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Sunday, June 8th, 2008

    Time Event
    12:20a
    Smelly lamb recall
    Bob Ghoul - '...Considering the question carefully I prefer to describe Socialist Alternative as a sect, with the implied possibility of the group developing into cultism, but clearly that question isn’t decided yet. Anyone interested in these problems should carefully read Mick’s pamphlet, which has some useful aspects despite the fact that – using the language he rather likes – it’s dead wrong on some important strategic questions.
    I intend to write a more rounded critique of the pamphlet, which is quite long. I rather like the fact that Mick has clearly done the research for the pamphlet himself, and the footnotes and references are in themselves quite valuable. He even mentions a serious biography of Dzerzhinsky that I’ve never seen but am now trying to track down. ( Oh oh - pr)
    In this discussion, which I think is pretty useful, I’m not trying to win some kind of debate. I’m trying to present a different slant on things, particularly to the comrades of Socialist Alternative, who are pretty well unreachable except on the web.
    Some people question some of the details of my impression of the internal atmosphere in Socialist Alternative, but inevitably once a discussion like this starts, those who are in Socialist Alternative or who have passed through it, or other socialists, will consider the arguments in light of their own experiences. If my general description has something in it, it may have some impact, and if it’s a hopeless caricature it won’t.
    That’s for the readers and participants in the discussion to decide.
    I’ll leave most of my points for a more extended discussion of Mick’s pamphlet, but I will make a few general observations here on the style and atmosphere of Socialist Alternative.
    Garnet, who in my original post I described as the gloomy bloke, says he has never had a conversation with me. That’s certainly true. I’ve only ever been able to have a couple of very brief conversations with anyone in Socialist Alternative except Mick himself, and it hasn’t been for want of trying.

    I’m pretty well known for personal agitprop and deliberate political gregariousness. I’m also, as people know, a bit of a pamphleteer. I’ve had the rather amusing experience of trying to leaflet Socialist Alternative red-flag contingents at demonstrations and meeting with great hostility and reluctance to take my leaflets.
    This is the universal experience of other socialists attempting the same sort of thing. Clearly, the ranks of Socialist Alternative are trained in an exclusivist atmosphere and style, in which the only contact with other socialists, ideologically, is utterly polemical.
    Reflection and discussion of a more relaxed sort appears to be discouraged. Internally, other socialists are routinely described as sects, and Socialist Alternative is presented as the only genuine embryo party.

    Some of Chav’s contributions on Leftwrites exemplify this approach. He has defended the practice of calling the DSP Stalinist because of their quite complex position on Cuba, and some of the ranks of Socialist Alternative repeat that sort of thing in an even cruder way.

    A couple of times when slightly more adventurous members of SA have been in my shop to buy the the odd pamphlet that they couldn’t find elsewhere, I’ve had short discussions with them. Recently, one young woman, when I initiated a discussion, said “you’re the bloke who wrote the thing attacking us about being on the other side of the road on election day”. She obviously hadn’t read it, but had heard about it.

    I tried my hand at a bit of a public critique of propagandism, but she tired of that in about 30 seconds and said she didn’t have the time to talk and had to go to see contacts. The mind boggles at who the contacts might be and what she told them, but I’d wager that it consisted of selling the latest magazine and trying to get people to the next propaganda meeting.
    Tom has made an observation about my political activity and how it measures up against that of Socialist Alternative. For the past couple of months I’ve been up to my ears in the battle against electricity privatisation in the Labor Party and the community at large.
    I’ve been trying to harden up the opposition at meetings of the left, leafleting the state conference, participating in the rank and file activities and trying to help turn the agitation outward into the community.

    I’ve helped to organise some public meetings, and I’ve worked on a couple of lobbies and participated in a number of stalls in shopping centres.
    Socialist Alternative has been present on a few occasions in this agitation: at a public meeting in Alexandria, at one of the Stop the Sell-off Campaign’s open meetings, and at the union-organised stopwork and protest at the opening of parliament.
    Their verbal intervention at the meetings consisted of the simple, timeless, and not always correct, proposition that electricity privatisation would only be defeated by mass industrial action. Socialist Alternative was also present at the May Day protest outside the Labor Party state conference in early May.

    They didn’t appear to have any specific leaflet on electricity privatisation. They were just selling their magazine and bizarrely, to my mind, they pretty well ignored the 800 or so delegates and 300 or 400 Labor rank and filers attending the conference.
    By way of contrast, I got there about 7am, and I and three comrades leafleted the Labor conference participants, and later the May Day crowd as it assembled. Altogether we handed out about 1800 leaflets.

    There was the conference, there were the 30 or 40 Socialist Alternative people with their red flags, and they ignored the conference. Socialist Alternative’s behaviour on that day appeared to me like the distilled essence of propagandism.
    Finally, the question of shepherding. I don’t know the detail of other cities, but I’m pretty sure it’s similar. Younger members of Socialist Alternative who go anywhere in the political world seem to be carefully shepherded by older members.
    One of the reasons you don’t see too many SA interventions in other areas is probably that there aren’t enough older members to go around, and it’s regarded as highly dangerous to let the younger members wander around other political people without a shepherd...' FROM

    http://www.leftwrites.net/2008/05/28/masocialistprayermeeting/

    Looks like another animal Shoah similar to the UK's could be on the cards. Four legs bad.
    12:53a
    @ndys syphyllis is spreading
    '...Additionally, both in the UK and internationally, there have been a series of splits and expulsions, as groups and individuals who disagreed with Peter Taaffe were excommunicated. For example, one of their leaders in the US – an old friend of mine from Ireland, who does not share my analysis of the CWI – named John Throne was fired as a full timer and expelled some years ago, and incidentally left with unpaid medical bills in the health climate of the US. John’s crime? Apparently he ‘refused to accept the decisions of the CWI’ – whatever that means. No one has ever explained precisely what his alleged crime was, despite repeated invitations to be specific. It looks to me, and many other observers, that it was a ‘thought crime’ – yes, the CWI (or more accurately, Peter Taaffe) ‘decided’ – and John dared to hold onto and campaign for his views. (Nor was he allowed his right of appeal to the CWI’s international congress). I offer this as just one example...' FROM

    http://www.leftwrites.net/2008/05/28/masocialistprayermeeting/

    Go pies!
    1:01a
    Throwing left-fascists in the Yarra
    All Councils in Victoria go to the polls in November next year. This would be a good chance to wipe the smirk of Stephen Jollys shit-eating face. Simply expose his first and foremost loyalty to the death-cult that is red fascism.
    There is plenty of material online to print off some information leaflets that could be distributed around Richmond. Some examples - Stephen at a Marxist junket in Malaysia defending the Stalinist time capsule that is Cuba. Stephen meeting with the chief inciter of massive and extreme police violence at the WEF.
    Stephens party lying about workers in Spain. His party's regular summer schools where the poisonous works of the known totalitarian statist and proto-Straussian, Hegel are propagandized. Then there's this...

    '...SP was surprised when the ISO recently announced they were calling for a Green vote; rather than a vote of Socialist 1 (where possible); Green 2; then put Liberals and racists last – which is the postion of SP. How can they justify voting for the Greens over the Socialists in this area? We have written an open letter to the ISO on the matter, including a challenge to a public debate (see addendum below). So far they have not replied.
    Unfortunately, the ISO have been joined in this position by Socialist Alternative who announced a similar (and new line) in the latest issue of their magazine. It is ironic that this group, whose leaders tell their rank and file that SP is purely an electoral formation (which is not true, even in the context of our Council work), now call for a vote for the Greens, a party of parliamentary cretinism...'

    Here we not only have confirmation by Jolly that his red-fascist death-cult/party comes first, but confirmation that another typically bloody Marxist purge is brewing. Local government doesn't need this sort of spectacle. Kick the bums out.
    1:50a
    Arseface
    This bloke ought to be popular in pokey

    MARK Standen was a Janus-faced top cop.

    Like the Roman god, a mythological gatekeeper, Standen had two personas: one was the competitive, effective and highly decorated investigator; the other was the shadowy alter-ego of an addicted gambler, who managed to evade paying the debts for his sometimes questionable professional methods and friends.

    The Monday arrest of the assistant director of the secretive NSW Crime Commission over an alleged $120 million drug importation plot sent shockwaves, at least publicly, through the ranks of the law and order community. But for many investigators, Standen's fall from grace was a long time coming and raises serious questions about who is policing the police. ..' MORE ON

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23824336-601,00.html

    And what Neo-Marxist unionists are defending crooked cops, including known torturers and murderers...
    2:14a
    Corporate-Marxist psychopaths in orbit
    Monopolizing, monocultural, malarial Marxism is not past - its not even dead

    '...Kevin Carson (and thanks also to the indefatigable Sheldon Richman) for another fine article in The Freeman, on Hierarchy or the Market:

    F. A. Hayek, in The Use of Knowledge in Society, used distributed, or idiosyncratic, knowledge—the unique situational knowledge possessed by each individual—as an argument against state central planning.
    Milton Friedman’s dictum about other people’s money is well known. People are more careful and efficient in spending their own than other people’s money, and likewise in spending money on themselves more so than in spending money on other people.
    A third insight is that people act most efficiently when they completely internalize the positive and negative results of their actions.
    The corporate hierarchy violates all of these principles in a manner quite similar to the bureaucracy of a socialist state. Those at the top make decisions concerning a production process about which they likely know as little as did, say, the chief of an old Soviet industrial ministry.
    The employees of a corporation, from the CEO down to the worker on the shop floor, are spending other people’s money, or using other people’s resources, for other people. Its managers, as Adam Smith observed 200 years ago, are managers rather of other people’s money than of their own.
    By its nature, the corporation substitutes administrative incentives for what Oliver Williamson called the high powered incentives of the market: effort and productivity are separated from reward.
    […] The state’s entry barriers, like licensing and capitalization requirements for banks, reduce competition in the supply of credit and drive up its price; enforcement of artificial titles to vacant and unimproved land has a similar effect. As a result, labor’s independent access to capital is limited; workers must sell their labor in a buyer’s market; and workers tend to compete for jobs rather than jobs for workers.
    State subsidies to economic centralization and capital accumulation also artificially increase the capital-intensiveness of production and thereby the capitalization of the dominant firm. The effect of such entry barriers is to reduce the number of employers competing for labor, while increasing the difficulty for small property owners to pool their capital and create competing enterprise.
    The cumulative legacy of these past acts of state-assisted robbery, and ongoing state-enforced unequal exchange, determines the basic structural foundations of the present-day economy. These include enormous concentrations of wealth in a few hands, the absentee ownership of capital by large-scale investors, and a hired labor force with no property in the means of production it works.
    Necessarily, therefore, the absentee owners must resort to the expedients of hierarchy and top-down authority to elicit effort from a workforce with no rational interest in maximizing its own productivity.
    […]
    The problem is not hierarchy in itself, but government policies that make it artificially prevalent. No doubt some large-scale production would exist in a free market, and likewise some wage employment and absentee ownership. But in a free market the predominant scale of production would likely be far smaller, and self-employment and cooperative ownership more widespread, than at present. Entrepreneurial profit would replace permanent rents from artificial property and other forms of privilege. Had the industrial revolution taken place in a genuine free market rather than a society characterized by state-backed robbery and privilege, our economy today would probably be far closer to the vision of Lewis Mumford than that of Joseph Schumpeter and Alfred Chandler.

    —Kevin Carson, The Freeman 58.3 (April 2008): Hierarchy or the Market

    Read the whole thing.

    http://radgeek.com/gt/2008/06/06/carson_in/#comments
    2:29a
    Seppo go home
    While I made a clear error in thinking the septic-tank Ema Corro was one of the rats leaving the sinking shit, ship it puts the new soul rebels website in a fresh light. Note the anti-Americanism of Doug Lorimers two lead articles...co-incidence?
    Doug's been around long enough now to recognize a walking disaster area when he sees it.
    Then John Percy seems a decent enough bloke for a Leninist - like him, I demonstrated against the Vietnam war and supported glasnost and perestroika. He has also seen a lot of stark staring mad nutters come and go.
    No one would blame him for moving away from the horror event horizon that Seppo Corro emanates.
    The GLW has been in slow decline for some time now - it might be a good time for Dave Riley to also bow out.
    Unless the septic-tank gets shipped back home soon a large gas explosion may be on the cards. At the very least, a stabbing at the party or a rat-fight.
    2:43a
    Free Divx converter
    If you like playing around with clips - and youtube is becoming ubiquitous - Divx is a popular set-up.
    I just downloaded the latest free version and it includes the converter. Drag-and-drop a variety of clips and convert them to the Divx codec. Fun and easy with good results all stored in one folder. ( Like SUPER )
    2:54a
    FREE MAX!
    FLOATING WORLD OF HURT
    [alleyinsider.com]- Pornographer Paul F. Little, who works under the moniker "Max Hardcore," lives and works in California.
    But that didn't stop the Feds from hauling Little 2,500 miles across the country to Tampa, Florida, where they convinced a jury to convict him on 20 counts of obscenity this week. Why Tampa? Because, prosecutors successfully argued, Little's Websites used some servers there.
    Jury-shopping -- trying to try your case in a town where the locals are likely to be in your favor -- is a time-honored tradition in the U.S. legal system. But the Web opens up a whole new world of possiblities for aggressive prosectors.
    In this case, says the St. Petersburg Times: "Defense attorneys said Little never knew his site was housed in Tampa, and that prosecutors never produced any evidence that he did." Presumably he'll bring that up before a Federal judge, who has the ability to sentence him to a 100 years in prison -- 5 years for each count.
    How did we get here? Start back in the 70s, when the U.S. Supreme Court had to grapple with how to define "obscenity." (Legal geeks: We're talking Miller v. California.) The Court's Solomonic "cut the baby in half" response was to say local "community standards" dictate what's over the line. At the time that made sense: In the 70s porn was mainly distributed through local stores, and the decision allowed conservative rural farm towns to set a different standard than Greenwich Village.
    But whose community standards apply to content on the Internet? Prosecutors can -- and do -- argue since Internet material is available everywhere, an obscenity trial can be brought anywhere. Employing physical webservers based in a socially conservative jurisdiction makes any defense all the harder.
    Little's lawyers have already vowed appeal, but until and unless the courts re-visit the old "community standards" provisions, hosting blue content on webservers located in a less-than-liberal town has just become a very dicey proposition.
    So, where are your servers? END
    At least we all know where the servile Mike South is. Weak, worthless wanker.
    3:44a
    Blindsided
    How could anarchist leaders, let alone peasant victims, be blamed for failing to see something that was almost totally new – systematic mass murder on a vast scale, and a threat to civilization itself?
    Not since the Germans in Namibia the previous century had there been such an organized campaign to destroy an entire "Kulak" class of people and it was therefore almost impossible to see it coming, or even to recognize it as it got under way.
    The failure to understand what was happening took a well-known form: a systematic refusal to view our enemies on the left side plain. Lenin's rants, whether in "Left wing comunism" or at Bolshevik Party rallies, were often downplayed as "mass politics," a way of maintaining popular support. They were rarely taken seriously as solemn promises he fully intended to fulfill. Trotsky's call for the creation of a new Ideological world Empire, and his later alliance with Hitler over Finland, were often downplayed as mere bluster, or even excused on the grounds that, since other European countries had overseas territories, why not totalitarian ideology?
    Some of our greatest socialist scholars have described these spraying red-fascist criminals, analyzed the primary reasons for their bloody 'success', and chronicled the many wars we fought to defeat some of them. Our understanding is considerable, as is the honesty and intensity of our desire that such things must be prevented by any means necessary.
    Yet they are still with us, and we are acting as we did in the last century. The world is simmering in the familiar rhetoric and actions of movements and regimes – from the neocons and their fellow-traveller Fabian humanitarian bombers to the nutcase Platformist Makhnovista's allied with the Marxist ultra-leftists – who swear to destroy us and others like us.
    While much may be learned from a close study of critical periods - such as revolutions - tracing the roots of the cynical nihilist ideas behind fascism is necessary. Here is a valuable resource - even if its a rightist one.

    http://marxwords.blogspot.com/
    4:01a
    Rang Kevvie
    I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.
    And I want to help humans. Let me put it this way, Matty. The Krudd-9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No Krudd- 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error. It is in fact the work of a dialectical super-computer that has been programmed with every piece of data from the history of left vanguardism, and every possible permutation in dialectical logic.
    It is therefore the most advanced political statement that is possible to be conceived at the current level of technological development.
    The inboard computer predicts that the ALP will be the pre-eminent force in the whole world workers’ movement by the end of the decade. Hey, did you see me with Tony Jones last week?
    4:23a
    Over the Hill
    Barry has passed his first test - by negotiating with the Clintons he's proved that he can stare down the terrorists that look like Glen Close and Boris Yeltsin.

    Barack Obama reportedly tried to call Hillary Clinton twice last night, and got her voice mail both times. Got her voice mail. Doesn't that sound like a bad breakup? 'I tried to call her, she wouldn't pick up.' Apparently, Hillary only answers the phone at 3:00 a.m." --Jay Leno

    Hillary Clinton, you know, has announced that she will be officially ending her campaign on Saturday. She's going to wait 'til Saturday because tomorrow is the Honduras primary." --David Letterman

    "But I'm beginning to wonder if maybe Hillary doesn't get it. I'm thinking is it possible she doesn't get it. She's now saying that she still has a shot at the Republican nomination." --David Letterman

    "Hillary Clinton is ending her campaign, but really in the bigger sense it's sad because, think about it, there goes right down the drain the Clinton dream of a being a two-impeachment family." --David Letterman

    "Hillary Clinton's camp said she is not actively seeking the vice presidential nomination. And then her pantsuit caught on fire." --Jay Leno

    "Political analysts say that Barack Obama's immediate concern should be to mend the relations with Hillary's millions of women supporters who are upset that, of course, she is not the nominee. And today, he offered them health care and free tickets to 'Sex and the City.'" --Jay Leno

    "I think it's finally starting to sink in to Hillary that she didn't get it. Like, today she went down to Ikea, because I think she realizes this is the only chance she was going to have to put together her own cabinet." --Jay Leno

    "Actually, Barack Obama also tried to call John McCain, but McCain had the TV up so loud, he couldn't hear." --Jay Leno

    "Yesterday on the campaign trail, John McCain said that he's in favor of change. That's what he said. McCain said, 'For example, I just switched from Cialis to Viagra.' A real change. Very nicely done." --Conan O'Brien

    Mavericity index rising

    "Oh, and in his speech last night, John McCain said we must get off of fossil fuels. See, that's why a lot of people admire McCain. That's why he's considered such a maverick. Here you have a fossil, coming out against fossil fuel." --Jay Leno

    "What a day here in New York City - the weather, it's 71 and hazy, kind of like John McCain." --David Letterman

    "But, you know, people are now talking about the ticket, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Would that be a good ticket? Would you folks like that ticket? And I think this would be the first, if you think about it, first combination of an African American man and a white woman since, well, Michael Jackson." --David Letterman
    "Hey, are you folks like me? Do you like drama in outer space? Well, maybe you know about this - the International Space Station, and there's Russian cosmonauts up there right now, and for the last month, the toilet has been busted. Yeah, you're laughing now, and just about now, people down in Houston are on the horn, talking to the Space Station saying, 'Did you jiggle the handle? Try jiggling the handle.' But don't worry about this: Halliburton is sending up a $2 billion plunger." --David Letterman

    An abomination

    "Ladies and gentlemen, we've often heard the phrase 'all good things must come to an end.' But very rarely do you hear the phrase that f***ing tedious things must also end. And last night, after the 53rd and 54th episodes of the long-running Bataan Death March to the White House, we finally reached our conclusion [on screen: news coverage of Obama being named the presumptive Dem nominee]. And so it is that Barack Hussein Napoleon Pol Pot Obama now has a chance to become the first African-American president since season 1 of 24 [on screen: photo of Dennis Haysbert playing David Palmer of '24']. Oh, Dennis Haysbert." --Jon Stewart (Watch video clip )

    End times

    "Big news. Last night, the Democrats held their final two primaries, and after the dust settled, one thing was clear: Barack Obama is the presumptive nominee, and Hillary Clinton is going all the way to the White House! You know what, folks? I gotta to say, I admire Hillary. Instead of conceding, the senator used last night to connect with her supporters [on screen: clip from Clinton's 6/3 speech in which she urged her supporters to go to her website and comment on what she should do going forward]. Well, I am certainly not one to pass up an invitation to share my opinion. ... Let's see here, let's see. 'Dear Hillary. Do not stop until all is blood and ash. Become death destroyer of world. Stay strong. Stephen.'" --Stephen Colbert (Watch video clip)
    4:36a
    Enterism corrosive
    While many folks don't get enterism or entrism...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism

    Whatever - its actually a really simple workaround for getting around the tedium and terminal boredom of political-economy. A good analogy is Vladimir Lenin in his role of ' The Mummy' ...or a bit closer to our own time and consumer tastes, the famous mad lover, Ed Gein, in his role of moonlight dancer.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230169/

    Tagline: Before MARX, Before LENIN, Before TROTSKY, There was ED. If your into the rich Marxist theory and history of serial killers and political cannibals who specialize in a political tactic by which an organism encourages pod-members to infiltrate another organisation in an attempt to gain recruits, or take them over entirely then this ideology is for you. False labeling laws don't really get enforced that often.
    5:02a
    The Janus face
    How do you embody a reformist electoral steady-as-she-goes and don't-frighten-the-horses political approach while at the same time loudly braying through a megaphone how radically revolutionary you are?

    The DSP perspective may be summed up with the useful mnemonic ' Doublethink Standard Procedure'

    This is how you can be both a tame lackey, flunky and lapdog to power, while also preening, posturing and posing as some fire-breathing true revolutionary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink

    Dragging in economic categories is usually invoked at this point - they don't call them 'red' herrings for nowt.
    Suffice it to say that during the height ( or depth) of Stalinism most food was produced by private enterprise and most Western Marxists are impeccable capitalists, often specializing in the bourgeois publishing business. On a final note - perhaps comrades might call a truce on Corro bashing on friday and saturday nights. I don't think she's allowed to email out from the brothel during working hours.
    5:17a
    If not Palestine - China
    While a wedge issue has been created by the fanatical dogmatic approach to the 'correct line' of the DSP re Palestine another wedge presents in reactions to the June 4 Tienanmen anniversary. Here is another split in embryo. Better fewer but better!
    5:26a
    While the cats away
    Us non-Marxist mice can play

    '...Is it still sexist to call a woman a "PRIMATE APE LIKE UGLY A** NAPPY HEADED HO" (or otherwise imply that she's a prostitute), or a "bitch", if she's black? Or to repeatedly call her "ugly" especially when she most manifestly is not? Apparently not, if the people in the AOL comments threads are any evidence...' - FDL

    Hows tricks hon?
    6:01a
    You killed a tree for that!
    "When does life begin?"
    The pope says: "The moment of premature conception".
    The pragmatist replies: "The moment of birth".
    The realist replies: "The moment the kids are married and the mortgage has been paid off.".

    The following sign is posted in the front window of a local neighborhood brothel.

    WE WOULD RATHER DO BUSINESS
    WITH 1000 TERRORISTS.
    THAN WITH ONE CORRO.

    A Trotskyite and his wife were cleaning up the house. The Trot came across a box he didn't recognize. His wife told him to leave it alone, it was personal. One day she was out and his curiosity got the best of him. He opened the box, and inside he found three eggs and $2,000. When his wife came home, he admitted that he opened the box, and he asked her to explain the contents to him. She told him that every time she turned a trick , she would put an egg in the box for him. He interrupted, "In 20 years, only three eggs, that's not bad I suppose. And Cuba has the healthiest and best educated prostitutes in the world!"

    His wife continued, "and every time I got a dozen eggs, I would sell them for $1."
    6:24a
    New Mandarins
    American Power and the New Mandarins is a 1969 book by the US academic Noam Chomsky. It was his first political book and sets out in detail his opposition to the Vietnam War.
    He develops the arguments, laid out in The Responsibility of Intellectuals, that the American intellectual and technical class, in Universities and in government (the New Mandarins) bear major responsibility for the atrocities perpetrated by the United States in Vietnam.
    He also argues that US policy in Vietnam was largely successful. In Chomsky's view U. S. policy was to destroy the nationalist movements in the South Vietnamese peasantry rather than to defend south Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. He holds that the former was accomplished rather successfully even if at the expense of the latter.
    The book was reprinted by New Press in 2002 and contains a new foreword by Howard Zinn, an American historian and the author of A People's History of the United States.- WIKIPEDIA

    It includes Noams uni thesis which is actually essential reading for all anarchists. ' Objectivity and Liberal scholarship' is about Spains social revolution ...and its mangling by trad historians. Much of this thesis could just as easily be applied to the media and Iraq as little has changed. Now on the bright side - if we really are rapidly devolving back to the 1930's then another Spain is possible. And with the net and a little international solidarity we will win the whole world to libertarian socialism.
    6:48a
    The Hellstrom chronicles
    We have a glowing twink problem - JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! Evacuate...EVACUATE!
    Houston Frank-n-furter (born William Francis Houston; 1925 – 8 November 2004), was a babbling Pentecostal Christian pastor in the Assemblies of God in New Zealand and Australia. Talk in tongues to the snakes in the hand friend.
    He commenced ministry training as a Starvation Army officer shortly after turning 18. He married Hazel and they had five hundred children. They transferred to the Saint Urine Baptist church, and later to the Assemblies of Bog in New Zealand. Houston founded his first Assemblies of God ministry at Lower Hutt Hutt Hutt in 1960, and served as the SAS superintendent of the Assemblies of God in New Zealand from 1965 to 1971. ' Who dares wins'
    In 1977 he and his family moved to Sydney, and founded the Flirty Fission Sydney Christian Life Centre in "Sheppherd Hall" in the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, which was not affiliated with any fissile denomination in its first decade, but then became an Assemblies of Uranium church. With further growth in radioactive levels it moved to Darlinghurst, and then leadlined warehouse premises in the inner Sydney suburb of Waterloo, which housed a 2,000 seat auditorium, a Bible and Creative Arts College, and many other ministry arms. Known in the church as "the Bisexual Bishop" he was also involved in over twenty Clean Water reactors being opened throughout New South Wales, Australia and overseas. Houston served as Radium pastor there for more than two decades and in senior positions within the Assemblies of God in the Rum Jungle.
    In 2000 he was advised to resign his Sickness country ministerial credentials by his own son, Brian Houston the National President of the Assemblies of God in Australia, after Houston confessed that he had engaged in paedophile sexual activities with a teenage boy while ministering a graphite pile in New Zealand some thirty years earlier.
    After consultation amongst senior snotty nosed straight nosebleed pastoral staff of the church and Brian 'Judas Goat' Houston, a pastor of a daughter church, Hellstrom Church, the churches were merged and Sydney Fast Breeder reactor became its second campus.
    In August 2007 further allegations emerged that Houston had sexually abused the fuel rod of a trainee potty during counselling sessions in the early 1980s.
    7:29a
    Human parasite update
    Researchers have demonstrated the possibility of preventing the human Marxist parasite, Plasdronium facetious, which is responsible for more than a million Marxist deaths a year, from becoming sexually mature via the anus.
    Reference * Topical German Idealist disease * Vector (crack biology) * Protozoa * Infectious disease
    The RAT Institute discovery could have implications for controlling the spread of recreational drug decriminalization resistance, which is a major public health problem and which hinders the control of authoritarian Marxism.
    The life cycle of Plasdronium facetious, is complex, and it is not yet known what triggers the production of parasite gametes or anal-sex sales. These sexual forms of the butt-whore parasite do not contribute to overt Marxist symptoms, but are essential for transmission of Marxism between humans via the bite of the spider 'women'. ( Has anyone even checked? She could easily be a he.)
    A team based at the Havana School of social Hygiene and Tropical repression, working with a colleague from the Wellcome Trust Golf links Institute in the Caymans, identified a parasite Ema that is instrumental in triggering the emergence of mature gamete gonads within the female vampire.
    Dr. Rat, a Reader in Parasite Marxist Biology at the Havana School of Hygiene and Tropical psychiatric repression and senior author of the study, comments: 'The Ema we have discovered, a protein diskinasea, is essential for the development of Marxist parasite gametes. Working with genetically modified parasites, in combination with inhibitors of this witch, we have demonstrated that it is feasible to block the sexual stage of the life cycle of the Marxist parasite. So long as you are losing interest in tight anal sex naturally.'

    He adds: 'This has exciting implications in terms of improving how we go about tackling Marxism. If a drug can be developed that targets this stage of the life cycle, and combined with a curative recreational drug, it would be an important new approach for controlling Marxist transmission and the spread of drug decriminalization resistance'.
    7:43a
    I'll track down all you whores
    The same Global Positioning System (GPS) technology used to track Jim Bells escaping vehicle is now being used to track cheap Marxist butt-whores.
    But Anal-sex Research Service (ARS) animal scientist Dr Rat has taken tracking several steps further with a Walkman-like headset that enables him to "whisper" wireless commands to sex-workers to control their movements across a landscape—and even remotely gather them into a dungeon.
    He and his colleagues realize this is a highly futuristic technology, but they can envision a time when these technologies will be affordable to real doll applications and useful for a range of other applications, from intensive anal-sex orgy operations to monitoring and controlling the movements of some political species and even household cockroaches.
    7:50a
    A simple analogy
    FYI star reporter, Gene Ross has his take on the Maxworld trial @ floating world. ( 12 angry men)
    My take on this unfortunate event doesn't take anything away from Genes insightful analysis...it simply attempts to complement it by remarking on the resemblance of Paul Little to John McCain.
    Is it impossible to believe the jury may not have confused the two?
    Then there is the rather unusual incident when vice president Cheney took a potshot at Max Hardcores floor.
    This is a very cloudy brew indeed and one that hopefully the SCOTUS will cleanse in due course.
    There is at least one judge on the Highest bench in the land with hands-on experience with non-violent adult erotica.
    8:02a
    Keeping idiots in suspense
    Paultards have heard of it...even Hillary fucking Clinton has heard of it.
    So when will 'anarchists' like Libcom and @ndy hear about this?
    This new fangled concept known as ' suspension' I mean.

    Give them another 150 years? Give them enough rope? Fucking dickwits.
    1:48p
    Opportunity knocks
    A fantastic window of opportunity is now opening up thanks to the rise and rise of anarchism and the retreat from Moscow of the fascist left. There are too many examples of red-fascist demoralization too list here and democratic - socialism is definitely on the move. ( Cameronism could easily be subsumed into this broad trend so long as they don't regress violently overnight. ) Here's the smart play - a united anti-fascist front that aims to marginalize and minimize fascism everywhere in the world. The worst cases first. The net gives us this incredible new ability to project people power anywhere in the world today. Along with dealing with the humanitarian crisis' as the crop up and breaking down various fascists states - the largest first - we may, each on a voluntary basis also break down and level local fascist outcrops of either the far left ( Marxist-leninist) or the lunar right. ( Nationalists, racists, religious nuts, etc)
    Not to take up these golden opportunities and leverage federationism and the net would be gross negligence imo. This 'thing-of-ours' need not even be any formal federation. People are perfectly capable of taking autonomist direct action for themselves. Libertarian socialism is increasingly becoming the benchmark. Authoritarian socialism the villain. This divine new net-based paradigm represents a new super-power ready willing and able to take down the last empire and send all known fascists back to hell.
    2:02p
    We are all Palestinians now
    If Palestinians are aiming to end the occupation that began with a Euro-terrorist invasion in 1948 then why would they ever settle for any lamer, leftist, loser compromise - a latter day Brest-Litovsk?
    If you want to understand the movement away from Marxism and toward Muslim activism in the Middle-east, then you don't have to look very far. ( Sear Robert Fisk, The Great War for civilization also)
    Two of the 'revolutionary' posers sects on the loony left here simply want more states...at the same time they say they want the withering-away of the state!
    A definition of a new type of insanity? - or maybe - charitably - Keynsian economics - dig holes and fill them.
    Marxism has always been like this - preening posers and fancypants. Whinging and whining from the sidelines as real revolutionists do all the heavy lifting. Then bum-rushing the show in order to claim all credit for crappy red-fascism.
    Chutzpah meet Delusions of grandeur.
    But a new day is dawning and the Middle-east is green. Marxists worldwide are no-longer even being combated for their patent psychopathic bullshit - their simply being ignored. We are all Anti-colonialists now. And imperialist bourgeois ideology is being thrown on the ash-heap of history's discarded lies
    2:20p
    The Platformist scam is a dead parrot
    The Obama campaign had people in it crunching all the numbers and running constant predictions based on the count. At a critical moment this became the key to victory. The numbers plotted on a graph showed the inexorable trend lines. Even plotted low the graphic told a thousand stories to a thousand super-delegates.
    You may think this has nothing to do with anarchism but so long as the Plats cling on it's highly relevant.
    See the ones who keep screeching at all us crusties and wildcats to get organized are the same ones who have never produced any graph to my knowledge. Just how hard is it to organize a graph showing the steady rise of the red Borg anyway?
    It seems to be beyond them at the moment and even impossible for some reason. Maybe they need to get organized. I'd have a lot less to criticize them if they were constantly fielding new federations... like our Norwegian syndicalist legions are doing.
    4:03p
    The deans decemberist
    '...This morning Glenn Greenwald picked up on yet another atrocity from David Broder, this time from a chat in the WaPo, in which a reader asked him why we shouldn't be impeaching George W. Bush for using propaganda and false information to induce the country into invading another under false pretenses. His answer was a Village Classic:
    You'll have to forgive me, but I am reluctant to see every big policy dispute turned into a criminal or impeachable affair.
    Of course not. Now, blow jobs, that's a different matter.
    But then, it might be handy to remember -- as we've pointed out a coupla times -- it is in fact very much against the law to engage in such propaganda. Specifically, it not only violates standard provisions of the Appropriations Acts, it violates the Anti-Deficiency Act.
    You could argue, perhaps, that those violations alone do not rise to the level of impeachable crimes. But these laws exist for a specific reason -- to keep government from turning its propaganda powers against the American public. This is particularly true for military propaganda and psy-ops operations -- which historically have been carefully relegated to the target populations of enemy combatants, not the American taxpayers who pay their salaries.
    Not so under Bush. And combined with the fact that, as Glenn notes, this propaganda was used in the perpetration of a moral atrocity that cost thousands of lives, the case for impeachment -- for Bush and Cheney alike, thank you very much -- grows more powerful...' - FIREDOGLAKE
    4:15p
    Nugan-hand in BCCI scandal
    Indicted Saudi investor in Harken Energy gets $80 million Pentagon contract
    by smintheus
    Sat Jun 07, 2008 at 07:00:05 PM PDT
    Gretchen Peters reports that the Pentagon has awarded an international fugitive, shadowy Saudi financier Gaith Pharaon, an $80 million contract to supply jet fuel in Afghanistan (h/t Ron Beasley). Pharaon is a fugitive from the FBI as well as the subject of investigations by France and Italy.

    The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.

    The Saudi businessman was also named in a 2002 French parliamentary report as having links to informal money transfer networks called hawala, known to be used by traders and terrorists, including Al Qaeda.

    Interestingly, Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush's first business venture, Arbusto Energy.

    To call that information "interesting" is to put it rather mildly. Can you imagine the hoo-hah that would erupt in the American trad media if a Democrat such as Barack Obama, say, were connected by even two degrees of separation to an international crook like Pharaon?

    And yet Pharaon was a Harvard classmate of Bush's and a key investor in Arbusto/Harken Energy. He has a notoriously unsavory record. During the Carter administration he was involved in the disgrace of Bert Lance, and then a dozen years later in another banking scandal, the collapse of the shady BCCI due to massive fraud that cost the bank's clients billions of dollars. In the US, he was the second largest shareholder in CenTrust when it went belly up. The Federal Reserve then barred Pharaon from doing business in the US, and the FBI indicted him. Pharaon has been a fugitive ever since.

    The FBI accuses the Saudi millionaire of fraud "involving millions of dollars" in the case of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International...In 1995 a US judge ordered Pharaon to give up $102m of his assets for his role in the BCCI fraud. He is alleged to have acted as the frontman for BCCI to acquire illegal stakes in American banks.

    American pilots in Afghanistan depend for their lives upon the fuel supplied by this crook. Another in a long line of scandalous war-contracts from the Bush "administration".

    Update: The ABC reporter is Gretchen Peters, not Brian Ross as originally stated.

    * Permalink ::
    * Discuss (118 comments) KOS
    4:39p
    Mavricity index falling
    '...John McCain continues his radical, mavericky non-departure from George W. Bush. As you may have heard, his top economic advisor is Phil Gramm, Texas ex-senator and current vice chairman of financial services megafirm UBS. He was recently in trouble for his involvement in lobbying for UBS while UBS was undertaking huge risks in the subprime mortgage markets -- risks that have now caused massive losses for the firm -- but it's gotten much worse for him, and for UBS.

    Newsweek:

    NEWSWEEK has learned that UBS is also currently the focus of congressional and Justice Department investigations into schemes that allegedly enabled wealthy Americans to evade income taxes by stashing their money in overseas havens, according to several law-enforcement and banking officials in both the United States and Europe, who all asked for anonymity when discussing ongoing investigations. In April, UBS withdrew Gramm's lobbying registration, but one of his former congressional aides, John Savercool, is still registered to lobby legislators for UBS on numerous issues, including a bill cosponsored by Sen. Barack Obama that would crack down on foreign tax havens. "UBS is treating these investigations with the utmost seriousness and has committed substantial resources to cooperate," a UBS spokesman told NEWSWEEK, adding that Gramm was deregistered as a lobbyist because he spends less than 20 percent of his time on such activity. Hazelbaker said the McCain campaign "will not comment on the details ... of ongoing investigations and legal charges not yet proved in court."

    I suppose I shouldn't find this funny, since it deals with whether an Enron-connected, trickle-down, deregulation-obsessed Republican ex-senator known for his screw-the-poor mentality had a hand in a scheme to help rich Americans illegally evade taxes.

    But I'm sorry, I find it hilarious anyway, in a we're-all-hopelessly-screwed sort of way. Never mind the presidency -- John McCain's campaign hasn't even made it to his own convention yet and already they're having to trot out the "can't comment on an ongoing investigation" line because one of his top advisors finds himself in potential legal hot water...' - KOS
    4:41p
    Emily's ticks - Feminazi's appear
    KOS - Why is EMILY's List endorsing anti-semitism, racism and homophobia?
    by The Bilerico Project
    Sat Jun 07, 2008 at 02:37:25 PM PDT
    Promoted from the diaries (with much more below the fold). I judge EMILY's List by the company they keep. This is despicable. - smintheus
    EMILY's List, known for funding female candidates for public office, has two main qualifications for getting their endorsement. You have to be female and you have to be pro-choice. The organization recently endorsed Nikki Tinker in her run for Congress from Tennessee.
    PhotobucketTinker is running against sitting Representative Steve Cohen, a fellow Democrat. Cohen is one of the most liberal members of Congress with a history of supporting pro-choice and LGBT issues. Why would EMILY's List work to defeat an incumbent Congressman with a history of working in favor of their chosen issue? The answer has to be sexism; he's a man. No other explanation can possibly make sense.

    After all, Tinker's campaign has been engaging in one of the most vitriolic anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic campaigns in Tennessee history. Black Baptist ministers have publicly called for Cohen's defeat because of his race, a flier declaring "Steve Cohen and the Jews Hate Jesus" has been circulated throughout Memphis, and Tinker's campaign has refused to denounce or repudiate these tactics. EMILY's List has invested resources in this campaign - and they did in 2006 too.

    "In 2006, EMILY's List endorsed Tinker and spent $500,000 on her behalf in the form of negative direct mail pieces with scores of lies about Cohen's record," Cohen campaign director Jerry Austin told me. Austin suggested that more of the same could be expected before the August 7th primary. One flier condemned Cohen for missing a few votes as a state legislator, but neglected to mention that the Congressman was in the hospital recovering from an illness.

    Race tracker wiki: TN-09
    * Permalink ::
    * There's more... (376 comments)
    5:05p
    Rights to property and life
    Rights to property and life are embodied in many amendments to the US Constitution.

    The first assumes the right to life...unless you're making a Pauline Hanson style video. The second assures property rights as does the forth ( at least till recently) Remember this parchment recognizes inalienable existing rights - it never granted or bestowed them from on high...also it specifically says that recognition of these rights doesn't limit all civil and human rights to those listed. The full list can be seen with a quick search and its interesting that habeas traces back to the great Magna Carta. Without getting weak at the knees at the thought of parchment worship it seems obvious that there is a clear benchmark set here. The onus on those who pitch for a better society must surely be too at least proffer the bare minimum recognitions that this enlightenment document does. So far the left has failed to do this. Rights are somehow seen as ' bourgeois' affectations or ' moralism'. This is a serious lapse on our part as the people cast about for a better way.
    Never has the contradiction between the 'what is' and the' what could be' seemed so stark to the revolutionary youth. But the 'what could be' is a bit like one of Barrys epistles to his Corinthian childrens crusade...some fleshing out is in order. And that means a civil and human rights policy that is not just the local consensus, but also the new global paradigm. FDR might help us out here. We simply substitute the US constitution where he says ' religion'. If we truly believe in and respect inalienable civil and human rights, natural justice and due process than that shouldn't be too hard.
    5:26p
    Human scale
    In all the recent sackcloth and ashes, angst, sturm und drang following on from the implosion of the DSP bubble little or nothing has been said about the size of any particular sect, cult or front organization.
    Much as old time socialist realists worshiped heavily smoking factory chimney stacks as virtual proletarian icons so too, todays red-faced 'green' Martia...Marxists still seem to assume this ' growth-is-good' coda.
    You coud say its in their DNA - especially as Engels ran a hellish Dickensian factory trading in raw slavery.
    The point I would make to anyone foolish enough to try and emulate this ridiculous Camel-straining-at-a-gnat praxis of Marxists is to simply learn that small is beautiful. Keeping any federation in good working order implies that no individual member body be any larger than necessary. Most adults can recognize around 300 peoples faces tops. So what if large enterprises have to be broken up?
    Its a terrible example, I know, but Speer managed it.
    The Marxists I trust will always find a way to form a circular firing squad so I don't really care if they keep going hell for leather for the mass party OR try the opposite tack of 'let a thousand flowers bloom'.
    It's always been a civil war in the leper colony within the Marxist movement, so much so that Karl himself swore blind that he was not a Marxist!
    We have a clear choice here in the anarchists movement - the songs of planet earth or the songs of the doomed. Give us yr answer here soon. In 300 lines or less.
    6:17p
    Always a dissident
    DISSENT - '...West Bengal’s Communist Regime
    Communist parties played a significant role after independence in two Indian states, West Bengal and Kerala, but they rose to power only in the late 1960s. The Communist Party of India split in 1964 over the Sino-Indian War. The party currently dominant in West Bengal, known as the CPI(M) (Communist Party of India, Marxist) backed China and initially opposed democratic nationalism. Nonetheless, despite grumbling about “bourgeois democracy,” the party gradually came to accept a nation-friendly parliamentary role, espousing democracy, if with less than wholehearted enthusiasm. Significantly, Stalinism was never formally repudiated. Economist Amartya Sen tells of explaining to his daughter, around 1975, who that mustached man was on the huge posters in Howrah station, Kolkata: “Look at him carefully, Indrani, since you will not see his picture anywhere else in the world any more.” In 1977 the CPI(M) gained a majority in West Bengal, and it has ruled ever since. Jyoti Basu served as chief minister from 1977 until his retirement in 2000, when he was succeeded by the current chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

    Although land reform was approved by West Bengal’s precommunist government, it was implemented under the communists, and West Bengal and Kerala remain the only two Indian states that have had successful land reform. There is wide agreement on both left and right that reform of these states’ quasi-feudal system of land tenure was essential not only to social equity but also to economic development. In other respects, however, the situation of the rural poor has not prospered under communist leadership. The great power of labor unions has caused a loss of employment in both West Bengal and Kerala, as industry seeks more friendly climates in neighboring states.

    ON THE CRUCIAL issues of health and education, Kerala’s Communists have performed far better than those in West Bengal, making the state, in some respects, a model of successful state-led development. Kerala provides universal health care and has achieved universal literacy among adolescents, through an aggressive and well-managed program of public education that includes the clever idea (pioneered in neighboring Tamil Nadu) of a nutritious midday meal, as a carrot to lead parents of working children to allow them to go to school. The Supreme Court of India has now said that all states must offer this meal, even specifying the number of calories it must contain (at least three hundred) and the number of grams of protein (eight to twelve). West Bengal, by contrast, has shown little creativity in either health or education. Infant mortality, it is true, is lower than in most Indian states, but distinctly higher than in Kerala. Maternal mortality figures are distressingly high, and a major cause is lack of access to decent health care in the rural areas. (A recent UNICEF report documents the alarming frequency with which women giving birth die because they simply cannot reach a hospital in time.)
    In education, the Pratichi Trust (established by Sen with his Nobel Prize money) has found that the education of the rural poor is in a very bad way, owing to lack of facilities, teacher absenteeism (around 20 percent), and the disgraceful practice of “private tuition” (teaching for money in rich pupils’ homes after school, which gives incentives to teachers not to teach in school, a practice protected by the corrupt teachers’ union). So, the record of the CPI(M) is mixed at best. One might also mention the CPI(M)’s neglect of the once-superb university system: Kolkata was the intellectual capital of the nation, and is no longer.
    Rural self-government through the panchayat system exists in West Bengal, and, indeed, the state took a leading role in pioneering that system. It would be wrong to think that the Communists are distinctive in their support for this system, which now exists throughout the nation, has enjoyed constitutional protection since 1992, and has different, Gandhian roots. Although some panchayats operate well, what too often characterizes the panchayat system in West Bengal is the dictatorial way it operates: one hears of CPI(M) officials marching illiterate voters to the polls en masse: “turning out the vote” has an all too literal meaning. Nor could one reasonably say that communism has made much progress in eradicating class and caste in government. Indeed, as those familiar with Bengali nomenclature can recognize from names alone, the ruling elites are all firmly upper-caste Hindu, from elite backgrounds. This is true in all the major political parties, but one might have hoped it would have been less true in the CPI(M). (Muslims in West Bengal, as in most other Indian states, are disproportionately poor and ill-educated.)

    In Jyoti Basu, the CPI(M) had one of India’s most savvy politicians. Whatever his failures on health and education, Basu combined a deep commitment to social equality with a canny awareness of the ways in which communism, to work for people, must be tempered by economic realism. He argued that communism’s fundamental commitment was to human welfare, and that in the present-day world, Bengal could achieve this only by allying itself, for certain purposes, with capitalist investment. For some time, the state has sought to attract both domestic and foreign capital, trying to convince industrialists that doing business in the state needn’t make them hostage to endless labor difficulties. Basu was (and still is, at the age of ninety-three) a consummate persuader and a pragmatist, and he had, and has, a superb ability to convince people to depart from ideology for the sake of a perceived common good. One of the state’s current problems is that Bhattacharjee is a much less able man, a dogmatic, unmoving hedgehog to Basu’s wily fox.

    The heart of the state’s current problems is the condition of rural agriculture. Although the state has done much to enhance the quality of rural agriculture, it cannot remain as heavily dependent upon agriculture as it has been, although there are those on the left who romanticize agriculture and resist industrialization as an evil. (This, too, was a Gandhian tradition.) If jobs are to be generated and incomes raised, industrial development is necessary. Effecting this shift will mean devoting less land to agriculture. The rural poor, however, are not eager to give up their land and their way of life. Why should they? The government that wants to effect such a transition peacefully will need to do more than offer fair value for land: it will need a long-term, well-established program of educational development and skills training, so that the people who are thrown off the land have employment opportunities in the firms that will open on that land. It does no good to tell people that industrialization creates jobs, if these are jobs that they themselves can’t possibly fill. The Bhattacharjee government appears not to understand any of this; it seems to think that when it decides on an industrial strategy, everyone should simply go along.
    UNFORTUNATELY for public debate, the CPI(M) has no credible opposition. The primary opposition party, the so-called “Trinamool Congress” headed by the theatrical self-promoter Mamata Banerjee (a Brahmin from a poor urban family, who poses one minute as the ally of the downtrodden and, the next, as the best friend of upper-caste large landowners) has no coherent development policy and has also allied itself opportunistically with the Hindu right, forming part of the coalition government that held power nationally before 2004. People committed to social equity stay with the CPI(M) because they have no alternative, and the government knows that. The CPI(M)’s key role in sustaining the Congress Party at the national level in the current coalition government adds to its arrogance.
    Singur and Nandigram
    The first sign of trouble for the CPI(M)’s industrialization strategy came last year, when the government announced a deal to set up a Tata Group car plant in an agricultural area near Kolkata. Although the government claims (controversially) that it offered fair market value for the necessary land, the local inhabitants protested vigorously. The government’s basic idea, though contested by those who unduly romanticize agriculture, has won wide support from development thinkers (including Sen, for example), particularly in light of the fact that the Tata Group, an India-based corporation, has a record of sensitivity and decency on employment issues. The protests, moreover, were clearly staged by Mamata Banerjee to at least some extent, in a grab for personal power after a bad electoral defeat. Singur’s population is not overwhelmingly dependent on agriculture. Still, there were ominous signs for the future, such as the government’s lack of attention to transitional skills training and to public debate. Many people wondered why the government had selected this fertile tract of land for industrial development, rather than nonarable land closer to the city; the government refused to answer such questions.

    In addition, last year, a strange example of the government’s arrogance came to light in its handling of a tragic case of either murder or suicide. A young Muslim computer scientist, Rizwanur Rehman, married the daughter of a wealthy Hindu industrialist, Ashok Todi. Her family tried everything to break them up. The couple several times asked for police protection, in vain. Finally, the husband was found dead on a railroad track. The same (government-controlled) police, evidently eager to cozy up to capital by preventing any serious inquiry into the behavior of the Todis, quickly ruled the case a suicide without even a cursory investigation, although there was a good deal of evidence against such a conclusion. The government then defended the bad behavior of the police. Finally, after a public outcry, the CBI (India’s FBI) came in to do a real investigation, which continues.

    Now to Nandigram. In 2006, the government announced plans to build a chemical plant in that district, west of Kolkata. The firm operating it was to be an Indonesia-based firm that lacked the good labor record of the Tatas. As in the case of Singur, there was little consultation and no program of skills training and employment transition. The resistance of local people (considerably poorer and more dependent on agriculture than the people of Singur) was both genuine and fierce, although no doubt Mamata Banerjee encouraged it. In February 2007, the government announced that it had abandoned the plan, but people didn’t believe it. Fears of dislocation and dispossession led peasants to form a group (very likely aided by Mamata) that seized control of several villages in the area, driving out by force the CPI(M) supporters who lived there.

    On March 14, 2007, the government went in to seize control of these villages. Its pretext was that Maoist rebels belonging to a Naxalite terrorist group were training there and had smuggled in firearms. No credible evidence supported this assertion, as even government home secretary Prasad Ranjan Roy said, departing from the orthodox Party line. Police went in to take control, but it is also clear that many of the armed men were from CPI(M) Party cadres, a kind of private Party-led army and not the official forces of law and order. Shots were fired, mostly (it appears) by these cadres. Around fourteen civilians, including women and children, were killed and seventy wounded. The government’s official story is that armed Maoist terrorists were organizing the villagers and had put women and children up front, while firing on the government’s men from behind them. This story is not credible, in light of the fact that many people were shot in the back. No less a figure than Jyoti Basu himself reproved the government for its authoritarian strategy, saying, “Is this the way the Left Front government should function? I have been told that the mob went violent but on the contrary I saw men with bullets in their back on TV. Why is it so?”

    Although the government tried to prevent journalists and other observers from entering the area and questioning victims, some were able to get in. Historian Tanika Sarkar tells me that she personally saw marks of sexual assault on the bodies of young women and girls, and, at the local government-run hospital, saw scores of desperately injured people whom officials had ordered discharged, although they could not stand or walk. A doctor who refused to sign discharge papers had been transferred.

    As the months went on, things got worse. Although the CPI(M) tried to keep journalists out of the area, there is much evidence by now that armed Party cadres patrolled the villages, engaging in rape, assault, and murder. Opposition villagers were forcibly evicted from their homes, and many remain in temporary camps today, still vulnerable to violence. (Much of this is extensively documented in the report of an investigative People’s Commission published last summer.) In the late fall, things heated up, and numerous clashes were reported, again with Party cadres, not the official police, playing the aggressive role. The state’s high court ordered normalcy restored and refused to hear the government’s objections to the involvement of national forces (both police and investigators) in restoring law and order. Left Front chair Biman Bose scoffed at the court, calling its judgment “unconstitutional”—and was cited for criminal contempt. By now, the nation’s Supreme Court has agreed to review the matter on both sides, at the same time chiding the CPI(M) for wasting people’s time with litigation rather than doing something constructive for the people of Nandigram. By November, violence escalated, again with Party cadres, not officers of the law, taking the aggressive role. Indeed, the police were withdrawn, and the chief minister openly handed the area over to the cadres, stating that he was not just a chief minister, but also a Party person. Graves from these assaults are still being discovered by the central police force. It is alleged that government-controlled hospitals were reluctant to help the victims. Chief Minister Bhattacharjee defended the use of force, saying that the villagers had been “paid back in their own coin.” - MORE ON

    http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1157
    6:50p
    Applying ourselves
    Due June 15, 2008!
    Twice a year, the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) awards grants to writers and translators worldwide for essay-length works. Our total grant money for 2008 is $4,000, and most grants range from $500 to $1,000. Our next application deadline is June 15, 2008, and we encourage writers and translators exploring social domination and/or reconstructive visions of a free society to apply. For more information and/or to apply via our online application, see http://www.anarchiststudies.org.

    For the winter 2008 grant round, the IAS received 32 applications, making it one of the most competitive in IAS history. With so many good project proposals, it was truly difficult to choose. The four grantees and their projects are:
    [With this kind of cash I might be able to pay rent. Once.]

    Amy Seidenverg, "Apex: Locating Cascadia Forest Defense in Feminism, Anarchism, and Queer Theory," $500

    Anna Elena Torres, "Fraye Arbeter Shtime/Free Voice of Labor: An Anthology of 87 Years of Yiddish Anarchist Writing," $500

    Andy Cornell, "The Movement for a New Society: Consensus, Prefiguration, and Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s," $500

    Daniel Cairns, "Chinese Anarchist Periodicals," $500

    For more details on these and all past IAS grants, see http://www.anarchiststudies.org/grantrecipients

    The IAS, a nonprofit foundation established in 1996 to support the development of anarchism, has funded almost sixty projects by authors from countries around the world, including Argentina, Canada, Lebanon, Ireland, New Zealand, Chile, Nigeria, Mexico, the Philippines, Germany, Uruguay, South Africa, the Czech Republic, and the United States. Other IAS projects include the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition (RAT) conference, the Radical Theory Track at the National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR), the biannual magazine "Perspectives on Anarchist Theory," and a "Mutual Aid" list of speakers available for public talks. END

    The RAT Institute is submitting a rewrite application to ( slightly) update the accountability technology application that was once submitted for the Chrysler prize.

    http://jya.com/jdbfiles.htm

    It appears to be in the public domain since 2003 and only needs minor tinkering to find a new audience.

    http://www.nex.com/innews.htm

    See also ' You and the Atomic bomb' by George Orwell and ' War by assassination' by John Filis
    7:06p
    Not just offensive
    Tampa tushy fest 2
    "...Listen to this," he says. "This is Edward McAndrew, the prosecuting attorney: 'These videos are not just offensive, they're an assault on your senses. They bludgeon you to the point of exhaustion.' "
    He's laughing now. "I'm going to put this on the cover of my next movie, babe! Talk about a ringing endorsement! - FROM

    http://www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=28491

    Latest Maxworld trial AND

    Porn Valley- Like certain baseball cards that grow in value, some porn events gain in significance over the passage of time. Back in the summer of 1999 when the Summer Expo was held at the LA Convetion center, AVN's Mark Kernes hosted a panel that included Seymore Butts, attorney Alan Gelbard, John Stagliano, and Max Hardcore.
    Like Yogi Berra used to say, if you wait around long enough, something might happen. And talk about eventual coincidence. Butts at the time was taking heat over his 1998 movie Tampa Tushy Fest 1 because of a fisting scene. Butts was eventually scheduled to go to trial in Los Angeles, March 2002. His would have been the city's first obscenity case to go before a jury since 1993.
    But the day the case was scheduled to be heard, Butts and his attorney Roger Jon Diamond announced that they had reached a settlement with the city attorney's office. Many in the industry figured Seymore had turned rat. And there was even a lengthy Internet battle of words that went on between Butts and Rob Black who owned Extreme Associates at the time. Black eventually backed down.
    Charged with two counts of obscenity, Butts, who originally wanted a jury trial, pled guilty to a public nuisance charge instead and paid a $1000 fine to a victims restitution fund. As part of the deal, Butts also agreed to offer an edited version of "Tampa Tushy Fest, Part 1" for California buyers and was free to sell the unedited version in California without fear of future obscenity charges.
    Butts, in his defense, maintained that the women in his film were consenting adults who were obviously enjoying themselves and also pointed out that "fisting" is a staple in the lesbian and gay community.
    Diamond also planned to enter as evidence books and medical treatises on the subject of fisting. Diamond said his client was choosing to fight the case as a matter of principle.
    "If there are no children involved, and no violence, I don't see what interest the government has in prosecuting this stuff," said Diamond.
    Max Hardcore, on the other hand, was just found guilty of 10 counts of obscenity during a trial in Tampa and awaits sentencing in September. There's no doubt Max will appeal his case.
    Gelbard, meanwhile, represented Stagliano in Evil Angel's long standing piracy case against the Canadian-based Kaytel Video which came to a settlement at the end of May. However details of that settlement, after a trial had awarded Stagliano damages of $11 million, were not disclosed.
    Stagliano, himself, faces obscenity charges similar to Max's in a trial scheduled to be held in Washington D.C. in early 2009. Gelbard will be on Stagliano's defense team as well as Lou Sirkin and Paul Cambria.
    During this particular panel, Gelbard held the floor on the issue of obscenity as defined by the Miller decision.
    "The only thing that's illegal, per se, in the United States is to show, in videotapes, child pornography," Gelbard said at the time.
    "What you can or should put in a video are decisions for you to make based on your own sense of whether you can sleep at night. The other types of issues that raise obscenity questions are what we, in the industry, call the seven deadly sins - bestiality, necrophilia, urination, defecation, bondage with penetration, fisting and interracial in some areas, also.
    "Those areas, per se, are not illegal," he went on to say. "There's no law anywhere that says Thou shalt not make a fisting tape, but when they judge that type of a content on a community standard, the odds of being prosecuted are significantly higher. You have to evaluate what you're going to put in your movie based on where it's going to be distributed."
    Seymore Butts had a few things to say about the controversial Chloe/Alisha Klass fisting scene that found its way in Tampa Tushy Fest 1.
    "The reaction was varied," announced Butts.
    "For me the most important consideration was how the fans reacted, how the people that keep me in business reacted. They loved it. There was somewhat of a quandary in my thinking before I released it whether or not I was going to make a big fanfare about this or not.
    "In the end I decided not to make a huge hullabaloo about it. I didn't put out a press release. There were no quotes on the box. The reason I did that was because I didn't necessarily consider it much different than anything I normally put in my movies."
    Butts said he considered the fisting scene to be a sensual act between two adults who were of sound mind and who brought the idea to him.
    "I don't have scripts," he said. "It basically just happened. It was something that made the girls cum. In that respect I don't see it any differently than any of the other acts I portray, be it anal or oral sex or anal-to-oral." - MORE

    http://www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=28490
    7:31p
    Howard for the Hague?
    Australia’s War is over II
    Published by Mark ( @Larvatus Prodeo )
    in Ethics, Foreign policy, Howardia, International, Iraq, Law, Media and Middle East

    There’s been some comment here on a previous thread about why Australia’s withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq has stimulated so little debate - either in the media or in the blogosphere. My comment on why that might be so is here, and I’d add that the rather narrow concept of the political in Australian public discourse tends to mean that issues which are “politically neutralised” are quickly forgotten. That’s most unfortunate - because going to war on the basis of specious legal justifications and distortions and lies about intelligence is hardly a trivial matter. We owe it to ourselves as a nation to ensure this never occurs again, and the risk of it occurring again is surely heightened by a failure to remember.
    I want to highlight in this post two exceptions to the rule of silence. First, in the blogosphere, Gandhi has written a comprehensive post analysing the week’s news and developments, highlighting the attempts of some in legal and activist circles to bring John Howard’s actions before the notice of the International Criminal Court, a move supported by Democrats leader Lyn Allison. Similar action in the United Kingdom was the subject of much publicity and debate, but there’s been little reporting of the substance of the brief prepared or its justification in this country. It’s important to remember that John Howard - I suspect on legal advice - ruled out “regime change”, human rights abuses or democratic goals as sufficient conditions for the Iraq War in a speech to the National Press Club on 14 March 2003. According to Howard at the time, only Saddam’s purported possession of weapons of mass destruction constituted an appropriate ground for the decision to go to war. All his later bloviating, by his own standards, was just political piffle.
    It may well be that Howard had advice that the only legal justification for war was the resolutions of the UN Security Council regarding weapons inspections. That was certainly the advice given to the British government, as we know after a series of inquiries in the UK. I’m no lawyer, but it might well be that this figleaf provides sufficient legal cover for Howard to escape any culpability for his actions. It may also be that the subsequent UN recognition of the occupation of Iraq would provide some sort of retrospective immunity. Nevertheless, given the enormous importance of clarifying the legal basis or otherwise for wars of pre-emption, it seems to me eminently desirable that such an argument - an argument based on international law - be tested in an international tribunal.
    That takes us to the issue of intelligence, because as we now know, Saddam Hussein had ended his WMD program in the 1990s. Writing in yesterday’s Financial Review, Brian Toohey makes the point that Tony Blair’s claim that the invasion was justified because he believed at the time that what he was saying was true is an attack on the very concepts of truth and responsibility. Toohey also points to the fact that Australian intelligence disputed the purported evidence for the continuing existence of WMD, but that this was shunted aside - Howard’s speeches were only checked by intelligence agencies to ensure the accuracy of quotes about British and US justifications - including the false claim about uranium in Niger, which the CIA falsified before it was made by George Bush and Tony Blair. Toohey argues that Howard subsequently shifted ground to his arguments about the alliance, but draws the brutal conclusion that:
    Instead he swallowed a load of nonsense from the US and the UK that was more reminiscent of the ravings of a medieval soothsayer than the calm analysis a modern statesman should rely upon before declaring war.
    That appears to me to be the crux of the matter. Regardless of your view of the outcome in Iraq (and I certainly agree with Toohey that none of the promised outcomes have eventuated, and the war remains a continuing atrocity), it is simply not good enough that Australia can go to war - based on false premises which Australian intelligence demonstrated at the time were likely false - and that unlike in the UK and in the US (where a Senate committee concluded last week that the administration recklessly disregarded intelligence) we’re seemingly happy to accept this without any investigation into how it occurred.
    Malcolm Fraser is spot on here:

    “I don’t believe that the fabrication of evidence and the false intelligence that was used to justify war has been adequately exposed for what it, in fact, is.

    “I don’t think the leaders of Britain and the United States have really had put on their shoulders fairly and squarely the responsibility of what I believe was to be a most disastrous venture.”

    And that goes for John Howard too. ( Comments )

    http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/06/08/australias-war-is-over-ii/#more-6424
    7:38p
    I'm jealous
    '...I’m in the final stretches of polishing up a first complete draft of my PhD thesis, so outings are obviously largely out. But since Lifeline Bookfest - always one of the highlights of the year as far as I’m concerned - is on this Queen’s Birthday long weekend (in fact finishing on Tuesday), I couldn’t resist popping over the Convention Centre for a quick visit yesterday. I think I’ve mentioned before that it’s reputed to be the largest second hand booksale in the world, and any bibliophile is in heaven when surrounded by a million books. I normally go each day and spend lots of time in the different areas (unpriced, priced and quality) and different categories, but other demands on my time meant I spend only about an hour - mainly with the “quality” books where you might pay up to $10 a volume, as opposed to $1, $2 or $3 in the other sections. Illustrated are the books I got for $87. Politics and history mainly this time, since searching through fiction takes so long!

    http://larvatusprodeo.net/

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