The People's Poet!

The People's Poet!
Right on, kids!

Thursday 26 June 2014

Embedded Journalism

"The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets' which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us. These are already pre-digested, and then are sicked up as little gobbits of authorised spew. The columns of defence correspondents in the establishment sheets serve as the spittoons."


E. P. Thompson,British historian.

Wednesday 25 June 2014

The Power Elite

"A Society that is in its higher circles and middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of "success" to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed."


The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills

Thursday 19 June 2014

The Bagua Massacre Five Years On

What 'Free Trade Agreements' really mean for ordinary people.

On Fifth Anniversary of Peru FTA Bagua Massacre of Indigenous Protestors, State Department Cables Published on Wikileaks Reveal U.S. Role

"On the fifth anniversary of a deadly confrontation in Peru spurred by controversial policies enacted to comply with the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA), Amazon Watch and Public Citizen expressed extreme concern over recently revealed U.S. diplomatic cables showing the U.S. government’s role in the violence that resulted in the deaths of at least 32 people.

On June 5, 2009, Peruvian security forces attacked several thousand indigenous Awajun and Wambis protestors, including many women and children, who were blocking the “Devil's Curve,” a jungle highway near Bagua, 600 miles north of Lima. The protestors were demanding revocation of decrees providing new access to exploit their Amazonian lands for oil, gas and logging that had been enacted to conform Peruvian law to FTA requirements."


(full article continues here...)

Wednesday 18 June 2014

David Graeber Responds to Chris Hedges Anti-Black Bloc Rant

Although this is a couple of years old I think it's worthwhile reviewing the fallout from Chris Hedges' criticism of the Black Bloc tactic.

Chris Hedges February 6 2012 The Cancer in Occupy:

"The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement. The presence of Black Bloc anarchists—so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontations with police and destroy property—is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state. The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent. They were shut down because the state realized the potential of their broad appeal even to those within the systems of power. They were shut down because they articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines. And they were shut down because they were places mothers and fathers with strollers felt safe."

The rest of Hedges' piece continues here...

David Graeber takes exception to Hedges' superficial characterisation of the Black Bloc tactic.

David Graeber February 9 2012 Concerning the Violent Peace-Police

"I am writing this on the premise that you are a well-meaning person who wishes Occupy Wall Street to succeed. I am also writing as someone who was deeply involved in the early stages of planning Occupy in New York.

I am also an anarchist who has participated in many Black Blocs. While I have never personally engaged in acts of property destruction, I have on more than one occasion taken part in Blocs where property damage has occurred. (I have taken part in even more Blocs that did not engage in such tactics. It is a common fallacy that this is what Black Blocs are all about. It isn’t.)

I was hardly the only Black Bloc veteran who took part in planning the initial strategy for Occupy Wall Street. In fact, anarchists like myself were the real core of the group that came up with the idea of occupying Zuccotti Park, the “99%” slogan, the General Assembly process, and, in fact, who collectively decided that we would adopt a strategy of Gandhian non-violence and eschew acts of property damage. Many of us had taken part in Black Blocs. We just didn’t feel that was an appropriate tactic for the situation we were in.

This is why I feel compelled to respond to your statement “The Cancer in Occupy.” This statement is not only factually inaccurate, it is quite literally dangerous. This is the sort of misinformation that really can get people killed. In fact, it is far more likely to do so, in my estimation, than anything done by any black-clad teenager throwing rocks.

Let me just lay out a few initial facts:

1. Black Bloc is a tactic, not a group. It is a tactic where activists don masks and black clothing (originally leather jackets in Germany, later, hoodies in America), as a gesture of anonymity, solidarity, and to indicate to others that they are prepared, if the situation calls for it, for militant action. The very nature of the tactic belies the accusation that they are trying to hijack a movement and endanger others. One of the ideas of having a Black Bloc is that everyone who comes to a protest should know where the people likely to engage in militant action are, and thus easily be able to avoid it if that’s what they wish to do.

2. Black Blocs do not represent any specific ideological, or for that matter anti-ideological position. Black Blocs have tended in the past to be made up primarily of anarchists but most contain participants whose politics vary from Maoism to Social Democracy. They are not united by ideology, or lack of ideology, but merely a common feeling that creating a bloc of people with explicitly revolutionary politics and ready to confront the forces of the order through more militant tactics if required, is, on the particular occasion when they assemble, a useful thing to do. It follows one can no more speak of “Black Bloc Anarchists,” as a group with an identifiable ideology, than one can speak of “Sign-Carrying Anarchists” or “Mic-Checking Anarchists.”

3. Even if you must select a tiny, ultra-radical minority within the Black Bloc and pretend their views are representative of anyone who ever put on a hoodie, you could at least be up-to-date about it. It was back in 1999 that people used to pretend “the Black Bloc” was made up of nihilistic primitivist followers of John Zerzan opposed to all forms of organization. Nowadays, the preferred approach is to pretend “the Black Bloc” is made up of nihilistic insurrectionary followers of The Invisible Committee, opposed to all forms of organization. Both are absurd slurs. Yours is also 12 years out of date.

4. Your comment about Black Bloc’ers hating the Zapatistas is one of the weirdest I’ve ever seen. Sure, if you dig around, you can find someone saying almost anything. But I’m guessing that, despite the ideological diversity, if you took a poll of participants in the average Black Bloc and asked what political movement in the world inspired them the most, the EZLN would get about 80% of the vote. In fact I’d be willing to wager that at least a third of participants in the average Black Bloc are wearing or carrying at least one item of Zapatista paraphernalia. (Have you ever actually talked to someone who has taken part in a Black Bloc? Or just to people who dislike them?)

5. “Diversity of tactics” is not a “Black Bloc” idea. The original GA in Tompkins Square Park that planned the original occupation, if I remember, adopted the principle of diversity of tactics (at least it was discussed in a very approving fashion), at the same time as we all also concurred that a Gandhian approach would be the best way to go. This is not a contradiction: “diversity of tactics” means leaving such matters up to individual conscience, rather than imposing a code on anyone. Partly,this is because imposing such a code invariably backfires. In practice, it means some groups break off in indignation and do even more militant things than they would have otherwise, without coordinating with anyone else—as happened, for instance, in Seattle. The results are usually disastrous. After the fiasco of Seattle, of watching some activists actively turning others over to the police—we quickly decided we needed to ensure this never happened again. What we found that if we declared “we shall all be in solidarity with one another. We will not turn in fellow protesters to the police. We will treat you as brothers and sisters. But we expect you to do the same to us”—then, those who might be disposed to more militant tactics will act in solidarity as well, either by not engaging in militant actions at all for fear they will endanger others (as in many later Global Justice Actions, where Black Blocs merely helped protect the lockdowns, or in Zuccotti Park, where mostly people didn’t bloc up at all) or doing so in ways that run the least risk of endangering fellow activists."


The rest of Graeber's response continues here...

Direct Democracy

Tuesday 17 June 2014

Screaming Blue Messiahs - Good And Gone

Goldman Sachs: The bank that rules the world - Special series - Al Jazeera English

Goldman Sachs: The bank that rules the world - Special series - Al Jazeera English

"Ever since the stock market crashed, on the night of September 15 2008, the name Goldman Sachs, or GS, has been appearing everywhere: in the collapse of the financial system, the Greek crisis, the plunge of the euro, and the campaign to prevent regulation of financial markets. The investment bank created in New York in 1868 has carved out its reputation and success by working silently behind the scenes. But today GS stands accused of myriad charges: playing a key role in the subprime loan fiasco, pushing several of its competitors into bankruptcy, helping countries like Greece hide their deficits before speculating on their downfall, precipitating the fall of the euro, and influencing the consumer price index. And yet GS has come out of this latest crisis richer and more powerful than ever."

Nicholas Shaxson on Tax Havens, the Banking system & UK Uncut

Saturday 14 June 2014

Norm Kirk

I was just reading Chris Trotter's latest contribution over at Bowalley Road, It contained a brilliant quote from Norman Kirk:

"It did not brood. It had no character. Instead it conformed. The people were drab. The street was drab. The people were poor. The street was poor. It was there because it had to be. It had nowhere else to go. Neither did the people. It did not inspire. It was a sponge. It soaked up hope. And at night it counted its people like a warder counts his prisoners."

Thursday 12 June 2014

Quote: Rudolf Rocker

"Power always acts destructively, for its possessors are ever striving to lace all phenomena of social life into a corset of their laws to give them a definite shape. Its mental expression is dead dogma; its physical manifestation of life, brute force. This lack of intelligence in its endeavours leaves its imprint likewise on the persons of its representatives, gradually making them mentally inferior and brutal, even though they were originally excellently endowed. Nothing dulls the mind and soul of man as does the eternal monotony of routine, and power is essentially routine." - Rudolf Rocker, "Nationalism and Culture", 1937.

Tuesday 10 June 2014

The People's Poem! - The Young Ones S1E6

Rik Mayall (7 March 1958 – 9 June 2014).

I remember when The Young Ones first appeared on television in New Zealand, I think it was on Friday night. A few mates and I would watch the latest episode while taping it, then we would watch the episode again straight afterwards. There really was nothing that came close to the anarchic madness The Young Ones represented at the time, I have never laughed as hard at anything I have seen as I did during that first episode.

  “I feel sorry for you, you zeros, you nobodies. What’s going to live on after you die? Nothing, that’s what! This house will become a shrine! And punks and skins and Rastas will all gather round and all hold their hands in sorrow for their fallen leader! And all the grown-ups will say, ‘But why are the kids crying?’ And the kids will say, ‘Haven’t you heard? Rick is dead! The People’s Poet is dead!’ And then one particularly sensitive and articulate teenager will say, ‘Why kids, do you understand nothing? How can Rick be dead when we still have his poems?’."

 The People’s Poem:
  What do you think you’re doing
  PIG?
  Do you really give a FIG, 
  PIG? 
  And what’s your favourite GIG,
  PIG? 
  Barry Manilow … 
  or the Black and White Minstrel Show!

Thursday 5 June 2014

Libertarian Socialism: Beyond Anarchism and Marxism?

This looks o.k., a new book on Libertarian Socialism. Check out the review over at Anarchist Writers
"The book ends with a conclusion by Berry and Pinta which addresses the core issues well. So is a libertarian socialism which combines the best of Marxism and anarchism possible? As the chapter on Sorel suggests, revolutionary anarchists have long advocated “the best” of Marxism and rejected “the worse” (and proven right over parliamentarianism, statism, partyism, etc.). So from a revolutionary anarchist perspective, it is tempting to conclude that Black and Red have been united since the 1860s. That Marx’s contributions to our understanding of capitalism are important as are the ideas of libertarian Marxists need to be placed against the fact that Marxism has failed. While some cannot bring themselves to acknowledge this, hopefully others will be less ideologically narrow-minded. For while there are multiple anarchisms (as Marxists note), there are multiple Marxisms: a Kautsky is different from a Lenin who is different from a Pannekeok who is hardly a Stalin. Are there overlaps between anarchism and Marxism? It depends. Marxists can draw revolutionary anarchist conclusions as Lenin acknowledged when he labelled the council communists “semi-anarchist elements.” So engaging with libertarian Marxists is worthwhile but we must never forget that they moved towards revolutionary anarchism conclusions. This book shows why others should take this path."