We've all been there but don't like to admit it. We've all kicked back in our cubicles and suddenly felt something brew down below. As much as we try to convince ourselves otherwise, the WORK POOP is inevitable. For those who hate pooping at work, following is the 2001 Survival Guide for taking a dump at work. Memorize these definitions and pooping at work will become a pure pleasure.
ESCAPEE. Definition: a fart that slips out while taking a leak at the urinal or forcing a poop in a stall. This is usually accompanied by a sudden wave of panic embarrassment. This is similar to the hot flash you receive when passing an unseen police car and speeding. If you release an escapee, do not acknowledge it. Pretend it did not happen. If you are standing next to the farter in the urinal, pretend you did not hear it. No one likes an escapee, it is uncomfortable for all involved. Making a joke or laughing makes both parties feel uneasy.
JAILBREAK (Used in conjunction with ESCAPEE). Definition: When forcing poop, several farts slip out at a machine gun pace. This is usually a side effect of diarrhea or a hangover. If this should happen, do not panic. Remain in the stall until everyone has left the bathroom so to spare everyone the awkwardness of what just occurred.
COURTESY FLUSH. Definition: The act of flushing the toilet the instant the nose cone of the poop log hits the water and the poop is whisked away to an undisclosed location. This reduces the amount of air time the poop has to stink up the bathroom. This can help you avoid being caught doing the WALK OF SHAME.
WALK OF SHAME. Definition: Walking from the stall, to the sink, to the door after you have just stunk up the bathroom. This can be a very uncomfortable moment if someone walks in and busts you. As with all farts, it is best to pretend that the smell does not exist. Can be avoided with the use of the COURTESY FLUSH.
OUT OF THE CLOSET POOPER. Definition: A colleague who poops at work and damn proud of it. You will often see an Out Of The Closet Pooper enter the bathroom with a newspaper or magazine under their arm. Always look around the office for the Out Of The Closet Pooper before entering the bathroom.
THE POOPING FRIENDS NETWORK (PFN). Definition: A group of coworkers who band together to ensure emergency pooping goes off without incident. This group can help you to monitor the whereabouts of Out Of The Closet Poopers, and identify SAFE HAVENS.
SAFE HAVENS. Definition: A seldom used bathroom somewhere in the building where you can least expect visitors. Try floors that are predominantly of the opposite sex. This will reduce the odds of a pooper of your sex entering the bathroom.
TURD BURGLAR: Definition: A pooper who does not realize that you are in the stall and tries to force the door open. This is one of the most shocking and vulnerable moments that can occur when taking a dump at work. If this occurs, remain in the stall until the Turd Burglar leaves. This way you will avoid all uncomfortable eye contact.
CAMO-COUGH. Definition: A phony cough that alerts all new entrants into the bathroom that you are in a stall. This can be used to cover-up a WATERMELON, or to alert potential Turd Burglars. Very effective when used in conjunction with an ASTAIRE.
ASTAIRE. Definition: A subtle toe-tap that is used to alert potential Turd Burglars that you are occupying a stall. This will remove all doubt that the stall is occupied. If you hear an Astaire, leave the bathroom immediately so the pooper can poop in peace.
WATERMELON. Definition: A turd that creates a loud splash when hitting the toilet water. This is also an embarrassing incident. If you feel a Watermelon coming on, create a diversion. See CAMO-COUGH.
HAVANA OMELET. Definition: A load of diarrhea that creates a series of loud splashes in the toilet water. Often accompanied by an Escapee. Try using a Camo-Cough with an Astaire.
UNCLE TED. Definition: A bathroom user who seems to linger around forever. Could spend extended lengths of time in front of the mirror or sitting on the pot. An Uncle Ted makes it difficult to relax while on the crapper, as you should always wait to drop your load when the bathroom is empty. This benefits you as well as the other bathroom attendees.
FLY BY. Definition: The act of scouting out a bathroom before pooping. Walk in and check for other poopers. If there are others in the bathroom, leave and come back again. Be careful not to become a FREQUENT FLYER. People may become suspicious if they catch you constantly going into the bathroom.
The top X things to say when you've been caught pooping in the urinal:
Can you get me some toilet paper? This one seems to be out. I keep slipping off these little seats. What the....get the fuck out of my stall! I'm installing the new cakes. Didn't you hear about that guy at Starbucks who got his dick crushed in a toilet seat? Dude, I'm not gonna sit on the crapper seats, people piss all over those things!
(Ideally these are supposed to be funny.)
How to get poop into a urinal
The easiest way is just to drop trou in the men's room and press your hiney up against the urinal and let go. However, I can think of a few reasons you might not want to take this approach. For instance, there's the whole "getting caught" ordeal, or having a colon prone to stage fright. Not to mention putting your ass into close proximity with thousands of generations of urine.
With that in mind, I have devised the following not-so-clever and oh-so-easy plan: In the comfort of your own home, when you feel the urge, crap into a plastic bag. Ziploc would be a good idea. When the opportunity presents itself, carefully deposit your offering into the Porcelain Alter of Liquid Excrement. Congratulations, you now have poop in a urinal. Take a picture and send it here.
I was at Barnes and Nobles one day protesting with a picket sign that Ayn Rand be removed from the Philosophy section of the store. The thugs in blue removed me from the premises.
What I hate is how she stole the term Libertarian from my fellow libertarian socialists. She had to know that anarchists had been using the term for a hundred years before her ilk raped the word.
>>"Everyone knows Ayn Rand was a cult leader anyway."
I agree, but alot of those ultra right idiot Libertarians on slashdot do not seem to know this.
Lately, there have been a lot of relatively unopposed claims that liberalism has failed.
We seem to universally accept that the only valid economic system is free market capitalism, and we also have an extreme faith in the doctrines of this system: competition is always good and niche marketers are somehow inferior.
Some people even blame the recent crisis in Russia on its failure to accept free market capitalism quickly enough. However, as many probably realize but are afraid to admit, the emperor of the unfettered market has no clothes. As the estimable Robert Sheer pointed out in his Sept 1, 1998 column in the Los Angeles Times, we insist the "Russians pay homage to a free market theology that we don't practice in our country."
When one compares Russia and Sweden (a nation which is more akin to Russia than one might think), one immediately notes that "socialistic" Sweden has a far superior standard of living - superior in many ways to our own. Yet, while the liberal programs of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society brought unprecedented prosperity to a wide variety of people in this nation, until the recent stock market crash, left of center politics were considered hopelessly passé.
The irony is that the ascendant "conservative" economic theories are actually the theories from which the original "liberalism" was composed.
A true conservative would not take the view that "growth," change or even competition are always good things, yet the economic conservatism of modern times is based on a philosophy in which mutation is most central and competition is celebrated.
Since the days of Huxley and Spencer, capitalists have tried to make the religion of the free market sound like science by using analogies with evolution.
However, as a biological sciences major, I am not fooled. In the real world, most species will establish niches, territorial systems or collusive relations to minimize the amount of direct competition that is occurring. Species generally cannot coexist in direct competition.
Continuing the analogy, economy does mirror ecology. Every market is divided by corporations into niches or territories where there is a risk of direct competition. Yet, explicit niche marketing is not generally accepted.
For example, Apple Computer is always under pressure to gain market share beyond its niche of academic and artistic users but has actually suffered greatly from its attempts to expand beyond its core consumer base.
Moreover, while corporations always seem to form natural monopolies, we are consistently trying to break up such monopolies, both abroad and at home, in the name of increased competition.
I am aware of the dangers of monopolies; however, I realize that sometimes monopolies provide the most efficient means of delivering goods and services.
Take utilities, for instance. Even if we are saving money from the demonopolizing and deregulation of the phone industry, what is the cost in sheer annoyance from this free market harassing us during our family mealtimes? And this harassment is abetted by the Republicans who claim to support family values!
More seriously, phone deregulation has opened up the flood gates for fraud, and I expect further deregulation in other utility sectors to do the same.
I am not arguing in favor of Communism and against all competition. Considering that people do not behave so rationally as economists would like, the free market functions awfully well.
Moreover, I have seen what collective ownership (or at least collective maintenance) can do to a place - have you ever seen a clean kitchen in Arroyo Vista? Even though the custodial staff cleans the kitchens every weekday, a kitchen must be cleaned more often than once a day to be properly maintained. However, since no one person "owns" the kitchens in Arroyo Vista, nobody takes the responsibility to make sure the kitchen is kept clean.
Ownership is no guarantee of stewardship either. In this age of increasingly large corporations with cubical imprisoned employees, how much individual ownership exists to motivate our economy anyway?
I am only arguing that, in light of all the evidence of shortcomings in the so- called conservative economic philosophy that currently enjoys almost universal acceptance, we should not write off liberalism as irrelevant or dead.
[pp. 6-8] There are no societies without religion, even, or especially, those which believe themselves to be entirely secular. In our century, in our society, the concept of development has acquired religious and doctrinal status. The [World] Bank is commonly accepted as the Vatican, the Mecca or the Kremlin of this twentieth- century religion. A doctrine need not be true to move mountains or to provoke manifold material and human disasters. Religious doctrines (in which we would include secular ones like Leninism) have, through the ages, done and continue to do precisely that, whereas, logically speaking, not all of them can be true insofar as they all define Truth as singular and uniquely their own.
Religion cannot, by definition, be validated or invalidated, declared true or false - only believed or rejected. Facts are irrelevant to belief: they belong to another sphere of reality. True believers, the genuinely pure of heart, exist in every faith, but the majority generally just goes along lukewarmly out of cultural habit or material advantage. When, however, the faith achieves political hegemony as well, like the medieval Church (or the Bolsheviks, or the Ayatollahs), it is in a position to make people offers they can't refuse, or to make their lives extremely uncomfortable if they do.
The religion of development cannot be validated or invalidated either. It doesn't matter whether it works or not, nor how many ordinary people's lives are damaged or destroyed, nor how much nature may be abused because of it.
Development theory and practice cannot be validated because they are not scientific. They have not established reliable and recognized criteria for determining whether development has in fact occurred, except for internal economic indicators like the rate of return of an individual project or the growth of Gross National Product - themselves artificial constructions and articles of faith. This being so, there is no established way to identify, correct or avoid error either. When Susan George wrote the Afterword to A Fate Worse than Debt, she put it this way:
"Scientists are trained to avoid error by testing their hypotheses systematically. Normally, development theorists and practitioners should also be trained to test their hypotheses by observing what they do to people, since human welfare is presumably the goal of development. 'People' here does not mean well-off, well-fed elites but poor and hungry majorities whose fundamental needs are presently not being met. If decades of application of the reigning development paradigm have failed to alleviate their suffering and oppression or, worse still, have intensified them.., the paradigm ought to be ripe for revolution."
She then asked, naively, "In short, how many people have to die before the ruling paradigm is beaten back and we are rid of it once and for all?" thereby largely missing the point. The point is that priesthoods are not elected and they need not answer to the faithful; they are specially invested with the truth and with sacramental functions from which, by definition, the common herd is excluded. The faith they serve is itself a greater good in whose name present suffering is mysteriously transformed into future salvation. Or to borrow an old favourite from secular religion, eggs must and will be broken. One's children, or theirs, or theirs, will eventually sit down to enjoy the omelette.
This, for us, is the final and most compelling reason not to concentrate on pointing out yet again how multifarious are the World Bank's ill-conceived projects, how unresponsive its leaders, how impervious to criticism its doctrine. Such things may be entirely or partially true, but are at bottom expressions of a world-view. It is the foundations of that world-view we shall try to dig for.
The Bank resembles the Church and this will be a guiding analogy in these pages. Both believe themselves invested with a mission, both (the Church historically, the Bank at present) have set themselves against the state. Both celebrate the poor rhetorically while refraining from actually improving their capacity to change their earthly lot.
The Church, more than the Bank, is like God himself "a mighty fortress, a bulwark never failing" in the words of the splendid hymn. The Bank has lost many of its fortress aspects - particularly compared to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - and is more open to exchanges with outsiders. The overall vision that guides its practice cannot, however, seem to transcend the narrowest of economic orthodoxies serving a smaller and smaller fraction of transnational elite interests worldwide. The Bank's declared new, or at least renewed, "poverty focus" shows that it is groping for a mission but in practice it has no grand design beyond the casting of all economies in the neo-classical mould and the refashioning of all men and women as Homo economicus.
[pp. 245-251] "The Thing"
In the late 1980s the Italian Communist Party was undergoing a full-blown identity crisis. Italian Communists had no idea what to call whatever future Party might emerge from the ruins of the post-Gorbachev world. In all the documents, in all the discussions of the time, this as-yet undefined Party was referred to as la Cosa -- the Thing -- an institution in search of a new personality. Since The Godfather, Cosa Nostra -- Our Thing -- has entered all our vocabularies, whatever our language. Calling the Mafia Cosa Nostra is one way of not having to say what it really is.
At Bretton Woods, the founding fathers didn't know what to call the Bank either -- it got its name more or less by default and "Bank" it has remained. Throughout these pages we have tried to determine what the Bank is and at the end of the enterprise we, too, are tempted to call it the Thing because, although we think we have made progress, to some degree it remains fascinating and mysterious. One of the chief attributes of power is not having to say what it is, not having to reveal its true identity, not having to give up its secrets to even the most diligent search.
Thus the question "Why is the Thing so powerful?" is crucial. One thing about the Thing is certain: it is not powerful because it is a bank; that is, in ordinary language, a purely economic entity. Nor is it powerful because it has some of the characteristics one would expect of an international public service organization. It is a political and cultural enterprise, even a modern version of what the pioneer sociologist Marcel Mauss called the "total social phenomenon" (le fait social total). The obvious, financial and economic side of the Bank is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The multiple roles it plays and the many functions of power it assumes, like the difficulty of defining it, make the Bank a total social phenomenon, a Thing. This is why throughout the book we have spoken of beliefs, faith, doctrine, prophecy, and fundamentalism; of ancestors, initiation, esprit de corps, intellectual leadership and rule. This is also why, in addition to the facts and the documentary evidence, to the economic and political analysis we have tried to provide, we have made a few unorthodox sorties we called "Interludes" into the world of the imagination. If the Bank were just a bank we would have had no reason to call on fiction. We hope the reader will have found in each chapter and interlude partial answers to the question "Why is the Thing so powerful?" This is the thread we have tried to follow, the one that should bind the book together.
Borrowing from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, we can say that the Bank is powerful because of its capacity constantly to exchange economic capital for symbolic capital and vice versa. Its economic activities generate money -- well over a billion dollars a year in profits -- but also immense prestige. Its prestige in turn generates more financial and economic power. The Bank has dug passageways and built bridges that allow it continually to shuttle between material and non-material wealth, to transform one kind of capital investment into another and to reap all the rewards of both.
The Bank is thus in a position to assume functions which are at once economic and symbolic: integration, guidance and, most important, maintenance of a programme of truth. The Bank is the visible hand of the programme of unrestrained, free market capitalism. The Bank's first function is to be an instrument of integration through the market. This market is (or should be) co-extensive with the world; like that of the Church, its vocation is universal. All nations and all people must become ever more tightly bound to it. In this setting, the doctrine of export-orientation finds its natural home. All countries must trade as much as they can and rely for their subsistence first on the world market, last on their own resources.
Until quite recently, even in wealthy countries, communities provided for most of their wants from their domestic, local economies. What they could not find close at hand, they sought at the regional or national level. Only rarely, usually for luxury items, would they have recourse to the world market. This historical pattern has been turned on its head: we are now exhorted to satisfy our needs first from the international, global market, then the national or regional one and so on, down the ladder to the domestic economy, lowliest of all. The Bank's second function is to act as a guide. Those who believe that its own doctrine is that of laisser-faire are mistaken. The Bank is, in fact, far more interventionist than the interventionist governments whose policies it seeks to transform. If the Bank were to leave people and societies alone, anything could happen -- they might operate not on the basis of the marketplace but on principles of reciprocity, redistribution or solidarity. In modern societies, the state has attempted, with greater or lesser success, to organize redistribution and solidarity. Thus the state, like the traditional society based on reciprocity, is under threat from the Bank.
Here we face a contradiction. The marketplace cannot be the natural habitat of humankind. If it were, the Bank's interventions would be unnecessary. Everywhere the market would already be the sole guiding principle of society and, if it were, in the Bank's own view, there would be no underdevelopment, no South, no need for modernization or for structural adjustment -- and no need for the Bank.
Why do we think we need the Bank? For the same reasons we think we need the Church. Frail, imperfect humanity needs constraints, guardrails, continual instruction in, and interpretation of, the doctrine. Those who have not yet reached the full expression of market capitalism and consequent development, those who fall by the wayside, must be goaded along the path to salvation.
To change society one must also change individual men and women. Man must be ontologically reconstructed and redeemed as homo economicus. What is redemption if not the passage from one state to another, from darkness to light? The virtues of the New Economic Man, whose dwelling place is the market, are the will and the capacity to accumulate, to follow self-interest and to maximize profit in all things. His wants are unlimited; to satisfy them, he must learn to struggle against his fellows. Scarcity is a fact of life. There is not enough to satisfy the unlimited desires of all nor to provide a place in the sun for everyone. If unemployment in their country is twenty per cent or more, the New Men and Women will pit themselves against each other to find work at any price, at all costs.
The Bank's third function is to be the standard-bearer of a programme of truth. If the world market is the Bank's fundamental organizing principle, price is its instrument. One of the Bank's major articles of faith is "getting the prices right", which it translates in French as la verite des prix, the truth of prices. A price has a metaphysical quality because it is supposed to be the invisible point at the intersection between hundreds, thousands, millions of individual transactions. Price, if governments do not meddle by providing subsidies and otherwise distort the natural balance of things, will regulate human activity and necessarily bring order out of apparent chaos.
Those who deny a programme of truth defy the law, in the case of the Bank the laws of economics, structural adjustment and the market. With the International Monetary Fund, the Bank is the keeper of laws which, like the Ten Commandments, are immutable. Once revealed, they must be followed.
Defiant countries that refuse them outright are blacklisted, literally excommunicated from the international community. Governments which receive the law halfheartedly must be exhorted to better performance. The Bank will reward or punish them by the granting or withholding of loans and credits. Thus it helps return them to the straight and narrow path or, in its own words, puts them back on-track.
If the New Man finds his life in the market, what of his death? All great truths must in one way or another speak of last things; the Bank's is no exception. The Bank's nominal mission is to promote development. Development in its biological sense means an organism's attainment of its inherent potential, inexorably followed by decay and death. In the Bank's vocabulary, however, this biological meaning is replaced by a concept of never-ending growth. The Bank's priesthood specifically denies limits to growth and promises an ersatz eternity in the here-and-now. If such endless growth is supposed to lead to an American or European middle-class standard of living for over five billion people today and who knows how many tomorrow, we already know this to be an ecological and biospheric impossibility, even assuming tremendous and rapid changes in technology. The Bank refuses to confront this last of all last things -- not merely individual or societal death but the possibility of species extinction, including that of the human species. Incantations like "sustainable development" stave off the moment when the finite must at last be faced.
The Church's traditional imagery of heaven and of hell is graphic and explicit. Although it cannot prove that anyone has ever gone there, it still issues the visas to the promised land. The Bank paints no pictures with saints, angels and demons but it does put up signposts pointing towards paradise, exhorting the faithful to imitate the blessed -- the now-developed rich market-economy countries or at least those who are well on their way, like the Asian tigers.
The very vagueness of the concept of development and the great number of candidates who hope to attain it legitimize the Bank's functions, justify its existence and explain its power. As long as the fragile planet's heavenward journey lasts, as long as the poor are with us, as long as salvation is sought where it cannot be found, the World Bank will find for itself a role and a mission.
The political controversy of the late 19th century was:
whether socialists (all those who believed in the individual's right to possess what he or she produced) should engage in the political process, seize control of the state, and use the state apparatus to achieve liberation; or, whether a worker's state was inherently contradictory, counter revolutionary, and would only lead to the creation of a new ruling class whose interests would still clash with those of the ruled - that the state should be abolished allowing for no transitional stage of any kind during which power may have the chance to reconsolidate itself.
The situation has recreated itself with amazing similarity almost exactly a century later. Non-libertarian parties the world over (those who see authoritarian centralization as the bulwark of civilization) are bankrupt, economically and intellectually. The only viable intellectual current today falls under that ambiguous term - "libertarian."
Today there exist beneath this umbrella as many splinter groups as there were a hundred years ago under the umbrella of socialism. Two distinct trends, a right and a left if you will, are clearly discernible. One group, clearly the largest with a hierarchical organization modeled on the other political parties, believes, like most Marxists, in constitutional parliamentary republican democracy. They believe that the state is a necessary guarantor of individual safety and the product of the individual's labor, and in gradual progress toward a free society through participation in the political process. The other group, much smaller and far more splintered, rejects the state as necessarily a tool of class domination and exploitation. This group believes that what Bakunin said a hundred years ago is as true today, "If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Czar himself."
The first group is in all fairness a direct inheritor of the ideals of the American Revolution. In modern times, however, it has only two roots: (1) the Austrian school of economics represented by Ludwig Von Mises; (2) the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Von Mises never considered the libertarians. He answered the Marxists and the Keynesians and defended laissez-faire capitalism at a time when no one else would. His justification for capitalism was empirical - the greatest good for the greatest number. Ayn Rand, however, attempted to offer a moral justification of capitalism by substituting the word `capitalism' for the libertarian meaning of the word "socialism." She then attributed all of the ills of capitalism to government interference with the market and all of the world's wealth to the minds of the men whom the world considered the robber barons.
The contrast between Ayn Rand's "Objectivism" and libertarianism is deeper than mere substitution of terminology, however. Several of her propositions or axioms place her clearly outside of the libertarian tradition. Her justification of the state is derived from a Hobbesian state of nature theory:
... a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into chaos and gang warfare.... [The Virtue of Selfishness, 152; pb 112]
If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door - or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of society into the chaos of gang rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual warfare of prehistoric savages. [Ibid., 146; pb 108]
Ayn Rand's belief in the inherent depravity of human nature which renders us forever incapable of living without rulers and not descending to the level of `savages', clearly places her outside of the libertarian tradition which views human nature as essentially good, capable of indefinite improvement through the experience of freedom and the exercise of reason. Her knowledge of anthropology is as embarrassing as her understanding of history. For example, in regards to her conception of who are the savages, she describes America as, "...a superlative material achievement in the midst of an untouched wilderness, against the resistance of savage tribes." [For The New Intellectual, 58; pb 50]
To Rand, the essential characteristic of the state is that it possesses a monopoly on the use of retaliatory force. How does she justify this monopoly or national sovereignty? She accepts it as a given, something not requiring a justification, and demands that an-archy, the negation of the proposition, justify itself. Her concept of national sovereignty is then something transcendental, existing separate and apart from individuals, and beyond the right of the individual to accept or reject according to his or her own reason. These propositions clearly place Ayn Rand's philosophy closer to Hobbes, Hegel, and Marx, than to libertarianism.
The state, according to Miss Rand, must hold a monopoly on the enforcement of contracts and the settling of disputes between individuals, at least whenever this arbitration is not accepted by both sides voluntarily. She fails to consider that the enforcement of contracts by the state fundamentally alters the nature of free agreements. Agreements are made on terms which otherwise might not be, because they are justiciable.
The terms of "free agreements" under law are titled in favor of lenders over debtors, landlords over tenants, employers over employees, in a way which would not exist in a "free market." This leveraging of power is not `objective' at all. Depending purely on legal convention, creditors may have debtors imprisoned, tenants may be evicted without notice and their effects confiscated, one human being may own another or the land on which another lives and works, all to varying degrees.
To understand Ayn Rand's psychology it is helpful to know her background. She was born to a wealthy St. Petersburg family in 1905. The position of her family in Czarist society must have been considerable. At a time when the lives of most Russians had changed little since feudalism, her family was wealthy enough to afford a French Governess and take regular vacations to the Crimea.
It should be noted that wealth in Czarist society was almost wholly a measure of one's favor with the government. There were few if any Horatio Alger stories about individuals who lifted themselves out of serfdom without the patronage of the Czar.
At the age of twelve, she must have been very upset when those nasty workers took over her father's business. Her family fled St. Petersburg for the Crimea and the protection of the White Army. This experience rendered her forever incapable of seeing land reform or any struggle of oppressed and exploited people as anything more than hatred for the good and lust for the unearned.
She shared with Marx the bourgeois ideology that only a few people were capable of running things. The masses ought to be happy to have a job working for bosses. Any suggestion that an enterprise could be run by the employees without having someone in charge was to her absurd.
She shared with Godwin and Kropotkin the belief that the individual is born tabula rasa - a blank slate, and all human knowledge is derived from sense experience. She then proceeded, however, to completely dismiss environment and socialization as the determining factor in the development of character.
People were to her good or evil, brilliant or indolent, depending solely on their volition. People should be judged by their actions with equal severity regardless of their condition. Though she insisted that the United States was not and never had been a completely free country, she granted no such thing as extenuating circumstances when judging an individual and had no qualms upholding the power of the state to inflict capital punishment.
A far more sinister legacy of Ayn Rand to libertarianism is that of a moralizing autocrat who gathered about her an inner circle which she ironically called, "The collective." Outwardly, this collective professed egoism and individuality. They were to be the vanguard of an intellectual renaissance. The price of admission to this group, however, was slavish conformity of one's life and professed philosophy to Ayn Rand's whims and eccentricities. For example, she did not like men who wore facial hair or listened to Mozart, and if you didn't give them up you were unfit for Rand's inner circle. This is particularly sinister if one considers that Karl Marx, believed by millions to be the very symbol of liberation, was also an autocrat who, though professed to be the ultimate champion of democracy, resorted to extraordinary means to maintain control of the International Workingmen's Association. He even moved its headquarters to New York to exclude the libertarian influence.
Today Ayn Rand is gone, but like Marx a century ago, hers is the primary influence on the largest libertarian organization existing. Even the pledge which all Libertarian Party members must sign is taken directly from her admonition, "I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals." In spite of their pledge to non-violence, many libertarians are frustrated with election laws and media censorship. An argument which circulates among libertarians of the right is that, if they were more threatening, the government may take steps to accommodate them as it did the black civil rights movement.
Ayn Rand's writings are not entirely consistent on the point of non-violence either. In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark resorts to the use of dynamite. In Atlas Shrugged, Ragnar Danneskjold engages in piracy on the high seas and even shells a factory which has been nationalized. In a clandestine rescue mission, Dagny Taggart shoots a guard who stood in the way of her desired end.
In the event of economic upheaval, ruined by unemployment and inflation, tenants and home owners may refuse to make rent and mortgage payments. The unemployed may seize vacant land and begin to farm, and factory workers may realize they can run things without stock holders. It would not be at all surprising if there were to emerge within the libertarian right, groups committed to direct action and counter revolutionary violence, even a coup d'etat.
Imagine a charismatic and autocratic personality at the center of such a group and you have the Objectivist Lenin. Like the Marxists and right libertarians, Lenin and the Objectivists are professed republican democrats. Lenin and the Bolsheviks promised that if given power, they would immediately convoke a constituent assembly. When they realized, however, they would not hold a majority in such an assembly they turned against the idea of such an assembly.
Can anyone doubt that the cultist mentality which characterizes most of Miss Rand's followers could lead to the creation of a group of self-appointed avengers of the capitalist class? That they would suppress strikes, demonstrations, and factory take overs? That they would not execute people for crimes against the libertarian state?
Ayn Rand believed in a republican form of government with a cleverly constructed constitution which would deny the majority of the power to infringe on the rights of a minority as she conceived them. If the majority supported a general strike against rents and mortgages and supported the factory takeovers, would not the clandestinely organized Objectivist libertarian party be tempted to dispense with democracy in order to enforce what they conceived of as the rights of the dispossessed bourgeoisie?
In all fairness it must be admitted that Ayn Rand herself would never sanction such actions, but the same argument is made everyday by western Marxists that Marx would probably not have sanctioned many of Lenin's actions and would certainly not take credit for the Soviet Union.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks won power by promising, "Land to the peasants!" "Factories to the workers!" When they took power, however, they immediately set about liquidating the factory committees and nationalizing the land. They crushed work place democracy by installing armed guards in the factories, and even returned former owners to their positions as employees of the worker's state. Leon Trotsky stopped the practice of soldiers electing their officers from their ranks and even restored former Czarist officers to their ranks in the Red Army.
When the Russian Revolution began few people clearly understood the gulf which separated the state socialists from the libertarians. Many dedicated libertarians like Alexander Berkman, rallied to the Bolshevik cause, willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in hopes that seizing state power would only be a transitional stage toward the development of the stateless/classless society.
Many sincere lovers of liberty now flock to the standard of the Libertarian Party, as they did the Bolsheviks, completely ignorant of the history of the last century. As Santayana said: "Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them."
What should be done? It should be obvious that government enforcement of private contracts is not libertarian any more than is taking state power to set people free. Libertarianism is and always will mean socialism - the self-emancipation of working people.
Libertarians must stop courting the Republican right and return to their intellectual roots. By standing outside of the political process we deny the state legitimacy, and like the state torturers in Atlas Shrugged, they will come and beg for libertarians to take over.
Remembering the experience of the Spanish libertarians, and heeding the advice of John Galt, libertarians must refuse state power even when begged. The state can never be a tool of liberation. Only its complete and utter collapse will allow for the emergence of non-statist institutions, libertarian co-ops, communes, and free markets, to flourish and displace the political state once and for all.
We've all been there but don't like to admit it. We've all kicked back in our cubicles and suddenly felt something brew down below. As much as we try to convince ourselves otherwise, the WORK POOP is inevitable. For those who hate pooping at work, following is the 2001 Survival Guide for taking a dump at work. Memorize these definitions and pooping at work will become a pure pleasure.
ESCAPEE. Definition: a fart that slips out while taking a leak at the urinal or forcing a poop in a stall. This is usually accompanied by a sudden wave of panic embarrassment. This is similar to the hot flash you receive when passing an unseen police car and speeding. If you release an escapee, do not acknowledge it. Pretend it did not happen. If you are standing next to the farter in the urinal, pretend you did not hear it. No one likes an escapee, it is uncomfortable for all involved. Making a joke or laughing makes both parties feel uneasy.
JAILBREAK (Used in conjunction with ESCAPEE). Definition: When forcing poop, several farts slip out at a machine gun pace. This is usually a side effect of diarrhea or a hangover. If this should happen, do not panic. Remain in the stall until everyone has left the bathroom so to spare everyone the awkwardness of what just occurred.
COURTESY FLUSH. Definition: The act of flushing the toilet the instant the nose cone of the poop log hits the water and the poop is whisked away to an undisclosed location. This reduces the amount of air time the poop has to stink up the bathroom. This can help you avoid being caught doing the WALK OF SHAME.
WALK OF SHAME. Definition: Walking from the stall, to the sink, to the door after you have just stunk up the bathroom. This can be a very uncomfortable moment if someone walks in and busts you. As with all farts, it is best to pretend that the smell does not exist. Can be avoided with the use of the COURTESY FLUSH.
OUT OF THE CLOSET POOPER. Definition: A colleague who poops at work and damn proud of it. You will often see an Out Of The Closet Pooper enter the bathroom with a newspaper or magazine under their arm. Always look around the office for the Out Of The Closet Pooper before entering the bathroom.
THE POOPING FRIENDS NETWORK (PFN). Definition: A group of coworkers who band together to ensure emergency pooping goes off without incident. This group can help you to monitor the whereabouts of Out Of The Closet Poopers, and identify SAFE HAVENS.
SAFE HAVENS. Definition: A seldom used bathroom somewhere in the building where you can least expect visitors. Try floors that are predominantly of the opposite sex. This will reduce the odds of a pooper of your sex entering the bathroom.
TURD BURGLAR: Definition: A pooper who does not realize that you are in the stall and tries to force the door open. This is one of the most shocking and vulnerable moments that can occur when taking a dump at work. If this occurs, remain in the stall until the Turd Burglar leaves. This way you will avoid all uncomfortable eye contact.
CAMO-COUGH. Definition: A phony cough that alerts all new entrants into the bathroom that you are in a stall. This can be used to cover-up a WATERMELON, or to alert potential Turd Burglars. Very effective when used in conjunction with an ASTAIRE.
ASTAIRE. Definition: A subtle toe-tap that is used to alert potential Turd Burglars that you are occupying a stall. This will remove all doubt that the stall is occupied. If you hear an Astaire, leave the bathroom immediately so the pooper can poop in peace.
WATERMELON. Definition: A turd that creates a loud splash when hitting the toilet water. This is also an embarrassing incident. If you feel a Watermelon coming on, create a diversion. See CAMO-COUGH.
HAVANA OMELET. Definition: A load of diarrhea that creates a series of loud splashes in the toilet water. Often accompanied by an Escapee. Try using a Camo-Cough with an Astaire.
UNCLE TED. Definition: A bathroom user who seems to linger around forever. Could spend extended lengths of time in front of the mirror or sitting on the pot. An Uncle Ted makes it difficult to relax while on the crapper, as you should always wait to drop your load when the bathroom is empty. This benefits you as well as the other bathroom attendees.
FLY BY. Definition: The act of scouting out a bathroom before pooping. Walk in and check for other poopers. If there are others in the bathroom, leave and come back again. Be careful not to become a FREQUENT FLYER. People may become suspicious if they catch you constantly going into the bathroom.
He should have said 'you are' when addresssing the keeper of the Troll Library, the honorable RoboTroll. 'You're' is informal and not appropriate for a coward to address others with. That disrespectful asshole!
The political controversy of the late 19th century was: whether socialists (all those who believed in the individual's right to possess what he or she produced) should engage in the political process, seize control of the state, and use the state apparatus to achieve liberation; or, whether a worker's state was inher- ently contradictory, counter revolutionary, and would only lead to the creation of a new ruling class whose interests would still clash with those of the ruled that the state should be abolished allowing for no transitional stage of any kind during which power may have the chance to reconsolidate itself.
The situation has recreated itself with amazing similarity almost exactly a century later.
Non-libertarian parties the world over (those who see authori- tarian centralization the bulwark of civilization) are bankrupt, economically and intellectually. The only viable intellectual current today falls under that ambiguous term~ `libertarian'.
Today there exist beneath this umbrella as many splinter groups as there were a hundred years ago under the umbrella of social- ism. Two distinct trends, a right and a left if you will, are clearly discernible.
One group, clearly the largest with a hierarchical organization modeled on the other political parties, believes, like most Marxists, in constitutional parliamentary republican democracy.
They believe that the state is a necessary guarantor of indi- vidual safety and the product of the individual's labor, and in gradual progress toward a free society through participation in the political process.
The other group, much smaller and far more splintered, reject the state as necessarily a tool of class domination and exploita- tion.
This group believes that what Bakunin said a hundred years ago is as true today, ``If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Czar himself.''
The first group is in all fairness a direct inheritor of the ideals of the American Revolution. In modern times, however, it has only two roots: (1) the Austrian school of economics repre- sented by Ludwig Von Mises; (2) the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Von Mises never considered the libertarians. He answered the Marxists and the Keynesians and defended laissez-faire capitalism at a time when no one else would. His justification for capital- ism was empirical~the greatest good for the greatest number.
Ayn Rand, however, attempted to offer a moral justification of capitalism by substituting the word `capitalism' for the liber- tarian meaning of the word `socialism'. She then attributed all of the ills of capitalism to government interference with the market and all of the world's wealth to the minds of the men whom the world considered the robber barons.
The contrast between Ayn Rand's `Objectivism' and libertarian- ism is deeper than mere substitution of terminology, however. Several of her propositions or axioms place her clearly outside of the libertarian tradition.
Her justification of the state is derived from a Hobbesian state of nature theory:
``...a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipi- tate it into chaos and gang warfare....'' [The Virtue of Selfish- ness, 152; pb 112]
``If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door~or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of society into the chaos of gang rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual warfare of prehistoric savages.'' [Ibid., 146; pb 108]
Ayn Rand's belief in the inherent depravity of human nature which renders us forever incapable of living without rulers and not descending to the level of `savages', clearly places her out- side of the libertarian tradition which views human nature as es- sentially good, capable of indefinite improvement through the experience of freedom and the exercise of reason.
Her knowledge of anthropology is as embarrassing as her under- standing of history. For example, in regards to her conception of who are the savages, she describes America as, ``...a superlative material achievement in the midst of an untouched wilderness, against the resistance of savage tribes.'' [For The New Intellec- tual, 58; pb 50]
To Rand, the essential characteristic of the state is that it possesses a monopoly on the use of retaliatory force. How does she justify this monopoly or national sovereignty? She accepts it as a given, something not requiring a justification, and demands that an-archy, the negation of the proposition, justify itself.
Her concept of national sovereignty is then something tran- scendental, existing separate and apart from individuals. and beyond the right of the individual to accept or reject according to his or her own reason.
These propositions clearly place Ayn Rand's philosophy closer to Hobbes, Hegel, and Marx, than to libertarianism.
The state, according to Miss Rand, must hold a monopoly on the enforcement of contracts and the settling of disputes between individuals, at least whenever this arbitration is not accepted by both sides voluntarily. She fails to consider that the en- forcement of contracts by the state fundamentally alters the nature of free agreements. Agreements are made on terms which otherwise might not be, because they are justiciable.
The terms of ``free agreements'' under law are titled in favor of lenders over debtors, landlords over tenants, employers over employees, in a way which would not exist in a ``free market.'' This leveraging of power is not `objective' at all. Depending purely on legal convention, creditors may have debtors impris- oned, tenants may be evicted without notice and their effects confiscated, one human being may own another or the land on which another lives and works, all to varying degrees.
To understand Ayn Rand's psychology it is helpful to know her background. She was born to a wealthy St. Petersburg family in 1905. The position of her family in Czarist society must have been considerable. At a time when the lives of most Russians had changed little since feudalism, her family was wealthy enough to afford a French Governess and take regular vacations to the Cri- mea.
It should be noted that wealth in Czarist society was almost wholly a measure of one's favor with the government. There were few if any Horatio Alger stories about individuals who lifted themselves out of serfdom without the patronage of the Czar.
At the age of twelve, she must have been very upset when those nasty workers took over her father's business. Her family fled St. Petersburg for the Crimea and the protection of the White Army.
This experience rendered her forever incapable of seeing land reform or any struggle of oppressed and exploited people as anything more than hatred for the good and lust for the unearned.
She shared with Marx the bourgeois ideology that only a few people were capable of running things. The masses ought to be happy to have a job working for bosses. Any suggestion that an enterprise could be run by the employees without having someone in charge was to her absurd.
She shared with Godwin and Kropotkin the belief that the indi- vidual is born tabula rasa~a blank slate, and all human knowledge is derived from sense experience. She then proceeded, however, to completely dismiss environment and socialization as the determin- ing factor in the development of character.
People were to her good or evil, brilliant or indolent, depend- ing solely on their volition. People should be judged by their actions with equal severity regardless of their condition. Though she insisted that the United States was not and never had been a completely free country, she granted no such thing as extenuating circumstances when judging an individual and had no qualms up- holding the power of the state to inflict capital punishment.
A far more sinister legacy of Ayn Rand to libertarianism is that of a moralizing autocrat who gathered about her an inner circle which she ironically called, ``The collective.''
Outwardly, this collective professed egoism and individuality. They were to be the vanguard of an intellectual renaissance. The price of admission to this group, however, was slavish conformity of one's life and professed philosophy to Ayn Rand's whims and eccentricities. For example, she did not like men who wore facial hair or listened to Mozart, and if you didn't give them up you were unfit for Rand's inner circle.
This is particularly sinister if one considers that Karl Marx, believed by millions to be the very symbol of liberation, was also an autocrat who, though professed to be the ultimate champi- on of democracy, resorted to extraordinary means to maintain control of the International Workingmen's Association. He even moved its headquarters to New York to exclude the libertarian influence.
Today Ayn Rand is gone, but like Marx a century ago, hers is the primary influence on the largest libertarian organization existing. Even the pledge which all Libertarian Party members must sign is taken directly from her admonition, ``I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals.''
In spite of their pledge to non-violence, many libertarians are frustrated with election laws and media censorship. An argument which circulates among libertarians of the right is that, if they were more threatening, the government may take steps to accommo- date them as it did the black civil rights movement.
Ayn Rand's writings are not entirely consistent on the point of non-violence either. In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark resorts to the use of dynamite. In Atlas Shrugged, Ragnar Danneskjold engages in piracy on the high seas and even shells a factory which has been nationalized. In a clandestine rescue mission, Dagny Taggart shoots a guard who stood in the way of her desired end.
In the event of economic upheaval, ruined by unemployment and inflation, tenants and home owners may refuse to make rent and mortgage payments. The unemployed may seize vacant land and begin to farm, and factory workers may realize they can run things without stock holders.
It would not be at all surprising if there were to emerge within the libertarian right, groups committed to direct action and counter revolutionary violence, even a coup d'etat.
Imagine a charismatic and autocratic personality at the center of such a group and you have the Objectivist Lenin.
Like the Marxists and right libertarians, Lenin and the Objec- tivists are professed republican democrats. Lenin and the Bolshe- viks promised that if given power, they would immediately convoke a constituent assembly. When they realized, however, they would not hold a majority in such an assembly they turned against the idea of such an assembly.
Can anyone doubt that the cultist mentality which characterizes most of Miss Rand's followers could lead to the creation of a group of self appointed avengers of the capitalist class? That they would suppress strikes, demonstrations, and factory take overs? That they would not execute people for crimes against the libertarian state?
Ayn Rand believed in a republican form of government with a cleverly constructed constitution which would deny the majority of the power to infringe on the rights of a minority as she conceived them. If the majority supported a general strike against rents and mortgages and supported the factory takeovers, would not the clandestinely organized Objectivist libertarian party be tempted to dispense with democracy in order to enforce what they conceived of as the rights of the dispossessed bour- geoisie?
In all fairness it must be admitted that Ayn Rand herself would never sanction such actions, but the same argument is made everyday by western Marxists that Marx would probably not have sanctioned many of Lenin's actions and would certainly not take credit for the Soviet Union.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks won power by promising, ``Land to the peasants!'' ``Factories to the workers!'' When they took power, however, they immediately set about liquidating the factory com- mittees and nationalizing the land. They crushed work place democracy by installing armed guards in the factories, and even returned former owners to their positions as employees of the worker's state.
Leon Trotsky stopped the practice of soldiers electing their officers from their ranks and even restored former Czarist officers to their ranks in the Red Army.
When the Russian Revolution began few people clearly understood the gulf which separated the state socialists from the libertari- ans. Many dedicated libertarians like Alexander Berkman, rallied to the Bolshevik cause, willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in hopes that seizing state power would only be a transi- tional stage toward the development of the stateless/classless society.
Many sincere lovers of liberty now flock to the standard of the Libertarian Party, as they did the Bolsheviks, completely igno- rant of the history of the last century. As Santayanna said: ``Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.''
What should be done? It should be obvious that government enforcement of private contracts is not libertarian any more than is taking state power to set people free. Libertarianism is and always will mean socialism~the self emancipation of working people.
Libertarians must stop courting the Republican right and return to their intellectual roots. By standing outside of the political process we deny the state legitimacy, and like the state tortur- ers in Atlas Shrugged, they will come and beg for libertarians to take over.
Remembering the experience of the Spanish libertarians, and heeding the advice of John Galt, libertarians must refuse state power even when begged. The state can never be a tool of libera- tion. Only its complete and utter collapse will allow for the emergence of non-statist institutions, libertarian coops, com- munes, and free markets, to flourish and displace the political state once and for all.
Load up on grits and bring your aunts They're fun to pour right down your pants Natalie is naked and turned to stone Oh no, OOG's gone, now I'm all alone
I like trolling, it's contagious Here we are now, moderate us You don't like caps, post aborted? ASCII art plans, they are thwarted! I got bitchslapped, I dissed Bojay I post flamebait every Troll Day Yeah!
First posting's what I do best And for this gift I feel blessed Commander T likes other men And always will until the end
VA's stock price, it's disastrous Hey, does timmy ride the short bus? All they post now: Lars and Napster Well, this sure ain't stuff that matters Raymond shoots ten who don't 'get it'? Read it Tuesday on ZDNet Yeah!
And I forgot Just why I post Oh yeah, I'm first, so now I can boast I'm not that lame, the filters are blind Can you imagine a -- oh, nevermind
I'm not rabid, like the zealots So they flamed me, they're just jealous Metamodding and IP bans Won't you use them on ol' sorehands? I don't want to beg for karma Don't hate patents, just your dogma I'm not insightful Not insightful
We are plesed to inform you that, after careful consideration , we have accepted your troll into the Troll Library.
You show a masterful skill at trolling.
Thank you for your time and your contribution.
--- A google search turned up this, you fucking propagandizing Indian:
"Your search - chinese refugee site:timesofindia.indiatimes.com - did not match any documents.
Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly. Try different keywords. Try more general keywords. Try fewer keywords. Do not listen to overly patriotic Indians."
The Plea of Nikos Maziotis to the Athens Criminal Court
First, I do not intend to pretend to be the "good guy" here where I was forced to come. I will not plead for anything, because I do not consider myself a criminal. I am a revolutionary. I have nothing to repent. I am proud of what I have done. The only thing I regret is the technical error that was made so that the bomb didn't explode such that my fingerprint was found on it afterward and I ended up here. This is the only thing I repent. And something else also. All that stuff shouldn't have been at my house. It should have been kept somewhere else.
You must have in mind that although you are judges and sitting higher than me, many times revolutionaries, and myself specifically, have judged you long before you judge me. We are in opposite camps, hostile camps. The revolutionaries and revolutionary justice (because I don't believe that this court is justice, it's the word justice in quotation marks) many times judge their enemies more mercilessly, when they get the chance to impose justice.
I will begin many years ago. We don't have any crime of mine to judge here. On the contrary, we will talk about crimes, but not mine. We will talk about the crimes of the state, of its mechanisms, of justice and police crimes....
The first time I can say I was politicized is when I took part in a demonstration in 1985. It was the 17th of November. I was fourteen then, and one policeman, Melistas, shot and killed a fifteen year-old, Kaltezas. I had not participated in the riots of that night. The same evening after the murder the Chemistry School was occupied and in the morning special forces carried out a police raid on the building to evacuate it and they arrested the anarchists and youths who were inside. The next day five thousand people occupied the Polytechnic School--if I remember correctly because I was young then and didn't have much information. These occupations were precisely a reaction to the murder of Kaltezas by policeman Melistas. "Justice," five years later, in January of 1990, found Melistas innocent.
What I mean by saying this is that in reality you are abettors of crimes, at least according to me. Then, in January and February of '90 I took part in the occupation of the Polytechnic, which occurred as a reaction to the court-decision which found Melistas not guilty for the murder of Kaltezas. There were riots and damages, store windows were broken, stones and molotov cocktails thrown.... I participated in these events. From then on I could consciously say I was an anarchist.
And when I say anarchist, I mean that I am against the state and capital. That our purpose is to subvert the state and the capitalist regime. We want a society without classes, without hierarchy and without domination. The biggest lie of all times is that the state is society. I think Nietzsche has also said this--that the state lies.
We are opposed to the division of society into classes, we are against a separation between those who give orders and others who obey orders. This authoritarian structure penetrates the whole of society and it is this structure that we want to destroy. Either with peaceful or with violent means--even with guns. I have no problem with that.
I will contradict my brother who said before that he didn't want the guns in order to make war. They were for war. Maybe they were just kept there, but the guns are for war. You don't just have them to keep them at home. I might have kept them as they were, but they are to make war and I make war.... The bomb in the ministry was an act of war.
Since 1990 I have been convicted many times for my actions, for multiform actions.
I was convicted because I refused to serve the army. Not because I have any problem with weapons or with violence, I repeated that in the military court. The fact that this time I was arrested in possession of guns means that I have no problem with weapons or with violence. I am not at all a pacifist. Because neither society nor the state are peaceful. As long as I receive violence I will respond with violence.
I spent seven months in a military prison. I have been convicted for deserting the army and for evasion of military services. The second time I was released after 51 days of a hunger strike.
I have been arrested in '94 in the occupation of the Economic university along with 51 comrades of mine, when Giorgos Balafas and Odysseas Kampouris were on hunger strike. This occupation of the Economic School was also an action of solidarity. In conditions where we couldn't gather anywhere, nor demonstrate, we had decided to squat a university and use it as a center of counter-information about the cases of Giorgos Balafas and Odysseas Kampouris, who were then imprisoned.
In '95 I was arrested with 500 other people in the revolt of the Polytechnic in November. That occupation happened because there were many different political prisoners in jail--Kostas Kalaremas, Odysseas Kampouris, Giorgos Balafas who was arrested again in the meantime, Spyros Dapergolas, Christoforos Marinos and four persons from Thessaloniki who were arrested when the demonstration in which they were participating was attacked by the police on the 14th of November--and because there was a prisoners' revolt going on in Koridallos jail. For this occupation I was at last sentenced to one year imprisonment along with many others of my comrades. In all these actions my comrades and myself have taken complete responsibility.
So, during this decade since I can call myself an anarchist, I have used many forms of action. I have written and distributed leaflets. I took part in postering. I participated in occupations, violent or peaceful. For example, the occupation of the Economic School didn't have any violent character but the Special Police Units and the Riot Police invaded and arrested us. There were even policemen of the Special Units wearing ski-masks who entered in order to break the chains on the gate.
In the case of the Polytechnic we didn't pretend to be innocent, still without accepting the specific charges we were accused of. We explained why we went in the Polytechnic. Some time after, when I was court-martialed in February of '98, I personally took responsibility for burning a Greek flag. I said that I burnt it. I consider it to be a symbol of a hostile force. With anyone having the Greek flag I see my enemy, because the policemen have it on their uniforms, and the marshals.... It is the symbol of the enemy.
Our purpose, within the anti-state and anticapitalist struggle, is to connect ourselves with the different social struggles. Our purpose also when interfering in these struggles is to attempt to take things to the edge, which means to culminate the conflict of these social parts with the state and the police. To urge the people fighting to transcend institutional frameworks--the trade-unions, the local administrations and all those manipulators who are enemies of human freedom. Many comrades of mine, with their small forces, were engaged in such struggles. I will tell you about them more specifically.
In 1989, in a struggle of environmental interest in the village of Aravissos, the resi
dents of the area didn't want their water sources to be exploited by the Water Company of Thessaloniki. They clashed with the police and the riot police, the burnt water pumps, set fires and built barricades.... And some of our comrades from Thessaloniki took part in this struggle and were even arrested.
In 1990 the aggression of neo-liberalism began in Greece (an aggression that internationally had begun in the '80s with the Reagan and Thatcher governments), including de-industrialization, workers' dismissals, privatization, restriction of the welfare state, reductions in salaries, pensions and medical treatment.... This attack that started in Europe and North America in the beginning of the '80s only started in 1990 in Greece.
The first project was the "problematic" companies. In that section also, during the period of 1990-91, there were occupations in many factories of the country--in Mantoudi, Lavrio, Patras. Again, some comrades of ours, with their small powers, were there. More specifically in Mantoudi and in the Piraiki-Patraiki factory which is located in Patras.
After that we have the pupils' movement of "90-91 which was a grand one in to my opinion. It managed to subvert the law of the Minister of Education Kontogiannopoulos, who finally resigned. The right-wing government, in its effort to repress the movement, had mobilized its thugs in order to smash the school occupations, resulting in the murder of a teacher, Nikos Temponeras, inside an occupied school in Patras. It was one more crime of the state. Here we will count the crimes of the state, no crime of mine.
Responding to the murder of Temponeras there was a demonstration of thousands of people. We participated too, to sharpen the situation. There were conflicts with the police, the Polytechnic was occupied once again for two days. Flames, barricades, damage.... There was also another crime those days, in the 10th of January "91. During the riots, tear-gas bombs thrown by the police caused a fire in the building of K. Marousi, a shopping-center in Panepistimiou street. Four people died there due to this fire. For this crime nobody has yet paid, nor did "justice" say anything. It was covered up.
One year after, in the summer of 1992, my comrades--not me personally but this doesn't matter--participated in the clashes around Votanikos central bus-station, when the government attempted to privatize Public Transports. There were conflicts between the workers and the police. Then, some workers in the Public Transports went to prison accused of sabotage. They were smashing private buses belonging to the ruffian owners who had bought them. There also, anarchists were present.
Before referring to the struggle in Strymonikos, I want to mention the most recent examples: the jobless teachers the previous year and the pupils' movement in the winter
of '98-'99. We were present there as well. A comrade who testified yesterday, Vasilis Evagelidis, tried to talk about it. He was arrested in the clashes that took place in January of '99 in a pupils' demonstration.
Generally, wherever there are disturbances, wherever there are conflicts we want to be involved--to subvert things. For us, this is not a crime. In a real sense, these disturbances are the "popular sovereignty" that professional politicians keep talking about. That's where freedom is expressed....
Now let's talk about the struggle of the people in Strymonikos. Long before I placed the bomb, other comrades had been in the villages. They had been talking with the people there. They had published a brochure about this revolt, about the clashes in October of 1996. But I will talk more specifically about the struggle in Strymonikos in a little while. First, I want to talk exclusively about the action.
To tell the truth, I was inspired to put this bomb for a specific reason: The people of the villages broke the usual limits by themselves. If it had been a struggle inside institutional frameworks--in the way that trade unions and local administrations try to keep these struggles restricted, if it was confined in a mild, harmless and nondangerous protest, maybe I wouldn't have done anything.
But the comrades up there in the villages--who are not anarchists, of course, but I don't care about that, they are citizens who also want their freedom--had exceeded every limit. They had conflicts with the police three times--on the 17th of October 1996, on the 25th of July '97 and on November 9 '98. They had set fire to police cars and vans of the riot police. They had burnt machinery belonging to TVX, they had invaded the mines of Olympiada and destroyed part of the installations. Some of them also made a kind of guerrilla war. In the nights, they were going out with guns, shooting in the air to frighten the policemen. And I thought, these people are cool. They've gone even further than us.
And then repression followed, especially in '97 when there was marshal law imposed in the area. The Chief of Police in Halkidiki gave an order according to which all gatherings and demonstrations were forbidden. They also sent special police units and police tanks, which came onto the streets for the first time since 1980. Now they were sending them out again in the villages of Halkidiki. So, I thought, we must do something here, in Athens. It is not possible that the others are under repression and we are here staying passive.
The ministry of Industry and Development, in Papadiamadopoulou and Michalakopoulou streets, was one of the centers of this case. The struggle in Strymonikos was a struggle against "development," against "modernization" and all this crap they keep proclaiming. What is hidden behind all these expressions is the profits of
multinationals, the profits of "our own" capitalists, Greek capitalists, the profits of states officials, of the Greek state, of the bureaucrats, of all those who take the money, of technical companies.... There is no relevance between this "development" and "modernization" they are talking about and the satisfaction of popular needs. No relevance at all.
So, I placed a bomb. The purpose was as I said in the letter with which I took responsibility for the action. In the passage of February '98 I said that in placing the explosive device my purpose was to send a double political message. Everything is political. Even if you use such means, the messages are political. War itself is a means of political pressure. In this case, this was also a political means, a political practice. First of all, a message to the people of Strymonikos that "you are not alone, there are also others who may live 600 km away from you but care." Not for personal reasons...I don't know anyone from there personally. Other comrades know people there. I haven't even been there. It was not my house that was threatened, but this is not the point.
Simply, my principle--and generally the principle of anarchists and of other non-anarchist revolutionaries--is that social freedom is one and inseparable. So, if freedom is partially offended, in essence it is offended as a whole. If their freedom is offended, mine is offended too. Their war will be my war, especially in an area where the "sovereign people"--again an expression used by professional politicians--does not want what the state and the capital want: the gold metallurgy of TVX.
On the other hand, I have said that, OK, there would be some damage--I knew that. Yes, I had the intention to cause material damages. So, what damage would that be? On the windows, on that certain place, what kind of damage? Or outside the storehouse where I placed the bomb? In my opinion the damages would be minimal. But even if they were more than minimal, for me it is not important at all. Because freedom can't be compared with the material damage of some windows, on a state car or state property. For me, the ministry is not an institution of common benefit as the charges say. Of state benefit yes, but of social benefit no.
However, even if the device did not explode, I sent my message. I was caught because I made that technical error and I left a fingerprint, but even if there was no material damage at all the message was sent. And you received it, the state received it, but also the people of Strymonikos received it. I know that they are saying I am one of them, even if they have never met me. There is nothing better than that. And of course, I repeat that I don't regret it at all.
I am a social revolutionary, and when you say that it is like talking for the benefit of society. Not like--it is for the social benefit. As I have this principle I couldn't harm any citizen. I could harm a policeman. I consider them my enemies. And you are my enemies too. I separate you. I make a clear class separation. On one hand we have those, on the other hand, we have the others. In this occasion though I intended to harm neither the policeman who guarded the ministry nor anybody else--and of course not a citizen.
The procedure that is used by groups or individuals in general is exactly this: you first place the bomb in your target and then you call to a newspaper. In this case, I called to Eleftherotypia and said: In half an hour a bomb will explode there. Exactly what is written in the evidence: "In 30 minutes there will be an explosion in the Ministry of Industry and Development, for the case of TVX in Strymonikos." By this sense, as it was proven practically and not hypothetically, the police arrived at the place in time. The first of them who went there surrounded and evacuated the area for 200 meters around the building, as the police specialists themselves admitted, so that there wouldn't be any car or person accidentally passing by. And then they waited for the bomb to explode. As they have already said, they were waiting for the safety time to expire, which is the 30 minutes that I had given! Whether the bomb would or wouldn't explode there was absolutely no danger for humans lives. In case that it exploded, there would be only material damages. So, it would happen exactly as was intended to happen. Objectively, if the device had exploded there was no chance of an accident, like exploding before or after the time given.
And exactly because of the message being political and symbolic, it was not in my purpose to cause extensive material damages; that's why I used a small quantity of dynamite. And I had the possibility to put five or seven or ten kilos if I had wanted to.... But I didn't. Since there were such things found in my house, I could have caused great damage, always talking about material damages! But I didn't. If I could have demolished the whole building of the ministry without having killed anyone, I wouldn't have any objection. It is another useless building for the people and for society. As I said before, the only thing I regret is the technical error on the device.
Now, I want to say something in advance. This action was performed only by me, I did it alone, there was nobody else. The message of course said "Anarchist Urban Guerrillas." This doesn't mean that there were other persons aside from me.... It was just an expression to imply which milieu I come from. Of course, I wouldn't use my name "Nikos Maziotis" to tell the newspaper where I placed the bomb. I'd say "Anarchists." That's all. I want to make it clear, finally, that the initiative for this action was mine only, there was neither a group nor an organization nor anything. And also, It doesn't appear even from the evidence that there was a group or an organization, that I would supply any group or organization. I was alone and the things found were only mine.
I want to refer more to what I call solidarity, to the motives that I had. What is this solidarity. I believe that people socialized--that human society was created--based on three components: solidarity, mutuality and helping each other. That's what human freedom is based on. Any social group in struggle, in different space and time--whether they are pupils or farmers or citizens of local societies, for me and for anarchists is very important. It doesn't have to do with whether I am a worker and identifying my interests with the interests of that class. If someone asks for a higher salary or has a trade-unionist demand for me that is not important. For me, solidarity means the unreserved acceptance and support with every means of the right that the people must have to determine their lives as they wish, and not letting others to decide in default of them, like the state and the capital do.
That means that in this specific case, in the struggle of Strymonikos but also in every social struggle, for me what counts mostly is that they are struggles through which the people want to determine their fates alone. And not having any police chief or any state official or capitalist deciding what they should do. It is of secondary importance if they want or don't want the factory, if the focal point of the struggle is environmental. The important thing is that they don't want the factory because they don't like something imposed on them with violence.
Concerning the matter of political violence now, from the very beginning they tried to present a case of "repulsive criminals" and "terrorists" who "'blindly' placed bombs." Something that doesn't exist.
If theoretically terrorism is exercising violence against citizens and unarmed population, that goes exclusively for the state. Only the state attacks civilians. That's what the repression mechanisms are for: the riot police, special police units, the army, special forces...mechanisms that also rob the people. They finance armed professionals, policemen. Aren't they trained to shoot real targets? Aren't the riot police armed with chemical gas? To use them where? On citizens, in demonstrations and in manifestations. So, only the state exercises violence against citizens. I didn't use any violence against any citizen.
I will say exactly what terrorism is.
Terrorism is when occupations, demonstrations and strikes are being attacked. When the riot police attacked the pensioners who demonstrated outside Maximou four years ago. When Melistas killed Kaltezas. When Koumis and Kanelopoulou were murdered by the riot police in 16th of November 1980. And if I remember well, they were not shot, they were beaten to death. Terrorism is when Christos Kassimis was murdered. But I will refer more specifically to this case.
A group of revolutionaries had then tried to set fire to the German factory of AEG, in Redis. This was also an action of solidarity. I don't know if you are aware of that, but I will tell you about it. Then, in '77, some guerrillas of the RAF had died inside the white cells of Stammheim, in Stuttgart, West Germany. The white cells alone are terrorism. Prison is terrorism. So, then, some Greek revolutionaries went to burn the factory of AEG, as an action of solidarity with the RAF and also as a reaction to the murder of RAF militants in the prisons of Stuttgart. During this attempt, which was unsuccessful, somebody was killed. He was Christos Kassimis, shot by the two policemen, Plessas and Stergiou, who were guarding the factory. And according to what I have read, they didn't kill him because their lives where threatened, they shot him in the back. He died with a bullet in his back.
Terrorism is when special police forces invade the Chemistry School and beat up anarchists and youth. Terrorism is when Temponeras is murdered in Patras. Terrorism is when Christos Tsoutsouvis was murdered in '85. But this case also has something special and I want to point it out. To Christos Tsoutsouvis fits an expression of Thucydides-if you know about him, he is the ancient historian who wrote down the story of the Peloponnesian War--that "dying in the battle is an honor, followed by the acclaim of the citizenry." He may have been killed, but he also took three of them with him. For me, he was a warrior, a militant. I believe that society needs more persons like him.
Terrorism is when citizens are murdered by the police in simple "identification controls." I will mention some examples. I will tell about Christos Mouratis, a Rom in the city of Livadia, who was shot in a police blockade in October of 1996. He was an unarmed citizen. This is a crime. But "justice" did nothing about it, what would it do? It just rewarded the crime.
In 1997, Helias Mexis was passing by the street in front of the Transport Detention Center (for prisoners) and he was shot by the police guard Tsagrakos.
Theodoros Giakas was killed on January 10th 1994 by police officer Lagogiannis of the Moschato police station. This case is also quite peculiar. He was an unarmed citizen. He was stopped in the street for identity control. He ran away and the police shot him. Afterwards they said they found a knife in his possession and other crap. As far as I know, in the beginning he was shot three times. Probably all three shots were fatal. As Giakas was lying on the ground, Lagogiannis shot him another two times and even after that he handcuffed him! Are you aware of what "justice" did about it? Sentenced him to 12 years on probation. That's why I'm saying that your "justice" must be put in quotation marks.
Terrorism is when Ali Yumfraz, a Pomak from Vrilisia suburb of Athens, was arrested for being drunk and afterwards he was found dead in his cell in the police station. The police said he suffered a heart-attack and that this was the reason for his death. I can recall another incident, in January of '91, when a Turkish political refugee, Souleiman Akiar, was beaten to death by policemen. The Minister of Public Order had then said that the man had heart problems. But the medical examination found that there were bruises all over his body.
Terrorism is this court, here. Every trial of a militant, every trial of a revolutionary is terrorism, a message of intimidation for society. I said it before in my statement yesterday, when you called me to ask if I accept the charges, and I will repeat it. Because my persecution is political, the message is clear: whoever fights against the state and capital will be penalized, criminalized and characterized as a terrorist. The same for any solidarity with any social struggle: it will be penalized and crushed. This is the message of this trial and by this sense it is terrorism. Terrorism against me, terrorism against the anarchists, terrorism against the people of Strymonikos, who are also receiving similar messages during this period, as they have similar trials for their mobilizations. This is terrorism.
The fact that I put a bomb as an action of solidarity is not terrorism. Because no citizen was harmed by this action.
Many times, the media--sometimes even more than the police--promote a view of every action taking place (for example in molotov attacks) that "we almost had victims, almost, almost, almost...." But such a thing has never really happened. This is done to create impressions and these things are said so that there will be social consent for repression. So that I, for example, will be convicted with a long-term prison sentence. "We found someone who made the mistake of leaving his fingerprint. We caught him. And he says that he did it? Let's fuck him!" My language is a little vulgar.
I want to refer to the struggle in Strymonikos. Even if I have never been there I will give you some historical rudiments. The mines which have now been bought by the multinational company TVX Gold have existed since 1927. They used to belong to Bodosakis. In these mines, where numerous work accidents have taken place and many miners suffered pneumonokoniosis, there was a big bloody strike back in 1977. The strike had demands such as increases in wages, medical treatment, and security measures in the mines. At that time police tanks sent also sent into the area. There were arrests and convictions, with terrorism imposed in the villages.
In the late '80s the company was characterized as "problematic," like many others. The state, through METVA, planned the installation of gold metallurgy. In '92 the company, as "problematic," passed into the hands of the state and in December of '95 the latter sold the mines to TVX. But the residents of Strymonikos didn't want the construction of a gold metallurgy plant. More than seventy years of mining activity had already caused serious environmental problems.
This struggle has great importance, and that has been proven, for international reasons. The mobilizations started in the beginning of '96. The residents blockaded the national Thessaloniki-Kavala highway, they made guardhouses from which they supervised the mines and stopped any company truck that might try to pass or any machinery that would begin drilling activities. With these activities, the street blockade and the guardhouses, the people demonstrated: "We are here. You are not going to pass."
This way they forced the company to temporarily suspend its activities. On the 26th of October '96, TVX sent an ultimatum to the greek state and to the Ministry of Development, saying that "Unless the works start right now, we are going to leave." Their investment, which is the biggest private one ever made in the country, an investment of 65 billion drachmas, would leave Greece.
When the first clashes took place, on the 17th of October, and the residents managed to violently repel the police forces from the area, Jason Stratos, the president of SEV, stated that "these disturbances damage the integrity of the country abroad." And he was right, because "It's impossible that two thousand provincials (I don't mean this characterization in a bad way, but that's how the minister or the president of SEV mean it; that's how professional politicians and the political parties talk about simple people) will destroy our investments, not letting a Canadian company or any other foreign company come here and make investments. This reaction must end".
So, you can understand that this struggle had no restricted local character. It had international implications, because it created a precedent: "If we can't have an investment in Halkidiki, wherever a foreign investor may go it will not be able to proceed with the investment. If the people revolt and don't want what the state wants, the economy is through."
One year later, there was another attempt to start work for the installation of the gold metallurgy plant. In July of '97 the residents destroyed a drill belonging to IGME and clashed with the police. In November, they gathered and demonstrated at the mines. But some months before--in September, if I remember well--the state had predicted that the people's reactions would culminate and had sent hundreds of policemen from Thessaloniki. They had also sent riot police from Athens, special repression police units and police tanks, which as I said before appeared in the streets for the first time after 1980 when they were used to suppress demonstrations. There was a whole army of occupation installed there permanently. The police knew that there would be riots again so they had prepared a military force to repress the residents. As it happened, of course, it wasn't completely successful because the police were defeated in clashes that took place on the 9th of November. And as I have said before police cars and riot police vans were destroyed, the drill of the company was set on fire and finally guerrilla activities took place, in which shots were fired to frighten the police.
As I have already said, I was very much inspired by these events to put the bomb in the Ministry of Industry and Development. On this base I want to repeat that this struggle had no simple local character. It had transcended that.
For us, for the anarchists, social struggles and solidarity are beyond national limits. For me and for my comrades, struggles that take place outside the borders of the Greek state have a great importance.
There is huge importance for me in the Zapatista guerrilla that has burst out in Chiapas in 1994. It is one more struggle against neoliberalism, a struggle that is carried out with guns, with masks, a real war. It involves political violence and I am not against that. I have never made any statement against it and I do not want to pretend to be innocent.
Of great importance for me is also the movement of Brazilian farmers without land (the MST) who occupy the land of the estates in order to cultivate it collectively.
There is also great significance in the movement of the jobless people in France, who made occupations in working offices and clashed with the police during the winter of '97-'98.
Also important is something that took place in Turkey and that is similar with what happened in Strymonikos with TVX. Another multinational company, EUROGOLD, tried to make a comparable investment in Pergamos. And it is very important what I am going to say now. It was in the village Ovancik of Pergamos, if I remember correctly. The residents of that area, Turkish farmers, successfully frustrated the EUROGOLD investment, in the same ways that the people of Strymonikos have used to so far prevent the installation of gold metallurgy. The people of Pergamos made blockades in the Ismir-Istanbul highway. They clashed with military police forces. And, coincidentally, there was again someone who placed a bomb in the offices of the investing company, in Ismir. Like I did here.
So, as you understand, all these practices are part of social struggles, they happen everywhere. And for us, not only are they not crimes, but they are an honor. We are proud of these practices.
Concerning this factory in Pergamos, the Greek media, the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Aegean had been hypocritically saying that if it was constructed it would pollute the Aegean sea. But they are not saying the same for Strymonikos Bay. So the factory in Turkey must not be constructed, but in Greece it is all right. Here the hypocrisy of the Greek state, of the media and of the politicians is obvious.
I don't believe that you really judge me as a "terrorist." I don't believe that you judge me for "having the purpose to cause danger to human lives." This is just a pretext. In fact, you are judging me for what I've said until now. For who I am. For being an anarchist, for believing what I believe, even for my past. Because all of these are aggravating elements: "So, you were in the Polytechnic occupation, you were in the Economic School occupation, you are an objector to military service, you were here and there...." I don't have a "previous decent life," according to you, of course, because according to me I am a very decent person. In reality, you don't judge me for supposedly having the purpose of harming people.
In fact, the state has proven that it does not care for the citizens. On the contrary, when its domination must be consolidated, the state takes away human lives, as I have said in the examples I gave before. The only thing the state wants is to conserve a monopoly, the monopoly that "Only I, the state, can take away human lives."
Only the uniformed police, the secret police, the riot police or the special police can take away human lives. Everyone else who does it is a criminal. But when the state does it, it proves to be unassailable.
Whenever citizens were killed, "justice" has accepted the police allegations. Not because it believed them but for reasons of interest. It always accepts the allegation that "the bullet lost its way," that supposedly "the policeman's gun had accidentally fired," or that he was supposed to be "in legal defense." In reality though, all these examples that I mentioned before, and I have more to mention, are cold-blooded murders. Very few policemen were ever accused and all of them are out of prison and proud of what they have done. Proud!
A witness for my defense said something before about the case of Alekos Panagoulis. And it is true that the attempt of Panagoulis to murder the dictator Papadopoulos was an action applauded by the Greek people. It was an attempt to kill. And so what? Who did he try to kill? A dictator!
Rationally one can oppose the argument that back then there was a status of military junta and that the means of political violence were justified to be used as a means of political pressure in the time of dictatorship, but now we have a "parliamentary democracy." Now we have "freedom" and we have "rights." Well, I don't think it is exactly like that. With all I've said I don't believe there are rights. They may exist on paper, but in reality there is nothing.
I will mention certain occasions of the political reform period, the time of the presumed democracy, where people have been killed within social struggles. It was once again proven that the people still don't define their fate just because the constitution of the state changed in 1974. Specific examples: The first disturbances took place, as far as I remember, in July of 1975. Also in May of 1976 for one more time the police tanks appeared in the streets of Athens. Laskaris, the minister of Employment of Karamanlis' government had then made a new law, Act 330, an anti-worker and anti-strike act. On the 25th of May '76 there was an all-workers' demonstration.
There were clashes with the police, an assault at the offices of "Bradini" newspaper..., molotov cocktails and fire... Then, a police tank which was chasing after demonstrators killed Anastasia Tsivika, a 67 year old saleswoman. Nobody was ever accused of this murder.
In other cases, there were new drafts of laws voted in the parliament without asking anybody's opinion. For example in 1990 there was a revision of the agreement considering the continuation of the American military base operations in Greece. The people of Chania did not accept that... In June of 1990 they had a demonstration which was attacked by the riot police. As a reaction, the people clashed with the police and burnt down the Prefecture of Chania.
In 1991 the farmers of Heraklion province set fire to the building of the Heraklion Prefecture. As you can see, political violence is exercised by everyone. By all of society and by every social segment or class that is threatened.
What the state wants is to deal with everyone alone. You must have heard an expression that Prime Minister Simitis is using a lot, speaking of "social automatism" whenever social reactions burst out. He uses this expression in order to present these social reactions--the blockades in the streets, the squatting in public buildings and all the actions of this kind--as being in contrast with the interests of the rest of society. Something that is a total lie. It is just the tactics of "divide and rule," which means "Spread discord to break solidarity." Because solidarity is very important as anyone who is alone becomes an easy target.
When a workers' strike takes place and there is no solidarity it is easier to attack. They talk about a "minority." This is the argument of the state, that it is "a union minority having retrogressive interests which turn against modernization, against development, against all reforms," and all that nonsense. Well, there hasn't been one social segment or social group that hasn't come in conflict with the state--especially during the '90s, and that hasn't been faced with the argument that "You are just a minority," that "Your struggle is in contrast with the rest of society's interests."
That is exactly what happened in all cases. It happened with the workers in the "problematic" companies who were squatting their factories in '90-'91, with the pupils who occupied their schools in '90-'91 and recently in '98-'99. The same thing happened with the workers in Public Transport in '92, with the farmers who blockaded the national highways in '95 and in '96, with the teachers' mobilizations against the repeal of the calendar and the new exam. The same thing happened of course with the people of Strymonikos.
What is really being attacked is solidarity. And that's what is also attacked--without any disguise--through my trial. The state wants to attack everyone alone. Because when it finds them together things are much more difficult.
Police brutality is, of course, not sufficient for repression. Coming back to what I was saying before, I have concluded with the fact that the difference between dictatorship and parliamentary democracy--or should I better say capitalistic oligarchy--is that the first one is mainly imposed by raw violence and the latter, the presumed democracy, is mostly imposed by the intellectual control of the citizens, through the weapon of the mass media, through deception. Because I don't believe that people voting for their bosses every four years means they have their freedom. They vote for them but when they're not doing what they were elected to do, people can't get rid of them.
In ancient Athens this didn't happen. In ancient Athens everyone could speak in the public assembly. Anyone could express an opinion, no matter how modest his position was. And those having a public position could be removed by the people at any time.
But democracy has also proven that when deception and intellectual control of the citizens are not enough, it has no problem resorting to police violence, killing, torture and terror.
Finally, I am not on trial because I placed a bomb, nor because I possessed three guns and ten kilograms of dynamite. After all, the army and the police have a lot more guns than me and they use them. The one can't be compared with the other.
I have nothing else to say. The only thing I'll say more is that no matter what the penalty to which I will be sentenced--because it is certain that I will be convicted--I am not going to repent anything. I will remain who I am. I can also say that prison is always a school for a revolutionaries. His ideas and the endurance of his soul are experienced. And if he passes this test he becomes stronger and believes more in the things for which he was put in prison. I have nothing more to say.
The judge: Don't turn the cameras to the bench!
Public prosecutor: In the beginning of your plea you said that you had the guns for war. Don't you see a contradiction when you say that there was no danger for human lives?
I made clear that none of my activities is turned against citizens. I already made that clear. Where is the contradiction?
Public Prosecutor: You said the guns are for war.
Yes but not for the people. For my class enemies. Look, I never said that I am a humanist generally. Nor a philanthropist, because the meanings of these words are degraded. In everything that I've written--if you have read--and in everything that I've said I made clear who are my friends and who are my enemies. Not on a personal but on a social level. Who are my social and class friends and who are my social and class enemies. In the letter with which I took responsibility for the action as well as in my defense I said that society is another thing from the state.
I will go on to be more specific for the jury. On the one hand I place the state, state officials, the police, the army, the security forces, capitalists, and on the other hand I place the rest of the people: workers, farmers, pupils, the whole of society, the majority of the people, the oppressed people.
Public prosecutor: You talked about "justice" putting the word in quotation marks. What ground for complaint do you have against justice?
I have been in prison for the last 18 months. I have personally stayed in prison for 18 months and another 7 months in military prison. Simple and close examples. You are speaking of me, personally, are't you?
These laws are made in order to suit your interests. From these laws you are earning your bread. Your job is to send citizens to prison and to oppose the argument that policemen have committed murders but don't go to prison for it. I have already criticized the job of this "justice" you are talking about. That finally there are two weights and two measures. The matter is not what the law says or what the penal code says, but what really happens. Just like in the case of terrorism.
For example, the US consider PKK to be a terrorist organization, but not UCK. In the beginning UCK was considered, by the US, a terrorist organization but afterwards it wasn't because its existence was convenient for their plans. Isn't that right? The US did not consider Contras to be terrorists, when they were going to invade Nicaragua, but they considered all the left revolutionary movements and guerrillas terrorists.
Public prosecutor: I will refer to the danger you said something about. Didn't you know that the bomb could cause danger?
If I knew? I knew that it would not cause any danger. The procedure is stereotyped and it goes exactly like that: you make a telephone call to a newspaper for warning, then somebody from the newspaper informs the police, the police arrive at the place and blockade the area surrounding the target. In my case, they did blockade the area and the police specialists in neutralizing explosive devices who were then present have already testified that the blockade was safe for a range of 200 meters. So there was no danger for human lives. For material damages now, I told you my opinion about them....
I want to complete what I was saying before to the public prosecutor, about terrorism on an international level. In reality, for this moment, the US are the global gendarmery and terrorists, as the only great world power left. Which means it is the worst thing on earth. And according to our perception--as anarchists--the state, all the states and all the governments are antisocial, terrorist mechanisms, since they have organized armies, police, and hired torturers.
I also want to complete what I was saying about having two weights and two measures. For example, the US provides weapons, financing and instigating every dictatorial regime all over the world. And in Greece as well. In Latin America, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru.... This is terrorism. Terrorism is to arm dictators, to arm death squads in Argentina or in Bolivia in order to kill people of the left, citizens, revolutionaries. Those who equip the death squads to torture, those are the terrorists.
Terrorism is when they bombard Yugoslavia for ten days, killing civilians....
Excuse me, Mr. prosecutor, but the US is the one which pronounces who is terrorist and who isn't. Its State Department issues official directions, advising Greece about who is a terrorist. In this period of time, it places pressure on the Greek state to make an anti-terrorist law, a model of law which will criminalize those who fight, making laws more draconian than those already existing. This is terrorism.
The revolutionaries and militants are not terrorists. The terrorists are the states themselves. But with this accusation, with this stigmatizing (as terrorism) all the states and governments try to criminalize the social revolutionaries and militants inside their countries--the internal social enemy. In fact, the state, "justice" and the police face me also as this kind of enemy. As an internal social enemy. On the basis of the division I described before. That's the way the state sees it. This is what is ventured in this trial.
Public prosecutor: What do you have to oppose to what exists?
Social revolution. By any means necessary.
It is generally proven, because I am well versed in Greek as well as in international social and political history, that never did any changes happen, never did humanity meet any progress--progress as I conceive it--through begging, praying or with mere words.
In the text I sent to take responsibility for the action in which I said that I placed the bomb and which was published in Eleftherotypia newspaper, I said that the social elite, the mandarins of capital, the bureaucrats, all these useless and parasitic people--who should disappear from the proscenium of history--will never quit their privileges through a civilized discussion, through persuasion. I don't want to have a discussion because you can't have a discussion with this kind of people...
I would like to add something. Precisely because I have studied a lot, (I know that) during the events of July of '65, a conservative congressman of the National Radical Union came out and said about those who went into the streets and caused disturbances when Petroulas was killed, that "Democracy is not the red tramps but we, the participants in parliament," which means the congressmen who are well paid.
I will reverse that. Popular sovereignty, sir judges, is when molotovs and stones are thrown at the police, when state cars, banks, shopping centers and luxury stores are burnt down. This is how the people react. History itself has proven that this is the way people react.
This is popular sovereignty. When Maziotis goes and places a bomb in the Ministry of Industry and Development in solidarity with the struggle of the people in Strymonikos. This is the real popular sovereignty and not what the Constitution says.
I forgot to commemorate militants who have been murdered. Christoforos Marinos was murdered in the port of Piraeus, inside the ship "Pegasus" in July of '96. Michalis Prekas was murdered by the Special Police Units in October of 1987 in Kalogreza. Tsironis was murdered in Nea Smyrni in 1978.
I also want to add something concerning to what Mr. Prosecutor said yesterday, during his speech, on the matter of humanism.
I will mention an event that happened abroad, to prove who are humanists and who aren't after all, who are the real criminals.
The Tupac Amaru guerrillas occupied the Japanese embassy of Peru in December of 1996. They took more than a hundred hostages and these hostages were not just citizens. There were ambassadors, diplomats from many states, Japanese businessmen and officials of the Peruvian regime--which is quite far from being democratic. They were demanding the freedom of their militants, the release of their organization's leader and of other comrades of theirs who were imprisoned in dungeons.
Not only didn't they hurt any one of the hostages but they even released almost all of them--that is to say who are really the humanists. On the contrary, after endless and exhausting negotiations, the Peruvian special forces invaded the embassy and executed every one of them in cold blood. I tell all that in order that we know who are the criminals and who are the "humanists"--in quotation marks, because I don't like this term and that's why I don't use it a lot.
I want also to mention some things that happened here in Greece. I want to speak for Charis Temperekidis, who may not have been a political militant, but for me he was a rebelling penal prisoner. He had been kept in prison for years. He also died with his gun in hand during a chase after the robbery of the Agricultural Bank in Klitoria, Achaia. Despite the fact that he was still alive when caught by the police, he didn't inform against his accomplices. In the past he had taken part in prisoners' revolts, like the one of 1987 in Kerkyra in order to close this place of punishment.
And there is one more case--if we want to discuss crimes once more, the case of Sorin Matei. When Matei kept a policeman as hostage, the police didn't make any move to arrest him. When Matei took civilians as hostages, the police couldn't care less about their lives. In order to strengthen their prestige the police invaded the apartment where Matei had taken shelter, resulting in the death of a young woman. The criminals were more the policemen of the special units than Sorin Matei. As criminal as the manager of Nikaia general hospital, Alexiou, who ordered the transportation of Matei to the prison hospital Agios Pavlos, where he died either from the beating he suffered by policemen or by the drugs they were given to him. That explains who is criminal.
You idiot. I do not live in China. The Chinese government is a little a autocratic, but I rather live in China and be feed, then one of the many people eating out of garbage cans in India.
India's economic growth rate may sound impressive compared to Western Europe and other rich nations, but most of their populations are in decline and supplemented by immigration. In India they are fucking mulitiplying like rabbits and the economic growth rate is not fast enough for the corresponding population increase.
What this means is India is getting poorer as time goes on.
Hail Mao was a joke. India is so poor most people there cannot afford shoes. The economy in India is growing fast, but so is the population. The economy of India is acutally degenerating as it is not growing fast enough for its high population growth rate.
Grasp what? That the only way you think you can say what you want is by retreating to freenet? Fight the government you fucking pussy. Go to Thessaloniki 2003 at the next WEF meeting pick a up a stick/rock/anything and bash the Greek police and close down their fucking meeting.
You've been bad, Don't do what I say. You don't listen, And you never obey Try to teach you, But you just won't be good. You won't behave the way A big girl should. It's time to give that whip a crack, I'm gonna have to send you back to, Bitch School Bitch School
You're a beauty, You're the best of your breed. You're a handful, And you know what I mean. You need training, Gonna bring you to heel. I'm gonna greak you with my will of steel, Discipline's my middle name, And no one comes back the same from, Bitch School Bitch School
No more sniffing strangers, Or running free at night. You think my bark's bad honey, Wait till you feel my bite.
You got problems, You whine and you beg. When I'm busy, You wanna dance with my leg. I'm gonna chain you, Make you sleep outdoors. You're so fetching when you're down on all fours, And when you hear your master, You will come a little faster, thanks to, Bitch School
Slashdot Mirror
Dear Troll,
We are plesed to inform you that, after careful consideration , we have accepted your troll into the Troll Library.
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HOW TO POOP AT WORK
We've all been there but don't like to admit it. We've all kicked back in our cubicles and suddenly felt something brew down below. As much as we try to convince ourselves otherwise, the WORK POOP is inevitable. For those who hate pooping at work, following is the 2001 Survival Guide for taking a dump at work. Memorize these definitions and pooping at work will become a pure pleasure.
ESCAPEE.
Definition: a fart that slips out while taking a leak at the urinal or forcing a poop in a stall. This is usually accompanied by a sudden wave of panic embarrassment. This is similar to the hot flash you receive when passing an unseen police car and speeding. If you release an escapee, do not acknowledge it. Pretend it did not happen. If you are standing next to the farter in the urinal, pretend you did not hear it. No one likes an escapee, it is uncomfortable for all involved. Making a joke or laughing makes both parties feel uneasy.
JAILBREAK (Used in conjunction with ESCAPEE).
Definition: When forcing poop, several farts slip out at a machine gun pace. This is usually a side effect of diarrhea or a hangover. If this should happen, do not panic. Remain in the stall until everyone has left the bathroom so to spare everyone the awkwardness of what just occurred.
COURTESY FLUSH.
Definition: The act of flushing the toilet the instant the nose cone of the poop log hits the water and the poop is whisked away to an undisclosed location. This reduces the amount of air time the poop has to stink up the bathroom. This can help you avoid being caught doing the WALK OF SHAME.
WALK OF SHAME.
Definition: Walking from the stall, to the sink, to the door after you have just stunk up the bathroom. This can be a very uncomfortable moment if someone walks in and busts you. As with all farts, it is best to pretend that the smell does not exist. Can be avoided with the use of the COURTESY FLUSH.
OUT OF THE CLOSET POOPER.
Definition: A colleague who poops at work and damn proud of it. You will often see an Out Of The Closet Pooper enter the bathroom with a newspaper or magazine under their arm. Always look around the office for the Out Of The Closet Pooper before entering the bathroom.
THE POOPING FRIENDS NETWORK (PFN).
Definition: A group of coworkers who band together to ensure emergency pooping goes off without incident. This group can help you to monitor the whereabouts of Out Of The Closet Poopers, and identify SAFE HAVENS.
SAFE HAVENS.
Definition: A seldom used bathroom somewhere in the building where you can least expect visitors. Try floors that are predominantly of the opposite sex. This will reduce the odds of a pooper of your sex entering the bathroom.
TURD BURGLAR:
Definition: A pooper who does not realize that you are in the stall and tries to force the door open. This is one of the most shocking and vulnerable moments that can occur when taking a dump at work. If this occurs, remain in the stall until the Turd Burglar leaves. This way you will avoid all uncomfortable eye contact.
CAMO-COUGH.
Definition: A phony cough that alerts all new entrants into the bathroom that you are in a stall. This can be used to cover-up a WATERMELON, or to alert potential Turd Burglars. Very effective when used in conjunction with an ASTAIRE.
ASTAIRE.
Definition: A subtle toe-tap that is used to alert potential Turd Burglars that you are occupying a stall. This will remove all doubt that the stall is occupied. If you hear an Astaire, leave the bathroom immediately so the pooper can poop in peace.
WATERMELON.
Definition: A turd that creates a loud splash when hitting the toilet water. This is also an embarrassing incident. If you feel a Watermelon coming on, create a diversion. See CAMO-COUGH.
HAVANA OMELET.
Definition: A load of diarrhea that creates a series of loud splashes in the toilet water. Often accompanied by an Escapee. Try using a Camo-Cough with an Astaire.
UNCLE TED.
Definition: A bathroom user who seems to linger around forever. Could spend extended lengths of time in front of the mirror or sitting on the pot. An Uncle Ted makes it difficult to relax while on the crapper, as you should always wait to drop your load when the bathroom is empty. This benefits you as well as the other bathroom attendees.
FLY BY.
Definition: The act of scouting out a bathroom before pooping. Walk in and check for other poopers. If there are others in the bathroom, leave and come back again. Be careful not to become a FREQUENT FLYER. People may become suspicious if they catch you constantly going into the bathroom.
The top X things to say when you've been caught pooping in the urinal:
Can you get me some toilet paper? This one seems to be out.
I keep slipping off these little seats.
What the....get the fuck out of my stall!
I'm installing the new cakes.
Didn't you hear about that guy at Starbucks who got his dick crushed in a toilet seat?
Dude, I'm not gonna sit on the crapper seats, people piss all over those things!
(Ideally these are supposed to be funny.)
How to get poop into a urinal
The easiest way is just to drop trou in the men's room and press your hiney up against the urinal and let go. However, I can think of a few reasons you might not want to take this approach. For instance, there's the whole "getting caught" ordeal, or having a colon prone to stage fright. Not to mention putting your ass into close proximity with thousands of generations of urine.
With that in mind, I have devised the following not-so-clever and oh-so-easy plan: In the comfort of your own home, when you feel the urge, crap into a plastic bag. Ziploc would be a good idea. When the opportunity presents itself, carefully deposit your offering into the Porcelain Alter of Liquid Excrement. Congratulations, you now have poop in a urinal. Take a picture and send it here.
If MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM, says you are a Brit, it must be true! Got it?
I was at Barnes and Nobles one day protesting with a picket sign that Ayn Rand be removed from the Philosophy section of the store. The thugs in blue removed me from the premises.
What I hate is how she stole the term Libertarian from my fellow libertarian socialists. She had to know that anarchists had been using the term for a hundred years before her ilk raped the word.
>>"Everyone knows Ayn Rand was a cult leader anyway."
I agree, but alot of those ultra right idiot Libertarians on slashdot do not seem to know this.
Lately, there have been a lot of relatively unopposed claims that liberalism has failed.
We seem to universally accept that the only valid economic system is free market capitalism, and we also have an extreme faith in the doctrines of this system: competition is always good and niche marketers are somehow inferior.
Some people even blame the recent crisis in Russia on its failure to accept free market capitalism quickly enough. However, as many probably realize but are afraid to admit, the emperor of the unfettered market has no clothes. As the estimable Robert Sheer pointed out in his Sept 1, 1998 column in the Los Angeles Times, we insist the "Russians pay homage to a free market theology that we don't practice in our country."
When one compares Russia and Sweden (a nation which is more akin to Russia than one might think), one immediately notes that "socialistic" Sweden has a far superior standard of living - superior in many ways to our own. Yet, while the liberal programs of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society brought unprecedented prosperity to a wide variety of people in this nation, until the recent stock market crash, left of center politics were considered hopelessly passé.
The irony is that the ascendant "conservative" economic theories are actually the theories from which the original "liberalism" was composed.
A true conservative would not take the view that "growth," change or even competition are always good things, yet the economic conservatism of modern times is based on a philosophy in which mutation is most central and competition is celebrated.
Since the days of Huxley and Spencer, capitalists have tried to make the religion of the free market sound like science by using analogies with evolution.
However, as a biological sciences major, I am not fooled. In the real world, most species will establish niches, territorial systems or collusive relations to minimize the amount of direct competition that is occurring. Species generally cannot coexist in direct competition.
Continuing the analogy, economy does mirror ecology. Every market is divided by corporations into niches or territories where there is a risk of direct competition. Yet, explicit niche marketing is not generally accepted.
For example, Apple Computer is always under pressure to gain market share beyond its niche of academic and artistic users but has actually suffered greatly from its attempts to expand beyond its core consumer base.
Moreover, while corporations always seem to form natural monopolies, we are consistently trying to break up such monopolies, both abroad and at home, in the name of increased competition.
I am aware of the dangers of monopolies; however, I realize that sometimes monopolies provide the most efficient means of delivering goods and services.
Take utilities, for instance. Even if we are saving money from the demonopolizing and deregulation of the phone industry, what is the cost in sheer annoyance from this free market harassing us during our family mealtimes? And this harassment is abetted by the Republicans who claim to support family values!
More seriously, phone deregulation has opened up the flood gates for fraud, and I expect further deregulation in other utility sectors to do the same.
I am not arguing in favor of Communism and against all competition. Considering that people do not behave so rationally as economists would like, the free market functions awfully well.
Moreover, I have seen what collective ownership (or at least collective maintenance) can do to a place - have you ever seen a clean kitchen in Arroyo Vista? Even though the custodial staff cleans the kitchens every weekday, a kitchen must be cleaned more often than once a day to be properly maintained. However, since no one person "owns" the kitchens in Arroyo Vista, nobody takes the responsibility to make sure the kitchen is kept clean.
Ownership is no guarantee of stewardship either. In this age of increasingly large corporations with cubical imprisoned employees, how much individual ownership exists to motivate our economy anyway?
I am only arguing that, in light of all the evidence of shortcomings in the so- called conservative economic philosophy that currently enjoys almost universal acceptance, we should not write off liberalism as irrelevant or dead.
[pp. 6-8] There are no societies without religion, even, or especially, those which believe themselves to be entirely secular. In our century, in our society, the concept of development has acquired religious and doctrinal status. The [World] Bank is commonly accepted as the Vatican, the Mecca or the Kremlin of this twentieth- century religion. A doctrine need not be true to move mountains or to provoke manifold material and human disasters. Religious doctrines (in which we would include secular ones like Leninism) have, through the ages, done and continue to do precisely that, whereas, logically speaking, not all of them can be true insofar as they all define Truth as singular and uniquely their own.
Religion cannot, by definition, be validated or invalidated, declared true or false - only believed or rejected. Facts are irrelevant to belief: they belong to another sphere of reality. True believers, the genuinely pure of heart, exist in every faith, but the majority generally just goes along lukewarmly out of cultural habit or material advantage. When, however, the faith achieves political hegemony as well, like the medieval Church (or the Bolsheviks, or the Ayatollahs), it is in a position to make people offers they can't refuse, or to make their lives extremely uncomfortable if they do.
The religion of development cannot be validated or invalidated either. It doesn't matter whether it works or not, nor how many ordinary people's lives are damaged or destroyed, nor how much nature may be abused because of it.
Development theory and practice cannot be validated because they are not scientific. They have not established reliable and recognized criteria for determining whether development has in fact occurred, except for internal economic indicators like the rate of return of an individual project or the growth of Gross National Product - themselves artificial constructions and articles of faith. This being so, there is no established way to identify, correct or avoid error either. When Susan George wrote the Afterword to A Fate Worse than Debt, she put it this way:
"Scientists are trained to avoid error by testing their hypotheses systematically. Normally, development theorists and practitioners should also be trained to test their hypotheses by observing what they do to people, since human welfare is presumably the goal of development. 'People' here does not mean well-off, well-fed elites but poor and hungry majorities whose fundamental needs are presently not being met. If decades of application of the reigning development paradigm have failed to alleviate their suffering and oppression or, worse still, have intensified them.., the paradigm ought to be ripe for revolution."
She then asked, naively, "In short, how many people have to die before the ruling paradigm is beaten back and we are rid of it once and for all?" thereby largely missing the point. The point is that priesthoods are not elected and they need not answer to the faithful; they are specially invested with the truth and with sacramental functions from which, by definition, the common herd is excluded. The faith they serve is itself a greater good in whose name present suffering is mysteriously transformed into future salvation. Or to borrow an old favourite from secular religion, eggs must and will be broken. One's children, or theirs, or theirs, will eventually sit down to enjoy the omelette.
This, for us, is the final and most compelling reason not to concentrate on pointing out yet again how multifarious are the World Bank's ill-conceived projects, how unresponsive its leaders, how impervious to criticism its doctrine. Such things may be entirely or partially true, but are at bottom expressions of a world-view. It is the foundations of that world-view we shall try to dig for.
The Bank resembles the Church and this will be a guiding analogy in these pages. Both believe themselves invested with a mission, both (the Church historically, the Bank at present) have set themselves against the state. Both celebrate the poor rhetorically while refraining from actually improving their capacity to change their earthly lot.
The Church, more than the Bank, is like God himself "a mighty fortress, a bulwark never failing" in the words of the splendid hymn. The Bank has lost many of its fortress aspects - particularly compared to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - and is more open to exchanges with outsiders. The overall vision that guides its practice cannot, however, seem to transcend the narrowest of economic orthodoxies serving a smaller and smaller fraction of transnational elite interests worldwide. The Bank's declared new, or at least renewed, "poverty focus" shows that it is groping for a mission but in practice it has no grand design beyond the casting of all economies in the neo-classical mould and the refashioning of all men and women as Homo economicus.
[pp. 245-251] "The Thing"
In the late 1980s the Italian Communist Party was undergoing a full-blown identity crisis. Italian Communists had no idea what to call whatever future Party might emerge from the ruins of the post-Gorbachev world. In all the documents, in all the discussions of the time, this as-yet undefined Party was referred to as la Cosa -- the Thing -- an institution in search of a new personality. Since The Godfather, Cosa Nostra -- Our Thing -- has entered all our vocabularies, whatever our language. Calling the Mafia Cosa Nostra is one way of not having to say what it really is.
At Bretton Woods, the founding fathers didn't know what to call the Bank either -- it got its name more or less by default and "Bank" it has remained. Throughout these pages we have tried to determine what the Bank is and at the end of the enterprise we, too, are tempted to call it the Thing because, although we think we have made progress, to some degree it remains fascinating and mysterious. One of the chief attributes of power is not having to say what it is, not having to reveal its true identity, not having to give up its secrets to even the most diligent search.
Thus the question "Why is the Thing so powerful?" is crucial. One thing about the Thing is certain: it is not powerful because it is a bank; that is, in ordinary language, a purely economic entity. Nor is it powerful because it has some of the characteristics one would expect of an international public service organization. It is a political and cultural enterprise, even a modern version of what the pioneer sociologist Marcel Mauss called the "total social phenomenon" (le fait social total). The obvious, financial and economic side of the Bank is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The multiple roles it plays and the many functions of power it assumes, like the difficulty of defining it, make the Bank a total social phenomenon, a Thing. This is why throughout the book we have spoken of beliefs, faith, doctrine, prophecy, and fundamentalism; of ancestors, initiation, esprit de corps, intellectual leadership and rule. This is also why, in addition to the facts and the documentary evidence, to the economic and political analysis we have tried to provide, we have made a few unorthodox sorties we called "Interludes" into the world of the imagination. If the Bank were just a bank we would have had no reason to call on fiction. We hope the reader will have found in each chapter and interlude partial answers to the question "Why is the Thing so powerful?" This is the thread we have tried to follow, the one that should bind the book together.
Borrowing from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, we can say that the Bank is powerful because of its capacity constantly to exchange economic capital for symbolic capital and vice versa. Its economic activities generate money -- well over a billion dollars a year in profits -- but also immense prestige. Its prestige in turn generates more financial and economic power. The Bank has dug passageways and built bridges that allow it continually to shuttle between material and non-material wealth, to transform one kind of capital investment into another and to reap all the rewards of both.
The Bank is thus in a position to assume functions which are at once economic and symbolic: integration, guidance and, most important, maintenance of a programme of truth. The Bank is the visible hand of the programme of unrestrained, free market capitalism. The Bank's first function is to be an instrument of integration through the market. This market is (or should be) co-extensive with the world; like that of the Church, its vocation is universal. All nations and all people must become ever more tightly bound to it. In this setting, the doctrine of export-orientation finds its natural home. All countries must trade as much as they can and rely for their subsistence first on the world market, last on their own resources.
Until quite recently, even in wealthy countries, communities provided for most of their wants from their domestic, local economies. What they could not find close at hand, they sought at the regional or national level. Only rarely, usually for luxury items, would they have recourse to the world market. This historical pattern has been turned on its head: we are now exhorted to satisfy our needs first from the international, global market, then the national or regional one and so on, down the ladder to the domestic economy, lowliest of all. The Bank's second function is to act as a guide. Those who believe that its own doctrine is that of laisser-faire are mistaken. The Bank is, in fact, far more interventionist than the interventionist governments whose policies it seeks to transform. If the Bank were to leave people and societies alone, anything could happen -- they might operate not on the basis of the marketplace but on principles of reciprocity, redistribution or solidarity. In modern societies, the state has attempted, with greater or lesser success, to organize redistribution and solidarity. Thus the state, like the traditional society based on reciprocity, is under threat from the Bank.
Here we face a contradiction. The marketplace cannot be the natural habitat of humankind. If it were, the Bank's interventions would be unnecessary. Everywhere the market would already be the sole guiding principle of society and, if it were, in the Bank's own view, there would be no underdevelopment, no South, no need for modernization or for structural adjustment -- and no need for the Bank.
Why do we think we need the Bank? For the same reasons we think we need the Church. Frail, imperfect humanity needs constraints, guardrails, continual instruction in, and interpretation of, the doctrine. Those who have not yet reached the full expression of market capitalism and consequent development, those who fall by the wayside, must be goaded along the path to salvation.
To change society one must also change individual men and women. Man must be ontologically reconstructed and redeemed as homo economicus. What is redemption if not the passage from one state to another, from darkness to light? The virtues of the New Economic Man, whose dwelling place is the market, are the will and the capacity to accumulate, to follow self-interest and to maximize profit in all things. His wants are unlimited; to satisfy them, he must learn to struggle against his fellows. Scarcity is a fact of life. There is not enough to satisfy the unlimited desires of all nor to provide a place in the sun for everyone. If unemployment in their country is twenty per cent or more, the New Men and Women will pit themselves against each other to find work at any price, at all costs.
The Bank's third function is to be the standard-bearer of a programme of truth. If the world market is the Bank's fundamental organizing principle, price is its instrument. One of the Bank's major articles of faith is "getting the prices right", which it translates in French as la verite des prix, the truth of prices. A price has a metaphysical quality because it is supposed to be the invisible point at the intersection between hundreds, thousands, millions of individual transactions. Price, if governments do not meddle by providing subsidies and otherwise distort the natural balance of things, will regulate human activity and necessarily bring order out of apparent chaos.
Those who deny a programme of truth defy the law, in the case of the Bank the laws of economics, structural adjustment and the market. With the International Monetary Fund, the Bank is the keeper of laws which, like the Ten Commandments, are immutable. Once revealed, they must be followed.
Defiant countries that refuse them outright are blacklisted, literally excommunicated from the international community. Governments which receive the law halfheartedly must be exhorted to better performance. The Bank will reward or punish them by the granting or withholding of loans and credits. Thus it helps return them to the straight and narrow path or, in its own words, puts them back on-track.
If the New Man finds his life in the market, what of his death? All great truths must in one way or another speak of last things; the Bank's is no exception. The Bank's nominal mission is to promote development. Development in its biological sense means an organism's attainment of its inherent potential, inexorably followed by decay and death. In the Bank's vocabulary, however, this biological meaning is replaced by a concept of never-ending growth. The Bank's priesthood specifically denies limits to growth and promises an ersatz eternity in the here-and-now. If such endless growth is supposed to lead to an American or European middle-class standard of living for over five billion people today and who knows how many tomorrow, we already know this to be an ecological and biospheric impossibility, even assuming tremendous and rapid changes in technology. The Bank refuses to confront this last of all last things -- not merely individual or societal death but the possibility of species extinction, including that of the human species. Incantations like "sustainable development" stave off the moment when the finite must at last be faced.
The Church's traditional imagery of heaven and of hell is graphic and explicit. Although it cannot prove that anyone has ever gone there, it still issues the visas to the promised land. The Bank paints no pictures with saints, angels and demons but it does put up signposts pointing towards paradise, exhorting the faithful to imitate the blessed -- the now-developed rich market-economy countries or at least those who are well on their way, like the Asian tigers.
The very vagueness of the concept of development and the great number of candidates who hope to attain it legitimize the Bank's functions, justify its existence and explain its power. As long as the fragile planet's heavenward journey lasts, as long as the poor are with us, as long as salvation is sought where it cannot be found, the World Bank will find for itself a role and a mission.
Ayn Rand and the perversion of libertarianism
The political controversy of the late 19th century was:
whether socialists (all those who believed in the individual's right to possess what he or she produced) should engage in the political process, seize control of the state, and use the state apparatus to achieve liberation;
or, whether a worker's state was inherently contradictory, counter revolutionary, and would only lead to the creation of a new ruling class whose interests would still clash with those of the ruled - that the state should be abolished allowing for no transitional stage of any kind during which power may have the chance to reconsolidate itself.
The situation has recreated itself with amazing similarity almost exactly a century later. Non-libertarian parties the world over (those who see authoritarian centralization as the bulwark of civilization) are bankrupt, economically and intellectually. The only viable intellectual current today falls under that ambiguous term - "libertarian."
Today there exist beneath this umbrella as many splinter groups as there were a hundred years ago under the umbrella of socialism. Two distinct trends, a right and a left if you will, are clearly discernible. One group, clearly the largest with a hierarchical organization modeled on the other political parties, believes, like most Marxists, in constitutional parliamentary republican democracy. They believe that the state is a necessary guarantor of individual safety and the product of the individual's labor, and in gradual progress toward a free society through participation in the political process. The other group, much smaller and far more splintered, rejects the state as necessarily a tool of class domination and exploitation. This group believes that what Bakunin said a hundred years ago is as true today, "If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Czar himself."
The first group is in all fairness a direct inheritor of the ideals of the American Revolution. In modern times, however, it has only two roots: (1) the Austrian school of economics represented by Ludwig Von Mises; (2) the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Von Mises never considered the libertarians. He answered the Marxists and the Keynesians and defended laissez-faire capitalism at a time when no one else would. His justification for capitalism was empirical - the greatest good for the greatest number. Ayn Rand, however, attempted to offer a moral justification of capitalism by substituting the word `capitalism' for the libertarian meaning of the word "socialism." She then attributed all of the ills of capitalism to government interference with the market and all of the world's wealth to the minds of the men whom the world considered the robber barons.
The contrast between Ayn Rand's "Objectivism" and libertarianism is deeper than mere substitution of terminology, however. Several of her propositions or axioms place her clearly outside of the libertarian tradition. Her justification of the state is derived from a Hobbesian state of nature theory:
... a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into chaos and gang warfare.... [The Virtue of Selfishness, 152; pb 112]
If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door - or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of society into the chaos of gang rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual warfare of prehistoric savages. [Ibid., 146; pb 108]
Ayn Rand's belief in the inherent depravity of human nature which renders us forever incapable of living without rulers and not descending to the level of `savages', clearly places her outside of the libertarian tradition which views human nature as essentially good, capable of indefinite improvement through the experience of freedom and the exercise of reason. Her knowledge of anthropology is as embarrassing as her understanding of history. For example, in regards to her conception of who are the savages, she describes America as, "...a superlative material achievement in the midst of an untouched wilderness, against the resistance of savage tribes." [For The New Intellectual, 58; pb 50]
To Rand, the essential characteristic of the state is that it possesses a monopoly on the use of retaliatory force. How does she justify this monopoly or national sovereignty? She accepts it as a given, something not requiring a justification, and demands that an-archy, the negation of the proposition, justify itself. Her concept of national sovereignty is then something transcendental, existing separate and apart from individuals, and beyond the right of the individual to accept or reject according to his or her own reason. These propositions clearly place Ayn Rand's philosophy closer to Hobbes, Hegel, and Marx, than to libertarianism.
The state, according to Miss Rand, must hold a monopoly on the enforcement of contracts and the settling of disputes between individuals, at least whenever this arbitration is not accepted by both sides voluntarily. She fails to consider that the enforcement of contracts by the state fundamentally alters the nature of free agreements. Agreements are made on terms which otherwise might not be, because they are justiciable.
The terms of "free agreements" under law are titled in favor of lenders over debtors, landlords over tenants, employers over employees, in a way which would not exist in a "free market." This leveraging of power is not `objective' at all. Depending purely on legal convention, creditors may have debtors imprisoned, tenants may be evicted without notice and their effects confiscated, one human being may own another or the land on which another lives and works, all to varying degrees.
To understand Ayn Rand's psychology it is helpful to know her background. She was born to a wealthy St. Petersburg family in 1905. The position of her family in Czarist society must have been considerable. At a time when the lives of most Russians had changed little since feudalism, her family was wealthy enough to afford a French Governess and take regular vacations to the Crimea.
It should be noted that wealth in Czarist society was almost wholly a measure of one's favor with the government. There were few if any Horatio Alger stories about individuals who lifted themselves out of serfdom without the patronage of the Czar.
At the age of twelve, she must have been very upset when those nasty workers took over her father's business. Her family fled St. Petersburg for the Crimea and the protection of the White Army. This experience rendered her forever incapable of seeing land reform or any struggle of oppressed and exploited people as anything more than hatred for the good and lust for the unearned.
She shared with Marx the bourgeois ideology that only a few people were capable of running things. The masses ought to be happy to have a job working for bosses. Any suggestion that an enterprise could be run by the employees without having someone in charge was to her absurd.
She shared with Godwin and Kropotkin the belief that the individual is born tabula rasa - a blank slate, and all human knowledge is derived from sense experience. She then proceeded, however, to completely dismiss environment and socialization as the determining factor in the development of character.
People were to her good or evil, brilliant or indolent, depending solely on their volition. People should be judged by their actions with equal severity regardless of their condition. Though she insisted that the United States was not and never had been a completely free country, she granted no such thing as extenuating circumstances when judging an individual and had no qualms upholding the power of the state to inflict capital punishment.
A far more sinister legacy of Ayn Rand to libertarianism is that of a moralizing autocrat who gathered about her an inner circle which she ironically called, "The collective." Outwardly, this collective professed egoism and individuality. They were to be the vanguard of an intellectual renaissance. The price of admission to this group, however, was slavish conformity of one's life and professed philosophy to Ayn Rand's whims and eccentricities. For example, she did not like men who wore facial hair or listened to Mozart, and if you didn't give them up you were unfit for Rand's inner circle. This is particularly sinister if one considers that Karl Marx, believed by millions to be the very symbol of liberation, was also an autocrat who, though professed to be the ultimate champion of democracy, resorted to extraordinary means to maintain control of the International Workingmen's Association. He even moved its headquarters to New York to exclude the libertarian influence.
Today Ayn Rand is gone, but like Marx a century ago, hers is the primary influence on the largest libertarian organization existing. Even the pledge which all Libertarian Party members must sign is taken directly from her admonition, "I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals." In spite of their pledge to non-violence, many libertarians are frustrated with election laws and media censorship. An argument which circulates among libertarians of the right is that, if they were more threatening, the government may take steps to accommodate them as it did the black civil rights movement.
Ayn Rand's writings are not entirely consistent on the point of non-violence either. In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark resorts to the use of dynamite. In Atlas Shrugged, Ragnar Danneskjold engages in piracy on the high seas and even shells a factory which has been nationalized. In a clandestine rescue mission, Dagny Taggart shoots a guard who stood in the way of her desired end.
In the event of economic upheaval, ruined by unemployment and inflation, tenants and home owners may refuse to make rent and mortgage payments. The unemployed may seize vacant land and begin to farm, and factory workers may realize they can run things without stock holders. It would not be at all surprising if there were to emerge within the libertarian right, groups committed to direct action and counter revolutionary violence, even a coup d'etat.
Imagine a charismatic and autocratic personality at the center of such a group and you have the Objectivist Lenin. Like the Marxists and right libertarians, Lenin and the Objectivists are professed republican democrats. Lenin and the Bolsheviks promised that if given power, they would immediately convoke a constituent assembly. When they realized, however, they would not hold a majority in such an assembly they turned against the idea of such an assembly.
Can anyone doubt that the cultist mentality which characterizes most of Miss Rand's followers could lead to the creation of a group of self-appointed avengers of the capitalist class? That they would suppress strikes, demonstrations, and factory take overs? That they would not execute people for crimes against the libertarian state?
Ayn Rand believed in a republican form of government with a cleverly constructed constitution which would deny the majority of the power to infringe on the rights of a minority as she conceived them. If the majority supported a general strike against rents and mortgages and supported the factory takeovers, would not the clandestinely organized Objectivist libertarian party be tempted to dispense with democracy in order to enforce what they conceived of as the rights of the dispossessed bourgeoisie?
In all fairness it must be admitted that Ayn Rand herself would never sanction such actions, but the same argument is made everyday by western Marxists that Marx would probably not have sanctioned many of Lenin's actions and would certainly not take credit for the Soviet Union.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks won power by promising, "Land to the peasants!" "Factories to the workers!" When they took power, however, they immediately set about liquidating the factory committees and nationalizing the land. They crushed work place democracy by installing armed guards in the factories, and even returned former owners to their positions as employees of the worker's state. Leon Trotsky stopped the practice of soldiers electing their officers from their ranks and even restored former Czarist officers to their ranks in the Red Army.
When the Russian Revolution began few people clearly understood the gulf which separated the state socialists from the libertarians. Many dedicated libertarians like Alexander Berkman, rallied to the Bolshevik cause, willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in hopes that seizing state power would only be a transitional stage toward the development of the stateless/classless society.
Many sincere lovers of liberty now flock to the standard of the Libertarian Party, as they did the Bolsheviks, completely ignorant of the history of the last century. As Santayana said: "Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them."
What should be done? It should be obvious that government enforcement of private contracts is not libertarian any more than is taking state power to set people free. Libertarianism is and always will mean socialism - the self-emancipation of working people.
Libertarians must stop courting the Republican right and return to their intellectual roots. By standing outside of the political process we deny the state legitimacy, and like the state torturers in Atlas Shrugged, they will come and beg for libertarians to take over.
Remembering the experience of the Spanish libertarians, and heeding the advice of John Galt, libertarians must refuse state power even when begged. The state can never be a tool of liberation. Only its complete and utter collapse will allow for the emergence of non-statist institutions, libertarian co-ops, communes, and free markets, to flourish and displace the political state once and for all.
HOW TO POOP AT WORK
We've all been there but don't like to admit it. We've all kicked back in our cubicles and suddenly felt something brew down below. As much as we try to convince ourselves otherwise, the WORK POOP is inevitable. For those who hate pooping at work, following is the 2001 Survival Guide for taking a dump at work. Memorize these definitions and pooping at work will become a pure pleasure.
ESCAPEE.
Definition: a fart that slips out while taking a leak at the urinal or forcing a poop in a stall. This is usually accompanied by a sudden wave of panic embarrassment. This is similar to the hot flash you receive when passing an unseen police car and speeding. If you release an escapee, do not acknowledge it. Pretend it did not happen. If you are standing next to the farter in the urinal, pretend you did not hear it. No one likes an escapee, it is uncomfortable for all involved. Making a joke or laughing makes both parties feel uneasy.
JAILBREAK (Used in conjunction with ESCAPEE).
Definition: When forcing poop, several farts slip out at a machine gun pace. This is usually a side effect of diarrhea or a hangover. If this should happen, do not panic. Remain in the stall until everyone has left the bathroom so to spare everyone the awkwardness of what just occurred.
COURTESY FLUSH.
Definition: The act of flushing the toilet the instant the nose cone of the poop log hits the water and the poop is whisked away to an undisclosed location. This reduces the amount of air time the poop has to stink up the bathroom. This can help you avoid being caught doing the WALK OF SHAME.
WALK OF SHAME.
Definition: Walking from the stall, to the sink, to the door after you have just stunk up the bathroom. This can be a very uncomfortable moment if someone walks in and busts you. As with all farts, it is best to pretend that the smell does not exist. Can be avoided with the use of the COURTESY FLUSH.
OUT OF THE CLOSET POOPER.
Definition: A colleague who poops at work and damn proud of it. You will often see an Out Of The Closet Pooper enter the bathroom with a newspaper or magazine under their arm. Always look around the office for the Out Of The Closet Pooper before entering the bathroom.
THE POOPING FRIENDS NETWORK (PFN).
Definition: A group of coworkers who band together to ensure emergency pooping goes off without incident. This group can help you to monitor the whereabouts of Out Of The Closet Poopers, and identify SAFE HAVENS.
SAFE HAVENS.
Definition: A seldom used bathroom somewhere in the building where you can least expect visitors. Try floors that are predominantly of the opposite sex. This will reduce the odds of a pooper of your sex entering the bathroom.
TURD BURGLAR:
Definition: A pooper who does not realize that you are in the stall and tries to force the door open. This is one of the most shocking and vulnerable moments that can occur when taking a dump at work. If this occurs, remain in the stall until the Turd Burglar leaves. This way you will avoid all uncomfortable eye contact.
CAMO-COUGH.
Definition: A phony cough that alerts all new entrants into the bathroom that you are in a stall. This can be used to cover-up a WATERMELON, or to alert potential Turd Burglars. Very effective when used in conjunction with an ASTAIRE.
ASTAIRE.
Definition: A subtle toe-tap that is used to alert potential Turd Burglars that you are occupying a stall. This will remove all doubt that the stall is occupied. If you hear an Astaire, leave the bathroom immediately so the pooper can poop in peace.
WATERMELON.
Definition: A turd that creates a loud splash when hitting the toilet water. This is also an embarrassing incident. If you feel a Watermelon coming on, create a diversion. See CAMO-COUGH.
HAVANA OMELET.
Definition: A load of diarrhea that creates a series of loud splashes in the toilet water. Often accompanied by an Escapee. Try using a Camo-Cough with an Astaire.
UNCLE TED.
Definition: A bathroom user who seems to linger around forever. Could spend extended lengths of time in front of the mirror or sitting on the pot. An Uncle Ted makes it difficult to relax while on the crapper, as you should always wait to drop your load when the bathroom is empty. This benefits you as well as the other bathroom attendees.
FLY BY.
Definition: The act of scouting out a bathroom before pooping. Walk in and check for other poopers. If there are others in the bathroom, leave and come back again. Be careful not to become a FREQUENT FLYER. People may become suspicious if they catch you constantly going into the bathroom.
He should have said 'you are' when addresssing the keeper of the Troll Library, the honorable RoboTroll. 'You're' is informal and not appropriate for a coward to address others with. That disrespectful asshole!
Ayn Rand and the perversion of libertarianism
The political controversy of the late 19th century was: whether
socialists (all those who believed in the individual's right to
possess what he or she produced) should engage in the political
process, seize control of the state, and use the state apparatus
to achieve liberation; or, whether a worker's state was inher-
ently contradictory, counter revolutionary, and would only lead
to the creation of a new ruling class whose interests would still
clash with those of the ruled that the state should be abolished
allowing for no transitional stage of any kind during which power
may have the chance to reconsolidate itself.
The situation has recreated itself with amazing similarity
almost exactly a century later.
Non-libertarian parties the world over (those who see authori-
tarian centralization the bulwark of civilization) are bankrupt,
economically and intellectually. The only viable intellectual
current today falls under that ambiguous term~ `libertarian'.
Today there exist beneath this umbrella as many splinter groups
as there were a hundred years ago under the umbrella of social-
ism. Two distinct trends, a right and a left if you will, are
clearly discernible.
One group, clearly the largest with a hierarchical organization
modeled on the other political parties, believes, like most
Marxists, in constitutional parliamentary republican democracy.
They believe that the state is a necessary guarantor of indi-
vidual safety and the product of the individual's labor, and in
gradual progress toward a free society through participation in
the political process.
The other group, much smaller and far more splintered, reject
the state as necessarily a tool of class domination and exploita-
tion.
This group believes that what Bakunin said a hundred years ago
is as true today, ``If you took the most ardent revolutionary,
vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse
than the Czar himself.''
The first group is in all fairness a direct inheritor of the
ideals of the American Revolution. In modern times, however, it
has only two roots: (1) the Austrian school of economics repre-
sented by Ludwig Von Mises; (2) the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Von Mises never considered the libertarians. He answered the
Marxists and the Keynesians and defended laissez-faire capitalism
at a time when no one else would. His justification for capital-
ism was empirical~the greatest good for the greatest number.
Ayn Rand, however, attempted to offer a moral justification of
capitalism by substituting the word `capitalism' for the liber-
tarian meaning of the word `socialism'. She then attributed all
of the ills of capitalism to government interference with the
market and all of the world's wealth to the minds of the men whom
the world considered the robber barons.
The contrast between Ayn Rand's `Objectivism' and libertarian-
ism is deeper than mere substitution of terminology, however.
Several of her propositions or axioms place her clearly outside
of the libertarian tradition.
Her justification of the state is derived from a Hobbesian
state of nature theory:
``...a society without an organized government would be at the
mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipi-
tate it into chaos and gang warfare....'' [The Virtue of Selfish-
ness, 152; pb 112]
``If a society provided no organized protection against force,
it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home
into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door~or
to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other
gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the
degeneration of society into the chaos of gang rule, i.e., rule
by brute force, into perpetual warfare of prehistoric savages.''
[Ibid., 146; pb 108]
Ayn Rand's belief in the inherent depravity of human nature
which renders us forever incapable of living without rulers and
not descending to the level of `savages', clearly places her out-
side of the libertarian tradition which views human nature as es-
sentially good, capable of indefinite improvement through the
experience of freedom and the exercise of reason.
Her knowledge of anthropology is as embarrassing as her under-
standing of history. For example, in regards to her conception of
who are the savages, she describes America as, ``...a superlative
material achievement in the midst of an untouched wilderness,
against the resistance of savage tribes.'' [For The New Intellec-
tual, 58; pb 50]
To Rand, the essential characteristic of the state is that it
possesses a monopoly on the use of retaliatory force. How does
she justify this monopoly or national sovereignty? She accepts it
as a given, something not requiring a justification, and demands
that an-archy, the negation of the proposition, justify itself.
Her concept of national sovereignty is then something tran-
scendental, existing separate and apart from individuals. and
beyond the right of the individual to accept or reject according
to his or her own reason.
These propositions clearly place Ayn Rand's philosophy closer
to Hobbes, Hegel, and Marx, than to libertarianism.
The state, according to Miss Rand, must hold a monopoly on the
enforcement of contracts and the settling of disputes between
individuals, at least whenever this arbitration is not accepted
by both sides voluntarily. She fails to consider that the en-
forcement of contracts by the state fundamentally alters the
nature of free agreements. Agreements are made on terms which
otherwise might not be, because they are justiciable.
The terms of ``free agreements'' under law are titled in favor
of lenders over debtors, landlords over tenants, employers over
employees, in a way which would not exist in a ``free market.''
This leveraging of power is not `objective' at all. Depending
purely on legal convention, creditors may have debtors impris-
oned, tenants may be evicted without notice and their effects
confiscated, one human being may own another or the land on which
another lives and works, all to varying degrees.
To understand Ayn Rand's psychology it is helpful to know her
background. She was born to a wealthy St. Petersburg family in
1905. The position of her family in Czarist society must have
been considerable. At a time when the lives of most Russians had
changed little since feudalism, her family was wealthy enough to
afford a French Governess and take regular vacations to the Cri-
mea.
It should be noted that wealth in Czarist society was almost
wholly a measure of one's favor with the government. There were
few if any Horatio Alger stories about individuals who lifted
themselves out of serfdom without the patronage of the Czar.
At the age of twelve, she must have been very upset when those
nasty workers took over her father's business. Her family fled
St. Petersburg for the Crimea and the protection of the White
Army.
This experience rendered her forever incapable of seeing land
reform or any struggle of oppressed and exploited people as
anything more than hatred for the good and lust for the unearned.
She shared with Marx the bourgeois ideology that only a few
people were capable of running things. The masses ought to be
happy to have a job working for bosses. Any suggestion that an
enterprise could be run by the employees without having someone
in charge was to her absurd.
She shared with Godwin and Kropotkin the belief that the indi-
vidual is born tabula rasa~a blank slate, and all human knowledge
is derived from sense experience. She then proceeded, however, to
completely dismiss environment and socialization as the determin-
ing factor in the development of character.
People were to her good or evil, brilliant or indolent, depend-
ing solely on their volition. People should be judged by their
actions with equal severity regardless of their condition. Though
she insisted that the United States was not and never had been a
completely free country, she granted no such thing as extenuating
circumstances when judging an individual and had no qualms up-
holding the power of the state to inflict capital punishment.
A far more sinister legacy of Ayn Rand to libertarianism is
that of a moralizing autocrat who gathered about her an inner
circle which she ironically called, ``The collective.''
Outwardly, this collective professed egoism and individuality.
They were to be the vanguard of an intellectual renaissance. The
price of admission to this group, however, was slavish conformity
of one's life and professed philosophy to Ayn Rand's whims and
eccentricities. For example, she did not like men who wore facial
hair or listened to Mozart, and if you didn't give them up you
were unfit for Rand's inner circle.
This is particularly sinister if one considers that Karl Marx,
believed by millions to be the very symbol of liberation, was
also an autocrat who, though professed to be the ultimate champi-
on of democracy, resorted to extraordinary means to maintain
control of the International Workingmen's Association. He even
moved its headquarters to New York to exclude the libertarian
influence.
Today Ayn Rand is gone, but like Marx a century ago, hers is
the primary influence on the largest libertarian organization
existing. Even the pledge which all Libertarian Party members
must sign is taken directly from her admonition, ``I hereby
certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of
force as a means of achieving political or social goals.''
In spite of their pledge to non-violence, many libertarians are
frustrated with election laws and media censorship. An argument
which circulates among libertarians of the right is that, if they
were more threatening, the government may take steps to accommo-
date them as it did the black civil rights movement.
Ayn Rand's writings are not entirely consistent on the point of
non-violence either. In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark resorts to
the use of dynamite. In Atlas Shrugged, Ragnar Danneskjold
engages in piracy on the high seas and even shells a factory
which has been nationalized. In a clandestine rescue mission,
Dagny Taggart shoots a guard who stood in the way of her desired
end.
In the event of economic upheaval, ruined by unemployment and
inflation, tenants and home owners may refuse to make rent and
mortgage payments. The unemployed may seize vacant land and begin
to farm, and factory workers may realize they can run things
without stock holders.
It would not be at all surprising if there were to emerge
within the libertarian right, groups committed to direct action
and counter revolutionary violence, even a coup d'etat.
Imagine a charismatic and autocratic personality at the center
of such a group and you have the Objectivist Lenin.
Like the Marxists and right libertarians, Lenin and the Objec-
tivists are professed republican democrats. Lenin and the Bolshe-
viks promised that if given power, they would immediately convoke
a constituent assembly. When they realized, however, they would
not hold a majority in such an assembly they turned against the
idea of such an assembly.
Can anyone doubt that the cultist mentality which characterizes
most of Miss Rand's followers could lead to the creation of a
group of self appointed avengers of the capitalist class? That
they would suppress strikes, demonstrations, and factory take
overs? That they would not execute people for crimes against the
libertarian state?
Ayn Rand believed in a republican form of government with a
cleverly constructed constitution which would deny the majority
of the power to infringe on the rights of a minority as she
conceived them. If the majority supported a general strike
against rents and mortgages and supported the factory takeovers,
would not the clandestinely organized Objectivist libertarian
party be tempted to dispense with democracy in order to enforce
what they conceived of as the rights of the dispossessed bour-
geoisie?
In all fairness it must be admitted that Ayn Rand herself would
never sanction such actions, but the same argument is made
everyday by western Marxists that Marx would probably not have
sanctioned many of Lenin's actions and would certainly not take
credit for the Soviet Union.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks won power by promising, ``Land to the
peasants!'' ``Factories to the workers!'' When they took power,
however, they immediately set about liquidating the factory com-
mittees and nationalizing the land. They crushed work place
democracy by installing armed guards in the factories, and even
returned former owners to their positions as employees of the
worker's state.
Leon Trotsky stopped the practice of soldiers electing their
officers from their ranks and even restored former Czarist
officers to their ranks in the Red Army.
When the Russian Revolution began few people clearly understood
the gulf which separated the state socialists from the libertari-
ans. Many dedicated libertarians like Alexander Berkman, rallied
to the Bolshevik cause, willing to give them the benefit of the
doubt in hopes that seizing state power would only be a transi-
tional stage toward the development of the stateless/classless
society.
Many sincere lovers of liberty now flock to the standard of the
Libertarian Party, as they did the Bolsheviks, completely igno-
rant of the history of the last century. As Santayanna said:
``Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat
them.''
What should be done? It should be obvious that government
enforcement of private contracts is not libertarian any more than
is taking state power to set people free. Libertarianism is and
always will mean socialism~the self emancipation of working
people.
Libertarians must stop courting the Republican right and return
to their intellectual roots. By standing outside of the political
process we deny the state legitimacy, and like the state tortur-
ers in Atlas Shrugged, they will come and beg for libertarians to
take over.
Remembering the experience of the Spanish libertarians, and
heeding the advice of John Galt, libertarians must refuse state
power even when begged. The state can never be a tool of libera-
tion. Only its complete and utter collapse will allow for the
emergence of non-statist institutions, libertarian coops, com-
munes, and free markets, to flourish and displace the political
state once and for all.
Umm... Ivan Drago was Rocky IV. In Rocky III, he went up against Clubber Lang, and Thunderlips.
"Drago: I must break you." -from Rocky IV
Band: Discharge
Song: Free Speech For the Dumb
Free speech free speech for the dumb
Free speech free speech for the dumb
Free speech free speech for the dumb
Free speech free speech for the dumb.
Load up on grits and bring your aunts
They're fun to pour right down your pants
Natalie is naked and turned to stone
Oh no, OOG's gone, now I'm all alone
Hello, hello, hello, Katz blows
Hello, hello, hello, Katz blows
I like trolling, it's contagious
Here we are now, moderate us
You don't like caps, post aborted?
ASCII art plans, they are thwarted!
I got bitchslapped, I dissed Bojay
I post flamebait every Troll Day
Yeah!
First posting's what I do best
And for this gift I feel blessed
Commander T likes other men
And always will until the end
Hello, hello, hello, Katz blows
Hello, hello, hello, Katz blows
VA's stock price, it's disastrous
Hey, does timmy ride the short bus?
All they post now: Lars and Napster
Well, this sure ain't stuff that matters
Raymond shoots ten who don't 'get it'?
Read it Tuesday on ZDNet
Yeah!
And I forgot
Just why I post
Oh yeah, I'm first, so now I can boast
I'm not that lame, the filters are blind
Can you imagine a -- oh, nevermind
I'm not rabid, like the zealots
So they flamed me, they're just jealous
Metamodding and IP bans
Won't you use them on ol' sorehands?
I don't want to beg for karma
Don't hate patents, just your dogma
I'm not insightful
Not insightful
Dear Troll,
We are plesed to inform you that, after careful consideration , we have accepted your troll into the Troll Library.
You show a masterful skill at trolling.
Thank you for your time and your contribution.
---
A google search turned up this, you fucking propagandizing Indian:
"Your search - chinese refugee site:timesofindia.indiatimes.com - did not match any documents.
Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Try fewer keywords.
Do not listen to overly patriotic Indians."
The Plea of Nikos Maziotis
to the Athens Criminal Court
First, I do not intend to pretend to be the "good guy" here where I was forced to come. I will not plead for anything, because I do not consider myself a criminal. I am a revolutionary. I have nothing to repent. I am proud of what I have done. The only thing I regret is the technical error that was made so that the bomb didn't explode such that my fingerprint was found on it afterward and I ended up here. This is the only thing I repent. And something else also. All that stuff shouldn't have been at my house. It should have been kept somewhere else.
You must have in mind that although you are judges and sitting higher than me, many times revolutionaries, and myself specifically, have judged you long before you judge me. We are in opposite camps, hostile camps. The revolutionaries and revolutionary justice (because I don't believe that this court is justice, it's the word justice in quotation marks) many times judge their enemies more mercilessly, when they get the chance to impose justice.
I will begin many years ago. We don't have any crime of mine to judge here. On the contrary, we will talk about crimes, but not mine. We will talk about the crimes of the state, of its mechanisms, of justice and police crimes....
The first time I can say I was politicized is when I took part in a demonstration in 1985. It was the 17th of November. I was fourteen then, and one policeman, Melistas, shot and killed a fifteen year-old, Kaltezas. I had not participated in the riots of that night. The same evening after the murder the Chemistry School was occupied and in the morning special forces carried out a police raid on the building to evacuate it and they arrested the anarchists and youths who were inside. The next day five thousand people occupied the Polytechnic School--if I remember correctly because I was young then and didn't have much information. These occupations were precisely a reaction to the murder of Kaltezas by policeman Melistas. "Justice," five years later, in January of 1990, found Melistas innocent.
What I mean by saying this is that in reality you are abettors of crimes, at least according to me. Then, in January and February of '90 I took part in the occupation of the Polytechnic, which occurred as a reaction to the court-decision which found Melistas not guilty for the murder of Kaltezas. There were riots and damages, store windows were broken, stones and molotov cocktails thrown.... I participated in these events. From then on I could consciously say I was an anarchist.
And when I say anarchist, I mean that I am against the state and capital. That our purpose is to subvert the state and the capitalist regime. We want a society without classes, without hierarchy and without domination. The biggest lie of all times is that the state is society. I think Nietzsche has also said this--that the state lies.
We are opposed to the division of society into classes, we are against a separation between those who give orders and others who obey orders. This authoritarian structure penetrates the whole of society and it is this structure that we want to destroy. Either with peaceful or with violent means--even with guns. I have no problem with that.
I will contradict my brother who said before that he didn't want the guns in order to make war. They were for war. Maybe they were just kept there, but the guns are for war. You don't just have them to keep them at home. I might have kept them as they were, but they are to make war and I make war.... The bomb in the ministry was an act of war.
Since 1990 I have been convicted many times for my actions, for multiform actions.
I was convicted because I refused to serve the army. Not because I have any problem with weapons or with violence, I repeated that in the military court. The fact that this time I was arrested in possession of guns means that I have no problem with weapons or with violence. I am not at all a pacifist. Because neither society nor the state are peaceful. As long as I receive violence I will respond with violence.
I spent seven months in a military prison. I have been convicted for deserting the army and for evasion of military services. The second time I was released after 51 days of a hunger strike.
I have been arrested in '94 in the occupation of the Economic university along with 51 comrades of mine, when Giorgos Balafas and Odysseas Kampouris were on hunger strike. This occupation of the Economic School was also an action of solidarity. In conditions where we couldn't gather anywhere, nor demonstrate, we had decided to squat a university and use it as a center of counter-information about the cases of Giorgos Balafas and Odysseas Kampouris, who were then imprisoned.
In '95 I was arrested with 500 other people in the revolt of the Polytechnic in November. That occupation happened because there were many different political prisoners in jail--Kostas Kalaremas, Odysseas Kampouris, Giorgos Balafas who was arrested again in the meantime, Spyros Dapergolas, Christoforos Marinos and four persons from Thessaloniki who were arrested when the demonstration in which they were participating was attacked by the police on the 14th of November--and because there was a prisoners' revolt going on in Koridallos jail. For this occupation I was at last sentenced to one year imprisonment along with many others of my comrades. In all these actions my comrades and myself have taken complete responsibility.
So, during this decade since I can call myself an anarchist, I have used many forms of action. I have written and distributed leaflets. I took part in postering. I participated in occupations, violent or peaceful. For example, the occupation of the Economic School didn't have any violent character but the Special Police Units and the Riot Police invaded and arrested us. There were even policemen of the Special Units wearing ski-masks who entered in order to break the chains on the gate.
In the case of the Polytechnic we didn't pretend to be innocent, still without accepting the specific charges we were accused of. We explained why we went in the Polytechnic. Some time after, when I was court-martialed in February of '98, I personally took responsibility for burning a Greek flag. I said that I burnt it. I consider it to be a symbol of a hostile force. With anyone having the Greek flag I see my enemy, because the policemen have it on their uniforms, and the marshals.... It is the symbol of the enemy.
Our purpose, within the anti-state and anticapitalist struggle, is to connect ourselves with the different social struggles. Our purpose also when interfering in these struggles is to attempt to take things to the edge, which means to culminate the conflict of these social parts with the state and the police. To urge the people fighting to transcend institutional frameworks--the trade-unions, the local administrations and all those manipulators who are enemies of human freedom. Many comrades of mine, with their small forces, were engaged in such struggles. I will tell you about them more specifically.
In 1989, in a struggle of environmental interest in the village of Aravissos, the resi
dents of the area didn't want their water sources to be exploited by the Water Company of Thessaloniki. They clashed with the police and the riot police, the burnt water pumps, set fires and built barricades.... And some of our comrades from Thessaloniki took part in this struggle and were even arrested.
In 1990 the aggression of neo-liberalism began in Greece (an aggression that internationally had begun in the '80s with the Reagan and Thatcher governments), including de-industrialization, workers' dismissals, privatization, restriction of the welfare state, reductions in salaries, pensions and medical treatment.... This attack that started in Europe and North America in the beginning of the '80s only started in 1990 in Greece.
The first project was the "problematic" companies. In that section also, during the period of 1990-91, there were occupations in many factories of the country--in Mantoudi, Lavrio, Patras. Again, some comrades of ours, with their small powers, were there. More specifically in Mantoudi and in the Piraiki-Patraiki factory which is located in Patras.
After that we have the pupils' movement of "90-91 which was a grand one in to my opinion. It managed to subvert the law of the Minister of Education Kontogiannopoulos, who finally resigned. The right-wing government, in its effort to repress the movement, had mobilized its thugs in order to smash the school occupations, resulting in the murder of a teacher, Nikos Temponeras, inside an occupied school in Patras. It was one more crime of the state. Here we will count the crimes of the state, no crime of mine.
Responding to the murder of Temponeras there was a demonstration of thousands of people. We participated too, to sharpen the situation. There were conflicts with the police, the Polytechnic was occupied once again for two days. Flames, barricades, damage.... There was also another crime those days, in the 10th of January "91. During the riots, tear-gas bombs thrown by the police caused a fire in the building of K. Marousi, a shopping-center in Panepistimiou street. Four people died there due to this fire. For this crime nobody has yet paid, nor did "justice" say anything. It was covered up.
One year after, in the summer of 1992, my comrades--not me personally but this doesn't matter--participated in the clashes around Votanikos central bus-station, when the government attempted to privatize Public Transports. There were conflicts between the workers and the police. Then, some workers in the Public Transports went to prison accused of sabotage. They were smashing private buses belonging to the ruffian owners who had bought them. There also, anarchists were present.
Before referring to the struggle in Strymonikos, I want to mention the most recent examples: the jobless teachers the previous year and the pupils' movement in the winter
of '98-'99. We were present there as well. A comrade who testified yesterday, Vasilis Evagelidis, tried to talk about it. He was arrested in the clashes that took place in January of '99 in a pupils' demonstration.
Generally, wherever there are disturbances, wherever there are conflicts we want to be involved--to subvert things. For us, this is not a crime. In a real sense, these disturbances are the "popular sovereignty" that professional politicians keep talking about. That's where freedom is expressed....
Now let's talk about the struggle of the people in Strymonikos. Long before I placed the bomb, other comrades had been in the villages. They had been talking with the people there. They had published a brochure about this revolt, about the clashes in October of 1996. But I will talk more specifically about the struggle in Strymonikos in a little while. First, I want to talk exclusively about the action.
To tell the truth, I was inspired to put this bomb for a specific reason: The people of the villages broke the usual limits by themselves. If it had been a struggle inside institutional frameworks--in the way that trade unions and local administrations try to keep these struggles restricted, if it was confined in a mild, harmless and nondangerous protest, maybe I wouldn't have done anything.
But the comrades up there in the villages--who are not anarchists, of course, but I don't care about that, they are citizens who also want their freedom--had exceeded every limit. They had conflicts with the police three times--on the 17th of October 1996, on the 25th of July '97 and on November 9 '98. They had set fire to police cars and vans of the riot police. They had burnt machinery belonging to TVX, they had invaded the mines of Olympiada and destroyed part of the installations. Some of them also made a kind of guerrilla war. In the nights, they were going out with guns, shooting in the air to frighten the policemen. And I thought, these people are cool. They've gone even further than us.
And then repression followed, especially in '97 when there was marshal law imposed in the area. The Chief of Police in Halkidiki gave an order according to which all gatherings and demonstrations were forbidden. They also sent special police units and police tanks, which came onto the streets for the first time since 1980. Now they were sending them out again in the villages of Halkidiki. So, I thought, we must do something here, in Athens. It is not possible that the others are under repression and we are here staying passive.
The ministry of Industry and Development, in Papadiamadopoulou and Michalakopoulou streets, was one of the centers of this case. The struggle in Strymonikos was a struggle against "development," against "modernization" and all this crap they keep proclaiming. What is hidden behind all these expressions is the profits of
multinationals, the profits of "our own" capitalists, Greek capitalists, the profits of states officials, of the Greek state, of the bureaucrats, of all those who take the money, of technical companies.... There is no relevance between this "development" and "modernization" they are talking about and the satisfaction of popular needs. No relevance at all.
So, I placed a bomb. The purpose was as I said in the letter with which I took responsibility for the action. In the passage of February '98 I said that in placing the explosive device my purpose was to send a double political message. Everything is political. Even if you use such means, the messages are political. War itself is a means of political pressure. In this case, this was also a political means, a political practice. First of all, a message to the people of Strymonikos that "you are not alone, there are also others who may live 600 km away from you but care." Not for personal reasons...I don't know anyone from there personally. Other comrades know people there. I haven't even been there. It was not my house that was threatened, but this is not the point.
Simply, my principle--and generally the principle of anarchists and of other non-anarchist revolutionaries--is that social freedom is one and inseparable. So, if freedom is partially offended, in essence it is offended as a whole. If their freedom is offended, mine is offended too. Their war will be my war, especially in an area where the "sovereign people"--again an expression used by professional politicians--does not want what the state and the capital want: the gold metallurgy of TVX.
On the other hand, I have said that, OK, there would be some damage--I knew that. Yes, I had the intention to cause material damages. So, what damage would that be? On the windows, on that certain place, what kind of damage? Or outside the storehouse where I placed the bomb? In my opinion the damages would be minimal. But even if they were more than minimal, for me it is not important at all. Because freedom can't be compared with the material damage of some windows, on a state car or state property. For me, the ministry is not an institution of common benefit as the charges say. Of state benefit yes, but of social benefit no.
However, even if the device did not explode, I sent my message. I was caught because I made that technical error and I left a fingerprint, but even if there was no material damage at all the message was sent. And you received it, the state received it, but also the people of Strymonikos received it. I know that they are saying I am one of them, even if they have never met me. There is nothing better than that. And of course, I repeat that I don't regret it at all.
I am a social revolutionary, and when you say that it is like talking for the benefit of society. Not like--it is for the social benefit. As I have this principle I couldn't harm any citizen. I could harm a policeman. I consider them my enemies. And you are my enemies too. I separate you. I make a clear class separation. On one hand we have those, on the other hand, we have the others. In this occasion though I intended to harm neither the policeman who guarded the ministry nor anybody else--and of course not a citizen.
The procedure that is used by groups or individuals in general is exactly this: you first place the bomb in your target and then you call to a newspaper. In this case, I called to Eleftherotypia and said: In half an hour a bomb will explode there. Exactly what is written in the evidence: "In 30 minutes there will be an explosion in the Ministry of Industry and Development, for the case of TVX in Strymonikos." By this sense, as it was proven practically and not hypothetically, the police arrived at the place in time. The first of them who went there surrounded and evacuated the area for 200 meters around the building, as the police specialists themselves admitted, so that there wouldn't be any car or person accidentally passing by. And then they waited for the bomb to explode. As they have already said, they were waiting for the safety time to expire, which is the 30 minutes that I had given! Whether the bomb would or wouldn't explode there was absolutely no danger for humans lives. In case that it exploded, there would be only material damages. So, it would happen exactly as was intended to happen. Objectively, if the device had exploded there was no chance of an accident, like exploding before or after the time given.
And exactly because of the message being political and symbolic, it was not in my purpose to cause extensive material damages; that's why I used a small quantity of dynamite. And I had the possibility to put five or seven or ten kilos if I had wanted to.... But I didn't. Since there were such things found in my house, I could have caused great damage, always talking about material damages! But I didn't. If I could have demolished the whole building of the ministry without having killed anyone, I wouldn't have any objection. It is another useless building for the people and for society. As I said before, the only thing I regret is the technical error on the device.
Now, I want to say something in advance. This action was performed only by me, I did it alone, there was nobody else. The message of course said "Anarchist Urban Guerrillas." This doesn't mean that there were other persons aside from me.... It was just an expression to imply which milieu I come from. Of course, I wouldn't use my name "Nikos Maziotis" to tell the newspaper where I placed the bomb. I'd say "Anarchists." That's all. I want to make it clear, finally, that the initiative for this action was mine only, there was neither a group nor an organization nor anything. And also, It doesn't appear even from the evidence that there was a group or an organization, that I would supply any group or organization. I was alone and the things found were only mine.
I want to refer more to what I call solidarity, to the motives that I had. What is this solidarity. I believe that people socialized--that human society was created--based on three components: solidarity, mutuality and helping each other. That's what human freedom is based on. Any social group in struggle, in different space and time--whether they are pupils or farmers or citizens of local societies, for me and for anarchists is very important. It doesn't have to do with whether I am a worker and identifying my interests with the interests of that class. If someone asks for a higher salary or has a trade-unionist demand for me that is not important. For me, solidarity means the unreserved acceptance and support with every means of the right that the people must have to determine their lives as they wish, and not letting others to decide in default of them, like the state and the capital do.
That means that in this specific case, in the struggle of Strymonikos but also in every social struggle, for me what counts mostly is that they are struggles through which the people want to determine their fates alone. And not having any police chief or any state official or capitalist deciding what they should do. It is of secondary importance if they want or don't want the factory, if the focal point of the struggle is environmental. The important thing is that they don't want the factory because they don't like something imposed on them with violence.
Concerning the matter of political violence now, from the very beginning they tried to present a case of "repulsive criminals" and "terrorists" who "'blindly' placed bombs." Something that doesn't exist.
If theoretically terrorism is exercising violence against citizens and unarmed population, that goes exclusively for the state. Only the state attacks civilians. That's what the repression mechanisms are for: the riot police, special police units, the army, special forces...mechanisms that also rob the people. They finance armed professionals, policemen. Aren't they trained to shoot real targets? Aren't the riot police armed with chemical gas? To use them where? On citizens, in demonstrations and in manifestations. So, only the state exercises violence against citizens. I didn't use any violence against any citizen.
I will say exactly what terrorism is.
Terrorism is when occupations, demonstrations and strikes are being attacked. When the riot police attacked the pensioners who demonstrated outside Maximou four years ago. When Melistas killed Kaltezas. When Koumis and Kanelopoulou were murdered by the riot police in 16th of November 1980. And if I remember well, they were not shot, they were beaten to death. Terrorism is when Christos Kassimis was murdered. But I will refer more specifically to this case.
A group of revolutionaries had then tried to set fire to the German factory of AEG, in Redis. This was also an action of solidarity. I don't know if you are aware of that, but I will tell you about it. Then, in '77, some guerrillas of the RAF had died inside the white cells of Stammheim, in Stuttgart, West Germany. The white cells alone are terrorism. Prison is terrorism. So, then, some Greek revolutionaries went to burn the factory of AEG, as an action of solidarity with the RAF and also as a reaction to the murder of RAF militants in the prisons of Stuttgart. During this attempt, which was unsuccessful, somebody was killed. He was Christos Kassimis, shot by the two policemen, Plessas and Stergiou, who were guarding the factory. And according to what I have read, they didn't kill him because their lives where threatened, they shot him in the back. He died with a bullet in his back.
Terrorism is when special police forces invade the Chemistry School and beat up anarchists and youth. Terrorism is when Temponeras is murdered in Patras. Terrorism is when Christos Tsoutsouvis was murdered in '85. But this case also has something special and I want to point it out. To Christos Tsoutsouvis fits an expression of Thucydides-if you know about him, he is the ancient historian who wrote down the story of the Peloponnesian War--that "dying in the battle is an honor, followed by the acclaim of the citizenry." He may have been killed, but he also took three of them with him. For me, he was a warrior, a militant. I believe that society needs more persons like him.
Terrorism is when citizens are murdered by the police in simple "identification controls." I will mention some examples. I will tell about Christos Mouratis, a Rom in the city of Livadia, who was shot in a police blockade in October of 1996. He was an unarmed citizen. This is a crime. But "justice" did nothing about it, what would it do? It just rewarded the crime.
In 1997, Helias Mexis was passing by the street in front of the Transport Detention Center (for prisoners) and he was shot by the police guard Tsagrakos.
Theodoros Giakas was killed on January 10th 1994 by police officer Lagogiannis of the Moschato police station. This case is also quite peculiar. He was an unarmed citizen. He was stopped in the street for identity control. He ran away and the police shot him. Afterwards they said they found a knife in his possession and other crap. As far as I know, in the beginning he was shot three times. Probably all three shots were fatal. As Giakas was lying on the ground, Lagogiannis shot him another two times and even after that he handcuffed him! Are you aware of what "justice" did about it? Sentenced him to 12 years on probation. That's why I'm saying that your "justice" must be put in quotation marks.
Terrorism is when Ali Yumfraz, a Pomak from Vrilisia suburb of Athens, was arrested for being drunk and afterwards he was found dead in his cell in the police station. The police said he suffered a heart-attack and that this was the reason for his death. I can recall another incident, in January of '91, when a Turkish political refugee, Souleiman Akiar, was beaten to death by policemen. The Minister of Public Order had then said that the man had heart problems. But the medical examination found that there were bruises all over his body.
Terrorism is this court, here. Every trial of a militant, every trial of a revolutionary is terrorism, a message of intimidation for society. I said it before in my statement yesterday, when you called me to ask if I accept the charges, and I will repeat it. Because my persecution is political, the message is clear: whoever fights against the state and capital will be penalized, criminalized and characterized as a terrorist. The same for any solidarity with any social struggle: it will be penalized and crushed. This is the message of this trial and by this sense it is terrorism. Terrorism against me, terrorism against the anarchists, terrorism against the people of Strymonikos, who are also receiving similar messages during this period, as they have similar trials for their mobilizations. This is terrorism.
The fact that I put a bomb as an action of solidarity is not terrorism. Because no citizen was harmed by this action.
Many times, the media--sometimes even more than the police--promote a view of every action taking place (for example in molotov attacks) that "we almost had victims, almost, almost, almost...." But such a thing has never really happened. This is done to create impressions and these things are said so that there will be social consent for repression. So that I, for example, will be convicted with a long-term prison sentence. "We found someone who made the mistake of leaving his fingerprint. We caught him. And he says that he did it? Let's fuck him!" My language is a little vulgar.
I want to refer to the struggle in Strymonikos. Even if I have never been there I will give you some historical rudiments. The mines which have now been bought by the multinational company TVX Gold have existed since 1927. They used to belong to Bodosakis. In these mines, where numerous work accidents have taken place and many miners suffered pneumonokoniosis, there was a big bloody strike back in 1977. The strike had demands such as increases in wages, medical treatment, and security measures in the mines. At that time police tanks sent also sent into the area. There were arrests and convictions, with terrorism imposed in the villages.
In the late '80s the company was characterized as "problematic," like many others. The state, through METVA, planned the installation of gold metallurgy. In '92 the company, as "problematic," passed into the hands of the state and in December of '95 the latter sold the mines to TVX. But the residents of Strymonikos didn't want the construction of a gold metallurgy plant. More than seventy years of mining activity had already caused serious environmental problems.
This struggle has great importance, and that has been proven, for international reasons. The mobilizations started in the beginning of '96. The residents blockaded the national Thessaloniki-Kavala highway, they made guardhouses from which they supervised the mines and stopped any company truck that might try to pass or any machinery that would begin drilling activities. With these activities, the street blockade and the guardhouses, the people demonstrated: "We are here. You are not going to pass."
This way they forced the company to temporarily suspend its activities. On the 26th of October '96, TVX sent an ultimatum to the greek state and to the Ministry of Development, saying that "Unless the works start right now, we are going to leave." Their investment, which is the biggest private one ever made in the country, an investment of 65 billion drachmas, would leave Greece.
When the first clashes took place, on the 17th of October, and the residents managed to violently repel the police forces from the area, Jason Stratos, the president of SEV, stated that "these disturbances damage the integrity of the country abroad." And he was right, because "It's impossible that two thousand provincials (I don't mean this characterization in a bad way, but that's how the minister or the president of SEV mean it; that's how professional politicians and the political parties talk about simple people) will destroy our investments, not letting a Canadian company or any other foreign company come here and make investments. This reaction must end".
So, you can understand that this struggle had no restricted local character. It had international implications, because it created a precedent: "If we can't have an investment in Halkidiki, wherever a foreign investor may go it will not be able to proceed with the investment. If the people revolt and don't want what the state wants, the economy is through."
One year later, there was another attempt to start work for the installation of the gold metallurgy plant. In July of '97 the residents destroyed a drill belonging to IGME and clashed with the police. In November, they gathered and demonstrated at the mines. But some months before--in September, if I remember well--the state had predicted that the people's reactions would culminate and had sent hundreds of policemen from Thessaloniki. They had also sent riot police from Athens, special repression police units and police tanks, which as I said before appeared in the streets for the first time after 1980 when they were used to suppress demonstrations. There was a whole army of occupation installed there permanently. The police knew that there would be riots again so they had prepared a military force to repress the residents. As it happened, of course, it wasn't completely successful because the police were defeated in clashes that took place on the 9th of November. And as I have said before police cars and riot police vans were destroyed, the drill of the company was set on fire and finally guerrilla activities took place, in which shots were fired to frighten the police.
As I have already said, I was very much inspired by these events to put the bomb in the Ministry of Industry and Development. On this base I want to repeat that this struggle had no simple local character. It had transcended that.
For us, for the anarchists, social struggles and solidarity are beyond national limits. For me and for my comrades, struggles that take place outside the borders of the Greek state have a great importance.
There is huge importance for me in the Zapatista guerrilla that has burst out in Chiapas in 1994. It is one more struggle against neoliberalism, a struggle that is carried out with guns, with masks, a real war. It involves political violence and I am not against that. I have never made any statement against it and I do not want to pretend to be innocent.
Of great importance for me is also the movement of Brazilian farmers without land (the MST) who occupy the land of the estates in order to cultivate it collectively.
There is also great significance in the movement of the jobless people in France, who made occupations in working offices and clashed with the police during the winter of '97-'98.
Also important is something that took place in Turkey and that is similar with what happened in Strymonikos with TVX. Another multinational company, EUROGOLD, tried to make a comparable investment in Pergamos. And it is very important what I am going to say now. It was in the village Ovancik of Pergamos, if I remember correctly. The residents of that area, Turkish farmers, successfully frustrated the EUROGOLD investment, in the same ways that the people of Strymonikos have used to so far prevent the installation of gold metallurgy. The people of Pergamos made blockades in the Ismir-Istanbul highway. They clashed with military police forces. And, coincidentally, there was again someone who placed a bomb in the offices of the investing company, in Ismir. Like I did here.
So, as you understand, all these practices are part of social struggles, they happen everywhere. And for us, not only are they not crimes, but they are an honor. We are proud of these practices.
Concerning this factory in Pergamos, the Greek media, the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Aegean had been hypocritically saying that if it was constructed it would pollute the Aegean sea. But they are not saying the same for Strymonikos Bay. So the factory in Turkey must not be constructed, but in Greece it is all right. Here the hypocrisy of the Greek state, of the media and of the politicians is obvious.
I don't believe that you really judge me as a "terrorist." I don't believe that you judge me for "having the purpose to cause danger to human lives." This is just a pretext. In fact, you are judging me for what I've said until now. For who I am. For being an anarchist, for believing what I believe, even for my past. Because all of these are aggravating elements: "So, you were in the Polytechnic occupation, you were in the Economic School occupation, you are an objector to military service, you were here and there...." I don't have a "previous decent life," according to you, of course, because according to me I am a very decent person. In reality, you don't judge me for supposedly having the purpose of harming people.
In fact, the state has proven that it does not care for the citizens. On the contrary, when its domination must be consolidated, the state takes away human lives, as I have said in the examples I gave before. The only thing the state wants is to conserve a monopoly, the monopoly that "Only I, the state, can take away human lives."
Only the uniformed police, the secret police, the riot police or the special police can take away human lives. Everyone else who does it is a criminal. But when the state does it, it proves to be unassailable.
Whenever citizens were killed, "justice" has accepted the police allegations. Not because it believed them but for reasons of interest. It always accepts the allegation that "the bullet lost its way," that supposedly "the policeman's gun had accidentally fired," or that he was supposed to be "in legal defense." In reality though, all these examples that I mentioned before, and I have more to mention, are cold-blooded murders. Very few policemen were ever accused and all of them are out of prison and proud of what they have done. Proud!
A witness for my defense said something before about the case of Alekos Panagoulis. And it is true that the attempt of Panagoulis to murder the dictator Papadopoulos was an action applauded by the Greek people. It was an attempt to kill. And so what? Who did he try to kill? A dictator!
Rationally one can oppose the argument that back then there was a status of military junta and that the means of political violence were justified to be used as a means of political pressure in the time of dictatorship, but now we have a "parliamentary democracy." Now we have "freedom" and we have "rights." Well, I don't think it is exactly like that. With all I've said I don't believe there are rights. They may exist on paper, but in reality there is nothing.
I will mention certain occasions of the political reform period, the time of the presumed democracy, where people have been killed within social struggles. It was once again proven that the people still don't define their fate just because the constitution of the state changed in 1974. Specific examples: The first disturbances took place, as far as I remember, in July of 1975. Also in May of 1976 for one more time the police tanks appeared in the streets of Athens. Laskaris, the minister of Employment of Karamanlis' government had then made a new law, Act 330, an anti-worker and anti-strike act. On the 25th of May '76 there was an all-workers' demonstration.
There were clashes with the police, an assault at the offices of "Bradini" newspaper..., molotov cocktails and fire... Then, a police tank which was chasing after demonstrators killed Anastasia Tsivika, a 67 year old saleswoman. Nobody was ever accused of this murder.
In other cases, there were new drafts of laws voted in the parliament without asking anybody's opinion. For example in 1990 there was a revision of the agreement considering the continuation of the American military base operations in Greece. The people of Chania did not accept that... In June of 1990 they had a demonstration which was attacked by the riot police. As a reaction, the people clashed with the police and burnt down the Prefecture of Chania.
In 1991 the farmers of Heraklion province set fire to the building of the Heraklion Prefecture. As you can see, political violence is exercised by everyone. By all of society and by every social segment or class that is threatened.
What the state wants is to deal with everyone alone. You must have heard an expression that Prime Minister Simitis is using a lot, speaking of "social automatism" whenever social reactions burst out. He uses this expression in order to present these social reactions--the blockades in the streets, the squatting in public buildings and all the actions of this kind--as being in contrast with the interests of the rest of society. Something that is a total lie. It is just the tactics of "divide and rule," which means "Spread discord to break solidarity." Because solidarity is very important as anyone who is alone becomes an easy target.
When a workers' strike takes place and there is no solidarity it is easier to attack. They talk about a "minority." This is the argument of the state, that it is "a union minority having retrogressive interests which turn against modernization, against development, against all reforms," and all that nonsense. Well, there hasn't been one social segment or social group that hasn't come in conflict with the state--especially during the '90s, and that hasn't been faced with the argument that "You are just a minority," that "Your struggle is in contrast with the rest of society's interests."
That is exactly what happened in all cases. It happened with the workers in the "problematic" companies who were squatting their factories in '90-'91, with the pupils who occupied their schools in '90-'91 and recently in '98-'99. The same thing happened with the workers in Public Transport in '92, with the farmers who blockaded the national highways in '95 and in '96, with the teachers' mobilizations against the repeal of the calendar and the new exam. The same thing happened of course with the people of Strymonikos.
What is really being attacked is solidarity. And that's what is also attacked--without any disguise--through my trial. The state wants to attack everyone alone. Because when it finds them together things are much more difficult.
Police brutality is, of course, not sufficient for repression. Coming back to what I was saying before, I have concluded with the fact that the difference between dictatorship and parliamentary democracy--or should I better say capitalistic oligarchy--is that the first one is mainly imposed by raw violence and the latter, the presumed democracy, is mostly imposed by the intellectual control of the citizens, through the weapon of the mass media, through deception. Because I don't believe that people voting for their bosses every four years means they have their freedom. They vote for them but when they're not doing what they were elected to do, people can't get rid of them.
In ancient Athens this didn't happen. In ancient Athens everyone could speak in the public assembly. Anyone could express an opinion, no matter how modest his position was. And those having a public position could be removed by the people at any time.
But democracy has also proven that when deception and intellectual control of the citizens are not enough, it has no problem resorting to police violence, killing, torture and terror.
Finally, I am not on trial because I placed a bomb, nor because I possessed three guns and ten kilograms of dynamite. After all, the army and the police have a lot more guns than me and they use them. The one can't be compared with the other.
I have nothing else to say. The only thing I'll say more is that no matter what the penalty to which I will be sentenced--because it is certain that I will be convicted--I am not going to repent anything. I will remain who I am. I can also say that prison is always a school for a revolutionaries. His ideas and the endurance of his soul are experienced. And if he passes this test he becomes stronger and believes more in the things for which he was put in prison. I have nothing more to say.
The judge: Don't turn the cameras to the bench!
Public prosecutor: In the beginning of your plea you said that you had the guns for war. Don't you see a contradiction when you say that there was no danger for human lives?
I made clear that none of my activities is turned against citizens. I already made that clear. Where is the contradiction?
Public Prosecutor: You said the guns are for war.
Yes but not for the people. For my class enemies. Look, I never said that I am a humanist generally. Nor a philanthropist, because the meanings of these words are degraded. In everything that I've written--if you have read--and in everything that I've said I made clear who are my friends and who are my enemies. Not on a personal but on a social level. Who are my social and class friends and who are my social and class enemies. In the letter with which I took responsibility for the action as well as in my defense I said that society is another thing from the state.
I will go on to be more specific for the jury. On the one hand I place the state, state officials, the police, the army, the security forces, capitalists, and on the other hand I place the rest of the people: workers, farmers, pupils, the whole of society, the majority of the people, the oppressed people.
Public prosecutor: You talked about "justice" putting the word in quotation marks. What ground for complaint do you have against justice?
I have been in prison for the last 18 months. I have personally stayed in prison for 18 months and another 7 months in military prison. Simple and close examples. You are speaking of me, personally, are't you?
These laws are made in order to suit your interests. From these laws you are earning your bread. Your job is to send citizens to prison and to oppose the argument that policemen have committed murders but don't go to prison for it. I have already criticized the job of this "justice" you are talking about. That finally there are two weights and two measures. The matter is not what the law says or what the penal code says, but what really happens. Just like in the case of terrorism.
For example, the US consider PKK to be a terrorist organization, but not UCK. In the beginning UCK was considered, by the US, a terrorist organization but afterwards it wasn't because its existence was convenient for their plans. Isn't that right? The US did not consider Contras to be terrorists, when they were going to invade Nicaragua, but they considered all the left revolutionary movements and guerrillas terrorists.
Public prosecutor: I will refer to the danger you said something about. Didn't you know that the bomb could cause danger?
If I knew? I knew that it would not cause any danger. The procedure is stereotyped and it goes exactly like that: you make a telephone call to a newspaper for warning, then somebody from the newspaper informs the police, the police arrive at the place and blockade the area surrounding the target. In my case, they did blockade the area and the police specialists in neutralizing explosive devices who were then present have already testified that the blockade was safe for a range of 200 meters. So there was no danger for human lives. For material damages now, I told you my opinion about them....
I want to complete what I was saying before to the public prosecutor, about terrorism on an international level. In reality, for this moment, the US are the global gendarmery and terrorists, as the only great world power left. Which means it is the worst thing on earth. And according to our perception--as anarchists--the state, all the states and all the governments are antisocial, terrorist mechanisms, since they have organized armies, police, and hired torturers.
I also want to complete what I was saying about having two weights and two measures. For example, the US provides weapons, financing and instigating every dictatorial regime all over the world. And in Greece as well. In Latin America, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru.... This is terrorism. Terrorism is to arm dictators, to arm death squads in Argentina or in Bolivia in order to kill people of the left, citizens, revolutionaries. Those who equip the death squads to torture, those are the terrorists.
Terrorism is when they bombard Yugoslavia for ten days, killing civilians....
Excuse me, Mr. prosecutor, but the US is the one which pronounces who is terrorist and who isn't. Its State Department issues official directions, advising Greece about who is a terrorist. In this period of time, it places pressure on the Greek state to make an anti-terrorist law, a model of law which will criminalize those who fight, making laws more draconian than those already existing. This is terrorism.
The revolutionaries and militants are not terrorists. The terrorists are the states themselves. But with this accusation, with this stigmatizing (as terrorism) all the states and governments try to criminalize the social revolutionaries and militants inside their countries--the internal social enemy. In fact, the state, "justice" and the police face me also as this kind of enemy. As an internal social enemy. On the basis of the division I described before. That's the way the state sees it. This is what is ventured in this trial.
Public prosecutor: What do you have to oppose to what exists?
Social revolution. By any means necessary.
It is generally proven, because I am well versed in Greek as well as in international social and political history, that never did any changes happen, never did humanity meet any progress--progress as I conceive it--through begging, praying or with mere words.
In the text I sent to take responsibility for the action in which I said that I placed the bomb and which was published in Eleftherotypia newspaper, I said that the social elite, the mandarins of capital, the bureaucrats, all these useless and parasitic people--who should disappear from the proscenium of history--will never quit their privileges through a civilized discussion, through persuasion. I don't want to have a discussion because you can't have a discussion with this kind of people...
I would like to add something. Precisely because I have studied a lot, (I know that) during the events of July of '65, a conservative congressman of the National Radical Union came out and said about those who went into the streets and caused disturbances when Petroulas was killed, that "Democracy is not the red tramps but we, the participants in parliament," which means the congressmen who are well paid.
I will reverse that. Popular sovereignty, sir judges, is when molotovs and stones are thrown at the police, when state cars, banks, shopping centers and luxury stores are burnt down. This is how the people react. History itself has proven that this is the way people react.
This is popular sovereignty. When Maziotis goes and places a bomb in the Ministry of Industry and Development in solidarity with the struggle of the people in Strymonikos. This is the real popular sovereignty and not what the Constitution says.
I forgot to commemorate militants who have been murdered. Christoforos Marinos was murdered in the port of Piraeus, inside the ship "Pegasus" in July of '96. Michalis Prekas was murdered by the Special Police Units in October of 1987 in Kalogreza. Tsironis was murdered in Nea Smyrni in 1978.
I also want to add something concerning to what Mr. Prosecutor said yesterday, during his speech, on the matter of humanism.
I will mention an event that happened abroad, to prove who are humanists and who aren't after all, who are the real criminals.
The Tupac Amaru guerrillas occupied the Japanese embassy of Peru in December of 1996. They took more than a hundred hostages and these hostages were not just citizens. There were ambassadors, diplomats from many states, Japanese businessmen and officials of the Peruvian regime--which is quite far from being democratic. They were demanding the freedom of their militants, the release of their organization's leader and of other comrades of theirs who were imprisoned in dungeons.
Not only didn't they hurt any one of the hostages but they even released almost all of them--that is to say who are really the humanists. On the contrary, after endless and exhausting negotiations, the Peruvian special forces invaded the embassy and executed every one of them in cold blood. I tell all that in order that we know who are the criminals and who are the "humanists"--in quotation marks, because I don't like this term and that's why I don't use it a lot.
I want also to mention some things that happened here in Greece. I want to speak for Charis Temperekidis, who may not have been a political militant, but for me he was a rebelling penal prisoner. He had been kept in prison for years. He also died with his gun in hand during a chase after the robbery of the Agricultural Bank in Klitoria, Achaia. Despite the fact that he was still alive when caught by the police, he didn't inform against his accomplices. In the past he had taken part in prisoners' revolts, like the one of 1987 in Kerkyra in order to close this place of punishment.
And there is one more case--if we want to discuss crimes once more, the case of Sorin Matei. When Matei kept a policeman as hostage, the police didn't make any move to arrest him. When Matei took civilians as hostages, the police couldn't care less about their lives. In order to strengthen their prestige the police invaded the apartment where Matei had taken shelter, resulting in the death of a young woman. The criminals were more the policemen of the special units than Sorin Matei. As criminal as the manager of Nikaia general hospital, Alexiou, who ordered the transportation of Matei to the prison hospital Agios Pavlos, where he died either from the beating he suffered by policemen or by the drugs they were given to him. That explains who is criminal.
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You idiot. I do not live in China. The Chinese government is a little a autocratic, but I rather live in China and be feed, then one of the many people eating out of garbage cans in India.
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Your stupid.
India's economic growth rate may sound impressive compared to Western Europe and other rich nations, but most of their populations are in decline and supplemented by immigration. In India they are fucking mulitiplying like rabbits and the economic growth rate is not fast enough for the corresponding population increase.
What this means is India is getting poorer as time goes on.
Hail Mao was a joke. India is so poor most people there cannot afford shoes. The economy in India is growing fast, but so is the population. The economy of India is acutally degenerating as it is not growing fast enough for its high population growth rate.
It is not that great in China, but it is far better than India!
Grasp what? That the only way you think you can say what you want is by retreating to freenet? Fight the government you fucking pussy. Go to Thessaloniki 2003 at the next WEF meeting pick a up a stick/rock/anything and bash the Greek police and close down their fucking meeting.
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Dear Troll,
We are plesed to inform you that, after careful consideration , we have accepted your troll into the Troll Library.
You show a masterful skill at trolling.
Thank you for your time and your contribution.