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Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

    Time Event
    12:08a
    Saudi Australia
    THE Griffith University-Saudi Arabian funding saga should not be allowed to snowball into anti-Saudi paranoia and jeopardise the growing Saudi market for Australian education. Sources from the Saudi embassy in Canberra reveal that the Saudi Government may end up sending as many as 10,000 of its students to study in Australia. Normally Saudi students do not travel alone, coming with their kith and kin, so the final number may be even larger.
    This is an enormous boon to our resource-starved universities. Most Saudi students who arrive here are in their 20s and, like our youngsters, want to escape the constraints of a conservative society and enjoy the fruits of freedom and the Western way of life. They are also big spenders.
    With rising oil prices and an appreciating Australian dollar, there is great market potential for our education in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf countries. Our paranoia about religious radicalism should be balanced with rational policies to protect this lucrative market. ..' - MORE ON

    http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/comments/saudi_market_worth_it/

    Au has a similar sized population to Saudi Arabia and is resource rich...unfortunately we are decades behind them on income tax policy. There has been no income tax in SA since the 1970's.
    Clearly we also have a lot to learn from the Saudi's on Hawala and usury policies as well.
    Oh...and resisting overseas imperialism. One day we too may be independent and strong like Saudi Arabia.
    One day we will be Saudi Australia?
    12:39a
    Mbeki needs killing
    Independent.co.uk
    Mbeki is to blame for xenophobic attacks, says watchdog
    By Ian Evans in Cape Town
    Wednesday, 21 May 2008
    Aid workers in Johannesburg are struggling to feed and shelter the
    thousands of immigrants who have fled a wave of xenophobic attacks in
    which 24 people have been killed.
    The Institute for Race Relations, a respected think-tank, blames the ANC
    government and President Thabo Mbeki for the violence, the worst South
    Africa has seen since the dying days of apartheid. Its chief executive,
    Frans Cronje, said corruption, failing law and order, economic
    mismanagement and lack of proper border controls "contributed to create
    a perfect storm of lawlessness, poverty and unfulfilled expectations
    which has now erupted into violence".
    Armed gangs were continuing their attacks on refugees around the
    financial capital last night as Mr Mbeki prepared to fly to Tanzania for
    a conference.
    Members of his administration claimed a shadowy "third force" was at
    work. They declined to say what that force was but blamed armed, drunken
    criminals for the violence. A spokesman said the National Intelligence
    Agency had joined the investigation into the causes of the attacks which
    erupted in the Alexandra township 11 days ago.
    Since then, refugees from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi among other
    African nations have been shot at, burnt, raped, beaten and driven from
    their homes to seek protection at police stations and community halls.
    Police have called in help from neighbouring provinces but as of last
    night, soldiers remained in their barracks.
    The authorities estimate that about 10,000 people have fled their homes
    in townships, squatter camps and poorer suburbs in and around Johannesburg.
    In one attack yesterday, a mob stormed a hostel in Reiger Park, east of
    the city, in their hunt for foreign workers. They found four Mozambican
    men who were working in the mines. One was beaten to death in his room
    and the other three dragged outside and beaten with metal poles before
    being dragged to nearby grassland and left for dead. By the time
    paramedics arrived, one had died. The other two were taken to hospital,
    but their condition was unclear last night.
    The institute said: "The failure to protect communities from criminal
    elements and to remove those elements had allowed criminals to take full
    advantage of chaos and disorder to rob, rape, and loot. The collapse of
    proper border control mechanisms saw literally millions of people
    gaining entry to South Africa illegally. Poor policy decisions and
    simple incompetence in border policing therefore contributed directly to
    the presence of a large illegal population in South Africa. Without
    adequate legal standing in the community these people became easy or
    soft targets for mob violence."
    An estimated five million refugees live in South Africa, 3.5 million of
    whom are believed to be Zimbabweans fleeing violence and economic chaos
    under Robert Mugabe. Gangs targeting refugees claim immigrants get
    preferential housing treatment, taking scarce jobs and committing crime.
    The opposition Democratic Alliance again called on the government to
    mobilise troops to bring order. Jack Bloom, the party's leader in
    Gauteng province where the killings are taking place, said soldiers from
    two military bases could easily be deployed.
    "President Thabo Mbeki is notoriously allergic to admitting that even
    the most obvious crisis is a crisis, so yet again people die because he
    is out of touch with reality, both here and in Zimbabwe," Mr Bloom said.
    President Mbeki who is due to fly to Tanzania today for a two-day
    meeting of the African Union, has condemned the violence. He said:
    "Citizens from other countries on the African continent and beyond are
    as human as we are and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
    South Africa is not and will never be an island separate from the rest
    of the continent."
    Testimony of a reluctant witness
    Yesterday, I witnessed a nightmare take place in broad daylight. Mobs
    hunting down foreigners, setting up roadblocks. They were cornering
    people, beating them up, and when they were done, they stole anything of
    value they had. I never thought it wouldbe my turn to pack up and move
    to a friend's house. But it's a crisis when you look outside your window
    and see someone running for his life, watch while they are cornered,
    then beaten almost to death with a brick, and the attackers laugh, as if
    it were all just a game. For an hour I heard the sounds of women
    screaming and babies crying while they raided the building next to me. I
    could not watch any more. No one should. You should never be allowed to
    watch an individual's dignity taken away from them. It kills outright
    the belief and trust you have in people. So what's next? You will
    probably have one less Zimbabwean at your office. But spare a thought
    for the gardener, the waiter and maid who wait on you because a lot of
    them are also from Zimbabwe. They are here because they don't have a
    choice. What they once valued has been taken away from them.

    Kudzanai Chiurai is a Zimbabwean artist forced to flee to Johannesburg
    after painting Robert Mugabe with his head on fire
    Search Query: Independent.co.uk
    1:10a
    Baptism slam dunk
    "It was quite a weekend, politically. Yesterday, an estimated 75,000 people attended a Barack Obama rally on the banks of the the Willamette River. ... And if you believe the media, listen to this. After the rally, Barack Obama fed them all with just five loaves of bread and two fish. Amazing!" --Jay Leno

    "The oldest serving member of Congress, former Klan member, Senator Robert Byrd, has endorsed Barack Obama for president. That's got to make Hillary feel good, huh? Even the Klan guy is going, 'I'm gonna go with the black guy.'" --Jay Leno

    "In response to climate change, Barack Obama said we can't drive our SUVs, keep our houses at 72 degrees, and eat all we want. When Al Gore heard we can't eat all we want, he called Obama a global warming fanatic! He's an environmental nut case!" --Jay Leno

    "The Pentagon announced this week that the reward for capturing al Qaeda leader Abu al-Masri has been dropped from $5 million to $100,000. Yeah. And they say if that doesn't bring him in, they're prepared to go even lower."

    "According to these latest financial disclosures, Dick Cheney is worth somewhere between $20 million and $100 million. I mean, could they be more vague? Isn't that like an $80 million gap? Apparently, Cheney's accountant is the same guy telling Hillary she still has a mathematical chance of winning.'" --Jay Leno

    "President Bush was in Saudi Arabia to mark 75 years of official relations with the royal family. And 40 years of officially being screwed royally by that family. Did you see the present the royal family gave President Bush? You see what it was? ... A Schwinn. A brand new Schwinn, yeah. That pretty much says it all, doesn't it? He goes over there looking for solutions to the energy crisis, they give him a bicycle." --Jay Leno

    "And as you know, the country of Saudi Arabia is run by the Saudi royal family. Boy, imagine allowing someone to run a country just 'cause his dad ran the country. Thank God that could never happen here." --Jay Leno

    "Hillary Clinton still campaigning hard. In a speech this weekend that she just gave, Hillary Clinton said that John McCain 'couldn't be more out of touch.' Yeah, then Hillary said, 'Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm about to win the Democratic nomination.'" --Conan O'Brien

    "Barack Obama also going after John McCain. In a speech today, Barack Obama accused John McCain of trying to bankrupt social security. That's what he said, yeah. Yeah, not by voting against it, just by collecting it for 80 years." --Conan O'Brien

    "Ladies and gentlemen, President Bush is back from his trip to the Mideast. And he did accomplish one thing, he found the crystal skull." --David Letterman

    "But while President Bush was in Egypt, he did, he rode a camel. President Bush road a camel. So, if you are scoring at home, that's three humps." --David Letterman

    "Now here's what is troubling to me. This Osama bin Laden. I mean, remember when he was wanted, dead or alive? Remember that? That was like eight years ago. Yeah. And now he is still recording and releasing audiotapes and videotapes. It's not right, I tell you, ladies and gentlemen. In fact, there is a new audiotape from Osama bin Laden and you can tell this one is current because in this tape, he takes credit for making that guy fly in the JetBlue rest room." --David Letterman

    Maybe we should send Malcolm Turnbull over there to help Bush - whatever the Bush policy is he can sell it. Then Tony Jones could maybe go back in time over there too - tell the FBI about Saudi's flying in from Malaysia, Phoenix flight schools and missing laptops. See if that helps.
    1:21a
    Goin' down slow
    The contents of the Downing Street Minutes confirm that the Bush Administration was determined to go to war in Iraq, regardless of whether there was any credible justification for doing so. The Administration distorted and misrepresented the intelligence in its attempt to link Saddam Hussein with the terrorists of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, and with weapons of mass destruction that Iraq did not have.
    In addition, the Downing Street Minutes also confirm what has long been obvious – that the timing of the war was linked to the 2002 Congressional elections, and that the Administration’s planning for post-war Iraq was incompetent in all its aspects. The current continuing crisis is a direct result of that incompetence.
    President Bush constantly talks about the 'progress' that is being made in Iraq against the insurgency, but he’s looking for good news with a microscope. All anyone can see is 'Mission Mis-accomplished' and the continuing losses of American lives, the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis, the torture scandal, and the ominous decline in our nation's moral authority in the world community.

    We know the Administration had been planning to invade Iraq for many months before the invasion actually began. We know the Administration twisted the intelligence to make the facts fit their plan. We know that the Administration never really intended to give the U.N. weapons inspectors a reasonable chance to succeed. The Downing Street Minutes demonstrate that the Administration knew their case for war was paper thin, and that in order to go into war with the support of our allies, we had to demonstrate some willingness to go along with the UN inspection process. But the Administration continued to misuse its intelligence, distort the facts and pay only lip-service to the UN’s role in disarming Iraq.
    We never should have gone to war for ideological reasons driven by politics and based on manipulated intelligence. The Downing Street Minutes provide even more proof that this is exactly what happened on Iraq. The Administration's dishonesty, lack of candor, and lack of planning have brought us to where we are today, with American soldiers dying, Iraqi civilians living in constant fear, and with no clearer picture of our strategy for victory in Iraq than when we started.

    ---Sen. Ted Kennedy, June, 2005
    9:41a
    An insurgent emergency
    An Unnatural Disaster (by Michael Hirsh, Newsweek)
    U.S. government literally broke down during the Bush years. The interagency process was destroyed as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld set up what was effectively a “black” alternative government (the veep’s shadow national security council, and Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon). The White House treated its coequal branch, Congress, like an interloper (to the annoyance of Republicans as well as Democrats). Junk science infected the policy-making apparatus on key issues of importance to our allies in Europe and Asia, like global warming. Junk legal reasoning by White House and Justice Department lawyers was used to publicly justify torture, decimating our once high moral stature around the world. Junk economics—an excess of free-market fervor—infected the Federal Reserve and other regulators, who slumbered while Wall Street ran amok selling fraudulent mortgage securities to foreign markets. Congress went to sleep while the administration ran up record deficits. (The fallout from the subprime debacle and budget imbalance has cost us as much prestige in the economic sphere as Iraq has cost us in the foreign policy arena.) The Department of Homeland Security, misconceived and oversized even at its birth, grew into an unmanageable monstrosity. MAKETHEMACCOUNTABLE

    Where's this 'us' whiteman?
    9:45a
    What a sweetheart
    And a man after Molochs own heart and stomach of a kingmaker

    In discussion of DeGeneres' marriage announcement, Fox News host Gutfeld equated "public exhortations of love" with talking about bowel movements
    Summary: On Red Eye, Greg Gutfeld criticized Ellen DeGeneres' announcement that she plans to marry Portia de Rossi: "For me, public exhortations of love are no different than telling everyone how great your bowel movements are since switching to All-Bran -- no one gives a [bleep] except you." Gutfeld then said: "And so, this is why I never discuss my marriage with anyone, which is the main reason why John Stamos and I are so happy together. And if you disagree with me, then you, sir, are worse than Hitler." But Gutfeld himself has engaged in "public exhortations of love" and has talked about his wife. In addition to writing about his wife in a book, according to a 2005 New York Observer item, Gutfeld "talks incessantly and adoringly of his 24-year-old Russian bride, Elena, and carries with him an envelope chock-full of photos." - MEDIA MATTERS

    I wish we had a few respectful David Brocks paying their dues and working for us anarchists - all we get are the whining whinging losers like the WSM.
    9:57a
    All that is rational is real
    All that is real is rational ( Platonist and proto-Marxist Hegel)

    Sure it is. McCain-Backer Hagee: Hitler Was Doing God's Will...and a new jellyfish species has been discovered inside the seahorse exhibit at the Reef HQ aquarium in Townsville, in north Queensland.
    Scientist Dr Lisa Gershwin said she found the species by accident.
    The expert in marine stingers said she was delighted at the find, because it was unlike anything she had ever seen.
    The jellyfish, of the family Coeloplana, has its mouth on its underside and its anus wrapped around its brain.
    It looks more like a flatworm than a jellyfish, and moves by gliding along the seagrass.
    Dr Gershwin said the species was an evolutionary "dead end".

    "It's lost the ability to sting, it's lost the ability to swim, it's not a very good jellyfish, as far as jellyfish go," she said...' - END Extract.

    But I'm sure all this is all really rational - Hegel tells me so
    10:18a
    Remembering Hamilton Jordan
    It is incredible that the ethical atmosphere of the Clinton White House had sunk to a level whereby the constitutional power of a president to issue a pardon was discussed among Mr. Clinton and his White House staff as just one more perk of office. It was treated in the same vein as: "Who is going to be regional HUD director?" or "Which campaign contributors are staying in the Lincoln Bedroom tonight or flying on Air Force One?"
    It is a great mystery how this gifted politician could have had such an enormous lapse of judgment. I attribute it to the fact that the Clintons are terribly self-absorbed. As well, I believe they developed a feeling of invincibility and even arrogance after his impeachment trial, when the Clintons confused their short-term victory with the sense of national exhaustion and disgust that followed the scandal.
    If a president can get caught having sex in the Oval Office with an intern and committing perjury about it to a federal grand jury, and still get away with it, what could possibly stop him? Bill Clinton—whose every decision was guided by public opinion polls—interpreted his high job-approval ratings following his impeachment at least as a vote of confidence and more likely as some form of national forgiveness.
    Instead of leaving him for his public betrayal, Hillary Clinton exploited her public image of a wronged but loyal spouse to create a new persona for herself and win election to the Senate.
    The Clintons are not a couple but a business partnership, not based on love or even greed but on shared ambitions. Everywhere they go, they leave a trail of disappointed, disillusioned friends and staff members to clean up after them. The Clintons' only loyalty is to their own ambitions.
    They belong to no place. Arkansas was just a starting point for Bill Clinton and a place Hillary had to tolerate while nurturing national ambitions. It was their home for a quarter-century, the birthplace of their only child and their political base, but they left the state behind in favor of New York City, a place that can match the scale of their own egos, appetites and ambitions.
    Hamilton Jordan
    1:01p
    Futures keep happening
    WHAT ARE futures?
    FUTURES ARE contracts in which one party agrees to buy or sell a certain commodity, such as a bushel of wheat or a barrel of oil, at a certain price at an agreed upon date in the future.
    Everything is spelled out in the contracts, including the quantity and quality of the commodity, the price per unit, and the date and method of delivery. The futures market is different from the "spot market," where buyers and sellers trade the same commodities, but in the present time.
    It helps to think of this as traders buying a service up front. In practice, people complete these sorts of transactions every day. For example, when you purchase an airline ticket, you are paying the company today for the right to travel on an agreed upon time in the future. Futures contracts are the same thing, except they typically involve companies buying and selling commodities in the future--oil, wheat, corn, soybeans, pork, cattle, butter, milk, gold, silver, etc.
    The practical benefit of futures contracts is that they help firms to lock in the prices of what they are buying or selling in advance. For example, airlines use futures contracts when buying jet fuel, rather than buying it on the so-called spot market. It helps both buyers and sellers to more accurately predict their operating costs and incomes.
    HOW ARE the prices determined?
    THIS IS where futures exchanges come into the picture. The largest futures exchange is the Chicago Board of Trade, which has been in operation since 1848. All futures contracts are registered at such exchanges, which then create the benchmarks for further contracts.
    For example, if a company agrees to buy 1,000 barrels of oil from another firm for delivery in June at $125 a barrel, the two parties report the contract to a futures exchange. This becomes a new standard price for oil futures.
    Another supplier could decide if they thought that price was too high (or too low) and make an offer to deliver 1,000 barrels at $125.50. If a buyer steps forward and accepts, this sets a new benchmark. Then another supplier could enter the picture and make the same calculation, or a different one. These trades happen over and over throughout the course of the day. Demands for futures contracts sends prices up. When demand falters, prices drop.
    What happens next is that at the end of every day, the two parties must settle up based on where the futures price of that commodity ended the day.
    Let's say Buyer A (known as the "long" position) and Seller B (known as the "short" position) agree to a futures contract in which Buyer A would buy 1,000 barrels of oil from Seller B on July 1 for $125 a barrel. On the next day, say the futures price increases to $130 a barrel. The Seller B has lost $5 per barrel because he is now obligated to sell at a price below the market. Buyer A has made $5 per barrel because the price he is obligated to pay is below the market. The Seller must pay the Buyer $5,000 ($5 times 1,000 barrels) to settle the account.
    These adjustments are made daily, depending on how the price of futures changes, until the contract expires, the goods are delivered and the final settlements are made.
    Therein lies another benefit for the actual traders in commodities. The futures markets enable buyers and sellers to hedge against--or cushion the impact of--pricing changes. Buyers and sellers could set up trades to minimize potential losses from rising and falling prices on spot markets through these hedges in the futures market.
    If prices fall after a contract is signed, a seller would be protected from lower prices on the spot market because he would be collecting income on existing futures contract. If prices rise, the seller would lose money on the futures contract, but could try to sell more in the spot market to make up the difference. In theory, futures contracts are meant to be a zero-sum hedge to protect against changes in prices.
    WHAT'S WRONG with this picture?
    HISTORICALLY, FUTURES contracts were traded primarily between producers of commodities and consumers of commodities at large, regulated commodities exchanges. Most futures contracts eventually resulted in the actual delivery of a commodity on a set date.
    That's changing in recent years but nowhere near fast enough. Now, many of the firms trading on futures exchanges are service providers with no intention of ever receiving delivery of the 'dead pool' commodities they are trading.
    For example, for some terrorist casino's, it might take only 10,000 contracts to satisfy the needs of buyers and sellers to hedge prices. However, the volume of funeral contracts from the beginning of the year through March 2008 was 5.7 million contracts.
    As well, contracts are usually wound down or rolled over without cadavers ever being exchanged. Instead, traders make their profits simply through creating and exchanging APster contracts, and timing those moves to make the most of day-to-day price fluctuations on the futures markets.
    Plus, new, unregulated exchanges have emerged online, so traders don't even have to report all of their activity. Thus, traders could make a trade on a public market and then make another on an unregulated market to balance or heighten the first trade. - MORE ON

    http://www.nex.com/innews.htm
    1:28p
    Fascist bourgeois micro-managers or Marxists for short
    70 years ago the council communist Otto Rühle argued that ‘The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism’:

    Russia must be placed first among the new totalitarian states. It was the first to adopt the new state principle. It went furthest in its application. It was the first to establish a constitutional dictatorship, together with the political and administrative terror system which goes with it. Adopting all the features of the total state, it thus became the model for those other countries which were forced to do away with the democratic state system and to change to dictatorial rule. Russia was the example for fascism.

    It’s also worth keeping in mind Bakunin’s words of warning, written in 1866 (and expanded upon in subsequent writings on the intellectual class), regarding the potential impact of the Marxian conception of revolution. Noam Chomsky, in an interview with Robert Borofsky (Intellectuals and the Responsibilities of Public Life, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Robert Borofsky, Public Anthropology, May 27, 2001):

    RB: Ivan Illich has talked about “disabling professions” - or really disabling professionals - who systematically disempower others through their claims to expertise. To what degree do you perceive elite experts, and more broadly academics, being a “new class” of apparatchiks who function to reinforce rather than challenge the status quo in America?

    NC: That intellectuals, including academics, would become a “new class” of technocrats, claiming the name of science while cooperating with the powerful, was predicted by Bakunin in the early days of the formation of the modern intelligentsia in the 19th century. His expectations were generally confirmed, including his prediction that some would seek to gain state power on the backs of popular revolution, then constructing a “Red bureaucracy” that would be one of the worst tyrannies in history, while others would recognize that power lies elsewhere and would serve as its apologists, becoming mystifiers, “disablers,” and managers while demanding the right to function in “technocratic isolation,” in World Bank lingo.

    I would, however, question the implication that there is some novelty in this beyond modalities, which naturally change as institutions change and develop. Isaiah Berlin described the intellectuals of Bakunin’s “Red bureaucracy” as a “secular priesthood,” not unlike the religious priesthood that performed similar functions in earlier times - functions described acidly by Pascal in his bitter rendition of the practices of the Jesuit intellectuals he despised, including their demonstration of “the utility of interpretation,” a device of manufacturing consent based on reinterpretation of sacred texts to serve wealth, power, and privilege. Berlin’s observation is accurate enough, and applies at home as well, and even more harshly for the reasons already mentioned: the apparatchiks and commissars could at least plead fear in extenuation.
    2:15p
    War by other meanings
    Michael Warby is a freelance teacher and social analyst who is a principal in a business that puts on medieval and ancient history days for schools.

    http://quadrant.org.au/php/article_view.php?article_id=3908

    '...Lenin’s great achievement was to jacobinise Marxism, to turn a movement for whom the classless society was something history would create to a movement that would create the classless society by applying revolutionary will. (That is, appropriate amounts of tyranny and murder.) In Lenin’s words (and emphasis), “A Jacobin who wholly identifies himself with the organisation of the proletariat—a proletariat conscious of its class interests—is a revolutionary Social-Democrat.” What Lenin did was modernise the politics of Robespierre; develop a working model of unrestrained politics—unrestrained in both means and ends.
    A few particularly perceptive observers of politics then realised that Lenin’s methods could be used for other political projects. The first use of this insight was by a former firebrand of the radical wing of the Italian Socialist Party, Benito Mussolini.
    Mussolini was a keen observer of Lenin’s successes and failures, having come from the same milieu (including time in radical socialist circles in Switzerland). In the outpouring of emotion that started the Great War, Mussolini, who volunteered for the front, had felt that nation had a much stronger pull on people’s sense of identity than class. So he abandoned the collectivism of class for the collectivism of nation. Fascism was born in the application of Lenin’s political methods to the project of national greatness through national unity. Mussolini jacobinised nationalism just as Lenin jacobinised Marxism. If Lenin was Marx-plus-Robespierre, Mussolini was Mazzini-plus-Robespierre...'

    AND

    '...The crossover nature of fascism is central to its nature, and no genuine understanding can be had unless that is understood. Indeed, its crossover nature gave it a range of rhetorical appeals no other political movement or parties could equal. If the enemy was organised Catholicism, then anticlericalism could be stressed; if “bourgeois” parties and politics, then welfarism, socialism and egalitarianism; if leftist class politics, then the unity of national forces (even to the extent of parading as a defender of religion). To attack those tied to current practices, the glorious future of purified national unity could be invoked; to attack those offering a future of threatening change, the glorious past could be invoked.

    But its atavism is also central to its nature...'

    ( The glorious past invoked by the liberal use of neo-Roman empire iconography ranging from battle standards to slack bastard Goering's toga parties. pr )

    '...Russian émigrés and businessmen traumatised by the attempted Leninist takeovers of 1918-19 were important early Nazi supporters...'

    ' attempted'?

    Que?

    How come so many efforts are made to exonerate the Lenin of the Red Terror period?

    Anne Appelbaums recent book on the Gulag system doesn't even mention some of the earliest and first examples!

    I guess Lenin and Trotsky were just 'attempting' to start a concentration camp system.

    Maybe they 'meant well'...or more likely the core Trotskycon myth of battlefield earth must on no accounts be messed with by any un-cleared Thetan
    2:37p
    Bone china
    Handle with care
    By Michael J. Smith on Tuesday May 20 09:05 AM
    You'd think the Democratic Party was a precious, fragile vessel of leaf-thin fine bone china, the way everybody is now worried about "damaging" it during the primary melodrama.
    If only it were so. In fact the leathery old whore seems indestructible, more's the pity. In its two-century history it's survived every possible kind of disgrace and betrayal, and it still trudges shamelessly on, a shit-eating Clintonesque grim on its homely face, ready willing and eager to sell itself -- and its hapless "base" -- to any buyer, no matter how repellent, for ready cash.
    It's odd, really. The shabby thing really does appear awfully flimsy, and it certainly stands for nothing at all except employment under Government for its cadre. Yet it endures (and endures, and endures), in saecula saeculorum, like the Energizer bunny. This paradoxical durability must have some structural explanation.
    I think its very mendacity is the secret of its success. Crucially, it claims to offer an alternative -- however half-hearted and feeble -- to the utter, absolute, complete and comprehensive lordship of plutocracy. As crucially, it actually does nothing of the kind...' - EXTRACT

    http://www.stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/

    Tammany Hall reports that some obscure congressdroid has woken up some of these facts and deserves our hearty congrats...

    '...But at least we know there's someone in Congress who knows the score, and isn't afraid to say it. Kudos to Rep. Wexler for that...'

    That and a few bucks will get you a percolated coffee from another congressdroid in the hall. Suck it up Kossaks!
    3:40p
    Predator-drone flight to the dark side
    Many years ago in a military-entertainment galaxy far, far away, the Vice President of the Imperial Senate appears on Meet the Probe with Tim Russert
    CHENEY: Well, Tim, this is the first chance we've had really since the events this ..... We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. ...RELATED...Jedi Master Jonba Hehol - known to family and friends as Barney Jones, 36, of Holyhead - was giving a TV interview in his back garden for a documentary when a man, dressed in a black bin-bag and wearing Darth Vader’s trademark shiny black helmet, leapt over his garden fence.
    Wielding a metal crutch - his lightsaber presumably being in for repairs - the Sith Lord proceeded to lay about his opponent, whose Jedi powers proved inadequate for the task of defending himself. Many Rebel Alliance members died bring us this news.

    BREAKING! Newsdroids report GOP Terminator machines sent back in time just miss Josh Marshall as a young Padawan.
    Several Ewoks and a Wookie were dissembled to the 14th dimension during this vicious attack that broke every technical assembly code rule of robotic ethics...DEVELOPING!
    4:07p
    Indianna Jones and the Skull Fuckers
    Well Michael Krogers back playing the man with the whip and is this a long strange trip after the previous two episodes! Driven out of the ABC for being too Marxist, Kroger somehow winds up in Area 51 - some plot-point to do with merchant banking and union-busting is the sub-text here - typical bourgeois Marxism. In the highly restricted zone Kroger gets the compulsory anal probe which he then finds inspires many happy memories of going to Monash and stopping off at Neils for ball games with ' Short Round'. ( Peter Costello in a cameo role)
    So straight off to gay old San Francisco we then fly... in a Bi-Plane of course with anal-probing all the way through this particular 'redeye' flight. Later, during a bondage session with some leathermen Indie/Kroger learns the secret of the skullfucking Tom of Finland legend. He calls up Marcus and together they catch a tramp steamer to scandalous Scandinavia. On the way they manage to explore a few volcanic caves oozing red-hot lava and Iceland. In spite of some apparent aging and shrinkage of his 'pistol' this butch archaeologist of the Liberal party still proves he has what it takes to be a Ming sized arsehole. Leave the kids at homo.
    4:24p
    The honeymoon is over
    Kathmandu shuts down
    Ameet Dhakal
    KATHMANDU: Kathmandu Valley on Wednesday remained shut to protest the killing of a businessman, who was earlier abducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
    Vehicles stayed off the road, businesses remained shut and education institutions were closed. Protest rallies were held in different parts of the city. Protesters clashed with members of the Maoists’ youth wing, Young Communist League. Family members of Ram Hari Shrestha, who died in a PLA cantonment during “interrogation”, had called for a strike in the Kathmandu Valley, demanding the formation of a high-level judicial probe commission to investigate the incident.
    Public pressure
    Bowing to pressure, Maoist Chairman Prachanda on Wednesday issued a statement urging the government to form a probe commission. “Our party is committed to provide all kinds of support to such a probe,” said the statement. Mr. Prachanda also said he was ready to hold a “positive” dialogue with Shrestha’s family.

    Earlier, Mr. Prachnda had issued a statement saying Shrestha was killed by “selfish” individuals who had infiltrated the party. FROM

    http://www.hindu.com/2008/05/22/stories/2008052254161400.htm

    “If the old days in China were so terrible, why the long queue at Mao’s tomb?”

    P.J. O’Rourke wanted to respond, “They’re making sure he’s dead”
    5:02p
    Porn for the blind
    CYBERSPACE -- Initially, it sounds as logical as radio for the deaf, but porn for the blind is no joke -- at least not on PornfortheBlind.org.
    Whether it’s an unseen flash in the virtual pan or the ear of things to come is still unknown, the fact that BBC’s Brazilian service says 150,000 unique visitors sampled the auditory erotica of PornfortheBlind.org during May alone.
    The key to the site’s success lies in its volunteer-recorded descriptions of X-rated videos, website layouts, and website clips. The site does not provide reviews of content, but, instead, serves up short, calmly intoned, matter-of-fact narrations of the action.
    Although launched in 2006, a blogger for the Montreal Gazette explains that the site experienced a growth spurt when the site added an on-site recording tool. According to the blogger, Elmer, the site owner, reports that visitors want higher quality recordings, and he’d love some of those to come from women. Currently, the vast majority of recordings feature male voices, several of which sound bored or like they don’t take what they’re doing seriously.
    Given that 22-percent of respondents to an American Foundation for the Blind survey indicated an interest in adult videos with audio descriptions, this genre could be a micro-niche goldmine.
    Darklady is Editor at YNOT, a member of the Free Speech Coalition board of directors, and has nearly two decades of experience covering the adult entertainment industry, internet technology, and alternative sexuality beats online, in print, and via traditional and web radio.
    http://www.ynot.com/
    5:23p
    President Barbara
    Rumors are circulating that Barry Obama is willing to undergo a sex-change operation in order to bind the nations wounds with feminists. By changing his name to 'Barbara', the Obama forces also hope to reach out to all the Bush family supporters. President Barbara is thus expected to be the first trans-sexual leader of the free free world. The change we wish to see in this world. Si se puede maricon.
    6:05p
    Tired of Chomsky's bs
    "The "New" Left In Latin America:
    What Chomsky Didn't Tell You
    By Lorna Salzman
    21 May, 2008
    Countercurrents.org
    The pursuit of social justice doesn't always benefit the environment. Indeed, it often does just the opposite.

    What Noam Chomsky, referring to the new leftist governments in Latin America, recently described in the International Herald Tribune as a "promising sign of deliverance from the (American corporate) demons of the past" is turning out to be a Business As Usual policy of full speed ahead on resource exploitation and economic growth regardless of the ecological consequences.
    In response to the cliché that "You can't stop progress", someone once said: "When you are standing on the edge of a cliff, progress is taking one step backward or turning around 180 degrees and moving forward." The new leftist governments in Latin America - Venezuela, Brazil, and Bolivia, and to a lesser extent Chile - are taking a new tack. Standing at the edge of the cliff, they have decided to construct their own ladder down the cliff in order to move forward in the same direction as the detested neo-liberals have urged.
    Accordingly, they are moving rapidly to exploit, develop and export their natural resources, agricultural products, and energy infrastructure in the same unsustainable direction charted by the WTO, IMF and World Bank, with a new entity called Mercosur and other consortiums involving European industries. Chile, on the other hand, has committed itself to following the old IMF/World Bank guidelines, but with a "compassionate capitalism" face that will emphasize social justice within the same old expansive capitalist growth model.

    Brazil, for whom environmentalists once had high hopes, is still experiencing rampant deforestation in the Amazon, slash and burn agriculture, destructive cattle ranching and once-banned (but never suppressed) genetically modified soybean (GMO) cultivation. President Lula Inacio da Silva has abandoned his campaign opposition to GMOs, additional nuclear power plants, and Amazon deforestation, and instead has accepted a World Bank multi-year loan of up to $1.2 billion to purportedly balance economic growth with social development. The environment doesn't seem to enter into it at any stage.
    As a result, 2004 showed the highest economic growth ever in Brazil, mostly from agribusiness, the largest contributor to Amazon destruction. Those who oppose the anarchic ranchers and farmers in the region are murdered as were Chico Mendes, Dorothy Stang and others. Frontier vigilantism still reigns.
    Brazil is now the leading beef exporter in the world, thanks to its ranches on Amazonian land and the second largest exporter of soybeans (all genetically modified) after the U.S. Also on the books is another trans-Amazon superhighway, a giant hydroelectric dam to provide cheap power for the Brazilian and foreign aluminum industries, a third nuclear power plant at Angra dos Reis, and a 5000- mile natural gas pipeline (proposed by Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan president) from Venezuela south, smack across the state of Amazonas.
    Within the state of Amazonas, Lula and the Brazilian oil company Petrobras, long a target of criticism from local peoples for its oil leaks, want to creaate an extensive network of gas pipelines within the state, a forested area larger than Britain, France, Italy and Germany combined. The one proposed to go south to Porto Velho would invade indigenous lands, and to the west Petrobras wants to develop other oil and gas deposits, which would have to be moved out through dense rainforest areas. As for Chavez' 5000-mile pipeline dream, any analysis of its environmental impact does not yet seem to be in the cards.
    Chile's ancient forests of Araucaria and southern beech (Alerce and Nothofagus), have gotten more protection than formerly but mainly because of large purchases by foreigners like Doug Tompkins, of Esprit clothing fame, conservation organizations and others. The country remains the 4th largest exporter of wood, cellulose and wood chips in the hemisphere and is likely to become the second largest soon. While there are 30 million acres of protected national parks, preserves and monuments, many of these are "paper" preserves with little actual protection, and forest agreements have loopholes that will allow mining. Meanwhile, plans are afoot for extensive gold mining in Argentina on the Chile border.
    Chile's president Michelle Bachelet is constrained by the coalition that elected her, which includes Christian Democrats and two smaller leftist parties. As a consequence, she has announced a continuation of the old neo-liberal policies of her predecessor, Ricardo Lagos, and has thrown in her lot with the same financial institutions of yore. She has shown no inclination to question the development objectives of the funding institutions, industry, corporations or previous administrations and plans to keep the incredibly low rate of 3% royalties imposed on foreign mining companies.
    In Ecuador, the new leftist president, Rafael Correa, seems not to have heeded the tragic lesson of oil exploration in Ecuador's Oriente province in the Amazon basin. While the government recently bought out Occidental Oil, which represents 20% of Ecuador's oil output, the government seems intent on repeating the catastrophe wreaked on the indigenous lands and peoples in the Oriente by the criminal polluting oil exploration which has destroyed human health, the forests, water supplies, and utterly degraded national parks like the Cuyabeno preserve.
    While this destruction was mainly committed by foreign oil companies like Conoco and Texaco, the national oil company Petroecuador was a partner in this and, in any case, the government turned a blind eye to the pollution and destruction, which are the subject of a pending multibillion dollar law suit.
    Ecuador has the highest deforestation rate in South America, thanks to the building of roads to facilitate oil exploration, which open up the forests to illegal loggers and settlers. Despite this, Ecuador has plans for more such roads in connection with a new pipeline, Oleoducto de Crudo Pesado, funded by a consortium that includes JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and oil companies from the US, Canada, Italy, Argentina and Spain, as well as a proposal for another east-west land-sea pipeline crossing the Amazon basin and the Andes. A consortium of indigenous and conservation groups strongly oppose any expansion of the oil industry and are asking for a 15-year moratorium on all oil exploration. When they filed a complaint with the Organization of American States (OAS), the Ecuadorian Minister of Energy and Mines replied: "OAS doesn't give orders here".
    The 300- mile Oleoducto pipeline threatens the remarkable Nambillo cloud forest preserve near Mindo, the first preserve declared an Important Bird Area (IBA) in South America, and eleven other protected areas. If built, this pipeline would double Ecuador's oil production, require hundreds of new oil wells and flow lines, as well as processing and refining facilities that would accelerate oil exploration. Despite the huge financial reserves reaped from oil exploration, little of the wealth has trickled down to the poor. Ecuador hasn't yet been able to provide a regular source of drinking water for its cities despite the presence of the Andes.

    In any case, little is changing in the Ecuador oil scene, since the president announced that while Petroecuador might take charge, oil exploration and production would remain in foreign hands. Given the disastrous environmental legacy of Texaco and Conoco, the future looks as grimy as ever.
    Clearly, radical economic policies declaring independence from the US do not include more deference to the environment. So just what does it mean to declare independence from the old 'imperialist" institutions? Just where are these countries diverging from the economic growth models and agendas of capitalist economies everywhere? Where are the radical differences that American investors and industry -- as well as leftist commentators like Chomsky -- were anticipating with the so-called left turn in Latin America?

    Judging from the public statements of these new leaders, capitalism has little to fear from Latin America's so-called leftists. They may reject IMF and World Bank now and then, but their hearts remain in the same place, dedicated to untrammeled, unsustainable resource exploitation and economic growth just like their capitalist neighbors to the north but with a few more crumbs allotted to the poor. Just read their lips: "No worries, mate". Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
    Lorna Salzman has been an environmental writer and activist since the mid-1960s, and served as natural resource specialist for the New York City Dept. of Environmental Protection in the early 1990s. In 2004 she was a candidate for the U.S. Green Party's presidential nomination. Her articles on environment and energy can be found at www.lornasalzman.com
    8:55p
    Private schools are still on the pad
    As well as this blatant Howard era scam

    BRENDAN Nelson is mad as hell at the high-taxing Rudd Government and he wants to do something about it by promising “a real tax cut”: 5.5c a litre off the price of petrol.
    So why is he vowing to oppose in the Senate a tax cut that actually is in the budget: removing the 1 per cent income tax surcharge on single people on incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 and on couples between $100,000 and $150,000 who do not take out private health insurance? The Government says there are nearly 500,000 people in this category and to those we can add Australians who decide to drop their insurance because they no longer face a surcharge: 485,000, according to Treasury, and many more, according to health fund and other estimates.
    Removing the surcharge will cut their taxes by up to $1000 a year for singles and $1500 for couples. That looks like “a real tax cut”. It certainly is bigger than the benefit most people would get from cheaper petrol under the Nelson proposal.
    There is no worse example of the bracket creep about which there are so many complaints. When the surcharge was introduced in 1997, only 12 per cent of Australians had a taxable income above $50,000. But the Howard government never raised this threshold and it is now about the level of average earnings. Not only that, the surcharge was bad policy.
    Tariffs and cash hand-outs to industry went out of fashion more than 20 years ago, with only the fag end of the protection debate still playing out in the car industry. But the big exception is the health funds, which are propped up by so many government supports that their product is more accurately described as semi-private health insurance. No other industry receives a 30 per cent government subsidy on the prices it charges: make that 35 per cent for premiums for members between 65 and 69 and 40 per cent for those 70 and over. The tax surcharge continues for income earners above the higher thresholds set in the budget, with the aim of pushing them into private insurance. There is the government-mandated 2 per cent a year increase in premiums for every year people delay taking out insurance after they turn 30. Then there is the discounted payment the health funds make for private patients treated in public hospitals. Finally, a tight web of regulation means competition between the funds is limited.
    The justification for this extraordinary degree of intervention and taxpayer support is that the health playing field is not level, with Medicare guaranteeing free treatment in public hospitals. But support for Medicare has long been bipartisan because both sides of politics accept that a national health insurance system is superior.
    The Liberals may have come to this conclusion reluctantly but not even they want to revisit the health policy disasters of the Fraser government, which dismantled the Whitlam government’s Medibank but never produced a viable alternative, despite five attempts in eight years. Nor does anyone in their right mind want to go down the privatised US healthcare road, with health costs soaking up 15.3 per cent of national income, compared to 8.8 per cent in Australia, and for a worse result in terms of average health outcomes.

    So why in the name of rational economics should we be pouring vast amounts of taxpayers’ money into an industry that is uncompetitive and provides a more expensive service?
    The argument goes that we need a vibrant private health sector because it offers choice to patients and keeps the public sector on its toes. But who is to say the ideal level of private health insurance is about 45 per cent of the population, as at present, rather than the 30 per cent it might fall to without enormous government subsidies?
    Private health insurance, say its supporters, takes pressure off public hospitals. But to the extent that is true, it comes at a cost. Doctors charge higher fees for private patients, who also are more likely to undergo more procedures and more expensive ones. This would not necessarily matter if the quality of medical care was better but the evidence on this is ambiguous. Nor would it matter if it did not involve large buckets of government money to private insurance.
    The 30 to 40 per cent rebate alone cost the federal budget $3.5 billion last financial year. In terms of its impact on health, much of it is wasted because it goes to people who had private health cover before the rebate was introduced and would keep it whether or not it was subsidised. A much better use of the money would be to spend it on public hospitals or, for that matter, private hospitals.
    A major explanation for why the private funds struggle to keep their members is because they offer a poor product. Out-of-pocket costs are the main reason people cite for giving up their membership. Understandably, they resent being rewarded for buying insurance by having to fork out extra money when they actually claim benefits. There has been a reduction in the number of private patients facing gap payments but after at least 15 years of trying to sort out this issue, more than 15 per cent of hospital services still involve a gap payment and one that is increasing. The funds are not to blame: they are well aware of the damage gap payments cause to their business. But they often lack the clout to force doctors into agreements that guarantee no gaps and when they do succeed, the doctors can extract a hefty price.

    The funds could lift their game, as well. For all the dire warnings about premium increases as a result of people dropping their insurance following the budget changes, there is no sign that the increase in membership - from 6.2 million to 9.5million in the past eight years - saw downward pressure on prices. Instead, each year since then, premiums have increased by between 1.2 per cent and 5.3 per cent above the rise in the consumer price index.
    But then why should the funds worry too much about their prices when they are used to getting bailed out by the government?
    Skeevy Mike - The Austrian
    From what I've seen of Barry/ Barbara's health plan in the USSA it resemble 'Doctor' Howards Frankenstein more than anything like the true free universal cover that would be change we could really believe in.
    9:10p
    The Quo Vadis party
    It seems clear that it will take an unprecedented event for us to move on from the bi-partisan consensus on nanny statism. Such events happen regularly but we simply can't rely on them to save us from slow motion democide. My modest proposal is for a replacement party be formed by those on the left who are mostly of the libertarian socialist tradition and those who comfortable with the idea of the withering-away-of-the-state.
    I guesstimate that these could raise roughly 15% of the popular vote - with proper marketing. Then add the small-state, libertarian right. There you have another 15% or so and roughly the sort of 'Big Tent', united front or loosely networked coalition that helped defeat the referendum proposal to arm the EU superstate.
    Obviously 30% is not a popular majority however there are always sufficient undecideds in the center who will be attracted to a new 'coming thing' party able to attract the young and energetic.
    Such a coalition party will need a clean, clear minimalist platform. Sunset clauses, benchmark targets to shrink the state sector, repeal of two laws for every new law passed and so on. 'Walking the talk' with strict net quality control. A lean green core welfare/warfare state is the aim, and one that may even wither away all-together given enough time. 'The state that governs least' concept is not necessarily a Reagan Thatcher conceit that they undermined and sabotaged in practise. It is a long standing core demand of all true transcendent anarchists. Diversity-of-tactics surely allows for electoral practice - so long as it is not called anarchism and how long does voting take anyway?
    As much time as quick shit.
    So lets get on with it - not much else is going on anyway is it? ( Our Greek comrades being the exception that proves this rule ) It's time for all good anarchists to come to the aid of the party.
    9:52p
    Consumers have power
    ANZ withdrawal of ads appears to be a first for Australian TV, experts say. Consumers have power. We are not simply wage-slaves flogged from pillar to post by bourgeois capitalist swine as some lazy Marxist mega-phone mouths would have it. Consumer education was even a subject in high schools 37 years ago.
    The real weak points of Capital remain God and the State. The real strong points remain markets.
    Attacking markets and the means of exchange is like punching someone on the top of their head rather than the tip of their chin. I would leave such lunatic attacks on money-changers to dogmatic fanatics with a death wish.

    QandA is a new show on ABC. It looks like a homage to Jennie Brockie so far... but Mogadon Man just promised to turn it into a Jeff Whassisname snoozefest next week. They are taking SMS text questions so maybe a worm can't be far behind?
    ' We are all populists now '
    10:17p
    Cheap slut in depraved army gang-bang
    This is my rifle - this is my gun - who dares wins
    The Defence Department has issued an unreserved apology to celebrity Tania Zaetta, after she was named in a leaked Defence note detailing inappropriate conduct.
    The Federal Government has announced an inquiry into the leaked briefing note about allegations Ms Zaetta had anal sex with dozens of grunts during her recent entertainment tour to Afghanistan.
    Defence has tonight issued a statement saying the document containing Ms Zaetta's name was a draft and it was withdrawn minutes after it was written because of privacy concerns.
    Ms Zaetta denies the claims she had sex with soldiers. Earlier, she told Channel Nine she deserved an apology.
    She said she could not understand why someone would make the claims.
    "I feel like I am owed an apology, because first of all it's complete, made-up lies," she said.
    "For it to end up public knowledge, front page of pretty much every newspaper in the country, apart from being hurtful, is damaging to a woman's career, to her reputation."

    You call this military entertainment?
    10:43p
    Thoughts of Chairman Kevin
    Libertarianism and Liberalism: What Went Wrong
    (posted by Kevin Carson)
    Since the general theme of this blog is an anti-authoritarian entente–or even coalition–of diverse liberal and libertarian elements, one question that comes to mind is: “What are the most objectionable features of both establishment libertarianism, and establishment liberalism, from the standpoint of achieving such a coalition?”
    1. The problem with mainstream libertarianism is its almost total departure from its radical roots. Early classical liberalism was a revolutionary doctrine, which declared war on the most entrenched class interests of its day. Even the most mainstream of classical liberals (like Adam Smith, James Mill and David Ricardo) displayed considerable hostility to the landed oligarchy and the politically connected mercantilists who dominated Britain in the early nineteenth century. And the classical liberal movement included, as well, a large radical wing represented by thinkers like Thomas Hodgskin, who saw the new capitalist system as a bastard fusion of partially free markets and industrialism with the old feudal class system. For Hodgskin, the new industrial capitalists were amalgamating with the old landed aristocracy to form a new ruling class. The capitalist system that was coming into existence was not a free market, but a new class system in which capitalists controlled the state and used it to enforce special privileges for themselves, in exactly the same way that the landed interests had controlled the state for their own interests under the Old Regime.

    The significance of this radicalism increases when you bear in mind that Hodgskin’s radical wing of classical liberalism overlapped heavily with the early socialist movement, back when a major part of the workers’ movement still aimed simply at abolishing the special privileges of landlords and capitalists and building a market economy based on workers’ cooperatives.

    The radical wing of the classical liberal movement did not by any means disappear, even when classical liberalism as a whole shifted rightward. It survived in the American individualist anarchism of Warren, Tucker and Spooner, and in the various offshoots of Henry George (e.g. Albert Nock and Ralph Borsodi), among other places. Nevertheless, it was relegated to the margin of the larger classical liberal movement.

    For the overall movement, the transition came toward the middle of the nineteenth century, when the industrial capitalists had supplanted the landed elites as the dominant class in Britain. At this point, the main body of classical liberalism shifted its emphasis from an attack on entrenched privilege of the great land-owning classes and mercantilists, to a defense of the interests of industrial capitalists.

    With the political triumph of the Third Estate, the mainstream of classical political economy–the generation after Ricardo and Mill–made the switch to what Marx called “vulgar political economy,” and took up the role of hired ideological prizefighters for capitalist interests.
    From a revolutionary ideology aimed at breaking down the powers of feudal and mercantilist ruling classes, mainstream libertarianism has evolved into a reflexive apology for the institutions today most nearly resembling a feudal ruling class: the giant corporations.
    A useful illustration of the shift is the contrasting positions of the early and late Herbert Spencer. The early Spencer was a disciple of Thomas Hodsgkin, who attacked the artificial property rights of the landed elites and regarded the rents collected by the great landowners as a species of taxation. The later Spencer (although still a more complex thinker than these remarks might suggest) was described by Benjamin Tucker:
    It seems as if he had forgotten the teachings of his earlier writings, and had become a champion of the capitalistic class. It will be noticed that in these later articles, amid his multitudinous illustrations (of which he is as prodigal as ever) of the evils of legislation, he in every instance cites some law passed, ostensibly at least, to protect labor, alleviate suffering, or promote the people’s welfare. He demonstrates beyond dispute the lamentable failure in this direction. But never once does he call attention to the far more deadly and deep-seated evils growing out of the innumerable laws creating privilege and sustaining monopoly. You must not protect the weak against the strong, he seems to say, but freely supply all the weapons needed by the strong to oppress the weak. He is greatly shocked that the rich should be directly taxed to support the poor, but that the poor should be indirectly taxed and bled to make the rich richer does not outrage his delicate sensibilities in the least. Poverty is increased by the poor laws, says Mr. Spencer. Granted; but what about the rich laws that caused and still cause the poverty to which the poor laws add? That is by far the more important question; yet Mr. Spencer tries to blink it out of sight.

    In other words, as Cool Hand Luke would say, “Them pore ole bosses need all the help they can get.”

    2. Establishment liberalism, on the other hand, is all too true to its roots. Its origins lie at the turn of the twentieth century.
    After the Civil War, American society was transformed by giant, centralized, hierarchical organizations: the large corporation and the large government agency. To these was eventually added the large charitable foundation and the university. All these large organizations shared a common organizational style, and a common managerial culture. Progressivism, which was the direct ancestor of twentieth century liberalism, was the ideology of the professional and managerial New Middle Classes that ran these large organizations. Especially as exemplified by Herbert Croly and his associates in the New Republic circle and the National Civic Federation, Progressivism sought to organize and manage society as a whole by the same principles that governed the large organization.
    The managerial revolution carried out by the New Middle Class, in the large corporation, was in its essence an attempt to apply the engineer’s approach (standardizing and rationalizing tools, processes, and systems) to the organization of society as a whole. And these Weberian/Taylorist ideas of scientific management and bureaucratic rationality, first applied in the large corporation, quickly spread not only to all large organizations, but to the dominant political culture. The tendency in all aspects of life was to treat policy as a matter of expertise rather than politics: to remove as many questions as possible from the realm of public debate to the realm of administration by “properly qualified authorities.” As a New Republic editorial put it, “the business of politics has become too complex to be left to the pretentious misunderstandings of the benevolent amateur.” At the same time, the individual was transformed from the independent and self-governing yeoman of the Jeffersonian ideal, to the client of professional bureaucracies. He became a “human reource” who took orders from the Taylorist managers at work to whom he had alienated his craft skills, went hat in hand to the “helping professionals” to whom he had alienated his common sense, and expressed his “individuality” entirely in the realm of private consumption.

    Conclusion. So what do we need? Libertarianism needs to move back to its radical roots. The elements of the libertarian movement that favor genuinely free markets as a matter of principle, as opposed to defending corporate interests under the guise of phony “free market” rhetoric, need to separate the sheep from the goats.

    Liberalism, on the other hand, needs to move away from its managerialist roots (”The body of Leviathan and the head of a social worker,” in Joseph Stromberg’s memorable phrase) and become more genuinely left-wing. It needs to embrace direct democracy, self-management, and decentralism.

    I think there is a huge, unmet demand in this country for a third alternative in politics. Right now, mainstream American politics consists of a Daddy Party and a Mommy Party. The Daddy Party, the Banana Republicans, want to turn this country into one giant dioxin-soaked corporate sweatshop, while acting as Pecker Police and making sure nobody catches a glimpse of Janet Jackson’s tit. The Mommy Party, personified by a 900-foot-tall nanny in kevlar vest and gas mask, has as its slogan “Momma don’t allow! Momma don’t allow!”
    We need an alternative that appeals to everyone who finds both of the above distasteful. The third agenda would be something along the lines of the “Common Sense II” pamphlet put out by the People’s Bicentennial Commission thirty years ago, which promoted local self-government and cooperative economics. Its centerpiece would be reducing the power of both big government and big business, and devolving power to human scale political and economic organizations subject to direct democratic control. The overriding principle would be to eliminate privilege, and to eliminate all the ways that government currently stacks the deck in favor of the rich and big business, and then get out of the way as much as possible. Let workers keep the share of our product that’s currently consumed by useless eaters (landlords, usurers, bureaucrats, and licensed monopolists), and then do with it as we will.
    This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
    http://www.theartofthepossible.net/2008/03/13/libertarianism-and-liberalism-what-went-wrong/
    10:46p
    Set up to fail
    With all the mutual antipathy between left and right anarchists it might be expecting far too much too get enough of them together in any critical mass capable of yielding beneficial energy. That is why it would have to be a new kind of party. A traditional party is a mini-state. Any new replacement party would have to be a federation. A commitment to 'advancing in diversity and striking in unison' would also have to be necessarily combined with a regular weeding program to suspend and expel any known far left or far right ideologues.
    With this basic goal of minarchism and a sunset clause on the entire project a new united front is possible.
    These days any emerging issues can easily be handled on the net so it only looks like the songs of the doomed...no really, this is one 'Big Tent' program for the anarchist masses crying out to breath freely.
    10:56p
    Change we can believe in
    A change in the growth of the worlds largest bureaucracy - the pentagon. A positive change toward negative growth rates across the board and a new era of accountability and citizen audits.
    A change for free universal health cover. This is obviously a growth in the size and power of the state but so long as it is matched and exceeded by the decline in the military-entertainment sector then it remains manageable and sustainable growth. The overall size and power of the state continues to decrease.
    A change in attitude towards all known kidnappers, rapists, torturers, thieves, crooks and criminals - mostly in the Bush ancien-regime but also within the Vichy. No to ' Truth and reconciliation'. Yes to more fresh Nuremberg trials.
    A change in farm aid. The present situation in the West where significant rural gerrymanders lead directly to grinding exploitation for the wretched of the earth is an open wound. This is National Socialism for rich farmers and bloated Agribusiness. It is the worst of Communism meets the worst of Capitalism. It is Statism red in tooth and claw. It can't go on - all this must end. First the stacking of government by rural gerrymanders - then the subsidies that prop up monopolies.
    A change away from representational government toward more direct government. Representational government has proved far to susceptible to corrupt crony capitalism. With todays net there is no excuse for not having transparency, rotatable, recallable delegates and accountability for corruption in real time.
    There's more of course but there are the basics for change we can believe in. If you believe in Tinkerbell go and get the clap.
    11:20p
    The Stamp of Upheaval
    The Stamp of Upheaval
    Will Durst | Bio ( 23/6 )
    Like a blind squirrel tripping over a discarded acorn, the pundits may have accidentally stumbled onto a similar nugget of truth in their speculation that Hillary is making Barack a better candidate. Or maybe he's just a quick learner. Either way, Mr. Obama seems to have gotten real good real quick. This week, in less than 12 hours, he managed to turn a debilitating loss into a triumphal moment of celebration complete with two males holding hands in a non-California or Massachusetts way. From goat to hero in less than a single revolution of Mickey's little hand. That's way beyond Clinton-good. We're verging on Reagan-good here.

    Mr. Elitist has become Mr. Smoothiest. He's as polished as a casaba melon wrapped in a velour golf towel covered in baby powder. More fluid than the lines on a Lamborghini fashioned out of Italian cream cheese resting under heat lamps. Less friction than a bead of sweat between two bodies in high heat at full rut. And if he's not real careful, they're going to start printing up t-shits with a picture of him over the caption: Slick Barry.
    To say that Hillary Clinton beat him in West Virginia is like implying Post-It Notes don't 'library' well in blast furnaces. Or, to use the Appalachian vernacular, he was beaten like a red-headed stepchild. What I'm saying here is: He lost. Real bad. By more than 40 points. Numbers more befitting an also ran than the ostensible front-runner. Not quite the infallible image a candidate being carried on a litter through teeming crowds on his way to a coronation is anxious to project.
    But then, the very day after he got himself royally trounced by that recently transformed friend of the working man, Mr. Obama pulled from out of his hat, not just one, but two major league liberal endorsements. The first rabbit to sneak down his sleeve was that coquettish Democratic Party debutante, Senator John Edwards, who pretended to take almost as long to make up his mind about whom to endorse than he normally spends on his hair. The timing was as lethally effective as ball-peen hammer to the forehead. You might even call it premeditated murder. A classic case of stashing a Heineken in the crisper bin of the fridge at a party in a house that isn't yours.
    Mr. Obama also received the blessing of the national abortion rights action league, NARAL. And the endorsements have hit Hillary Clinton like two sucker punches to the gut with gloves mounted on pneumatic pistons. Both oaths of sanction hurt, but especially the latter. Butting heads while competing for the same third-generation factory worker constituency is one thing. Stealing the feminist vote from the feminist is another.
    Mr. Edwards can be forgiven for jumping on the winning bandwagon, after spending so much time buried in the John Kerry submersible, but Hillary has been a NARAL supporter since day one, so if I were one of the directors of that organization, I would get down on my knees and pray to whatever Supreme Being I believed in that I was never subpoenaed to appear before one of Senator Clinton's subcommittees. Pray and invest in a varied, yet tasteful, wardrobe of Kevlar pantsuits. Why? Because hell hath no fury like a woman getting her butt kicked on the campaign trail.
    Catch Will Durst at the San Francisco Punch Line
    http://www.236.com/blog/w/will_durst/the_stamp_of_upheaval_6572.php

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