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And also, German industry got a little help: https://www.adl.org/news/op-ed... https://www.washingtonpost.com... https://libcom.org/library/all... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-... http://www.jewishvirtuallibrar...

Just goes to show: a Jew will sell to both sides as long as there's money to be made.

...can vote to declare that gravity does not exist ?

This article outlines what fascism is, how it is growing in the 21st Century United Kingdom, how it has nothing to offer working people and how we can combat it.

https://libcom.org/thought/fas...

Ahh, the ole Bush helped the Nazis kill jews bit.

Yes, that old bit, in which it is revealed that Prescott Bush could not possibly have not known what he was doing. In fact, a number of corporations willingly cooperated with the Nazis. Without their assistance, the axis could not have made war effectively. Naturally, every one of these corporations has tried to disclaim responsibility for what their German divisions were up to, but the ongoing relationships between such entities during the war make that difficult. The service contract for the concentration camp management machines was paid straight to IBM's American operations in Armonk, NY, for example.

It is a fact (simple or not) that American interests willfully and thus traitorously aided the axis for profit. And it is a fact that Prescott Bush was among them.

You won't find it ironic after you've read this

https://libcom.org/files/Rober...

ANATOMY OF FASCISM - Robert Paxton

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

The Five Stages of Fascism
1) Intellectual exploration, where disillusionment with popular democracy manifests itself in discussions of lost national vigor
2) Rooting, where a fascist movement, aided by political deadlock and polarization, becomes a player on the national stage
3) Arrival to power, where conservatives seeking to control rising leftist opposition invite the movement to share power
4) Exercise of power, where the movement and its charismatic leader control the state in balance with state institutions such as the police and traditional elites such as the clergy and business magnates.
5) Radicalization or entropy, where the state either becomes increasingly radical, as did Nazi Germany, or slips into traditional authoritarian rule, as did Fascist Italy.

You can read the full thing here

https://libcom.org/files/Rober...

David Graeber's article "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs" is excellent.

What will these former truck drivers do? I don't know but we've found work to make up for all kinds of jobs lost in the past.

Yes. The technical term is bullshit jobs.

The beginnings of capitalism: after 90 thousand years of everybody who got hungry taking an apple off a tree in the apple grove, Ogg and his family realized that if they clubbed to death everybody who took an apple from the tree without giving them a dead animal, then they could just sit in the apple grove all day and wouldn't have to go wander through the forest looking for animals to club to death. This became known as private property, entrepreneurship, and the best system ever developed.

It is important to realize that objectively, this whole modern era is so far just a flash in the pan; for 90% of our species' history we lived as hunter-gatherers. There was no chance of travel to other planets, but on the other hand there was no chance of seriously damaging the climate, either. The well-studied Khoisan (aka !Kung) work only a few hours a day to fulfill all their needs; this seems to be true of hunter-gatherer societies in general. http://books.google.com/books?...

This along with other ethnographic and anthropological studies suggest that the long standing view of such societies as "inferior" is a biased artifact of our current society. It's quite clear that the switch from hunter-gatherer to agriculture resulted in a lower standard of living, i.e. a less varied and nutritious diet, an decrease in average lifespan (from agricultural accidents and a jump in epidemic diseases from constant exposure to animals and "species-jumping" of their endemic diseases). http://books.google.com/books/...

"The most important challenges to economic orthodoxy that come from the descriptions of life in hunter-gatherer societies are that (1) the economic notion of scarcity is a social construct, not an inherent property of human existence, (2) the separation of work from social life is not a necessary characteristic of economic production, (3) the linking of individual well-being to individual production is not a necessary characteristic of economic organization, (4) selfishness and acquisitiveness are aspects of human nature, but not necessarily the dominant ones, and (5) inequality based on class and gender is not a necessary characteristic of human society." http://libcom.org/history/hunt...

Similarly, and more familiarly, the industrial revolution resulted in a wave of hunger, poverty, disease, accidents, etc. as we adapted from agriculture.

In general the modern studies of hunter-gatherer societies resemble the suggestions of futurists regarding an "era of abundance" more than those long standing pictures of primitive savagery: egalitarianism, sexual equality, mutual sharing, a social safety net, etc. etc. etc. along with a decent standard of living regarding physical needs. As usual with anthropologists, the remaining time and effort of these societies is arbitrarily assigned to spiritual, social and religious activities. Of course, all this idyllic behavior was largely within the tribe, with its complex net of kinship. However, although there were and are many warlike societies, it appears that the majority of interactions between tribes over history was more a system of trade and mutual recognition of territories.

All this shouldn't be surprising; again, this describes a system which was stable for almost ten times as long as recorded human history, so it's axiomatic that destabilizing influences would be relatively few and weak.

It appears that the destabilizing influence that has led to the current system is mainly a desire for more than subsistence affluence, whether you view that as a legitimate desire for a better standard of living or an illegitimate tendency towards avarice and greed. Either way, it does not seem to be the inescapable part o

You should have a look at David Graeber's articleOn the phenomenon of bullshit jobs, a more serious version of Douglas Adams' B Ark.

People in power have been doing these subtle manipulations for centuries. Check out "A people's history of the United States" by Howard Zinn for reference.

It's less about being politically correct than it is about the amount that was laundered. If there were six more zeroes at the end of the sum, the guy would have gotten off with a warning.

Sigh. That is a load of horseshit, and you should be embarrassed for believing that all it takes is to be involved in high-profile economic activity. Counterexamples abound. You have to be well-connected. http://www.theguardian.com/wor... https://libcom.org/library/all...

If fairness, do you know anyone with $30 BILLION dollars that isn't well connected? I mean, it's not as if he meant $00000030,000 or $30,000.000000

It's less about being politically correct than it is about the amount that was laundered. If there were six more zeroes at the end of the sum, the guy would have gotten off with a warning.

Sigh. That is a load of horseshit, and you should be embarrassed for believing that all it takes is to be involved in high-profile economic activity. Counterexamples abound. You have to be well-connected. http://www.theguardian.com/wor... https://libcom.org/library/all...

Skylab 4 was the mission where te astraunuts revolted.

http://libcom.org/history/1973-skylab-4-mutiny

Political violence doesn't work to actually implement social change. It only plays into the hands of authoritarians who rule by fear, in this case fear of you. Kill Bernanke, and they have a great propaganda tool against your cause. And they can replace Bernanke with no trouble. And you haven't actually done anything to harm the people whose interests Bernanke is protecting.

There is an excellent essay on the topic, dating from the 1970s, titled You Can't Blow up a Social Relationship. From the preamble:

When left-wing terrorism is being carried out in a consistent way in society, it gives the state extra leverage in using political repression against individuals and the left in general.

When by their own actions terrorists serve such ends, they are contributing to the destruction of politics and the closing of various options for the spreading of ideas before they have been fully utilised.

Of course, the state will readily use various repressive methods if it meets any substantial resistance or if it has to handle a social crisis which is creating resistance. Terrorism and guerrilla-ism cannot be attacked just because they produce repression. Even more important is the fact that there is nothing to have made it worthwhile. In the end the guerrillas get wiped out and there is nothing left but repression (and a law and order mentality amongst the people).

Pop quiz: Who sold the Nazis fuel and metal so that they could run around killing

Pop quiz: were all 150 millions Americans of a like mind and did they act in perfect concert during WWII?

As for for FDR's cynical, but perhaps justified, treatment of such actions during the war, perhaps you'd like to read the descriptions of the very people whose research uncovered this treason. You can start here. Should the "business people" responsible been tried for treason after the war? Hell yes.

We fueled the war deliberately

You mean by things like the Lend Lease Act? Ask the British if they objected to US aid prior to our entry into the war.

then entered the war

You mean an America with a strong isolationist sentiment, and a desire not to get hundreds of thousands of her own people killed, didn't enter the war until after we were attacked by Japan, and then a few days later, Nazi Germany declared war on us? That's true.

It permitted us to reduce a bunch of our excess population

You mean the population that people were concerned had a declining birth rate, due to the Great Depression? At any rate, it wasn't a very effective policy for reducing our population. As horrific as our losses of over 400,000 Americans were, it reduced the population by only 0.27%. Then the whole thing was undone by the millions born in the post-war baby boom. A seriously failed policy.

One other minor problem: there is absolutely no evidence for the absurd notion that we wanted to "reduce a bunch of our excess population".

You always have a choice.

Technically that's true. If somebody puts a gun to your head and tells you to either join the military or be shot now, and you choose the bullet now, your heirs will be free to praise you morality. Until and unless that happens to you, shove your sanctimony.

http://libcom.org/news/samsung-workers-mexico-hunger-strike-solidarity-needed-16072011
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/news/new-455.html

Ah, maybe those places aren't actually where ultra-left people hang out? Ever thought of that? How about you go and talk to some actual anarchists for example. They do hang out on the Internet some times.

An Anarchist FAQ is a place you can found out more than you ever wanted about a particular type of anarchism (a communists/socialist type). You might start with What is anarchism?.

Also the terms ultra and far left actually have meaning in political science and in radical politics. Ultra left tends to be used as an insult against those who refuse to work with statist parties, and otherwise take "extreme" positions (such as, "a pox on both your houses, neither Hamas nor Israel, but no state at all"). That said, many ultra leftists thus take the insult and embrace it. The term originated in the 1920s:

For Lenin, the main revolutionary problem was to forge a "leadership" capable of leading the workers to victory. When ultra-leftists tried to give a theoretical explanation of the rise of factory organizations in Germany, they said the working class does not need a party in order to be revolutionary. Revolution would be made by the masses organized in workers' councils and not by a proletariat "led" by professional revolutionaries.

This "infantile" rejection of the need for statist parties to bring about a communist (and thus, buy definition stateless) society really upset Leninists and similar.

Far left just tends to mean the extreme left. And by definition can not mean any sort of statist, as there is always a further left position (against the state).

You seem to be confused about certain types of statist who seem pretty left when compared to mainstream politics. Actually though, these people, by wanting a Soviet style state (or even just a nicer welfare state) end up being the enemies of all those who would do away with the state altogether.

In conclusion, I was drunk when I wrote the previous post. I'm now just slightly hung-over. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

There is a lot more to these protests than just the silent demonstrations. The economy collapsed after the crooked 2010 elections. Prices of basic goods saw huge increases. For example, just few weeks ago drivers were blocking busy streets with their cars in protest against 100% increase in fuel prices. More info here

Patriotism has no place in science.

Heh, I actually agree with that, but ultimately there will be war between the space people and the earth people, exactly in the same fashion that we make war against our African/Middle East ancestors.

Mutiny on the Skylab

July: http://www.gamepolitics.com/2010/07/01/ice-seizes-website-domains-part-copyright-crackdown

Nov: http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/130763-homeland-security-dept-seizes-domain-names-

Dec: ?

And in the UK its the police:

Mid-November: http://libcom.org/news/police-force-shut-down-fitwatchorguk-16112010

Late-November: http://www.techeye.net/internet/uk-police-want-power-to-shut-down-websites

Unfortunately the US government (at least in the US) has pulled ahead in terms of controlling the internet via seizure: July: http://www.gamepolitics.com/2010/07/01/ice-seizes-website-domains-part-copyright-crackdown Nov: http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/130763-homeland-security-dept-seizes-domain-names- Dec: ? And in the UK its the police: Mid-November: http://libcom.org/news/police-force-shut-down-fitwatchorguk-16112010 Late-November: http://www.techeye.net/internet/uk-police-want-power-to-shut-down-websites

There is really nothing particularly atheist about his, eh, manifesto. He doesn't mention god at all, and he mentions religion only once, condemning civilization and "its disgusting religious-cultural roots." This doesn't say much about religion or spirituality in general, and less about the existence of a god. I guess it makes him, if anything, a (radical) primitivist.

Interesting.. But would be good to see some good hard evidence behind that.
Thather got in on the back of the Winter of Discontent.
When she left power, the economy was in a lot better state than it was when she entered power; there was a rough ride to achieving stability, and a heavy social price was paid.
As to how she created a broken economy when England was actually going to the IMF for over £2 billion before she took the reins of government is quite beyond me. It was thoroughly broken when she got there.
By all means, dislike her, and follow whatever political path you want, but I'm finding your post heavy on rhetoric, low on fact. Now, I can be persuaded by showing proofs of this, and evidence, but not by screaming "bullshit" and claiming incompetence.
And me, a fundamentalist? Oh boy! That did give me a chuckle.

Let's remember why Mussolini was so popular (among other things, he had the will to attack the Mafia with harsh methods) and why the Italian people fought on the side of the Axis. Seeing him through the lens of Allied propaganda is not accurate.

Being beaten then opportunistically switching sides in 1943 isn't quite the same thing as a profound social repudiation of Fascism. Those who were on the Left never liked it, but it was quite compatible with the rest of Italian society including the Vatican, whose (amply documented, see "Operation Ratline") efforts even extended to protecting fugitive Nazi war criminals after WWII ended. The Pope was also buddies with the delightful Ante Pavelic, even granting him an audience. The Catholic Church is fundamentally Italian, and so are its actions.

http://libcom.org/library/role-catholic-church-yugoslavias-holocaust-se-n-mac-math-na-1941-1945

The death toll of the French Revolution is estimated at a million. France has 1/20th the population of China. If you really support the potential death of 20 million people in the name of liberty, democracy and capitalism, then in my book you're a monster.

Chairman Mao's policies killed a lot more than 20 million people. So if you're opposed to China being a democracy you must be a monster too.

Moving to democracy does not necessarily involve violence - in fact Zhao Ziyang the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre wanted to move China to a multi party system. Unfortunately hardliners like Li Peng deposed him and run the students over with tanks. If Zhao had stayed in power China would have avoided the violence and ended up free.

In fact the same year the Tiananmen Square massacre happened there was another student movement for democracy in a Chinese speaking country - against the KMT regime in Taiwan. President Lee Teng Hui had just been elected by a parliament which had sat since the end of the Chinese civil war without elections. Lee invited the students into the Presidential palace and said he agreed with their demands and proceeded to end martial law and censorship. He won the first free election for the Presidency in Taiwan's history after which he left due to term limits he had himself put in place. No one needed to be run over by tanks. And Taiwan is as mentioned much richer than China. It's also been spared the horrors of mass famine and hundreds of thousands of outbreaks of serious violence that have plagued the Communist Party's rule in China. Even now there are tens of thousands of mass incidents in China each year - lethal riots against corrupt and abusive local officials.

http://libcom.org/news/58000-mass-incidents-china-first-quarter-unrest-grows-largest-ever-recorded-06052009

The report said that if this trend continues, then 2009 would break all previous records with over 230,000 'mass incidents', compared to 120,000 in 2008 and 90,000 in 2006.

The numbers of mass incidents have been growing for some time too - many of these are very serious - mobs burn down the local secret police head quarters killing everyone inside before being dispersed by paramilitary police firing live ammunition. Then the authorities round people up around the area of the demonstration - they have a quota - and execute them after a dubious political process to try to intimidate the local population against doing it again for a while. Of course the root of the problem - corrupt officials stealing from people is never really solved.

I forgot to mention a story from Forbes about Indian tech workers unionizing, which cuts the drive to outsource US tech jobs. Indian Technology Industry Workers Get Organised

Some people here have mentioned that unionizing for IT workers might do some good, but it is either not feasible due to nature of IT work or has other drawbacks. I think IT workers (a broad category I know) should be talking about organizing first, unions second. Many of the official unions are just a different set of bosses, often fairly friendly to the original set. This does not mean that our attempts to collectively improve our conditions are doomed to harm us. Instead, how much the union works their members, how much for themselves and how much for the company depends mostly on how organized and conscious people already are in their workplace. When workers want to work more reasonable hours for a better pay and are willing to fight together, they will force their union to do the job. When the workers are apathetic, the union will manage them. The main advantages of the union are legal protections and national support, so it makes a sense to have one if people in a workplace already want to get organized, but it makes almost no sense to ask for outsiders to come from the union and organize the workplace.

IT workers organizing is not unprecedented. The first real IT strike I know of took place in 2004 at Schneider Electrics aka the GE of Europe, which produces electrical components and control systems. The company was planning to move 400 local IT workers (mostly doing tech support) to a different french company, which does outsourcing services. This meant each employee would take a 500 Euro monthly paycut and would work in worse conditions at the outsourcing shop. In response to these plans, IT workers went on strike, occupied their offices and seized some servers. The union was not happy and provided almost no support. The workers had their own daily assemblies where they discussed their situations and decided how to act. They received some support from factory floor (blue collar) workers. Ultimately they voted to end the strike and occupation, since the company wasn't willing to negotiate and the union was not willing to defend them. Although this was not a measurable victory, it's not defeat either - this sort of action makes it harder for the company to outsource people in the future. For the IT workers it was their first real strike, which changed their attitudes towards work and collective action. Some of them were not union members, but described the strike as something they had to do - the pay cut meant trouble paying mortgages. A more detailed account (unfortunately rather politicized and not always clear, but still very valuable) is here Strike and occupation of IT workers at Schneider Electrics.

Organizing Info (union or no union)
Workplace Organizing
General Organizing

Some people here have mentioned that unionizing for IT workers might do some good, but it is either not feasible due to nature of IT work or has other drawbacks. I think IT workers (a broad category I know) should be talking about organizing first, unions second. Many of the official unions are just a different set of bosses, often fairly friendly to the original set. This does not mean that our attempts to collectively improve our conditions are doomed to harm us. Instead, how much the union works their members, how much for themselves and how much for the company depends mostly on how organized and conscious people already are in their workplace. When workers want to work more reasonable hours for a better pay and are willing to fight together, they will force their union to do the job. When the workers are apathetic, the union will manage them. The main advantages of the union are legal protections and national support, so it makes a sense to have one if people in a workplace already want to get organized, but it makes almost no sense to ask for outsiders to come from the union and organize the workplace.

IT workers organizing is not unprecedented. The first real IT strike I know of took place in 2004 at Schneider Electrics aka the GE of Europe, which produces electrical components and control systems. The company was planning to move 400 local IT workers (mostly doing tech support) to a different french company, which does outsourcing services. This meant each employee would take a 500 Euro monthly paycut and would work in worse conditions at the outsourcing shop. In response to these plans, IT workers went on strike, occupied their offices and seized some servers. The union was not happy and provided almost no support. The workers had their own daily assemblies where they discussed their situations and decided how to act. They received some support from factory floor (blue collar) workers. Ultimately they voted to end the strike and occupation, since the company wasn't willing to negotiate and the union was not willing to defend them. Although this was not a measurable victory, it's not defeat either - this sort of action makes it harder for the company to outsource people in the future. For the IT workers it was their first real strike, which changed their attitudes towards work and collective action. Some of them were not union members, but described the strike as something they had to do - the pay cut meant trouble paying mortgages. A more detailed account (unfortunately rather politicized and not always clear, but still very valuable) is here Strike and occupation of IT workers at Schneider Electrics.

Organizing Info (union or no union)
Workplace Organizing
General Organizing

Some people here have mentioned that unionizing for IT workers might do some good, but it is either not feasible due to nature of IT work or has other drawbacks. I think IT workers (a broad category I know) should be talking about organizing first, unions second. Many of the official unions are just a different set of bosses, often fairly friendly to the original set. This does not mean that our attempts to collectively improve our conditions are doomed to harm us. Instead, how much the union works their members, how much for themselves and how much for the company depends mostly on how organized and conscious people already are in their workplace. When workers want to work more reasonable hours for a better pay and are willing to fight together, they will force their union to do the job. When the workers are apathetic, the union will manage them. The main advantages of the union are legal protections and national support, so it makes a sense to have one if people in a workplace already want to get organized, but it makes almost no sense to ask for outsiders to come from the union and organize the workplace.

IT workers organizing is not unprecedented. The first real IT strike I know of took place in 2004 at Schneider Electrics aka the GE of Europe, which produces electrical components and control systems. The company was planning to move 400 local IT workers (mostly doing tech support) to a different french company, which does outsourcing services. This meant each employee would take a 500 Euro monthly paycut and would work in worse conditions at the outsourcing shop. In response to these plans, IT workers went on strike, occupied their offices and seized some servers. The union was not happy and provided almost no support. The workers had their own daily assemblies where they discussed their situations and decided how to act. They received some support from factory floor (blue collar) workers. Ultimately they voted to end the strike and occupation, since the company wasn't willing to negotiate and the union was not willing to defend them. Although this was not a measurable victory, it's not defeat either - this sort of action makes it harder for the company to outsource people in the future. For the IT workers it was their first real strike, which changed their attitudes towards work and collective action. Some of them were not union members, but described the strike as something they had to do - the pay cut meant trouble paying mortgages. A more detailed account (unfortunately rather politicized and not always clear, but still very valuable) is here Strike and occupation of IT workers at Schneider Electrics.

Organizing Info (union or no union)
Workplace Organizing
General Organizing

Great Idea China. In the face of falling property prices, your economy slumping and people losing their jobs and riots growing... take away their porn.

http://www.propertywire.com/news/asia/property-prices-fell-sharply-china-2008-200901072355.html http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jYY3ugKb9diKGictWunUrDVu-aBw http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/07012009/323/china-fears-recession-riots-europe-joblessness-grows.html http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/20/china.jobs/index.html http://uk.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUKPEK226188 http://libcom.org/news/chinese-factory-workers-riot-26112008

Slashdot readers may have noticed a large volume of submissions coming from Anti Globalism and burnitdown, many of which are being accepted onto the front page. Taken on their own, many of the articles are indeed interesting.

However, these accounts always link to corrupt.org in their submissions, a site that advertises the goal of "remaking modern society". The content is mostly boilerplate 'society is failing' rhetoric, with an emphasis on how we are out of touch with reality and hung up on "emotional abstractions" that are holding us back.

So what is this reality our society has denied? Corrupt.org is somewhat evasive on the specifics. Talking points include the impending danger of overpopulation, derision and scapegoating of people seen as inferior (who are called "parasites", "schemers" and "leeches", among other things), and why democracy doesn't work and needs to be replaced with "strong leaders".

As for the "emotional abstractions" they would like for us to dispense with, those seem pesky things like valuing human life. Corrupt betrays their intentions in their mission statement:

"Where in the past we spent huge amounts of money to try to "rehabilitate" many, with a high rate of failure, in the future we should not shy away from removing them."

And no, they're not referring to prisoners guilty of capital offenses there - they're talking about dealing with the 'undesirables'. This kind of rhetoric is intended to prepare their audience to accept the idea of killing on a large scale as a solution to society's problems. They also preach thinly veiled racial separatism on the same page:

"Ethnic self-determination
Each local culture is tied to a group by heritage, and no two groups can exist in the same place. For this reason, local cultures can decide who or who not to accept on any basis they desire, including heritage and culture."

corrupt.org is registered to Throne Networks, which is run by a neo-Nazi. Throne has been behind several other fringe sites, including anarchy.net, nazi.org, pan-nationalism.org, antihumanism.com, and amerika.org. Each of these sites targets a different demographic, but the modus operandi has been the same - appeal to intellectual and philosophical outcasts who are inclined to distrust 'the system', and then reel them in with an empowering philosophy that paves the way for fascist indoctrination.

Their fake anarchist website managed to piss off some real anarchists earlier this year, who proceeded to do an excellent job of exposing them in that thread. It's long and heavily peppered with debates/flamewars about anarchism (if you find yourself tuning out after a couple pages, skip to page 10), but it documents who is behind corrupt.org along with their goals and strategy. It's really quite damning.

Of coarse, even manipulative crypto-Nazis have the right to free speech - but that doesn't mean Slashdot should be providing them with free advertising. Unlike dumb aggregaters like Digg, Slashdot is supposed to have editors. Is it really too much to ask that they remove links to neo-Nazi fronts from front page articles?

I didn't say it was a good idea. You also need to realise how much shit people are prepared to put up with, especially when its phased in gradually (like Al Gore's story about the frog in an "Inconvenient Truth" - if you raise the water temperature gradually the frog doesn't notice).

Its been shown in the UK before too, the Winter of Discontent in '78. People still put up with it.

Yeah the funniest part about that story was when those non-existent WMDs killed a whole bunch of non-existent people.

Armed only with reality, I have karma to burn.

It was wrong even at the time of our grand(-grand-)parents. The role of the state in left/socialist theory (and praxis) has been disputed since the beginning. (e.g. Bakunin vs. Marx in the 1870s)

There are a lot different flavours of socialism. In the US you had Murray Bookchin a libetarian socialist. Then you have different anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist flavours all around the earth and they were and are strictly anti-state/anti-government and leftist.

And to your Empire I would like to add at least John Holloway's works.

That leftist are pro-state pigheads stuck in early 20th century ideology is just FUD.

Los Angeles - - BitTorrent Founder and CEO Bram Cohen and Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman announced today that the motion picture industry and BitTorrent, Inc. are collaborating with the goal of inhibiting film piracy. Bram Cohen developed a revolutionary technology for websites to make large content files available on the Web and that technology is often used by others illegally to distribute movies and television shows. Today Cohen confirmed BitTorrent, Inc.'s commitment to removing links that direct users to copies of pirated content owned by MPAA companies from its search engine at BitTorrent.com. The announcement today is historic in that two major forces in the technology and film industries have agreed to work together and proactively identify ways to l and to promote constructive innovation in this area.

Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and Torrent AB have decided to join forces. BitTorrent has acquired Torrent as it recognized the merits of Torrent's exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together Torrent's efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent's expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client.

Note that the above link title is misleading BTW - MPAA haven't "bought" uTorrent. Rather BitTorrent Inc have bough uTorrent and BitTorrent Inc have a commercial relationship with the MPAA.

I recall reading about a link between uTorrent/BT Inc and TorrentSpy too. At minimum, TorrentSpy.com is apparently planning to filter MPAA content soon:

http://digg.com/tech_news/Bye_Bye_TorrentSpy_and_I SOHunt_Both_to_Filter_Copyrighted_Content/all

Worrying times!