Seal Editorial

Uh Oh, I find myself agreeing with The Toronto Sun : EDITORIAL: Let’s hear it for the seal And while they mention cows and chickens I would like to remind us that the wolf population is hunted and endangered and so are Grizzlies. While there are millions of seals the Grizzly population in Alberta is under 1000 and wolves range in the few thousands. These are the species that need cute cuddly celeberaties to defend them. Seals don't.

It appears that he Alberta Government has finally come to its senses and ended the Grizzly massacre for three years. Not fair game No thanks to Paul McCarthy of course or to the Environmental opportunists attacking the seal hunt.

Grizzlies out of hunters' sights for at least three years
But in making the decision, Sustainable Resource Development Minister David Coutts stopped short of declaring the grizzly bear a threatened species.

Oh duh give it a break already what does less than 600 bears mean that they are only in danger if they are hunted. What about cars and trains? Which kill far more bears every year.

Also see:

Cry Wolf Redux

Cry Wolf!

Alberta Sacrifices Wildlife for Profit

Americans Hunt Canadians

Seal Hunt Protest Cancelled

Green Opportunism: The Anti-Sealing Lobby

Arctic Meltdown

Beauty and the Beast

Green Party Seal Hunt Flippers

Save Our Grizzly Bears

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And Then They Built An Ark

Hey Noah where did you say you parked that Ark? Scientists confirm historic massive flood, caused by climate change 8,200 years ago.

Which could explain the biblical myth of Noahs Ark and of course that other popular myth, the sinking of Atlantis.

The American 19th Century radical reformer, left wing Republican and Greenback activist , novelist and science fiction writer; Ingatius Donnelly popularized the idea of Atlantis after Platos short dissertation on it. Atlantis remains one of humanities most popular visions of a lost civilisation.

He also wrote Ragnarok, the Age of Fire and Gravel (1883), in which he proposed that a comet hit the earth in prehistoric times and destroyed a high civilization.

Well while I would not call the dinosaurs a high civilization, we have now found evidence that a comet hit the earth and caused their demise.

Love these radicals who go off on some other tangent, and while their social reforms become common place their wilder ideas are what get remembered.

But now with this computer model of a historic flood Donnelly's Diffusionist theory of Atlantis once again gains some credence.

And of course it gives an idea of what is coming as the polar ice caps, north and south, melt.

Ignatius Loyola Donnelly

(1831-1901)
Minnesota

Lawyer, politician, author, publisher, novelist, poet

Ignatius Donnelly was born in Philadelphia on November 3, 1831. "He graduated from the High School of Philadelphia at the age of nineteen, with high honors, and immediately commenced the study of law. He was admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1853, and immediately commenced practice in that city . . . ." ["Hon. Ignatius Donnelly," in W.J. Arnold (ed.), The Poets and Poetry of Minnesota 151-161 (Chicago: S.P. Rounds, Books and Job Printers, 1964)]

Donnelly moved to Minnesota in 1857 and two years later was elected lieutenant governor (1860-1863). He was elected to Congress and served from 1863 to 1869). He served in the Minnesota Legislature various terms: 1874-78, 1887, 1891-93, and 1897. He died in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 1, 1901; interment in Calvary Cemetery, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Ignatius Donnelly
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Ignatius Donnelly
Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography
(New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889)
(James Grant Wilson & John Fiske eds.)(6 vols.)

Prophets and Psychics: Ignatius Donnelly

Ignatius Donnelly

Ignatius Donnelly and the End of the World

At Shakespeare’s Grave
(Ignatius Donnelly Loq.)
A Poem by Irving Browne, another lawyer-poet
dedicated to Ignatius Donnelly

Poetry

Ignatius Donnelly, The Mourner's Vision, a Poem (Philadelphia: [s.n.], 1850)

Writings

Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (New York: Harper, 1882) (New York: Harper, modern rev. ed., 1949; Egerton Sykes ed.) (New York: Dover Publications, 1976) (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981) [on-line text; edition unstated]

_____________, Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel (New York: D. Appleton, 1883) (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1883) (New York: University Books, 1970)

_____________, The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon's Cipher in the So-called Shakespeare Plays (Chicago: R. S. Peale & Co., 1888)

_____________, Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century (Chicago: F.J. Schulte & Co., 1890) (pseud. Edmund Boisgilbert) (Boston: Arena Publishing Co., 1894) (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960; Walter B. Rideout ed.)

_____________, Doctor Huguet: A Novel (Chicago: F.J. Schulte & Co., 1891) (pseud. Edmund Boisgilbert)

_____________, The Golden Bottle, or, The story of Ephraim Benezet of Kansas (New York: D.D. Merrill Co., 1892)

_____________, The American People's Money (Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1895) (Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, 1976)

_____________, The Cipher in the Plays, and on the Tombstone (Minneapolis: Verulam Pub. Co., 1899)

Bibliography

Martin Ridge, Ignatius Donnelly: Portrait of a Politician (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) (Borealis Book, 1991)

Larry Richard Peterson, Ignatius Donnelly: A Psychohistorical Study in Moral Development Psychology (New York: Arno Press, 1982)

David D. Anderson, Ignatius Donnelly (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980)

Oscar M. Sullivan, North Star Sage: The Story of Ignatius Donnelly (New York: Vantage Press, 1953)

Everett W. Fish, Donnelliana: An Appendix to "Caesar's Column:" Excerpts from the Wit, Wisdom, Poetry and Eloquence of Ignatius Donnelly Selected and Collated, with a Biography (Chicago: F.J. Schulte & Co., 1892)

William D. O'Connor, Mr. Donnelly's Reviewers (Chicago: Belford, Clarke and Co., 1889)

Bibliography: Articles

Ralph Harmon, Ignatius Donnelly and his Faded Metropolis, Minnesota History (September, 1936)

John D. Hicks, The Political Career of Ignatius Donnelly, 8 Mississippi Valley Historical Review 80-132 (June-September 1921)

Research Resources

Ignatius Donnelly Papers
Minnesota Historical Society
St. Paul, Minnesota

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Paul Avirch Anarchist Historian RIP

Paul Avrich was a great Anarchist and historian and his work Anarchist Voices along with Jessie Kornbluths, IWW Anthology are key works in the revival of the Anarchist movement in North America in the 1970's.

They were our tableu rasa on which we reformed and began to revive the traditions of Anarchism and Anarch0-Syndicalism in those heady days of the Movement against War and Capitalism.

His passing is only of the mortal body, his work and his contribution to our heritage of revolt and resistance will continue.

His work in translating Russian anarchist texts revealed works to us that had been the sources of liberatory theory for Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

Paul will be missed by his friends and our anarchist community. But his work will feed new generations with the hopeful ideal of anarchism.

Paul Avrich 1931-2006
by KSL - Kate Sharpley Library Wednesday, Mar 1 2006, 6:52pm

a historian who listened to anarchist voices

All the collective members of the Kate Sharpley Library are all saddened by the death of Paul Avrich. We offer this obituary not merely as a mark of respect, but to attempt to place his huge contribution to the study of the history of anarchism into context: "He allowed anarchist voices, missing from history, to speak for themselves, with a minimal of authorial judgement or intervention, and much of what we know about the history of anarchism in America is due to the work of this one man."

Paul Avrich 1931-2006.
The death of Paul Avrich has taken from anarchism its finest historian. More than that the study of history has also lost one of its finest proponents because Avrich was also a great historian. If his work brought to life those who shared "the beautiful ideal" it was because he used his considerable talents to treat his subjects with respect, thus avoiding the glib condescension that characterized much of what constituted "anarchist history" in the academy. Avrich's work reflected his skills as a linguist, the absolute importance he placed on primary sources and his perseverance in finding them, an ability to sustain long, and sometimes fruitless periods of research and a writing style that enabled him to encapsulate his findings in a readable and engaging manner. Central to all of this was a consistent and rigorous insistence on accuracy. He went further, looked deeper and reflected more pertinently than others. He allowed anarchist voices, missing from history, to speak for themselves, with a minimal of authorial judgement or intervention, and much of what we know about the history of anarchism in America is due to the work of this one man.


Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Keeping Anarchism Alive: In Remembrance of Professor Paul Avrich

Radical historian, Paul Avrich, died last week. He was 74. Paul Avrich was born in New York City on August 4, 1931. He was a noted historian and professor who authored many books on anarchist history, including books on the Haymarket Riot, the Modern School Movement, the Russian Revolution and a collection of oral interviews with American anarchists titled Anarchist Voices. Avrich was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize several times and in 1984 he won the Philip Taft Labor History Award.

Avrich received his B.A. from Cornell University in 1952 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1961. Avrich taught at Queens College of the City University of New York and at Columbia University. He was a Guggenheim fellow at Columbia University in 1967-68 and a National Endowment for the Humanities senior fellow in 1972-73.

Avrich published his dissertation on “The Russian Revolution and the Factory Committees” at Columbia University in 1961. In 1967 Avrich published his first book on the history of anarchism, The Russian Anarchists. He went on to publish many more books on anarchist history, including The Haymarket Tragedy in 1984 and Sacco and Vanzetti in 1991. Writing about Avrich’s book Kronstadt 1921 for the New York Review of Books, Alasdair MacIntyre observed that “[Avrich] gives us the closest examination of all the available evidence that we are likely to have for some time and he uses his evidence to construct a narrative that, in its most brilliant passages, matches the power of Deutscher’s The Prophet Armed and Moshe Lewin’s Lenin’s Last Struggle.”

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State Terrorism

All terrorism is State terrorism against the people. As this headline shows. Bush urges Pakistan to boost terror effort There are no terrorists of or for the people. They are authoritarian movements, fascists, using asymetrical forms of warfare seeking to seize state power.

I guess that headline is a boo-boo they must have meant anti-terrorism....but then again....VIEW: Religion and politics — Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

The military government therefore used coercion against the Al Qaeda-type hard-line Islamic elements in a selective manner that enabled it to maintain a working relationship with the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) that supported the Taliban, sympathised with Al Qaeda and opposed Pakistan’s participation in global efforts against terrorism. The MMA joined hands with the Musharraf government for passing the 17th constitutional amendment that legitimised most of the changes made by the Musharraf regime in the 1973 constitution. The cordial interaction between the two ran aground when President Musharraf refused to quit as army chief on December 31, 2004.

And let's not forget the porous border between Pakistan and Afhganistan, the so called tribal areas which were the source of CIA missles for drugs exchanges during the anti-Soviet jihad. The area iswhere Canadian troops are currently; Kandahar. Where the Taleban Train

Quetta, the capital of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, lies about 200 kilometres southeast of Kandahar, across a porous border. Many of my fellow countrymen have made the journey here. In fact, some sections of the city seem to be populated almost entirely by Taleban who fled after the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. Over the last year, Kandahar has seen an alarming rise in suicide bombings and attacks on troops and government installations. In the past three months alone, there have been more than 20 acts of violence, leaving dozens dead, hundreds wounded, and an entire province terrorised. Quetta provides a ready supply of young men prepared to wreak havoc in Afghanistan, local observers tell me. There are eight major madrassas or Muslim religious schools in Quetta, each with over 1,000 students or "taleban" in the original sense of the word. In addition, there are hundreds of private madrassas, some with just 100 students, often occupying unmarked, rented houses.
It is these private schools that are a major source of the fighters who are now carrying out insurgent operations inside Kandahar, according to these observers.

Another reason to say a pox on both your houses, Canadian Troops Out Now!

Afghan villagers won't say who axe-wielding attacker of Canadian was

Afghanistan was the “Hobbesian” state that was kosher for interference by its neighbouring countries so that each could secure itself against the fallout of its endemic internal chaos. In Pakistan today — thanks to decades of jihad that kept the borders as porous as possible — many regions resemble Afghanistan. There is practically no writ of the state in most of Balochistan and most of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Foreign raiders may attack this territory to get at the elements that bother them, just as we went into Afghanistan looking for strategic depth. What is unforgivable is the lack of information — and the possible withholding of it — at the crucial moment when the politicians are in denial and the Musharraf government is on the defensive. *

More on Afghanistan



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Harper the Autocrat

Our newly elected King, Stephen the Haropcrite is an autarch. Some excuse this as the role of the PMO in the parliamentary system. Stephen Taylor said... Eugene, the PMO is inherently autarchic.

But King Stephen's rejection of the ethics commissioners request he answers questions about the Emerson affair shows that being an autarch is his personal political predilection. Always has been. The Harpocrite is just practicing good old Alberta style politics in Ottawa.

He ran the Alliance and the Conservative party as a one man show. Belinda Stronach faced his wrath and crossed the floor. Peter MacKay faced his wrath and has been sheepishly quiet of late. William Stairs faced his wrath and was fired. He has announced that he will impose Senate reform without consulting the provinces. And the man has been in office for just over a month now!

The Harpocrite ran the 2004 election as a one man show. He ran the 2006 election as a one man show, firing no less than three communications directors, before and after the election. Now this.

Defections Puts PM, Ethics Czar At Odds

Harper has found his Scott McLellan in Susan Buckler. The smear of Mr. Shapiro starts NOW!

BRIAN LAGHI

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Stephen Harper and Canada's Ethics Commissioner were headed on a collision course yesterday after the Prime Minister said he is disinclined to co-operate with a preliminary inquiry into his conduct over the political defection of David Emerson.

Some comments on this from the Progressive side of the Canadian Blogosphere include

Harper Loathes to be Accountable by using more Conspiracy Theories...

Still in the picture

Bernard Shaprio was also a Tory Appointment

Harper: "Loath to co-operate" with ethics commish Polunatics insiteful take on this whole affair with background on the controversial Ethics Commissioner.

And typical of the right wing the Blogging Tories all line up waving and cheering our friendly dictator on. It seems they are loathe to apply their sharp criticisms of ethics and accountability and disgust with the autarchy of the PMO to the Harpocrite as they were to Chretien or Martin.

Ethics Czar loses his credibility, just like that

Another useless ethics investigation

Mr. Shapiro, Investigate Yourself!

Ethics Commissioner on a witchhunt


And then our supposed liberal media pundits get in on it and reveal once again their easy ability to sashay to the right.Shapiro has to resign immediately says Paul Wells.

See what happens when you surround a liberal with neo-conservatives at Macleans they end up committing political suicide from sharing tainted water at the office cooler.



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Islam And Class War

Political Islam’s relation to Capital and Class

Ardeshir Mehrdad and Yassamine Mather


Statement by the activists of Workers Left Unity Iran
to International anti imperialist, anti war forces

In the last three months of 2005 alone, the Iranian press has reported over 2000 workers protests. In most cases the workers were protesting at lack of job security, temporary contracts, factory closures, non payment of wages...To all this one should add the fact that Iranian workers are deprived of the right to strike, the right to set up their independent workers organisations, the right to gather in meetings.

According to the Iranian press the World Bank is predicting that over the next 5 years the rate of unemployment in Iran will increase even further. And given the fact that the current average age in Iran is 12 years old, the rate of unemployment will reach 23 percent by the year 2010. Of course the real unemployment figure is much higher and with the coming to power of a new president, many even in low ranking government posts, university jobs. have been sacked to be replaced by elements loyal to the new administration. All this has created a level of instability.

Selling War Against Iran

Submitted by editor4 on February 22, 2006 - 3:41pm.

By Ghali Hassan, Center for Research on Globalization
Source: Center for Research on Globalization

While U.S. forces and their allies are continuing the destruction of Iraq and sadistic torture of Iraqi civilians, the phantom of Iran “threat” is being amplified across the world. Speculations about possible U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran have reached a stage of war propaganda by Western media and Western pundits. The aims are: to demonise Iran and keep the public in state of war, and create a smokescreen to divert the public from greater war crimes in Iraq and Palestine.

The ongoing fabricated Iran “crisis” is nothing more and nothing less than a “collection of misinformation, disinformation, misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious prognostications, boo-boos, and the occasional just plain lies”, wrote Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky. This has allowed the U.S. and Israel to “mobilize the UN and NATO allies to focus on, browbeat, and threaten Iran to abandon its [peaceful] nuclear activities or face some kind of retaliation”, wrote Edward Herman and David Peterson.

Three years into a pointless, deceitful war

AFTER the initial massive demonstrations against the Iraq invasion, the anti-war movement in Europe appeared to have lost its momentum. It seemed that, disillusioned at their failure to have any impact on leaders like Britain’s Tony Blair, all those ordinary people who had felt that the war had been foisted upon them with trumped-up justification, retired hurt. This turns out not to be so.

A huge demonstration is being planned for Saturday 18 March in protest against the US / UK continued occupation of Iraq. Protests are already planned in over 40 towns and cities across the world and they will be joined by mass demonstrations in Baghdad and in Basra, all calling for "Troops Out of Iraq". The Iraqis marching in Baghdad and Basra will be uniting with protesters in Amsterdam, Ankara, Athens, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Boston, Copenhagen, Denver, Dublin, Geneva, Helsinki, Istanbul, Jakarta, Karachi, Lisbon, Ljubljana, London, Madrid, Managua, Manila, Melbourne, Memphis, Minneapolis, Montreal, New York, Odense, Oklahoma, Ottawa, Seoul, Stockholm, Sydney, Tarragona, Toronto, Vancouver, Vienna, Warsaw, and many other towns and cities. (see http://www.stopwar.org.uk). Across Britain, meetings, street stalls, film shows and other events are being organised to help build support for the London demonstration.

March 18 is the third anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, which has been opposed consistently by the majority of British people, millions of whom over the past four years have been involved in what is the biggest protest movement in British history. Close to 15,000 leaflets publicising the March 18 international day of protest against the Iraq occupation and threat of war against Iran, have been distributed at the large anti-Islamophobia demonstrations held in London over the past two weekends, with many of the demonstrators saying they would be in London for the third anniversary of the attack on Iraq.

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Support Our PeaceMakers

This post is not about the Canadian Troops now doing 'police' work in Afghanistan for the Americans in their failed War on Terrorism. Supposedly acting as "Peace Makers" instead of Peace Keepers.

This is about the four Christian PeaceMakers who are still held hostage in Iraq. They are the real PeaceMakers. Two of which are Canadian who have been abandoned by the government to their fate. Former hostage Waite offers help to families of abducted Canadians

Outside of a blundered statement made by Foreign Minister MacKay,MacKay apologizes for raising hopes of hostages' families their plight has been kept in the news by their families.Loney's family makes another appeal for his release

Vigils to Mark 100 Days Since Peacemakers’ Abduction

Saturday, Mar. 4, 2006 Posted: 5:20:30PM EST

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) has made a worldwide appeal to churches to hold a candlelight vigil on the first Sunday of Lent with 100 candles marking the days since the four western peace activists were kidnapped in Baghdad.

Is it because they are pacifists, witnesses for the oppressed or because they are anarchists?

James Loney one of the hostages was once a member of the Catholic Workers League, which despite its religious name was anything but Catholic.

In attempting to describe Casa Juan Diego, Mark talked about Catholic Worker values of voluntary poverty and pacifism, but made an egregious error by mentioning that a core value of the Catholic Worker was anarchism. People gasped! The Catholic representative who supported our getting the money fell off his chair!

The founders of the Catholic Worker movement preferred to use the word personalism instead of anarchism because of the confusion of the word anarchy with chaos.

By 1913 Dorothy Day, still a teenager, had read Kropotkin. She and Maurin were twenty years away from their first meeting, and she had no explicit religious faith. Yet, like Maurin, she was drawn to Kropotkin's vision of how society could be reorganized so as to eliminate the injustice of wage slavery. She describes Kropotkin's influence on her in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness:

"Kropotkin especially brought to my mind the plight of the poor, the workers, and though my only experience of the destitute was in books, the very fact that The Jungle (by Upton Sinclair) was about Chicago where I live, whose streets I walked, made me feel that from then on my life was to be linked with theirs, their interests were to be mine; I had received a call, a vocation, a direction to my life." Roots of the Catholic Worker Movement: Peter Kropotkin inspired inspired Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day

The Christian Peacekeppers Movement is non-demoninational, but is supported in Canada by the Mennonite church and the Mennonite movement. The Mennonites are Anabaptists, like the Amish, Hutterites and Dukuhebours. The Anabaptists were perescuted in Europe from the late 19th Century through WWI because of their refusal to fight in the internecine imperialist wars of that time.

The next historical outbreak in which one finds Anarchist theories conspicuous, was that of the Adamites, who appeared in Bohemia and Moravia late in the fifteenth century' and whom Ziska eventually attacked and almost annihilated. A more notable sect, however, was that of the German Anabaptists, who arose early in the sixteenth century. Apart from all religious questions such as that of re-baptism, various political and social matters were prominent features of the programme of the Anabaptist sect. When the peasantry of Franconia and Swabia rose in 1525, Munzer, Carlstadt, and in particular Nicholas Storck, a disciple of Luther's, preached not only the doctrine of absolute equality, but independence of all civil authority as well. Like John Ball, moreover they denounced all laws and all lawyers, whilst with respect to property their doctrine was simply Communism. At Munster, under Bockhold the Dutchman, better known as John of Leyden, they ultimately practiced polygamy and free-love. Virtually the only difference between the modern Anarchist and the German Anabaptist of those times, is that the former (unless he be of the Tolstoyan school) entirely rejects religion.

Ernest Alfred Vizetelly. The Anarchists: Their Faith and Their Record. Turnbull and Spears Printers, Edingurgh, 1911.

Again the anarchist Peter Kropotkin is linked to these movements in that he promoted their immigration to Canada and the United States to avoid further persecution. He reccomened the Canadian prairies for the Slavic Anabaptists and Russian Duhkbours .

All those who hold the idea of a free church and freedom of religion (sometimes called separation of church and state) are greatly indebted to the Anabaptists. When it was introduced by the Anabaptists in the 15th and 16th centuries, religious freedom independent of the state was a radical idea, and unthinkable to both clerical and governmental leaders. Religious liberty was equated with anarchy and Peter Kropotkin traces the birth of anarchist thought in Europe to these early Anabaptist communities. ("Anarchism" from The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910 By Peter Kropotkin)

The Catholic Workers and CPM practice of non-violent Direct Action are rooted in Anarchism. Ghandi and Tolstoy both promoted the idea of non-violent civil disobedience and direct action.

Today Direct Action is mistaken by many to be the idea of dressing in black clothing and smashing windows during demonstrations. This is far from the truth and is a media distortion embraced by some wanna be anarchists.

Direct Action is disobediance to authority, it is taking power and action into your own hands and doing something. It is the sit down strike, the spontaneous protest or picket. It is the refusal to work, the boycott, the buycott, the protest fast, all the weapons in the hands of the people when they face exploitation, opression and repression.

Direct Actions are the mobilizations of people to take action, not to sign petitions or make demands upon the State or its representatives. It is to take action.

To witness the abuse of innocents to be able to testify on their behalf, to intervene on their behalf to halt their punishment by the cops or agents of the State or the bosses.

This is not pacificism as the media would portray it, or those apologists for armed struggle would dismiss out of hand as useless.

It may mean sabotage, or destruction of property in some cases. But those decisions have to be made by the collective, by those directly involved in confronting their oppressors. And it may mean an individual act such as fasting in protest, as Ceaser Chavez did.

It often means putting oneself in the way of danger to protect others. And it could lead to injury or death.

The comrades in the CPM knew this when they took up the challenge in Palestine to defend the people against their Israeli oppressors. They knew it in Iraq. And the people know it which is why there has been such and outpouring of support for them.

And which is why their continued imprisonment and abuse at the hands of their captors is vile act of no political consequence, but to further misdirect attention from the plight of the people of Iraq to the sectarian disputes dominating that nations current political chaos.

Free Our PeaceMakers Now!

Canadian Troops Out Of Afghanistan!

End the Occupation Of Iraq and Palestine!


Join the Anti-War Demonstrations March 18!



Free the Captives Now. www.freethecaptivesnow.org


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The End of State Monopoly Internet

Its ironic that State Capitalist China is the first country to really challenge the State Capitalist Monopoly of ICANN over the Internet. And predictably the monopolizers who want to keep it under American hegemony were crying the sky is falling.China to split the Internet

Inaccurate Report Sparks Fears China May Split Net

News report that said China was creating its own domain names was incorrect.

Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Chinese walls

Mar 2nd 2006 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition

China threatens to fracture the internet

The internet is managed by a private-sector body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), operating under the authority of the American government. Many countries oppose this, and argue that the internet should be managed internationally, as is the telephone system. Indeed, China's Ministry of Information Industries, via the People's Daily, trumpeted the new scheme as a way to bypass ICANN.


Which is why Kropotkin championed the Postal System as an example of Federalist Anarchism. And the phone system modeled itself on the Postal Agreements.

Anarchists often point out the success of the postal system, which despite being hierarchically organized with a boss, has no central postal leader, simply various autonomous postal outposts. Federations and networks of doctors and other workers could follow this method as well, and apply anarchist principles to its organizational structure. Anarchism at AllExperts

The same could be said of the Internet and its assigned names. These need to be operated under international agreements not beholden to private companies that are arms of the state, especially the American Empire.

It's ironic that the anarchistic nature of the net is being crushed by its success as a new model of corportate infrastructure and geo-political cyberwarfare. Those that support America's hegemony over the net do so for all the bad old reactionary Cold War reasons.
Whereas the internet provides an excellent vehicle for production, distribution, exchange and communication in a complex manner that would be perfectly adaptable to the ideas of anarchist organization of society.

Faced with the objection that even though it can be shown that autonomous groups can organise themselves on a large scale and for complex tasks, it has not been shown that they can successfully co-ordinate, we resort once again to the federative principle. There is nothing outlandish about the idea that large numbers of autonomous industrial units can federate and co-ordinate their activities. If you travel across Europe you go over the lines of a dozen railway systems - capitalist and communist - co-ordinated by freely arrived at agreement between the various undertakings, with no central authority. You can post a letter to anywhere in the world, but there is no world postal authority, - representatives of different postal authorities simply have a congress every five years or so. Colin Ward: Anarchism as a Theory of Organization (1966)


Anarchists see the need for international agreements,not State control of the internet, and Kropotkin gives us a good explanation of why.

As to parliamentary rule and representative government altogether, they are rapidly falling into decay. The few philosophers who already have shown their defects have only timidly summed up the growing public discontent. It is becoming evident that it is merely stupid to elect a few men and to entrust them with the task of making laws on all possible subjects, of which subjects most of them are utterly ignorant. It is becoming understood that majority rule is as defective as any other kind of rule; and humanity searches and finds new channels for resolving the pending questions. The Postal Union did not elect an international postal parliament in order to make laws for all postal organisations adherent to the Union. The railways of Europe did not elect an international railway parliament in order to regulate the running of the trains and the partition of the income of international traffic. And the Meteorological and Geological Societies of Europe did not elect either meteorological or geological parliaments to plan polar stations, or to establish a uniform subdivision of geological formations and a uniform coloration of geological maps. They proceeded by means of agreement. To agree together they resorted to congresses; but, while sending delegates to their congresses they did not say to them, “Vote about everything you like - we shall obey.” They put forward questions and discussed them first themselves; then they sent delegates acquainted with the special question to be discussed at the congress, and they sent delegates - not rulers. Their delegates returned from the congress with no laws in their pockets, but with proposals of agreements. Such is the way assumed now (the very old way, too) for dealing with questions of public interest - not the way of law making by means of a representative government.
Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles - Peter Kropotkin

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Melt Down

North Pole Meets South Pole: Earth Is Melting at Both Ends

And if they meet in the middle this happens..............



Which is why this is a good time to review the real meaning of Peak Oil.

THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream

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Octavia Butler RIP

I had not heard of Octavia Butler till today when I came across obituaries about her death. She was a West Coast U.S. science fiction writer, a woman and an Afro-American, which is probably why I hadn't heard of her.

The publishing business which dominates SF today moreso than ever in the past, has failed to publicize writers of colour as writers of colour. Thats because in the new world of mass SF and Fantasy publishing the only colour that counts is green.

While SF and the SF community can be progressive to a fault it can also be inbred and self ghettoized, but at least in the past being fan based one would hear of writers who were different or ground breaking. Such is not the case today with the truimph of commercialization the old SF Fan community has been replaced with the mass culture of SF and Fantasy consumers.

Though Octavia was not the first Black science fiction author, that was Samuel R. (Chip) Delaney. Who was also the first gay SF author. Though again both these facts were officially overlooked, not mentioned, for much of the Sixties and Seventies when he was writing.

Nor was she the first woman writer, many of those who wrote in the Golden Age of SF in the forties, fifties and right through the sixties, had to hide their identities behind male psuedonyms in order to get published by sexist editors. So as usual Octavia like Delaney faced a dual discrimination.

She died far too young. And I will be checking out her books.

Octavia Butler, brilliant master of sci-fi, dies at 58

Octavia E. Butler: Home Page

Octavia Butler: The outsider who changed science fiction,

Voices from the Gaps: Octavia Estelle Butler;

Essay on Racism
A Science-Fiction Writer Shares her View of Intolerance

Octavia Butler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Octavia E. Butler

22 June 1947 - 25 February 2006

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