Anarchy

The word Anarchy comes to us from the Greek and signifies without government, the condition of a people governing itself without benefit of constituted authority.
Before a whole category of thinkers ever deemed such organization possible and desirable, before it was ever adopted as a goal by a party which has since become one of the prime factors in modern struggles, the word Anarchy was generally taken in the sense of disorder, confusion: to this very day, it is taken by the ignorant and by adversaries concerned to hide the truth to mean just that.
As government was held to be necessary, in that it was accepted that without government there could be naught but disorder and confusion, it is only natural, and indeed logical, that the term Anarchy, signifying absence of government, should also signify the absence of order.
The phenomenon is not without precedent in the history of words. In the days and in the countries where the people believed in the necessity of government by one person (monarchy), the term Republic, signifying government my the majority, was taken in the sense of disorder and confusion: the very same meaning still attaches to it in the popular parlance of many countries.
Do but change minds and persuade the public that not only is government not a necessity, but that it is extremely dangerous and harmful, and the word Anarchy, precisely because it signifies absence of government, would imply, as far as everyone is concerned: natural order, harmony of everyone's needs and interests, utter freedom in solidarity.
It is argued, incorrectly, that the anarchists made a poor choice of name, since that name is misconstrued by the masses susceptible to misinterpretation. The error resides, not in the word, but in the thing: and the difficulty encountered by anarchists in their propaganda springs, not from the name they espouse, but from the fact that their outlook sits ill with all of the age-old prejudices which people cherish regarding the function of government, or to use the common parlance, the State.

What is government?
The metaphysical tendency (which is an affliction of the mind whereby man, having, by means of logic, abstracted the qualities of an entity, succumbs to a sort of hallucination whereby he mistakes the abstraction for the reality),
which for all of the buffeting of positive science, is still deeply rooted in the minds of most contemporaries, ensures that many think of government as a moral entity, endowed with certain attributes of reason, justice and equity quite separate from the personnel of the government.
For them, the government, or rather, the State, is the abstract power of society: it is the representative, albeit the abstract representative, of the general interest: it is the expression of the rights of all, construed as a limit upon the rights of each. This way of thinking about government is supported by the interested parties preoccupied with salvaging the principle of authority and seeing it outlive the shortcomings and errors of those who succeed one another in the exercise of power.
We anarchists see the government as the collectivity of those who govern: and governments, kings, presidents, ministers, deputies, etc., are those endowed with the faculty of making laws in order to regulate the relations between men and of having those laws carried out; of prescribing and levying taxes; of enforcing military service; of judging and punishing those whop trespass against the laws, of supervising and sanctioning private contracts, of monopolizing certain areas of production and certain public services, or, should they so desire, the whole of production and every public service; of expediting of obstructing the exchange of products; of declaring war or concluding peace with governments from other countries; of granting or withholding franchises, etc. Governors, in short, are those who, to a greater or lesser extent, are empowered to make use of society's resources, or of everyone's physical, intellectual and economic wherewithal, in order to compel everyone to do their will. As we see it, this faculty constitutes the principle of government, the principle of authority.
But what is government's raison d'etre?
Why abdicate our own freedom, our own initiative into the hands of a few individuals? Why empower them to arrogate the power of all to themselves, with or without the consent of the individual, and to do with it what the will? Are they so exceptionally gifted that they can, with some semblance of reason, supplant the masses and look to men's interests better than the people concerned could do? Are they so infallible and incorruptible that the fate of each and every on can be prudently entrusted to their kind hearts?
And even were there men of boundless kindness and learning in existence, and, to take a hypothesis which has never been proved in history and which, we believe, is not susceptible to verification, even if the power of government were to be bestowed upon the most competent and the best, the possession of power would add nothing to their power of beneficence, and would, rather, paralyze and destroy it on account of their finding themselves confronted with the necessity of concerning themselves with so many things beyond their understanding an, above all, of squandering the greater part of their energies upon keeping themselves in power, appeasing friends, quelling malcontents, and thwarting rebels.
Moreover, be they good or bad, wise or ignorant, what are governments? Who appoints them to their elevated position? Do they prevail of themselves by right of war, conquest, or revolution? In which case, what assurance does the people have that they are prompted by considerations of general usefulness? It is a straightforward matter of usurpation; and their subjects, should they be unhappy, have no recourse but force if they are to shrug off the yoke. Are they chosen by class, by a party? In which case, it is the interests and ideas of that class which will prevail, while others' wishes and interests will be sacrificed. Are they elected by universal suffrage? In which case the sole criterion is numbers, which is assuredly no proof either of equity, reason or competence. Those elected will be the ones best able to gull the masses, and that is without taking into account the fact that experience teaches there is no way of devising an electoral machinery to ensure that those elected are at least truly representative of the majority.
Many and varied are the theories by means of which attempts have been made to explain away and justify the existence of government. All in all, they are all founded upon the presumption, confessed or not, that men have contrary interests and that it takes an outside force to compel some to respect the interests of the rest, by prescribing and imposing such a line of conduct which would, insofar as possible, reconcile the conflicting interests and afford each of them as much gratification as possible with the least possible sacrifice.
If, say authoritarianism's theoreticians, an individual's interests, inclinations, and desires are at odds with those of another individual, or even of society as a whole, who is to be entitled and empowered to compel him to respect the interests of others? Who is to prevent such a citizen from trespassing against the general will? The freedom of each, they contend, is bounded by the freedom of others, but who is to set such boundaries and enforce respect for them? The natural antagonisms of interests and enthusiasms create the need for government and justify authority's posing as moderator in the social strife, marking out the boundaries of everyone's rights and duties.
So runs the theory: but, if they are to be just, theories must be founded upon facts and have the capacity to explain them, and we know that in social economy, theories are all too often devised in justification of facts, which is to say, in defense of privilege and in order to have it blithely accepted by those who are its victims.

Let us examine the facts instead.
Throughout the whole course of history, as well as in our own day, government has been, either the brutal, violent, arbitrary rule of the few over the mass, or a tool designed to guarantee the rule and the privilege of those who, on foot of force or guile or heredity, have laid claim to all of the wherewithal of existence, particularly the soil, and utilize it in order to keep the people in servitude and to have it work for them. Men are doubly oppressed: either directly, by brute force and physical violence; or indirectly, by being denied the means of subsistence, thereby reducing them to powerlessness. The former mode is the source of power, that is, political privilege; the second is the root of economic privilege.
Men can further be oppressed by working upon their intellect and their feelings, as represented by religious or "academic" power, but since the mind is mere a product of material forces, falsehood and the bodies set up in order to peddle it have no reason to exist except insofar as they are the product of economic and political privilege, a means of defending and consolidating the latter.
Today, government, made up of property-owners and the people in their service, is wholly at the disposal of the propertied: so much so that the wealthiest often even disdain to belong to it. Rothschild has no need to be either deputy or minister: it is enough that he has deputies and ministers to do his bidding.
In many countries, the proletariat nominally enjoys a greater or lesser part in the election of government.This is a concession granted by the bourgeoisie, either in order to secure popular backing in its struggle against royal or aristocratic power, or in order to divert the people away from the notion of self-emancipation, by affording it a semblance of sovereignty. Whether or not the bourgeoisie anticipated this, from the moment it granted the people the right to vote, it is a certainty that that right turned out to be quite illusory, good only for consolidating the power of the bourgeoisie, by affording the most vigorous portion of the proletariat the illusory hope of achieving power.
Even with universal suffrage, we might indeed say particularly with universal suffrage, government has remained the bourgeoisie's serf and gendarme. Were it otherwise, were the government to threaten to turn hostile, if democracy could be anything other than a means of deceiving the people, the bourgeoisie, its interests in jeopardy, would make ready for revolt and would utilize all of the strength and influence afforded to it by its possession of wealth in order to call the government to order as a mere gendarme doing its bidding.

At all times and everywhere, whatever the name by which government has been known, whatever its origins and its organization, its essential function has always been that of oppressing and exploiting the masses and defending the oppressors and usurpers: its chief organs and vital characteristics are the gendarme and tax-collector, the soldier and the jailer, unfailingly joined by the peddler of lies, priest or professor, paid and protected by the government to enslave the minds of the people and make them suffer the yoke of oppression without complaint.

A government cannot exist for long unless it conceals its nature behind some semblance of general serviceability: it cannot ensure respect for the life of the privileged without seeming to seek respect for everyone's life; it cannot secure acceptance for the privileges of some without going through the motions of safe-guarding everybody's rights. "The law", Kropotkin says, which is to say those who make the law, meaning the government, "the law has played upon man's social sentiments in order to secure the passage, along with moral precepts readily acceptable to man, orders to servicing the minority of despoilers against whom he would have otherwise revolted." 
A government can scarcely want the break-up of society, because that would signify the disappearance of victims for it and for the ruling class to exploit. It cannot allow society to regulate itself without official interference, because then the people would very quickly realize that government serves no purpose, other than to defend the property-owners who keep the people hungry, and would make preparation for ridding itself of governments and property-owners.
Today, faced with the urgent and menacing demands of the proletariat, governments display a tendency to meddle in dealings between employers and workers. In so doing, they try to derail the workers' movement and, by dint of a few deceitful reforms, to prevent the poor from seizing for themselves all that they need, which is to say, as great a morsel of well-being as the others.

The tremendous expansion which has taken place in production, the spread of economic needs which can never be met except with the assistance of a huge number of men from every country, the communications media, the habit of travel, science, literature, trade, and indeed wars have knit and increasingly are knitting humanity into a single body, the mutually solidary parts of which look no further than the welfare of the other parts and of the whole for their own scope and freedom to develop. Abolition of government does not and cannot signify destruction of the social bond. Quite the opposite: the cooperation which today is forced and which is today directly beneficial to a few, will be free, voluntary, and direct, working to the advantage of all and will be all the more intense and effective for that. The social instinct, the sentiment of solidarity, would flourish in the highest degree: every man will do all that he can for the good of other men, in order to satisfy his feelings of affection as well as out of a properly understood self-interest.
Out of the free collaboration of everyone, thanks to the spontaneous combination of men in accordance with their needs and sympathies, from the bottom up, from the simple to the complex, starting from the most immediate interests and working towards the most general, there will arise a social organization, the goal of which will be the greatest well-being and fullest freedom of all., and which will bind the whole of humanity into one fraternal community; which will amend and improve itself in accordance with the amendments, circumstances, and lessons of experience.

Such a society of free men, such a society of friends, is Anarchy.

In order to understand how a society can live without government, one need only look into the depths of the present society, and one will see how, in fact, the greater part, the essential part of the life of society, carries on, even today, outside of government intervention, and how government intervenes only in order to exploit the masses, to defend the privileged and, finally, to sanction, quite pointlessly, everything that gets done without it and indeed despite and against it.
Government is the body of individuals who have received or assumed the right and the wherewithal to make laws and to force people to obey; the administrator, the engineer, etc., are by contrast, men who receive some task and who see to its completion. "Government" signifies the delegation of power, which is to say the abdication of everyone's initiative and sovereignty into the hands of a few. "Administration" signifies delegation of work, which is to say, 'task assigned and task accepted' and free exchange of services on the basis of free contracts.
He who governs is a privileged person, since he has the right to command others and utilize others' strengths in order to bring about the triumph of his own ideals and wishes. The administrator, the technical director, etc., are workers like all the rest--- provided of course, that we are speaking of a society wherein everyone has equal access to growth, where everyone is, or can be, simultaneously brain workers and manual workers, wherein all tasks, all duties, entail equal entitlement to enjoyment of social amenities. The function of government  should not be confused with the function of administration, for they are different in essence, for, whereas today they may be mistaken one for the other, this can be attributed to economic and political privilege.

But let us move on speedily to the functions of government for which government is regarded--- by all who are not anarchists --- as truly indispensable: the defense of a society, within and without; which is to say "war", "policing", and "justice".
Once governments have been done away with and society's wealth placed at the disposal of all, all of the antagonism between different peoples will very quickly evaporate and there will be no more justification for war. 
Let us suppose, though, that the governments of countries as yet unemancipated should attempt to reduce a free people to servitude again. Will the latter require a government in order to defend itself? The waging of warfare requires men with requisite geographical and technical expertise, and, above all, masses willing to fight. A government can add nothing to the competence of the one, nor the resolution and courage of the other. Historical experience teaches us how a people truly desirous of defending its own country is invincible: in Italy, everyone knows how thrones collapsed and regular armies made up of conscripts or enlisted men melted away before the volunteer corps (an anarchist formation).
And what of "policing"? What of "Justice"? Many imagine that if there were no gendarmes, police and judges around, everyone would be at liberty to kill, rape, and maim his neighbor: that the anarchists, in name of their principles, would like to see respected this queer freedom that rapes and destroys the life and liberty of other folk. They are all but convinced that, once we have destroyed government and private property, we would blithely allow both to be re-established, out of regard for the "liberty" of those who might feel the need to be governors and proprietors. A truly queer construction to place upon our ideas! True, it is easier, with a shrug of the shoulders, to dispose of them that way rather than to take the trouble to refute them.

The liberty we seek, for ourselves and for others, is not that absolute, abstract, metaphysical liberty which, in practice, inevitably translates into oppression of the weak, but rather, real liberty, the achievable liberty represented by conscious community of interests and willing solidarity. We proclaim the maxim" "Do what you will", and we condense our program, so to speak, into that, because, as will readily be understood, we are convinced that in a harmonious society, in a society without government and without property, "each will want what will be his duty." Were it not for the equivocation by means of which an attempt is made to head off the social revolution, we might assert that Anarchy is a synonym for socialism.

--Errico Malatesta--

Emile Henry, 1894

We are not "believers", we bow the knee neither to Reclus, nor to Kropotkin. We debate their ideas, accepting them when they elicit fellow-feeling in our minds, but rejecting them when they evoke no response from us.

Having established that, let me try to spell out for you briefly and quickly what Anarchy means to me, without thereby speaking for other comrades who may, on given matters, hold views differing from mine. 

That the social system today is in a bad way you will not dispute, and the proof is that everyone suffers by it. From the wretched vagrant, breadless and homeless, forever hungry, to the billionaire who lives in constant fear of rebellion by the starvelings upsetting his digestion, the whole of mankind has its worries.
Upon what foundations does bourgeois society rest? Discounting the precepts of family, nation and faith, which are merely its corollaries, we can state that the two corner stones, the two underylying principles of the existing State are authority and property.
I am loath to expound upon this point at greater length. It would be easy for me to show that all the ills we suffer flow from property and authority. Poverty, theft, crime, prostitution, wars, and revolutions are merely the products of these principles.
So the twin foundations of society being evil, there are no grounds for hesitation. No need to try out a heap of palliatives (to wit, socialism) that serve only to relocate the evil: the twin seeds of vice must be destroyed and eradicated from the life of society. Which is why we anarchists seek to replace individual ownership with Communism, and authority with liberty.
No more title deeds, then; no more titles of ascendancy: rather, absolute equality.

When we say absolute equality, we are not claiming that all men are to have the same brains, the same physical make-up: we are very well aware that there will always be the widest variation in intellectual and bodily aptitudes. It is that variety in capabilities that will see to the production of everything that humanity needs, and we are also counting upon it to sustain emulation in an anarchist society.
Self-evidently, there will be engineers and there will be builders, but the one will pretend to no superiority over the other: for the engineer's work would count for nothing without the assistance of the builder and vice-versa.  With everyone free to choose the trade he will follow, there will no longer be creatures in thrall to the inclinations naturally within them ( a guarantee of productivity).

At which point, a question is posed. What about the lazy? Will everyone be willing to work?

To which our answer is: yes, everyone will be willing to work, and here is the reason why: today, the average workingday is ten hours long. Lots of workers are engaged in tasks of absolutely no use to society, particularly in the manufacture of military armaments for the land based and marine services. Many, too, are stricken by unemployment. Add to these the considerable number of able-bodied men producing nothing: soldiers, priests, police, magistrates, civil servants, etc. Thus we can argue, without fear of being accused of exaggeration, that out of every one hundred persons capable of performing some work, only fifty turn in an effort of any real use to society. It is these fifty that produce the entire wealth of society. From which it follows that if everyone were to work, the working day, instead of being ten hours, would fall to just five hours.
Bear in mind, too, that in the current situation, the total of manufactured products and the sum of agricultural output outweighs by multiples the amount required to meet the needs of humanity--- which is to say that a human race three times as numerous could be clothed, housed, heated, fed, in short, could have all its needs me, if the surplus production was not destroyed through waste and many other factors. 
So, from the foregoing we can deduce the following conclusion: A sociery in which everyone would do his bit for production and which owuld be content with production not greatly in excess of its needs (the excess of the former over the latter should build up a small reserve), nedd require of each of its able-bodied members only two or three hours' labor, maybe even less. So who would refuse to contribute such a tiny amount of labor? Who would be willing to live with the shame of being despised by everybody and regarded as a parasite?

Property and authority always march in step, the one supporting the other to keep humanity enslaved! What is property right? Can it be right that one man should eat while another starves? No. Nature, when she created us, made us similar creatures, and a laborer's stomach demands the same satisfactions as a financier's. And yet today, one class has appropriated everything, robbing the other class not just of the sustenance of the body but also of the sustenance of the mind. Yes, in an age dubbed the age of progress and science, is it not painful to think that millions of minds thirsting for knowlede are denied the opportunity for improvement? How many children of the people, who might have made men of great value to humanity, will never know anything beyond the few rudiments drummed into them in primary school?

Property--- that is the enemy of human happiness, for it gives rise to inequality, and thence to hatred, envy, and bloody revolution. Authority is merely property's sanction. Its function is to place force in the service of spoliation.
Since labor is a call of nature, you will agree with me that no one will shirk the responsibility for such a paltry effort as we mentioned above. (Labor is such a call of nature that history shows us statesmen happily dodging the cares of policy in order to toil like ordinary workmen. To cite only two well-known instances: Louis the XVI dabbled in the locksmith's trade, and "the grand old man" Gladstone spent his spent his holidays chopping down oak trees in his woodland, like a common woodsman.)

So you can see, Monsieurs, that there will not be any need to have recourse to law to abolish laziness. If, by some fluke, however, someone did want to deny his colleagues his contribution, it would still be cheaper to feed such a wretch, who cannot but be sick, than it is to maintain legislators, magistrates, police officers and warders in order to curb him. Many other questions arise, but these are of secondary significance: the important this was to establish that the abolition of property and taking from the common store would not lead to a halt in production as a reslut of an upsurge in idleness, and that the anarchist society could feed itself and provide for its every need. Any other objections that might be raised will easily be rebutted on the basis that an anarchist setting will develop solidarity and love of his fellows in every one of its members, for man will know that in producing for others he will be at the same time working on his own behalf.

One objection which might appear to have more substance is this:
If there is no authority anymore, if there is no more fear of the policeman to stay the hands of criminals, do we not risk seeing offenses and crimes proliferating to frightening extent? The answer is simple:
The crime committed today can be classified under two main headings: crimes for gain and crimes of passion. The former will vanish of its own accord, for there will no longer be any point to such offenses, trespasses against property, in a setting where property has been abolished. As for the latter, no legislation can prevent them. Far from it. The existing law which frees the spouse who has murdered his adulterous wife is merely an ecouragement to such crimes.
By contrast, an anarchist environment will raise humanity's moral standards. Man will grasp that he has no rights over a woman who is simply acting on conformity with her own nature. As a result, in the future society, crime will become rarer and rarer, until it dissappears completely.

Let me sum it up for you, Monsieurs, my ideal of an anarchist society.
No more authority, which is a lot more contrary to the happiness of humanity than the few excesses which might attend the birth of a free society. Instead of the current authoritarian organization, individuals combined on the basis of sympaties and affinities, without laws or leaders. No more private property: products held in common; everyone working in accordance with his needs, and everybody consuming in accordance with his needs, which is to say, according to his whim.
No more selfish bourgeois family making man woman's property and woman property of man, requiring two creatures who happen to have been in love for a moment to bind themselves one to the other until the end of their days.
Nature is capricious, forever questing after new sensations. She wants free love. Which is why we advocate the free union.
No more fatherlands, no more hatred between brothers, pitting one against the other, men who have never even laid eyes on one another.
Replacement of the chauvinist's narrow, petty attatchement to his homeland with open, fertile love of the whole of humanity, without distinctions of race or color.
No more religions, forged by priests for the degredation of the masses and to afford them hope of a better life while they themselves savor this earthly life.
Instead, the continual pursuit of the sciences, made accessible to everyone who may be inclined to study them, nursing men gradually towards a materialist consciousness.
In short, no further impediment to the free development of human nature. Unfettered exercise of all physical, intellectual and mental faculties.

I am not such an optimist as to expect that a society with such foundations should straight-away arrive at perfect harmony. But it is my profound conviction that two or three generations will prove enough to wrest man away from the influence of the artificial civilization to which he is subject today and return him to the state of nature, which is the state of nature, which is the state state of kindness and love. But if this ideal is to succeed, and an anarchist society is to be erected upon solid foundations, we must start with the work of destruction. To old, worm-eaten structure must be cast down, which is what we shall do. The bourgeoisie claims that we shall never reach our goal. The future will teach it differently.

 Emile Henry

The End of Nations

The French philosopher Ernest Renan once defined a nation as ''a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors.''

Emma Goldman once stated: "Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.
The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner."

History abounds with examples which excoriate the fallacy of nationalism, exposing it for the odious, rancorous lie which it demonstrably, undeniably is. Let us take for our pertinent example the "nation" of Spain. The "nation" of Spain is said to occupy about 4/5ths of the Iberian Penninsula, at the terminus of western Europe. Framed on the east by the Pyranees mountains, the land mass is characterized by plains and hills. It has been inhabited by a variety of people throughout history. Some of the earliest evidence of modern human habitation of Europe is found in Spain, as well as numerous pre-human (Neanderthal) sites. The region is home to the Basque language, which is one of the oldest languages on earth, even predating the expansion of the Indo-European language groups into western europe, and has no surviving relatives. The region was a critical battleground for the conflict between the Roman and Cartheginian empires, eventually becoming a Roman province. It is argued that Castilian Spanish (notably argued mostly by Castilians) is the closest surviving relative of the original Roman Latin. After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the region existed as a series of independant, occaisionally warring provinces, until it was conquered by the Moors. The Moors, a group of moslims from northern Africa, crossed the straits of Gibraltar, bringing within them an enduring peace and an enlightened society, which stood for nearly 800 years like a beacon of civilization and prosperity in contrast to the barbarism of medieval Europe. The Moors were eventually expelled by a genocidal group of Christian Zealots from the region of Castille, who through military campaigns and inquisitions, were able to remove the Moors from Spain, leaving the areas largely depopulated by virtue of expulsion or slaughter. The small population of Christian Spain was insufficient to fill the void of the now empty lands, so the monarchy opened the lands up for settlement by the burgeoning population of France. A massive influx of French people left a permanent mark on the landscape, and also the Spanish Language, both of which are readily observable to this very day. As with many feudal societies, Spain became heavily provincial; people from Asturias were Asturian first, Spanish second; Aragonese were Aragonese, Castillians were Castillians. Being Spanish was really only useful for the purposes of the monarchy and Church, and the dissimilarities culturally and linguistically between the provinces are still evident, and contentious, to this day. Rather than one nation, it was a loose collection of people and provinces which were not only distinct but also often at odds with one another, occasionally identifying as Spanish for convenience and military or political expediency.

During the 1930's, when the Fascists, or Nationalists as they preferred to call themselves, endevored to overthrow the rule of the people of Spain, they claimed to fight for "Hispanitud", or "Spanishness". The Fascists utilized a number of historical comparisons in their propaganda; especially favored was the idea that they were going to "re-conquer" Spain from the forces of liberalism and democracy, as the Castillians had done when they expelled the Moors (Ironically, the vast majority of Nationalist troops were conscripts from Morocco, decendents of the Moors). But was it Castillian Spanishness? Or Aragonese Spanishness? It couldn't have been the Spanishness of the French settlers, and certainly wasn't the Spanishness of the Moors, who controlled Spain for longer than the Spanish; nor was it the Spanishness of the Romans or Cartheginians, nor the Basques nor the Gauls nor the Neanderthals. In reality, the Spanishness they proffered was an elaborate series of bland, chauvunistic euphamisms for exactly nothing. There is no historical "Spanishness", and even today there is still none. The fascists sought to create a myth of national purity, because doing so allowed them to put themselves in a position whereby they were the sole judges of that supposed purity. Acting as though they were the divinely-appointed guardians of this ridiculous nationalist mendacity, they could justify the mass slaughter of whomsoever they saw fit, for political expedience. History falls to the wayside when the powerful have a mythology to support their agenda, and no matter how ridiculous that myth may be, no matter how demonstrably false, the powerful will stop at nothing to make sure that myth goes unquestioned. 

The story of Spain is the same for all nations, though of course the anecdotal information is different. The nation is a myth; a powerful, destructive myth, which lays waste to the earth and makes slaves of its people. Nations require for their sustenance the exploitation and domination of the people contained within them; the cruelty engendered in this system naturally creates a high degree of instability and resentment among the exploited. The mythology of a nation is critical to its ruling class, because beyond the force of violence of deprivation, the ruling class has else nothing by which to justify their domination of the proliteriat. People believe myths, people love myths. We incoroporate these myths, taught to us since birth, into our psyches and define ourselves by them. The ruling class who are served by these myths also retain the power to alter them to fit their political, economic, or military schemes and designs. The utility for the ruling class of national myths cannot be overstated, because people will work for myths, people will fight for myths, people will die for myths. And the ruling class is always very interested in making sure that they can get people to work for them, to fight for them, and to die for them. The nationalist myth is the only distinction between the governments today and the tyrants of history. The difference between Ghengis Khan and Benyamin Netanyahu is that Netanyahu wants to make sure that your neighbors believe his lies before his troops crush you and your family. At least the Mongols were honest in their conquests: they didn't claim to fight for some purpoted "mongolianness" or some ridiculous national myth that their god chose them to be the rulers of the world. When the Mongols destroyed your irrigation systems and burned your orhcards and razed your village, they didn't try to enforce some circuitous logic to make the victim into the villain. They wanted plunder, they wanted power; in this they were no different than the plutarchs and tyrants who rule our world today.

The plain fact is that nations technically, literally do not exist. They aren't real in any sense of the word. Go to the borders of a country, and look to the ground. You will find no dividing line, though one may be supposed to be present. Perhaps you will find a wall, or a some natural barrier; but the land on either side of the wall will be roughly the same, and the mountains and rivers of this world far predate mankind and his petty machinations. Where is this nation which delineates these territories? The nation is not the wall: the wall is merely artifice, a stacking of meaningless rubble. Perhaps the nation can be found in its documents? But these are merely parchement and ink, having no power beyond any other piece of paper. Is the nation the man in the uniform with his weapons, or the politician and his lies? No, for these are merely men, fallible and mortal as any other.
The nation is an elaborate fantasy which lives only in the imaginations of people. Though it may build edifices of marble or gold, though it may wage wars and issue decrees and cause incalculable suffering and destruction, these things are not themselves the stuff of nations. They are the affects of nations. A nation is nothing, literally nothing, but a frankenstein construct of a myriad of lies and myths with one unifying purpose: to make certain that the downtrodden and exploited remain so, and to make sure that those who have power keep that power. And though both king and peasant may be made to believe the same myth, for that the myth is no more true. 

The most potent weapon against the nation is simple disbelief. Since it lives only in the minds of people, all that is needed to destroy any nation is to deny it it's feeding grounds. To change the minds of men can be simpler than it may seem, and once a person has seen the fallacy for what it is, they can never return to belief. Starve the nation of minds, and it will fall more easily than a house of cards.

We are already free. The people are inhibited only by the lies they believe; lies that they are powerless, lies that they are inferior, lies that they need leaders, lies that evil is the condition of man. The yoke of opression, the chains which bind us to tyranny and exploitation, have only the wieght which the individual gives to them. Their strength exists only to the extent that an individual may be made to identify with them, to accept them. Even the whip of governmental reproach and reaction which scourges the flesh of free people is powerless in the shining light of undeniable truth. They can steal our lands, burn our works, and take from us our very lives. But they cannot, for all of their lies and all of their cruelty, deprive us of our convictions, and no amount of violence or coercion is sufficient to subjugate once more a mind which has been liberated by truth.
We've already won, comrades. Let's go out into the world and enjoy our victory. Spread the word. Sing it loud, sing it proud. Shout it, scream it, print it, post it; just don't wait for it. 

Dan

A Brass-Tacks Comparison of Political Theories

Two Conflicting Ideas

(...) The Bolshevik idea was to erect upon the ruins of the bourgeois State a new "workers' State," to establish a "worker and peasant government" and introduce the "dictatorship of the proliteriat."
     The anarchist idea was to overhaul the economic and social foundations of society without resorting to a political State, government or "dictatorship" of any description, which is to say to carry out the Revolution and resolve its difficulties, not by political and State means, but by means of the natural, unforced economic and social activity of the workers' very own associations, once the last capitalist government had been overthrown.
     In order to coordinate activity, the first of these outlooks envisaged a central political authority, orchestrating the life of the State to abet the government and its agents, in accordance with formal directives emanating from the "center."
     The alternative approach implied jettisoning political and State organization once and for all; the direct and federative arrangements between economic, social, technical or other bodies (trade unions, cooperatives, various associations, etc.) at local, regional, national and international levels; signifying not a political, statist centralization reaching out from the government at the center to the periphery controlled by it, but rather an economic and technical centralization, dictated by real needs and interests, moving from the periphery towards the centers and established naturally and logically in accordance with actual needs, with no domination and no commands.
     Note the absurdity, or partisanship of the reproach leveled at anarchists to the effect that they know only "how to destroy" and have no "positive" ideas [...] especially when the reproach emanates from "leftists". Discussions between far-left political parties and the anarchists had always centered upon what [...] had to be done once the bourgeois State have been destroyed--- a destruction upon which all agreed. Along what lines should the construction of the new society proceed: statist, centralist and political, or federalist, apolitical and merely social? This was as ever the subject of disputations between the two sides: irrefutable evidence that the anarchists' central preoccupation was always nothing less than building the future.
     In place of the parties' thesis that there should be a "transitional" political, centralized State, anarchists offered their own: that there should be ongoing but immediate progess towards real economic and federative community. The political parties rely upon the social structure bequeathed by bygone ages and regimes and argue that there are constructive ideas implicit in this model. Anarchists reckon that, from the outset, fresh construction requires fresh methods and they advocate such methods. Whether their contention be right or wrong, it proves at any rate that they are perfectly clear as to what they want and that they have clear-cut constructive ideas.
     Generally speaking, a wrong-headed, or, most often, knowingly incorrect, interpretation argues that the libertarian approach signifies absence of all organization. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not a question of "organization" or of "non-organization," but rather of two different organizing principles.
     Of necessity, every revolution begins in a more or less spontaneous--- and thus confused and chaotic foundation. It goes without saying, an libertarians understand this as well as anybody else, that if a revolution reamains at that stage, the primitive stage, it founders. Immediately following the spontaneous eruption, the organizing principle has to intervene in a revolution, as in any other human undertaking. And it is at that point that the serious question arises: what are the tenor and the basis of that organization to be?
     Some contend that a central leadership group, an "elite" group, should be formed in order to take the whole endeavor in hand and see it through in occordance with its lights, imposing the latter upon the entire collectivity, establishing a government and organizing a State, dictating its wishe to the population, imposing its "laws" through force and violence and combating, eliminating and even annihilating those in disagreement with it.
     Others reckon that such a view is absurd, contrary to the underlying trends in human evolution and, in the last analysis, more than sterile: downright damaging to the whole undertaking. Of course, the anarchists say, society must be organized. But that new, normal and henceforth feasible organization ought to proceed freely and socially an, above all, from the grassroots up. The organizing principle should emanate, not from center ready-made for the purposes of capturing the whole and overruling it, but the very opposite, from all points, arriving at coordinating centers, natural centers designed to service all these points. 
     Of course, the organizing spirit, men with a capacity for organization, "elites", must play their part. But everywhere and in all circumstances, all such human resources must participate freely in the common undertaking as true colloaborators and not as dictators. Everywhere, they should set an example and set about marshalling, coordinating and organizing people's goodwill, initiative, expertise, talents and aptitudes, without dominating, subjugating or oppressing them. Such men would be true organizers and their handiwork would be natural, humane and genuinely progressive. Whereas the other sort of "organization", modeled upon that of an old society rooted in oppression and exploitation, and consequently tailored to those two purposes, would be sterile and unstable, because it is incongruent with the new targets and thus in no way progressive. Indeed, it would contribute nothing to the new society: instead, it would take all of the blights of the old society to extremes in that only their appearance would have altered.
     Belonging to an obsolete society overtaken in every respect and thus impossible as a natural, free and truly human institution, it could not survive other than with the aid of some new artifice, some new trickery, some new violence, fresh oppressions and exploitations. Which would, of necessity, sidetrack, mislead and jeopardize the entire revolution. Self-evidently, such organization would remain stalled as a locomotive of the social revolution. In no way could it serve as a "transitional society" (as the "communists" contend) for such a society would necessarily have to carry at least a few of the seeds of the society towards which it would be evolving--- now, every authoritarian and Statist society would possess only residues from the overthrown society.
     According to the libertarian case, it was the toiling masses themselves who, through their various class agencies (factory committees, industrial and agricultural unions, cooperatives, etc.), federated and centralized in response to the real needs, were everywhere to busy themselves on the spot with resolving the problems of the Revolution. Through their activity, which would be powerful and fruitful, in that it would be free and deliberate, they were to coordinate their efforts right accross the length and breadth of the land. As for the "elites," their role, as libertarians saw it, was to assist the masses; to enlighten and instruct them, to offer the requisite advice and nudge them towards such and such initiative, setting an example and supporting them in their activity, but not directing them government-style.
     According to libertarians, happy resolution of the problems of the social revolution could only come about through the freely and consciously collective, solidary efforts of millions of men, contributing and reconciling the whole diversity of their needs and interests as well as of their ideas, strengths and capabilities, their talents, aptitudes, dispositions, professional know-how and expertise, etc. Through the natural inter-play of their economic technical and social bodies, with the aid of the "elites" and, if need be, under the umbrella of their freely organized armed forces, the toiling masses, according to libertarians, ought to have been able to move the social revolution forward and arrive progressively at the practical accomplishment of all its tasks.
     The Bolshevik line was diametrically the opposite. According to the Bolsheviks, it was the elite---their elite--- which, by forming a government (a so-called "workers" government enforcing the so-called "dictatorship of the proliteriat") was to carry through the transformation of society and resolve its immense problems. The masses were to assist this elite (the converse of the libertarians' line, whereby the elite was to assist the masses) by faithfully, blindly and "mechanically" implementing its plans, decisions, orders and "laws". And the armed forces, likewise modeled upon those of the capitalist countries, had to be blindly obedient to the "elite."
     Such was and is the essential difference between the two outlooks.
     Such also were the two contrary notions of social revolution at the time of the Russian overthrow in 1917.
     The Bolsheviks, as we have stated, were unwilling even to listen to the anarchists, much less allow them to put their thesis to the masses. Believing themselves to be possessed of an absolute incontrovertible and "scientific" truth, arguing that they had a duty to impose and apply it as a matter of urgency, they fought and eliminated the libertarian movement through recourse to violence as soon as the latter began to awaken the interest of the masses: the customary practice of all overlords, exploiters, and inquisitors.

---Voline

A Group of Twenty Bastards

The Group of Twenty, or G-20, is the modern incarnation of a long lineage of international conferences called by the ruling elite from varying regions for the purpose of economic and political negotiation. Representing the top 19 developed and developing economies, plus the European union, the G-20 is a consortium of world leaders from powerful nations meeting together to decide amongst themselves how best to carve up the rest of the world for their own empires and agendas. They set binding policies which are enacted with dubious legality and are frought with fraud and corruption. The decisions of the G-20 are enforced by the leaders in attendance without any input or oversight whatsoever from their own constituencies, let alone the billions of people from countries which are not represented at the conference. These decisions have long reaching and profound consequences which are always skewed to the benefit of those nations, corporations, and interests which are already wealthy and powerful, at the expense of the exploitation and domination of the rest of the "less-developed" world. The G-8, G-20, and other such conferences such as those of the WTO (World Trade Organization), are the means by which the international capitalist establishment maintains and enforces its global economic and political hegemony, and provide nothing beside (other than an opportunity for the bastard 'leaders' involved to engage in an orgy of chauvanistic self-congradulation). The idea is that, by utilizing the very same processes which have brought the world to ruin, the G-20 will be able to resolve the various crises they themselves have created while at the same time preventing the truly necessary social and economic changes required to achieve a better and more equitable world. They're trying to smother a fire with gasoline that they stole from the fire truck, so to speak.

In reality, the conference itself is little more than a media-friendly opportunity for the bastard figureheads of state to display a carefully scripted interest in the proceedings so as to appear engaged and in charge, whereas all of the important decision-making and negotiations have already been concluded in the preceeding years and months by various delegations, committees, and other interested (and powerful) parties. Then, when the corporate media's cameras are rolling, our handsome bastard leaders come in and take all the political credit for accomplishing absolutely nothing while managing to conceal the fact that they are total pawns of the true power brokers. Since the conference is primarily designed as a media event, it is also a perfect opportunity for the diverse groups in opposition to the unilateral policies of the G-20 to make their voices heard, in the streets and around the world. Protests have famously followed the G-8, G-20, and affiliated organizations, wherever they have gone the world over. On the first of April, the G-20 convened in London, and met record-setting crowds of protestors of every political persuasion. The protests have a two-fold effect: they increase solidarity and connectivity between disperate groups, and they help to reveal the true allegiances of the institutions which dominate our lives--- governments and police forces loyal not to their people, but to the economic interests of the capitalist establishment and the ruling elite.

Time and again, the forces of oppression show the astounding lengths to which they will go to crush opposition and dissent. Media suppression is critical to the establishment in this regard- when the RNC met in Minneapolis, USA, to nominate their Presidential candidate in 2008, nearly all independant media was pre-emptively raided and falsely incarcerated days before the event; protest organizers were thrown in jail indefinately on trumped-up charges. In Tehran, Iran, there was an explosion of state violence and a media crack-down, including the arrest, inprisonment, and torture of journalists native and foriegn alike, following a disputed presidential election. Despite the best efforts of the Iranian State, the story of the struggle of the People of Iran reverberated the world over, and could not be contained. This was mirrored in China during a brutal series of repressions against ethnic Uighurs, which featured a near full shut-down of the internet by state authorities. Even though the Chinese State is quite experienced in keeping its oppression quiet, they too were unable to prevent the world's attention from being drawn. In London during the G-20 protests of April, the police targeted cameras and the people holding them, aggressively and proactively attacked peaceful crowds, and even killed a man. We can expect all of this and possibly more when the G-20 comes to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, towards the end of September of this year, and no amount of disinformation or intimidation will silence the voices of those gathered there to voice their opposition.

In spite of the obstacles placed before them by well-funded institutions and powerful, oppressive states, organizers in Pittsburgh have begun to prepare the way for people from all over the USA and all over the world, of every persuasion, to come to their town and make their voices heard against the monolithic power of the G20. The People of Pittsburgh have a long and splendid history of resisting oppression and exploitation, and with the G20 coming to town, there has never been a better time to show solidarity with their struggles, and the struggles of the people of the world. They have generously made available a variety of resources, which can be found at

http://resistg20.org
and
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20090818143344925

See you there.

Hale

Democracy, Class, and Revolution

Winston Churchill once famously quoted that "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried."

Although democracy is not itself a specific type of government, many governments credit themselves as having "democratic character". Rhetorically, this is meant to imply that, through majoritarian decision-making, popular consensus can be achieved with coercion, exploitation, and violations of individual rights being kept to a minimum. However, as is immediately apparent upon serious examination and reflection, most if not all governments (whether "democratic" in character or not) are, as a requisite feature of their nature, structurally dependant upon precisely the types of coercion, domination, and exploitation which they claim to remedy. The word "Democracy" is Greek in origin. "Demo" meaning "people", and "Kratos" meaning "to rule";  democracy is a term which means that the people rule themselves. Not one person set above all (monarchy), not one group or party for themselves over others (oligarchy), but literally the people ruling themselves, not set above or below one another--- all for one and one for all, so to speak. Governments said to have "democratic character" claim to aspire to this state of affairs and seek to achieve it by employing means which are, both in theory and practice, antithetical to and destructive of this goal.

Modern democratic thought is highly influenced by a philosopher named John Stuart Mill, particularly so by what he called "Utilitarianism". J.S. Mill's principle of Utilitarianism is stated, very briefly, that the goal of society is to achieve the highest amount of good possible for the largest amount of people possible, while minimizing detriment to the maximal degree possible. This carries with it the implication that there will always and necessarily be a degree of exploitation and disservice, and that such are inexorably linked to any degree of happiness and prosperity to be achieved by anyone. Which fits perfectly well with a majoritarian approach to democracy, wherein the majority opinion is enforced against dissent through arms, guile, or economics to the exclusion and detriment of minority opinion, no matter how large or slim the majority dividing the two may be. Therefore a society fashioned around such principles, presuming that the "good" for one group is predicated upon the "not-good" of others (no matter how large or small in number), as a necessary structural component of its existence, will always divide its population into groups (along whatever culturally specific criterion established by that society) which experience varying and unequal degrees of service, status, and acceptance. Thus, society is segregated into various classes.
Indeed, J.S. Mill was very influential in enlightenment-era philosophical discourse. His work was, and is, integral to the development of the idea of the so-called "social contract", which is instrumental to the structures of Constitutionally-Democratic governments. J.S. Mill's work on the subject was oriented around a hypothetical condition which he termed "the original position", which very simply stated is this: that human beings as a fact of their existence, being weaker than other animals, needed to assemble in groups by which to conduct collective activity for their very survival, and that at such time as these individuals coalesced into their groups, they entered into an arrangement whereby, for the functioning of the group along the Utilitarian precepts mentioned above, certain individual rights are surrendered in exchange for the services and benefits, to be agreed upon at the time of this formation, rendered by collective activity in the context of this new society. J.S. Mill postulated that individuals entered into this arrangement under another hypothetical condition which he artistically termed a "veil of ignorance", in which the individuals were unaware of their social class relative to each other, either because social class was to be invented in the terms of the social contract or because the social contract pre-dated the advent of social class, in which case dichotomous social standing was the supposedly natural result of the interplay between individuals of differing backgrounds and talents. Most Constitutional governments that formed contemporaneously with Mill, and for long after as well, were highly influenced by these premises, and almost totally dependant upon them in many cases. Their influence persists to this very day.

The obvious flaw in Mill's "Original Position" is that this never happened. Human beings and their societies didn't just appear one day, fully formed yet unaware of themselves. Society (Here defined: a group of individuals interacting in a social context for mutual benefit) in fact pre-dates human existence. Our closest kin in the animal world, apes, all exhibit their own types of societies, which function often times very similarly to our own. Our ancestors, Hominids, themselves descendants of apes, also had their own societies. In fact, society is a survival adaptation of our kind, and is that which has made possible the development of our species. For literally millions of years, existing in society has influenced individuals; indeed, humans cannot live (well) outside the context of society, for our development as a species has been within the context of society since long before we were recognizably human! This precludes J.S. Mill's notion that humans existed at one time outside of society and coalesced into societies as a necessary factor for the survival of the individual. To sum, rather than society being the spontaneous result of the interaction between diverse individuals, the very opposite is true; individuals exist because of their development within and interactions with society, and cultural diversity as well is the result of the cumulative interactions between individuals, society, and the ongoing development of both--- a result of evolution.

If segregation of human society into classes were a natural fact of our human development, it would be ubiquitous throughout all human societies the world over, and at all times. If class division were a natural part of human society, as is the case with creatures like ants, there would be no society anywhere without it, and that is clearly not the case. Numerous societies throughout time, many even still in the present, did not exhibit this culturally specific trait. It is not necessary for there to be one group to rule and another to serve, nor indeed is such a dichotomy appropriate or ethical. The presence of this and other inequities are the result of a society built largely on deception and false premises which enable those in power to justify to themselves the abuses they utilize to maintain their power, as well as to convince those who are abused that nothing can be done to improve their situation. To reference the opening quote from Churchill, democracy is not a government, nor has it ever been tried. Democracy and government cannot exist in the same place at the same time. Government itself, whether authoritarian or majoritarian, is totally destructive of democracy. Government forces individuals and groups to submit to authority in order to serve the authority's goals, whether that authority is violent, religious, or "democratic in character"; without exception the goals of the ruling class are self-servicing are always achieved at the expense of whatever group or groups do not possess comparable power or influence. Real democracy is only possible when there is no government and no class division. Make no mistake and do not be fooled--- anything less than real democracy is nothing less than another mutation of tyranny.

Real democracy is not hierarchical--- it does not require some to submit to others, or proclaim some individuals as superior and others as inferior. Real democracy is a society for all people everywhere, without preconditions of servitude, or of debt, or of sacrifice as pre-requisites for participation or receipt of benefit. It is not faith, it is not slavery; it is neither poverty nor wealth, neither scarcity nor excess; it is not the dominance of one race or of one religion or of one class over any other. It is reason, and science, and understanding, and empathy. Real democracy is sustainable and equal, each producing according to ability and each receiving according to need. It is liberty, equality, and fraternity, without amendment or abrogation. Real democracy grows without end, ever changing to respond and adapt to ever changing circumstances, and holds nothing sacrosanct or static. Real democracy is free and equal individuals working with their free and equal peers, not serving institutions under pain of death or threat of suffering.
To say that it has not been tried is not entirely accurate--- democracy has been tried every time that a people have risen up in revolution to cast off the chains of domination and oppression- it has been tried the world over and throughout history, in movements great and small. Often the greater immediate achievements are brutally repressed by the reactionary hubris of the ruling class, in a vain effort to turn back the ever-rising tide of human advancement and to preserve their own status as slave masters and overseers. Though the immediate achievements of revolutions might be turned back temporarily, the effect of their example is cumulative. All the greatest achievements of free people--- minority rights, women's rights, labor rights, free speech, all had to be hard won through difficult struggle and revolutionary action, and a still better world is yet to won! Democracy grows upon those revolutions which have come before, and contributes to those yet to come, building towards an ever freer world; a better world without slaves or masters, without exploitation or domination; without governments, or corporate kleptocracies. Real freedom, real equality, real democracy--- Anarchy is the practice and implementation of these things. Through Anarchy, they are not just ideals--- they are realities, and they are worth struggling for.

The governments of today, servants of the ruling class and veiled by the insulting farce of democracy which scarcely hides their naked greed and aggression, are quite literally a dead-end for humanity. They are unsustainable, and if allowed to continue as they have done and as they do now, the survival of the entire human race is in very serious peril. Anarchism is the way to a sustainable society, one with which the human species can continue ever onward into a future of limitless development. Don't believe what you've been told by your state, and never accept things as just being said and done--- another world is possible, and the future is ours.

-Hale-

What is Liberty?

Liberty, equality, and fraternity! This has been the call of countless revolutions since the dawning of the revolutionary period. The three are co-equal and co-dependant: without equality, there can be no liberty, without fraternity there can be no equality, without liberty, there can be no fraternity. As is logically customary, let us provide cursory definitions of each before proceeding with further discussion.

Fraternity is the natural disposition of mankind. It is a sentiment of empathy and understanding; knowing that at all levels of interaction, the human condition is shared and universal. It is an appreciation that individuals, regions, and indeed the whole world, are dependant upon one another, and an understanding that to improve the lot of those close to you improves your own lot, thus carrying to every economic and political interaction, from the smallest to the largest. Above all, fraternity is the expression of altruism and frienship, of kinship and of comradship. For a sentiment of fraternity to prevail, it is essential that a condition of equality among people is prevalent.

Equality is a condition in which no one individual, organization, or institution possess more rights or privileges than another; a condition wherein political and economic advantage are not used for the sake of exploitation and domination, and in fact wherein such advantages do not exist. Joeseph Conrad wrote in his seminole work The Heart of Darkness that "power is an accident arising from the weakness of others." Indeed, power only exists in a tangible form when it is used by one group against another, and only when one group percieves advantage in the domination and exploitation of another. As such, power is not itself evident of any fundamental or existential difference, of superiority or inferiority, of providence or propriety, between the two, but is rather a manifestation a temporal difference in disposition and opportunity. Equality prevails when advantage is not derived from the temporary condition of power, or the abuse of power for the sake of advantage; it prevails when the distribution of power is such that the creative processes and productive energies of the people are not misappropriated by force or guile for the sake of maintaining the status of an unequally powerful and influential class, political party, organization, or individual. When the distribution of power is unequal, fraternity is impossible; iniquity breeds hostility and strife among people, and is the root source of most social problems and personal woes.

For either condition to exist, the people must know their Liberty. Liberty is ubiquitous, which is to say it is held in common by all people. This is true today as it has always been. Indeed, the greatest feat accomplished by ruling classes throughout history has been to convince people that they are not possessing of liberty. Liberty is a natural right, above all; by this it is meant that all people are born with liberty--- it cannot be given, nor can it be taken away. It is intrinsic and universal to the human condition, regardless of time, place, social standing, or sanction. Liberty is, in short, individual expression. It is your right to be who you are, and to express that as you personally see fit. It is your right to produce what you want to produce, to accomplish what you want to accomplish. To live your life the way you want to. To be free. In reality, all people everywhere have total liberty at all times of their lives. However, self-perpetuating institutionalized hierarchies of power utilize inequality, dissinformation, and brute force to dissuade people from expressing their liberty. They establish means of indoctrination, such as governments, laws, religions and state-run education, in order to control the flow of information and enlightenment, so as to prevent the people from seeing through the carefully constructed (and entirely false!) "reality" upon which the power and justification for and the existence of the ruling class are totally dependant. Through control of basic economic and political resources, the ruling class are able to provide severe sanctions and punishments against "deviant" (an arbitrary distinction made at the discretion of the ruling class) actions and behavior, principally the withholding of food and other vital resources. And underscoring all forms of oppression and domination are the use of violence and force, manifested through armies and police, to deprive people of their precious and already too-brief lives in the event that all other means of control prove inadequate. The purpose of centralized power is to maintain itself and the status of its membership, and this is accomplished through the subversion of Liberty from the majority of the people for the service of a small ruling minority. The productive and creative energies, the blood and sweat and tears, the hopes and dreams of the people, of WE the people, of WE the workers, are harnessed and exploited to this end. This is why Anarchism is called the social revolution- it is a revolution of thought and perspective, every bit as much as it can be a revolution of arms and armies. Through revolution, we utilize our liberty to establish equality, and fraternity is the natural result of that.

Liberty is the ongoing condition of human life. It is the supreme struggle and ultimate goal of all human endeavour. At the same time, it is the primary motivator for all action, it is that which drives us all to our own individual goals; it propels us throughout the course our lives as individuals and as members of our communities. Liberty is the perpetual and universal pursuit of self-improvement and social interaction. Through our common liberty, we are bound to share our condition as equal human beings, simultaneously independent from and dependant upon all others, in our shared situation on our shared planet. Liberty is not an ending, it is not a singular purpose--- it is a continuing process of development and learning, of growth and of evolution, expressed and bourne through the lives of each of us. Each of us uniquely expressing the sum total of our own individual humanity, in turn building upon that humanity which came before and developing that humanity which shall yet come, unceasingly and without end. Liberty is the supreme good; the good at which all others aim at.

The most important question anyone can ever ask themself is "What does Liberty mean to me?"
The most important question anyone can ever ask anyone else is "What does Liberty mean to you?"

What does liberty mean to you, comrades?

-Hale

{post-script: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I }

All People Are Equal

Splendid is humankind for its diversity in construction. As with all living creatures, every individual is unique-- no two, not even genetic clones, are exactly the same. This is the result of an immesurably complex series of interactions between forces within the construction of that individual as well as the events and circumstances surrounding that individual through the course of time. The diversity we see in people, ideas, cultures, governments, vocations, are a natural result of this confluence of factors which are at once beyond our control and at the same time subject to the unique circumsances of each individual's life. The influence is mutual, and cumulative over time, both for the individual and for society.

It is from this interaction between past and present, individual and society, nature and nuture (so to speak), that are manifested the unique characteristics and traits that define each human being as a singular entity. We are all made of the sum total of our experiences within the context of our lives, influenced by the times and circumstances of those times while simultaneously exercising our own degree of control and influence over them through our own choices, actions, and ideals.

Additionally from this interplay of differing forces are manifested sometimes stark dissimilarities in talent, taste, and personality, as well as all of the other multitudinous factors which together form the composition of an unique individual. Through different experiences, people derive different lessons. Through different exposures, people adjust, adapt, and are modified in slight and drastic ways alike. Proclivities, inclinations, disinclinations, fears, wants, desires, hopes and dreams: these things are unique to individuals, and each provide important contributions to the sum total of a person, and develop gradually over time.

A person's standing in society is possibly the greatest contributing factor to the development of that individual. Their position influences which experiences they have, what lessons they learn, what skills they develop, which resources are made availible to them, what opinions are ecouraged, and so on and so on. The effect of this influence is cumulative over the course of an individual's life, and as time progresses, that individual's identity is more and more solidified along class lines. Their individual talents and natural proclivities are incorporated into this identity in the context of the wider society, and play a similarly important role in the development of the individual's indentity relative to thier standing within that society.

In every society and human association through the course of time this interplay has produced unique individuals, talented and suited for their time and place, well incoprorated into the accepted norms of that society. In every society, the dissimilarites in human talent and ability have played important roles in the survival of these societies, and the functioning of individuals within them. These dissimilarites have been interprepted and appeciated by cultures in various ways, depending upon the prevailing opinions and perceptions of each culture. The influence of western culture is over-arching and pervasive in the world today, which carries with it some alarming conserquences. Western culture, relative to this discussion, interprets the dissimilarities in individual talents and proclivities as representations of individual superiority and the favor of providence, or of God.
The norms of western capitalist soceity, as it is manifested presently, pretend to the notion that monetary and proprietary gain is the pirmary measure and arbiter of individual success and of personal worth. Consequently, individuals born into circumstance wherein access to wealth is the norm are funnelled by the circumstances of their lives and within the context of the institutions to which they are subject into lines of thought and into the development of skills and talents which are suited to the task of maintaining and utilizing this wealth in methods proscribed by the prevailing society as "appropriate". Similarly, individuals born into circumstances of disenfranchizement and servitude are funnelled into patterns of thought and skill which relfect their status in society, and via the institutions which influence their development, over time and generations, the differences in classes are maintined, enforced, and perpetuated.

In prevailing western thought, the differences in individual talent and disposition are considered to be self-evidentiary representations of individual worth. A person who has money is assumed to be better suited to its possession and use simply for the reason that this person "has it", regardless of how the money came into their possession, and regardless of what they do with it. The opposite is true for the "less fortunate", who are presumed to be somehow defective, somehow less worthwhile, for their lack of resources. This is called "The Myth of Meritocracy", and is among the most ruinous and ruthless fallacies which support and condone the continuing exploitation of individuals and disequalibrious distribution of wealth and resources. Because material wealth is so highly valued in prevailing western society, wealthy and powerful individuals are considered to be intrinsically superior to those whose exploitation is required for the acquisiton and maintenance of that wealth. These individuals, in conjunction with existing institutions and established authorities, contrive mechanisms for the perpetuation of these ideas and for the continution of the hegemony required for the implementation of them, typically by force of arms or economics.

It is through the interplay of individuals within the context of the wider society, as most often manifested by interactions with such intistutions that individuals are influenced in the course of their lives to accept the prevailing ideas of the cultures and societies in which they are born and raised, particularly in the context of their social standing or class. The same process influences the development of their talents and proclivities. Therefore, the manifestation of dissimilar talents is not evidentiary of a dissimilarity in human worth, but rather an indicator of the universality of the human condition. True, physical make up plays a co-equal role in the development of skills and abilities, and as the physical construction of an individual is entriely not of their choosing, should not be considered evidentiary of personal deficiency or failure; rather, it should be appreciated as a unique manifestation of the sublimely complex and diverse array of human possibility. Neither should the expression of one talent or skill versus another be regarded as reflecting on a dissimilarity in personal worth between one individual over another, for these talents are also unique to the individual representing them, and formed naturally through the course of a splendidly unique individual history. Neither is it appropriate for any individual or organization to attempt to divide individuals into categories of worth relative to a broader society based upon arbitrary cultural designations regarding the primacy of one expression of talent and diversity versus another; without fail, institutions which set themselves in positions so as to enable the division of human diversity into categories of "worth" or "utility" do so primarily for the purpose of ensuring the continued service of those skills and the individuals possessing them to wealthy and powerful individuals and organizations which possess the requsite means to influence and control the aforementioned institutions which retain the power, through force of arms or economics, to make such designations; designations that are, without fail, purely cultural and arbitrary distinctions, done specifically (though often tacitly) for the perpetuation of the rule of the few over the many, and the exploitation of the labors of the masses to support the vanity and hubris of the ruling class.

Know always that this aspect of the human condition is universal: we are all part of this same scheme of interaction between our own personal histories and the societies and cultures in which we develop as individuals, regardless as to which society specifically this may be. The differences between us as individuals, rather than divide us into classes of more and less worthwhile people, are expressions of magnificent diversity and personal singularity and uniqueness, and help to define us as human beings. All People Are Equal in worth- no one person is intrinsically better than any other simply for the sake of the uncontrollable circumstances which have influenced their development as individuals; no expression of human possiblity is inheirently superior to another;

and no institution, no organization, no individual, no god and no government has the right to legislate, arbitrate, or otherwise designate human worth, for All People Are Equal, without exception or exemption!

Hale

Property is Theft!

For countless generations, societies the world over have been divided fundamentally into two castes: those who own, but do not work and those who work, but do not own. This dichotomy is maintained through a multitude of means, as diverse as the minds which devise them. Ultimately, all established authority perpetuates itself though the use of violence and other types of force, such as the denial of food, education, and other human rights. It all boils down to who has the power to enforce the decisions they make on other people, regardless of the malignant effect these decisions have on the people affected by them. The evident fact is that those who possess power utilize force, in its varied and many forms, in order to perpetuate their status; and their status invariably comes at the expense of other human beings.
This fundamental truth has changed very little over the many years of modern human existence. Those who are able to implement force, in whatever form and by whatever scheme, do so out of self-interest and primarily for the sake of personal gain. It has been these individuals who have possessed the means to influence society's development through the ages, and have done so for similar reasons. Ethical and doctrinal systems and institutions have variously been established in order to provide justification for these individuals and their exploitation of the masses. These systems, such as laws, governments, and dogma, at every turn prove their fallacy, as they are readily and judiciously applied to those do not possess the requisite power to influence them, and are widely and easily ingored by those who do possess such power. And again, at the root of their power is the use of violence, intimidation, and countless other heinous crimes which are broadly called "Authority" and ultimately are manifestations of force. This is what Mao Zedong meant when he famously quoted that "Political Power grows out of the barrel of a gun". Or at the point of a sword, or a police baton, depending upon the context.

Bearing this Preamble in mind, let us proceed to the purpose of the article, the title of which I am borrowing from a pioneer of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. The modern manifestations of the two castes mentioned earlier are the two ends of the economic equation: Capital and Labor. These names can be potentially deceptive, so before proceeding, let us define them better.

To say that Capital is "those that own but do not work" is not entirely accurate, as readers of Das Kapital will attest. Capital is itself a product of the working person's labor: A builder of ships produces capital in the form of boats, a writer of poems produces capital in the form of poetry, a cultivator of food produces capital in the form of food, a steel-smelter produces capital in the form of workable metal and tools, and so on and so on. Any worker that labors to produce anything produces capital, no matter what the product ultimately is. Even the labor itself can be capital in certain cases. "Labor", referred to earlier, then can be said to be the working people, those who "work but do not own". It is we who strive to produce, we the workers. "Labor", in this context, shall be said to be the efforts and products of people who strive to be productive in any capacity which produces capital.
So what then is "Capital", in the terms of the equation mentioned earlier? To refer to the phrase "those who own but do not work", Capital is the end of the equation wherein the productive labors and beneficial, ueful capital produced by working people are expropriated (Read: Stolen) by the ruling class for the express purposes mentioned earlier, namely personal, selish gain at the expense of their fellow human beings, and the hijacking of goods and services which they did not earn for the purpose of maintaining their lifestyles, status, and power. The monopoly of force possessed by the Ruling Class enables this grand crime, which is seen time and time again throughout the course of human history.

As mentioned earlier, the ruling class employs an endless variety of institutions and fallacies by which it justifies and perpetuates this ongoing process of expropriation and exploitation. Primary among these methods are deception and misinformation, which are disseminated widely and variously through docrtinal institutions such as schools, churches, and vaious other means of distributing information (henceforth refered to broadly as 'the media'). George Orwell once said "A trained dog will jump through a loop when a whip is cracked; A truly well-trained dog will jump when no whip is present." The same is true for people. While the ruling class maintains a monopoly on the use of force, it is not always practical or even possible to utilize this force on a scale necessary to maintain their control and status. Through the manipulation of the common discourse and distribution of fallacious misinformation (by which the ruling class is itself often decieved), working people come to believe that certain practical realities prevent them from achieving their own productive goals, as well as require them to remain in their situation of exploitation and servitude. Indeed, it is often the case that these "practical realities" can manifest with very real and very severe consequences, up to and including the use of force against them as individuals by the established authority. Through control of the media, education, and common discourse, individuals are encouraged to feel isolated and dysfunctional if they find thmeselves classified by prevailing perceptions as being "deviant" or "dissenting", and in conjunction with real consequences provided through the use of force, are strongly discouraged from activities and lines of thought which countermand the status of servitude imposed upon them by the established authorities.

One such fallacy, the focus of this article, particularly present in western capitalist (Read: "Plutocracy", or "Kleptocracy") societies, is the lie which is widely known as "Property". The institutions established and controlled by the ruling class, "those who own but do not work", will provide very specific yet remarkably vague qualifications for what property actually is; the definitions change quickly and easily around the requirements of those individuals who possess power and ill-gotten wealth, so as to better accomodate the expropration of Capital from those who produce it. The indefinate character of property as it exists in the carefully cultivated "reality" constructed by the ruling-class serves them well, as it enables them to change it at will and in response to their ever expanding quest to exploit the working peoples of the world. In reality, many societies have widely varying definitions, some have none at all, for what property in fact is. Generally, the consensus seems to be that property is closely related to habitation and responsibility. Beyond that, there is little consesus. Indeed, what property is seems to be a primarily cultural distinction, subject heavily to individual interpretation.

Let us consider the following hypothetical. A wealthy man buys a plot of fertile land, and orders the construction of a large, well-built house. He pays "his" capital (which as mentioned earlier, was expropriated from the work of others) to the established authority of the region, and to another wealthy man who commands a team of builders. In short order, the house is built. Very soon, the work is done, and the wealthy man hires a gardener who, with great skill and care, raises a bountiful garden on the site. The wealthy man feels confident and satisfied that the house belongs to him, and that he owns that land upon which it has been built. The wealthy man is sure that the garden belongs to him, and claims all the vegetables within to be his property.
But he is lying to himself, and stealing from everyone else!
It was not he who built the house; no, it took the labor of a dozen skilled men, whose trade the wealthy man knows nothing about. It was not he who harvested the timbers, or mixed the cement, or forged the nails, for the wealthy man knows nothing of these honest crafts, nor could he achieve any of them on his own even if he did. Though he lives there and populates the house with many fine things, none of which he built or has the skill to maintain, the house is too large for one man to maintain, and the wealthy man knows nothing of maintaining a house, so he hires it done. Maids, repairmen, et cetera. Even if he knew these trades, a wealthy man's house is much too large to be maintained by a single wealthy man, so he must exploit the labors of an endless number of other human beings in order to satisfy his vain lifestyle. Is the house his? Absolutely not, for he did not labor to produce it or any aspect of it!
And what of the Garden he says he owns, and the produce within? The land was fertile long before anyone lived there, and would have been whether or not anyone did. The wealthy man does not labor in the garden, and does not care for the plants within. Out of incompetance or laziness, he hires someone else to work land which the wealthy man claims is his own, to produce vegetables which the wealthy man claims as his own. But without the labors of that gardener, the land would remain fertile, but vegetable-free! And without the labors of that gardener, weeds and pests would shortly overtake the garden, returning it to its original condition within less than a year. Indeed, that produce is far more the product of the Gardener's labor than the wealthy man's capital!
The same is true for any means of production. Like the garden in our example, a wealthy man cannot own a factory, or a workshop, or any other means of production which require the labor of working people. For those implements would not function or produce without those labors and the maintenance of those individuals acquianted with them, and neither can he own anything produced via the labors of those honest people, for he had no role in their production!
Does the land belong to the wealthy man? Hardly! The planet earth is far more ancient than any man--- that ground was there long before the wealthy man drew his first gasp of life, and shall continue to be there long after his body is less than ash and dust. For the earth, the wealthy man's life is fleeting beyond measure, and the wealthy man can no more own the land beneath his feet than he can claim ownership of the clouds above his head. No matter how wealthy he may be, all the capital he may expend or labor he may exploit in his efforts to control either will amount to nothing and be ground to less than nothing by the endless procession of time.
Indeed, the authority from whom the wealthy man "bought" the land has no right to it either; for if we trace back the roots of history, we find that in the past as today, established authority has always employed violence in order to achieve its goals. This has been particularly true in the case of land acquisiton. In every land, it is a story of warfare and pillage, of slaughter and rape; kings and generals and emperors and presidents, each employing their own force to brutal effect, removing peoples from their lands and generations later themselves being removed by the same means and the same titles, held by different people separated by the gulf of time, though with the same odious and malicious intent. It is a story with which those of us from North and South America should be particularly familiar.

So what then is property? As it is defined now, by the established authority and by the ruling class, Property is Theft of the honest labors of other human beings, expolited and subjugated for the sake of the perpetuation of the same machinations that provide for their enslavement--- at best.
At worst it is the legacy of the rape of the earth and the wholesale slaughter of its rightful inhabitants, justified only by the greed and bloodlust of the ruling class of the past, which seeks to extend its control ever onward into a future it hopes also to own.


-Hale

Anti-capitalist bloc

Anti-capitalist forces are manifesting their opposition on April 25th against capitalism 8:00 AM Judiciary Square Metro at the Law Enforcement Memorial.

Some have been saying it all along…

Some have just begun to see it in crisis…

A world in constant crisis, chained to desks and assembly lines, clear cuts and wastelands left in its wake… and they called it progress…and it collapsed. The suffering and disempowerment felt around the world everyday has become generalized in capitalist globalization. The age of globalization is the age of quiet total war.

They exploited us, traded us away, and left us to pick up the devastation. This world is a death machine, producing death and saying that this is what it means to have it work. Around the world thousands die everyday of preventable causes linked to poverty as we live lives of shallow material opulence obtained by selling our entire lives away in the channels opened up in some market, a market which guarantees poverty to most and complete objectification to the rest. And they say that it works… And it collapsed…

Work or starvation and for many work and starvation. They fenced off the world into property, fenced off the Earth itself and make us buy back the things which are already ours if we just decide to take them back. They made us dependent on markets for the basics of life… and it collapsed…

For all our subservience we got a world of poverty, wars, cultural meaninglessness, and wastelands. We are killing ourselves while we devastate the very planet which sustains us in a frantic race to the bottom. Capitalism is a race to see who can exploit more, extract more, cut more, and drill more, the fastest and make the most money doing it… and as a result the planet is a sinking ship. For every oil spill, every clear cut, every by-product dumped into a lake, every mountain blown up to mine coal, every war started, every sweatshop opened, every housing foreclosure, every lay-off, every eco-system leveled to build an upscale resort, every prisoner locked away, every culture destroyed, profit is made, and the drive for profit is destroying the planet while relegating us to lives slaved away in the offices, factories, and prisons of this world.

And it collapsed… We are left to pay Wall Street for the money THEY lost and the lives THEY destroyed. We are left jobless, homeless, lifeless, and suffering the effects of THEIR failure, unless we refuse this fate.

We have a choice to make, stay on the sinking ship or turn and fight. The people that structure this destruction have faces and meetings. We intend to take the fight to them, and this is a fight for our world, a fight for our lives. April 24-26 in Washington DC the International Monetary Fund and World Bank will be holding their annual Spring meetings, and we will be in the streets waiting…

We are calling for a an anti-capitalist bloc to strike a blow against the death machine.

Anti-capitalist forces are manifesting their opposition on April 25th against capitalism 8:00 AM Judiciary Square Metro at the Law Enforcement Memorial.

Kick it till it breaks! For A spring Social war.

A communique from the Self-Described Anarchist Collective

bump

Incentive of Labor

One of the most frequently asked questions I am confronted with is, If everyone is provided for
equally, why would people work harder? Why would anyone want a job that was taxing mentally or physically,
when all are provided for equally?

People have a hard time grasping the concept of changing thier views on incentive. Most have been
conditioned to view things in a capitalistic manner, only doing things for financial gain and
self interest. This is of course not thier faults, being products of an environment that promotes
these behaviors. Consumerism runs deep throughout our daily lives and all are subject to programming
by mass media. Materialistic conquests are associated with status within our society.

Changing these concepts in people is not always an easy thing to do. Most people have never taken
anarchism into consideration as a viable alternative way to live, generally due to the huge
misconceptions surrounding anarchism. When expressing these alternative views to others, one
must explain the true nature of capitalism. Capitalism is comparable to a parasite deriving
benefit from the exploitation of others and is in no way symbiotic with society. Capitalism
proposes only to sustain its self without regard for social or ecological benefit, as to where
anarchism proposes both of these things and on a level playing field to boot.


A.O.C.

The Résistance is not Quiet!

The Claremont Anarchist Collective announces:


Benefit concert: April 19th

Music’s not just entertainment, It’s a call to action, a call to arms!


Southern California Punk show supporting local activists involved in:

FoodNotBombs,

Antifascist Action

Labor Solidarity

Opposing police checkpoints

Protecting the Bernard Field Station

The Anarchist Archive

Voices of the Lost Cannon Project

Welcoming Committee



Bands include: 7Generations, abandon, Lux Nova Umbra Est, Restrained, and others... (some to be confirmed)

$5 tickets at the door

Also Featuring Vegan Bake Sale and radical raffle!

8pm/Gold Student Center/ Pitzer College

For ticket and info contact:

ANARCHY@LISTSERV2.PITZER.EDU




Anarchist Conference: April21st

Defeat the Enemies Strategy -Sun Tzu



Lectures, discussion and movies on contemporary anarchist activism featuring:

Keith McHenry (Founder of FoodNotBombs)

Derrick Jensen (Author of Endgame)

Dana Ward (founder of Anarchist Archive)

A.O.C. (Webmaster of Anarhcy.net)

A.D. Hoyt (Poison Oak Collective)

Ramon (Bike Project)

Real friends of the Bernard Field station

Spokesperson for anarchistplanner.org

Aaron Kinyen (former singer from Man is a Bastard)

Spokesperson for Arizona Indymedia

Spokesperson for Central Arizon Radicals Opposing Boarder (CAROB)

Clair (Checkpoint Alarm)



4pm, Pitzer mounds!

G-20

Around 4,000 estimated anarchists and anti-capitalists showed up for the G-20 (Financial Fools Day).
The Royal bank of Scotland was a focal piont in the protest for being bailed out by the Brittish
government, fitting tax payers with the bill. "Thieves" was spray painted on the face of the bank,
as well as "class War". For most anarchists, the main point being brought to light was that people
will not stand by and be raped of thier livelyhood and that capitalism is revealing to be an
ineffective system.

A.O.C.

China's Push for International Currency

Did any one here in the U.S. catch the news last night? well I did and what
I saw was a little disturbing. Apparently with the U.S. economic slump and
the decline of value in the American dollar, China is now pushing the U.S.
to move into an International currency system. For those who have not been up to date
on your current events, The U.S. is basically in China's pocket. With the war in the
middle east, we are in debt Trillions of dollars to China because they were
pretty much the sole lender for the war. The reason China is making this push
is because as we move towards inflation they will lose thier ass on thier
financial investment.

What would this mean for people here in the U.S.? It makes me wonder a little
about certain theories about this country and what direction we are heading in.
What are your thoughts...?

A.O.C.

London's Calling

MARCH 28/09 // 
MILITANT WORKERS: DIRECT ACTION BLOC
'Put People First' Anti-G20 demonstration, 11am Central London


As the financial crisis has spurred a global economic recession the reality of the situation is being faced by us all – price hikes and wage cuts, job losses, spiralling debt and repossessions. The institutions of government and global finance are making us pay for their mistakes, giving themselves hefty bonuses for the privilege. As big banks get billions of our money to bail them out, the Post Office is threatened with privatisation and mass redundancies to claw back the pension hole! Government and bosses, while protecting their own interests, are steadily losing their grip as the anger of the working class becomes more and more apparent after a decade of enforced 'social peace'.

Putting working class anger first
The recent wildcat strikes at the Lindsay Oil Refinery saw workers take action for themselves, without union backing. Thousands of workers across the country walked out in sympathy strikes – a practice still outlawed under the Thatcherite anti-trade union laws. No repercussions were suffered by the workers - a lesson to us all. And although we oppose such slogans as “British Jobs for British Workers”, we do not dismiss the experiences, anger and positive action of those workers to develop a pro-working class position, based not on capitalism's demands for inter-worker competition, but on international class solidarity.
If we want social change we must fight without prejudice for it.

Solidarity is not a word but a weapon

Our purpose is to put direct action at the core of any fightback - against the repossessions and redundancies that we will face over the coming months and years, to restate our commitment for an international unity amongst all working class people regardless of nationality, race, sexuality or religion. We stand shoulder to shoulder with all those who take direct action against their current situation (against the state and its institutions, against the bosses and the capitalism they cling to), and confront those who seek to hinder or recuperate that action - fascist parties like the BNP, government forces, the trade union elite and the corporate media. The memory of the miners strike, Wapping, Poll tax lingers long and hard.
2009 is our summer of rage - we are only as strong as the power we give ourselves.



Join the direct action bloc on the Put People First mass demonstration on Saturday March 28th. Meet in Victoria Embankment Gardens, 11am. Look for the red and black flags.
 


APRIL 1/09 // RECLAIM THE MONEY
Meet in the Square Mile (London's Financial centre) to take back what's ours


World leaders, including Barak Obama, are set to meet at Docklands Excel Centre in London's East End, for the G20 financial summit on April 2nd, to sort out the global crisis they themselves conspired to create. While unemployment escalates along with debt and poverty - we are told to tighten our belts, not to complain, to have faith in bankers, bosses and politicians, these leaders are preparing the biggest shake up in the history of capitalism since the 1930s. We can only imagine what is on offer as their solution - from the people that brought us wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, from the heads of economies that continue to concentrate the world's wealth in the hands of a tiny minority from the obscene rich and powerful who continue to steal the products of our labour and time, forcing us to fight amongst ourselves for what's left.

We are living in uncertain, dangerous times, where we can either allow our futures, and the future of our children, to be decided by the same class of people that have brought us into this crisis (and continue to profit from our misery) or we can decide to get rid of the lot of them and organise society differently - for our own benefit and of the benefit of those around us; those we work with, those we live with, for a future based on our collective needs. 



We are their crisis
Let's make this a chance for a fundamental change in society. Let's reclaim the history of working class struggle for a new free world, for a global human community fit for all, not the undeserving rich elite who are happy to see our lives ruined if it means that they stay in charge and at the top.

Join thousands of disgruntled, angry, pissed off people on the streets of the financial district. As the bankers continue to cream off billions of pounds of our money let's put the call out – RECLAIM THE MONEY, storm the banks and send them packing.
April 1st in the square mile, City of London financial district

APRIL 2/09 // G20 London Summit, Excel Centre, Docklands
A day of fucking up the summit and other adventures. Be warned. Be aware. Be ready!




bump by A.O.C.

The Legislation of Morality

Morality is based on personal choice and and the feeling of right and wrong. Laws are an institutionalized
enforcement of writings presumably to protect civil liberties. The interjection of morality into law is inherently
wrong. Take victimless crimes for example, prostitution. Prostitution affects no one with the exception of the
consenting parties. Adultery is moral dilemma between a married couple, which might I remind you is a religious
binding of two individuals that has been Incorporated into governmental over-seeings. Also might
I remind you that there is also supposed to be a separation of church and state. Within these two examples there
is no infringement on any ones civil liberties, yet both examples are punishable by law up to and including
imprisonment. Imprisonment is an infringement on ones own civil liberties in and of its self, yet is deemed as
acceptable by those in power for crimes to which there are no victims. Another one I would like to point out is
gays in the military. As much as we may not approve of any involvement with the government, as anarchists
we fully understand and respect freedom of choice. To deny someone this right because of sexual orientation
is another good example of the legislation of morality.

A strong push for abortion laws is another issue that I would like to touch on. What a person does with
their own body is none of the governments concern. To impose ones moral values on another should not be
tolerated in any social setting. Some right wing extremists feel that the civil liberties of the unborn
child are being assaulted by freedom of choice, making claims that the fetus is a person after X amount
of time in the womb. Unfortunately many of these right wing extremists hold political positions
of power.

P.S. Thanks for the discussion Kevin
A.O.C.

No Gods, No Masters!

Some seven million years ago, a distant relative of the Chimpanzee named australopothecus ramidus stood up,
and began its descendants on the journey that would culminate in our modern day. The descendants of this
hominoid eventually found need to explain to one another how the world worked, and so was religion born.
It started off simply enough--- spirits, demons, sorcerers, magic, etc. As time went on, superstitions became
more and more codified and traditional, regimented by rules and standards passed from holy man to holy man.
These superstitions, often based upon or containing useful information such as the migration patterns of game
animals, were held in high regard and those who knew them were afforded certain privelidges in order to preserve
that knowledge. As time went on, these superstitions often became the justification and basis for ethical systems.
More than explaining why the rains came, more than explaining why herb X cures ailment Y, peoples began to
expect their shaman to explain why bad things happened to good people, what is right and what is wrong, what
happens when we die, and so on and so on. Thus was God invented, to answer the legion of questions that
curious human beings had come up with, long before science could show them the true answers.

One might be inclined to say that based upon this utility, the fallacy of Gods might be justified; for after all,
what harm can there be in convincing a man of the fundamental good of humanity? Surely, the charitable works
of religions excuse them from the wrong inherent in their character. However, fallacy is, in this case,
the appropriate term.

A brief word on logic: an argument is traditionally divided three ways. First, there is the premise, which is the
assumption or idea which is being tested. Then you have the support, which is the evidence which positively
or negatively indicates the validity of the premise; then you have the conclusion, or deduction, which is what
was learned about the premise through investigation. When one follows through on false premises with the
intention, tacit or otherwise, of proving them true, it is then called a fallacy.

Whenever one considers religions, it is very important to remember that virtually all conclusions derived from
religious thought are fallacious. They are based on the false premise that there is a God. Religious organizations,
whether they venerate Jesus or Muhammed, Rama or Bhudda, Thor or Zeus, are dependant upon the assumption
that such entities exist. They do not.

Let us be clear: The reality is that there is no God, of any type.
There never has been a god, there never will be a god.

Some defend religion based on ethical grounds; that religion instills in men a sort of ethical framework,
even in men who might not characteristically seek to act ethically. Bearing this presumption in mind,
please consider the following quote from Aristotle: "I have gained this by philosophy: That I do without
being commanded that which others only do from fear of the law."

Following, let us have a brief example of the ethical implications of religion.
An atheist and a muslim walk into a neutral charity. Let's say that both men are equally good and generous
and kind. The Muslim is motivated variously by his personality and the teachings of his religion. He wants to
give because 1: His religion teaches him to do so. 2: By doing so, he believes that he might be saving the
souls of those he helps. 3: By doing so, he believes that he is securing his own place in heaven. 4: By giving,
he could seek to convert others to his religion. 5: Finally, he seeks improve the general state of mankind.

The Atheist, on the other hand, 1: Is not obligated to give; he does because he wants to. 2: The Atheist does
not believe in souls, nor in saving them. 3: The Atheist does not believe in heaven, and does not seek to secure
its favor. 4: The Atheist does not seek to influence others to atheism.
5: He seeks to improve the general state of mankind.

The ultimate difference between them is that the muslim (for this example it could just as easily be any
other religion) has been incentivized for his action. He has been bribed with the promise of heaven, or
perhaps threatened by the fires of hell. He is not doing good, even if that is the result of his action,
because his motivation is flawed and ultimately selfish. Yes, the ultimate goal is to improve the general
state of mankind, and this might even be effected. But it is not genuine, because a truly good person
would seek to improve the general state of mankind out of genuine kindness, not out of fear of hell or
of god; not for the sake of advancing one agenda or the other, and certainly not for the sake of
glory to a fictitious god.

The Atheist, in this example, cuts a swath through the chaffe of religious superstition and skips directly
to the real ethical disposition of mankind; which is to the general improvement of the state of mankind, l
ocally and globally. If a man is educated properly, he will not need to be made to fear religious law in order
to achieve goodness in his actions; he will do good things because he recognizes them internally as being
good and worthwhile, and because the nature of mankind is altruistic.

Religion presents major problems for those of us who seek to bring about positive change in society,
particularly those of us who seek to promote eaglitarianism, and even more particularly those of us who
seek to establish uncompromised liberty. Religion is truly ancient, indeed it is older than mankind as we
know it today. Human ancestors practiced veneration of the dead and ceremonial burial for many hundreds
of thousands, perhaps millions, of years before present; long indeed before modern humans evolved to their
present form. Ancient as it is, religion is not as old as the Authority Principle.

In a nutshell, the Authority Principle can be said as "Might Makes Right". The Ape with the biggest club
and the strongest arm wins, and rules society as the venerable king; so long as he remains the strongest
ape. Such a system does not long last and seldom affords any stability. In this system, constant warfare
and strife prevent a king from solidifying his power, and as we know a people whipped will not wait long
before rebellion.

Force is not enough for tyrants to maintain their power. Despots employ religion to justify their power,
and to make sure that the many continue to serve the few. The ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians
were ruled by God-Kings, who were worshipped as Gods themselves. And who among men would resist the
dictums of a god? The Medieval Europeans looked to the Pope, who was (is?) the infallible voice of God himself.
And who among men would resist the dictums of god, spoken through the Pope? Notably, another name for
the Pope is "The King Maker". Thus religion ingratiates itself to the ruling establishment, which in turn makes
certain that the current religious establishment continues and retains primacy. Thus the few rule the many.
Please consider this passage from the book Deuterotomy:

"Hath not the potter power over the clay, to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?"

The potter is god, and we are the clay. The moral? Some people are better than others, and these people
have been mandated by god, who has made them intrinsically better, to rule over the rest. To rule, with
impunity, over the rest of us, whom god has not made so well. And should we the rabble masses of people
get the erroneous idea in our heads that we are deserving of the same rights as anyone else, we can be
assured of our passage to hell.
And furthermore, if one worries about injustice in this life, one need worry not! All that one has to do is
suffer the indignation, and turn the other cheek, and allow oneself to be exploited and oppressed in life,
and one will be rewarded in the life after this with paradise! All are equal in death.

If we are to profess ourselves as men without masters, free and emancipated workers, then we must also
reject the most pernicious master, that of superstition! If we are to be free of masters, we *must* be
free of gods as well, for it is those gods and those who worship them that have established the legitimacy
of the inequality in our society! I say live free, live good, and live you lives with *No Gods and No Masters!*


Hale

Fuck Islam

If a certain regulation passes by the United Nations me saying this will be a complete and utter crime. In the UN there is a “resolution combating defamation of religions” which they hope to make binding to member nations. The majority of civilized countries are a member of the UN and regardless of their own legal customs they will be to protect the religious. This resolution is being spearheaded by 57 Muslim countries. This was passed as a non-binding resolution in last December but there are plans to make it a binding resolution.
An editor in India was prosecuted for re-running an article originally printed in England. This article had mentioned the top three religions but was said to hurt the religious feelings of others. I encourage all anarchists to oppose this to the highest degree and inform others about it. This is a totalitarian concept that defecates upon free speech entirely. How long until we cannot speak of anarchy due to it being offensive to the structured well behaved population?
-Winston-

Anarchist Outreach (contd)

STOP AMERICAN GOVERNMENT!

THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IS NO LONGER ABOUT FREEDOM AND EQUALITY. IT IS ABOUT CORRUPTION. THEY KILL FOR MONEY AND OIL. THEY FIRE PEOPLE FROM THEIR JOBS TO MAKE WAY FOR NEW MACHINERY. THEY LET YOUNG CHILDREN STARVE AND THEIR MOTHERS TAKE THE BLAME. BUT WORSE OF ALL THEY LIE TO YOU ABOUT DOING ANY OF IT.
THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT MUST BE STOPPED!
AND THERE IS A PLAN TO DO JUST THAT, BUT BEFORE ALL, YOU MUST START THINKING FOR YOUR SELF, AND BECOME INDEPENDENT OF GOVERNMENT.

THE PLAN:
1) Expose the fed Cartel
Boycott Citibank, JP Morgan Chase & bank of America
They are the most powerful controllers in the corrupt Federal Reserve System. If you have a bank account or credit card with any of them, move it to another bank. If you have a mortgage, refinance with another bank.
If you own their stock sell it. If you work for them quit
This will create awareness about the fraud in the federal banking system.

2) Boycott the news networks
Turn off the TV news. Visit independent news networks on the internet to get your information.
CNN, ABC, NBC, FOX, and all the others are presented pre-filtered to maintain the status quo. All of these stations are owned by major corporations.
Protect the internet at all times for that is our only source for independent media.

3) Boycott the military
Don't let any one you know join the military.
The only reason the military is here is to maintain an establishment that is no longer relevant. U.S soldiers in Iraq work for major corporations, not the people. War is not a natural part of human existence.
The military is NOT an honorable institution.

4) Boycott the energy companies.
If you live in a detached house, get off the grid. Investigate every means of making your house self sustainable. Use wind, water, and solar energies.
This will be much cheaper and less polluting!
If you drive get the smallest car you can, convert it to run on alternative fuels which are less polluting and cheaper.

5) Reject the political system
The illusion of democracy is an insult to our intelligence.
In a monetary system there is no such thing as true democracy.
Both democratic and republican sections of government are owned by the same people so don’t vote!

VIEW THE ZEITGEIST ADDENDUM MOVIE: ANARCHY.NET CORRUPT.ORG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gKX9TWRyfs

-Blacktoothgrin-

Anarchist Outreach

The recent thread got me thinking of ways that we embark upon successful anarchist outreach? Indeed, what does anarchist outreach even mean?

Anarchist outreach should be the arm of the movement that is entirely devoted to extending the message and increasing the general public's awareness of anarchism. This is only one form of anarchist action, the others being the dueling twins of "liberal" style social action and more militant insurrection activities. While these two things have a goal to bring about a revolution, no revolution is complete w/out a complementary CONVERSION of the hearts and minds of the people. Now surely "liberal" style social action and militant insurrection represent the ideals of anarchism and aid in this conversion by deeds, but neither of them are "outreach" in the sense of drawing people into the intellectual fold of anarchism, where conversions occur. This becomes clear when we see anarchist actions blend w/the actions of other groups (from hippie peace protests to community garden projects to rioting inner city black youth). As such, when anarchism is in the public eye it's going to be associated w/activities that the vast majority of people are going to find fruity (at best) or dangerous (at worst); in addition, anarchism tends t get drowned out. This is where anarchist outreach steps in. Anarchist outreach is nothing more and nothing less than anarchist propaganda, and it absolute MUST accompany, in a VERY visible way, the other forms of actions. As such, anarchist outreach must seek to be constantly crafting public opinion even when it's not accompanying the other forms of action. And, as w/"liberal" style social actions and insurrection actions, when the time comes, EVERY anarchist is responsible for outreach as well. The thing about outreach though is that the time for it is ... all the time: everyone we talk to is a target for our propaganda, and yes, I do believe that we should be active propaganda mouthpieces and that this is something wholly different than works/deeds based activism.

Now, how does this play out?

Well, we have a wide variety of media at our disposal: web, print, radio, tv, and movies. For a wide array of reasons, the latter three are very difficult to break into, though that's not say they shouldn't be seen as impenetrable media. Print can be hit and miss: it's time consuming to operate, is pretty expensive if you want to be taken seriously, etc ... . So, I'll talk about the medium we're currently engaged on: the web.

The web has many advantages: easy to use, cheap, accessible, etc ... . It also has many disadvantages which become readily apparent if you've ever tried to generate hits for a website.

When we're talking about web anarchist outreach, this site (and others like it: infoshop, crimethinc, submedia.tv, etc ...) is only a small piece of the puzzle ... indeed, it's the endpoint of what should be a far broader and more insidious outreach program.

I'm going to give a brief rundown on how I've come to supplement my other outreach activities, which occur in my classes and other f2f occasions, with a healthy presence on the web.

1. Web communities: there are an almost infinite amount of communities on the web that have absolutely jack squat to do w/anarchism ... and that's a good thing. Why? B/c by engaging people in these environments you can catch them w/their guards down vis-a-vis anarchism. Every anarchist should be an ACTIVE member of as many of these communities as they have the time for. I'm active in 2 communities (one for boardgames and one for a sports team). It's best to narrow down your participation to a number of communities that you can maintain an ACTIVE presence on.

2. Types of web communities: Try to find communities based upon other things you're interested in ... you want to be in non-political web communities. In doing so, you're already building common ground w/your audience by your shared interests. It's important to maintain a presence based on this shared interest at all times.

3. Building your persona: You shouldn't ever just be an anarchist. You want to be a fully fledged and commonly known member of the community ... like in Cheers where everybody says your name when you walk through the doors. In other words, be yourself in every aspect ... in the process, you will make friends, who will serve as your support whether they're anarchists themselves or not.

4. Anarchist outreach: Once, you've become a working member of the community either find the forums dedicated to Off Topic discussions or specifically political discussions. It is very important that you don't enter these discussions wearing your anarchism on your sleeve ... treat these OT discussions (and especially forums) as terra nova and assume that everyone there is hostile to anarchism. You want to engage in these discussions w/out bringing up anarchism or citing anarchist thinkers, so just talk politics like everyone else. Use sources they're familiar with. Take sides (you'd be surprised who'd you'd be allied with sometimes). Over time, you should be trying to become an oddball on the forum, someone people have a hard time pinning down. To those who think this might be difficult b/c anarchism is solidly on The Left, consider how it easy it is to take the side of a conservative in a discussion about the bailout/stimulus (screw the feds ... get them out of our business: rah, rah, sis, boom, bah). Essentially you're trying to plant seeds in the minds of the rest of the community that anarchism is not irrational & dangerous, but it does provide alternative ways of looking at things. In general, these seeds cannot be planted if you "come out" as an anarchist.

5. Coming out: By being a sane and likeable member of the community, you've already done a heaping amount of outreach, but this doesn't do anarchism any good if people don't know you're anarchist. At some point you're going to have to "come out" ... you're going to have to reveal yourself as an anarchist. This is extremely tricky, b/c if you do it wrong or too soon, you can kill the goodwill you've created. Did I mention that people that don't like "anarchy?" So, every time you think you've found an opportunity to "come out" ... don't. Put it off ... put it off until you literally can't take it anymore. The more time between your initial participation and the "coming out" the better. Now, as a long as you've been yourself the entire time (short of coming out and saying you're an anarchist) and have been genuine w/your posts, "coming out" won't be seen as some sort of big trick or an elaborate ruse. It'll just be seen as an "oh that makes sense, now I know why he's been so hard to pin down, but hmmm ... wait a second, he's not a unabomber freak ... interesting." After you've "come out" keep on keeping on as you've been doing, but now you can also begin to introduce anarchism as such ... always slowly and carefully, you'll probably be the face of anarchism in that web community represent us well.

The overarching goal of anarchist outreach is to normalize anarchism on an intellectual level.

For an example of how this works, I'll use my participation in an online board game community (yes, I'm a gamer dork ... shove it! :) ).

The following link is for a discussion I started regarding the worker expropriations in Argentina:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/378676

The next thread is the first thread I started about Anarchism itself ... it garnered a huge audience and a ton of very quick activity, which indicated 2 things to me: that people are looking, starving for something different in politics & society AND that I had a LOT still to learn about how to negotiate my presence in the community.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/352857/page/1

This is the thread where I "came out:"

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/352546

And this is the thread that finally pushed me to "come out" in the first place ... the idea that people wouldn't let their kids play w/my kids just b/c we were anarchists was really troubling:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/352324

Anarchist action doesn't have to be big to communicate ideas. Anarchist action doesn't have to be "practical demonstrations" to communicate ideas. Anarchist action can be as small and impractical as a strategic conversation over the water cooler or in a thread on a random web community. The opportunity for outreach is all around us, and we must constantly be looking to seize those opportunities.

--GAWD

To Fight or Not To Fight, That is the Question

Peaceful resolve is a view that some anarchists hold dear, while other anarchists see insurrection as
the only resort. For the purpose of this article i will put my own views aside for fear of being biased.
anarchopacifist or insurrectionist, that is the question.
Taking a lengthy look at the options that these two views provide, we will analyze and evaluate the pros
and cons of each.

Anarchopacifism: Viewing violence as counter-productive, anarchopacifists utilize peaceful methods to
dismantle the government such as non-participation. The realization that the people its self is the life
blood of the system, cutting off the bloodstream will cause the system to collapse and fail. Viewed as
idealists per anarchist standards, they continue their cause of changing every ones mind about the
nature of power and that violence causes the state to tighten its reigns when people cry out in fear
of terrorism, thus strengthening the state.
The problem I see with anarchopacifism is that conceptually it is correct but only in outstanding
numbers. In all reality anarchists make up a very small percentage of the population and changing the minds
of millions is highly improbable. This ghandi-esque point of view is commendable but extremely idealistic.


Insurrectionary anarchists: The view in which the existing government is overthrown by force, usurping
their power and giving it back to the people once obtained. The problem with this is that in history,
this usually paves the path for yet another tyrant. This method will more than likely be the eventual
outcome. This however would also require a major political rallying point that the people as a whole
could stand behind, such as the exposure of treason by the state against its own people. (lol, about
1000 instances just came rushing into my head). without a rallying point, direct action would be viewed
with disdain by the masses and be labeled a terrorist act.

HMMM, I wonder, If we could just find a middle ground here...
(for the record, I did my best to keep opinions out, its just so damn hard.)

-Agent of Chaos-

Drink It In

A study was conducted in 2006 and 2007 by Shayne Snyder and colleagues at the Southern Nevada Water Authority
in Las Vegas. This is what was found, tap water contained....

Atenolol: A beta-blocker used to treat cardiovascular disease.

Atrazine: An organic herbacide that is used to decline fish stocks and and alter animal behavior.
(Banned in The E.U.)

Carbamazepine: A mood stabilizing drug used to treat bipolar disorders. (I dont remember being
diagnosed with that.)

Estrone: An oestrogen hormone secreted by the ovaries.

Gemfibrozil: An anti-cholesterol drug. (Great for washing down that Big Mac.)

Meprobamate: A tranquiliser used in psychiatric treatment. (Again, I dont remember being diagnosed.)

Naproxen: An anti-inflamitory linked to increases in asthma.

Phenytoin: An anti-convulsant used to treat epilepsy.

Sulfamethoxazole: An antibiotic.

TCEP: A reducing agent used in molecular biology.

Fluoride: AAAAhhh. Here we go. Fluoridation of the water. Fluoride has been directly linked with reducing
people's IQ's. In 1995, neruotoxicologist Dr. Phyllis Mullenix published research showing that fluoride was built
up in the brains of animals that were exposed to moderate levels. Other interesting results included
offspring suffering psycological effects similar to A.D.D. Young and adult animals given fluoride suffered
opposite effects such as sluggishness and hypoactivity (sedation).

The toxic effects of fluoride on the central nervous system was subsequently confirmed by previously
classified government research. Two new epidemiological studies which confirm fluorides neurotoxic effects
on the brain have showed that children exposed to high levels of fluoride had lower IQs.

"And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological
method of making people love their servitude, and producing ... a kind of painless concentration camp for entire
societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it,
because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced
by pharmacological methods." Damn, I wish I could remember who said this.

At the end of World War II, the US government sent Charles Eliot Perkins, a research worker in chemistry,
biochemistry, physiology and pathology, to take charge of the vast Farben chemical plants in Germany. The
German chemists told Perkins of a scheme which they had devised during the war and had been adapted by
the German General Staff. The German chemists explained of their attempt to control the population in any
given area through the mass medication of drinking water with sodium fluoride, a tactic used in German and
Russian prisoner of war camps to make the prisoners "stupid and docile".

Anyhow, just some fun facts to play with. Enjoy your next glass of refreshing sedation.

A.O.C.

Class War

On February 9th, a 52 yr old homeless man was beaten by Fresno Police officers. The police department is
struggling to justify the beating, claiming thet the tape did not catch the attack of the homeless man ripping
off one of the officers badge. The two officers are under investigation by internal affairs. The vulgar display
of power is apparant in the video and has recieved attention across the nation. What I am seeing is more
than just police brutality, this is a clip of the class war.


A.O.C.

Army of NONE

Our comrade Stan has also sent me an update on himself and the status of Military Health Care.
Stan Wrote...

Hi A.O.C.,

In case you don't remember me, my name is Stan, and I am the soldier who emailed you back in early January about how ridiculous the Army is and how I want to 'get out' more than anything in the world. I thought I would update you on another piece of the pie that is supposed to be a great reason to join the service: free health care. LOL!

Here's the low down of the GREAT Army medical care:

1) IF they allow you to get treated (ie. take time out of your 'busy' schedule to see a doctor, because everything we do in garrison is so important - HA!) they treat you like a smuck, coward, and weakling because you are requesting medical attention. (More or less 'suck it up')
2) The usual treatment is done by the outward look of the patient, and not a diagnosis of the problem. You 'look' ok, so just get some rest, stop being a bitch, and 'drink water'.
3) If you really do have a problem, it takes MONTHS to get anything done (surgery wise), and often weeks to months health wise. Don't forget, everything here is done by Army doctors and not civilians. When you are treated by a civilian doctor in the real world you have the privilege of knowing that he/she has gone to med school and earned their reputation to be a registered doctor. Not in the Army. A year of brief and unsupportive general health training, followed by another brief school of specific training towards their field is all these people get. Imagine getting surgery on an ankle or knee, in which you would want the best care possible. Actually, don't imagine that, because the inexperience of the person performing surgery on you will scare you.
4) When and if you are allowed to get your problem or illness treated by your superiors, the bureaucratic and completely in-efficient system that the Army uses to handle patients will put you at the long end of a waiting list that takes ages to work through. (You think there would be a system for the severity of the problem at hand, but the way the Army does things is at their convenience, so someone with a broken leg will be put on the waiting list for two months out, after someone who needs something significantly less, like a consultation who will get it at the end of the week. There is no order and no sense whatsoever. From experience, having a broken leg has taken me MONTHS to get it treated because of the constant loops I've been thrown in that I have to sort out myself, with no help from the medical staff).
5) Don't get me started on Army Dentists.
6) The Army will NOT take care of you if you have gotten injured, and more than likely you will not receive any disibility or beneficial pay after your discharge, should anything happen to you. I would provide a source here, but just look up any anti-war group or in particular 'AVAW' (Army Vets Against the War) and you will see a list of people who received little to no medical care for their amputations or paralysis caused by a pointless war.

More to come. Generally when you are young and looking for opportunity, don't look twice at the Army. The benefits they wave in front of your face are little more than exaggerated lies. The 'top notch' medical care that they advertise should be called 'third world health care', or rather, 'third world health care if and when you are able to receive it, based on the convenience of those in charge of you, who have no medical knowledge whatsoever and could really care less about your well being!!!!!"

FUCK

Live safe. Live happy (or try to). And by all means live on the streets before even thinking of enlisting in any branch of service. Your country needs you, so give it the finger.

- Stan

-Agent of Chaos-

The Evilness of Power

"My motivations for creating The Evilness of Power are varied. I wanted to clarify the ideas and channel the
strong emotions I'd been internalizing since I became an activist in 2004 and which I had been sketchily
trying to articulate in my youtube channel since late 2006. I also realized that there weren't that many
documentaries dealing exclusively with the concept of hierarchy--perhaps none at all--.
I noticed how relatively easy and effective it would be to weave together some of my youtube videos
with parts of programs, films, documentaries etc to offer a more comprehensive examination of hierarchy
and hopefully contribute to revolutionary change."

Jonathan-

"Your Papers Please?"

After 9/11 the government used widespread public fear as a method to
deprive us of certain rights. Of these was a 2005 bill passed that
would allow for a national identification system (known as "Real ID")
to be implemented. This bill was never debated yet it was passed
unanimously, as it was tacked as a must-pass appropriations bill to
fund troops and tsunami relief effort. Although 16 states have passed
legislation rejecting this bill to make it virtually impossible as a
national policy, there are some states that plan to put Real ID into
action.
Even though it seems we have dodged a national system, (for the
moment being anyway), advanced state ID systems could be just as
harmful. A great deal of the population either did not know about Real
ID or thought it was in their best interest when it was at its peak.
In addition to a major inconvenience this system is a clear invasion
of human rights. Allowing these I.D's to put all of your information
in the computer and make it accessible by DMV workers. It would also
be required to enter certain buildings and to strength gun "control"
laws.


Remain ever vigilant
-winston

Question of the Week

i read through the manifesto and i have a few questions.

1. if morals are based on do what you will, then wont people live in fear? with no absolutes isnt it possible for more people to
do bad things and get away with them?


A) People do all types of bad and immoral things as it is and still get away with it. As I have stated before, anarchy does not
mean chaos. Nothing in this life is absolute except change.


2. how would a government completely on an individual basis work? how could negotiations be made? could society still flourish?


A) Communitys would be set up by like minded individuals, each with their own set of guidelines and repercussions for
infringement on anothers liberties, all of which is determined by the community as a whole. Negotiations would be
done in a similar manner. As far as the community flourishing, the community would be driven by necessity and
survival which is the basis for invention and innovation.


3. has this ever been proven a valid system of government? has anarchy ever shown itself to be reasonable and worth repeating?


A) There have been talks of puting anarchism to the test in a sociological experiment as far as real life, just take a
look at the factory workers in Argentina.


4. couldn't a person just go live off on their own if they wanted to completely be in charge of their own life? why
take down a country, when only a faction wants this?


A) We as a society are moving closer and closer to globalization and when this happens we will all be fucked. Nowhere
to run, nowhere to hide. Small communes will be brought to their knees for breaking away and labeled as insurgents.
For those anarchists living in America, we are living in the belly of the beast. Despotism being the eventual outcome
of the American war machine, sooner or later we will need to throw our bodies on the gears to make it stop.
-Agent of Chaos-

On a Lighter Note

Thought I would lighten the mood a bit while still staying on topic. While George Carlin was never a self proclaimed anarchist,
I feel as though his view on life in general was anarchistic. The man questioned and challenged all forms of authority while
promoting no gods, no masters and the exposure of tyranny on many topics. Sadly George died last year, and his words of
logic and reason will be lost to all but documentation and memory. I hope his words put a smile on your face as it has mine.
Enjoy.






A.O.C.

Israeli - Palestinian Conflict

After WW2 the Jewish Zionist movement was leading the charge to
obtain Israel for the Jews. The U.N partitioned the land to the
Zionists in 1947. Unfortunately, they completely ignored the already
existing Arab population of the land that is now Israel. This was not
a major issue and by military force from the U.N (largest amount of
troops came from U.S) Israel was established.
Thus began a sixty year aid program between the U.S to Israel that
has no sign of stopping. "The U.S. aid relationship with Israel is
unlike any other in the world," said Stephen Zunes during a January 26
CPAP presentation. "In sheer volume, the amount is the most generous
foreign aid program ever between any two countries," added Zunes,
associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace and Justice
Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.
The image above shows how much the U.S has given Israel since 1949 to
1997. The reasoning of this is perfectly clear however not spoken of
very often. The United States benefits from having an ally in a region
they want control of. Israel was a doomed plan from the start and
could never stay afloat without aid from "Uncle Sam". The financial
aid they gain shows how desperately the U.S needs this country to keep
up in order to get things done quietly in a hot region.
Direct connections with the U.S and a very intimidating military in
addition to religious difference make Israel a common enemy among most
Middle Eastern countries. Palestine, the country most displaced by
Israel has held a grudge against her. It is this anger that fuels
attacks on Israel, in response Israel fires back and thus a long
conflict the world has seen before is started. Innocents and children
on both sides are killed mercilessly, based on historical facts the
current conflict will only repeat itself over and over again.


Winston