31 December, 2006

WTC impact photo




This photo has a history that needs to be told:

David Handschuh took this about 1 second after the "impact" or should we say "the explosion"

We see

  • a white explosion-cloud in the OTHER TOWER
  • the orange fireball is already big on the side OPPOSITE of the "impact"
  • the impact area has exterior cladding pieces flotaing in the Air, but no aeroplane parts.
  • the flame is thin and directed unlike the "fireBALLS' on the other side(s). If a real plane had impacted one would expect the explosion to take the easiest route through the 'punched hole'. The momentum of the jet fuel not withstanding.
  • what is the large black object?

I bet you that a study of this photo and others of the explosion will reveal more.

email or phone David Handschuh DHandschuh@DailyNewsPix.com @ work 212/210-2344 to obtain a super-high-rez photo so we can analyse the debris!

Then this noise filled the air that sounded like a high-pressure gas line had been ruptured. It seemed to come from all over, not one direction. Everyone was looking around thinking, "What was that?" And the second tower explodes. ...

I don't even recall making the picture that wound up in the paper the next day. Just after we started seeing the flames come out of the South Tower, I pulled the camera and started shooting.

Time stood still. I had just run into a friend of mine, [a television cameraman], who said he had unbelievable footage of the second tower getting hit.
source

The turbo-fan-roar of a 767 does not sound like a the hiss from a gas pipe. However a missile does.

Another version of Handschuh's statement goes like this:

Handschuh was standing on the corner of Liberty and West when he heard a noise that “seemed to come from everywhere.” He thought that perhaps a large natural gas main in the building let go. “But all of the sudden the second tower explodes into flame. And I’m standing underneath it. And I think, “OK. This is a second bomb. This is not an accident.”

Handschuh instinctively raised the camera to his eye. “I have the fireball coming out of the West Street side.”

Handschuh tells of friends he lost. Among them was Glenn Pettit, a former freelance photographer who joined the NYPD a few years ago as a videographer. “He said he had amazing footage of the second plane hitting…for some reason we just gave each other a little hug around the shoulders and he went east and I went north. Apparently just after we spoke he went into the South Tower with the fire fighters…he is officially listed as missing. Even though they haven’t found his body, I just attended his funeral and memorial service.”

source


911_FallingPlaneParts001_DavidHandschuh-UAflt174-DailyNews-1.jpg

The original filename implies that there are AEROPLANE PARTS raining down, but the shape of the pieces is that of the aluminium cladding elements

source, and more photos http://sageauthoring.com/fdny/WTC-911/WTCpho001.htm

http://images.google.com/images?q=handschuh%20wtc



Not related this photo, but an interesting czech helicopter shockwave .. coinsidering that the shockwave from the collapse should arrive at the helicopter at a different time than a shockwave from a big explosion (that initiated the collapse) it should be possible to do a timing estimate.


http://www.letsroll911.org/articles/controlleddemolition.html


Bookmark and Share
posted by u2r2h at Sunday, December 31, 2006 0 comments

30 December, 2006

911 truth seekers EXOTIC BEAM facts

http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/ You need to spend some time on it. The world needs to be rescued from the BASTARDS in the US military. However, there is a deeper truth to be deconstructed from the psyches:



A 911 TRUTHER'S GUIDE TO DISINFORMATION

Place yourself, for one minute if you will, in the position of one of the architects of the 911 demolitions. Your job is to counter-attack the inevitable opposition to the official version of events.

You do not need to worry about the press - they are mostly under strict control. So you concentrate your efforts on the principal enemy - the open, undisciplined, autonomous, anarchic, democratic, dangerous free exchange of ideas known as the internet.

Do you sit and wait for groups to spring up and then employ people to post persuasive and persistent defenses of the status quo/ attacks on the doubters?

Do you start new sites devoted to 'debunking' the skeptics? Or do you set up a
bogus 'truth movement' which appears to be intent on exposing the villains, but is in fact a deliberate decoy and a 'honey-pot' for honest truth-seekers?

The words of Donald Rumsfeld strongly suggest all three are in operation. Talking about the 'manipulations of the US media by the country's 'enemies' which as we now know can include patriotic Americans who question their government, Mr Rumsfeld said, "That's the thing that keeps me up at night."

He has set up a unit to fight 'inaccurate statements''.

The newly-established unit would use "new media" channels to push its message and "set the record straight", Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff said.

A Pentagon memo seen by the Associated Press news agency said the new unit would "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and aim to "correct the record". The unit would reportedly monitor media such as weblogs and would also employ "surrogates", or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows.

So that leaves us to identify the pysops candidates. The first two listed above are easy enough to spot. It is when we get to the Cointelpro, the truth that is not truth, that the difficulty starts.

Here there are a number of possible set-ups. As they are not mutually exclusive, it is possible for more than one of them to be true.

The first possible candidate is the 'wacky theories' infiltration scenario. This is far and away the most popular holder of the 'disinfo' mantle here on 911blogger, and consists of a rag-bag of 'unprovable' theories and hypotheses including holograms, pods, bluescreen, tvfakery, mini-nukes, beam weapons and other exotic (unverified) devices. Clearly some of these are indeed bizarre to say the least, but there are others which are not. They are all indiscriminatingly tarred with the same brush, making the job of research an uphill struggle in the face of insults. I can believe that the 'perps' might well want to confuse us by putting forward impossible theories as genuine research. But as well as presenting fake research, they must surely be doing their best to discredit the real stuff.

This is the second, very important function of the '911 Truth movement' psyops - to attempt to undermine those who are getting near the truth of what was used to bring down the Twin Towers. Which theories are most heavily attacked on 911 Truth forums? For a while it was the no-Boeing-at-the-Pentagon supporters who got the most flak. I believe a couple of years back that Controlled Demolition was not a popular view in 911truth.org, but I stand to be corrected.

The focus of attack has for nearly two months been Judy Wood and Morgan Reynolds' lengthy analysis of the Star Wars Beam Weapons hypothesis.

Actually it is not a strict hypothesis as it cannot be tested, for obvious reasons. This does not make it invalid, and to say so is to deceive. There are, however, some interesting puffs of smoke which, although they do not yet constitute a 'smoking gun', should cause concern to every genuine 911 researcher.

This reaction to a question in a recent press conference should ring alarms bells.

QUESTIONER:

Could you answer a question about some of that technology you're developing to fight the war on terrorism, specifically Directed Energy and high-powered Microwave technology. Have you... when do you envision(sic) that you weaponize that kind of technology?

LOOK AT THE FACE!!! IT IS A BEAM WEAPON GIVEAWAY!! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1439692165433909308&hl=en

DONALD RUMSFELD:
Hmmmm...(mumbled)goodness...it is, it is in, for the most part, the kinds of things you are talking about are in very early stages. (turning to Gen. Myers) Do you want to give anything to add?

GENERAL RICHARD MYERS
I don't think I would add much, I, I...(long pause)...(swallows)...I think they are in early stages and, and...and probably not ready... er,for employment at this point.

A US general 'thinks' they are 'probably' not ready for employment. Probably? Thinks? Whoever is briefing him is not doing much of a job.

The reason given by the 911 'truthers' who , with various degrees of force , denounce those who are talking about exotic weapons at the WTC is always the same - it will 'damage the movement ' if this gets into the press, and consequently 911 Truth is ridiculed. They conveniently forget that not one major news media has mentioned, let alone ridiculed these theories. A Google News search on "space beams'' or ''directed energy weapons'' and '' 9/11'' yields barely two results. Neither are from significant media.

Incredibly, some have written on this forum that it does not matter if the theory is true or not, as the public will never buy it. I find the logic of that argument shocking. If we are not telling the world the whole truth as we know it, we are doomed to fail. We will lose what shred of credibility we still have with the non-skeptical public, and confuse and dismay those who want to find the truth but are nervous about agreeing with such an 'unpopular' claim.

So, in summary, it looks highly probable that there is a body of infiltrators at work in the 911 Truth movement.

Some will push untruth in the form of 'red herrings' and bogus theories. Others will work entirely negatively, contradicting and denouncing the proponents, suggesting they be banned, are 'nothing but a joke' and most likely government agents.


These last are likely to be well disguised, and will appear to be pushing genuine 911 Truth. First they have to earn the respect oftheir fellow truthers. This they achieve by making films, writing books and blogs that seem to be making new statements but are in fact denying most of the skeptical theories.

They reveal themselves by their extraordinary persistence and single-mindedness. At one stage it looked as though they were part of a gigantic double-bluff, so frequently did they mention the buzz words 'space beams' (often coupled with mini-nukes and Keebler Elves , a reference to a single, perhaps unwise, ironic metaphor used in a paper by Reynolds and Wood.

In conclusion, I would urge the greatest caution in writing off the research into both TV fakery and Beam Weapons. Both have much to commend them, and both , if proved true, would be vastly dangerous to the perps as they would dismantle -no, demolish - the whole edifice of untruth that has been constructed on the graves of the 3,000 souls who died in the Twin Towers.

Submitted by Andrew Lowe Watson on Fri, 12/29/2006 - 8:30pm.


Judy Wood says: Sent 12/28/06

Kevin, If you don't realize directed energy weapons exist, have been tested,
and are in use and you don't want to read our paper (which shows
examples of them in use), perhaps you'd like to visit the US
military's web site on Directed Energy Weapons:

http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cst/csat11.pdf directed
energy quotes (dated February 2000)

The above information is all in the public domain. So, perhaps you
can imagine what is not in the public domain.

Don't you find it a bit concerning that Steven Jones, whose area of
expertise this is in, claims to know nothing about the development of
directed energy weapons over the past 30 years? Even if he were that
ignorant about his field of expertise, isn't it a bit concerning that
he uses divisive and derogatory statements to describe our research,
such as "space beams knocking down the towers"? It's very difficult
not to conclude that his motive for taking over the ST911 website is
to keep the truth about 9/11 hidden. After all, he has admitted that
he knows of no way thermite could have brought the towers down.

I thought you might be interested in the response to Alex Floum's
email given by Andrew Johnson, a physicist and full member (FM) of
Scholars. What does it mean when yet another physicist objects to
Steven Jones' actions?

Judy http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/StarWarsBeam5.html



A LETTER FROM JIM FETZER:

All,

The situation with Scholars has taken an ominous turn, where we have been
frozen out of the Scholars web site and posting and updating has been made
impossible, which can only have been done by Fred Burks, who has possession
of the domain names, or Alex Floum, who may still control the password. It
looks like a nice example of the lack of scruples to which I drew attention
in my most recent message to the membership. I find this quite distressing.

Alex Floum continues to abuse his position as a former member of Scholars by
distributing contrived and misleading characterizations of the issues. To
hear him tell it, it is a conflict between the forces of democracy (led by
Alex Floum) and those of dictatorship (me). My frank assessment is that his
crass and underhanded tactics threaten the continuing existence of Scholars.
Here is a summary of the situation, followed by a list of forthcoming events.

1) As the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth who has acted on behalf of the
society to expose falsehoods and reveal truths about 9/11, I alone remain
as a member of the society, which former members are attempting to control.

2) The extant Scholars for 9/11 Truth is the rightful owner of the web site,
the journal, and the forum as well as their contents, where, in some cases,
such as copyrighted articles, that ownership may be shared with the authors.

3) Alex Floum, who obtained the domain names for the web site and the journal
on behalf of the society, had no right to transfer what he never owned to Fred
Burks, a friend of some ten years who served as a translator for Presidents,
who has neither legal, moral, nor intellectual rights to any of these sites.

4) The anonymous email requesting a vote on the future of the society's sites
and membership was unauthorized, illegal, null, and void. The manner in which
it was conducted (by creating fake addresses and phony administrators) offers
clear evidence that this was an ignoble action taken under cover where those
effecting these misdeeds were not even willing to identify themselves by name.

..... SNIP

more here http://911blogger.com/node/5277


Nico Haupt aka Ewing2001 SEEMS to have lost his mind.
Maybe he lived too long in New York, he is fast becoming a anti-NWO crazy.

David Griffin wants the international court of justice to work. This is a good thing, no matter what NICO thinks. Griffin MAY HAVE TALKED to crazy people, but this is not proof of him being member of a conspiracy. I cannot see how Griffin is helping to cover-up the vile crime of 911. Here is what Nico says. Strange, but hey, the world is strange.. so taken with a grain of salt, what is fact?


Re: David Ray Griffin Answers Your Questions

« Reply #14 on: Yesterday at 08:11:08 AM »

David,

the 9/11 Truth Movement is pretty much infiltrated at the TOP from people linked to the exotic weaponry programs of U.S. Government (Bowman, Jones, Hoffman), as pointed out in my articles here:

9/11 Truthling Cult Infiltration Watch Pt.1
http://www.911closeup.com/nico/911truthling1204.html
9/11 Truthling Infiltration Watch Pt.2
http://alexconstantine.blogspot.com/2006/12/911-truthling-infiltration-watch-pt2.html
The MIT-AI -9/11 Connection (Pt.3 and related research).
http://www.team8plus.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?4040

The 9/11 truthling movement turned into a cult, run by a god figure named Griffin.
I understand that you also run another cult in China, based on some obscure pantheism ideology by Wackhead Alfred North Whitehead.

I am not arguing about freedom of speech to chose some particular (pseudo-)religious choices, i am arguing that you are supporting 'one world government' ideologies, which are clearly based on Orwellianism and nothing else.
You also had been documented in close association with several Rockefeller Meetings in Europe.

Since i am not expecting you ever to support the evidence on 9/11 TV Fakery and the use of ExoW (exotic weaponry) on the Day of 9/11 and you also won't argue about the infiltration of this movement either, my question is, when are you leaving the scene, confirming the sabotage of some spook assets and give up or is there already someone else replacing your spot?

The OSS-Tavistock MindControl Cult- 9/11 Truthling Infiltration Timeline
http://911closeup.com/nico/911truthling_cult4.html

http://www.911logic.blogspot.com
http://www.911tvfakery.net
http://www.911researchers.com

http://www.bloglines.com/blog/ewing2001?id=2467
Waiting for Answers from One World Government Cultist David Ray Griffin

« Last Edit: Yesterday at 08:24:09 AM by ewing2001 »



Bookmark and Share
posted by u2r2h at Saturday, December 30, 2006 0 comments

28 December, 2006

Thank God for conspiracy theorists

San Diego City Beat

SORDID TALES

I can’t think of a fucking kicker by EDWIN DECKER

Last night blogger Matt Drudge linked to a clip of filmmaker David Lynch talking on Dutch television about 9/11 conspiracy theories, such as how the towers crumbled like a controlled demolition project, or that the size of the hole in the Pentagon was allegedly too small to have been created by a Boeing 757.

Unsurprisingly, Drudge berated him for even considering the theories. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was your basic, right-wing, reactionary, “don’t-question-authority” rant you would expect from a Matt Drudge type.

I don’t normally go for conspiracy theories. Honestly, I find your typical conspiracy theorist about as engaging as a stripped clutch plate. But I recognize their value. The conspiracy movement is a vital organ of any healthy republic, and it really just sucks the snot right out of my eyeballs whenever I hear conspiracy theorists being maligned like that.

I repeat: I am not a conspiracy theorist. I rarely suspect my government of conspiratorial monkeyshines. I’m probably the only guy left on Earth who still believes Area 51 is just an innocent government installation that engages in perfectly normal, top-secret military undertakings. But the very fact that I am not a suspicious person is exactly why I thank God for conspiracy theorists. They are ever vigilant, ever watching our backs, ever worrying about attacks on my liberty so I don’t have to.

Yes, of course, I understand the inclination to dismiss a conspiracy theorist. I know they’re as much fun to have around as an empty bag of bean sprouts, but still, is mocking them any way to say thank you? If it weren’t for conspiracy theorists, we’d all still think Nixon was a great president and Soylent Green is made from cucumber pulp and whey concentrate. What I’m trying to say is: Don’t be like Matt Drudge. Don’t be a Conspiracy Theorist Hater.

The Conspiracy Theorist Hater’s first response to a conspiracy theory is to mock it. He will not consider it. He will not explore the possibility of a conspiracy. He will trample on the idea so he doesn’t have to think about the painful possibility, as Drudge did.

The second thing he will do, as surely as cows don’t make crop circles, is to pose the argument that a conspiracy this enormous would be impossible to pull off.

“How could it be possible,” they ask, “that all those witnesses, and all the investigators, and the scientists, and engineers, and the victims families—whose testimonies all add up to the fact that 9/11 was an external, terrorist attack—could all conspiring to lie about it?”

Well, don’t act like it can’t happen. Don’t act like it hasn’t already happened, countless times in history, or that it isn’t happening now, somewhere else in the world. Indeed, even right here in America. I mean, aren’t Americans, with the aid of about half the planet, the purveyors of the largest, most all-consuming conspiracy’s ever conceived?:

The Santa Conspiracy.

We just pulled it off again, a few days ago, on Dec. 25, a quatrillion kids came running down the stairs to embrace the biggest lie of their little lives. I’m not making a judgment about whether it’s right or wrong to let children believe in Santa. I’m just focusing on the sheer scale of it. Think about the planning and preparation and cooperation it takes to uphold the sham that is the existence of Santa Clause. And everybody’s in on it, like a bad Twilight Zone. I mean, here you are, 10 years old, just la la la-ing along in your life, unaware that everyone is lying to you. Not just your parents, which is devastating all by itself, but also your aunts and uncles, and all your friends’ parents, and their relatives, and the mailman, and the nice lady who cuts your hair, and the police, and the president, and Congress, and the media—they’re all conspiring to keep you from knowing the real true truth about Santa Claus.

Et tu, media?

You’d think there’d at least be one rogue journalist who’d write that searing exposé for Highlights magazine. I can see the headline: “Santa a Farce; Toys Actually Manufactured by Planet-Raping Corporations.”

It’s a conspiracy so deep they even got to Hollywood, which is why you never see that blockbuster motion-picture trailer with the guy with the movie voice saying, “In a world corrupted by deception, two boys set out to find the answer to a question that would tear apart a nation: The Da Santa Code—opening at a theater near you.”

It is a conspiracy of such depth it even controls the Internet. They’ve successfully quashed all the Santa Conspiracy websites. How could it be that not even one Santa conspiracy site—with the grainy, hidden-camera footage of parents sneaking presents under the tree, or incriminating memos from a North Pole observation station confirming the absence of any elfin toy sweatshops—remains?

So if it’s this easy to get so many people to collude on a conspiracy of this size for no other reason than to make children happy, then can you imagine how easy it would be to get them to collude for reasons of greed and power?

No, I’m no conspiracy theorist, but conspiracies ain’t as hard to pull off as some people think they are. And if Matt Drudge believes it preposterous that a government could mass murder its own citizens to retain power and wealth, well, then isn’t he just the ideal citizen of that government?

Remember this, people, the next time a conspiracy theorist takes the stool next to you and bends your ear about how our government is using Area 51 to make a bomb that kills people but leaves Christmas decorations up until mid June. Remember all they’ve done for you then. Remember and nod your head in agreement and say, “Thanks, man! Thanks for keeping an eye on that Area 51 for me. I wanted to get out there but I’ve been a little busy lately.” Then buy that conspiracy theorist a drink, then another, and another, until he falls off his stool or passes out (conspiracy theorists are lightweights). Then back him up one more drink and walk out into the night satisfied in the knowledge that you were able to contribute in your own little way.
E-mail ed@edwindecker.com and editor@SDcitybeat.com.

12-27-06
Bookmark and Share
posted by u2r2h at Thursday, December 28, 2006 0 comments

27 December, 2006

al-Jazeera call Bush LIMP DICK

Bush, the Inept Marionette
By Curt Maynard
Al-Jazeerah, December 25, 2006

Many Americans are beginning to realize the obvious, President Bush has completely wasted any capital that he may have once had. Foreign leaders are already aware of this, nobody takes him seriously, he is seen for what he is, a weak, inept marionette. Recently we saw the new Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki literally stand Bush up at an allegedly important meeting in Jordan - he literally left Bush standing alone waiting on his own subordinate, at least from Bush’s perspective. The Associated Press did their best to mitigate what happened and to spin the implications, but it did a poor job at best. According to the AP the meeting that Bush and al-Maliki were scheduled to meet at was scrubbed, not because al-Maliki “punked” Bush by not showing up, but for some other reason, but not before Bush was expecting al-Maliki as evidenced by the fact that when the meeting was scrubbed, he was already inside Raghadan Palace and had posed for photographs alone with the king. White House counselor Dan Bartlett denied that the delay was a snub by al-Maliki directed at Bush or was related to the leak of a memo written by White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley questioning the prime minister's capacity for controlling violence in Iraq.” Yeah, whatever, the AP can write whatever they like, but the truth is al-Maliki “punked,” Bush, which is modern vernacular meaning that Bush was intentionally disrespected publicly. To my knowledge nothing like this has ever happened before - as a rule Presidential advisors do everything they can to ensure that the President of the United States never gets embarrassed in such a manner. In any case, al-Maliki’s absence spelled out something quite clearly - Bush has no influence in the Middle East any longer - zero.

To further support this fact and to support something else the mainstream media would prefer that you don’t know, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently admonished George Bush publicly too, he stated the obvious in response to a comment Bush made about him, when Bush said that Ahmadinejad was out of step with the rest of the world. Iran’s President replied by saying that perhaps Georgie needs to step out of [his] glass palace and go to [his] people to see how isolated [he is], not only across the world but also in your own country." Ahmadinejad continued by saying "Mr. Bush can travel to one of the American states, inviting the people to a stadium to see how the people would treat him… I am sure that the American people would treat Mr. Bush as the Indonesian people treated him," he said referring to protests that greeted Bush on a visit to Indonesia last month. Yeah, fat chance that’ll ever happen.

Ahmadinejad then stated what everyone but the most avid Fox News viewers are starting to conclude, and that is that Some so-called superpowers have gathered together and they think that they can control the whole world. I'm telling them: Open your eyes, today, the world no longer thinks your decisions have any value…By God's grace, the enemies have not been able to do anything (against Iran) as yet and they will not be able to do anything in the future either," he said.

The above comments weren’t made lightly, the Iranian President is well aware of the fact that the power elite in Washington DC cannot afford to allow him to make them look like monkeys, but nonetheless that is exactly what he has successfully done. Another thing the Iranian leader has done that truly has exposed the so-called modern western democracies to the embarrassment they so desperately deserve is to hold the holocaust conference that he did a few weeks ago, and to do so under the provision that it was held because it could not be held in the west, which by the way is an empirical fact. Despite the fact that President Ahmadinejad is the leader of a nation that according to our media suppresses freedom of speech, Ahmadinejad correctly pointed out that it is the west, not Iran, that throws its historians in prison for questioning certain aspects of the holocaust story, not as the media would have you believe, whether or not it occurred, but rather numbers and methods.

The fact is, not a single holocaust revisionist would state that the Nazis did not persecute Jews during the Second World War, but most of them question the idea that six million were killed or that any of them were gassed at Auschwitz. By holding that conference and by emphasizing the undeniable fact that the so-called modern democracies in the west imprison skeptics, the Iranian President has further highlighted the fact that Bush is a “limp dick.” The media wants you to believe that anyone that would question any aspect of the official holocaust story is crazy and/or a “conspiracy theorist.” The fact is, the reason some people question certain details associated with the holocaust is for exactly the same reason that many people question the “official version” of 9-11, because there are a tremendous amount of perfectly legitimate questions and no forthcoming answers.

The media would have you believe that only uneducated fools, anti-Semites and racists would question their version of what happened to Jewry during WWII, the mainstream media pumped out more than 1,000 articles about the holocaust conference in Iran, but not a single one of them ever mentioned that every scholar that appeared in Tehran to speak was a credentialed academic, meaning that they had at least a graduate degree. Nope, the Mainstream Zionist media doesn’t want you to know that. They do however want you to know that David Duke appeared, so that they can cast aspersions on the entire conference by dredging up the fact that Duke was associated with the KKK some thirty years ago, but at the same time not a single one of those so-called “objective” articles mentioned the fact that Duke has a PhD in history or that he appeared, not to question the holocaust, but in order to authoritatively speak about how the mainstream western media spins and distorts the facts, as evidenced by their very coverage of Dr. David Duke and what he actually said. I highly encourage anyone and everyone to disregard what the media said took place in Tehran and what the speakers said, and to see for themselves what transpired there by reading the words of the revisionists that were there, and by reading what Dr David Duke actually said in regards to free speech and its suppression in the west, in his own words.

Was the holocaust conference a success? You bet it was, not three weeks after its conclusion, Austria released David Irving from prison, no doubt as a result of the embarrassment brought upon it by way of the truths spoken at the conference. David Irving owes a large debt of gratitude to those that spoke out on his behalf in Tehran, now let’s hope he recognizes that fact and reciprocates without succumbing to the pressures of political correctness that often bar those seeking fame in the modern era.

Bush has taken the world to the very edge, he has threatened the leaders of nations with absolute destruction, as he did with Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf, when he sent Zionist lackey Richard Armitage to Pakistan after 9-11 to tell the Pakistani leader that the United States would bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age,” unless Musharraf cooperated with the United States in its war on terror. The fact that Pervez Musharraf even admitted this publicly as he did back in September also is a strong indicator that Bush’s impotence is well known among Muslim leaders. None of them believe anything he says, which has led to the inevitable, a “broke dick” foreign policy approach by the President and his Zionist sponsors. “Broke dick” is another term I learned while in the U.S. cavalry, it essentially means “irreparably broken,” and better describes Bush’s misadventures in the Mid east, than any other word that comes to mind.

It isn’t just Middle Eastern leaders that have called Bush’s bluff, the entire world sees the fool for exactly what he is, a “limp dick” with a “broke dick” administration. The only thing holding Bush up at this point is the Zionist media, who have been busily engaged in making him appear as if he weren’t the moron that he in fact is - a tough job to be sure. The Russians and the Chinese have absolutely no respect for Bush, no matter what he does they ignore him and move on with their own interests. Hugo Chavez the popular and democratically elected leader of Venezuela accurately labeled Bush the devil and did so before the entire UN assembly, in New York City no less, and stated something else that should wake up the American people, and that is that Bush’s government [Democratic and Republican elite alike] are the first enemies,” of the American people,” and that the Zionist-American elite’s empire is on its way down.

Chavez provided several examples as to why this eventuality is in fact inevitable, one of which was witnessed by the entire world, and that was when a United States veto at the United Nations allowed the Israelis with impunity to destroy Lebanon in front of us all as we stood there watching."

Americans must wake up, their government is ill, it has become a pathological liar, unable to tell the truth, because the truth will lead to its downfall. Bush allegedly sent the US military to Iraq in order to bring “democracy” to the Mid east, but democracy isn’t working out very well for Bush and company, because democratically elected leaders aren’t siding with the Zionist warmongers that inhabit Washington DC and the western media - in fact - they are doing exactly what Bush and the Zionists least expected, they are standing up to their bullying tactics - they are no longer afraid, which leaves Bush in the unenviable position of having to do something about the world’s lack of fear. Unfortunately for Bush, he has no real options, he can go nuclear which will lead to his downfall and the collapse of the American government at best, and at worst, death to tens of millions of people worldwide, including most likely millions of Americans, which will also lead to his downfall and the collapse of the American government.

No, the truth is, Bush is completely impotent, there is no guarantee that the American people will fall for anymore lies or another staged attack - everyone knows Bush lied us into a war in Iraq and its subsequent disastrous occupation, everyone now knows that Bush, despite his rhetoric, supports the amnesty of twenty million illegal immigrants in this country, not because he gives a damn about them, but because his Zionist puppet masters want them there for a variety of reasons, to disenfranchise the American working man, to water down the voting power [if any still exists] of the majority, to force down wages, and most importantly to create disharmony and discord among the American people by way of disingenuous accusations of racism, which will distract Americans from what Bush does elsewhere - Machiavellian principles at their finest.

No, it’s very difficult to tell whether or not another staged terror attack like 9-11 will have the desired effect, but that isn’t to say Bush and his Zionist masters won’t attempt one, in fact, I’d say it’s inevitable, I don’t think they see any other way out of the mess they created, they’ll fabricate a new 9-11, not so much to provide an excuse to nuke Tehran, which will come later, but to impose Martial Law here in the United States - an attack can wait, but the growing dissent among Americans cannot - that spells imminent doom for the Zio-American entity. The question that must be plaguing their minds though is whether or not Bush still has enough credibility to compel Law Enforcement and the National Guard to kill American citizens in the millions. Personally I doubt it - the imposition of Martial law will prove to be the final nail in the coffin of the Zionist-led government in Washington. That doesn’t mean I’ll be around to see it, the Neo-Cons will follow to the letter the policies of their ideological predecessors and eliminate with extreme prejudice any opponents, but nonetheless I’ll leave this world knowing that they’ll soon follow.

Bookmark and Share
posted by u2r2h at Wednesday, December 27, 2006 1 comments

Millions of Greek TV watchers were exposed to 9-11 inside job!

ORIGINAL ANNOUNCEMENT -- 18-19 December 2006
Interview: Jim Fetzer will be the guest discussing 9/11
with Greek investigative journalist Makis Triantafillopoulous
on the Alter Channel. The 3 1/2 hour television program is
broadcast live in Athens beginning at 11:00 PM local time.

FANTASTIC NEWS !! Jim Fetzer was on Greek TV

James Fetzer appeared on TOP RATING greek TV SHOW!

We heard mr. James Fetzer in Greece before about 1 week in the most popular TV telecast "Zougla" (means "Jungle") here in Greece. He was invited from the most famous journalist in Greece "Makis Efthimios Triantafilopoulos". (Triantafyllopoulos) Millions of Greeks was informed about the "inside job" for the first time from the media! (from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_967jIpFVfo )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zougla

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zougla

Download the mp3 where Jim Fetzer mentions it himself!

Zougla airs Thursdays at 11:15pm on Alpha TV (private for profit TV)
http://www.alphatv.gr/index.asp?a_id=176&tv_id=728

PLEASE Email: zougla@alphatv.gr and get someone to upload a video-copy of that programme to Google Video



Older greek language info and discusssion on the vile crime of 9/11: HERE is a bit of 911 talk: (can some Hellenician give us a translation/summary?)
TRANSLATE http://www.worldlingo.com/en/websites/url_translator.html
http://www.phorum.gr/viewtopic.php?p=353287

Triantafilopoulos translates to THIRTY LITTLE LEAVES.


Here is a message to James Fetzer:
Consider that [Image] was done by beam weapons, too. The reason was to warn AIRBUS to keep quiet!




Jim Fetzer's Three-Plus Hour Blockbuster on Greek Television, Monday 12/18
by fjockey 23 December 2006
Greetings fellow 9/11 Patriots, When I arrived at my week night job late this Monday afternoon, little did I suspect that the prime theme of the evening was not going to be pizza deliveries and tips as usual. Much to my surprise, the evening was dominated by extensive discussions about what really happened on 9/11, and watching my boss and a coworker wake up quickly and dramatically to the entire 9/11 matrix.

The pizzeria where I work is owned and operated by Greek immigrants. My boss has a TV in the kitchen which is hooked up to a satelite dish. He is able to receive the Alter Globe Greek language station, which he has on much of the time.

As soon as I walked in on Monday, he immediately called my attention to what was taking place live on Greek television. It was a panel discussion show involving several Greek journalists and broadcasters. They were asking questions from none other than our own Jim Fetzer, who was laying out his case - point by point - that 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by elements within the U.S. government.

The entire program was quite slickly produced and was supplimented by plenty of file footage. Included was an interview segment with Willie Rodreguez, a recording of Norman Mineta's testimony, and some of the sharpest, most revealing video footage of the twin towers' demolition I have seen to date. Everything was instantly translated so that the participants could understand professor Fetzer and he could understand them.

Overall, I was extremely impressed with this detailed, one-two punch from Jim Fetzer. Certainly, it was the strongest performance I have ever witnessed from him. As can be expected, the scientific aspects were covered. But his overwhelming emphasis was on political testimony and the 9/11 timeline. One after another, the points he made were the ones that everyone in the 9/11 Truth movement knows and agrees upon - dozens of them, in fact over the course of the three hours. And contrary to the divisions and fear mongering that still plagues our movement, Professor Fetzer unequivocally confirmed the findings of Dr. Stephen Jones and stated that thermite/thermate was used in the destruction of the WTC.

"The simplest explaination for something usually turns out to be the most accurate," he remarked. "But it should cover all the observable data." He then briefly mentioned the possibility that other high tech systems were also utilized on that day, but he quickly added that we don't know what they are or how they work, if any were involved at all. Never once during the course of the three-plus hours did he mention anything about "space beams" or weapons from space being involved. But he did add a political possibility that I never heard of or considered before, namely that the entire 9/11 operation could have been outsourced to the Israeli government, and they are the ones who scripted it. I started thinking about that possibility and realized that if such was the case,it may explain where the missing two-plus trillion dollars from the Pentagon budget went and why the instigators of 9/11 wanted the accountants who were working on the case killed.

Needless to say, the whole experience of this broadcast was quite revealing. Over the past few weeks, I've been hearing incessant criticism of Jim Fetzer, almost to the point of hysteria. But this presentation renewed my faith in him, his judgement, and his value to the movement. It also gave me a chance to witness other people awaken to the truth of 9/11 the same way I did many months ago. My boss had been aware for some time that I was a "9/11 Truther," but we never had the opportunity to discuss it in detail until this presentation appeared on his television. Frequently, I added my own commentary to reinforce the points even further. My boss could barely pull himself away from the set and his assistant once went several minutes before realizing there was a customer at the counter. It's a good thing that overall, it was a slow night.

However, there was one "negative" result of this presentation: It increased my already intense hatred of the American broadcast media. Here is a television network in a far off land that considered this information so important, they devoted more than three consecutive hours of air time to it. Although I did not have the luxury of hearing the English translations of the questions and commentary made by the Greek journalists, it was obvious from Professor Fetzer's answers that their input was thoughtful, intelligent, and appropriate.

Compare that to the corrupt fascism, mockery, and frat boy tactics of our dysfunctional American TV networks and cable outlets. Webster Tarpley is correct: the United States is an autistic nation. And our intollerant, antagonistic, scape goating, sound bite loving, corporate scum media is largely to blame for it.

I have every reason to believe that millions of Greeks, in their native land and around the world, woke up to 9/11 Truth on Monday night. Can you imagine what would happen if, for once, just ONE American network or cable outlet found the courage to turn the tables on their New World Order handlers and air a similar three hour panel discussion featuring ANY leading figure in the 9/11 Truth movement? Could you imagine the impact such a broadcast would have?

So, blog all you want about poor Kevin Barrett subjecting himself to more abuse from neo-con shill O'Reilly, and being shouted down before he can get two sentences out. Kevin puts up with it because he has no other options for a mass audience in America. But as for me, I refuse to even watch such uncivilized abuse. Opportunities like Jim Fetzer's Greek TV marathon have far more positive impact and offer far more opportunities and hope.

fjockey ... http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/fjockeyGreekTelevision.html


James H. Fetzer was born in Pasadena, California, on 6 December 1940. At graduation from South Pasadena High School in 1958, he was presented The Carver Award. He was magna cum laude in philosophy at Princeton University in 1962, where his senior thesis for Carl G. Hempel on the logical structure of explanations of human behavior won The Dickinson Prize. After being commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps, he became an artillery officer and served in the Far East. After a tour supervising recruit training in San Diego, he resigned his commission as a Captain to begin graduate work in the history and philosophy of science at Indiana in 1966. He completed his Ph.D. with a dissertation on probability and explanation for Wesley C. Salmon in 1970.
His initial faculty appointment was at the University of Kentucky, where he received the first Distinguished Teaching Award presented by the Student Government to 1 of 135 assistant professors. Since 1977, he has taught at a wide range of institutions of higher learning, including the Universities of Virginia (twice), Cincinnati, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, New College of the University of South Florida, and now the Duluth campus of the University of Minnesota, where he served from 1987 until his retirement in 2006. His honors include a research fellowship from the National Science Foundation and The Medal of the University of Helsinki. In 1996, he became one of the first ten faculty at the University of Minnesota to be appointed a Distinguished McKnight University Professor.
He has published more than 100 articles and reviews and 20 books in the philosophy of science and on the theoretical foundations of computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. On this web page, his publications have been divided by area, including special vitae for computer science, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, evolution and cognition, and his applied philosophical research on the death of JFK. His biographical sketch has appeared in many reference works, including the DIRECTORY OF AMERICAN SCHOLARS, WHO'S WHO IN THE MIDWEST, WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA, and WHO'S WHO IN THE WORLD. It may be found, for example, in the DIRECTORY OF AMERICAN SCHOLARS, 10th edition, WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA, 55th edition (2001), and WHO'S WHO IN THE WORLD, 18th edition (2001).
http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/


Email: jfetzer/at/d.umn.edu
Bookmark and Share
posted by u2r2h at Wednesday, December 27, 2006 1 comments

Chomsky on Iraq (DN interview)

MY GOODMAN: Today, we bring you world-renowned scholar and linguist Noam
Chomsky, who spoke a few days ago in an event sponsored by Massachusetts
Global Action. The speech was called "What's Next? Creating Another
World in a Time of War, Empire and Devastation." It was held at the
Emmanuel Church in Boston.

Chomsky is a professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. He recently returned from Latin America. He talked about the
recent elections in the region, which have brought leftist governments
to power that are challenging US foreign policy. Chomsky also talked
about Iraq and Iran in the context of Latin America.

In this excerpt, he begins by analyzing the recently released Iraq Study
Group report that was chaired by the former Secretary of State James Baker.

NOAM CHOMSKY: There are efforts to try to extricate the US from the US
power -- doesn’t matter much to the people, but US power -- from the
catastrophes it’s created for itself. The most recent such effort, right
on the front pages now -- so I’ll keep to that one -- is the
Baker-Hamilton report, the Iraq Study Group report, which has some
interesting features. Very interesting.

For example, one of its -- it doesn’t have much in the way of proposals
-- but the thinking is interesting. So here's one paragraph, refers to
recent polls in Iraq. The US government and polling agencies here take
regular polls in Iraq. They care a lot about Iraqi opinion. And this
points out that recent polling indicates that 79% of Iraqis have a
mostly negative view of the influence that the United States has in
their country, and 61% of Iraqis -- includes Kurds -- approve of attacks
on US-led forces. Well, that's clearly a problem. And we have to deal
with that problem by changing tactics, so they'll understand that we
really love them and we’re trying to help them and they'll stop thinking
they ought to attack us and hating us, and so on. OK, that was the
proposal.

There's something missing. The same polls that they cited have some
other information, for example, that two-thirds of the people of Baghdad
want US troops out immediately, and about over three-quarters of the
whole population, including Kurds, again, wants a firm timetable for
withdrawal within a year or less. Well, that isn’t mentioned, because in
our mission to bring democracy to the world, we don’t care about the
opinions of people. They’re kind of irrelevant, so that isn't mentioned.
And, of course, there's no timetable for withdrawal. That’s one of the
options they rejected.

Also interesting is that the American people are treated the same way. A
majority of people here are in favor of a firm timetable for withdrawal.
But that's irrelevant, too. In fact, back as far as April 2003,
considerable majority of people here in the United States were in favor
of keeping US troops there only if they were under UN supervision. The
UN ought to take responsibility for security, for economic development,
reconstruction, for democratic development, and so on. But that opinion
was, of course, totally ignored and, to my knowledge, not even reported.

Now, that continues, if that attitude continues, the next big problem,
next to Iraq, is Iran. And the Baker-Hamilton Commission, as you know,
gave a recommendation about that. It said the US must somehow engage
Iran, but they said that that’s going to be problematic given the state
of US-Iranian relationships. Well, the US population has an opinion
about that, too. 75% of the population here, including a majority of
Republicans, think that the United States ought to keep to diplomatic
peaceful measures in engagement with Iran, which they approve of, and
not use military threats -- exact opposite of the policy.

The same attitudes are true of the people of the region. They don't like
Iran, and they don’t certainly [inaudible] nuclear-armed Iran, but a
majority of the population of the regional states favors a nuclear-armed
Iran to any form of military intervention, just as people here do. Well,
that's kind of irrelevant, so that’s also not mentioned in the report.

A third interesting fact about the report is that it says the United
States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East -- of course, taken
for granted they must achieve those goals. It doesn't mean the people of
the United States, it means the government and their constituency. The
United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it
deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict. And then goes on to say
that the US must encourage discussions and so on, but restricting and
allowing Palestinians to participate, but only those who accept Israel's
right to exist. OK, those are the only Palestinians who can participate.
What about Israelis who accept Palestine's right to exist? Well, no
point in mentioning them, because there probably aren't any.

And, in fact, there shouldn't be any. No state has a right to exist.
It's obvious. In fact, the whole concept, right to exist, as far as I’m
aware -- somebody should -- it’s a good research project for someone --
to my knowledge, that concept was created in the 1970s when the Arab
States and the PLO accepted, formally accepted -- PLO tacitly, the Arab
States formally, the major ones -- formally accepted Israel's right to
exist within secure and recognized borders, borrowing the wording of the
major UN resolution, UN 242. So it became necessary to raise the barrier
to prevent negotiations diplomacy and to allow expansion instead.

And here comes right to exist, which, of course, nobody is going to
accept. It means accepting not only the fact of the expulsion of
Palestinians, but also its legitimacy. No state in the world is ever
going to accept that, any more than Mexico accepts the -- it recognizes
the United States, but it does not recognize the legitimacy of the US
conquest of half of Mexico -- outlandish.

But even if we reduce it from the crazy notion of right to exist to just
recognizing Palestine, how many -- who -- recognizing Israel, suppose we
limit Palestinians to those who recognize Israel, which Israelis
recognize Palestine? Does the United States recognize Palestine? I mean,
I won’t run through the history here, but for 30 years, the US and
Israel have, with rare exceptions, been unilaterally preventing the
establishment of a broad international consensus on a two-state
settlement. I mean, they're willing now, in the last couple of years,
only the last couple of years, to accept a very truncated Palestine
that’s dismembered, surrounded -- no chance of viable existence. Maybe
they'll recognize that. A couple of Bantustans, but not any viable state.

AMY GOODMAN: We are watching and listening to Noam Chomsky, giving an
address last week in Boston. When we come back, we'll turn to the
segment of his speech where he talks about Latin America, from which he
just returned. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return now to Noam Chomsky, who spoke a few days ago in
Boston.

NOAM CHOMSKY: I’ll start with last weekend. Important city in South
America, Cochabamba, with quite a history. There was a meeting last
weekend in Cochabamba in Bolivia of all the South American leaders. It
was a very important meeting. One index of its importance is that it was
unreported, virtually unreported apart from the wire services. So every
editor knew about it. Since I suspect you didn't read that wire service
report, I’ll read you a few things from it to indicate why it was so
important.

In last Saturday, the South American leaders agreed to create a
high-level commission to study the idea of forming a continent-wide
community similar to the European Union. This is the presidents and
envoys of all the nations, and there was the two-day summit of what's
called the South American Community of Nations, hosted by Evo Morales in
Cochabamba, the president of Bolivia. The leaders -- reading just now
--agreed to form a study group to look at the possibility of creating a
continent-wide union and even a South American parliament. The result,
according to the -- I’m reading from the AP report -- the result left
fiery Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, long an agitator for the region,
taking a greater role on the world stage, pleased, but impatient --
normal stance. They went on. It goes on to say that the discussion over
South American unity will continue later this month, when MERCOSUR,
South American trading bloc, has its regular meeting that will include
leaders from Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay and Uruguay.

There is one -- has been one point of hostility in South America. That's
Peru, Venezuela. But it points out that Chavez and Peruvian President
Alan Garcia took advantage of the summit to bury the hatchet, after
having exchanged insults earlier in the year. And that was the only real
conflict in South America. So that seems to have been smoothed over.

The new Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa proposed a land and river
trade route linking the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest to Ecuador's Pacific
Coast, suggesting that for South America, it could be kind of like an
alternative to the Panama Canal.

Chavez and Morales celebrated a new joint project, the gas separation
plant in Bolivia's rich gas-rich region. It’s a joint venture with
Petrovesa, the Venezuelan oil company, and the Bolivian state energy
company. And it continues. Venezuela, as I’m sure you know, is the only
-- it which points out -- is the only Latin American member of OPEC and
has by far the largest proven oil reserves outside the Middle East, by
some measures maybe even incomparable to Saudi Arabia. Well, that’s very
important in the general global context. I’ll return to a couple of
words about that.

There were also contributions, constructive, interesting contributions
by Lula da Silva, Brazil's president, Bachelet of Chile, and others. All
of this is extremely important.

This is the first time since the Spanish conquests, 500 years, that
there has been real moves towards integration in South America. The
countries have been very separated from one another. And integration is
going to be a prerequisite for authentic independence. I mean, there
have been -- I’m sure you know -- attempts at independence, but they've
been crushed, often very violently, partly because of lack of regional
support, because there was very little regional cooperation, so you can
pick them off one by one.

That’s what happened since the 1960s. The Kennedy administration
orchestrated a coup in Brazil, the first of which happened right after
the assassination was already planned. It was the first of a series of
falling dominoes. Neo-Nazi-style national security states spread across
the hemisphere. Chile was one of them, but only one finally ended up
with reaching Central America, with Reagan's terrorist wars in the
1980s, which devastated Central America, similar things happening in the
Caribbean. But that was sort of a one-by-one operation of destroying one
country after another. And it had the expected domino effect. It’s the
worst plague of repression in the history of Latin America since the
original conquests, which were horrendous. It’s only beginning to be
understood how horrendous they were.

But integration does lay the basis for potential independence, and
that's of extreme significance. The colonial history -- Spain, Europe,
the United States -- not only divided countries from one another, but it
also left a sharp internal division within the countries, every one,
between a very wealthy small elite and a huge mass of impoverished
people. The correlation to race is fairly close. Typically, the rich
elite was white, European, westernized; and the poor mass of the
population was indigenous, Indian, black, intermingled, and so on. It's
a fairly close correlation, and it continues right ‘til the present.

The white, mostly white, elites were not -- who ran the countries --
were not integrated with -- had very few interrelations with the other
countries of the region. They were Western-oriented. You can see that in
all sorts of ways. That's where the capital was exported. That's where
the second homes were, where the children went to the universities,
where their cultural connections were, and so on. And they had very
little responsibility in their own societies. So there’s very sharp
division.

They were also very support-- you can see it, for example, in imports.
Imports are mostly luxury goods, overwhelmingly. Development, such as it
was, was mostly foreign. It was much more open, Latin America, much more
open to foreign investment than, say, East Asia. It’s part of the reason
for their different paths of development in the past -- radically
different paths of development in the last couple of decades.

And, of course, the elite elements were very strongly sympathetic to the
neoliberal programs of the last 25 years, which enriched them --
destroyed the countries, but enriched them. Latin America, more than any
region in the world, outside of southern Africa, adhered rigorously to
the so-called Washington Consensus, what's called outside the United
States the neoliberal programs of roughly the past 25, 30 years. And
everywhere where they were rigorously applied, they led to disaster.
There’s scarcely an exception. Very striking correlation. Sharp
reduction in rates of growth, other macroeconomic indices, all the
social effects that go along with that.

Actually, the comparison to East Asia is very striking. Latin America is
a much -- potentially much richer area. I mean, a century ago, it was
taken for granted that Brazil would be what was called the “Colossus of
the South,” comparable to the Colossus of the North. Haiti, now one of
the poorest countries in the world, was the richest colony in the world,
a source of much of France’s wealth, now devastated, first by France,
then by the United States. And Venezuela -- enormous wealth -- was taken
over by the United States around 1920, right at the beginning of the oil
age, had been a British dependency, but Woodrow Wilson kicked the
British out, recognizing that control of oil was going to be important,
and supported a vicious dictator. And then, more or less, it goes on
until the present. So the resources and the potential were always there.
Very rich.

In contrast, East Asia had almost no resources, but they followed a
different developmental path. In Latin America, imports were luxury
goods for the rich. In East Asia, it's capital goods for development.
They had state-coordinated development programs. They disregarded the
Washington Consensus almost totally. Capital controls, controls on
export of capital, harsh punishments for it, pretty egalitarian
societies, a lot of -- authoritarian, sometimes, pretty harsh -- but
educational programs, health programs, and so on. In fact, they followed
pretty much the developmental paths of the currently wealthy countries,
which are radically different from the rules that are being imposed on
the South.

And that goes way back in history. You go back to the 17th century, the
commercial and industrial centers of the world were China and India.
Life expectancy in Japan was greater than in Europe. Europe was kind of
like a barbarian outpost, but it had advantages, mainly in savagery,
conquered the world, imposed something like the neoliberal rules on the
conquered regions, and itself, very high protectionism, a lot of state
intervention and so on. So Europe developed.

The United States, as a typical case, had the highest tariffs in the
world, most protectionist country in the world during the period of its
great development. In fact, as late as 1950, when the United States
literally had half the world's wealth, its tariffs were higher than the
Latin American countries today, which are being ordered to reduce them.

Massive state intervention in the economy. Economists don't talk about
it much, but the current economy in the United States relies very
heavily on the state sector. That's where you get your computers and the
internet and your airplane traffic and transit of goods, container ships
and so on, almost entirely comes out of the state sector, including
pharmaceuticals, management techniques, and so on. I won’t go on into
that, but it’s a strong correlation right through history. Those are the
methods of development.

The neoliberal methods created a third world, and in the past 30 years,
they have led to disasters in Latin America and southern Africa, the
places that most rigorously adhered to them. But whereas there was
growth and development in East Asia, which disregarded them, following
the rules, following pretty much the model of the currently rich countries.

Well, there’s a chance that that will begin to change. There are finally
efforts inside South America -- unfortunately not in Central America,
which has just been pretty much devastated by the terror of the last --
of the ’80s particularly. But in South America, from Venezuela to
Argentina, it’s, I think, the most exciting place in the world. There’s
reactions to this. After 500 years, there’s a beginning of efforts to
overcome these overwhelming problems. The integration that's taking
place, that I just read about, is one example.

There's efforts of the Indian population. The indigenous population is,
for the first time in hundreds of years, taking a -- really beginning in
some of the countries, take a very active role in their own affairs. In
Bolivia, they succeeded in taking over the country, controlling their
resources. Bolivia -- and it’s also leading to significant
democratization, real democracy, in which the population participates.
So it takes a Bolivia -- it’s the poorest country in the hemisphere in
South America -- Haiti is poorer -- it had a real democratic election
last year, of a kind that you can't imagine in the United States, or in
Europe, for that matter. There was mass popular participation, and
people knew what the issues were. The issues were crystal clear and very
important. And people didn't just participate on election day. These are
the things they had been struggling about for years. Actually,
Cochabamba is a symbol of it. I’ll come back to that. So, clear issues,
popular participation, ongoing efforts, elected someone from their own
ranks. I won't bother to compare it to the United States. You can work
it out for yourselves, but that's a real democratic election of the kind
we can't imagine.

In fact, in our elections, the issues are unknown. There’s careful
efforts to make sure that the issues are unknown to the public, for good
reasons. There's a tremendous gap between public opinion and public
policy. So you have to keep away from issues and concentrate on imagery
and delusions and so on. The elections are run by the same industries
that sell toothpaste on television. You don't expect to get information
from a television ad. You don't expect to get information about a
candidate from debates, advertisements and the other paraphernalia that
goes along with what are called elections here.

There's a lot of fuss on the left about election irregularities, like,
you know, the voting machines were tampered with, they didn't count the
votes right, and so on. That’s all accurate and of some importance, but
of far more importance is the fact that elections just don't take place,
not in any meaningful sense of the term “election.” And so, it doesn't
matter all that much, if there was some tampering. I suspect that's why
the population doesn't get much exercised over it. The concern over
stolen elections and vote tampering, and so on, is mostly an elite
affair. Most of the country didn’t seem to care very much. “OK, so the
election was stolen.” I mean, if you’re flipping a coin to select a king
or something, it doesn’t matter much if the coin is biased. That seems
to be the way most people feel about it. And there’s some justification.

In fact, the attitude of the public here towards the political system is
very dramatic. I mean, about a third of the population in the United
States, according to recent polls, believes that the Bush administration
was responsible for 9/11. But they don't think it's a problem, like they
don’t think that’s anything to worry about it. Yeah, of course, they’re
all crooks and gangsters and murderers, tell us something new, you know.
It doesn't have much to do with us. That's a shocking commentary on the
state of American democracy.

There's a lot of talk here about, you know, we have a divided country.
We have to unify. We need a unifier, somebody who will bring it back
together. Red and blue, and so on. That's pretty marginal. It is a
divided country. It's divided between public opinion and public policy.
A very sharp divide. And on issue after issue, the whole political
system is well to the right of the public and public attitudes. And we
know a lot about these, because it’s a very well studied topic in the
United States.

AMY GOODMAN: We’ll continue with Professor Noam Chomsky's address after
break.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We return to the address of Noam Chomsky, professor of
Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speaking last
Thursday in Boston.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Just to give one last illustration, I was driving home
from work the other day and torturing myself by listening to NPR, and --
I have kind of a masochistic streak I can’t get over. Actually, some day
I’m going to sue them. Sometime -- once they got me so angry that I
started speeding. I lost control of what I was doing, and I was stopped
by a cop, and I was going like 60 miles an hour in a 30 mile zone. Maybe
a basis for a civil suit, if there are any lawyers around here. But they
had a section on Barack Obama, the great new hope. And it was very
exuberant: what a fantastic personality he is and a great candidate,
thousands of people coming out. And it went on for about 15 minutes of
excited rhetoric. There's only one thing missing. They didn’t say a word
about what his policies were on anything. It’s kind of not -- doesn't
matter, you know. He’s a unifier. He looks at you when he talks to you.
He’s a really decent guy. Great background. OK, that's an election.

Bolivia was radically different, and that's a very striking different.
Well, there is -- one of the things that’s happened in Latin America in
the past several decades is there has been a wave of authentic
democratization. Despite US efforts to impede it, it's taken place.
However, an unfortunate side effect of it is that as the wave of
democratization increased, while support for democracy remained strong
in Latin America, support for the elected governments has been
declining, steadily declining.

There’s a reasonable explanation for that that was given by an Argentine
political scientist, Atilio Boron. He pointed out that the wave of
democratization correlated with the neoliberal programs, which are
designed to undermine democracy. I don’t have time to talk about it, but
every element of them is specifically designed to undermine democracy,
to restrict the public arena and participation and so on. So he
concludes -- I think plausibly -- that it's not surprising that while a
desire to have democracies remains very high, support for the elected
government declines, insofar as they follow the programs that are
undermining democracy.

Now, there are a few exceptions. The leading exception -- again, Latin
American opinion is also pretty carefully polled and studied, so we know
a lot about it -- the leading exception is Venezuela. From 1998 to the
present, support for the elected government has increased sharply, in
pretty dramatic contrast to almost all of Latin America. There are some
increases elsewhere. And, in fact, Venezuela leads the continent in
support for the elected government. That’s probably why it's called
anti-democratic and authoritarian and, you know, dictator, and so on and
so forth.

The rhetoric here is kind of interesting. There are authoritarian
tendencies, undoubtedly, but depicture of Chavez as a tin-pot dictator
-- has destroyed freedom of press and so on -- that's the standard line
also in the rightwing press in South America, and believed, in fact,
completely inconsistent with the facts.

I mean, take, say, freedom of the press. As you know, there was a coup
in Venezuela in the year 2002, supported by the United States. The
government was overthrown. It was taken over by Pedro Carmona, a rich
businessman, who immediately dissolved parliament, destroyed the supreme
court, got rid of the attorney general's office, the public defender.
Every vestige of democracy was instantly demolished.

US strongly supported it. The Venezuelan private press, the press,
strongly supported it. One of the people who supported the coup was the
opposition candidate in the last election. Just another -- other
supporters of the coup were a group called Sumate, the group that the US
provides aid to for what's called “democracy building.” So the coup was
supported by a substantial part of the elite in the society that was
backed by the United States, destroyed the democratic system.

It was quickly overthrown by a popular uprising. US had to back off. But
what's striking is that the newspapers continue to publish, still
continue to attack the government. Rosales, who supported the coup, ran
in the election. Sumate, which supported the coup, is functioning, the
main recipient of US democracy promotion funds.

Just imagine that that had happened in the United States. Suppose there
was a coup that overthrew the government, supported by the leading
press, you know, by political figures and so on. Would the press
continue to function? I mean, would the supporter of the coup be the
opposition candidate in the next election. I mean, it’s unimaginable.
They’d all be lined up in front of firing squads. But this is the
tin-pot dictator who’s destroying freedom of press, not the first time.
But these are quite important developments.

And what they illustrate is a decline in the -- first of all, a move
towards integration, independence and authentic democracy with mass
popular movements and participation and so on, all extremely important,
but also along with it goes a decline in the methods of domination and
control. I mean, the US has dominated the region for a long time with
two major methods: one of them, violence, and the other, economic
strangulation, economic controls. And both of those methods are
declining in efficacy.

2002 was the last effort of the United States to overthrow a government.
In earlier years, it was routine. And in fact, the governments that the
US is now supporting -- say, Lula -- probably would have been overthrown
40 years ago. There's not that much difference between Lula and Goulart,
the Brazilian president who was overthrown by the Kennedy-instigated
coup. There is a notable decline in the efficacy of violence for control.

And the same is true of economic controls. ve si decline. The main
economic controls in recent years have been the IMF, which is virtually
a branch of the US Treasury Department. But the countries are freeing
themselves of its controls. Argentina basically told the -- Argentina
was the poster boy of the IMF. It was a great success story, except that
it led to a total complete crash, a terrible crash. Argentina did
recover, but by violating IMF rules, refusing to pay its debts, buying
up what remained of the debt and “ridding ourselves of the IMF,” as the
president put it. They were able to do that, partly with the help of
Venezuela, which bought up about a third of the debt, another form of
cooperation. Brazil, in its own way, moved in the same direction,
freeing itself from the IMF.

Bolivia is now doing it. Bolivia had been, again, a rigorous obedient
student of the IMF for about 25 years. It ended up with per capita
income lower than when it started. Well, now they’re getting rid of the
IMF, too, again with Venezuelan support. And as this proceeds through
the -- in fact, the IMF itself is in serious trouble. If you look at the
business pages, you’ll notice that its viability is in question, because
it's not getting the kinds of funds it used to get from the role it
played in what one -- the US executive director of the IMF once called
it the credit community’s enforcer. It's like the Mafia. They’re the
goons who were sent in to get the payments, the default, and so on. But
they're not getting it anymore, and their own funds are running low.
They may not survive.

Well, all of this is just one aspect of the weakening of the economic
controls, alongside the weakening of the controls of violence, and
that's going hand-in-hand with the steps towards integration and
independence.

The US has had to have a policy change. There's still a distinction
between the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys happen to be
governments the US probably would have overthrown 40 years ago, like
Lula’s Brazil That’s one of the good guys. Morales and Chavez, they’re
the bad guys. Well, that's the party line. You’ve read it over and over.

In order to maintain it, it's necessary to finesse some of the facts,
like, for example, the fact that when Lula was re-elected in October --
the good guy -- his first act was to fly to Caracas to support Chavez's
electoral campaign -- that’s the bad guy. Now, that wasn’t reported in
the United States, too remote from the party line. Also, Lula dedicated
a Brazilian project in Venezuela, a bridge over the Orinoco River, new
development projects, and so on. That’s all the wrong story.

And as I mentioned, as the AP reported, Venezuela has been in the lead
of trying to move towards regional integration. That's what Chavez's
[Bolivarian] Alternatives for the America is all about -- is supposed to
be about, that involves efforts to develop institutions for an
integrated South America. Petroamerica is kind of an integrated plan for
an integrated energy system of the kind that China is trying to initiate
in Asia, also very worrisome to the United States. Telesur is an effort
to break through the closely guarded Western media monopoly. It’s a big
story in itself. The University of the South, if it takes off, would be
an academic center for the Americas, and so on.

Well, the US is kind of losing control. It's not that US policy is
changing. The policy has to be adjusted. The US has not given up on
means of violence and economic control, but they’re taking new forms. So
the training of Latin American officers has, by the US, has gone way up,
very sharply in the last few years. And they're being trained
differently. The training is being shifted. It's being shifted from the
State Department to the Pentagon. That's of some significance. When
training of Latin American officers is under State Department controls,
there's at least theoretically congressional supervision of human rights
violations and so on. Not very many teeth in it, but at least it's sort
of there.

AMY GOODMAN: MIT linguist and political analyst, Noam Chomsky, speaking
in Boston several days ago.

Bookmark and Share
posted by u2r2h at Wednesday, December 27, 2006 0 comments

22 December, 2006

467BC - ekhous apiston tênd anarkhian polei

Precursors of anarchism

Taoism, which developed in Ancient China, has been embraced by some anarchists as a source of anarchistic attitudes.[1] Similarly, in the West, anarchistic tendencies can be traced to the philosophers of Ancient Greece, such as Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, and Aristippus, who said that the wise should not give up their liberty to the state.[2] Later movements — such as the Free Spirit in the Middle Ages, the Anabaptists, the Diggers and the Levellers — have also expounded ideas that have been interpreted as anarchist.

The first known usage of the word anarchy appears in the play Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus, dated at 467 BC. There, Antigone openly refuses to abide by the rulers' decree to leave her brother Polyneices' body unburied, as punishment for his participation in the attack on Thebes, saying that "even if no one else is willing to share in burying him I will bury him alone and risk the peril of burying my own brother. Nor am I ashamed to act in defiant opposition to the rulers of the city (ekhous apiston tênd anarkhian polei)".

Ancient Greece also saw the first Western instance of anarchism as a philosophical ideal, in the form of the stoic philosopher Zeno of Citium, who was, according to Kropotkin, "[t]he best exponent of Anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece". As summarized by Kropotkin, Zeno "repudiated the omnipotence of the state, its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual". Within Greek philosophy, Zeno's vision of a free community without government is opposed to the state-Utopia of Plato's Republic. Zeno argued that although the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads humans to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it by providing man with another instinct — sociability. Like many modern anarchists, he believed that if people follow their instincts, they will have no need of law courts or police, no temples and no public worship, and use no money (free gifts taking the place of the exchanges). Zeno's beliefs have only reached us as fragmentary quotations.[3]

In Athens, the year 404 BC was commonly referred to as “the year of anarchy”. According to the historian Xenophon, this happened even though Athens was at the time in fact under the rule of the oligarchy of "The Thirty", installed by the Spartans following their victory in the second Peloponnesian war, and despite the fact that there was literally an Archon in place, nominated by the oligarchs, in the person of Pythodorus. However, the Athenians refused to apply here their custom of calling the year by that archon's name, since he was elected during the oligarchy, and “preferred to speak of it as the 'year of anarchy'”.

The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle used the term anarchy negatively, in association with democracy which they mistrusted as inherently vulnerable and prone to deteriorate into tyranny. Plato believed that the corruption created by democracy loosens the "natural" hierarchy between social classes, genders and age groups, to the extent that “anarchy finds a way into the private houses, and ends by getting among the animals and infecting them”. ('Republic', book 8). Aristotle spoke of it in book 6 of the 'Politics' when discussing revolutions, saying that the upper classes may be motivated to stage a coup by their contempt for the prevailing “disorder and anarchy (ataxias kai anarkhias) in the affairs of the state. He also connected anarchy with democracy when he saw “democratic” features in tyrannies, namely “license among slaves (anarkhia te doulôn)" as well as among women and children. “A constitution of this sort”, he concludes, “will have a large number of supporters, as disorderly living (zên ataktôs) is pleasanter to the masses than sober living”.

The Anabaptists of 16th-century Europe are sometimes considered to be as religious forerunners of modern anarchism. Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, writes that the Anabaptists "repudiated all law, since they held that the good man will be guided at every moment by the Holy Spirit...[f]rom this premiss they arrive at communism...."

Gerrard Winstanley, who published a pamphlet calling for communal ownership and social and economic organization in small agrarian communities in the 17th century, is considered one of the forerunners of modern anarchism. The first modern author to have published a treatise explicitly advocating the absence of government was William Godwin in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793); though he did not use the word anarchism, he is today regarded by some as the "founder of philosophical anarchism" as a derogatory term against the Left, but Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, adopted the term to describe his political philosophy in the 1840s.[4]

Liberals were often labeled "anarchists" by monarchists, even though they did not call for the abolition of hierarchy. Still, they did promote the idea of human equality, individual rights, and the responsibility of the people to judge their governments, which provided a groundwork for the development of anarchist thought. As American political society developed along the liberal model, anarchist thoughts were expressed in the writings of Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience). Like him, some classic liberals who become radicals are considered part of the libertarian socialist tradition.

Anarcho-capitalism arose later as some liberals attempted to reform the ideology of anarchism to make it compatible with capitalism. Many anarchists, however, consider anarcho-capitalism an oxymoron, arguing that capitalism is a hierarchal system that violates the non-hierarchal tenets of anarchist philosophy.

Modern anarchism

In 1793 William Godwin published An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, in which he presents his vision of a free society alongside a critique of government. This is considered by some to be the first anarchist treatise. These commentators credit him with founding modern philosophical anarchism although Godwin never used the word anarchism. He is also considered a forebear of utilitarianism. It wasn't until Pierre-Joseph Proudhon published What is Property? in 1840 that the term "anarchist" was adopted as a self-description. It is for this reason that some claim Proudhon as the founder of modern anarchist theory.

Individualists, taking much from the writings of Max Stirner, among others, demanded the utmost respect for the liberty of the individual.

Later in the 19th century, Anarchist communist theorists like Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin built on the Marxist critique of capitalism and synthesized it with their own critique of the state, emphasizing the importance of a communal perspective to maintain individual liberty in a social context.

Mikhail Bakunin saw a need to defend the working class against oppression and overthrow the ruling class as a means to dissolve the state. Peter Kropotkin's anarchist communism developed from his study of zoology and evolution in which he concluded that co-operation far surpasses competition in its importance to the survival of species. He published these conclusions and his critiques of the then emerging ideas of Social Darwinism in his book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902).

Some revolutionaries of this time encouraged acts of violence such as sabotage or even assassination of heads of state to further spark a revolution. However, these actions were regarded by many anarchists as counter-productive or ineffective (see "Violence and non-violence", below).

In the late 19th century, Anarchosyndicalism developed as the industrialized form of libertarian communism, emphasizing industrial actions, especially the general strike, as the primary strategy to achieve anarchist revolution, and "build the new society in the shell of the old".

Anarchists played a role in many of the labour movements, uprisings, and revolutions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the Russian Revolution (1917). In the United States, many new immigrants were anarchists; an especially notable group was the large number of Jewish immigrants who had left Russia and Eastern Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These groups were disrupted by the Red Scare of 1919.

Emma Goldman was a very influential anarchist and feminist during this period. She traveled around the country and the world spreading anarchist ideas and attempting to live out an anarchist life.

The anarcho-syndicalist orientation of many early American labor unions played a large part in the formation of the American political spectrum. The United States is the only industrialized former English colony to not have a labor-based political party.

In Europe, in the first quarter of the 20th century anarchist movements achieved relative, if short-lived, successes and were violently repressed by states. However, in the 1920s and 1930s the conflict between anarchism and the state was eclipsed by the one among liberal democracy, fascism and communism, which ended with the defeat of fascism in World War II. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), which many consider a prelude to World War II, a widely popular anarchist movement supported by militias loyal to the republic took control of rural areas of north-east Spain in 19361937 and collectivized the land, being crushed in short order by the Communist-controlled republican army.

At the end of World War II Europe was mostly divided into a liberal region under United States influence and a communist region under control of the Soviet Union, and the major political dichotomy became that between capitalism and communism. The philosophical influence of anarchism remained latent until it resurfaced in the 1960s.

From a very different perspective but also in North America, primitivists like John Zerzan proclaimed that civilization — not just the state — would need to be abolished to foster liberty and a just social order. A rejection of modern Technology is also prominent in the views of many primitivists, such as Theodore Kaczynski (the Unabomber).

A surge of popular interest in anarchism occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. In the UK this was associated with the punk rock movement; the band Crass is celebrated for its anarchist and pacifist ideas; of note is also the Sex Pistols' hit "Anarchy in the UK" In Denmark, the Freetown Christiania was created in downtown Copenhagen. The housing and employment crisis in most of Western Europe led to the formation of communes and squatter movements like the one still thriving in Barcelona, Spain.

Through the 20th century anarchists were actively involved in the labour and feminist movements, and later in the fight against fascism. The influence of this on anarchist thought is apparent, as most of the traditional anarchist philosophies emphasize the economic implications of anarchism or arrive at anarchism from economic arguments. Since the last third of the 20th century, anarchists have been involved in student protest movements, peace movements, squatter movements, and the anti-globalization movement, among others.

Anarchism today

Today, traditional anarchist organizations continue to exist across the globe and, in recent years, anarchism as a political philosophy has gained a higher profile as a result of the rise in protest against globalisation.

Feminism has always been a part of the anarchist movement, in the form of anarcha-feminism. North American anarchism also takes strong influences from the American Civil Rights Movement and the movement against the war in Vietnam. European anarchism has developed out of the labour movement, and both have incorporated animal rights activism. Globally, anarchism has also grown in popularity and influence as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist, and anti-globalisation movements. Recently, anarchists have been known for their involvement in protests against World Trade Organization and Group of Eight meetings, and the World Economic Forum; protests which are generally portrayed in mainstream media coverage as violent riots. Many anarchists are part of the black blocs at these protests and some engage in rioting, vandalism, and violent confrontations with police. Others peacefully protested, upholding non-violent principles.

Anarchists and others might say that recent technological developments have made the anarchist cause both easier to advance and more conceivable to people. Many people use cell phones or the Internet to form loose communities which could be said to be organized along anarchist lines. Some of these communities have as their purpose the production of information in a non-commodified or use-value format, a goal made attainable by the availability of personal computing, desktop publishing and digital media. These things have made it possible for individuals to share music files over the Internet, without economic incentive, and even with a certain amount of risk. There are also open source programming communities, who donate their time, and offer their product freely as well. Examples include Usenet, the free software movement (including the GNU/Linux community and the wikiwiki paradigm), and Indymedia. A book analyzing how this new "anarchic" mode of production is possible is Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Traditional historical materialist analysis, used by many libertarian socialists, is one means of interpreting the above, and would describe it as a "political economy of non-commodity information production".

Historical examples of societies successfully organized according to anarchist principles

In recent history there have been numerous instances of collapse of state authority, sometimes prompted by war but also often due to implosion of the state. In some cases, state collapse is followed by lawlessness, rioting, looting and, if disarray lasts long enough, eventually warlordism; present-day Somalia is often used as one such example. Although such societies are often described as anarchy, they are not organised according to anarchist principles.

However, there are instances in which a society peacefully organizes itself without a government or other form of centralised power, along philosophical anarchist lines. A functioning anarchy would then be a society maintaining stability and civil society without hierarchies. There are some examples, usually small and/or short-lived (many were overrun by outside forces), which are considered successful anarchies in this sense.

Spanish revolution (1936–1939)

In 1936, against the background of the fight against fascism, was a profound libertarian revolution throughout Spain.

Much of Spain's economy was put under worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%, but lower in areas with heavy Socialist influence. Factories were run through worker committees; agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian communes. Even places like hotels, barber shops, and restaurants were collectivized and managed by their workers. George Orwell describes a scene in Aragon during this time period, in his book, Homage to Catalonia:

"I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life — snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc. — had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master."

The communes were run according to the basic principle of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," of course without the attached Marxist dogma. In some places, money was entirely eliminated. Despite the critics clamoring for maximum efficiency, anarchic communes often produced more than before the collectivization. The newly liberated zones worked on entirely libertarian principles; decisions were made through councils of ordinary citizens without any sort of bureaucracy (it should be noted that the CNT-FAI leadership was at this time not nearly as radical as the rank and file members responsible for these sweeping changes).

In addition to the economic revolution, there was a spirit of cultural revolution. Oppressive traditions were done away with. For instance, women were allowed to have abortions, and the idea of "free love" became popular. In many ways, this spirit of cultural liberation was similar to that of the "New Left" movements of the 1960s.

Christiania

Freetown Christiania is a quarter of Copenhagen that became independent and self-governing in the 1970s after an anarchist commune took over army barracks in the center of the city. While in theory governed by the laws of Denmark, it is left alone by the authorities. For a third of a century, this self-described social experiment has successfully resolved conflicts threatening its continued existence, arising both internally and from the Danish state. However, it is alleged that Christiania derives income from the sale of illegal drugs such as Hashish and Marijuana to non-residents. This has created problems for the community, notably between supporters and opponents of recreational drug use.

Examples of organizations with anarchist qualities

Amongst the instances in which anarchism arose there are many examples that share some of the qualities of anarchist organizations.

Hungarian Revolution (1956)

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 can be seen as an excellent example of a functioning anarchy, perhaps even of successful communism. From October 22, 1956, Hungarian workers refused to obey their managers or their government. Claiming sovereignty for their own workers councils they organized economic, military and social production on an increasing scale. An example of the anarchic social organization was that vast sums of money were freely donated for injured revolutionary fighters; and that this money was left unattended in the street for days at a time. Peasants supplied the workers with food on a voluntary basis. Between October 22 and December 14 Hungary's economy and society was governed by the democratic opinion of workers councils and voluntary associations. These councils constantly increased in scope and depth, eventually forming a Central Workers Council of Greater Budapest (CWC-GB), with intellectual and student associations affiliated to the body. The attempts to form a national Workers Council were crushed by Soviet military violence. The workers councils fought off one invasion by the Soviet Union between October 23 and 28, and fought a second invasion to an armistice of exhaustion between November 3 and November 10. After this time the Soviet Union negotiated directly with the Workers Councils. However, arrests of the primary and reserve leaderships of the CWC-GB, and massive reprisal executions and deportations of Hungarian revolutionaries lead to voluntary dissolution of the CWC-GB as it was no longer able to uphold its aims and ideals. Sporadic resistance by Hungarian revolutionaries and workers continued until mid-1957. Only one self-proclaimed anarchist, the Marxist playwright Julius Hay (Hay Gyula), was involved in organizing the revolution. Most revolutionary Hungarians adopted their own "anarchist" way of organizing spontaneously.

Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities

The indigenous peoples of Southern Mexico rebelled in 1994, partially in response to the signing of NAFTA, reclaiming their lands in what is called "a war against oblivion." They established various municipalities which are, in practice, outside the realm of Mexican law.

Laws in the Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities are not passed by "leaders," as such, but by "Good Government Councils" and by the will of the people (representatives in these councils are truly representative of their communities, rather than professional politicians). They serve not as traditional governing bodies but as instruments of the people to provide medicine, education, food, and other essentials. The "laws" passed by the Good Government Councils are not enforced with policemen and prisons, but in a way that respects "criminals" as members of the community. For example, it was decided to ban alcohol and drugs, due to their nefarious influence on Indians in the past. Violation of this law is surprisingly rare; those who do may be required, for example, to help build something their community needs. Some anarchists believe this to be a decentralized, non-authoritarian style similar to what they advocate, having always loathed prisons, police power, and capital punishment.

The Zapatistas do not claim to be anarchists, but through their actions and words, have shown some similarities to self-proclaimed anarchists and have become a cause celebre of the global left and the "anti-globalization movement".

Argentina (2001–present)

After the non-violent collapse of the Argentinean government in 2001/2002, the social and economic organization of Argentina has undergone major changes, though how important these changes are remains to be seen. Worker occupations of factories and popular assemblies have both been seen functioning in Argentina, and both are the kind of action endorsed by anarchists: the first is a case of direct action and the latter a case of direct democracy. An alternate description by the CIA of present-day Argentinean politics is available here.[5] Approximately 200 "recovered" factories (fábricas recuperadas) are now self-managed and collectively owned by workers. In the large majority of them, pay is completely egalitarian; generally no professional managers are employed, or managers are collectively controlled in the other cases. These co-operatives have organised themselves into networks. Solidarity and support from external groups such as neighborhood assemblies and unemployed (piquetero) groups have often been important for the survival of these factories. Similar developments have taken place in Brazil and Uruguay.[6] In 2004, Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein (author of No Logo) released the documentary The Take, which is about these events.

Free Software Movement

The Free Software movement is an example of anarchist characteristics. The nature of the GPL which is the most widely used Free Software license in the world and most all Open Source licenses is such that there is a collective sharing of resources (in this case, source code) between all developers, thus putting into practice the theories behind social anarchists' perspective on private property and economic organization.

Wikipedia

Although not an anarchist project, some have pointed out that Wikipedia has many anarchist qualities: Wikipedians co-operate freely for their own benefit as well as the benefit of all (mutual aid), it is self-managed with little hierarchy, copyleft licence restricts private property rights and guarantees public use.[7]

See also

Notes

  1. Template:Notetoxicpop.co.uk, "Taoism & Anarchism," April 14, 2002 (accessed June 6, 2005).
  2. ^ Peter Kropotkin, "Anarchism," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910 (accessed June 6, 2005).
  3. ^ Ibid
  4. ^ Mark Philp, "William Godwin," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2003 (accessed June 6, 2005).
  5. ^ CIA, "Argentina," The World Factbook (accessed June 6, 2005).
  6. ^ Raúl Zibechi, "Worker-Run Factories: From Survival to Economic Solidarity," Citizen Action in the Americas, no. 12, August 2004 (accessed June 6, 2005).
  7. ^ yozzee, "Wikipedia—Anarchy in Action?," July 12, 2004 (accessed June 6, 2005).

See also

This article is based on a GNU FDL Wikipedia article: of anarchism en:History of anarchism W
Bookmark and Share
posted by u2r2h at Friday, December 22, 2006 0 comments

Locations of visitors to this page Politics Blogs - Blog Top Sites