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Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
| Time |
Event |
| 11:24a |
| | 11:40a |
Close brush with derangement syndrome
Hey I like the boy!
Everybody hates George Bush.’ (Think Progress)
[T]he Dallas Morning News reports that “even Texas Republicans such as Dallas Rep. Pete Sessions are distancing themselves from President Bush”: “The president, Mr. Sessions told a group of eighth-graders visiting the Capitol last week from Akiba Academy in Dallas, ‘is doing everything he thinks is correct,’ and yet ‘the American people are fed up…. we’ve lost the House and Senate, and everybody hates George Bush.’” - MTA
Who else in the modern era has done so much to advance anarchy? | | 11:43a |
Scotty more honest than Francis shock McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war. • He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war. • He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.” Francis Fukuyama TONY JONES: So when exactly did you see the light? FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: It was in the year before the war, between September 11 and March 2003. I spent a lot of time in Europe actually arguing about American foreign policy and I think, you know, there was a lot of arguments domestically as well and just in reflecting about, as I said, you know, it did seem to me that my familiarity with American involvement in this kind of conflict there really is a problem in the underestimation of the difficulty of transforming Third World countries and I just thought that the administration was really downplaying how difficult a process that that would be and that that was, you know, that was the real problem in going forward. TONY JONES: And they were being driven, ideologically by a group of people who you would think of as old friends, neo-conservatives the co-signatories of that letter in the New York Times you famously identified, this is what later, famously identified neo-conservatism with Leninism, what did you mean by that? FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: Actually it wasn't my, it wasn't me that came up with this but in a certain sense I do have a Marxist view of history in the sense that I think there are these broad social and economic processes that lead to modernisation that ultimately drive countries to becoming democratic or adapting democratic institutions. And I think what my neo-confriends wanted to do was that wasn't good enough for them, they wanted to speed up the process by using American power to drive things forward. So that's the difference between Marx and Lenin. Lenin wanted to use power to bring the revolution closer and I think that the original Leninism didn't work very well and I think that the new American Leninism was a similar disaster. MORE ON http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2255719.htmYeah right Now Francis is a Wilsonian. They are as different from neocons as Coke from Pepsi. | | 11:50a |
Bill Henson petition
A Melbourne publisher says Australia is in danger of becoming a nanny state over the controversy surrounding the photographs of Bill Henson.
Louise Adler, the head of Melbourne University Publishing, is one of 44 prominent figures who have urged Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to rethink his condemnation of the photos as "absolutely revolting".
Adler calls the controversy a 'beat-up'.
"I don't believe that paedophiles and pornographers are going to rush to Roslyn Oxley's gallery to find Bill Henson's work for stimulation," she said.
"The question is, is it a private matter, one of taste or is it that the community has to come down and make a judgement?
"Do we need to be chaperoned by the state on these questions?"
Police are considering laying charges against Henson after raiding a Sydney exhibition of his work.
They have also ordered the Newcastle Art Gallery not to show two of his photos featuring young, naked models.
The Albury Council has also removed three photographs from the Albury Regional Art Gallery, in southern New South Wales.
Turnbull, Brown join forces in Henson's defence
High-profile Opposition frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull has spoken out in defence of artistic freedom after revealing that he owns works by controversial photographer Bill Henson.
The Opposition treasury spokesman says he has two of the artist's photographs - one depicting a face in profile and the other of a sunset.
There is a rising storm over this arch-reactionary repression. Much more online about it. I have a suspicion this is connected - not only with the wowser invasion (re-invasion) of first nations but the Popes visit. We might expect to even see derelicts murdered in the lead up to Nazi Youth day catholic style. Operation clean up. | | 12:02p |
Higher petrol prices needed urgently
Americans cut back on driving in March, compared to the previous March, more than in any single month since such record-keeping began in 1942. It was a 4.3 percent drop in miles driven, a reduction of 11 billion miles.
Faster please | | 12:15p |
Cons crack - Dems off with the fairies
Neocons and recovering neocons are coming very close to admitting the Big Lie technique. Fukuyama, Scotty and now the blackshirt fascist...
Condi's Consensus [Michael Ledeen]
I agree with Jonah (nothing new there, I know), and I think we should add one more stick to the load on that donkey: the lawyers. Why did we go to war with Iraq? As Jonah says, there were many reasons, but one was surely that there were legal "hooks" and even U.N. votes on which to hang a rationale. WMDs were part of the whole legalistic/U.N. lobster pot, Iraq had given certain promises, and they were invariably found to have been broken. So we were legally entitled to go after Saddam. Plus there was Blair, don't forget. I was told at the time that he was insisting on (yet another) U.N. resolution, because his lawyers had warned him that, without one, he might be prosecuted as a war criminal. And so the whole thing dragged on and on... The Corner
Its quite safe for the rotten fascist creeps to try some inoculation now - the Vichy DINO's comprehensively dropped all inquiries last year when their endless fucking bullshit crap-campaign in the ass began.
And impeachment was removed even before that revealing these craven lying cowards as getaway drivers for the murdering thieves in the Bush regime. Collaborators, conmen, criminal accomplices - thats Dems all over. | | 12:23p |
Breaking
A man, believed to be homeless, has been found dead in a harbourside park close to the centre of Sydney, police say.
Police said they found the man's body at 8am (AEST) on Wednesday in thick scrub in a part of the Domain known as The Harbour Walk.
The man is thought to have died in his sleep.
A crime scene has been established but police said they were not treating the death as suspicious. | | 12:25p |
Imagine theres no DSP
No megaphone screaming, no third-worldist Stalinism. Above us only ASIO
AUSTRALIA'S domestic spy agency, ASIO, was dysfunctional throughout much of the Cold War and was probably infiltrated by hostile foreign agents, according to previously top-secret documents from the 1970s.
More than three decades after the Whitlam government appointed a royal commission to investigate Australia's main intelligence agencies, some of the most scathing findings have been laid bare for the first time in documents released by the National Archives.
During a three-year inquiry, conducted largely in secret from 1974, Justice Robert Hope identified a litany of problems in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, leading him to conclude that it "may be, or may have been, penetrated by a hostile intelligence service".
The fresh volumes of classified material released yesterday paint a damning picture of ASIO, from its formation in 1949 by Labor prime minister Ben Chifley, through to the mid-1970s.
According to Justice Hope, record-keeping at ASIO was shambolic, staff morale was low and agents spent more time digging dirt on left-wing sympathisers than looking into the greater threat posed by Soviet bloc spies operating in Australia.
"ASIO could not be taken seriously as an efficient organisation, still less an effective security organisation," he wrote.
The report pointed to 11 indicators suggesting ASIO had been compromised. Five of those indicators remain so sensitive that they have been excised in part or in full from the papers released yesterday.
Among concerns made public were the existence of counter-intelligence operations that ran to sudden and inexplicable conclusions, and that ASIO's limited counter-espionage capability consistently lost status, staff and effectiveness.
Justice Hope said measures to ensure ASIO recruits were not security risks could "best be described as naive".
"There are some aspects of the personalities and conduct of some present and former officers in ASIO which could render them liable to blackmail," he reported. "ASIO must take steps to guard effectively against penetration or neutralisation by those very people it should be investigating."
The report suggested some of the concerns raised over ASIO's vulnerability to espionage came from allied intelligence services in Britain and the United States.
Justice Hope was particularly critical of ASIO's leadership, which he said had "acted for decades in a capricious, arbitrary and ad hoc way".
Justice Hope found ASIO in such a state of "neglect, even indifference" during his inquiry that he went to then prime minister Gough Whitlam in late 1975 and recommended the immediate removal of the agency's director-general, Peter Barbour. Then opposition leader Malcolm Fraser supported the move and Mr Barbour was dismissed.
Justice Hope found ASIO was preoccupied with targeting left-wing groups and the anti-Vietnam War protest movement to an unjustifiable degree, while failing to keep an eye on Soviet agents in Australia. Not a single spy had been caught since the Petrov affair of the 1950s.
"It is my opinion that ASIO has pursued radicals beyond what is required to obtain security," he reported.
He found that ASIO was so politicised that it would communicate gossip and rumour to the Menzies Liberal government that could then be used in Parliament to attack Labor. He had found cases of MPs writing to the attorney-general seeking ASIO information.
George Brownbill, who was Justice Hope's deputy, yesterday recounted how former ASIO chief Charles Spry had slipped pieces of gossip to then prime minister Robert Menzies or to his attorney-general.
"The ASIO files disclosed numerous cases where gossip and tittle-tattle about people and their so-called communist sympathies was recounted to certain figures in the Menzies governments and then revealed in some cases under parliamentary privilege," he said.
"As we found out later and with more detailed inquiry, much of this was no more than slander under privilege. That is, the evidence was just not there."
Justice Hope also reported into the then secret intelligence agencies housed within the Defence and Foreign Affairs departments. He found that Australia's international spy agency, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), and the Defence Signals Directorate were both well run and well managed.
Although the Whitlam Labor government instituted the royal commission, the series of reports were completed under the Fraser Liberal government.
Thirty years on, ASIO's current director-general, Paul O'Sullivan, said much had changed at the agency. "We have a 24/7 in-house royal commission, that is called the inspector-general of security intelligence," Mr O'Sullivan told Sky News.
"We're accountable every day of the week to the Attorney-General and through him to the national security committee of cabinet." | | 2:33p |
Criminal conspiracy
'...An admission by a Cheney Administration insider that Rove and Libby did in fact conspire to deceive Fitzgerald and the grand jury is pretty big. If nothing else it blows away Kevin "Centrist" Drum's theory that there was nothing going on with Rove's four visits to the grand jury...'
It would represent criminal depraved indifference not to chase up on this lead. To re-open and widen the Plame exposure case and the reasons given for the supreme crime - aggressive illegal war, involving the bombing of many countries, the use of napalm, cluster mines and similar weapons, systemic and sustained torture that is ongoing, kidnapping, genocide, mass theft, gross corruption and many other rapes and war crimes that are ongoing. Also and concurrently a deep Watergate style Senate investigation is warranted into the cover up of the worst set of crimes since Watergate itself and the Iran-Contra scandal. The cover-up is also a crime. | | 3:14p |
Tamarind seeds
Another interesting sub-story of that Paraguay book ( Tomb of the inflatable pig) was the three great migrations of Mennonites from Russia to Paraguay. Each was successively harder and the last involved a grueling escape from Siberia. On their way these last survivors picked up some tamarind seeds in SE Asia. These would later take root where precious little was supposed to - the Chaco wilderness of Paraguay.
I suppose the mother-of-all migrations was the humans out of Africa. And what a great mass re-union when the Indian tribes of the Mississippi delta region played their musical instruments for the first African- American arrivals. After all those tens of thousands of years we finally meet again. What a really long strange trip thats been around the world. Something good had to come out of it. | | 3:35p |
For two generations to agree
For two generations of Marxists to agree just add fear and loathing of anarchy
'...Speaking of ‘1968′, Mick Armstrong of local Trotskyist group Socialist Alternative has apparently just completed a speaking tour on the subject with fellow Italian Marxist Yurii Colombo. Bob Gould attended the presentation in Sydney and, perhaps not unexpectedly, was not impressed. Which is unfortunate, as Mick and Bob were certainly able to reach agreement on the G20 protest in Melbourne in 2006. Bob wrote:
Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment was a funny movie, but 100 Morgans running around is a political pain in the neck.
The old movie, Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, starring a very young Vanessa Redgrave, is one of my personal all-time favourite movies. The penultimate scene, with the whole world chasing Morgan in his monkey suit all over London, is very funny indeed.
One Morgan is okay, but a hundred or so southern-hemisphere Black Bloc wannabes trashing police vehicles at an otherwise peaceful but relatively small Melbourne demonstration, in the current reactionary Australian political climate, is something essentially quite different to Morgan’s monkey suit.
The essential question [sic] is the fact that these irresponsible political adventurers disguise their faces. I agree strongly with Mick Armstrong’s post on this matter on Leftwrites, and I defer to his knowledge, based on his investigation as to who these people were [viz, crazy, ultra-violent, exploitative, hostile, contemptuous, abusive, ultra-sectarian, anarchist provocateurs and wreckers from New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, England and interstate]. The very act of people from outside a city invading a demonstration in another city with the clear intention of launching a semi-military attack on the cops, with their faces covered, irrespective of the consequences for the rest of the demonstrators, is a calculated political act directed against the bulk of the demonstrators.
People with covered faces who attack the cops, unless they are rather unlucky and their covering falls off, are very dangerous to everybody else at the demonstrations, and quite possibly include fascists and agents provocateur… real agents provocateur certainly do exist, and organised contingents with covered faces clearly facilitate the [activities] of real agents provocateur…' - @ndys | | 3:45p |
That anal-sex shall not perish from this land
In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Barack Obama echoed Bill Clinton by saying, “Government can’t solve all our problems — and we don’t expect it to” (at which point the applause in his Democratic audience noticeably dimmed). He went on to say, “That’s how we’ve always changed this country — not from the top down, but from the bottom up.”
That is Barack Obama’s opportunity, as it is ours. If Obama seizes it, wins the election, and transforms Washington — moving government to the thriving, innovative, problem-solving private rear-hole sector from the decaying, old, cuntish industrial public production sector — he and his party can snatch the future and govern America for the next 25 years. Anarchists may want to get there first. Bareback if necessary.
Libertarian socialists do have solutions. Our answer is “no god, no master”; our answer is a directly networked democracy that is more natural. Choice and diversity, if entrusted to people, require — and create — economic freedom. Anarchists need to re-learn the language of the best of the environmental and civil-rights movements, not only because it is more marketable, but also because it more accurately reflects the organic liberty and self-government we fight for and cherish.
Our theme, our brand, our identity? How about this: Anarchists are the not the party of a decaying, old, static, industrial-age, top-down government in Washington. We are the communications-age movement of genuinely democratic, dynamic self-government — of, for, and by real people.
We want to get money and power out of Washington and into the hands of the people — not only because negatively we want no military-entertainment complex run by the worlds largest bureaucracy , but also because we believe people who live in liberty create the best positive self-management when they move radically to govern themselves. Freedom is always taken - never given. Ours is a purpose-driven populism, determined to run the last empire into the ground, because if we do that, Anarchists can achieve anything in the world. | | 4:03p |
FBI plane scandal One of the few, if any, contracts let overseas for an entire plane is - or used to be till just recently - a contract let to a Victorian company to make a specialized spyplane for the FBI. In light of recent revelations that FBI agents have become regular witnesses at US government run torture sessions shouldn't this situation be suspended? How can we trade with known kidnappers, terrorists and torturers? The United States Civil Air Patrol use 17 Airvans in Search and Rescue operations... FROM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gippsland_GA8 | | 4:25p |
A spammer and an identity thief exposed I confronted this spamming jerk-off prick over his repeated spamming of the Smygo list. As nothing could be done about this spamming shitheel I de-subbed myself from this list. If the rotten stinking little criminal scumbag is still spamming this list maybe he could be de-subbed as a known identity thief? - FROM http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/54425'...Norm "Ambrose" Dixon opened an email account with my name on it and used it to try and extract information from people under this false pretence. Had he been successful, he would have been potentially privy to all or most of my correspondence related to the lpf. Surely a member of the NE engaging in covert ops against rank and file party members who happen to have a political disagreement is a *political* problem, and has a corrosive effect on trust inside the party. How could it possibly be otherwise? I can assure you I personally was in shock when I discovered this determined attempt at identity fraud. When I read Dave Holmes' report to the next NC I had to come to grips with the fact that I could not any longer necessarily trust DSP majority members around my computer. Barnacle reckons this is "faux outrage", well I think that says more about his hardened cynicism than anything else. In case it escaped your attention, the case is documented here: ["Barnacle E. Pumpkin 'stumbles upon' the LPF list"] http://www.lpf.org.au/?q=node/4Barnacle AKA ' glparramatta ' | | 4:41p |
Dog bites man story - Uglies take over Liberal Party
Rupert Murdoch's petty, spiteful, poisonous media have brought us redneck rubes here in this unofficial US state, jokes about killing presidential candidates and pairing their names with those of mass murderers - how can we ever repay him?
Alan Bond university graduates can hold their heads high once again - retreat to win is the bankrupts way.
"John McCain's in the news. Earlier today, John McCain released 1,200 pages of his medical records. Or, as his doctor calls it, Chapter One." --Conan O'Brien
"Speaking of McCain's medical records, John McCain's doctor says that McCain's service in the Vietnam War is unlikely to have any affect on his health. I think that's great. Yeah. However, the doctor says that McCain's health might be affected by his service in the Civil War. ... A slight musket wound in the toe." --Conan O'Brien
It was a huge document, almost 1,200 pages long. More than 84 pages on his ear hair alone. ... I guess somebody went through it. He's in great shape. Doctors say he could potentially live all the way through 2010. So that's good news." --Jimmy Kimmel
"And McCain released 1,200 pages of medical documents this week, to prove that he is healthy. 1,200 pages to prove he's healthy? Man. Man, how many does Dick Cheney have? My God!" --Jay Leno
"Earlier this week, Vice President Dick Cheney gave the commencement speech at the Coast Guard Academy. He was given a 19-gun salute. And two Coast Guard members were slightly injured when Cheney returned fire." --Jay Leno
"Well, actually, on the news, they stress that these vice presidential meetings were only preliminary. And before any final decision is made, they say that McCain will sit down with his senior advisers. His senior advisers? The guy is 71. What, are they from the Millard Fillmore administration?" --Jay Leno
"And when speaking in Montana, Barack Obama got a standing ovation when he said, 'It is time to take back the country.' The bad news: he was on an Indian reservation at the time." --Jay Leno
BTW Barry - Mauthhausen was a punishment camp for Auschwitz so there are camps and there are camps. | | 5:27p |
Expert 'hands-in' guide NEW YORK — Before embarking on a six-week tour for her new book, “Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships,” noted sex educator, author and adult filmmaker Tristan Taormino spoke to XBIZ about her latest project: the book and corresponding resource website for those interested in non-traditional relationships. Taormino, speaking from her home in upstate New York, noted cultural changes in the way society views traditional relationships and trends toward a broader acceptance of non-monogamous or open relationships. “It’s interesting that on a lot of these social networking sites now, which organize a lot of people’s lives — on Facebook, you can say that you’re in an open relationship. That’s a shift, obviously,” she said. “I think on MySpace, you can say you’re a swinger,” she said. “There are these other options for people. And in terms of meeting other people, with Craigslist and some of these other sites, you can pretty much find anything you want.” Referring to “The Ethical Slut,” authored in 1997 by Dossie Eastmen, as one of the few books dealing with the topic of open relationships, Taormino was motivated to readdress the subject. Based on her on observations of people in different types of relationships, Taormino spent a year and a half conducting 126 interviews for “Opening Up.” “I interviewed people from all walks of life and all different backgrounds who are in some kind of relationship that is not monogamous,” she said, “and that could be anything — from someone who’s a swinger, to someone who considers their relationship monogamy ‘with benefits,’ to one spouse is straight and the other has come out as gay and they have an open relationship, to people who identify as polyamorous.” In addition to the book, Taormino also has launched a new website with resources and community networking features, for those interested in nontraditional relationships, OpeningUp.net. According to Taormino, the site’s main feature is a constantly updated resource guide, categorized by region, so that users can find national and local support groups, social organizations, as well as research- and spiritually-based groups, all centered around non-traditional relationship lifestyles. There also is a feature called the Open List, which has contact information for professionals such as doctors and counselors that are “polyamorous-friendly.” Message boards are available for users to communicate with each other, and Taormino is also hosting a regularly updated blog dealing with open relationships issues, and which will soon feature reports from the author as she travels on the book tour. “The feedback has been really amazing,” Taormino said. “I’ve gotten a lot of good comments. I feel like that if you read the news — the topics of monogamy, marriage and fidelity, commit, as well as non-monogamy, open marriage — it’s a really hot topic right now.” “We’ve gotten some conversations going on the message boards, which is always the hardest thing to get going,” she added. “Enough people are still not commenting on my blog posts. I see my traffic, so I know they’re there — so make comments! I would like to have hear what people want to have and what they would find helpful.” As an adult filmmaker, Taormino continues to helm the Vivid-Ed brand of educational videos, though her role has expanded to include that of executive producer. She plans to nurture other sex educators and adult industry personalities, to direct educational titles for the line. So far, performer Penny Flame has been the newest addition to the Vivid-Ed roster with the soon-to-released “Penny Flame’s Expert Guide to Hand Jobs,” followed by a second release that will feature the topic of rough sex. Taormino said she also will continue to direct and, not surprisingly, she expects some crossover, from her writing, website and videos, as well as new educational seminars that she will be teaching, based on “Opening Up.” “I am shooting the ‘Expert Guide to Threesomes,’ so there will be some things in their about how to negotiate and communicate, which overlap with some of the things in the book,” Taormino said. As an educator with a diverse platform from which to share her views and information, Taormino said that she feels that an important aspect of her work is to point out to people that they have many options — more now, than ever. “That’s the important thing — I do not purport that an open relationship is a better type of relationship or is more evolved or is more political — I don’t believe that,” she said. “I just believe that people have to choose their relationship style consciously so that it fits their life and their needs and their desires.” http://www.xbiz.com/news/all/94450 | | 5:50p |
Not-voting activists update
Not voting is 'not-doing-anything'. It's not doing anything stupid.
Take my federal seat of McEwan...the present member is a clapped out old Liberal party 'ugly'. But it turns out that eight people voted twice!
( As at least one anarchist advised pre-election! )
So lets review.
The Alternative Liberal Party win the seat by a seven vote margin. Cue recount.
The old member - an old battle-ax- then takes the seat with 12 vote margin...then this turns into the last supper with a shit sandwich. Now its a lawyers picnic.
Could it all happen in a nicer Governor-Generalate? | | 7:53p |
Impeaching Pelosi
In a scathing new memoir, former White House spokesman Scott McClellan goes after his former bosses for using propaganda to start a war -- and after the press corps for not being skeptical enough of what McClellan himself told them. Now if Pelosi says impeachment is still off the table maybe her corrupt lying collaborating ass ought to be impeached!
Starting wars is the ' Supreme Crime' punishable by shooting and/or hanging under International precedent.
Covering up crimes like this is also a capital crime. | | 8:04p |
Chinese air-pollution is up Boycott Beijing - if only for yr lungs Parents’ Grief Turns to Rage at Chinese Officials DUJIANGYAN, China — Bereaved parents whose children were crushed to death in their classrooms during the earthquake in Sichuan Province have turned mourning ceremonies into protests in recent days, forcing officials to address growing political repercussions over shoddy construction of public schools. Parents of the estimated 10,000 children who lost their lives in the quake have grown so enraged about collapsed schools that they have overcome their usual caution about confronting Communist Party officials. Many say they are especially upset that some schools for poor students crumbled into rubble even though government offices and more elite schools not far away survived the May 12 quake largely intact. On Tuesday, an informal gathering of parents at Juyuan Middle School in Dujiangyan to commemorate their children gave way to unbridled fury. One of the fathers in attendance, a quarry worker named Liu Lifu, grabbed the microphone and began calling for justice. His 15-year-old daughter, Liu Li, was killed along with her entire class during a biology lesson. “We demand that the government severely punish the killers who caused the collapse of the school building,” he shouted. “Please, everyone sign the petition so we can find out the truth.” The crowd grew more agitated. Some parents said local officials had known for years that the school was unsafe but refused to take action. Others recalled that two hours passed before rescue workers showed up; even then, they stopped working at 10 p.m. on the night of the earthquake and did not resume the search until 9 a.m. the next day. read article Read Article Tuesday May 27, 2008 11:42 pm Source: New York Times Author: ANDREW JACOBS Published: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/world/asia/28quake.html?hpThe brutal polluted totalitarian Marxist police state of China is defended somewhere...@marxmail for example. | | 8:12p |
US election shaping up nicely
While I'm furious that its taken all the clear-air away from the anti-war effort, things are actually looking really good on the election front...really good for ANARCHISM!
Hillary will soon be melting, MELTING, while both Obama and McCain are the incredible shrinking men.
McCain is a sick old bag of pus looking more and more like the Emperor from Star Wars while Barry is falling to bits trying to keep all his lies tarballed and g-zipped. As a Jedi Knight he looks more like an Ewok everyday.
This creates a great opening for libertarian socialism.
Rather than Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum choose direct democracy.
Anarchists should leverage all the exposure politics they can get from now on out. If young people really are looking for a radical alternative that works then we're it. Chances like this one are rare so lets not blow it people. A tide taken at the flood oft leads on to good fortune - on such a tide we are now afloat! | | 8:24p |
The WMDs are incoming
In 'The Rebel' Camus argues that any rebel may kill, so long as they are prepared to die in turn.
That was all very well 60 odd years ago, but since then the individuals power to kill has been ramped up tremendously and if plotted on a graph then a ' Death Star' scenario is possible sooner than we think.
This makes it imperative to stamp out religion imho.
Should anyone who believes in an afterlife - especially a pleasant afterlife or paradise - then it is only logical that they would be more inclined to use any 'doomsday device' such as several hundred nukes. Enough to create a nuclear winter for several years. The odds of this happening could, however, be diminished by reducing the number of 'true believers'. There is already a healthy consensus to keep religion out of politics - that world is growing as I speak. So if we keep up the good fight to save secular humanism from any return to the dark-ages then we should win. So long as we hold onto the web we hold onto to our last best hope. | | 10:00p |
Revolutionary Stalinist Party http://www.rsp.org.au/The orphaned dregs of the DSP have built another echoing, hollowed out howling lunar-left red-fascist warehouse/website. Much like my local 2$ shop it features the Stalinist Che prominently. As the Stalinists visage fades into the carcinogenic bracken at Green Left Weekly he re-emerges stark as a fresh bloodstain oozing from Trotsky's earhole at the Revolutionary Stalinist Party HQ! El pueblo unido! Viva Che, viva! Hasta la Victoria Siempre! | | 10:27p |
Corrosive acid-throwers The Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP), the group that initiated Green Left Weekly in 1991 as a broad left newspaper, has suffered a political split with minority critical of its continuing support for the Socialist Alliance as a new party project. This follows a nearly three-year internal debate in the DSP. This split in the DSP will not disrupt the production and distribution of Green Left Weekly. Any readers who are interested can read the positions of the two sides at http://www.dsp.org.au and http://www.lpf.org.au. There is also a vigorous discussion of this issue on the GLW discussion list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/.In the immediate aftermath of such political divisions, feelings on both sides inevitably run high. In order to keep the pages of GLW focussed on the issues and struggles that unite us, the editors have decided for now to direct debate about this split in the left to the Green Left discussion list. Stuart Munckton & Emma Murphy, Green Left Weekly editors. http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/752/38867Being such a gaming/dead pools promoter I should take some action on how long the new Revolutionary Stalinists will last. Longer than the new movie about Che? Ante up. On Edit you may want to factor in a good omen for Stalinists. Nepal just beat Australia in removing its monarchy. Please bet generously. | | 10:52p |
I raise my hand '...The evidence I've seen does in fact show that the administration had different justifications for the liberation of Iraq — but we saw them plainly and in the open before as well as after the invasion. The president, the secretary of state, the VP, and many others gave lots of reasons for the invasion of Iraq. There were international legal cases, there were public policy cases, there were national security cases all to be made. And they were. The idea that the press didn't do its job and was too soft on the president — as McClellan writes — is, frankly, laughable. Raise your hand if you have any evidence that the press was too soft on the administration...' - [Seth Leibsohn] Um Seth? I've made the case since 2003 in sites like Infoshop, my Livejournal blog, Indymedia and here that the press was an essential part of this supreme crime. Very similar to Nazi Germany as recorded by William Shirer in Berlin diary actually. Also Bob Woodward describes a very similar use of these techniques he calls 'blowback' in 'Veil'. Page 126 of Veil describes some CIA propaganda from Italy being washed through the NYTimes - picked up by Al Haig and exaggerated to the point of being a potential reason for war. As to the nuts and bolts of the Bush regimes use of these classic 'Big Lie' techniques in 2002, the classic expose on this is James Moore's ' Judy and the little tubes of terror'. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/judy-and-the-litt_b_5117.htmlThis is concrete evidence the president, the vice president, the National Security advisor and the Secretary of state all lied the US into an aggressive illegal war. This is called the 'supreme crime' under Nuremberg precedent. The New York Times through Gordon and Miller and various talk TV shows corruptly colluded in this big lie. That is what I call the Military-entertainment complex at work and part of why the corporate media is almost as unpopular as the president. It takes a lot of arrogance or ignorance to ignore all these facts. Maybe its both. Seth? Are you some kind of ideologue? And are you now or have you ever been a neocon? | | 11:12p |
RIP
RSP sadly born dead
RSP - Perspectives - Constitution -Program
Article 2. Aims
The aims of the party are:
(a) To abolish the capitalist social order in Australia and, in collaboration with the international working-class movement, to eliminate poverty, national inequality, sexist oppression, racist discrimination, war and ecological destruction, through the construction of a classless, socialist society.
(b) To achieve this by educating and organising the workers and other oppressed social groups, on the basis of the party’s Program, for a revolutionary struggle to replace the capitalist government with a working people’s government. RIP RSP
Now we won't have these particular Nixonian socialists to kick around anymore I propose we consider knocking the Jolly smirk off Stephen the Stalinists ugly mug. In the past I've tried to raise interest in a door knock around Yarra City to raise consciousness about the vicious fascist lies put about by the SPA sect. I renew my offer to do this vital work with any democratic or libertarian socialist. Recently Kerin ( and perhaps Main?) seem to struck some legal snags. We may well be able to tie these to around Jolly's goitered neck if they pan out. Gary Foley and the old Hegelian sage of Trades Hall might publish some memoirs. Mick Armstrongs mob are obviously doomed, so the SPA is really the last of a dying breed of self deconstructing lepers. They really need our hospice style care as a pillow for their poor diseased old heads...its up to all of us to do our bit.
For the sake of the children. | | 11:49p |
Red fascism bloody in tooth and claw CPI-M leadership indicated they believed that months of political tension and conflict in Nandigram contributed largely to the electoral losses. Nandigram is a cluster of 30-odd villages in this eastern Indian state. Trouble started when the government wanted to acquire 20,000 acres of land for construction of a chemical hub. Residents of the Nandigram region fought an extended bloody war with the ruling party. The protests came to a head when the ruling party unleashed a reign of terror on the region in March 2007. Many people were killed and thousands were rendered homeless. Nandigram, which voted out the Marxists in the Panchayat elections, is now reliving the wrath of the ruling party, with the firings of opposition supporters. Some people have even been driven out of their homes. On Friday, 150 people arrived at the Nandigram relief camp. Some of them had been severely beaten and tortured. A 60-year-old man, his body covered with bruises, lay groaning in the hospital. He told AHN, "they beat me up mercilessly saying that I voted against them. I somehow managed to run away." Another woman was sitting by her 22-year old-son, who was lying motionless on a hospital bed. "They made him run and run and then they pushed him to the ground and beat him with sticks and gun points, saying that he supported the opposition party. The central police force intervened and brought him to the hospital otherwise they would have killed him," the mother said. A protest group formed by the villagers said that they fear the coming days. Bhabani Das, general secretary of the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee, said, "There are a lot of arms in the region and we fear that the CPI-M supporters might use them against us." - FROM http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7011082173 | | 11:57p |
Europe should inspire
"It is necessary to renounce the idea that freedom, human rights, intellect are nothing but a kind of decoration of material evolution and development, to renounce the Marxist idea about the base and superstructure, and to again rehabilitate the intellect, soul, moral order and conscience," Havel said.
He said Europe should inspire other parts of the world.
Havel said he minds the EU's technocratism.
"Indeed, 95 percent of debates about European unification focuses on matters like customs duties, quotas and the like, things that are material and outer in their essence, while all of this is again directed by the idea of continuous swelling, growth and catching up with someone," Havel said.
He said the European traditions include the idea of responsibility for the world, which also means solidarity with those who share the same values and who are persecuted for this in certain countries.
He named Burma, China, Cuba, North Korea and Russia.
"It seems to me that the EU is overcautious in solidarity with the people because it looks after its economic interests. This leads us again to what is the base and to what is the superstructure," Havel said. |
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