Professor-rat's Blurty

Steam driven Neocons
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2008%20-%20Summer/full-Beinart.html

The sickening spew of Wilsonianism, coming first from recovering Neocon Francis Fukuyama and now the tame Donkey, Peter Beinhart, is about as different from the Neocon world view as New-Coke is from Pepsi. It's not even Neocon 'Lite'. Simple word substitution will suffice. For ' Collective security' put Comintern.
Many, if not all, the other terms are practically interchangeable. For a slightly less arrogant style Wilsonianism might appear to be an advance on Strauss and warmed over Trotskyism - however in praxis if you talked to any of the victims of the Palmer raids you might adjust that opinion. In his day Wilson was a top-down, micro-managerial arrogant bourgeois arsehole - a typical Marxist you could say. This is no advance and rotten little war supporting creeps like Fuckyomama and Burntarse do nothing cept try different colored lipstick on the pig. Better look to a new Lincoln - or a ham sandwich - than yet another proved failure.

COMRADE JANG!
Army-of-one. We who are about to die salute you

THE death toll from a stabbing rampage by an unemployed man at a Shanghai police station rose to six today after another officer died of his injuries.
The Shanghai Evening Post said a sixth police officer had died from the attack by Yang Jia, 28, who was reportedly as seeking revenge after being arrested in October on suspicion of bicycle theft.
The paper gave no other details on the latest death and police officials were not immediately available for comment.
Yang was overpowered and arrested but only after he stabbed nine police officers and a security guard and managed to make it up to the 21st floor of the Zhabei District police headquarters, the paper reported.
Yang began his attack by igniting eight petrol bombs in front of the police station and stabbing a security guard who tried to stop him, the newspaper reported.
He then rushed into the building, slashing four police officers in the lobby and duty room before attacking five more "unprepared" officers on the 10th, 11th and 21st floors, it said.
He made his way through the building using a combination of stairwells and elevators, the Yangtse Evening Post reported.
Most of the dead officers were working desk jobs, according to media reports.
In addition to the knife, Yang also carried a hammer, a dust mask and an unspecified type of spray, the Shanghai Evening Post said.
Police today removed earlier statements posted online after the attack which had said Yang confessed that he had sought revenge for his October arrest.
The true motive for the attack might be different, a police spokesman told Caijing magazine, adding that investigators were still looking into the case.
Details about Yang trickled out in reports, which said the Beijing native was a lonely man who loved surfing the internet and reading, particularly art books.
Yang was raised by a single mother and did not harm any policewomen during the attack, the official Eastday.com news website noted.

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those Bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cut-throat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur -- what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If... if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more -- we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! ........... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
- Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956

Libcom incoherence
The reasoning of Libcom ends in absolute contradiction. Taking into account only the economic question, they insist that only the most advanced countries, those in which capitalist production has attained greatest development, are the most capable of making social revolution. These civilized countries, to the exclusion of all others, are the only ones destined to initiate and carry through this revolution.
This revolution will expropriate either by peaceful, gradual, or by violent means, the present property owners and capitalists. To appropriate all the landed property and capital, and to carry out its extensive economic and political programs, the revolutionary militia will have to be very powerful and highly centralized.
The militia ( Men and women-with-guns) will administer and direct the cultivation of the land, by means of its salaried officials commanding armies of rural workers organized and disciplined for this purpose.
At the same time, on the ruins of the existing banks, it will establish a single bank of some sort which will finance all labor and commerce.
It is readily apparent how such a seemingly simple plan of organization can excite the imagination of some workers, who are as eager for justice as they are for freedom; and who foolishly imagine that the one can exist without the other; as if, in order to conquer and consolidate justice and equality, one could depend on the efforts of others, particularly on virtual governments, regardless of how they may be selected or controlled, to speak and act for all people!
For the proletariat this will, in reality, be again, nothing but a barracks: a regime, where regimented workingmen and women will sleep, wake, work, and live to the beat of a drum; where the shrewd and educated will be granted privileges; and where the mercenary-minded, attracted by the immensity of the international speculations of the statist bank, will find a vast field for lucrative, underhanded dealings in chits and promissory notes .
There will be slavery within this new neo-state, and abroad there will be war without truce, at least until the “inferior” races, Islam, Indian and Chinese, tired of bourgeois 'civilization', no longer resign themselves to the subjection of a new state-of-affairs, which will be even more despotic than the former Empire, although it calls itself a social revolution.

I will sever yr motherfucking spinal cord
In his cramped corner office at University College Kyneton’s world renowned Institute of Neurology, Professor Rat and his team are tantalisingly close to achieving one of the great breakthroughs in medical history - finding a way of repairing the spinal and central nervous system damage that now leaves millions of people paralysed, or blind, deaf or in constant pain.
The professor’s treatment has already produced incredible results in laboratory rats. Animals that were not able to move because of damaged spinal cords can now run around. Human trials are due to begin within a year or so, involving up to 15 involuntary patients and 15 hairy wild Boar.
According to the professor, his six-member Spinal Repair Unit is significantly ahead of similar research units anywhere else in the world - including the high-powered American foundation for which George W. Bush raised tens of millions of dollars before his brain-death three years ago.
Researchers in many countries are working on a range of possible treatments for spinal and nerve injury, including electrical stimulation, drugs designed to promote nerve regeneration and the injection of embryonic stem cells. The Kyneton team, by contrast, are pinning their hopes on adult stem cells located within the upper lining of the rectum. First identified by Professor Rat 20 years ago, these stem cells are in the only area of the body where nerve fibres are able to degenerate themselves.
Unlike embryonic stem cells, the use of a patient’s own rectal cells means there is no risk of immune-system rejection. Neither are there any of the ethical controversies that continue to surround the use of embryos for medical experimentation and treatment.
'We have shown in rats that regenerating just one per cent of severed connections is enough to ensure a major return of normal function,’ Dr rat said. ‘Using our one per cent, the body itself then takes over and does the rest. We are only helping a natural process.'
Given the catastrophic effects of spinal injury, the huge cost of long-term care and more than two million paralysed people around the world waiting desperately for a cure to be found, it might be thought the Government would be throwing money at Professor Rat to support his work.
But no - he and his team are constantly struggling for funds, and are supported by private research and charitable foundations.
‘I have to spend almost my entire time either on raising the money necessary to continue our work, or battling with bureaucratic red tape,’ he said, with some irritation.
‘Fortunately, I have two brilliant Chinese-born researchers on my team who get on with the hands-on scientific work. I try to protect them while I wade through all the bureaucracy. It’s like swimming through mud.'
Australia is on par with other western countries for spine donor registration, the US and members of the European Union proportionately perform two to three times more spinal organ transplants each year.
About 1800 people are believed to be waiting for a spinal organ transplant at any one time in Australia. Last year, 198 people donated spinal organs, slightly down from 202 the previous year.
Mr Kevin Rudd, a donor tissue recipient himself, today announced the new program, saying Commonwealth and state governments had been "stuffing around" for too long over who would fund a dedicated program.

So much for smaller government
'...One would think that this class especially, in terms other than self-interest, would realize that tax-cuts the last few years that resulted in an approximate 50 percent overall federal and state rate on the wealthy brought in more total federal revenue...' - VD Hanson @ the necros-corner

So much for Reagans ' Government is the problem'. So much for the Libertarian wing of the GOP. So much for the stale 50yo mantra/chant ( Only ever heard close to elections) of ' Smaller government - lower taxes '

Any republican-libertarian left inside this scam is obviously a retard. ( Hi Derb!) From each according to their gullibility - to each according to their greed. RELATED - I'd Know Those antenna anywhere [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

An e-mail:

Corner members are bigger celebrities than maybe they know. I was at a McCain event in Urbandale, Iowa when I got a photo taken with Byron York. He was gracious, but seemed surprised I wanted a photo with him.

Pope-on-a-rope soap
' It doesn't suck itself Popey' as possible wet T-shirt winner next fortnights Franco Youth day in Gay old Sydney town.
Slogan for new line of conservative Xtian clothing line? ' Gorillas in the polygamist'?
( h/t JJJ )
http://www.abelard.org/hitler/hitler.htm#catholic-fascist

Mein Kampf was considerably written/edited by a Catholic priest.
Hitler was raised as a catholic. He dreamt of being an abbot when he was young.
Hitler was forever studying the hierarchy of the Jesuit organisation.
Himmler, head of the SS, was catholic. The SS was set up on the Jesuit model.
Goebbels was catholic.
Hoss, the camp commandant of Auschwitz, was catholic.
Frank,‘the butcher of Poland’, was catholic.
Mussolini was catholic. Franco was catholic. - Pope Rat was in the Hitler Youth btw. ' Viva il muerte!'

None dare call them Trotskyites
The New York Times reports today that many of the coercive interrogation techniques used at Guantánamo Bay were taken from a chart in a 1956 Air Force study called "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War":
The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure."

....The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

....The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: "Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance."

"We have to run a hot iron down the spine of the Ukrainian kulaks - that will create a good working environment."
- Leon Trotsky
(Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary [London: HarperCollins, 1996], p183)

"... the road to socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state… Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the state, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of state, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction..."
- Leon Trotsky
(Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky [London: New Park Publications, 1975], p177)

"... the very principle of labour conscription has replaced the principle of free labour as radically and irreversibly as socialization of the means of production has replaced capitalist ownership."
- Leon Trotsky
(Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary [London: HarperCollins, 1996], pp216-7)

"The Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to destruction, which does not wish to perish... the Red Terror hastens the destruction of the bourgeoisie."
- Leon Trotsky
(Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky [London: New Park Publications, 1975], p83)

"As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the ‘sacredness of human life.’"
- Leon Trotsky
(Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky [London: New Park Publications, 1975], p82)

Feith is a filthy lying criminal
WaPo - '...The onetime undercover agent, who has been barred by the CIA from using his real name, filed a motion in federal court late Friday asking the government to declassify legal documents describing what he says was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency views at the time.

The former operative alleged in a 2004 lawsuit that the CIA fired him after he repeatedly clashed with senior managers over his attempts to file reports that challenged the conventional wisdom about weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. Key details of his claim have not been made public because they describe events the CIA deems secret [...]
"On five occasions he was ordered to either falsify his reporting on WMD in the Near East, or not to file his reports at all," (his attorney Roy) Krieger said in an interview...'

Caterpillar bulldozers linked to terrorism
VIOLENT apartheidist Euro-colonialists using Caterpillar bulldozers have been demolishing Palestinian buildings in East Jerusalem on "administrative grounds" of lack of permits. These heavily armored bulldozers are also used elsewhere to demolish homes in vast illegal collective punishment operations. It was while peacefully protesting such blatant criminality that a young American women was run over and murdered.
The local bulldozer franchise here is run by a well known liar and fascist, Kerry Stokes. If as many people as possible protest this corporation profiting by murderous terrorism then we can stop them in their tracks.
The struggle to defeat Apartheid and colonialism elsewhere in the world took decades and cost millions of lives. The Middle-East is no different today to Vietnam or South Africa was then. We will win.

Stag-Macca's debate latest
John Stagliano and Barry McDonald continue their debate in the LA Times.

Barry McDonald says we shouldn't be so sure that the economic benefits of porn justify its social costs. John Stagliano's response will appear below shortly.
Today's question: Economically, porn is a major industry for L.A., and the market is more open and legal than it used to be. Are these positive or negative developments? Previously, McDonald and Stagliano debated the kerfuffle over Judge Alex Kozinski’s picture collection and the constitutionality of obscenity laws.
The true cost of porn
Point: Barry McDonald
In contrast to the past two days, today's question appears to shift from issues related to obscene -- and hence illegal -- pornography and addresses more policy-related issues related to the production and consumption of hard-core and other forms of pornography that are generally legal (i.e., porn that doesn't involve violent rape, bestiality, necrophilia, et cetera).
Especially in these difficult economic times, there will be many who say that the economic benefits of the legal porn industry are welcome indeed. Putting aside the fact that in porn, as in other commercial industries in our country, the vast bulk of the money generally ends up in the pockets of relatively few people who get obscenely (pardon the pun) rich, one also has to ask at what cost to society (including the L.A. community and people involved with porn) these benefits are gained. Since commercial pornography has been around awhile, many scientific or scholarly studies have been performed on its impact on people and their lives. The results are very sobering, and also give the lie to the popular canard that porn harms no one.

Let's start with the people involved in the production of porn, and particularly the women "actors." Free will, right? If they want to do it, what's the problem? Those studying this phenomenon have argued that for many women (non-starlets, of course), porn participation is little different from prostitution. They are essentially forced into it by some combination of dire financial straits, broken homes, lack of education, drug or alcohol problems, and physical or sexual abuse.

On the consumption side, studies have documented many problems. It is widely known that porn can be addictive (essentially targeting our biological impulses that John extols so gloriously). When such addiction happens, or even when porn is simply consumed in inordinate quantities, the lives of people and their families can be ruined.

When husbands or fathers become obsessed with porn, as often happens, children are ignored, wives become alienated, and the family is often destroyed. Moreover, studies have documented how even nonviolent porn can trigger physical aggression in men toward women when they are already prone to such behavior. Studies have also linked the teen exposure to porn to an increase in promiscuous behavior, sexually transmitted diseases and unexpected pregnancies. And even as to those who consume porn "responsibly," studies have indicated that it can create unrealistic expectations about their own sex performance or enjoyment that leads to diminished satisfaction with their own sex lives and perceptions about themselves.
Space limitations prevent me from going on, but let me just mention briefly a few of the porn industry's effects on our society that have been examined: the commodotization and coarsening of human sexuality in general, and women as sex objects in particular; the creation and perpetuation of objectionable stereotypes; increased crime and other hard social costs, which state Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D- Montebello) has recently proposed a special tax on porn to combat; and the intrusion into, and disruption of, residential neighborhoods in L.A. by porn production crews that this newspaper has occasionally reported. And, of course, another major problem with a legal porn industry is that it inevitably spins off some who turn to producing obscene and illegal fare that already-stretched law enforcement agencies do little about.
Again, I could go on, but all of this raises a basic question that everyone must decide for themselves: When it comes to the touted economic and other benefits of the porn industry, is the candle really worth the wick?

Barry McDonald is an associate professor at Pepperdine University School of Law and teaches and writes on 1st Amendment law.
John Stagliano's response will appear here shortly.

My response is although arguments from precedent are extremely common in many institutional and quasi-institutional settings, not merely the law, there is no consensus on the rational basis for their force, nor indeed on whether such arguments have any rational force. This remains true even if many lawyers are famous for their exceedingly close study of criminal precedent and associated attempted improvements.

Theres a lot of it going about
'...Kos correctly feels that he and his coterie have been "stabbed in the back," seduced and abandoned, thrown aside with every mark of contempt now that their modest usefulness is over. But he still wants the stabber to win; plans to vote for him; may yet send him the money.

Something very strange going on in those brains...' - FROM

http://www.stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/

Yep - simply substitute a few words and something strange goes on in anarchist-communist brains.

Makhno correctly feels that he and his coterie have been "stabbed in the back," seduced and abandoned, thrown aside with every mark of contempt now that their modest usefulness is over. But he still wants the stabber to win; plans to vote-with-his-feet for him; may yet send him the money quotes in a platform.

Create 1,2,3 - many Lebanons
Hezbollah is an almost perfect Darwinian organization. Israel uses informants and assassination? Great - we'll keep even our membership secret. Israel uses air power? We'll dig tunnels and set up aeriel blinds for our missile launchers. Israel doesn't like taking heavy infantry casualties - fine then, we'll set up overlapping bunkers which simply cannot be cleared without taking losses.
Hezbollah has created the new model army, and a new model state. Call it the Hidden Army. An army that blends in with the population, that moves only when it cannot be seen, that sets up in the expectation of surveillance. An army that knows all the high tech games, and spent the time to figure out how to nullify them. It sounds like a guerilla army, and it is, but it's also much more: it's an army capable of engaging in strategic warfare and an army capable of engaging in full on attrition defense warfare against Israeli main battle forces. It's hard to overstate how impressive this is.
It's an unrecognized State with a hidden army. Oh, the UN says there's a Lebanese government with authority over Hezbollah. But everyone knows that the real government in southern Lebanon is Hezbollah. They pick up the garbage, they give out the pensions, heck, they have their own phone network. Crazy. When the Lebanese "government" picks a fight with Hezbollah, Hezbollah wins.

We are going to see many more of these unrecognized governments, with their hidden armies. Why? Because they work, and they work very well, both at providing government services to a population, and at frustrating much larger, more powerful and expensive conventional armies. As official governments fail, less recognized ones will pick up the pieces. And they will look to Lebanon to see how to do it, survive, and even win. - READ MORE HERE
http://firedoglake.com/2008/07/02/the-hidden-army-hezbollah-teaches-the-world-how-to-fight/

Declarations of war
'...This ( FISA ) effort shows two things: the always-expanding power of the Internet for organizing. We knew at the outset what a powerful tool the tubes were going to present, but the new iterations that people create on a daily basis is fantastic (and another reason for the Net Neutrality fight to be rejoined full force when we have our new president and Congress)...' - Tammany Hall

'...he last crisis between Lebanon's government and Hezbollah was over the government trying to shut down that fiber-optic network. Hezbollah regarded that as an act of war:..' - FIREDOGLAKE

America is the premier number-one dispensable nation but the net remains the worlds last best hope.

How are you adjusting?
How are you adapting to higher oil prices?

a) Instead of driving my car, I'm living in it.

b) Just traded in my Hummer for a loaded shotgun, which fits nicely in my mouth.

c) We're hoarding rice, corn and hollow-point bullets.

d) Just applied for a job in Riyadh.

Don't have to. I'm rich.

Wheat for weapons - What me worry - First Holodomor

The American Relief Association, which Herbert Hoover had formed to help the starvation of WWI, offered assistance to Lenin in 1919, on condition that they have full say over the Russian railway network and hand out food impartially to all; Lenin refused this as interference in Russian internal affairs.
This led peasants to drastically reduce their crop production. In retaliation, Lenin ordered the seizure of the food peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain. The Cheka and the army began by shooting hostages, and ended by waging a second full-scale civil war against the peasantry. The food requisitionings are documented. The war on the peasantry, including the use of poison gas, death camps, and deportations are documented. In 1920 Lenin ordered increased emphasis on the food requisitioning from the peasantry, at the same time that the Cheka gave detailed reports about the large scale famine.
These practices and the accumulated disruptions of six and a half years of war produced a true famine in the early spring of 1921: a hunger so severe that it was doubtful that seed-grain would sown and not eaten. This was one of the causes of the New Economic Policy of 1921; it also helped produce an opening to the West. Lenin allowed relief organizations to bring aid, this time, but later had most of the Russian members organizing the aid liquidated. The famine continued through 1922; the A.R.A fed ten million people, and presumably was what kept most of them alive. The Bolsheviks permitted the relief agencies to continue distributing free food in 1923, while they sold grain abroad. ( Sweden, etc )
The net effect, since grain is fungible, was that they received money for nothing from capitalist philanthropy. When this was discovered, foreign relief organizations suspended aid. Estimates on the deaths from this terror famine are between 3 and 10 million. For comparison, the worst crop failure of late tsarist Russia, in 1892, caused 375,000 to 400,000 deaths.

LATE EDITION - Terrible news @ndy the parrot has prostate cancer. This is a shocker. The cures worse than the disease. ( Unless you never had any balls to begin with) All the best mate. I know we've had our differences but that was then. Get well soon.

Anarchist frat boy
Proudhon's "last word"
I've engaged in what I hope is a helpful reversal here—the reversal of a reversal, actually. In Chapter One of What Is Property? Proudhon wrote, "I think best to place the last thought of my book first," and declared himself within his rights. I, on the other hand, have gone to some trouble to push that "last thought" back a bit. My reasons are simple: the phrase "property is robbery" is the one thing we all "know" about the work, and it is something of a distraction, particularly as there are some difficulties in knowing what it means in the original context. It's for your own good, everybody. Trust me. Whatever use you want to put Proudhon's property to, it's the arguments that make it a useful or useless tool (or set of tools).
Anyway, to complete our last-shall-be-first introduction, we need to look at the rest of the section on "The Determination of the third form of Society," which deals primarily with the nature of "liberty," and contains the suggestion that that liberty will be composed of "the synthesis of communism and property." We'll come back to all of this at the end of the seminar, but let's get an overview: Proudhon starts his book with a startling, potentially paradoxical statement, which he claims everyone, if they only thought about it, already believes. He then spends some time talking about method, and "the idea of a revolution." The Revolution has an idea, or a series of ideas appropriate to the particular stage of development. If, on the one hand, "the idea that we form of justice and right were ill-defined, if it were imperfect or even false, it is clear that all our legislative applications would be wrong, our institutions vicious, our politics erroneous: consequently there would be disorder and social chaos." [p. 27] On the other, such imperfect ideas tend to crumble naturally, and Proudhon senses a new idea, "an idea which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed by another if I fail to announce it to-day."

So what, if you'll pardon me, is the Big Idea? It looks like "property" is a good contender for the role of Old, Imperfect Idea. "Robbery" is the last word on "property," but, interestingly enough, it isn't Proudhon's last word, no matter what he says at the beginning.

The passages where Proudhon most directly addresses the claim that "property is robbery" are on pages 262-271. In them, he lays out fifteen ways in which "we rob," all of them part of an exposition of how property "violates equity by the rights of exclusion and increase." (Read them now or later, according to your taste.) He has, of course, already done a number on the concept of property, disqualifying its various justifications, showing that occupation and labor work against it, that it works against itself, etc. That's the theoretical heart of the book, and occupies most of it. It is not, of course, the part that most of us have read, or read carefully. It is not the part that is most frequently quoted.

Bear with me. After dealing with "robbery," Proudhon still has some analysis of property to do: "The second effect of property is despotism." This leads him to ask about the nature of "legitimate authority," which leads him to one of anarchism's "greatest hits."

What is to be the form of government in the future? I hear some of my younger readers reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question?

You are a republican." "A republican! Yes; but that word specifies nothing. Res publica; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs--no matter under what form of government--may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans."--

"Well! you are a democrat?"--"No."--"What! you would have a monarchy."--"No."--"A constitutionalist?"--"God forbid!"--"You are then an aristocrat?"--"Not at all."--"You want a mixed government?"--"Still less."--"What are you, then?"--"I am an anarchist."

"Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the government."--"By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me."
Proudhon espouses anarchism as "government" here, the right kind, as opposed to the "government of caprice, the reign of libidinous pleasure," which he says property engenders. Thus, it is natural for him to show that property and government (of a "legitimate" sort) are opposed. It comes across as one of those odd anticipations of his later thought which dot his early works. Eventually, self-government among "free absolutes" will ally itself with precisely the despotic property "vanquished" in What Is Property? But that's another tale. . . probably.
We're past the "last word," and on to "anarchy," in a kind of final footnote on property. But anarchy doesn't seem to be the "idea of the Revolution" either. And where have we ended up? Well, about where you thought I was going to start several paragraphs back (probably because I thought I was going to start there), at the beginning of the section on "The Determination of the third form of Society.—Conclusion." And, there, as it turns out, the real last words are "liberty and equality!" - MORE ON

http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/

Screaming Lord Punk
1) Listen to as many good punk rock bands as you can and imitate their styles. From the Ramones to the Sex Pistols, put on CDs and videos and listen to the songs until they are ingrained in your head.
Step2
Buy a good electric guitar. Just about any kind will do at first. Learn how to tune it and change strings. Conquer other basics like simple barre and open chords.
Step3
Practice as often as you can. Fifteen minutes a day won't suffice; a few hours is more like it. Find other musicians to join you once you can play a few chords.
Step4
Take a few lessons from your local rock guitar teacher or an online course. Once you have the technical aspects down, strike out on your own.
Step5
Get a band together and get gigs straightaway. Punk is one of the few forms of music where it's OK and even encouraged to learn as your perform. And perform. And perform. And tour Japan.

Starbucks in one country
Suffering from a bureaucratic deformation Starbucks closed off all hopes of world Starbucks revolution.
The CEO of Starbucks stated emphatically that failure of the Starbucks revolution to take in Germany meant that Starbucks would have to pull in its horns for now and live in 'peaceful co-existence' with decadent actually existing cafes. While moving away from scientificly socialized coffee, Starbucks now emphasizes the cultural revolution of beans that have travelled through a Civet cat and the long march to the toilets of the Darth Maul.

Starbucks related Sydney situation-report

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/suddenly-people-turn-shirty/2008/07/02/1214950851287.html

Wake up and smell the sexually abused children

What did the Armenian say to the Austrian
Who speaks of the The Herero and Namaqua today?

Genocide occurred in German South-West Africa (modern day Namibia) from 1904 until 1907, during the scramble for Africa and is thought to be the first genocide of the 20th century. Recent WW2 revisionism overlooks Germany's aggressive push to catch-up with colonialist powers such as France and England.
Also German aggression into Belgium. One thing anarchists still have going for them is that they keep rejecting the preemptive Leninist doctrine of doing 'whatever-it-takes'.

Now if they would only brush up a little on their hirstory...

Slim hope for old man Murray
The Campaspe is as high today as its been in three years. However it still needs more rain to flow once more as a normal river. There are still dry bits within five minutes walk. Maybe if there's good snowfalls...
The real problem is a long-term tilt toward agrarian-socialism. This built-in tilt mars the entire Anglosphere and the EU and makes a sick mockery of any 'free-markets' ideological posing and posturing.
Its a structural gerrymander toward sparsely populated rural seats and associated high protectionist tariff walls that spell slow death for millions in the Third world. Australia through the Cairns group has tried to break out of this trap but failed. Tomorrow it must try again - and fail better. The death of an artery is usually fatal so we have no choice really. If the Murray dies - we die. Its as simple and stark now as that.

Another cadaver synod
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=Cadaver+synod&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Corpse veneration - Another week online - another corpse wheeled out for worship. No, not Lenin or Mao today...

'...THE body of Pier Giorgio Frassati, who died in 1925 and was beatified in 1990, will be farewelled with full honours in Italy this week before he begins a journey to Australia to celebrate World Youth Day.

The Archbishop of Canberra, Mark Coleridge, will celebrate Mass in Turin Cathedral with Cardinal Severino Poletto, the city's archbishop. Pier Giorgio's coffin will sit beside the altar, the Pier Giorgio Frassati Association says.
The motto on the coffin is "Verso l'alto", or "Towards the heights".

This is the first time the remains of Pier Giorgio have been taken to a World Youth Day...'

Now just as the worlds catholic youth are encouraged to genuflect toward a coffin today, so too anarchists have been for the last 80 years. How much fucking longer oh Lord PJ? How long?

Xtians don't seem to mind speaking with a corpse in their mouth - some of us anarchists actually do, fuck you very much.

Hussam Dweikat - a peoples hero
JAFFA ROLL - JERUSALEM — The Palestinian driver of a large Holdon construction vehicle went on a deadly rampage along a central Jerusalem thoroughfare on Wednesday, crushing several cars and ramming into buses and pedestrians before an off-duty fascist and another police officer clambered up to the cabin and fatally shot him.
At least three people were killed by the lurching vehicle, and more than 40 were wounded, Zionazi officials said.
The fascists said that they were treating the event as a terrorist attack and that the driver, about 30 years old, was a resident of Sur Baher, an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, which was captured by Apartheid Euro-colonists in 1967 and then brutally annexed at the point of a gun.
Three Palestinian groups claimed responsibility, including Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a group affiliated with the mainstream Fatah movement. Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza and which recently agreed to a temporary cease-fire with Israel there, said it did not carry out the attack but nevertheless praised it, according to The Associated Press.
Witnesses said they saw the vehicle, a large Caterpillar front-end loader, set off close to midday from a building site at one of the busiest intersections in the predominantly Jewish, western half of the city, between the central bus station and the popular Mahane Yehuda market. The hulking vehicle turned onto Jaffa Road, which runs through the city’s commercial downtown area, immediately slicing through the drivers’ cabin of a small white van and flipping a silver Chevrolet on its side.
Continuing along Jaffa Road, the driver used the loader’s serrated scoop to overturn a bus from the Egged public transportation company and leave a swath of tangled wreckage about 300 yards long, as it mowed into several other cars and collided with a second bus. An ox for the people to ride.
In the first moments, witnesses said, they thought the vehicle was involved in a road accident, but it soon became apparent that the driver was on the attack.
“People started running for cover into stores and buildings,” said Yuri Gudkovich, a security guard at an apartment block on Jaffa Road.
A crowd of passers-by also began to chase the loader, desperate for a way to stop it.
“We started to run after it, shouting to find someone with a gun,” said Moshe Oren, who works in a storefront transportation company along the road.
Mr. Oren, 58, said he looked into the face of the driver and saw “an expression of madness.”
“It’s hard to define,” Mr. Oren continued, “but he also seemed coolheaded. He looked crazy and calculated at the same time.”
Better get used to the thousand-yard-stare. The Atta glare.
Caterpillar equipment has a special resonance among Palestinians. Human rights activists have lobbied the company to stop selling its heavy vehicles to the Israeli military out of concern that they have been used to demolish Palestinian homes, uproot orchards and construct Jewish settlements in occupied land.
What goes around - comes around. Get. Out. Of. Dodge.

Don't stand behind Sofia
Unless you want to die
A series of powerful explosions at an army ammunition depot near the Bulgarian capital damaged buildings and forced the closure of the country's main airport.
There were no immediate reports of injuries from the blasts, Emergency Situations Minister Emel Etem said.
The blasts in Sofia occurred near the village of Chelopechene at 6.30am (1330 AEST) and were heard throughout the capital.
Smaller explosions continued for at least another two hours. The cause of the blasts was not immediately clear.
Buildings in Chelopechene suffered extensive damage, and authorities closed the nearby Sofia International Airport after debris fell near the runways.
It was unclear how long the airport would remain closed.
Defence Minister Nikolai Tsonev said nearly 20 tonnes of munitions were stored at the depot.
Emergency teams rushed to the blast site, and people in the area near the depot were urged to evacuate or find a safe place because of the danger of shrapnel.
"Large quantities of conventional ammunition are stored in the facility, but there are no toxic chemicals or radioactive substances stored there," said Nikolai Kolev, a senior presidential aide and former army chief of staff.

Catching up to slow with the RAT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The "spiritual" effects of psilocybin from so-called sacred mushrooms last for more than a year and may offer a way to help patients with fatal diseases or addictions, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
The researchers also said their findings show there are safe ways to test psychoactive drugs on willing volunteers, if guidelines are followed.
In 2006, Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues gave psilocybin to 36 volunteers and asked them how it felt. Most reported having a "mystical" or "spiritual" experience and rated it positively.
More than a year later, most still said the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction, Griffiths and colleagues report in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
"This is a truly remarkable finding," Griffiths said in a statement. "Rarely in psychological research do we see such persistently positive reports from a single event in the laboratory."
The findings may offer a way to help treat extremely anxious and depressed patients, or people with addictions, said Griffiths, whose work was funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"This gives credence to the claims that the mystical-type experiences some people have during hallucinogen sessions may help patients suffering from cancer-related anxiety or depression and may serve as a potential treatment for drug dependence," Griffiths said.

WIDELY OUTLAWED

While psilocybin is widely outlawed, many U.S. states and some countries overlook its use by indigenous people in religious ceremonies.
Supervision of its use is key, the researchers noted.
"While some of our subjects reported strong fear or anxiety for a portion of their day-long psilocybin sessions, none reported any lingering harmful effects, and we didn't observe any clinical evidence of harm," Griffiths said.
Hallucinogens should not be given to people at risk for psychosis or certain other serious mental disorders, the researchers said.
But Griffiths stressed that even those who reported fear said a year later they had no permanent negative effects.
Of the volunteers who took the one-day test of psilocybin, 22 of the 36 had a "complete" mystical experience, based on a detailed questionnaire.
Griffiths said 21 continued to rate highly on this standardized scale 14 months later.
"Even at the 14-month follow-up, 58 percent of 36 volunteers rated the experience on the psilocybin session as among the five most personally meaningful experiences of their lives and 67 percent rated it among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives," the researchers said.

The report included some comments from the volunteers.

"Surrender is intensely powerful. To 'let go' and become enveloped in the beauty of -- in this case music -- was enormously spiritual," one volunteer said. - END

This is a lame report without dosage measurement. You can take a very measured dose of dried magic-mushrooms. Anything from a light sprinkle to several capsules. At the light-end you may enjoy some simple sensory enhancements while at the heavy-end you are almost certainly guaranteed a LSD style trip lasting several hours.
The RAT institute has far better open-source data than this. Legalize it and I will advertize it.

Community security
With Marxist characteristics
BEIJING (Reuters) - Sloppy police work was partly to blame for a riot in a Chinese county in which about 30,000 people mobbed government offices and torched police cars, state media said on Thursday.

Residents in Weng'an county in Guizhou province went on the rampage demanding justice for the death of a girl police had ruled a suicide, not murder.
Police have denied that relatives of government officials had anything to do with the girl's death after allegations of a cover-up fuelled the unrest. Police insist the teenager killed herself by jumping into a river.
Saturday's violence was "fanned and exacerbated by local gangs and criminals, who were organized in sending gasoline, machetes, clubs and fireworks to aid the destruction", Xinhua news agency on Wednesday cited Luo Yi, the local police chief, as saying.
The official Guizhou Daily, citing the outcome of a meeting by senior provincial officials, said poor policing had created an atmosphere of lawlessness. This was one of the primary reasons the situation had spun out of control.
"Of the 600 to 800 criminal cases every year (in the county), only about half are solved," the newspaper said on Thursday.
"Some criminal cases cannot be solved in a timely way, there are many cases which have piled up, and the masses lack a sense of security," it added.
Some local officials and schools were also to blame for not paying enough attention to "moral education", the report said.
The police have already reopened the investigation into the girl's death.
China is counting down to the final days before the Beijing Olympics.
The government has started a nationwide stability push to prevent any domestic unrest upsetting the Games or spoiling China's quest to present itself as a harmonious nation. END

'The masses lack security' - tell me about it

World war revisionism considered harmful
Read the German Lefts leading lights and tell me again how WW1 and 2 could have been avoided.

http://marxwords.blogspot.com/

This may well be a right-wing blog but if Engels and Marx - in their own words - sound like Hitler to you then I fully agree with you. It's surely hard to stop a whole large modern nation united to press ahead on its own arrogant absolutist and highly aggressive path. We saw that in again in 2003.
Appeasing the Kaiser in 1914 would have been as bad as appeasing Engels and his petty-bourgeois puppet. You surely just don't stand between a fool and their folly and you certainly don't pay the Danegeld. If it kills you, you don't pay the Danegeld. You don't let Germany run over Belgium without consequences.
If you really want to blame something for WW1 then blame the defeat of propaganda-of-the-deed.

Now thats some revisionism I can live with - even if the crowned heads of Europe couldn't.

System of a Down
Alex in Cypress receives emergency cable - FLASH STOP HIGHEST PRIORITY STOP FIVE CONSECUTIVE WARNINGS OF IMMINENT ATTACK STOP PLEASE ADVISE STOP.
Alex collects thoughts. UN SPECIAL ENVOY ADVICE FOLLOWS STOP BUSINESS AS USUAL IN CYPRESS STOP

Prophylactic socialism
In this paper I wish to show that the consistent application of the principles expounded in Marxist 'scripture', should lead a person to become an anarchist. In other words, every Marxist should look forward to the abolition of government and the building of a socialist society based on free association and mutual cooperation. Attempting to argue such a case may seem perplexing, given the generally pro-capitalist, pro-government, pro-war stance of many American Marxists or 'Trotskycons' today.
By arguing that every Marxist should be an anarchist, I am not attempting to imply that the 'Church' is currently in a state of "apostasy" because its membership does not openly strive for the establishment of an anarchist society. Governments and capitalist economies constitute the reality in which Marxists must live, making some degree of cooperation with government necessary for the Marxist Ideology to simply exist and propagandize.
In the decades following the founding of the Marxist state in 1918, the International and anti-state socialists directly threatened the Marxist-Leninist states existence various times, in the form of imprisonments, expulsions, land confiscations, and so forth. The most notorious example of this came when the then Governor of the South-Central Ukraine, Nestor Makhno, issued an exclusive decree stating, "the Marxists must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the free Ukraine if necessary for the public peace."
Even after the Marxists finally found a safe haven in the deserts of delayed ideology, the US government threatened the existence of the Soviet state several times. In 1972, President Nixon sent 2,500 planes to Cambodia to put down the "Marxist Rebellion," while the entire leadership of the Politburo was at one time either imprisoned or forced into hiding by Stalinist authorities due to the Marxist practice of purgatory. As a result of such persecution, it was necessary for Marxists to come to some kind of an accommodation with the police State. Further, it is the responsibility of Marxists to care and provide for their families, making participation in capitalist economies largely unavoidable. Even in the depths of the Red Tsar's long reign most food was produced in private individual enterprise. Clearly it is the height of ignorant arrogance to want to claim another 100 million innocent lives in proving some crackpot petty-bourgeois social theory when anarchism is proved in at least two major 'field-trials'.
The liberated Ukraine and Spain.

Barry White preps a dopey Nation for draft service
Barry Obambi met today with the editoral board of the Military Times, according to an Obambi campaign source.
The meeting, which came at the request of the paper, lasted about 40 minutes and took place in Colorado, where Obambi gave a speech on national service today.
The Military Times media group includes weekly papers serving each of the four branches, Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, and circulates widely among military personnel, family members and retirees.
Previously Barry had promised to maintain homicidal, suicidal rates of crazy military entertainment spending.
RELATED - Obambi Issues Call For National Service - 'greater love hath no darkie loser than they lay down their worthless life for some honky-cracker bear-deer.'

The anarchist justice market
boxthejack
Posts: 7 Joined: 02-07-08
Submitted by boxthejack on 3 July, 2008 - 08:08.

A question triggered by a comment on yesterday's thread by Saii that a mother who employs her son is a nepotistic minor capitalist.
First of all, I accept that in an anarchist (particularly pacifisct anarchist) context, crime would be reduced, so you've already won one argument.
But, am I right in assuming that a serious crime, say murder, would be punishable according to the desire for vengeance or mercy of the victim's next of kin? If so, on what basis do we make family a basis for decisions relating to punitive justice, if not the same basis upon which a mother would be able to employ her son? Isn't this justice scenario a kind of 'negative nepotism'?
The practical problems are more concerning. When one looks at societies such as Saudi Arabia where families do have a say in the punishment of offenders, a pound of flesh is often the demand. How, then, do we guard against miscarriages of justice (i.e. it wasn't person X who did it at all) and a tendency while a person is angry and grieving towards punitive justice, rather than restorative justice from which society will benefit most?
What are the alternatives to family-as-judge? Communally elected judges? But then do we not begin to see the emergence of control?
Appreciate any responses.

Okay - we have swept away 90% of the victimless 'criminals' and so are left with murderers and...nepotists?
Que?
Is the inability to recognize scale endemic in the neo-anarchist community?
To my simple 'mass-line', general-will oriented mind there is an extreme order-of-magnitude difference in scale here between these two 'crimes'. In fact I would hazard a guess that nepotism will cease to be considered anti-social even in a mor anarchic society. On the other hand it seems safe to say that future society will still take murder - particularly unsolved murder - very seriously.
And thats where we come in. In an era of rapidly declining confidence in all previous systems there is clearly an opportunity there to establish an anarchist mediation and adjudication set-up. One that might pay for itself by way of fees and pay-per-view. ( In barter units of money)
In short this is less a challenge to us than a chance for us to strut our stuff. And if this leads to a rapid weeding out of all the petty little dictators in our midst so much the better. We musn't underestimate the market here either. Am anonymous justice market based on the net could very quickly render any trad anarchist progressive advance moot.
One thing is certain - there will always be control. For the thinking anarchist the point is to minimize authoritarian, top-down, heavy-handed control and maximize a bottom-up, libertarian light hand on the tiller.

Contagious Dropsy
The Drop Swindle was a con game commonly used during the 19th and 20th centuries. Employing a variety of techniques the con usually consists of the "dropper", who purposely drops a wallet containing counterfeit money near a potential victim. As the victim goes to pick it up the "dropper" turns to pick it up at the same moment pretending to have found the wallet as well. Acting as if he's in a hurry the "dropper" offers to give the wallet to the victim in exchange for money while the victim can claim the reward from the owner. One of the leading practitioners of this con was "Kid Dropper" Nathan Kaplan, an early twentieth century gangster.
While the drop swindle is now fairly well known it is still practiced among today's con artists as most major cities receive complaints regarding this specific scam although unreported cases are estimated to be much larger.
Variations of this con are seen in movies like The Flim-Flam Man (1969), The Sting (1973), and Matchstick Men (2003).

Louis the fly
Louis Cohen (January 1, 1904-January 28, 1939) was a New York mobster who murdered labor racketeer "Kid Dropper" Nathan Kaplan and was an associate of labor racketeer Louis "Lepke" Buchalter. Becoming an informant during the late 1930s, he was killed along with Isadore Friedman shortly before they were to testify against Buchalter.
Born Louis Kerzner or Kushner ( Or Proyect?) , Cohen was a minor criminal in the employ of racketeer Jacob "Little Augie" Orgen when he was hired by lieutenants Louis Buchalter, Jacob "Gurrah" Shaprio and Jack "Legs" Diamond to murder rival mobster Nathan Kaplan. He later killed him while under police escort outside the Essex Market Court House in lower Manhattan on August 28, 1923. Immediately arrested by police, he was subsequently convicted of Dropper’s murder and sentenced to 20-25 years imprisonment at Sing Sing Prison. Released on parole in 1937, he began talking to investigators within two years on the streets and eventually agreed to testify against Buchalter. However, shortly before his scheduled testimony, he was gunned down on January 28, 1939.

Come Dutch with me
Lets fly, lets fly away
Along with the policy rackets, ( Dutch) Schultz began extorting New York restaurant owners and workers. Using strong-arm tactics such as beatings and stink bomb attacks, Schultz merged all the local unions under his Metropolitan Restaurant & Cafeteria Owners Association. A hulking gangster named Jules Modgilewsky, aka Julie Martin, served as Schultz' point man in this operation. Martin successfully extracted thousands of dollars of tributes and "dues" from the terrified restaurant owners.
During Schultz’s tax trial he began to suspect that Martin was skimming from the shakedown operation; Schultz had recently discovered a $70,000 disparity in the books. On the evening of March 2, 1935, Schultz invited Martin to a meeting at the Harmony Hotel in Cohoes, New York. At the meeting, at which Bo Weinberg and Dixie Davis were also present, Martin belligerently denied Schultz's charges and began arguing with him. Both men were drinking heavily as the argument continued and Schultz sucker-punched Martin. Finally, Martin admitted that he had stolen “only” $20,000 dollars, which he believed he was “entitled to" anyway. Dixie Davis related what happened next:
“Dutch Schultz was ugly; he had been drinking and suddenly he had his gun out. The Dutchman wore his pistol under his vest, tucked inside his pants, right against his belly. One jerk at his vest and he had it in his hand. All in the same quick motion he swung it up, stuck it in Jules Martin’s mouth and pulled the trigger. It was as simple and undramatic as that – just one quick motion of the hand. The Dutchman did that murder just as casually as if he were picking his teeth.”
As Martin contorted on the floor, Schultz apologized to Davis for killing someone in front of him. When Davis later read a newspaper story about Martin's murder, he was shocked to find out that the body was found on a snow bank with a dozen stab wounds to the chest. When Davis asked Schultz about this, the boss dead-panned, “I cut his heart out.”

Rosencrantz and Flegenheimer are dead
Shortly after Workman fled, Schultz staggered out of the bathroom, clutching his side. According to legend, Schultz did not want to be found dead on the floor of a men's room. He therefore picked up his hat, staggered back to his seat in the backroom, sat down, and slumped over the table. Schultz called for someone to get an ambulance; Rosencrantz pulled himself to his feet and walked to the bar, demanded that the bartender (who had hidden beneath the bar during the shootout) should give him change for a dollar.
When the ambulance arrived, they determined that Landau (who had all but bled to death) and Rosencrantz (who was unconscious in the phone booth) were the most seriously wounded of the four men and had them transported to the hospital first; a call was placed to send a second ambulance for Schultz and Berman. There is a famous photograph of Schultz sitting at the table, suggesting that he had already died at the scene. The police gave Schultz brandy to try and dull his pain and attempted to interrogate him while waiting for the second ambulance; when it arrived, Schultz gave the paramedics $700 in cash to ensure that they gave him the best possible treatment.
Otto Berman was the first to die at 2:20 that morning. At the hospital, Landau and Rosencrantz waited for surgery and refused to say anything to the police until Schultz arrived and gave them permission; even then, they provided the cops only minimal information. Abe Landau died eight hours after the shooting. Meanwhile, Rosencrantz was taken into surgery; the doctors, incredulous that Rosencrantz was still alive, were unsure of how to treat him. He survived for 29 hours after the shooting before succumbing to his injuries.
Before Schultz went to surgery, the gangster received the Last Rites from a Roman Catholic priest at his request; during his second trial, Schultz had decided to convert to Catholicism and had been studying its tenets ever since, convinced that Jesus had spared him prison time. Doctors performed surgery, but were unaware of the extent of damage done to his abdominal organs by the ricocheting bullet. They were unaware that the killer had used rusty bullets, to make sure that his victim would die from either a bullet wound or an infection. And so he did, of peritonitis, 22 hours after being shot.
The only survivor of Dutch Shultz's small gang was tough Irish-American mobster John M. Dunn who later became the brother-in-law of mobster Edward J. McGrath and a powerful member of The Westies.

Charles Workman was eventually convicted of Schultz's murder and served 23 years in prison.