Slashdot Mirror

Shit like this [Chile coup, Pinochet -mi]

Chile's Pinochet, upon stepping down (show me one Left-dictator to have done that!), has left his country as the top Latin American economy.

Really? Then why is this organge line indicating the average of Latin America above the blue line indicating Chile between 1970 and 1991? There is also a different story to tell.

I suggest you read this enlightning entry in the Anarchist FAQ: http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionC2#secc23 , called "Is owning capital a sufficient reason to justify profit". You may not share their views, but at least this is an argumented point.

If you want communism, go to a commune. The early church practiced communism. Communism is totally different from socialism because communism requires you to willingly surrender your worldly goods to the community which you are free to join or not join.

I'm afraid you're mixing up a few things - living in a commune and communism are only loosely related. In a communist society nobody would force you to give up your "worldly" goods as long as they are not used to exploit others.

A good readings on all these topics related to capitalism, socialism, etc ... can be found here

In the meantime, the rest of us will keep thinking of political ideologies based on their practical manifestations, rather than pie-in-the-sky theories.

You mean like the anarchist Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo of the Spanish Civil War? Their socialist (if not communist) approach surely turned them into a single-party centrally-planned dictatorship in the areas the other factions didn't control. That is, before their Anarchist leanings made them dissolve into pure chaos where people just looted.

Oh, wait...

It's a good thing we (or some of us) live in the enlightened USA. In the US, we would never allow a law that forbade the interpretation of history and our collective past. Except for Florida, that is.

The best we to enforce a "do not copy" policy is, don't do the transaction. Everything beyond that takes away the freedom of the others to copy and redistribute. A limited term copyright was meant to give the creators a chance to cash in on their creations for a limited time. Note, however, that this cashing in is only necessary, because we live in an imperfect society, i.e. capitalism, where for most people it is necessary to sell something or themselves to make a living. for suggestions on how a truly free society might be build, where such selling is no longer necessary, and hence, copyright obsolete, you might want to continue reading here.

>

In a perfect capitalist system, power is completely independent of wealth. In an imperfect system, such as exists in all nations today, government power is used to increase the wealth of those who have the political influence.

I'd suggest you read this to get an understanding of the role of the state, and then you might want to skip to this section to get a better understanding of what capitalism is not.

>

In a perfect capitalist system, power is completely independent of wealth. In an imperfect system, such as exists in all nations today, government power is used to increase the wealth of those who have the political influence.

I'd suggest you read this to get an understanding of the role of the state, and then you might want to skip to this section to get a better understanding of what capitalism is not.

Rather than base itself on a study of reality and the generalization of theory based on the data gathered, economics has almost always been based on generating theories rooted on whatever assumptions were required to make the theory work. Empirical confirmation, if it happens at all, is usually done decades later and if the facts contradict the economics, so much the worse for the facts.

And they prove it.

They think that this is a good idea because showing up in crowded areas and making a disturbance is an excellent way to remain anonymous.

Your post seems to suggest that Anonymous is smart enough to not show up in person, and that HBGary is only using this as a scapegoat. You seem to think that Anonymous is logical and believes that staying online is the best course of action to preserve their anonymity.

I think you have some reading to do.

Actually, you have the wrong idea about libertarianism.

The term libertarian referred to anti-state socialists (anarchists) for a century before the word was hijacked by pro- laissez-faire capitalist right wingers.

Anarchism is at it's core, not so much anti-government (Proudhon's biting and brilliant "to be governed" aside) but opposed to all coercive forms of hierarchy such as the state, organized religion, capitalism, racism, patriarchy, etc. Anarchists envision and support various forms of non-hierarchical self-governance based on mutual aid and voluntary association such as localized or federated democratic structures (unions, councils, etc). Anarchism implies a egalitarian society where workers collectively manage the means of production without bosses or owners. Skilled work (as well as shit work) would be evenly available in balanced job complexes.

From the 1850s to the 1970s the term libertarian referred exclusively to the left (anti-capitalists). It was only in the early 1970s that the USA Libertarian Party hijacked the term. In most of the world libertarian is still refers to anarchists or anarchist leaning political orientations of the left.

I use the conventional definition of socialism, which is where the means of production are in the hands of the government.

For this constellation, one should use the term state socialism and rightfully oppose it. But that doesn't mean a libertarian socialism isn't possible.

I use the conventional definition of socialism, which is where the means of production are in the hands of the government.

For this constellation, one should use the term state socialism and rightfully oppose it. But that doesn't mean a libertarian socialism isn't possible.

I use the conventional definition of socialism, which is where the means of production are in the hands of the government.

For this constellation, one should use the term state socialism and rightfully oppose it. But that doesn't mean a libertarian socialism isn't possible.

If your point is that every country is necessarily better of if it was run completely democratically (i.e. by the vote of the majority) Chile is one of the best examples to the contrary. Instead of being the most prosperous and most free country in the Latin America for the last 30 years or so and approaching the living standard of the developed world (after the moderately nasty post coup period in the 70s), ... .

Simply wrong

Thus, between 1970 and 1989, Chile's GDP "grew at a slow pace (relative to the 1960s and to other Latin American countries over the same period) with an average rate of 1.8-2.0 per cent. On a per capita basis . . . GDP [grew] at a rate (0.1-0.2 per cent) well below the Latin American average . . . [B]y 1989 the GDP was still 6.1 per cent below the 1981 level, not having recovered the level reached in 1970. For the entire period of military rule (1974-1989) only five Latin American countries had a worse record. ..." [Petras and Leiva, Op. Cit., p. 32]

As for the living standard:

Per capita consumption fell by 23% from 1972-87. The proportion of the population below the poverty line (the minimum income required for basic food and housing) increased from 20% to 44.4% between 1970 and 1987. Per capita health care spending was more than halved from 1973 to 1985, setting off explosive growth in poverty-related diseases such as typhoid, diabetes and viral hepatitis. On the other hand, while consumption for the poorest 20% of the population of Santiago dropped by 30%, it rose by 15% for the richest 20%. [Noam Chomsky, Year 501, pp. 190-191] The percentage of Chileans without adequate housing increased from 27 to 40 percent between 1972 and 1988, despite the claims of the government that it would solve homelessness via market friendly policies.

That depends on who's reporting you believe. Some say "Only 3!!!". Others say hundreds.

The point exactly... luckily we have the documents as released to see for ourselves and not depend on mainstream media spin. They are saying "thousands" of informers/collaborators at risk - but only three are listed as informers. The rest are just names, village elders, anyone they stopped at checkpoints etc inside coalition occupied territory. So the media machine is trying to pass off all these people as "informers", at risk. They might as well say that every Afghan in occupied territory is at risk if we talk to them - it's no less credible.

Given that WikiLeaks initially insisted there were 0, and now admit to 3 kinda indicates a loss of credibility on the issue.

Like you said, depends on who you believe. I beleive the raw document - three informers - possibly a few others exposed by GPS coordinates and no names, but that's a stretching the definition

The leak has exposed no new civilian deaths. All of the information, minus the naming-the-informants problem, was already reported in the media.

Again, misinformation damage control by mainstream US press - historically extremely pro War. Nothing to see here, move along.

If you think the leaks are new revelations, then you haven't been paying much attention to the war.

Or you have may not been reading outside of propaganda pieces. To pick just one overview of many available, see "The Significance of the Afghanistan War Diary" under "What does the Afghanistan War Diary tell us? To what extent was the information therein already known? And what is its significance now?" There is plenty more quality journalistic analysis on the content, with more being published every week provide new insights into the war - just search outside of the US mainstream media channels. Here is another example. Very hard to claim that none of that material was previously known, as you seem to have been led to beleive.

Actaully, yes they do. Every. Single. War. Ever. Since the stone age. Or are you going to pretend that carpet-bombing cities at night in WWII didn't cause any civilian deaths? That no civilian in Vietnam was mistaken for a VC and shot? That the 'road of death' in the first gulf war had no civilians in any of the vehicles? That bombing Serbia never caused a civilian death (or a Chinese diplomat's death)?

Nice straw man. I never said that civilians don't die in war. I said what's new knowledge to us about out own troops related to 20K+ civilian deaths. One example or many: Extra judicial assassinations of innocent civilian children, while they sleep. Or how about thousands civilians killed by "ricochets" - slang for shot in the head without a valid reason. Or do you claim that the US or coalition forces have always been doing that? Search "Task Force 373" exposed by the diaries, because it seems you have been hoodwinked to ignore any new material that has been exposed.

Actually, you're so busy projecting me as an evil person

I am not trying the project you as anything, and certainly not evil. All I am taking issue with is the propaganda being parroted everywhere you look in mainstream US press - so much fabricated and false information in an obvious damage control propaganda campaign - that even a cursory look at the raw data can disprove it. Shit like "Thousands of Informers and their families at risk", "Amnesty Int. Condemns Wikileaks" - all easily proved wrong lies if we stick to facts.

Even Amnesty International spokeswoman Susanna Flood confirmed that there was no authorized statement on WikiLeaks

Could you translate this into English?

I would like to add that the political concept of anarchy is not chaos. It's about minimizing hierarchical authority and power differentials, not everyone doing "whatever they want". There's a substantial difference and many people are unaware of this; it is somewhat understandable since the word "anarchy" has become synonymous with "chaos" in common usage. It is perhaps akin to the unfortunate confusion over the term "theory" in the context of evolution; the scientific and common usages are not aligned.

I've never heard Chomsky or Mother Jones on the AM radio. I also wouldn't consider your examples "fringe".

Moveon is solidly pro-Democratic party, that's probably to the right of the American people. Democrats support corporate bailouts, drug wars, terror wars, etc. The American people do not.

Chomsky and Mother Jones might be a little to the left of the American mainstream, but would fit right with moderate European social democrats. I'd hardly call that fringe.

If you want to give examples of the radical left, check out crimethinc, bash back, or infoshop.org.

"Governments in miniature" of a temporary nature, based as far as possible upon consensus, with no arm of force, wouldn't resemble governments very much.
Please see section I-5 of the Infoshop FAQ*.
Link

* The FAQ is a little harsh towards market anarchism, betraying the bias of its authors, but is very comprehensive and otherwise excellent.

They already have tried this in the US. Back a few years ago the FBI raided and shut down a story site for what should be protected by the 1st amendment.

Red Rose Stories Shutdown

So what? They are involved in all of it, not just at the RNC. They messed with people at the DNC, too, documented here, and here, and here.

The point being that they do this everywhere (with the FBI and other armed bureaucracies involved). So it's the same thing they always do. They aren't doing anything "special" for the RNC.

I am voting for Obama for mass extinction, punctuated equilibrium, and the acceleration of evolutionary processes (and/or the Second Coming of Jesus).

In 2000, I traded my vote with a New York University professor. He voted for Nader for me in the safe state of New York, and I voted for Gore for him the swing state of Missouri.

Since I'm voting for Obama this year regardless, I have decided to "trade" my vote again only to trick someone in a safe state into voting for Nader.

Last election Nader wasn't on the Missouri ballot. So when I went in to vote, I decided to accept the argument that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, and I wrote in Ralph Nader's name. I tell people I voted for Bush last election for mass extinction and the Second Coming. So I got two votes in one where everybody else only got one vote.

I figure Democrats bake a nice big wedding cake with thick layers of frosting, they give us eat a big slice and we eat that shit up. Only when we get to the last few bites of our slice do we realize that it's all bloody -- it's a cake of death. The Republicans don't even bother baking cakes -- they make a cream pie of death and throw it your face! At least with the Republicans it's in-your-face, you know what's going on, you can take your Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy towel and wipe that shit off and figure out how to move on. But with the Democrats you ingest your entire helping and now the problem is systemic rather than topical!

VOTE CREATIVELY!

VOTING IS DIRECT ACTION! VOTE FOR PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM!

Also: Break Shit At Night!

too bad some rotten apples managed to take control of the country

Decisions by career law enforcement officials, on a case-by-case basis, about which person that's been arrested to put on which list may - but certainly not must - be influenced by whatever administration is in office at the time. But one thing is certain: the part that very loudly scolds, opposes, and certainly (if you listen to their press conferences) loathes Bush as a person and as C-in-C are running both houses of congress, and have all of the media access they could possibly dream of. If they thought there was some wretched abuse happening in this area, they're one piece of paper and a vote away from a law that changes the situation. And please, not all "bad apples" are in charge of law enforcement. Law enforcement has a lot of "bad apples" to deal with, including protesters that just can't seem to resist smashing up retail shops and injuring bystanders with thrown bricks as a way to show how their world view is more valid than someone else's. People who actually organize, in advance, the violent sub-groups within these larger professional protest organizations sure as hell SHOULD be considered dangerous. It's what they do. They want to be considered dangerous because they know that only that level of drama will buy them the television time they can't get by simply having a reasonable point to make in the first place.

That IMF protest is a perfect example: now they get to say, "See? The IMF is so bad that perfectly normal students couldn't stop themselves from hurling bricks at some shopkeeper's business, just from thinking about it! The IMF hates shopkeepers!" This crap isn't random: there are people that do it, and plan it, full time. Some of them actually are violent, or go to great lengths to inspire other people to become violent (that's a good read, complete with beaming pride over rocks thrown at "corporate windows," some hilarious hand-wringing over whether and how to describe sub-groups of militant marchers within the spectrum of a "variety of genders," etc). I've got no problem with those that specifically plan to, and actually do destroy private property to show how much they treasure their right to "protest" (oh, the irony) and get arrested doing it - and then do post-game analysis with an eye towards how to do more and better next time! - being listed with other people that do violent things to other people and their property. When a protester wrecks someone's business and hits a young woman in the head with a brick, it really doesn't matter what their point of view is... they've seen fit to use violence in a setting where it's completely inappropriate, and that says a lot about their world view, and a lot about whether, for example, Canada might want them to come for a visit, too.

How different agencies or other countries respond to your presence on that list is a different matter - should it simply be a binary response (fly, no-fly)? Probably not. Sounds like something that should be resolved legislatively, and since the party that's in control of the legislative process is also home to the vast majority of the "peace protester" profession, that would seem to be a pretty simple thing to tackle, right? Those in charge of Congress and the Senate seem to be pretty beholden to groups like MoveOn.org, so all they have to do is run a couple of their famously persuasive, insightful, discounted full-page NY Times ads, and problem solved!

TRUE libertarians are both. That's kinda the whole point of, you know, calling them 'libertarians'.

Actually TRUE libertarians are libertarian socialists, a.k.a. anarchists.

Capitalists attempted to steal the term in the 1950s, but capitalism requires a huge amount of state intervention and control of the people - land and resource deeds, corporate charters, copyrights, patents, everything that creates and supports the control of economic resources by a minority owning class. A system based on the exchange of labor - i.e., socialism - can do with much less intervention, approaching zero as non-coercive social forms or organization grow.

You'll note that right-wingers who like to identify as "libertarian" and talk about "smaller government", never mean reducing any of these state powers that funnel control of weath into the hands of a few. In fact most believe that turning land, natural resources, and even ideas into "property", and protecting the control of that "property" by the owning class, is the prime function of the state. Their idea of "smaller government" is ripping the governors off the engine of the state that enables capitalism, not shrinking the engine.

I don't remember, but I know they've bribed radio stations to broadcast crap music.

Correction: They BRIBE radio stations to broadcast crap music.

Payola you say? Now they just use a 3rd party. (Jeff McCluskey)
Read more about how the industry works here. http://infoshop.org/texts/seizing/ballinger.html

I favor a government with no central point of failure, but then trying to get a crowd to agree on anything important is near impossible. (see congress) And you would still have the probability that some of those people vote with their wallets and not with their hearts or heads.

You may be an anarchist. Or at least, you may find that an anarchist analysis is pretty close in line with your own concerns about large centralized government, and the corrupting influence of money and greed on government.

I think the biggest reason government (and business) is so fucked up right now is because as their supporters we allow them to be. We allow them to be fucked up not by voting for them, but by depending on them. We can't take care of ourselves or each other without the government. We can't have functional communities where people look out for each other and make sure we're all safe without the government's heavy hand over us, forcing us to behave. Hell, people won't even share their bounty when others are in need, so we get the government to take it from them, and "share" it how the government sees fit.

So in my mind, the biggest thing you can do now to be part of the solution is stop depending on the government. Many, many people in our society put up with the government's abuses of power because they believe that if we took that power away, we'd have mass chaos and "the law of the jungle" would reign. Prove them wrong. Get involved in non-governmental organizations. Help out the needy in your community voluntarily. Speak up for people who are being treated unfairly, and stand up against those who try to boss everyone else around. Support organizations that do things that the government won't, or do them better than the government can. Basically, stop thinking only about yourself, and start thinking about how to build a society that will be less and less dependent on the government as time goes on. Be a reasoning ethical person, and demand the same from others.

Well there's the rub - I have no dogma to offer you, no shining path which I want you to follow and none of that happy medium nonesense. All I offer you is your own rationality.

Power corrupts. Allowing power to concentrate is a bad idea. Power is expressed in the modern triumvirate of the state, capitalism and complicity. See the anarchist FAQ for more.

THE PEACE POLICE

Unfortunately, the presence and persistence of "peace police" was quite disturbing. On at least 6 separate occasions, so-called "non-violent" activists physically attacked individuals who targeted corporate property. Some even went so far as to stand in front of the Niketown super store and tackle and shove the black bloc away. Indeed, such self-described "peace-keepers" posed a much greater threat to individuals in the black bloc than the notoriously violent uniformed "peace-keepers" sanctioned by the state (undercover officers have even used the cover of the activist peace-keepers to ambush those who engage in corporate property destruction).

RESPONSE TO THE BLACK BLOC

Response to the black bloc has highlighted some of the contradictions and internal oppressions of the "nonviolent activist" community. Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of those who engaged in violence against black-clad and masked people (many of whom were harassed despite the fact that they never engaged in property destruction), there is the racism of privileged activists who can afford to ignore the violence perpetrated against the bulk of society and the natural world in the name of private property rights. Window-smashing has engaged and inspired many of the most oppressed members of Seattle's community more than any giant puppets or sea turtle costumes ever could (not to disparage the effectiveness of those tools in other communities).

Unthankfully we don't live in a capitalist system, we live in the Corporate Aristocracy Thomas Jefferson warned of. While we may have some choices about what we buy and who we buy it from, we don't for some things. For instance local governments granted local monopolies to power and telephone then to cable companies. And the FCC, here in the US, makes it practically impossible for someone to start their own radio and tv stations. Just ask those who started or tried to start micropower, "pirate", radio stations. The Mass Media wouldn't have it anyother way, they don't want to competition. We are getting more choices though in that in some places power users can buy their electricity from conventional or "green" providers. And because of cellphones people have a bunch of choices as to who provides their phone service. However we still have patents, and Adam Smith the "father" of capitalism was against patents.

I would rather see tax money be spend on R&D and physical infrastructure, items industry does not generatlly fund.

Some R&D, yes, with it open sourced. Along with physical infrastructure, as long as it is all open, ie if someone wants to provide services using the infrastructure then they should be able to.

Could you heat blood at the skin enough to re-enter the circulation system and transfer that heat elsewhere? Could you heat blood in that spot enough to reach a boil? What if the protester has a transdermal implant? Aren't microwaves supposed to give you cancer? Could you heat a blood vessle, say... behind the ear... enough to cause an aneurysm? What about the spine?

Nothing is non-lethal. Victoria Snelgrove here in Boston took a non-lethal pepper ball to the eye, killing her rather badly. For exactly the same reason that EMT's tell you not to bridge electricity across your heart, tazers sometimes stop them from beating. Beanbags kill by internal bleeding. Pepper spray has been known to cause respiratory failure.

That's not to say that we shouldn't keep looking for better and better ways to inflict pain without feeling moral reprocussions about it. But that is to say that every "non-lethal" weapon will kill somebody somewhere.

That's not anarchy.

Science Fiction & Fantasy Wikipedia
http://www.infoshop.org/sf/index.php/Main_Page

Libertarianism, regardless of the clueless palitical parties who espouse it, was on the left wing of the spectrum teh last I checked.

The terms "left" and "right" as applied to politics originally meant the commoners and the nobility. As used today, they're best applied to the workers and the owners or "capitalists" - like the nobility of old, the owning class is defined and backed by the state (which issues corporate charters, land and resource deeds, patents, copyrights, etcetera).

"Left" and "right", "worker" versus "owner", should not be confused with social liberalism or conservatism, or with command economies versue free markets, or with interventionism versus isolationism in foreign policy. Politics is multidimensional, and one could very well be a leftist with conservative social views who favors a free market and an interventionalist foregin policy, or a right-wing backer of command economies with a tolerant social attidude and a yen for isolationism. Of course, some combinations of these views are statistically more common than others.

The term "libertarian" originally refered to the sort of libertarian socialism generally known today as anarchy. Libertarian socialism is decidedly leftist, i.e., aligned with the concerns of workers over owners.

"Libertarian capitalists", of the sort you'll often find in the American "Libertarian Party", attempted to appropriate the term in the mid 20th-century. Libertarian capitalists are decidedly to the right, i.e., aligned with the concerns of owners, putting property rights as primary. (Indeed, many hold the view that a persons body is their "property" and thus arguing that all other rights flow from property rights).

Heinlein was clearly socially liberal, a free-marketer, and a supporter of war as legitimate foreign policy. Beyond that, I'm not familiar enough with his work to attempt to characterize him.

In the words of David Noble:

(Corporations) "have the ability to transfer production from one country to another, to close a plant in one and reopen it elsewhere, to direct and redirect investment wherever the 'climate' is most favourable [to business]. . . . [I]t has enabled the corporation to play one workforce off against another in the pursuit of the cheapest and most compliant labour (which gives the misleading appearance of greater efficiency). . . [I]t has compelled regions and nations to compete with one another to try and attract investment by offering tax incentives, labour discipline, relaxed environmental and other regulations and publicly subsidised infrastructure. . . Thus has emerged the great paradox of our age, according to which those nations that prosper most (attract corporate investment) by most readily lowering their standard of living (wages, benefits, quality of life, political freedom). The net result of this system of extortion is a universal lowering of conditions and expectations in the name of competitiveness and prosperity."

- from Progress Without People

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32082
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060531-6949 .html
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/business/14707951.h tm
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/8923
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20 060531084202128

Want some more? I dare say they are easy to find.

"It cites Firefox, MySQL and (more recently) Wikipedia as examples of projects that do not simply allow anarchy to rein in..."

As an anarchist geek, let me point out that this is a wrong use of the word "anarchy." Anarchism is a political philosophy that is FOR organization. Many people have described Wikipedia as an example of "anarchism in action" and they aren't misusing the word instead of using "chaos." The free software/open source (FOSS) movement is another example of anarchism in action and includes many actual anarchists working on various projects.

Find out more about anarchism at http://www.infoshop.org/ (where half of the visitors are using Firefox and other open source browsers)

... is what the US government spends annually on spying: obviously way too much. I mean, do we really need zombie sharks? A real hair-brained idea if I ever heard one. It'll never work. Most likely it's just a way to keep a couple of unimaginative researchers from loosing their jobs. I say leave the poor animals be; with the shark fin industry and everything they have it hard enough as it is these days.

"But in America the judicial branch of government [snip] is not the same as the executive branch"

They both work for the same Federal Government, you poor ignorant peasant.

"[snip] and they are often at odds with each other in their competition for power ."

Truly, how comforting.

"Seriously, take a civics class."

No really, take a "wake up and smell the actual reality" class.

Start here.

The so called "anarchists" get all over the news acting like total fuckwads at WTO "protests".

As an anarchist, somebody who was at the WTO protests, and someone who strongly supports online privacy and the cypherpunk perspective, I'd like to ask what the hell you're talking about?

The WTO protests was one of the biggest events of the late 20th century, it was part of a snowballing effect against corporate globalization which stretched from all points on the globe, and culminated in events such as the uprisings in Argentina and the Zapatista march on Mexico City.

In what way are the WTO protests, which were centered around deconstructing corporate control of our lives, including information and it's free flow, counter to the cypherpunk position?

Actually, you're spot on. I do believe that the Internet is the best form of anarchocapitalism that we've ever seen and I hope to see it instill some faith in voluntary cooperation (ie, capitalism) over time.

I'm sorry for picking a nit here, but there is no such thing as "anarchocapitalism" (that is, outside the fevered dreams of the David Freidman cult; see why anarchocapitalism is an oxymoron here), and expecting technology designed to control information to deliver a society without hierarchy is farcical. Of course, that is not the point for the "anarchocapitalist", is it? All they are after is immediate economic freedom for themselves, a kind of supply-side, trickle-down freedom machine whose obvious flaws will be visited on those who are unfortunate enough to not be in on the ground floor when this wonderful world manifests itself from the struggles of all the oppressed millionaires.

Any "freedom" predicated on technology is simply another form of control: if you can turn it off, or point it at someone, then someone, in a play to exert control, inevitably will. Capitalism is inherently hierarchal, and the Internet is, as well. To expect either to change into a truly anarchic state is simply overshooting any real probability; you might as well expect a fish to evolve directly into an antelope.

Correct:
http://www.infoshop.org/faq/

That was an interesting post until you spouted that nonsense about being an anarcho-capitalists. Anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron. Anarchism opposes the state and capitalism requires the state in order to survive.

Perhaps you are a Libertarian, but saying you are an "anarcho-capitalist" just make you look incredibly ignorant.

For the real scoop on anarchism, check out: http://www.infoshop.org/

The MySpace kids are laughing at your faux pas about anarchism.

however for a MMORPG i figured voting would be fine and i wouldn't get called on by someone like you! :)

http://www.infoshop.org/

Anarchism and anarchy are the same as chaos. Throwing a dictionary definition of the word at me just demonstrates your ignorance of anarchism. The dictionary definition is based on a century of slander against anarchists by capitalism, the government, and the media.

There are many books and websites out there which explain what anarchy is. Try this one for starters: http://www.infoshop.org/

Civilization gets anarchy wrong. It's a shame that they had to display their ignorance of this growing movement by programming it into the game.

If you have already made up your mind about what anarchists are about, then read no further.

If you have not already made up your mind, you might want to go read the "Anarchism FAQ" - you can find it using any of the large web search engines; a copy of this was at http://www.infoshop.org/faq/.

Short answer. Anarchism can work, even in the face of gangs. Go read about Barcelona, 1937; it was a war zone - about the harshest conditions for people to live in - and yet anarchism spoke to the basic desire people have for equality, and for freedom.

People were running around with full shopping carts, and riding around on stolen bicycles through the store. The place was trashed.

Here's a collection of still shots from that video. You can see the 2 cops pulling along their shopping cart full of shoes:

NBC10.com

There are many other reports of police officers looting TVs, computers, even liquor:

NOLA Times-Picayune

This post can be found at http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1984

No longer will Dick Cheney have to pay visits to Langley, Virginia and lean on CIA analysts to produce the kind of intelligence a Veep might need; not now that the President has his man, Republican loyalist Porter J. Goss, heading up the Agency, and a second term in hand. Of course, the CIA was already highly politicized in the first Bush term. Run by George Tenet (accurately dubbed "a political apparatchik" by Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis), throughout most of the last four years, it proved a servile agency despite possessing perfectly clear-eyed analysts who knew the truth about Iraq and wanted to pass it on.

But not, it seemed, servile enough. Unhappy with the intelligence pickings from the CIA, the Bush administration turned to its loveably, unreliable then-"friend," Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, for the sort of intelligence that could actually be used to terrify a nation into war -- you know, all those weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's hands, all those ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda -- and then Douglas Feith, the number three man in the Pentagon, created the Office of Special Plans to "search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists." It cherry-picked intelligence from Chalabi and others and passed it up the line to those eager to speak of mushroom clouds going off over American cities.

Such a complicated process, though. Now, former Republican congressman as well as ex-CIA agent and spy-recruiter Goss will bring no less loyal political aides from the House and elsewhere into the Agency's leadership and so simplify matters in a second Bush term. Already, before November 2, Goss's CIA was working hard to suppress crucial 9/11 information, as Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer reported. The CIA will now be but another, ever expanding militarized arm of an administration that will already control Congress (hence no possibility of serious oversight over the Agency), significant parts of our courts and justice system, a media machine, a political machine, a religious machine, a majority of the state governments in our federalist system, and sizeable hunks of the government bureaucracy. The President, in other words, will have his own intelligence arm and secret army at his beck and interventionist call for the next four years, and no one around to take a peek. The ultimate check on the administration was the electorate and it just failed. (Oh, let's not forget that there will at least be angry CIA agents and others still stuck in this highly politicized system, feeling betrayed, and as things begin to go truly off the tracks, leaking like mad.)

Of course, this administration has long been intent on putting much of what it does not only beyond all oversight, but utterly out of sight. After September 11, they put extraordinary effort and legal thought into creating an offshore mini-gulag, beyond the courts, beyond prying eyes, a torture-system beholden only to the President of the United States in his role as commander-in-chief. The CIA was put in charge of the most secret aspects of this system and, as the part of the government best tooled in the arts of offshore interrogation, from Abu Ghraib to a

Either way I dont think the field people are in much position to debate what ADM would have to say, and earning their $350 a week, before expenses afterall, they are not exactly going out and buying disposable goods at Wallmart.

Why has Hollywood removed the anarchism from this movie?

it's already been 'adjusted' quite a bit.
see:

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20 050721232532306