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Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
| Time |
Event |
| 12:18a |
Buffalo Bob Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (London, 24 May 1852 – 20 March 1936) was a Scottish politician, writer, journalist and adventurer. He was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP); the first-ever socialist member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; a founder of the Scottish Labour Party (1888-1893); a founder of the National Party of Scotland; and the first president of the Scottish National Party in 1934. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cunninghame-Graham'...After being educated at Harrow public school in England, Robert finished his education in Brussels, Belgium before moving to Argentina to make his fortune cattle ranching. He became known as a great adventurer and gaucho there, and was affectionately known as Don Roberto. He also travelled in Morocco disguised as a Turkish sheik, prospected for gold in Spain, befriended Buffalo Bill in Texas, and taught fencing in Mexico City...' | | 2:31a |
Guerrillas in the Mamista
LEN Deighton has capered off in a new direction, moving the novel of espionage and political intrigue to the brooding tropics of South America. One of Deighton's protagonists, a would-be revolutionary, has no sooner disembarked from the tramp freighter that deposits him in the imaginary nation of Spanish Guiana than his well-bred nostrils are assailed by the ''sour smell of putrefaction'' from the vast rain forest that begins at the decrepit edge of the shantytowns in the capital city of Tepilo.
Spanish Guiana is the kind of country that exports timber, coffee, and cocaine, and imports automatic weapons, mirrored sunglasses, half-baked revolutionaries, and CIA spooks. In addition to these types, MAMista's cast of characters includes a burned-out Australian physician named Ralph Lucas, who's been sent by the trendy leftists of London's Webley-Hockley Foundation to report on the medical needs in the nation's war-torn southern provinces.
Lucas' contact with the guerrilla bands who control the area turns out to be one Inez Cassidy, dedicated revolutionary and world-class knockout. A reader needn't be clairvoyant to guess that their relationship will involve something more than tropical diseases. Nor, for that matter, to recognize that the presence of the inappropriately named Angel Paz (''angel of peace'') bodes no good for either lover.
Inez has seen his type of ''Malibu Marxist'' before. Rich kids like Paz-he grew up in Beverly Hills-invariably ''arrived full of surplus value theory and (went) home wracked with malaria and heavy with disillusion.'' The young man's uncle in L.A. thinks the trip will help the kid grow up. ''They got a whole army of Marxists down there,'' he taunts. ''Go down there and take a look at them before they stuff them and put them into a museum.'' Or before they perish of tropical diseases. Eaten by parasites, wasted by malnutrition, and ridden by factional bickering, the revolutionaries own the jungle only because nobody else wants it.
Far from being the pre-Columbian Eden portrayed in so many films and novels of late, Deighton's rain forest is a pestilential hellhole where leeches, insects, and snakes compete with dysentery and beriberi to finish people off. But there's oil under the swampland, and that raises the stakes in Washington-at least in the opinion of unscrupulous national security adviser John Curl. He dismisses CIA reports correctly assessing the guerrillas' weaknesses as politically unacceptable. ''I prefer to think that maybe any day now (rebel leader) Ramon is going to come roaring out of that jungle like Attila the Hun,'' Curl decides.
An inevitably disastrous U.S. intervention cannot help but follow. As with any Deighton novel, MAMista is crisply written and full of rumpled heroes, sickening careerists, and shrewd ironies. But it's also as predictable as a Dirty Harry movie from beginning to end. | | 12:29p |
What must be done to advance imperialism Todays most active imperialists are Marxists or 'recovering Marxists' '...The Chinese handling of the Tibetan question exposes the faultline in the Marxist doctrine, namely that of the right of self-determination and the rights of minorities, For Marx, class and not nationality was the key factor. His vision of proletarian internationalism was supposed to take one step forward the French Revolution’s declaration of human solidarity. The slogan, “workers of the world unite” stemmed from that belief. Even on the national question and on the right of self-determination Marx was opposed by his arch rival, Bakunin. Lenin was more enthused about the right of self-determination on the condition that it would never precede the interests of socialism. The question of self-determination was totally relegated once the Bolshevik Party was established as the exclusive organisation of the working class. In such a scenario, there was little scope of either autonomy or self-determination. Lenin personally approved the brutal suppression of the local democratic government established by elections in Georgia in 1923. Stalinism had its roots in Leninism...' - FROM http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=3&theme=&usrsess=1&id=205582 | | 12:42p |
Well now you bought it up
Pope Louis brings up the unpleasant attitude of some minor leagues Marxist in the mid-forties. But has he really considered the roots of Marxist obnoxiousness. Heres a clue - it wasn't when Lenin banned factions in 1921.
This year is the anniversary of the Leninist-Trotskyist counter-revolution when Lenin dissolved the constituent assembly, gave the order to attack anarchists in Petrograd and Moscow and finally declared the Red Terror with Trotsky in charge. Marxism became murderous backstabbing exactly ninety years ago this year.
So far as I know the US Marxists hardly killed anybody - but Lenin and Trotsky were responsible for somewhere between several hundred thousand and a couple of million. Stalin added very little new to Leninism and ramped up Leninist and Trotskyist methods. These methods included Chekist tate terror, conscription and slavery, the Gulag system, blocking units, kidnapping, torture and terror famines. All the esssential ingredients of fascism. | | 12:55p |
A Fritzl style police state foreshadowed Lev Lafayette The recent furore of Australian artist Bill Henson is worthy of comment. Henson is one of Australia's most famous artistic photograhers. His work is held at the National Gallery of Australia, the Australian High Court, the Guggenheim in New York, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. He often photographs and displays nude adolescents. Last week the New South Wales police closed down one of his exhibitions. The Prime Minister has described the images as "revolting" [1], a view I cannot understand. On the contrary the images, presented with the stark chiaroscuro, certainly are presented with the artistic standard of beauty. Obviously having spoken to their lawyers, The Age has decided to publish the image was used in the print and email invitation [2]. An excellent debate on the subject has been presented on the site "Junk for Code" [3] What I find very strange is the claim that the images are 'pornographic' - and are therefore illegal when including underaged adolescents. For the life of me I cannot see the sexual content that allegedly exists. Indeed, I worry a great deal about those who apparently can see it. [1] http://news. ninemsn.com. au/article. aspx?id=567968 [2] http://www.theage. com.au/articles/ 2008/05/24/ 1211183189567. html [3] http://www.sauer- thompson. com/junkforcode/ archives/ 2008/05/- bill-hensson. html | | 1:13p |
Rosa Klubb
Mad Marxist mole
'...She still believes in Marxism with a big 'M', as an ideology that's not just something useful but as the ideology that will liberate the whole world. She also believes in the very damaging idea contained in the Communist Manifesto that many of the strands of socialism in that era were destined for the dust heap of history because only Marxist Communism was progressive and represented the wave of the future. I mean, if you think that, that's fine, but Luxemburg goes so far as to label people who believe in these strains of thought 'opportunists' and suggest that they have no place in the German Social Democratic Party, the Russian one, or any others, and that these parties themselves are the wave of the future, with other parties being lesser and theoretically incorrect. Finally, she also supports the general idea of the centralization of political parties but she believes in a more democratic way of putting that centralization into action. No central committee deciding everything, yet she argues that having on party policy and platform that's endorsed throughout the lands where the party is active is the way to go, specifically arguing against federalism as an organizational principle. Sure, the party could do things on the local level and interpret the general party line without having to ask the permission of some unaccountable central committee, but in the end it would have to fall into lock step with what the party commands...' ( From Left Thought )
Rosa could talk under wet cement and agreed with Trotsky that agriculture should be Nationalized. When the Leninist, Stalin finally felt Marxist-Leninist, or strong enough to do this millions died - he was ' dizzy with success' following this 'Left Turn' of his that is now broadly called the Holodomor. | | 1:30p |
Statement by MACG
We are monopolists in the field of politics. We can’t stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution can do it only through one platform and one organization. This is the lesson of the Makhnovista Revolution. That is the lesson of all history since the Makhnovist Revolution. Isn’t that a fact? This is why we are out to destroy every single anarchist federation in the field since then that makes any pretense of being a working-class revolutionary federation. Ours is the only correct program that can lead to revolution. Everything else is deception, treachery. We are monopolists in politics and we operate like monopolists.
Greg ( ablokeimet) for the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group | | 2:48p |
Liquidationism
This is really quite simple. Just take away all the writings of all the capitalists, bourgeois and rich peasants and keep all non-workers and peasants out of revolutionary politics. Just steer by worker and peasant praxis during revolutionary periods and you won't go far wrong even if yr from a bad background and just playing catch-up ball.
Lenin may have been sorely mistaken to talk about a severely limited ' trade-union consciousness'. He later said that he was pulling his dick to hard on this. But was he mistaken to observe that where there are more than one group of serious revolutionists, then there was opportunism?
And any grouping with Peter Boyle, Dave Riley, Sue Bolton, Norm Dixon, Nick Feldman and Luke Weyland in it couldn't possibly be opportunist could it? | | 3:08p |
'How can a revolution be made without executions?' Ideological imperialist Comrade leader Lenin http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/04/90967.phpRather than allow the people themselves to establish autonomist and federated revolutionary regimes in the various areas of the tsarist empire - in the Ukraine, in Georgia, in Siberia and so forth - Lenin insisted that a single regime should rule over all nationalities. This despite the fact he had earlier promised full freedom to all nationalities. The tsarist empire was kept intact with a single party asserting its political dominance - at tremendous cost. The crushing of the revolutionary peasants of the Ukraine is the best known example. Lenin developed a rationale for shooting these potential opponents. Of the ' Menshevics and social-revolutionists who advocated such views,' Lenin wrote that they, ' wonder when we tell them that we are going to shoot them for saying such things. They are amazed at it, but the question is clear: when an army is in retreat, it stands in need of a discipline a hundred times more severe than when it advances because in the latter case everyone is eager to rush ahead. But if now everyone is just as eager to rush back, the result will be a catastrophe. | | 3:44p |
| | 3:58p |
Barnacle's foul hull
THE royal commission that investigated Australia's intelligence agencies in the 1970s distrusted ASIO and went behind its back to get a second level of security at its headquarters.
The National Archives of Australia today released more than 1000 pages of previously classified documents from the Hope Royal Commission.
From 1974 to 1977 Justice Robert Hope investigated, largely in secret, Australian intelligence agencies, which included the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the overseas-operating Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).
Justice Hope's secretary George Brownbill offered up a rare insight into the workings of the commission.
"I asked ASIO to install a secure electronic perimeter, just to be on the safe side however, I got the special operations people from ASIS to put in another inside the ASIO one," Mr Brownbill told reporters, historians and intelligence operatives today.
Barnacle, your ultra-factional snooping failed when you tried in vain to hack into the LPF email discussion list. Now you clumsily
demand when the LPF decided that there was a process - or the danger - of liquiduidation of the DSP's Marxist politics. Barnacle
wants to know precisley when the clock stopped. He demands it in the hope he can extract some tortured truth or evidence about the bad, evil LPF. | | 4:08p |
Whats new at the RAT Institute
Cancer biologist Patrick Lee was surprised to find I am Legend's cancer-fighting virus was similar to his own theories. Here are the top 10 signs your research resembles science fiction.
10. Every time you explain what it is, thunder crashes and lightning strikes dramatically.
9. You don't have to worry about minor details such as whether the alien mothership's computer is actually compatible with a Mac.
8. The first people to contact you after the publication of your research is Time Warner, asking to buy the movie rights.
7. Every time you cook something new you feel Sigourney Weaver has been there before you in the Alien movies.
6. You're close to a breakthrough. If only you could work out how to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
5. Every time you come up with a new theory you swear you can hear Captain Picard say: "Make it so".
4. Your colleagues look like they are straight out of the Star Wars cantina.
3. Your time machine technician, The Doctor, keeps taking you "accidentally" to the Voyager because Seven of Nine has expressed interest in his sonic screwdriver.
2. Your lab assistant takes off her glasses, shakes out her hair and your life changes forever.
1. Any part of your research uses a flux capacitor.
Contributors: Don Knowles, Anthony Long, Iain Kennedy, Brian Greaney, Keith Cundale, Gavin Pay, Diane Hesse, Andrew Taylor and Peter Vasey. - FROM The Austrian IT | | 4:09p |
Ramping up the re-invasion
THE possibility of federal intervention into suburban Aboriginal communities
was flagged yesterday by Environment Minister Peter Garrett.
He said the Rudd Government needed to "look seriously at some big steps" on
quarantining welfare payments to ensure they were being used properly.
Mr Garrett said if it became clear "particular strategies" from the Northern
Territory intervention had worked, they should be considered for other
communities, including for La Perouse in his Sydney electorate of Kingsford
Smith.
So this is a bi-partisan policy then. Turn Australia into one vast concentration camp.
This calls for a measured response - I suggest an ultra-violent revolution with mass hangings of ALP members, militarists and high church shitheads. Bring back hanging. Yr milage may vary. | | 4:21p |
Conduct unbecoming
Melbourne university drops charges against Paul Mees - Andrew Trounson | May 27, 2008
AMID claims it was undermining academic freedoms, the University of Melbourne has dropped misconduct charges against academic Paul Mees.
He was alleged to have villified state government officials at a conference last year.
But Dr Mees is still angry and is contemplating court action for financial losses suffered in switching jobs and potential damage to his reputation.
Dr Mees also claims the university, in dropping the charges on a procedural technicality - that he was not fully appraised of the university's allegations misconduct against him - is refusing to investigate the more important question of whether it had bowed to political pressure in taking action against him in the first place.
"Letting me off on a technicality isn't enough to satisfy me," Dr Mees told HES.
"The issue of whether academics are free to criticise the government, and how free they are to criticise, is unresolved.''
The university launched an independent investigation into Dr Mees' behaviour in December, only after it had recieved a complaint from Victoria's department of infrastructure. That has sparked speculation that the investigation was politically motivated.
The university also widened the matter to include allegations dating from 2005, that Dr Mees had been abusive to staff, though these hadn't previously been investigated.
"I'm concerned about the general principle and the implications for other academics that may be put in the same situation if someone from the government complains about them,'' Dr Mees said.
Mees is a well known and often strident critic of Victoria's privatisation of public transport.
At a conference in August last year he publically attacked some government bureaucrats as being "liars and frauds who should be in jail'' in connection with the preparation of report on public transport.
In February, the investigation upheld the misconduct charges, raising the prospect that Dr Mees would be demoted at a cost of almost $10,000 to his annual salary.
But in the wake of the allegations becoming public earlier this month, a university review committee has now upheld Dr Mees' appeal based on "procedural grounds".
And given Dr Mees has resigned and will soon take up a new position at RMIT, the university has decided to drop the matter.
The decision comes as some of the university's academics were agitating for staff to issue a public condemnation of the university on Wednesday.
"The university has determined, on the grounds that further steps would be required to resolve this matter, and as Dr Mees will leave the university's employment at the end of this month, that no disciplinary action will be taken against him,'' vice chancellor Glyn Davis said in a statement.
"This brings to an end the disciplinary process in relation to the allegations against Dr Mees and no penalty will be applied,'' Professor Davis said.
Professor Davis had an amicable meeting with Dr Mees late this afternoon to inform him of the decision.
Dr Mees said he couldn't comment on whether the university had caved into public pressure.
"I suspect they got some legal advice. Whether they got any PR advice I don't know,'' he said. | | 4:26p |
One for the Adams family
Maybe if Philip's not to busy playing Jeeves to the biggest Busy-body in Australia - the Krudster - then maybe he could help us organize a boycott of Egyptian tourism. I envisage him popping out of a sarcophagus with the message that while everyone and their Mummy knows about dis-investing in Occupied Palestine by now there is still no large Sphinx-like bottom-up movement yet to help stamp out torture. You could say we were all in
' de Nile' so to speak as all we have seen so far has been a crock. I beseech thee in the bowels of Krudd - for the love of God something surely must be done. | | 4:40p |
Beautiful Losers
The show is promoted using an image of an inflatable sex doll and according to its own blurb is a "freak fest featuring a cast of necrophiliacs, murderers, chronic masturbators, prison bitches and Jesus freaks".
Question time in parliament? No actually. Its just another faction emerging from the anus of the DSP. | | 6:19p |
Worrying Bush body language
Some of the most serious speech's the Chimperor has been called on to deliver recently have all featured some tetchy, abrupt and dismissive flicking of his speech notes. Sometimes his lectern conceals this, but its so pronounced you can't help but notice it anyway. Any government that doesn't have a bombproof succession plan for any early retirement of this clown is criminally negligent imho. He's clearly a flake who doesn't give a flying fuck. | | 6:39p |
Deformed workers of the world unite Looks like the Pontifex Maximus of marxmail is sniffing the DSP rump on the issue of ' state-caps'. And co-horts, Glparramatta and Alex Miller look like being more-catholic-than the Pope on this issue. http://links.org.au/node/439Regular readers may remember this issue that can even be traced back to the early Max Shactman split with Trotsky over Finland. In 1940 Shactman wanted advice from Trotsky about how to handle this issue. Trotsky advised him that Finland was being liberated by a deformed workers state and that it remained vital to defend this state of affairs. As Shactman couldn't follow the Napoleonic logic of Trotsky he hived off and much later contributed to the well known neocon stream in the US. So a tiny and rapidly diminishing bunch of foaming mad red-fascist nutcases continue to swear blind that Leninism was never capitalist and Leninism -Stalinism is somehow defensible in some rational way! Some of the most prominent of these barking-mad left fascist nutters are clustered in Peter Boyles DSP sect and Pope Louis Proyects marxmail cult. File under serious losers and laughing stocks. | | 7:32p |
Sits on Spain http://libcom.org/library/self-management-spanish-revolution-point-blankThe Sits inherit quite a lot of the style of the choleric German professors and as such tend to shed at least as much heat as light nevertheless certain individual Sits were generally respectful of anarchism during the sixties. This article is also generally supportive of the Spanish anarchists of the late 30's. However there are some serious problems. 1) There appears to be some confusion on how to differentiate Anarcho-syndical unions and workers and agrarian councils. I suspect that a general debate would come to the consensus that they were the same. Such a debate was held in the twenties about the difference between socialism and communism. As a practical matter no difference was found. It pays to keep in mind that the Marxist council communists caught up with anarchism around 50 years after Fanelli's visit to Spain. And that Council Communism Marxist style was a patchy innovation over 10 years and three major sites. Holland, Italy and Germany. Not many of these 'new anarchists' were inclined to even acknowledge their debt to anarchism. So the old ignorant and arrogant style of Marxism was bought forward into these groups. 2) The description of the FAI as a Leninist vanguardist formation is risible - however the potential is there in any organization for centralization and authoritarianism...even the Situationists. ( Sear ' The realization and supression of the situationist movement' by Bob Black ) 3) Women were excluded from the Durruti column. I didn't see this mentioned in this article. It's a not unimportant factoid. 4) Berneri's idea to appeal for solidarity with the Morrocan's who were promised independence by Franco is also left out. There were good reasons not to 'frighten the horses' and follow up on this Bakuninist ( Poland 1830) idea, but the democracies were in full appeasement mode. In light of this the idea needs mentioning - it could be critical in the future and was critical in the recent Chinese arms shipment business. I know this is an old leaflet and the Sits are all kaput but there could be a footnote. 5) A recent work by Beevor floats the notion that more could have been done through guerilla warfare. Certainly in light of actions by people like Sabate this is a very interesting line of thought. After all this sort of warfare was made famous during the Napoleonic occupation. There seems to be a general paradox here that anarchists did not display enough leadership and at the same time they did! ( By entering the popular government) I regard it as a feature - not a bug - that anarchists do not seek to assert total authority. The onus is on those who berate us for not seizing total power. Also some note should be taken of the attrition taken during the pisotlero era and the failed 34 events. Certainly no anarchist need defer to any Marxist in any matter relating to history...at least until some Marxist decides to write some truthful history. And any Marxist who wants to claim anarchism as Marxism today will have a fight on their hands. A war to the knife. | | 8:23p |
Slack bastard
Rat weasel slackbastard seems to have rethought his support for the Swedish/ New Statesman/ Neo Labor style police state in order to save the children idea he had a few years back. I haven't added up posts or anything either but it LOOKS like he may even be moving to a more balanced appraisal of the real dangers of fascist ideology today. Like most of them are RED fascists.
If he keeps growing up in public - I don't know how old he is. 15 and a half? - then he may even come around to apologizing for lying to the members of the anarchobase board when he said that I had been warned before being abruptly ( fascistically? ) deported from that board. I don't mind @ndy accusing people of supporting fascism when he's right about it - its just that in my case I think he was wrong and he should apologize, if not to me then to the others on that board. Falling for net hoaxes could happen to anyone - telling a deliberate lie is something else again. Or maybe it was a mistake? Maybe he had a lot on his plate? I suspect he's doing a little , a smidgen, more fact checking these days as indeed we should all. Its not like using Google is so hard. |
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