Everything Is Blowback - Our Problems, Part 2

(Not quite eveything, but the major problems which tormented us in the last century and plague us today.)

Following from the artificial nature of our problems, we can then understand that these situations are blowback from previous decisions that were unwise or of a criminal nature.

* WWII was blowback from WWI. In part, due to the revengeful Versailles Treaty, but also the support the ruling classes of Europe and America gave to Mussolini and Hitler and the tacit support for Franco, as he destroyed Spanish democracy. (WWI is the best example of how one incredibly stupid decision can have a long-lasting and devastating effect upon the future.)

* Islamic Fundamentalism is largely blowback for US hostility toward Arab and other Muslim secular nationalist regimes, the carte blanche given to Israel, support for reactionaries like the Wahabist Saudi kingdom, and for overthrowing the progressive nationalist Mossedegh in Iran.

* Al Qaeda is blowback for supporting Islamist guerrillas against the Russian-backed secular Afghani government.

* Organized crime was blowback for Prohibition.

* Drug crime was blowback for treating addiction as a crime and not a social/medical problem, thus creating a lucrative black market into which the aforementioned blowback- created organized crime could step into.

* The crack cocaine epidemic was blowback from US terrorism against Nicaragua, as the CIA imported tons of cocaine into the US to pay for Contra arms.

* Massive "illegal immigration" is blowback from the wrecking of "Third World" economies by IMF- World Bank debt servitude and the destruction of peasant farms by government subsidized "First World" crops.

*Workplace massacres (Goin' postal) are blowback for 30 years of declining working conditions and the destruction of trade unions.

And you can add your own examples of blowback...

Auctioning the Magna Carta

You may have read the Magna Carta (considered to be the forerunner of the US Constitution) was auctioned off yesterday in New York City for $21.3 million. Some might think it strange to sell off what some consider to be one of the most sacred and historic democratic documents in the world. Really? Our government (pieces of it anyway in terms of policies, resources, protection, etc.) is auctioned off every day to the highest bidder in the form of campaign donations/investments and promises by wealthy individuals and corporations to politicians and regulators of jobs/income/favors.

Electronic Voting Machines Undermine Democracy

Electronic voting machines and voting machine corporations came under sharp criticism in a report issued last Friday by the Ohio Secretary of State. http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/info/EVEREST/00-SecretarysEVERESTExecutiveReport.pdf

Cuyahoga Country was singled out in the report as needing to scrap its Diebold corporation-manufactured machines prior to the March, 2008 elections. The county Board of Elections met on Monday to hear from the Secretary of State’s office, voting machine corporation representatives, and the public.

The real issue before the Board of Elections was the issue of authority – one of maintaining public authority to ensure that public officials and institutions are in complete control in the collection, counting and reporting of public votes during public elections in the democratic selection of public officials.

Voting machine technology is private. It’s trademarked. It’s private property.

Corporations manufacture the machines.
Corporations program the machines.
Corporations service the machines.
Corporations “trouble-shoot” any problems with the machines.
Corporations possess the proprietary “keys” to the machines.
Corporations have the bottom-line authority over the machines.
In short, vote counting has become privatized or, more specifically, corporatized.

In the Project EVEREST report issued last Friday, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner stated on page 73 under the General Conclusions and Background section, 3rd paragraph:

“It has been said that elections belong to the people. Excessive dependence on any voting machine company to operate the state’s elections, when that company’s voting system is subject to trade secret or propriety information claims, result in a loss of transparency that should exist to assure election officials and the public that a fair and accurate process has been implemented for democratic self-governance.”

Exactly.

She concludes that same paragraph by saying:

“The information available to the scientists who performed the assessments of this study is some of the most comprehensive information available to date for any such study. This was not accomplished without the assistance and cooperation of the voting machine companies whose equipment and software were studied”

This is precisely the problem – having to rely on or depend upon the assistance and cooperation of voting machine corporations.

This is not public. This is not democratic. This is the main problem. Public “oversight,” public “monitoring,” public “advising,” public “watchdogging,” or any other word to describe the passive and deferential role the public has under the current vote-counting framework is unacceptable. It’s undemocratic.

Issues of Touch Screen vs Optical Scan is akin to choosing between paper or plastic at the check-out line and calling it a real decision to save the environment – while SUVs and smoke stacks are destroying the Earth’s ozone. Obviously we need verified voting with a paper ballot but the choice as presented is a secondary concern.

The real issue is public authority. The real issue is whether or not the public, via Boards of Elections, can actually be in control of the voting machine technology, proprietary program “keys,” servicing and counting. In other words, can public entities be actively in charge rather than passively watching what’s going on. There’s a profound difference.

Public entities need to take over and totally control this technology. Public elections are too important to have private for-profit business corporations in charge. Vote counting needs to be open, transparent, and verifiable.

The real choice is not paper or plastic. It’s authority. Citizen authority or corporate authority.

Hopefully, all county Board of Elections across Ohio will be wise enough to make the right choice.

Our Problems are Artificial

Many, if not most people treat the problems we face as though they were a force of nature. Something inevitable, inexplicable, something that "just happens" or "has always been." Think of how poverty in the "Third World" is dealt with – when it is considered at all – "Here is $20 for Oxfam, poor devils, can't do much else." But Third World poverty did not fall out of the skies, it is the result of avoidable practices such as an the imposition of large-scale crop exportation rather than emphasizing local food crops, unwillingness to support the institution of land reform, the education of women and birth control. And the solutions to overcoming the worst of this poverty – providing everyone with potable water, decent living quarters, education and basic medicine, would cost only a fraction of the wealth squandered on military nonsense.

Homelessness did not exist back when rents were cheap and such housing plentiful. Nor is the solution to it any great mystery waiting for some povertycrat Einstein to reveal its resolution. Take basic housing out of the corporate "market." Use a fraction of the wealth wasted on idiocies like the Olympics or other forms of corporate welfare and apply it to building housing coops. Eliminate by-laws that restrict the building of basement suites and back-yard cottages. Drug addiction? Only a crime-causing problem in a system that is so criminal and/or stupid to treat addiction as a crime instead of a medical/social problem. Unemployment? Only a curse in a system that refuses to guarantee employment or income to its work force and is criminal enough to treat a problem of political economy as an individual problem. (As though it was the workers fault the plant closed and moved to China!)

I could go on and on but I think you get the point. Virtually every major problem humanity faces is artificial and solvable. These problems and the failures to resolve them are the result of deliberate choices made by the minority that holds political and economic power over us.

That our problems are artificial in nature is something very positive. It means the possibility exists for overcoming them if we have the intelligence and will to do so. Were our problems rigidly determined, like a force of nature, our situation would be hopeless. That they are the result of choices on the part of the powerful means they could be overcome and permanently resolved if we can eliminate the authoritarian and undemocratic structure that allows a small parasitic minority to dictate how we should live.

One of the ways the minority dominates us is to convince us that our problems are natural and irresolvable. Part of our struggle must be to break the hold upon the populace of this mentality.

Robert Hawkins And The Perils Of the Shopping Mall

The old fashioned "Main Street" was an open-ended public space. People did not congregate in any number, but spread out along the sidewalks, or were inside the multitude of small shops that comprised the commercial area. In part a desire for totalitarian control, the corporations that promoted and developed shopping malls eliminated public space and herded the onetime citizens, now consumers, under one roof. By corporatizing what was once public space, the developers sought complete control - no more undesirables - like buskers, pan handlers, street sellers, propagandists for this and that cause, or even people whose attire (protest tee shirts) was offensive to the authoritarian mentality. (1) A happy-face little white bread world now coming apart through the actions of a single deranged young man.

What surprises me, is not that someone went berserk with a gun in a mall, but that it didn't happen sooner. Herd masses of people together under one roof and they become sitting ducks for anyone with a real or imagined grievance against the world. The authoritarian need to centralize everything into vast agglomerations, instead of maintaining natural, human-scale, decentralized units, not only destroys community, but is also physically dangerous. Time to abandon the malls and go back to Main Street!

1. Not to mention that all business are now rent slaves and no one lives in/above their shop in a mall. The corporations have thus ratcheted up their control of small, independent business through the invention of the shopping mall.

Hugo Chavez and the Failure of Social Democracy

The failure of the Chavez government of Venezuela to gain a majority approval of its constitutional reforms - empowering the people, reducing the work week and giving legitmacy to collective property – shows the limitation of social democracy. Once again, it is impossible to introduce revolutionary change via the capitalist form of democracy. Chavez, a typical social democrat, had given the class enemies of working people the right to vote on issues that concerned those same working people. As though the oligarchy, its middle class toadies and wannabees, would ever support such changes, let alone that they should have any right to make decisions for the exploited and oppressed. That the bully should have a vote on whether to cease abusing his victim! Working people have to act on their own and TAKE the power they need to make those revolutionary changes. If the oligarchy, its butt-kissers and the CIA haven't begun a process in Venezuela that ends up turning Chavez into Allende Version # 2, maybe the working population will do precisely that. For if the right-wing gets back in power, they will be its chief victims.

Peak Oil And The Suburbanites

One of the fears generated by the coming Peak Oil crisis is that the suburbanites, those stereotypically SUV-driving MacMansion dwellers will go fashy, attacking scapegoats like immigrants and environmentalists and demand wars to steal other folks remaining oil.

I suspect that some of this would be true in the US context, but I don't think this will be quite as likely for the citizens of Canuckistan. I checked the election results for the major suburban areas of the province of British Columbia where I reside. The findings are interesting. While most burbs go right, some chose the social democratic NDP. In at least two suburban ridings (electoral districts) the NDP and the Greens are a majority, yet lose to a right-whiner because of the split vote. In all others, where the NDP loses, the Green-NDP minority is significantly large. Even the most knuckle dragging, evolution-denying, First Nations-hating burb, 37% of the electorate vote left.

This means that in the worst case scenario, four out of ten people will have some sort of awareness and thus able to confront fascist ideology as it arises and help lead their lost, bewildered and frightened conservative neighbors.

Another factor is that the authoritarian personality - the psychological basis of the right-winger - leads in most cases to passivity – the famous "silent majority." We see evidence for this constantly. Tens of thousands of peace and environmental demonstrators – and yet a pathetic handful of counter-demonstrators. Other factors are cultural. We live in a culture of solipsism and narcissism, and thus many people reduce social and economic problems to personal ones. Add to this the guilt which accompanies authoritarianism, and you have people who think in terms of personal failure if things go wrong and look for personal, not social solutions to these problems. The education system and the media constantly preach a reified world-view. That which is man-made, by the conscious choice of powerful hierarchies, is made to look natural, like an unalterable, overwhelming force of nature. (Think of the "inevitability" of so-called free trade, of the need to destroy living standards "in order to compete" – all hogwash, yet sold as though it was a basic law of physics.) Our conservative neighbors swallow this propagada whole.

There are also the examples from recent history when neo-liberal policies have laid waste to large sections of the well-paid work force. Millions have lost their jobs, thousands of lives destroyed by deliberate government policies creating recessions, cut-backs, piratizations, job-exportation and down-sizing. The results? Some resistance, indeed spectacular resistance like the Great Coal Strike in the UK, but in the main, far less than you might hope. As for the seig-heilers, yes, there has been some support among poor white youth, but hardly a threatening mass movement.

Passivity has been the main response to the neo-liberal attacks, the misery and poverty of which give us a fore-taste of the Peak Oil crisis. (Passivity was also the response during the first five years of the Great Depression.)

Nevertheless it is up to us, the more aware section of the populace, to make Peak Oil an issue among our neighbors and start right away to make the changes necessary to move to a post-petroleum, post-internal combustion world.

New Anarchist Journal in Ontario

Common Cause, the new Ontario anarchist group

has launched as web site and journal, both named

LINCHPIN, available at http://linchpin.ca/

Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule Part one

Short Film About the Security and Prosperity Partnership

Common Cause Anarchist Group Formed in Ontario

On September 29th in Toronto a new Ontario anarchist-communist organization, Common Cause, held our founding conference. Preparation for this founding conference had taken place over several months culminating in a speaking tour of six Ontario cities under the title 'Building a Popular Anarchism'. --- The conference agreed a basic policy document (below), a constitution, a structure for the specific conditions of Northern Ontario, affiliation with Anarkismo.net and a basic publication plan both online in terms of a website and a free printed newspaper which will be distributed in large numbers. The name 'Common Cause' was selected for the new organization and individual officers were elected to fill various administrative tasks.

In advance of the founding conference a statement of intent had been circulated which included "Our intention is not to build yet another small group of a dozen or so people but to begin the process of building an organization of thousands that will have a presence in every town, workplace and neighborhood across the province."

By the time of the founding conference we were still a long way from this eventual goal but dozens of people in ten Ontario cities have become involved with developing Locals in Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa, Sudbury, Windsor and Kitchener-Waterloo as well as other members around Ontario. It is our hope this will greatly expand in the days, months and years to come. We hope you will unite and struggle with us to build a world free from exploitation, oppression, ignorance and war.

To continue story go to http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos19943.html

INDIGENOUS ANARCHISM IN BOLIVIA

An Interview with Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui by Andalusia Knoll:

AK. Could you talk about some of the things that you have uncovered in your research about anarchism in Bolivia as related to the struggles of the Aymara and Quecha people?

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui: We started as an Aymara collective that basically wanted to uncover the Aymara and Quechua struggles and we discovered that there were many links with urban Aymara communities that had organizations linked both to the indigenous communities and to the union movement, which in the 20’s was basically anarchist. What happened in Bolivia is that there have been two official histories: the official history written by the [Revolutionary] Nationalist Party—MNR—that basically denies all the agency of both workers and peasants and indigenous peoples; and the official history of the left that forgets about anything that was not Marxist, thus eclipsing or distorting the autonomous history of anarchist unions,

It's the links between the anarchists and the indigenous people that gave them another nuance, because their communities are self-sustained entities and they basically are places where anti-authoritarian type of organization can take roots. They don’t need this leadership that is like permanent leadership. The communities have leaders, but as a rotational thing that is a service to the community. It’s kind of a burden to be a leader for a community, you know? It’s something you do once in a lifetime and you do because you ought to do, and that the community says its your turn or the turn of your family. So, that creates a totally different relationship with power structures and, in a way, it decolonizes power and to a certain extent gives it back to the people.

That is what fascinated us most about the communities and, on the other hand, it led us to discover that communities were not only rural but also urban and worked with [1920s anarchist] Luis Cusicanqui and other anarchist leaders because they had such an affinity between the way they saw struggle, autonomy, domination, and oppression.

Continued at http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos19906.html

I AM NOT A CROOK!

Álvaro Uribe , President of Colombia seems to be trying to emulate Tricky Dick at the time of Watergate. It has long been known that the Colombian right-wing is composed of death squad-organizing narcotrafficantes and the progressive movements believe that Uribe is one of them. Nor is this limited to “the left”, for the Defense Intelligence Agency, also feels the same way. To make things worse, Pablo Escobar's mistress has come out with a book detailing Uribe (and Uribe's father's) deep involvement in the “illegal” drug trade. The Prez denies all vociferously and talks of lawsuits. The New York Times has an article on this

See here.

For background information on the paramilitary-narcotrafficante right-wing see

http://www.narconews.com/Issue47/article2807.html

We should not be surprised in the least if Uribe is involved, for the War on Drugs is a scam. The people who benefit most from the drug trade are not the gangsters but the people at the top; the politicians and financial interests.

See this blog, July 19, 2005 THE SYSTEM IS A SCAM PART 1, The Illegal Drugs Fraud http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_archive.html

Ayn Rand on Native Land Theft

They didn't have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using . . . . What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their 'right' to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.

So much for Rand's “libertarianism”, not to mention respect for property rights. Property rights are for “white” folks it seems.

Thanks to Red Jenny http://redjenny.blogspot.com/2007/09/why-i-am-not-objectivist-2311.html

CAPITALISM DIDN'T INVENT ANYTHING

This was written back in July 2005, but the issue came up recently in a posting in Renegade Eye Blog, so I am running it again...

Apologists for capitalism like to lay claim for all the good things developed during the last 200 years. Wouldn't have happened without capitalist entrepreneurs, they say. And this is the reason that these entrepreneurs must be rewarded with colossal salaries and patent monopolies.

Trouble is, with this happy scenario, is inventors don't invent to become fabulously wealthy. There are legions of garage and basement-based inventors, and none of them are rich. Some like Edison and Ford do become rich, but in the beginning they weren't and yet they still invented. Inventing is their art, and like artists they will do so whether they are financially rewarded or not.

While financially successful inventors become capitalists as a matter of course, few inventors are themselves capitalists to begin with. The most common source of invention in the 19th and early 20th Century was the skilled worker. Edison and the Wright Brothers are the prime examples. Morse, Fulton, and Ericsson were artists. Watt an instrument maker. Edison a railway telegrapher. Kelvin, DeForest, (radio) Farnsworth, (TV) Bell, Faraday, Davie were scientists. Eastman (camera) an office clerk. Ford, and Howe (sewing machine) were machinists. Cyrus McCormack was a farmer.

Note that all great inventions are connected with a person's name. Inventions are made by individuals (Or two brothers as with the Wright Brothers and les freres Lumiere) and not by corporations. Corporate capitalism invents nothing. It might buy out someone's idea, or adapt an existing concept, but produces nothing new. Corporations develop ideas, but in a bureaucratic fashion. This explains the poor quality and impracticality of so much contemporary design. (1)The old inventors were practical people trying to find the simplest and most workable solution to a problem. The bureaucrats are merely looking for a marketing angle or a way of cheapening the cost, to which they will cheerfully sacrifice design.

Capitalism, and this is well known, suppresses inventions if they harm profits. Way back in the 1830's steam powered buses were running across England. The coaching industry and railways crushed the steam coaches by getting Parliament to enact the infamous "red flag law".(2.) Nicola Tesla found a way to transmit electricity without wires, his backer, J.P. Morgan, pulled the plug on him and a campaign of slander against Tesla was launched in the newspapers. A tacit agreement among the Big Three auto manufacturers in the US put the revolutionary Tucker car out of business.

Apologists for the corporate system claim that capital's promotion through advertising and large scale production brings new improved goods to the masses and as a result brings the price down. But people know a good thing when they see it and don't need to be propagandized into buying something. No mass advertising was necessary to switch from flint and steel to matches, or candles to coal oil lamps and then to electricity. Advertising is mostly a way of getting people to buy what they don't need or to get a larger share of the market for a product that is in no way different from that of the so-called competition. (Think of Coke vs. Pepsi)

While it is true that an economy of scale is needed to produce complex goods like aircraft, automobiles and large ships, it really doesn't apply to most items and services. Does the world really need and benefit from multinational corporations frying hamburgers, brewing beer, baking bread, manufacturing cheese, bottling soft drinks, or providing janitorial services? I think not. The quality of these goods and services is usually much better when delivered by small or local firms. If you want good beer you buy from a microbrewery not Molsons or Coors. Good bread is only found at local bakeries, mass production bread is only fit for pigs. MacDo burgers are crap and Kraft cheese has no taste.

1. Things have gotten insanely and unnecessarily complex. Why should you need a manual to operate your car radio-CD player? Why did they abolish the on-off switch for cell phones and pagers? Why are "help menus" so unhelpful?
2. The law by which any "horseless carriage" had to be preceded by a man bearing a red flag. This law, which wasn't killed until 1896, effectively gave France and Germany a big head start in the auto industry.

To All Survivors of "Indian Residential Schools"

Public Announcement

To all survivors of "Indian Residential Schools" and "Indian Hospitals", and their families and descendents:

An Invitation to make History

The time has come for the full truth of the crimes of the residential schools to be shared before the world, so that those responsible can be brought to justice, and the spirits of the departed can be laid to a final rest.

Commencing on September 5, 2007, a travelling human rights Tribunal will visit many indigenous nations across Canada to hold public and private sessions where you can share your story and other evidence regarding what actually went on in the residential schools and hospitals - and how these crimes against our people are continuing today.

Convened under the land law jurisdictions of the Anishinabe, Cree and Metis Nations, this Tribunal has a simple mandate: to gather the proof that genocide of indigenous people occured and is occuring across Canada.

One of the primary aims of the Tribunal is to identify the fate and buried location of the more than 50,000 children who died in residential schools and hospitals, and arrange the repatriation of their remains to their traditional territories for a proper burial.

The Tribunal will open in Port Alberni, British Columbia, on September 5, 2007, and will travel eastward over the following three months. It will include international human rights observers from indigenous nations around the world, local tribal elders, and members of the media.

Before the end of this year, we plan to present our findings to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City.

We, the founding elders of the International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide in Canada (IHRTGC), personally invite you to to welcome us onto your territory and to fully participate in our work and sessions. We need to hear your stories and gather the evidence that will make justice a reality.

We ask you to circulate this notice to your friends and families, and to encourage your own elders to welcome us and participate in our work. Please contact us at the numbers below if you can help us.

We look forward to working with you to end the suffering and bring a true and lasting healing to all our peoples. The truth shall set us all free.

With warmest regards and in the spirit of our Creator,

Louis Daniels - Whispers Wind, Elder, Anishinabe Nation

Jeremiah Jourdain, Elder, Metis-Cree Nation

Co-convenors,

The International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide in Canada (IHRTGC)

c/o 260 Kennedy St.

Nanaimo, B.C. Canada V9R 2H8

ph: 250-753-3345

(after September 4, leave a message at 1-888-265-1007 or email us at these addresses: genocidetribunal@yahoo.ca

hiddenfromhistory@yahoo.ca)

Our website is: http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Issued under the authority of our Hereditary Land Law Jurisdiction from unceded Coast Salish Territory, Turtle Island, 23 August, 2007

Prosperity Partnership Summit Denounced In Nanaimo

At 7;30 this morning at least 30 of us were strung in several lines along the Pearson Bridge in Nanaimo. There may have been more as some workers stopped to participate for half an hour or so before heading to their jobs. We bore signs denouncing the Prosperity Partnership (sic) Summit, that latest act of corporate state graft and empire building. A great many people driving to work waved or beeped their horns in support. I saw only one negative response. Most people took the leaflets. Participants involved included the Green Party, the Canadian Action Party, the NDP, Council of Canadians and the Popular Participation Movement (a radical youth movement) Since this demo was organized word of mouth and Nanaimo is relatively a small town, I think it was a success.

Michael Nerenberg - Songwriter

Morin Heights is a picturesque little Laurentian town about 45 minutes from Montreal. But it is well known for something else besides cuteness. Morin Heights, and the surrounding area, is home to some of Quebec's best musicians and songwriters. For folk, you have the McGarrigles and the late Wade Hemsworth, jazz the incomparible bass player, Normand Lachapelle, the sax man, Reez Soudre, and in rock, the legendary Robert Charlebois. There is one really outstanding songwriter/composer, who other than among his fellow musicians, has remained virtually unknown. Michael Nerenberg is part Dave Van Ronk, part Tom Waits, part Tom Lehrer and part Jelly Roll Morton, but at the same time, all and uniquely himself. His songs are hilariously funny or poigniant, joyous or sad, but always socially aware and intelligent. I am so pleased to discover that Michael now has a web site and that it is possible to download some of his songs. He has also started an organization called Committed Music and I quote from the site, This site is meant unabashedly to serve as a forum for message music, a warring site against ignorance as much as a spot for fine sounds.

For Michael Nerenberg's songs and Committed Music see

http://www.committedmusic.com/Michael%20Nerenberg/index.htm

Right Wing Pedos Once More!

More evidence that the authoritarian mentality and pedophilia are connected. See

http://www.armchairsubversive.org/

Manifesto of solidarity with Venezuelan Anarchists and Social Movements

One disturbing aspect of the article below are the disputes within Venezuelas small anarchist movement. There are, as I pointed out on a number of occasions in this blog, anarchist groups which give a certain amount of critical support to the Bolivarian Revolution. El Libertario is highly critical of the Chavistas. This article denounces El Libertario's anarchist opponents as “ fictitious groups paid for by the state” and considers them an aspect of Chavista repression against themselves. The critically pro-Bolivarian anarchists in turn call them “liberals” , “anti-working class tools of the right” etc. To me this all smacks of sectarianism and hence any articles coming out of the Venezuelan anarchist milieu have to be taken with a grain of salt. (1)

The newspaper Tierra y Libertad, mouthpiece of the Iberian Anarchist Federation, published in edition 227 of June 2007 this manifesto of the International of Anarchist Federations (IAF-IFA; www.iaf-ifa.org) in support of those who in Venezuela today confront the bureaucratic capitalist project of the Chavez government as well as their social democrat and right wing opponents.

In the first three months of 2007, 23 popular demonstrations were repressed by the Venezuelan government and 99 activists were detained. This fact speaks of the growing unease as well as the criminalization of social struggle in this Latin-American country, in a reality masked by the propaganda and mystification of a regime that paints itself as the vanguard of ‘21st Century socialism’ with the support of different groupings and persons associated with the authoritarian left throughout the world.

However, those who are concerned with the real situation of the oppressed and exploited in Venezuela know the inconsistencies and contradictions of the populist government led by the militarist Hugo Chavez. Far from structurally advancing the reduction of inequalities and the increase of possibilities of social development, the government in power in Caracas continues to maintain one of the most unjust systems of distribution of wealth in the continent, further deepening the role assigned to the country by economic globalization as a secure and trustworthy provider of energy to the global market, with trans-national oil corporations as pampered partners and principal beneficiaries of the actions of the Venezuelan state. After eight and a half years of a government relying on high oil prices with the highest financial income in national history, the social results of Chavez’s politics are mediocre, the most notable being the apparition of a new parasitic bourgeoisie of the client state, the ‘bolivarian bourgeoisie’.

According to recent government reports and statistics, over 5 million workers, 46.5% of the labour force remain in the informal sector of the economy, 43% of workers receive a salary under the legal minimum wage, a little less than 200 dollars per month, 2.5 million people lack suitable housing, 18% of the population suffer malnutrition, the network of public hospitals displays needs and limitations of every type, 90% of the indigenous population live in poverty, more than 400 people die violently each year in prison and there is an average of 15 people assassinated every month by repressive organs of the state.

The Venezuelan government has maintained over the last five years an inter-class dispute with certain traditional sectors of the local bourgeoisie which, in the midst of a strong political-electoral polarization, has allowed the division, immobilization, and recuperation of the country’s social movements. Any critic of the corrupt, inefficient and wasteful official bureaucracy would immediately qualify it as being ‘at the service of imperialism’, and with the excuse of confronting possible ‘coup’s and ‘reactionary provocations’, they have announced diverse laws that penalize with greater vigour street actions and strikes in the basic state industries. These are part of legal mechanisms that since 2006 have been used against popular mobilizations which, trying to recuperate their own demands, demonstrate every week for the right to personal security, decent housing, work and decent working conditions. The response of the government has been with tear gas grenades, gunshots and arrests.

Faced with the deceitful polarization experienced in this country, and specifically as a response to the presidential mandate to dissolve previously existing parties and groupings in order to integrate them in to the single party of Chavism, with the acronym PSUV, diverse Venezuelan organisations are trying to create autonomous spaces for the social movements. Amongst these are the efforts of the anarchists who from separate initiatives, such as the publication El Libertario (www.nodo50.org/ellibertario) are building an alternative that is as removed from the social democrat and right wing opposition as it is from the capitalism of the Bolivarian state. This effort by the anarchists to construct alternatives and routes that are consistently autonomous implies risks: El Libertario, for example, must face a systematic campaign of recriminations and disrepute from fictitious groups paid for by the state, thus there is a growing harassment of anti-authoritarian activism.

This manifesto wishes to remind our libertarian brothers and sisters inside Venezuela, as well as the various grass roots autonomous organisations that they have our appreciation, support and solidarity. Our anarchist organisations and initiatives will denounce, in every way they can, the incoherence and demagoguery hidden behind the alias of the ‘bolivarian revolution’, activating the necessary support mechanisms in response to every government attack against the concrete aspirations of social justice and liberty of the Venezuelan people.

1. Just how vicious sectarianism can be within the anarchist movement can be shown by the splits within the Spanish CNT back in the 1980's. The old guard attacked the group which later became the CGT as “traitors,” “anti-anarchist” and the two groups physically attacked each other. In the 1990's, the minority split-off from the French anarcho-syndicalist CNT slandered the majority as “fascists”. The International Workers Association (AIT) to which the Spanish CNT belongs, forbids its members from attending conferences sponsored by non-AIT anarcho-syndicalist unions. The AIT is notorious for its sectarianism. It is believed that El Libertario has some connection to the AIT. I should point out that only a minority of anarchists engage in this sort of thing and that most try to work together.

Aboriginal People and Canadian Genocide

This is a note to inform you that a Googlevideo version of UNREPENTANT is available. For those of you unaware of this prize winning film, it is an hour and a half documentary about the murder of 50,000 or more Aboriginal children in the residential schools, the attempts to cover up these crimes and the attacks upon the courageous few who have spoken up. Please copy this video and distribute it far and wide. Let the world know the truth about Canada's genocide! See:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6637396204037343133&hl=en

William's Windmill

Thanks to Red Jenny http://redjenny.blogspot.com/2007/07/good-thing-they-have-us.html this really inspiring blog about a young fellow in Malawi who has developed his from scratch wind mill power generator. See

http://www.williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/

Environment and Class War

This has also been posted at the Carnival Of Anarchy http://carnival-of-anarchy.blogspot.com/

The natural environment is the key issue today. This is not to reduce all other struggles and problems to it in a reductionist way, however. But what happens to the environment will have a determining effect upon the nature and direction of social change for the next generation, if not sooner.

We are facing two interrelated natural environment based crises – global warming and peak oil. Nothing real is being done about either, and the authorities are not preparing the population for a possible dire future. The orthodox left – social democrats – mainstream Greens - trumpets band aid solutions – Kyoto, hybrid cars, wind power etc. all well and fine in their way, had they been introduced 30 years ago! Only the minority; radical Greens, socialists, anarchists, decentralists, are really telling the truth to the people – that the auto, imported food, suburban sprawl, Walmart life style has to go and has to go now, otherwise heavy times ahead.

This brings me to class struggle. Of course, it goes on all the time, the ruling class or elite warring against the populace and the people fighting back with absenteeism, other forms of sabotage, and strikes. 98% of the aggression come from the rulers, however. The people tend to respond in a reactive manner. One can hold a romantic view of the proletariat, but nonetheless the previous statement is true, If you look at history. The people seem to go on the offensive only after a serious shock like a lost war, an attempted right-wing coup, or a bone-grinding economic depression. This reactive nature is understandable. Most people are not ideological and only wish to go about their daily lives. They will put up with an incredible amount of abuse as long as they are allowed some minimal level of “normal” existence. What I am suggesting is that the combined crises of peak oil and global warming will be such a shock.

We don't know the severe the crisis will be, but some people who have studied the issue, such as James Howard Kunstler, imply it will be the most severe crisis humanity will have faced since the Late Middle Ages, when the people endured famine, war and plague as a result of climate change, over-use of the land and the cutting down of the forests.

What type of reaction occurs really depends upon us, the libertarian-decentralist minority. The better prepared areas will pull through easier than those that have not prepared. Those of us who work to build community and support for local food production, farmers markets, public transit and struggle against developer-idiocy, will have in the long term, saved lives. Masses of people will turn against the rulers, finally realizing they have been lied to. Much of the true-believer Hummer - MacMansions crowd will turn to fascism. Of course, some are 90% there already.

Whether the mass of the people turn to fascism or communitarian socialism, will in some way depend upon how we tackle this issue now. And tackle it we must. I suggest a place to begin would be a sticker with the slogan “Is Your Town Prepared for Peak Oil?”, in smaller print below, “Or Is It Still All Shopping Mall and Suburban Sprawl?” and the web address of one of the peak oil sites. (Something similar about global warming for those areas that will be effected the most.) This could be followed up with a poster listing suggested actions that could be taken to survive peak oil/global warming.

Sarcophagus Wins Majority

Bad news! French President Nicolas Sarcophagus appears to have won a clear majority (330-230) of seats in the National Assembly. This evil, sick, treasonous piece of shit will now have a clear hand, in the Assembly at least, to turn France into a clone of the US. You would think that the people that voted him in would have learned from the mess created by Thatcher in the UK and Bush in the Empire, but evidently hatred toward immigrants, the left, etc takes precedence. (Is this the return of Vichy?) However, the French can be counted on to fight the destruction of their way of life in the streets. Maybe we will get a repeat of 1968.

Polynesians Beat Europeans to America

Chicken bones found in Chile prove that Polynesians visited America at least 100 years before Columbus. DNA analysis shows that the chicken was of Polynesian and not of a European variety. C14 dates it between 1320 and 1410. See story

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/06/070604-chickens.html

The CIRA Needs Help

The CIRA (International Centre for Research into Anarchism) in Lausanne (Switzerland) began its work of collecting and archiving the material published by the international anarchist movement in 1957. The CIRA gives militants and researchers the opportunity to consult archives made up of tens of thousands of volumes and is one of the most important places as far as the historical memory of anarchism is concerned. Today, the CIRA is in need of the efforts and solidarity of everyone if it is to get over a difficult financial situation and continue in its work. Within a short space of time, the CIRA must raise F100,000 or else it will be forced to close. For more on how to help the CIRA, see http://www.cira.ch

Info from A-Infos http://www.ainfos.ca/org/faq-en.html

Another Anarchist View of Venezuela's RCTV Situation

The Venezuelan anarchist movement is divided between those who give critical support to the Bolivarian Revolution, seeking to radicalize it, and those who are completely against it, seeing the movement as either purely capitalist or Stalinistic. The former is represented by FAL (El frente de acciones libertarias ) and the latter by El Libertario. (1) Be that as it may, I will let El Libertario speak for itself:

The Collective of “El Libertario”, Venezuelan anarchist newspaper, makes public its reasoned out position in the debate generated by the case of RCTV, in where the current government imposes a solution where we pass from the meanness that the capitalistic private oligopoly of TV to the dreadful that could be the monopoly of a bureaucratic and authoritarian state.

Since two decades ago, by means of our publications, ten Venezuelan anarchists have denounced and being against the vices and slants of the private media corporations as RCTV. This company had guaranteed its economic success combining evil oligopolistic practices, opportunist bonds with the current state power and the emission of “garbage-content” with the excuse of “giving the people what they want”. However, the problems that indeed this company represented are taken now as an
excuse for the imposition of a solution that means a repetition and multiplication of the same vices. In the 2007´s Venezuela, the meanness of a part of the private oligopoly is supposed to be corrected by the dreadful of a state monopoly, increasing the unprecedented insane advantages for the government and justifying the production of “garbage-content” with the condition of being “rojo-rojito” (red-small red) *1. In concrete terms: we do not have Miguel Ängel Rodríguez anymore but we will have the acclaimed Mario Silva, the presenter of the journalistic paradigm of the V Republic...

Continued See http://www.geocities.com/vcmtalk/ElLib.html

1. There are international ramifications. El Libertario is sympathetic to the Spanish CNT-IWA and FAL to the Spanish CGT. This split is over doctrinal purity vs. practical involvement in popular struggle. For the FAL see http://accioneslibertarias.blogia.com/

Venezuela's RCTV – Again!

Rad Geek http://radgeek.com/ disagrees with my refusal to get on the liberal media bandwagon and attack the Chavistas for closing down a pro-US mouthpiece. He also does not believe that class struggle is reflected in this event. He states;

Don't kid yourself. This isn't a matter of "the ruling class" attacking the anti-ruling-class government. The government is a ruling class: that is what governments do. This is a competition between two would-be ruling classes over which one is going to be dominant. I don't know about you, but I am an anarchist, and I don't give a good god damn about which gang of thugs wins, or about whether "revolutionary" or "counter-revolutionary" jackboots end up on the people's necks.

I think this a rather simplistic view of things. Yes, ultimately all states are the same – based upon coercion, hierarchy, power etc, but anarchists have always differentiated between reformist and reactionary states, and while never (well, rarely) giving support to a left-wing govt., have always preferred these to retrogressive ones. It is a matter of human lives. You would have to be insane not to see a difference between say, the Unidad Popular and Pinochet's dictatorship, or Labour circa 1978 and the Thatcher Regime which followed it.

The state is not a ruling class, although with capitalist or feudal governments some members of the ruling classes are directly involved in governing. But generally they do not, leaving this to their subordinates. Only in a state capitalist regime like the USSR can we speak of the state and ruling class being identical. With democratic left wing or progressive governments what we have is an attempt to mediate or stand between the classes, much in the manner that trade union officials do. Left-wing governments however, do not appear out of thin air, but are a result of class struggle. Left wing parties, whether out of opportunism or a sincere desire to reform society and better the working population, ultimately depend upon what happens in the streets. Chavez did not create the movement which put him in power, but rather was created by it. He would like to control it, but that is what social democrats seek to do, nothing unusual or unique there. The task of anarchists and revolutionary socialists is to radicalize this movement, not undermine it, or show sympathy for pro-imperialists and reactionaries. The goal is to make the movement escape from Hugo's hands and sweep away the corporate state in its entirety.

Thugs? Dissidents? Critics? Words have meaning. No one would doubt that Saddam or Pinochet were thugs, with their mass murders, tortures and the millions they skimmed off and hid in numbered bank accounts. Chavez and the leftist politicians around him have done none of these things. Their only real crime is trying to control an unfolding revolutionary situation. Hopefully they will be pushed aside or swallowed by this movement. Members of the oligarchy and the sheep who support them are not dissidents, or critics, but people who fear social change or the loss of some of their privileges. In my opinion, the Chavistas are far too soft on these scum, but that is understandable given their fundamentally social democratic viewpoint, which seeks to straddle the classes, rather than eliminate capitalism entirely.

This same type of rhetoric was used against the Sandinistas, I might add, and they did not turn into thugs or Stalinists as the Reaganites hoped. So too, the APPO in Oaxaca has been slandered as “thugs and vandals”.

And when push comes to shove I would rather have a Chavez than an Allende in power. Allende refused to arm the people, in the face of the impending CIA-backed coup. Chavez, I am certain, would not.

The world does not work according to wishes, ideology or theories. It is messy. It would be nice if all the left-wing parties in Venezuela disappeared and were replaced by millions-strong anarcho-syndicalist unions and an anarchist federation with tens of thousands of members. But that does not seem to be in the offing. Class struggle is being reflected through the Chavista Movement (for now) – though not the origin of such. If the Chavistas are overthrown in the foreseeable future, it will not be by anarchists, but the reactionary forces who will then murder thousands of people in an orgy of revenge. I suggest you read what Venezuelan class struggle anarchists have to say about the Bolivarian Revolution, explaining their critical support for it. See

http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/anarchist-analysis-of-venezuela.html

On the other hand, I do care a lot about how far a government can get away with using the force of arms to silence its critics. Which seems to be what's happening here. That's a big deal, even if the critics are real creeps. After all, they always come after the soft targets first.

Soft targets? Corporate TV and a CIA-backed opposition are soft targets? If the Chavistas were really against freedom of expression and wanted to pick on a soft target, they would shut down El Libertario, the anarchist paper which is highly critical of them, or harass the Trotskyists for that matter. See

http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/anarchists-and-ultra-left-mine-canaries.html

Venezuela's RCTV - Much Ado About Nada

Much has been made of late by corporate media – and liberals who ought to know better – about the Venezuelan government's refusal to re-new the license of a TV station. Everyone is bellowing about "censorship" and "authoritarianism." This station was instrumental in propagandizing for a coup d'etat against the Chavez government. One can imagine how a TV station that helped organize a coup against the American Government would be treated. The owner would do an eternity in Gitmo as a "terrist" and not have the wrist slap of license non-renewal. Hilarious hypocrisy, eh?

What is overlooked by liberal critics of this action is how the corporate media is used as an arm of the state, or where the state is controlled by folks the ruling class dislikes, as an agent of counter-revolution. This first came to people's attention in a big way in Chile just prior to the Golpe. The main newspaper, El Mercurio, and a major TV channel, Universidad Catholica, were both instrumental in fomenting support for a coup and spreading hate propaganda against the Unidad Popular government. Once again, in Nicaragua during the US-sponsored Contra terrorist attacks, the right-wing Nicaraguan media sought to undermine the Sandinistas and aid the US.

Liberal critics are upset with Chavez because they lack a class perspective, not realizing, or hiding from the reality, that an irreconcilable contradiction exists between the minority who control most of society's wealth and the vast majority who work for this minority.

The state need not be controlled by revolutionaries for the corporate media to go into attack mode. Any government that seeks to improve the lot of working people, no matter how moderate that party might be, comes in for similar treatment. Here in British Columbia, the social democratic NDP government of Dave Barrett (1972-1975) was pilloried by the newspapers for minor cost over-runs and a climate of hostility generated, resulting in the NDP losing power after only one term. When the right took power, billions were squandered on corporate welfare, but the media ignored this.

The corporate ruling class are consummate class warriors and their media are weapons in that war. While they demand a "loyal opposition", from the people, they do not expect the same of themselves. Any lie, any slander, any crime, is permissible in maintaining their power. Their only loyalty is to their stolen wealth and perverse will to power. Government, people, nation, and tradition ultimately mean nothing. We cannot expect any mercy from them, and should show them no mercy in return, not out of vengeance, but a sense of self-preservation. Note that this is not a call for violence, but expresses the need of the working people for united, concerted, forceful measures against the ruling minority, to advance our liberty and defend ourselves against attack.

If the Chavistas are to be faulted, it is not for shutting down an enemy propaganda machine, but taking so long to do so. Refusal to renew a license is also a somewhat wimpy and bureaucratic way of dealing with the enemy, far better to let the people occupy the station, throw the US-mouthpieces out in the street and run the show themselves. Working people have an instinctual way of dealing with corporate media, if allowed to. During the Quebec General Strike of 1972, workers seized newspapers, radio and TV stations. Those they could not occupy and run were simply shut down. Recently in the Oaxaca Commune, radio and TV stations were occupied and self-managed. This is the way to deal with the reactionaries.

There is no role what so ever for a corporate media in a free society. Only living, breathing, individual people have rights and freedoms, phony state-granted, paper constructs like corporations do not. The media should reflect the views of 95% of the population, not the interests of the wealthy and powerful 5% of exploiters and oppressors. The only way we can have genuine freedom of expression and freedom of the press, is for the people to own and control the mass media. This cannot happen via state ownership, one merely substitutes one giant corporation for several big corporations. The only free and democratic way is to turn the various mass media into a mass of stake-holder coops - democratic institutions run by directors elected from the various groups that make up the populace – by profession, social origins, political viewpoint, ethnicity and gender.

See also this excellent Narco News analysis of the RCTV controversy

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/5/27/162742/757

Believers and Non-Believers.

"Neither God nor Master!" is an old anarchist slogan first stated by Bakunin, and a mighty fine one. But how does this jibe with the many anarchists, like Leo Tolstoy and Dorothy Day who were believers? Then again, how about the anarcho-pagans and their Goddess? How can such two widely divergent viewpoints be reconciled? Or can they be reconciled?

I say they can be reconciled to a degree. First off, what does one exactly mean by "God" ? For Bakunin, God was a vengeful authoritarian monster, a purely imaginary and human creation modeled upon earthy despots – a tyrant of infinite dimensions – one that had to be overthrown to liberate humanity. As long as people were beholden to such a horrible fantasy, they were in mental and spiritual chains and thus incapable of liberating themselves from their human masters.

This cruel monster is the God of religious "fundamentalists" everywhere, and to this extent Bakunin was absolutely right. But talk to the anarcho-believers, and this is definitely not how they see God. For them the Divine is benevolent, agree with Bakunin that the Monster is a human creation and reject it. Tangentially, many proto-anarchist Gnostics saw the Old Testament God - the one who creates, murders, curses and destroys seemingly in fits of psychopathic or infantile folly, not as God, but as Satan.

Fine, we now have an evil God and a kind one, and the anarcho-believers follow the latter. Such a God is not a "master" anymore than the eco-system is a "master". It just is and one goes with it, or one does not. If you don't go with it, you are "punished" by your own foolish behavior and not by some Super Cop In The Sky, in the same way we are being "punished" by Global Warming for the stupidity of polluting the atmosphere.

Neither Evil, nor Master, but surely the God concept is still irrational and a purely human invention? Maybe our believer comrades have a screw loose somewhere in wanting to believe in this fiction?

To answer this query we have to turn to the German American libertarian socialist philosopher Joseph Dietzgen, (1) who discovered the underlying materialist aspect of the God concept. A dialectical philosopher, he sought the rational kernel within all thought and belief. For Dietzgen, the basis of all rational thought was the interconnectedness and unity of all existence, also known by philosophers as the Absolute, the Universe or the Totality. It is this unity of existence that is the materialist basis of the God concept, or as he put it, ...the all-perfect Being, with the conception of God, with the Substance of Spinoza, with the "thing in itself" of Kant, and with the Absolute of Hegel, has its good reason in the fact that the sober conception of the Universe as the All-One with nothing above or outside or alongside of it, is the first postulate of a skilled and consistent mode of thinking... (2)

When you think about it, the Totality of Existence or the Universe does have the classic attributions of God – it is infinite, it is greater than anything else, and since everything is interconnected and every action ultimately effects every aspect, one can even stretch the notion to include a degree of omniscience. The basic idea is not wrong, it is what people do with it. The reification and anthropomorphication of the Totality creates the God that atheists deny...the infinite, eternal, is not personal, but objective. (3) [my emphasis]

The Totality is not too far removed from the Tao, or for that matter, (even though they have become reified) Dharma, Karma and Rita of Hinduism and Buddhism. And is not The Great Spirit of the First Nations more of a Creative Force-Totality than the personal God of the Abrahamic religions?

Now, I agree that the folks who desire a personal God, let alone those who crave a Celestial Monster to bully them, will not find the Totality satisfying, and this problem I cannot even begin to resolve. But what it ought to do, is make non-believers more sympathetic to believer comrades and to realize that both of us share a certain spiritual-philosophical common ground.

1. The Joseph Dietzgen Page http://www.geocities.com/vcmtalk/jodietzgen.html

2. Joseph Dietzgen, Some of the Philosophical Essays, p. 274

3. Joseph Dietzgen, Popular Outcome of Philosophy, p. 437

This has been published in the Carnival of Anarchy http://carnival-of-anarchy.blogspot.com/

The Myth Of Idealism

I have been very busy of late, hence no postings for the last few weeks, but now things are back to normal...

I have never been an idealist. A favorite tactic of the upholders of the status quo is to drag out the old story of the person who was once "young and idealistic" but has now "grown up" and is now "practical and pragmatic" – ie ,who has adopted the conformist and retrograde ideology of the speaker. Another aspect, is to speak of socialists of whatever age as "left-wing idealists". It all boils down to seeing leftists as some sort of soft-hearted (and soft-headed) dreamers working for causes because of some inner need, isolated from the lives they actually live.

True, some people who come from privilege may see them selves as idealists, working out of guilt or compassion for causes which are not theirs. But in the main, most of us are driven more by a sense of enlightened self-interest rather than fuzzy idealism. This is something the reactionary cannot understand, indeed, will not understand. For the apologist of corporate power, blinded by a narrow and irrational ideology, everything happens in isolation. It does not matter if the corporate state drives masses of people into poverty, the tragic results are excused by claiming personal failure on the part of the victims. It does not matter if we destroy the environment in a quest for corporate profits, the negative consequences, such as global warming, are merely coincidental.

The socialist, the anarchist, indeed thinking people of any ideology, do not see reality in dislocated, isolated lumps, but, as it is in reality – as interconnected systems. Thus, what seems as "idealism", such as trying to preserve a forest 3000 miles away, organize a farmers coop in Africa or supporting a workers struggle in Mexico, is in fact, a form of self-interest. That forest produces oxygen for all of us, and the more poverty and oppression exists, the more likely we are to be impoverished and abused ourselves. The more sucessful others are, the more successful we might be. The old IWW slogan "an injury to one, is an injury to all" encapsulates this truth so well.

The reactionaries atomistic and false world view isn't their only (deliberate) misunderstanding giving rise to the myth of idealism. There is also their over-emphasis upon competition. Seeing the world in a dog-eat-dog "struggle for survival" mode does not make for an easier life. In most instances, it is far easier to get tasks accomplished in a cooperatively rather than everyone struggling against each other, not to mention being bullied into acting in a co-ordinated manner, seemingly the only other alternative allowed with the corporate mentality. Hence, those of us who opt for cooperation, self-management and voluntary effort are the practical ones and the "survival of the fittest" types are the practitioners of idealism, albeit a most perverse variety. (*)

(*) This is not to say that cooperation, self-management and voluntarism are always easy in a society where most are indoctrinated from birth into a short-sighted and narcissistic false individualism.