Alexandra to the townships of Diepsloot, Thokoza and Tembisa. END

    A Panel! Brilliant! Maybe creeping Jesus Barry will set up a panel or two in the states one of these years. To see where the fucking renaissance went.

    In a Guardian interview today, Tony Blair's wife says there was no "right answer" to the war in international law and lawyers are still deeply divided.

    Cherie Blair, a leading QC who sits as a recorder, said she strongly supported her husband's decision to join the Americans in toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003.

    "The one thing I knew was that Tony is a person of integrity and that he was absolutely doing everything he could to avoid a war," says Blair, who was talking about her autobiography, Speaking for Myself, which is published this week. "If he felt in the end this was the right decision for the country then I - who had not seen the papers - was absolutely convinced that it was too."

    Tony Blair's decision to go to war without a second UN security council resolution provoked a huge debate in legal circles. Lord Goldsmith, the then attorney general, warned two weeks before the war that the invasion could be illegal. He then said that war was legal on the basis of UN security council resolutions dating back to the aftermath of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

    Maybe we could have a panel on this?
    3:53p
    Classic Leninism
    North Korea welcomed on Saturday a U.S. offer of food aid, saying the assistance would help alleviate shortages and improve relations between the two countries.
    The U.S. State Department said Friday it would provide 500,000 tons of food to North Korea.

    During a part natural - part terror famine in 1921-2 Lenin accepted aid from America. At the same time he sold wheat to Sweden to pay for the Taylorized crash industrialization program he was pushing through.

    ' Soviets plus electrification'

    Horrific descriptions of conscripted 'shock workers' under the red-fascism of Trotsky and Lenin form much of the recent Naomi Klein book...oh wait.
    4:03p
    The justice process
    Hey if we are really good at this we could get business outsourced to us...this could be a good little bunsen.

    Here is an example of just one organization with many thousands of dollars but no sound justice policies.

    http://www.lpf.org.au/files/Response_to_charges.pdf

    Included in my response was a series of suggestions on how to improve
    the democracy of what was already clearly a show trial (where the
    show was so bad that they were too embarrassed to put it on show). I
    asked for an hour to provide an oral response to the charges. However
    despite my 9 years of dedication to Resistance, the leader of
    the "investigation committee" rang me up the day before my trial and
    told me I had 15 minutes.

    On the day of the NC I was called up to give my statement via speaker
    phone and told them that 15 minutes was a ridiculous amount of time
    to respond to the allegations made by the Melbourne Executive. I
    pushed for an hour but the NC decided "to be fair" that they would
    give me equal time to the person who raised the charges and give me
    20 minutes (I had no idea how long his presentation was until I
    received the phone call). However, unlike the person who raised the
    charges, I had no right to hear the oral presentations against me nor
    the discussion on the NC prior to the vote on my expulsion (let alone
    a chance to respond to the discussion).

    The "investigation committee" who had already stated that I was
    guilty before their investigation even began (see my report and its
    appendices), were invited to the NC to give their point of view.
    However many other people weren't invited to the NC. Comrades
    sympathetic to me in Resistance who respect a transparent process
    were denied invitations to the NC. While invited to every NC for the
    last 2 years, Clare Middlemass and Nathan Verney were denied
    invitations to this NC. Clare is the President of the Murdoch
    University Guild and Nathan Verney is the co-Resistance organiser in
    Perth branch. While I have had political disagreements with both
    comrades, they are genuine in their desire to see Resistance as an
    inclusive and politically vibrant Socialist youth organisation.

    Also while almost every NC document is circulated to the NC e-mail
    list which contains all executive members from branches as well as
    the NC, the charges against me and my response were only sent to the
    NC members private e-mails. This very hidden process only further
    shows the inability for the DSP to deal with the charges against me,
    (like those against the LPF) politically.

    I am yet to hear back from my purge trial but given the secrecy
    involved, I doubt I am a member of Resistance any more. As a former
    Resistance organiser who joined Resistance at the age of 14 it
    saddens me to see Resistance fall into the same degenerating mess as
    the DSP.

    Yours in solidarity,

    James
    http://www.marxmail.org/msg41633.html

    Marxmail is great for all the latest news on staunch cadres getting murdered in Iraq, India, Nepal and South America...oh wait
    4:15p
    Tattoos and punk rock rule
    If this dweeb is an intellectual then I'm a baboons backside ( Drop acid, you'll see)

    http://leftthought.blogspot.com/2008/05/hypocrisy-of-mao.html

    Phillip Shorts masterly work on Mao describes the young Mao running an anti-Trotskyist purge in 1929.
    This red fascist scumbag was prepared to use torture in 1929 so its hardly a great shock when it gets ramped up later is it?

    Some ideas are so fucking stupid you have to be a leftist intellectual to understand them.

    And did I mention this year is the 90th anniversary of the time Marxists starting mass torture and murder campaigns?
    Even a few tattooed punks might know that much by now.
    4:30p
    FARTing laptops
    '...The current man in the Oval Office, George Bush, simply can’t help himself: an outlaw invasion by a right-wing death-squad promoter is just fine with him.
    But guess who couldn’t wait to parrot the Bush line? Hillary Clinton, still explaining that her vote to invade Iraq was not a vote to invade Iraq, issued a statement nearly identical to Bush’s, blessing the invasion of Ecuador as Colombia’s “right to defend itself.” And she added, "Hugo Chávez must stop these provoking actions.” Huh?
    I assumed that Obama wouldn’t jump on this landmine – especially after he was blasted as a foreign policy amateur for suggesting he would invade across Pakistan’s border to hunt terrorists.
    It's embarrassing that Barack repeated Hillary’s line nearly verbatim, announcing, “the Colombian government has every right to defend itself.”
    (I’m sure Hillary’s position wasn’t influenced by the loan of a campaign jet to her by Frank Giustra. Giustra has given over a hundred million dollars to Bill Clinton projects. Last year, Bill introduced Giustra to Colombia’s Uribe. On the spot, Giustra cut a lucrative deal with Uribe for Colombian oil.) FROM

    http://www.gregpalast.com/300-million-from-chavez-to-farc-a-fake/#more-1976

    Maintaining minimal levels of skepticism about Hugo's dirty bomb - (I'd be more worried about his breath) is easy.
    What remains uncontested from previous open-source intelligence, ie newspapers, is that Huge-ego has tilted massively against the FARC competitor ELN, he has scabbed with Lula against truckies and he is a cocksuckers cocksucker of the arch-Stalinist Castro. On top of that he is chummy with fascists in China, Belarus, Iran, Vietnam and OPEC. Yes the 'workers friend' is a paid up member of one of the worlds worst capitalist monopolies!
    Stick that in yr plastic Zapatista pipe and smoke it cos we don' need no steekin' laptops!
    We got enough on the Caudillo of crap already. The mastodon of the Mamista is set to go extinct Somoza style - no less than any greedy swine like this deserves.
    4:47p
    Dirty bomb strategy
    The Middle East could rise up tomorrow and take over the oil fields worth trillions for the people.
    There are a couple of drawbacks - the US fleet and the fact much wealth is tied up in capitalist investments in the West. The solution seems obvious - wire up all the major fields with dirty bombs and hold them hostage.
    A dirty bomb is simply a relatively cheap IED or ANFO device set off with some from of radioactive isotope on top. Chances are that a good spread of radiation would render many oil wells obsolete for thousands of years.
    If not - rinse...repeat.
    The West can't keep going back to the well without looking like colonialist pigs at some stage. And thats when the entire world will give them the Nazi treatment. We know how to deal with oil grabbing fascists after all.
    After 55 million all died.
    I know the Sheik doesn't want to go this far right now but at some stage of the game ambit claims must not only be made - they must be backed up with blood in the sand and the seas. It is truly written that god will speak through a necklaced Bush.
    5:01p
    The unrepentant Stalinist
    '...For obvious reasons, the Venezuelan revolutionary movement has to proceed cautiously. Unlike Cuba in 1959, Venezuela cannot rely on a powerful socialist government for trade and subsidies. It has to play with the cards that it has been dealt by history...'

    These are words to carve on any red-fascist scumbags tombstone - ' a powerful SOCIALIST government lies here! '
    Three years after the mighty Hungarian revolution. Six years after the East German rebellion. After Poland and Finland and all the others Trotskyed up and butchered by the permanent revolution of Marxist ideological imperialism.
    I met a traveller from an antique land
    Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
    And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    `My name is Marxist-Leninism, King of Kings:
    Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
    Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
    The lone and level sands stretch far away.
    5:41p
    Shit blocks the camera
    Rebecca CopasNo Gravatar
    May 19th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
    On Big Brother being Shit:
    Nobody is arguing the point about Big Brother being crap, but most of us like to know what comes out the other end as well as what’s going in.
    Why, but, why, do we want it soo ?
    Is it that we love comparing ourselves to other folk and want to watch other folk making turds of themselves so that we can feel that we are less shitful?
    Or are we just lonely at home, or curious about why everybody else watches it, or really needing the insight into what comprises the immediate daily popular culture?
    I reckon that when popular culture is widely recognised as poo . . .
    . . . well apparently the untouchables in India who work in domestic tasks of shitkicking, shitstirring, and shit carrying, and recycling in general, are well paid.
    Do we sit there watching a stream of recyclable personalities so as we know how everyone rates certain reactions, only so we will not put a foot wrong in the bar with the boss we might be hoping for a promotion from?
    Maybe one day a guest appearance on BB, or putting in a week or a month with the housemates, will be obligatory in certain professions outside of the popular television personality industry.
    I can just see it now, we’ll all have affordable internet streaming in our houses, and there’ll be a whole range of BB type houses, where folk have to go for retreat so as not to be demoted at work; with all of us watching.
    That’s the basic idea of calling it Big Brother in the first place isn’t it?
    Scary stuff, shit! FROM

    http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/05/16/class-and-big-brother-2008/#comments

    Kanga on dudes - only try not to miss so much please!
    5:44p
    Framed shot drawn and hung
    Don't wanna make a big deal about the SEEMING 'unified field theory' ( Of Snows ' Two Cultures') at least to a certain extent where both scientists AND authors-of-artistic-works are BOTH suddenly deprived of their god-like detached well ' godlike' status.
    So without getting all Deepak Chopra on yo ass there is no frame-of-reference dealing with the very large and the very small is there?
    Least not so far as I can see - maybe Galileo he a fine fellow.
    Inclined gliding ramps sure put the drizzle in ma pizzle
    5:54p
    Camera's block the shit
    HAMMER OF THE COPS
    A PETITE teenager who tackled five police officers, wrecked a police station floor and flooded a jail cell says she's not such a bad girl.
    Taiya Danhiez, 18, launched her 167cm, 56kg frame into a frenzied rampage after Australia Day celebrations turned sour.
    Police say Danhiez was fighting with another girl in a park when they intervened.
    For their trouble, she kicked them in groins, shins, stomachs and legs.
    Danhiez, of Wodonga, said she didn't realise police officers were dragging her off the other girl in Albury's Noreuil Park.
    She said she became angry when her bikini top slipped and she was stopped from putting it back on.
    "How's a girl supposed to knock over five police officers?" she asked yesterday from Queensland, where she has been getting away from the controversy.
    But the fact is, she did.
    "I didn't punch anyone on purpose . . . it was just a reaction," she said. And Danhiez claimed she "wasn't even drunk" and had had only four mixed spirits.
    She said the only other time she'd been in trouble was when she was 10 and was warned for not wearing a helmet while riding her bike.
    Danhiez says she was the victim in the park incident.
    She claims 15 young women punched and spat on her before she was arrested and that police saw the assault. But it was her they "tackled, kicked, capsicum sprayed and cuffed".
    "I was helping an old friend who was having an asthma attack when these Aboriginal girls came up yelling abuse and throwing punches," Danhiez said.
    "The punches hit me in the legs and chest . . . when I was talking to the police, a girl spat in my face. The police did nothing, so I chased and punched the girl."
    She claims the five police officers then "beat the crap" out of her.
    "Five cops threw me to the ground, kicked me in the ribs, knelt on my back, sprayed me and handcuffed me," Danhiez said.
    "I was in the back (of the police van) when one of the cops said, 'You sure you're not a coon too?'," Danhiez said. "I got so mad I spat on the glass that divides the paddy wagon."
    She admitted she "got mad" when locked in a glass-fronted cell. Ambulance officers delivered a cold pack for her eyes which were still smarting from the capsicum spray, she said.
    "I bit open the cold pack and smeared it all over the glass so they couldn't see me," Danhiez said.
    She denies tearing up floor covering in the cell, but admits that in another cell she threw wet toilet paper at a surveillance camera and tried to flood the room. ( Cereal has been known to teh-heh work as well)

    "I was wearing a bikini, so I took off my shorts and stuffed them in the sink," she said. "I turned the tap on, but hardly any water came out, so I decided to take it easy and not do it."
    Danhiez says she regrets the incident.
    "I made one mistake that could ruin my whole life and I just want to get back to TAFE," she said.
    In Albury Court last week, Danhiez pleaded guilty to five counts of assault on police and three counts of malicious damage.
    She said yesterday that she pleaded guilty because there was "no chance" a judge would take her word over that of five police.
    She will be sentenced on June 30. END

    'Kim', who is left-wing twit @ LP suggested that it’s also about the individualisation and the consequential failure to see any basis for reflexivity and solidarity. When pressed on this she said she didn't have a fucking clue being to busy cleaning male Kanga out of a female toilet. With her mouth.
    6:20p
    The important thing to remember...
    ...here is not to obsess to much on the STASI like state of current society. Far better wax forth in obscure sociological jargon about abstractions and 'spooks' for as long as possible. The main thing to be avoided at all costs is surely any confrontation.

    Lets all chat about class in Big Brother rather than any crass back-chat about the lack of class of Big Brother or - Marx and Engels forbid! - the turning of the tables on Big Brother.
    6:35p
    Karina surrenders
    BOGOTA, Colombia ( — A wanted leader of Latin America's largest guerrilla army handed herself over to Colombian authorities on Sunday, Colombia's defense minister said.
    Eldaneyis Mosquera, also known as "Karina," was one of the most senior women in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. She operated in the country's mountainous, northwestern region, where security officials blamed her for a series of attacks and kidnappings.
    "We've been after this woman for a long time" Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told reporters.
    The FARC has recently taken a number of hits in northwestern Colombia, where its leader was killed in March by a subordinate who then handed himself over to authorities.
    Earlier this month, President Alvaro Uribe asked Mosquera in a public speech to turn herself in.
    She surrendered in the province of Antioquia, some 93 miles (150 kilometers) northwest of Bogota.

    Feminist authorities who have already split from the LARV PROD front have also suggested that comrade 'Kim' also surrender. Her Kimchi farts are stinking out the last of the democratic socialists strongholds.
    6:42p
    Stand stud stand
    Barry the black stud has promised to re-enact the famous 'Oval Oriface' scene in the white-house when ex-president Bill Clinton dropped to his knees and pressed his lips to Monica Lewinsky's delightful cherry anus
    In the new ' blacks-on-blondes' scenario, Barry will suck hard on Hillary's arse just so long as she - in turn - forgives several million dollars debt to the jackin' ass party. When ' back-room' deals are made transparent then that is when two generations and 57 states can agree said president -for-life elect Barry.
    Let us all enjoy this day the FOX-lord has made through affiliates with Playboy.
    7:31p
    In the interests of fracticidal homicide
    REFLECTIONS ON DIVISIONS WITHIN THE DSP

    Big Bob "I'm excited" Gould:

    > inevitable bullet in the back of the
    > Head...Happily, the Boyle bunch will never get anywhere near state power, so
    > that analogy falls down a bit

    I know Bob is ever so excited, since he's been predicting a split in the DSP
    that I've noticed since about 1990 (perhaps he should consider the the "end
    of the world is nigh" people will eventually be right, too), but does he
    really have to emulate Big Kev in hyperbolic enthusiasm?

    After a number of ever-so clarifying references from various participants in
    this discussion to the Moscow Trials, trigger-happy Filipino Stalinists, and
    the horribly brutal Ingsoc from Orwell's /1984/ ("groupthink"), we are now
    informed that not putting an article on the split in this week's GL is
    functionally equivalent to killing people and erasing their historical
    record.

    Even though the DSP has created and built up this virtually unmoderated and
    sizeable list, one click away from the GL site, for broader discussion than
    is possible in the hard copy paper. Even though most DSP members have been
    happy to expand the public availability of DSP discussion, while the former
    minority, en bloc, opposed this.

    Back in the real world, a small minority of a small socialist group has
    decided it does not want to be bound by the discipline, of action and not of
    thought and discussion, expected of group membership, and has gone its own
    way. This is unfortunate and has clearly been difficult for many on both
    sides, but let's keep perspective and knock off the "rivers of blood" type
    rhetoric.

    I'm keen, after this summing up post from me, to follow comrades Reihana's
    typically sensible advice, and keep the discussion about the substance going
    in the appropriate forums and at the appropriate level, and finish obsessing
    about the process.

    I've always been open to the LPF's arguments as they've obviously touched on
    real problems and issues (as recognised by all in the DSP in 2005). The
    reason they lost me, and I suspect many others, was by overblowing and
    generalising undoubted problems into a "scratch to gangrene" narrative of
    degeneracy, a far too common problem of a divided and tiny far left. The
    also ever sensible Chris Slee has pointed out how a hot house factional
    atmosphere can create and exacerbate such a tendency.

    The LPF might turn out to be correct, or more correct, on some issues, as
    far as a small socialist group with very limited resources can ever fully
    "test its line" (something that doesn't seem to be kept in mind a lot on the
    far left). Contrary to some comments here, the thing about the repeated
    large majority votes against the LPF was not to do with "proving" anything,
    it was about expected acceptance of (and not enforced agreement with)
    decisions.

    I would hope, once the dust settle a bit, that there's nothing on either
    side barring the continuation of the excellent reportage and analysis in GL
    carried out by a number of LPF members, most of which was not in dispute.
    (Note the onus here to best utilise GL to advance the struggle is on both
    sides). There's problems I recognise that in a small number of cases like
    Indonesia where there's particularly disagreements about how to cover. It
    may be appropriate to have some of the ongoing debate, as well as ongoing
    joint work, in GL, as there's always been debate among the left in the
    paper, but there's also a number of other forums for this.

    ...the RAT Institute reproduce teh following...

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