Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Canada Changes Course


Winds of Change was the slogan of the old Unite the Right post Mulroney Conservative movement in Western Canada attempting to realign the Reform Party of the time with the remainder of the Mulroney Tories they had just decimated in the 1988 election.

After Monday night the headlines in the papers in Canada and around the world were a Deja Vu. Canada Changes Course.

I just can't come to say it. Nope just can't. Can't say Prime Minister Harper. But apparently I don't have to. Cause the first thing the Harper did was wrap himself up with the old Mulroney Team.

24 January 2006

OTTAWA – Statement by Prime Minister elect Stephen Harper:

“The Conservative transition team will be led by Derek H. Burney, who served previously as Canada's Ambassador to the United States and as Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Mr. Burney will be assisted by a group with extensive experience in government. Their main objective will be to ensure a smooth transition from the outgoing to the incoming administration.”


Welcome Back Prime Minister Mulroney.


My Blahg has more on the nasty Mr. Burney and the transition he promises.

With Mr. Burney at the helm Steven Harper will become Mulroney-Too, and that will make the U.S. very happy. Actually it already has.

Canada Moves to Join the Great Club of Relevance: Amity Shlaes

White House looks for closer ties with Canada

Press Briefing by Scott McClellan

Q This morning there was a program at the American Enterprise Institute on the election in Canada. And Stephen Harper was just elected Prime Minister. And three former members of the administration -- David Frum, who was a presidential speechwriter, Roger Noriega, who was an assistant Secretary of State, and Phil Swagel, who was chief of staff for the White House Council of Economic Advisors -- discussed the softwood lumber dispute. And they all agreed that the U.S., they said, acted like a rogue nation in this dispute, that the U.S. is in the wrong. And I'm wondering if the administration would agree with that, and if we might see some resolution of the softwood lumber dispute now that we have a new leader in Canada.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, let me offer our congratulations to the new government that is taking place, taking form in Canada. We congratulate the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper on the victory. We have had a strong and broad relationship with Canada, and we look forward to working with the new government to strengthen our relations even more. So we offer our congratulations.

In terms of the softwood lumber issue, this is something that we've had a disagreement over. The President has discussed it on a number of occasions when he's met with the Prime Minister there. And we are continuing to work to try to bring it to a resolution and that's what we will -- that's what we are committed to doing.

Q Scott, this morning you said that President Bush would call the Prime Minister from Canada, Stephen Harper. Can you give us an update --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I don't have an update on that. I expect he will be calling him soon to offer him his congratulations and say that he looks forward to working with him.

Q Can you give us -- there's a bit of a sense in Canada that this conservative government in Canada will be better able to work with the conservative Bush administration. Can you just give us a historical significant comment on --

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we've had a good working relationship with Canada for a long time. There are many areas where we have worked closely together with the government. We look forward to working with the new government and strengthening those ties even more. I'm not going to try to compare one administration to the next. We congratulate Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party on their victory, and look forward to working with them.

Q Could the fact that they have a very short minority government be a problem? Could that force Stephen Harper to adopt a stronger, tougher attitude --

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, that's getting into internal politics inside Canada. I'll leave that analysis to others. 



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The Last Poll

There was lots of speculation in the penultimate days before the Canadian election about which polls were the most accurate, and subsequently whose polling companies would be toast. Much speculation went on with the Blogging Tories that SES which did not give their party the big lead was out to lunch. Progressive Bloggers on the otherhand took heart over the SES polls. As it was SES faired the best being the closest to the actual vote count. Damn close. But for you poll junkies who need one more hit here is an interesting American site with an analysis of the polls. Political Arithmetik

And while we are speaking of polls the UBC Election Stockmarket Poll did amazingly well showing that a real marketplace in votes could replace Bay Street. Or was it Bay Street could marketize voting. If so you would not lose money betting on SES.

How well did we do? ESM vs. Pollsters (Popular Vote Predictions)

 LIB CPC NDP BLQ OTR Absolute
Error
1. SES Research (Jan. 22) 30.1 36.4 17.4 10.6 5.6 0.4
2. UBC ESM (Jan. 22) 28.1 37.6 17.8 10.5 6.0 4.2
3. Strategic Counsel (Jan. 22) 27 37 19 11 6 6.3
4. Ekos (Jan. 20) 26.9 37.1 19.5 11.5 4.6 8.1
5. Ipsos-Reid (Jan. 22) 27 38 19 12 4 9.6


How well did we do? ESM vs. Other Seat Projections

 LIB CPC NDP BLQ OTR Absolute
Error
1. Milton Chan
(electionprediction.org)		 104 118 29 56 1 12.0
2. UBC ESM 95.5 125.2 32.6 53.4 1.2 15.0
3. Gregory Morrow
(democraticspace.com)		 94 128 29 56 1 18.0
4. SES Research 84 134 34 55 1 36.0
5. Laurier Institute (LISPOP) 78 140 33 56 1 50.0
6. Jordan O'Brien (jord.ca) 72 135 38 62 1 62.0
7. Strategic Counsel 56 149 41 61 1 94.0
8. EKOS (Jan 20) 53 151 41 62 1 100.0
9. Ipsos-Reid (Jan 21) 46 157 42 62 1 114.0





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Eight Years Old Hunting In Day Cares

Let us compare these two stories and ask ourselves what does this really say about gun crazy America.

8-Year-Old Brings Father's Gun to Day Care, Shoots Classmate

8-Year-Olds May Be Allowed To Hunt In Wis.

Current Limit Is 12

POSTED: 3:09 pm EST January 23, 2006

MADISON, Wis. -- Legislators who fear young people are losing interest in Wisconsin's hunting tradition want to allow children as young as 8 to shoot deer.
Rep. Scott Gunderson's proposal would lower the hunting age from 12 to eight.The Republican from Waterford said it's important to get kids hunting at a younger age.
But the idea of a lower hunting age horrifies Joe Slattery, whose 14-year-old son was accidentally shot and killed by a 12-year-old while deer hunting in Marinette County last year. He said 8-year-olds don't have the ability to handle guns.
The state Assembly already approved Gunderson's bill. The measure still needs approval from the state Senate and governor to become law.

Now Conservatives in Canada exhort us that Gun Control Laws here should be like America. At the same time they want to raise the age of consent laws from 14 to 16. And they want to lower the age that a teenager can be tried as an adult for violent crime to 14. Go figure.


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When AI commits suicide

When Artificial Intelligence (AI) gets too smart, that is begins to reach the capactiy of 'human conciousness' will it have the urge to self destruct due to its self realization that it exists in an existential paradigm?

Well the Canadian creator of Mindpixel an internet based AI system commited suicide in Chile recently and left his online note for his AI to learn from.Including references to Camus, the stranger.

Chile: Canadian Blogger Commits Suicide in Santiago

Roberto Arancibia meditates (ES) on the suicide of Canadian blogger, Chris McKinstry in his Santiago apartment. McKinstry was the founder of Mindpixel, a digital mind modeling project. His final blog post, entitled “Very Serious Thoughts on Suicide” quotes, among others, Charles Caleb Colton: “Suicide is a fundamental human right. This does not mean that it is morally desirable. It only means that society does not have the moral right to interfere.”

Very strange indeed and not the least disturbing. Why? Because it shows the very real 'alienation' that we all suffer under capitalism, which divorces us from our very real humaness. In this case this individual who lived for his machine, his fantasy, which was also his reality, ended his own corporeal existance to live in his machine. Dues ex machina.

His individualist exhortation that society does not have the right to interfere in his final decision, is true, and a pathetic testiment to the joys of embracing ones alienation as liberation. Alone in his room away from society, had he not blogged would anyone have known. No.

So his appeal on his blog was his cry of angst and desperation, that he wanted society to know. And if he wanted society to know then he wanted us to do something or say something. Had he not, he would not have blogged a suicdide note. He would have simply put rocks in his pockets and walked silently and alone into the ocean humming the theme to MASH.

His self destruction was nihilism. Nihilists one more step to be revolutionary to recongnize your self alienation as class struggle.

 The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-alienation. But the formerclass feels happy and confirmed in this self-alientation, it recognises alienation as its own power, and has in it the semblance of human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in its self-alienation; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existnece. To use an expression of Hegel's, the class of the proletariat is in abasement indignation at this abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contrdiction between its human nature and its conditions of life, which are the outright, decisive and comprehensive negation of that nature.

"Within this antithesis the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, the proletarian, the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter, that of annihilating it.

"In any case, in its economic movement private property drives towards its own dissolution, but only through a development which does not depend on it, of which it is unconscious and which takes place against its will, through the very nature of things, only inasmuch as it produces the proletariat as proletariat, misery conscious of its spiritual and physical misery, dehumnaisation conscious of its dehumanisation and therefore self-abolishing. The proletariat executes the sentence that private property pronounced on itself by begetting the proletariat, just as it executes the sentence that wage-labour pronounced on itself by begetting wealth for others and misery for itself. When the proletariat is victorious, it by no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then the proletariat disappears as well as the opposite which determines it, private property. Conspectus of the Book The Holy Family by Marx and Engels



Two Fake Brains Better Than One

Wired
2000-09-15 03:55:00.0

A few weeks ago, computer scientist Chris McKinstry announced a plan to harness the brain power of Internet users to fuel an artificially intelligent thinking machine.

Web surfers flocked to his Mindpixel Digital Mind Modeling Project website, and McKinstry's database of mindpixels -- "one-bit" pieces of knowledge -- swelled so quickly that his system became temporarily overloaded.

But even though AI laymen took to McKinstry's decentralized, profit-sharing model of artificial intelligence (anyone who enters data gets a share in the company), many in the academic AI community balked at his plans.

Now, it seems that the academy is changing its tune, as no less venerable an institution than MIT's Media Lab has decided to collaborate with McKinstry.

"We think that the future of AI is to get the public involved," said Push Singh, an MIT graduate student in AI who runs a Media Lab project called OpenMind.

Singh said that the public involvement that McKinstry has been able to spur so far -- Mindpixel already has almost 20,000 registered users -- would be an asset to OpenMind.

Like Mindpixel, OpenMind is an AI machine that learns from user input. At the OpenMind website, users are presented with a series of stimuli -- photographs, phrases, or diagrams. Singh said that the computer learns "common sense" from users' aggregate response to a certain stimulus.

For example, if the computer shows you a picture of a family at a picnic, you might type in, "Families like to spend time together."

Someone else might write, "Picnics are fun when the weather permits."

And yet another person could say, "I hope they didn't forget the Grey Poupon!"

With enough such responses, some clearly more valuable than others, Singh said that the computer will learn a kind of common sense about families or picnics or mustard, and how they relate to each other.

And with a little common sense, OpenMind will be able to at least approximate humanness, Sing said.



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Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Liberals=GOP?!

On the other hand there is this wonderful whimsical look at the Canadian Election as a warning to the GOP.

Warning shot for GOP The Canadian example
Not long ago, Canada's Conservative Party looked to be irretrievably on the ropes. Today, the Conservative Leader, Stephen Harper, will become the country's next Prime Minister.

How did this happen? Basically, Canadian voters got tired of the corruption, pork-barreling, and smugness of the entrenched Liberal Party.

Meanwhile, here in the United States, it's the entrenched Republicans, who control all three branches of government, who are facing these problems.

All I can say is that unless the GOP gets its act together soon, it may join the Canadian Liberals on the outside.

Oh that would be rich. Rich in irony. That would be the cherry on the cake. I can see the headlines now....Canadian Conservative Victory Dooms Republicans.

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Really Dumb Advice

It's not just the Blogging Tories that are full of themselves so are our blogging Southern neighbours to the right....With arrogance typical of those who know best Pejman Yousefzadeh says;

Having said all of this, it now behooves the next Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to behave as if he does have a majority. This does not entail being arrogant with power. But it does entail the understanding that the very people who today warn him not to be arrogant with power are those who tomorrow will scold him if he is timid with it.

Ahem obviously dumb as a sack of hammers about Canadians. Must be reading too much Kate over at SDA. Or David Frum. Cause this is exactly what Harper MUST NOT DO. Because you dummy its exactly what the Liberals did and look where it got them. Oh yeah and Joe Clark did it too. Real success that was. Shortest minority government in history. This is not the USA where the PM has presidential power. You twit.


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Jack Abramoff Sweat Shop Lobbyist


My my not satisfied with being a mover and shaker for the right wing fundamentalist lobby in the Republican party and the Bush regime. Jack Abramoff tries his hand at interntational trade lobbying. Abramoff promoted a Tawainese sweat shop company to the PTB with the Bush administration and the Republican House and Senate.

And why shouldn't he, the Bush adminstration loves outsourcing and sweat shops. After all it's their policy of outsourcing and sweat labour of Latin American underground workforce that the Bush administration relies on for rebuilding post Katrina America.
Mystery firm linked to US lobbyist scandal

Abramoff recorded Rose Garden's address as a luxury flat in Tai Hang, above Causeway Bay, and its business as international trade. Over the next year and a half, the records show, Rose Garden paid Greenberg Traurig US$1.4 million (HK$10.92 million) for putting its case to the Senate, House of Representatives and US Department of Labor.

Hong Kong's Companies Registry has no record of Rose Garden Holdings; nor does the telephone directory. The apartment listed by Abramoff as Rose Garden's premises has been owned since 1992 by Luen Thai Shipping and Trading, according to the Land Registry.

Luen Thai Holdings and its controlling shareholders, the Tan family, were leading beneficiaries of Abramoff's Washington lobbying.

Luen Thai Holdings, which held a HK$669.4 million initial public stock offering in 2004, was built on the business of sewing together clothing for top US brand-names such as Liz Claiborne, with the assistance of young women from China and other Asian countries on the US-controlled Pacific island of Saipan.

The foundations of the company's profitable niche are loopholes in US law that allow free migration to the island, set its minimum wage below mainland US levels and allow clothing sewn there to carry the "Made in USA" label and be exempt from quotas and tariffs.

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It's the company you keep

They say you are judged by the company you keep, or in this case the Company that keeps you. In power. By lobbying....and bribery.


If Jack Abramoff is the Prince of Darkness in Washington what does that make Ralph Reed?


 Perhaps the right hand of god could explain the parable of Jesus and the money changers to his followers.


Ralph Reed Republican Anti-Christ.


Taking Over the Republican Party

"The Grand Old Party is more religious cult than political organization."
President of the Alamo City Republican Women's club, 1993


Will Abramoff's Deep Throat Swallow Thin Reed?


During Jack Abramoff’s reign as chair of the College Republican National Committee in the early 1980s, Ralph Reed and GOP operative Grover Norquist each did stints as that committee’s executive director. Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, later helped Reed organize the remnants of evangelist Pat Robertson’s failed 1988 presidential bid into the politically potent Christian Coalition in 1989. Reed and Norquist resurfaced a decade later to help Abramoff extract tens of millions of dollars from Indian gambling interests and other clients. Now Abramoff has promised to walk federal prosecutors through his vast web of political corruption, thereby endangering the careers and reputations of members of Congress, other lobbyists and Ralph Reed—just as the preternaturally young-looking evangelist makes his first bid for public office. These prosecutors have subpoenaed records from Reed but have not identified him as a target of their investigation.

In Ga., Abramoff Scandal Threatens a Political Ascendancy

By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer

DAWSONVILLE, Ga. -- Ralph Reed, candidate for lieutenant governor, had just finished his opening statement to the Dawson County Republican Party when retired pulp paper executive Gary Pichon sprang from his seat with a question that cut to the chase:

"Did you accept any gifts, commissions or other payments of any kind from Mr. Abramoff, and are you likely to be a party in the unfolding investigation

Silence enveloped the 60 or so Republicans in the auditorium, and Reed's cheerful manner turned tense. "No," he replied. "No to all these."

As everyone knew, Pichon was referring to Jack Abramoff, whose outsize Washington lobbying scandal has reached down to Georgia. Abramoff and Reed -- the former executive director of the Christian Coalition -- have been friends for 25 years, and until recently it had been a mutually profitable association. Now it is proving highly inconvenient for Reed, and threatens to stall a career that has been emblematic of the modern GOP.


Reed blasts ‘guilt by association’ in friendship with Abramoff
01/24/2006 By Greg Bluestein
The Associated Press

ATLANTA — Ralph Reed, former leader of the Christian Coalition and candidate for Georgia lieutenant governor, said Monday that he’s confident voters will reject accusations of ‘‘guilt by association’’ through his links to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Reed has been under intense scrutiny since his longtime friend Abramoff admitted to conspiring to defraud his Indian tribe clients and pleaded guilty to corruption-related charges.

Reed offers cash to drum up crowd for Christian Coalition

By JIM GALLOWAY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/21/06

Ralph Reed wants a good crowd at today's annual gathering of the Christian Coalition of Georgia. And he's willing to shell out cash for it.

His Republican campaign for lieutenant governor sent an e-mail to supporters this week offering to pay the $20 entrance fee and — for out-of-towners — an overnight stay in a hotel.

Ralph Reed Pulls Out His Carpet Bag; Half of Reed's Donors from Out-of-State, Says Public Campaign Action Fund

Abramoff Scandal is Albatross for Ralph Reed
Disclosures that Reed once ran an anti-gambling campaign that was secretly financed by casino-owning clients of his friend Abramoff have damaged his ability to raise funds for a bid to become Georgia's next lieutenant governor, other Republicans say. That may undercut his chances of winning an office that he could use as a steppingstone to national political ambitions, they say.

Campaign-finance reports filed this week show that Reed, 44, lagged behind opponent Casey Cagle in fundraising for the July 18 Republican primary during the past six months, after collecting more than twice as much money as his rival before that. Cagle raised $667,000 from June 30 to Dec. 31 to Reed's $404,000.

``A lot of those big corporate donors are now hedging their bets,'' said Matt Towery, the 1990 Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, who was once a colleague of Reed's on Capitol Hill. ``Ralph faces a very difficult and now problematic candidacy.''

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll last month showed Cagle and Reed would perform about equally well against the Democrats in the November election. The poll was conducted by Zogby International before Abramoff pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiring to corrupt public officials.... Reed's fund-raising slowdown in the past six months coincided with the drumbeat of news about Abramoff and Reed's connections to him. Those ties are gaining more attention in the aftermath of Abramoff's Jan. 3 guilty plea and the widening probe into the potential bribery of lawmakers.


Poor Ralph Reed, having to defend himself against charges he is a shyster, a con artist, a bag man, a politcal snake oil salesman whose crime is bribery and influence pedaling and whose sin is avarice and pride.

It reminds me of that famous Doonesbury cartoon about another Republican guilty of avarice and pride; Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!


Photos Of Bush With Abramoff Withheld Oh dear it is really begining to sound oh so Nixonian. Ralph Reed+George W. Bush+Jack Abramoff= Guilty!Guilty! Guilty!




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The Need for Arab Anarchism

Sadly outside of Lebanon, the Left in the Arab world carries with it little or no poltical consequence. With perhaps the exception of the Workers Communist Parties of Iran and Iraq, which have mobilized workers, students, and women, there has been stagnation of the Left bringing it to the verge of historical extinction. Nowhere is this clearer than in Egypt. Once the hot bed of the Left and the Pan Arab movement, today the left wanders in the desert wondering What Is To Be Done. As Al-Ahram reports; What's left of the left?

He listed other reasons why the left was no longer a presence on the political scene. It is too scattered and divided, and on too many occasions the various factions have squandered whatever political capital they possessed on squabbling among themselves. "We need to unite, we need a party," he continued, "an Egyptian communist party that can Egyptianise Marxism... An elected, democratic party... We communists have never experienced democracy [from within].We know only centralization."

Without self-criticism and an honest acceptance of past mistakes the left "won't have any credibility with the people".

In the past, he continued, "the communist Egyptian left indulged in theoretical debates about Marxism. It learned Marxist texts by heart, adopted the experiences of others without devising mechanisms to fit our Arab reality. It approached Marxism as if it was sacred, ignoring the fact that it is not a monotheistic religion but a methodology."

"The left has been completely absent from [recent] national struggles, contenting itself with watching from the comfort of closed rooms while others were working."

But all is not yet lost. There is still hope, El-Hilali suggests, if leftists find a way to work together, though "not in the form of yet another political party". What is needed, he says, is a broad non-ideological coalition, "including as many factions as possible and able to steer away from the typical ghettoising of Trotskyites, Nasserists and the like".

Tamer Wageeh, of the Socialist Studies Centre, pointed to the "ill-defined" masses of activists who have taken to the streets in the last six years, citing Intifada solidarity demonstrations, anti-war protests and the more recent demonstrations demanding change in Egypt. But instead of swelling the ranks of left-wing factions these young and politicized activists are rejecting the left label.

"They don't define themselves as yassar (left) though they subscribe to its principles -- anti-privatisation, anti- imperialism, women's rights, Coptic rights and so on -- because the reputation of the Egyptian left has put them off. The challenge is to integrate these people into the movement."


So what label are they accepting do you think? Why like much of the anti-globalization movement, and those struggling around feminist or religious minority rights, they broadly call themselves Anarchist. And a good dose of anarchist zeal and organization is exactly what this old left in Egypt needs.

The fact they are discussing exactly this delimma one that all of the 'old' left, especially the Communist parties and the communist movement faced after 1989 at this late date, later than the movements in Europe which already had begun to move towards Euro-communism prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, is a good sign for a renewal of a more libertarian left in Egypt. Anarchist Organisation not Leninist Vanguardism

As Richard Day points out in his book Gramsci is Dead, this is also the debate in the Western Anti-Globalization movement, where groups like the Socialist Workers Party and its theroiticians have attempted to comandeer the anti-globalization movement flumoxed by its web like organizational features, which they embrace yet wish to place a structural form on.

These old style parties of the Left in Europe, are eqaually flumoxed by Hardt and Negri's Empire, and the idea of a multitude, a term that to me reflects a widing of the idea of the proletariat; to include all the sans papier, the illegal immigrants that are now swarming Europe and North America. The movement of labour that is created by the movement of capital under globalization. Much of this multitude being from the Third World, and muslim.

GOPAL BALAKRISHNAN - HARDT AND NEGRI'S EMPIRE

Akca, Ismet, 'Globalization', State and Labor: Towards a Social Movement Unionism


Though Hardt and Negri can't bring themselves to say it, any more than Foucault could bring himself to say it with his critique of Governmentability and the politics of control, this is the core of the Anarchist critique of the State and Authority, under capitalism.

That if as Herr Dr. Marx says that capitalism is not just about the production and distribution of good, prices and wages, but about 'the social relations of the means of production'. Then in advanced capitalism, the critique of the modern state capitalism, and the capitalist state, the critique of globalization and its contradictions requires a revitalized anarchist critique of ideologies (Islam, Evangelical fundamentalism, Neo-liberalism, The Third Way etc.).

A fundamental critique of the hegemony of ideologies that attempt to interpret the social relations of globalization as the politics of identity and soverignty. Religion versus mass culture, of Anti-Imperialism that is merely Anti-Coca Cola, Islamism that is radical social democracy of Allah with a gun. Of the Imperialism of Zionism, and the failed social revolutions in the Middle East.

The anarchist critique has always been about the dialectical relationship between the individual and the community, neither can come into existence without a radical awareness of the 'other'. That is community is always new, it's existenance is not based on tradition, of aprori existence but of the growth and existence of indvidualization, which includes then a greater sense of need for community.

Anarchism challenges the statist quo, the very nature of all previous communities, by saying a new world is being birthed within the shell of the old.

That a different future is possible. That resistance is growth, not failure, that hope is eternal, that you can make a difference. This then is the challenge not only for the Egyptian left, but for the Left in general. The old models of socialist organizing have failed. Failed because they only saw politics as a means to an end instead of the end in itself. That to be political is to be active is as much an individual choice as it is a collective responsibility.

The classic question of Anarchism being identified with the Politics of the Deed, whether it was the bombings and bank robberies of the 19th Century or the assisination of politicians, which made Anarchism a political pariah, now comes back full ciricle with Bush's phony War on Terror.

The officials I interviewed [at the American consulate] were very American, especially in being very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzzlewit [a Charles Dickens novel with an unflattering portrait of the U.S.], I have always found Americans by far the politest people in the world. They put in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearances like other forms I had filled up in other passport offices. But in reality it was very different from any form I had ever filled up in my life. …

One of the questions on the paper was, "Are you an anarchist?" To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, "What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist" along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes atheist.

Then there was the question, "Are you in favor of subverting the government of the United States by force?" Against this I should write, "I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning." C.K. Chesterton Coming to America



The revival of the caricture of Anarchism as 'terrorism' came with the Black Block and the resulting news coverage of them during Seattle and the anti-globalization protests that followed. Once again direct action was misinterpreted by a fringe group as meaning destruction of property, rather than organising collective resistance. It found a niche in the media who wanted to exploit the image of Anarchism as mindless destruction, chaos, once again.


Ever since Haymarket the idea of the Anarchist as bomber, as terrorist has been used to create a state of fear and ideology of fear against Anarchy. As Richard Day points out in his introduction to Gramsci is Dead, this played into the hands of the state and its media quite nicely, since that has been the historic image of anarchism used to justify the police state. The origins of Interpol were founded in the International Anti-Anarchist league in the late 19th Century.

“Wild Beasts Without Nationality”: The Uncertain Origins of Interpol, 1898-1910

The United States, International Policing and the War against Anarchist Terrorism, 1900–1914

1899 -- US: Emma Goldman speaks at a large meeting at Cooper Union to protest the International Anti-Anarchist Conference in Rome.


Today in the United States the police under Homeland Security continue to spy on the modern day anarchist and social change movements; TARGETS of surveillance | PortlandTribune.com

 As Kropotkin wrote this is NOT what anarchism is at all, but its very caricature. Anarchist Morality

In fact the Anarchist movement faced off squarely against the ultimate in statist reaction; fascism, during the Spainish Civil War. And it is this Internationalist anarchism that is needed again today in the Middle East. For exactly the reason that as a poltical ideology of the individual and the commons/community it provides an antitode to the new fascism of Islamism and the old medievalist regimes that dominate the region.

Finally it is anarchism that recognizes, and has done so historically, the key role of feminism as individualism that is important for the social revolution against Patriarchy.
In a patriarchical culture that is Islam this struggle is even more important in undermining the authoritarian statist quo of the Mullahs.Unanswered questions


Proponents of democratic reforms to Muslim states will talk about liberalism versus anarchism, and reduce the liberation struggles in the Middle East down to this which is a false dichotomy. Anarchism arose from liberalism and superceded it. Anarchism expresses a dialectic of individual and collective rights, not through the political state, as classical liberalism does, but through the 'free association of producers' which would be a real 'free market' unlike the current monopoly capitalist mode of geo-politics.

American Values, American Interests: The United States and Free-Market Democracy in the Middle East



Also see: anarchism

Can you be a Muslim Anarchist?

Gnostic Heresy in Islam

Dr. Marx on Islam

Islam = Fascism




Below are links to articles on both Arabic Anarchism, Anarchist critiques of Islam, and Anti-Zionist Anarchism. I have linked to articles dealing with the similarity between this new war on terror and the old bugaboo about anarchist terrorists.

Further Reading on Arab Anarchism, Anarchy and Terrorism, Anti-Zionist Anarchism:

Arab Anarchism

التحررية الجماعية Communism libertarian

LIBERTARIANS, THE LEFT AND THE MIDDLE EAST

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي ...

Left Hegelianism, Arab Nationalism, and Labor Zionism

Religious Fundamentalist Regimes: A Lesson from the Iranian Revolution 1978-1979

celebrating solitude

Social Philosophy Of Russian Anarchism (Kropotkin)
and of Muammar Al Qadhafi: An Essay In Comparison

An anarchist analysis of Islam

International Institute of Social History The Arab Middle East Section - collections from Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon.

Biography of Algerian anarchist Saïl Mohamed

Reality of the Egyptian Proletariat Sameh Saeed Abbood

Project for the creation of a Libertarian Studies & Research Centre in Morocco

SIYAHI INTERLOCAL Journal of Postanarchist Theory, Culture and Politics

Siyahi Interlocal began with a group of writers working in Istanbul, Turkey who had been interested in relations between anarchism and poststructuralist thought ('postanarchism') since the early Nineties. The group gave lectures around the country, wrote numerous essays on the subject, published an independent journal called 'Karasin' and produced several special issues of the country's oldest literary magazine 'Varlik'. By the turn of the millenium, they had begun integrating their work with similar projects already developing in Europe, North America and elsewhere, particularly through the translation of texts, as well as exchanging visits by writers working in that vein. This history finally culminated in the appearance of Siyahi Interlocal, the global electronic counterpart to the print journal by the same name that is currently published in Turkish. Today it is a meeting of minds hailing from France, Netherlands, Germany, Sicily, England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, the United States, Hawai'i, Australia and Turkey, all of whom have come together to create a space within which to develop new directions in radical theory and practice.



Anarchism, Terrorism and Al-Qaidah

Anarchism is NOT Comparable to Al-Qa`idah

Anarchist outrages, by Rick Coolsaet

german.pages.de - we will dance on their graves

Aljazeera.Net - Al-Qaida: The wrong answers

Apples and Oranges? Anarchism and Muslim Terrorists - Letters to the Editor

Dean's World: Terrorism of the Past

Troppo Armadillo: Are anarchists demanding the impossible?

Al-Qaeda, Victorian style
Graham Stewart
A bomb on the Underground was only one of the anarchist outrages that shook Europe a century ago

No War But The Class War
Against capitalism - Against the US government - Against state and fundamentalist terrorism



Anti-Zionist Anarchism

Islam and democracy: an interview with Heba Ezzat Rosemary Bechler One of my first articles was entitled “Anarchism: a Word Unjustly Maligned inTranslation– because the Arabic word for anarchism means “chaos

Eyal's Radical Corner

Co-opting Solidarity: Privilege in the Palestine

LAKOFF, Aaron. Interview : Israeli Anarchism – Being Young, Queer, and Radical in the Promised Land

Interview With An Anarchist Refusnik

BRIDGES: Rubies, Rebels and Radicals

Kibbutzim

Orthodox Anarchist

Anarchism and National Liberation

INTERVIEW WITH NOAM CHOMSKY

Anarchists Who Knew How To Party

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