7 January 2008

Johann Hari

Johann Hari - what a great journalist. And that's a rare thing.

http://www.johannhari.com/

I agree with his criticism of the Chapman Brothers.

Buying Goya works in order to deliberately deface them?

Sick.

And they're shit anyway.

1953 and 1973

In 1953 the USA destroyed democracy in Iran.

In 1973 the USA destroyed democracy in Chile.


These were two very important events with terrible consequences.

6 January 2008

Affluenza

http://www.selfishcapitalist.com/

Great stuff!

Really good stuff

But (one minor criticism) Oliver James still accepts unquestioningly - as so many do- that there is such a thing as mental illness and makes no mention of Szasz.

Many, many people - including many great writers and thinkers - for example, George Orwell and A.C. Grayling - never ever questioned the idea that there are people who are absolutely "mad" or "insane" or are "lunatics" or whatever.
But when you think about it it is obviously a meaningless distinction.
.......

Is that right regarding Eric Fromm?

"Erich Fromm, the Marxist psychoanalyst and Buddhist writer..."
Madeleine Bunting in Saturday's Guardian.
Rather a sententious description. But at least it's a mention of a thinker of great importance.
He was not a doctrinaire Marxist, nor a doctrinaire psychoanalyst either, if he was either at all.
As for Buddhist, well that's news to me. He was interested in the idea of God.
He described himself as a humanistic socialist.

4 January 2008

Orwell

"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it."

George Orwell, in "Why I Write", 1946.

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"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party."

Labour Party website, 2008.

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The NewLabourPartyUSDemocratPartyofEngland is not at present a socialist party by a dictionary definition of the word.....
It is a pro-business party.

....

An example of Unspeak really.
....

2 January 2008

Important Statement

And now for an important statement.

West Ham United 2 - Manchester United 1.

Webshite

www.buymoreshitnow.com

Donald Rooum

Happy New Year!

Even though I think that Steve Bell is a surreal political genius and the best mainstream political cartoonist of all time, I must blow the trumpet for the less well-known cartoons of Donald Rooum.
His anarchist cartoons are magnificent didactic pieces. They have literally changed the way I see the world and I wholeheartedly agree with most of the views that he expresses in them.

Work and why it must be destroyed before it destroys us!


Work and why it must be destroyed before it destroys us:


http://www.afed.org.uk/ace/work.html

http://flag.blackened.net/af/ace/work.html

Primordial anarchies

Unlike some anarchist theorists I do not believe that all primordial human societies were leaderless anarchies, without cheiftains or authorities of any kind.

The early emergence of leaders of some kind seems quite common, if only by consent of the governed.
However I do believe that leaders should be questioned.

That said, I think people are naturally anarchistic in the sense that most people instinctively don't like being bossed around and like to have consensus.
...



Anarchism means "I will not rule and I will not be ruled." This is a valid demand.