Indymedia sucks. Stupid, free speech liberals. They will not delete anything from the newswire, so it is full of spam, conspiracy theories, repostings, trolls, porn, ultra right wing lunacy, and other crap. It seems they rather cater to some ideal rather than make indymedia into a site useful for news.
Let Indymedia die!
Now that I said this, the Greek indymedia's are not ruined yet, but the main site and alot of others are have nothing but shit on their newswires.
It boggles the mind. They're not even pretending to educate any more. It's right out in the open.
I'm sure we all recognize the kind of student this will attract: Those unbathed, ill-groomed term-room troglodytes we knew in college, who gave out the terminal room phone number as their own and slowly, lumpishly flunked out.
Some of them stayed on anyway, parasitizing an institution that was no longer willing to tolerate their presence.
Now I guess we won't be flunking them out any more, we'll be giving them A's in "Self-Justification of Incompetence", "Advanced Parasitism", and "Stinking Like a Corpse". I can see it now -- UC Irvine will attract every drug-addled adolescent imbecile in the United States to this "program". Academic standards, already lowerd beyond all human tolerance, will sink beyond all nadirs previously imagined.
They're trying to produce a generation of young Americans so dismally uneducated that they'll fall for any idiotic junk-science and pseudo-philosophy that comes down the pike. A nation of perfect suckers to do as their told, a nation of drones incapable of thinking critically. The "recycling" industry will take off like a rocket (I'll be investing tomorrow, believe me) because these sad excuses for "college graduates" will be incapable of finding out where the "recycling" trucks actually go with the trash that the suckers have carefully sorted through (like bag ladies in their own homes, or slaves assigned as punishment to the garbage heap). Where do those trucks go, you ask? The dump, same as the other trucks. It's just obedience-training. The liberals always do what they're told, because they haven't the imagination or strength of will to create their own freedom.
I'm sorry if I'm ranting here, but I'm watching my nation get flushed down the toilet at the taxpayer's expense, and it's a bit hard to take.
Bah the American army could not even defeat France or Germany if they were to fight in a war. It is easy to look powerful when you are fighting cripples all the time like Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua, Afghanistan(we know about all the "mechanical" failures those American made helicopters are having), Yugoslavia(actually they kicked some American tail, first "stealth" bombers shot down!).
Im Lexicon Devil with a batt-erd brain Looking for the future,worlds my aim! So gimme gimme your hands-gimme gimme your minds- Gimme gimme this-gimme gimme tha-ea-ea-ea-ttt!
I want toy tin soldiers that can push and shove I want gunboy rovers that'll wreck this club I'll build you up and level your heads We'll run it my way cold men and politics dead...
I'll get silver guns to drip old blood Let's give this established joke a shove We're gonna wreak havoc on this rancid mill I'm searchin' for something even if I'm killed...
Empty out your pockets-you don't need their change I'm giving you the power to rearrange Together we'll run to the highest prop Tear it down and let it drop...away...
I know. ESR should be shot. The man is a loon, slashdot should stop posting all his interviews. All the "Libertarians" are tweaked, from Ayn Rand(the domineering cult leader) to ESR("X doesn't get it"). The only one who does not get it is, ESR.
One of the defining features of Chinese society at the turn of the century is the deepening urban/rural split. The big Chinese cities are now part of the first world: huge skyscrapers fill the skyline and are being built at a furious rate, there is a constant ringing from cell phones, gated communities spring up out of farm land on the outskirts of the cities, and the latest fashion is sold on every street. In the countryside, where 75% of the population lives, life is getting tougher and unemployment is growing.
In the late 1970's, the Chinese reforms under Deng Xiaoping began in the countryside by dismantling the collectives and allowing households to take responsibility for growing food on leased plots. Under such a system rural incomes grew rapidly, and, in the late 1980's and 1990's, reform moved on to the urban industries. It is only in the last few years that state industries have had to deal with the pressures of competition. Huge layoffs have been the primary way for these industries to become profitable; still, many have gone bankrupt. It has only been by maintaining a national growth rate of around 8% that many of these urban industrial laborers have been given new jobs, although many remain unemployed. The nature of their jobs has also changed. The old state industries guaranteed one a job for life, health care, schooling for one's children, and housing. These sectors of society are increasingly being privatized and most jobs offer little assistance. Many of the urban unemployed have been given make-work jobs with low pay and no benefits. And most new urban jobs are being created by private and foreign investment.
At the same time the rural economy has stagnated. Rural enterprises had grown in number in the 1980's, soaking up much of the excess rural labor. But as capitalist valorization plays an increasingly important role in decision making, these state supported enterprises have been failing at a very high rate, and only about one quarter of surplus agricultural laborers are finding employment in rural enterprises at the moment. In addition, there is little private and almost no foreign investment in rural areas. In the 1990's, it is the rural unemployed who have grown the fastest (the rural unemployed is estimated at around 130 million).
Yet the state seems to fear urban unrest the most, and, in order to keep the cities stable, it restricts the movement of rural unemployed into the cities. Internal migration is for the most part illegal: one needs a residence permit to live in a city. The state also raised the price of train tickets significantly in order to stem the tide of the rural poor. The status of being illegal immigrants in one's own country has only increased the precariousness of the rural poor, and, at the same time, it has produced a huge reserve of cheap labor. Most of the sweatshops that produce goods for export are filled with such laborers, mostly rural women.
These changes in Chinese society are due to the leadership's decision to bring the Chinese economy under the reign of capitalist valorization. Since 1992, the Chinese government has moved to make Chinese industry competitive on the world market. One of the more significant moves to insert the economy into the global regime of value was the 1994 devaluation of the Chinese currency. This devaluation is one of the primary causes of the 1997 Asian economic crisis, as it made the labor costs of smaller Asian nations less competitive thus hurting their investment. The increase in foreign investment in China (almost all in the coastal cities) has been extremely important in soaking up unemployed labor, but it hasn't been enough. To deal with this problem the government has also rapidly increased its spending on infrastructure. Yet again, most of this investment has been on the coast in the big cities. The government has also tried to spur domestic (urban) consumer spending, giving urban workers two weeks of extra holidays to spend money and lowering the interest rate and raising the taxes on savings accounts. But the famous untapped consumer market of China isn't what it is purported to be. There is very little consumer spending in the countryside where the majority of Chinese live, and urban spending has been much less than hoped for.
Another milestone in China's move to become fully part of global capitalism will be its entry into the WTO (probably in the Fall). Yet this will only compound the rural problems, as membership in the WTO will particularly hurt the rural population. China's agricultural goods aren't competitive on the world market. With WTO entry, cheaper agricultural goods will enter China's cities from abroad, and rural incomes, which are already stagnating, will probably drop. The state is making a lot of noise about increasing rural investment, but such investment is much more difficult than urban investment due, in part, to the small scale of farming in China.
Meanwhile, Chinese society is becoming much less stable. There are now thousands of protests a year in China. Most of these are by workers who haven't been paid or have been laid off. A year ago, the largest of these protests took place in a northeastern mining town. The mine was closed, putting the whole town out of work. This caused three days of riots, which included the burning of police cars and were only put down by the army. Rural riots have also taken place, many over water tights in the increasingly drought prone north. Farmers have even attacked gated communities on the edge of Beijing that had taken their land. Yet these outbursts haven't been able to build into any sort of movement. The Chinese government doesn't allow any autonomous organization. Nor does it allow independent publications to exist. When China recently signed UN covenants on human and social rights, it specifically excluded the sections that allowed for autonomous unions and free association. It is such organization that the Chinese government is most afraid of.
Under such circumstances, the Party has had to recreate its image and build a new ideological foundation. According to a new formulation by Party Chairman Jiang Zemin, the Party should first represent "the development needs of the most advanced forces of production." The Party is now more open about the fact that it has more in common with the budding capitalist class in China than with the workers. Both the government and many of the new capitalists see democracy as a chaotic force in China. The fostering of nationalism has also helped keep the Party in firm control. This is the prime reason for China's spending so much to get picked as the site for the 2008 Olympic Games.
Many questions remain: Will the Chinese state be able to contain the discontent that is generated by the insertion of Chinese society into the global capitalist regime of value? Will such discontent find effective means of organization and action? And, how can we act in solidarity with such struggles?
US imperialist hypocrisy and double standards have probably reached their peak during these last few weeks. The mass media treated the world to the spectacle of mobs destroying the Yugoslav parliament and attacking the offices of several Yugoslav left wing parties, hailing these events as "a great triumph of democracy" and other such nonsense. Meanwhile, the leader of the "free world," murderer of refugees and bomber of aspirin factories, Bill Clinton laid praise upon himself and fellow war-monger Secretary of state Madeleine Albright (ever notice how eerily physically similar she is to Maggie Thatcher?). We were all supposed to celebrate seeing magazine covers and newspapers with glorious headlines such as "free at last," while Clinton and company claimed that this was proof that the waging of war against a civilian population and the bombing of a country back to the middle ages is in fact the way to "work towards democracy." But since when has the US been interested in democracy?
The answer is, quite simply, never. Those who have doubts can ask the people of Latin America about the US' "democratic values." They will tell you about the US sponsorship of the Contras to fight against the Sandinista Liberation Movement in Nicaragua. Or of the brutal military dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, who took tens of thousands of lives and how they were sponsored and trained by the US military. Or better yet, of the CIA sponsorship of strikes and sabotage against the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende and the references made to Allende's election by at the time Secretary of state Henry Kissinger. Kissinger could not have summed up the US' appreciation of the concept of democracy any better when he said, "I don't see why we should let a country go red just because it's people don't know how to vote." Of course, how often does one hear the argument that, "that was all in the past and a consequence of the cold war, etc, etc."
So let me present you with a more recent example. Last week, as the hoopla about an elected statesman (true, those in power controlled the election, but where does the class in power not do so?) being overthrown by mobs began to die down, two men, Faisal al-Biloowi and Ayish al-Faridia, hijacked a plane headed to Heathrow airport from the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh. After the hijacked plane landed in Baghdad, with no injuries and no violence of any kind (which is not what can be said of the events in Belgrade), the hijackers stated that they committed the hijacking in order to draw attention to "human rights abuses, corruption, and unemployment" in Saudi Arabia. They also stated that they wanted to be free to choose their own leaders and that "the time of kings and monarchies is over." One would assume that the US, being the great defender of democracy that it claims to be, would make at least a mild gesture towards these, however unfortunately reformist, freedom fighters. Instead, as Saudi Arabia works to extradite them and hand them a certain death sentence, the penalty for hijacking in Saudi Arabia, the US has remained shockingly quiet.
Why is this? Because the United States is simply not interested in democracy. It is a plundering economic imperialist interested in economic gain, at the expense of people, lives, and yes, even it's own twisted brand of bourgeois democracy. The fact is, Saudi Arabia has natural resources, in this case oil, and allows the US to use place military bases on it's territory, hence, democracy is irrelevant. The same is true of Algeria, Turkey, Colombia, and other such dictatorships (yes, dictatorships, regardless of what sort of mock elections they may have periodically) around the world. Unfortunately for what is left of the Yugoslav federation, it has no such natural resources to offer the US.
In view of this it has to accept "democracy." For when the US and its allies say "democracy" what they mean is neo-liberalism. They mean privatization, which was not occurring in Yugoslavia, and subsequent layoffs. They mean the eating away of basic social services and most importantly they mean the surrendering of a nation's economy and a people's culture to economic imperialism aimed at exploiting them and robbing them of their cultural identity. For the US, freedom and democracy means a McDonalds on every avenue and a policeman on every corner.
Of course, no one will argue that Milosevic was a war criminal (although no worse than Clinton or Blair) and a tyrant. And we should be the last to condemn "revolutions" and other popular movements. However, one must look at the consequences of such events. The truth remains that Milosevic, despite his many, many negative qualities, represented one of the last bastions of European resistance to the expansion of western neo-liberalism. Now that he is out of power, or almost, the coast is clear for pro-US puppets, such as Kostunica, to open the doors to the rape of Yugoslavia. Indeed, the west wasted no time in announcing aid and investment, which conveniently means the reconstruction of everything NATO bombed into oblivion a a year ago.
Revolutions and popular movements are great and positive events, not to mention the burning of parliaments, but they are not exempt from the political context of the rest of the world. The Yugoslav students and workers who participated in the storming of parliament may have been well intentioned, just as their counterparts who torn down the Berlin wall were. However, just as is the case in the ex-Eastern bloc, they have been fed lies about western "democracy" and what lies ahead is unfortunately likely to be the same thing discovered by those in the ex-Eastern bloc, namely hunger, unemployment, and misery. It is the same people who ten years ago tore down the wall who are now saying that they would not have done it had they known what was to come, and that they are trying to undo their mistake by voting for the parties of old. It should surprise nobody if this scenario is repeated in Yugoslavia in the years to come. Democracy, real, people's democracy that is, is only appealing on a full stomach. There is no freedom without economic freedom, as they are inseparable. It is only a matter of time before the people of Yugoslavia join the millions of others across the world who have already come to this realization and again choose to do their history as fighters honor by resisting theirs, and the worlds, neo liberal aggressors.
The 5th semi-annual conference of the NorthEastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists was held in Baltimore, MD from Friday, February 22 to Sunday the 24. Well over 50 people were in attendance at the conference which saw a significant expansion of NEFAC's membership as well as a conscious move to develop a serious long-term strategy centered around strategic interventions in concrete areas of the class struggle. The membership of NEFAC has now expanded to include 8 member collectives and 5 supporter collectives. The member collectives are Sabate (Boston), Roundhouse (Baltimore), Tute Nere (DC), Sophia Perovskaya (Boston), Barricada (Boston), Quebec City Local Union, the Montreal Local Union, and La Bete Noir (Montreal). Supporter collectives are Freyheyt (Toronto), RASH (Montreal), De Cleyre (Philadelphia), Facing Reality (Montreal), and Thomas Payne Park (New York). To these can be added numerous new individual adhesions as both members and supporters. The most significant development of the conference was the conscious decision to move out of the "activist crisis" mode (summit-hopping and reactive politics) and begin developing a campaign of concerted, long-term interventions in specific areas of the class struggle. After a lengthy discussion regarding what areas to prioritize, it was decided to create three separate caucuses around the issues of housing/gentrification, anti-poverty work, and workplace struggles. The caucuses are to brainstorm on these issues and develop proposals for concrete federation wide interventions in the future. These issues were chosen as they are issues which affect the daily lives of working people, and thus provide anarchists with an opportunity to conduct struggles which relate to the day to day life of people, serving as gateways to radicalization and a broader rejection of the system as a whole and the building of a revolutionary dual power. The next significant development was the creation of a permanent women's caucus to deal with issues relating to gender and patriarchy both within the federation structure, as well as within our organizing and activity. This came following small group discussions around the issues of race and gender, an activity and form of discussion that we hope to see continued at future conferences. Furthermore, the conference designated Barricada as the International Secretariat collective, as well as the official agitational monthly of NEFAC . There was also a speakers bureau created (to be managed by Roundhouse), a Warchest fund (by Sophia Perovskaya), a working group to re-write the aims and principles, and endorsement of the Festival del Pueblo in Boston, the regional mobilization against the G8 in Ottawa, and mobilizations against the IMF/WB in Washington DC in October. People overwhelmingly felt that it was a productive and inspiring conference, which was also marked by a direct action in conjunction with ACORN (see Direct Actions Takes Out the Trash article), and marked an important step forward in the development of NEFAC as a stable and mature federation with a clear political program and revolutionary strategy.
------------------- Barricada: North America's Only Revolutionary Anarchist Monthly Magazine Visit www.barricada.org Support Us...Subscribe! (15$ for 6 months) PO Box 73 Boston MA 02133 USA
You are a great troll. It was hard for me to tell whether you were xenophobic American or a troll, which is precisely why you are so adept at trolling.
Study Finds Sexism Rampant in Nature
on
IPCop 0.1.1 Review
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· Score: -1
According to a University of California-San Diego study released Monday, sexism is rampant throughout the natural world, particularly among the highest classes of vertebrates.
"When we first decided to examine attitudes and behaviors toward gender roles among non-humans, we were wholly unprepared for what we would find," said Jennifer Tannen, leader of the UCSD research team, a joint venture between the school's zoology and women's studies departments. "Females living in the wild routinely fall victim to everything from stereotyping to exclusion from pack activities to sexual harassment."
Nowhere is the natural world's gender inequity more transparent, Tannen said, than in the unfair burden females assume for the rearing of offspring.
"Take the behavior of the ring-neck pheasant," Tannen said. "After mating, the male immediately abandons the hen, leaving her responsible for the total care for the chicks. For the single mother-to-be, there is no assistance, either in the form of a partner or child support. Nor is there any legal recourse. It's despicable."
Tannen said pheasants are typical of the natural world, where a mere 5 percent of animal species mate for life. Among species that do form lasting pairs, the situation barely improves: Females must remain close to the nest to incubate eggs, nurse, and keep watch over the burrow while males are free to go off hunting and fishing with their friends.
"The sexist attitude that child-rearing is 'women's work' is prevalent throughout nature and has been for generations, probably since reptiles first developed mammalian characteristics in the Triassic period," Tannen said. "Sadly, most creatures never pause to challenge these woefully outdated gender roles."
Tannen stressed the need to hold high those rare examples of species that do form caring, mutually supportive relationships.
"Wolves, beavers, gibbons, and a small African antelope known as a dik-dik all live in stable, monogamous pairs," Tannen said. "Other animals need to look to them as positive models if we are to have any hope of one day creating an ecosystem of understanding and respect."
More seriously, in addition to an unfair division of labor, nature is rife with sexual abuse and harassment. The UCSD study estimates that in 2001 alone, more than 170 trillion cases of abuse occurred in the world's forests, grasslands, and oceans--all of them unreported.
"During the act of mating, the female moose is subject to excessive biting, nipping, and herding," Tannen said. "The male has no qualms about using sheer, brute force to overpower his sex partner, and the female, accustomed to this sort of rough treatment after millions of years of it, doesn't even realize there's something wrong."
"Then, when it's time for the bull moose to complete the sexual act," Tannen continued, "it's over in about five seconds, with no regard to female pleasure whatsoever. Typical."
Adding insult to injury, Tannen said, the bull moose then heads off to mate with dozens more females over a period of two to three weeks, justifying his behavior as "part of the Mardi Gras-like atmosphere of 'mating season.'"
With other species, darker situations unfold.
"To mate, the male Galapagos tortoise simply immobilizes the female with his weight, which, as far as I'm concerned, qualifies as non-consensual sex," Tannen says. "Female southern elephant seals gather in large groups during mating season, and each group has a small handful of males who control them like a harem. It's sick."
When female animals refuse to play along with prescribed gender roles, Tannen said, they are demonized. For example, female foxes, known throughout the animal kingdom for their aggressiveness, are labeled "vixen."
"We've all heard the lurid tales about the female black-widow spider, who kills and eats her mate," Tannen said. "The truth is, male spiders encourage their partners to kill them because it increases the time spent mating and, thus, the number of eggs fertilized by his sperm. But no one condemns the male for his part in this destructive relationship."
UCSD researchers identified 24 distinct male behaviors designed to perpetuate gender inequity and preserve the prevailing power structure. Among these dominance-asserting behaviors are chest-puffing, plumage-spreading, and antler growth.
The UCSD study is not without its detractors. Glen Otis Brown, author of Forced To Strut: Reverse Sexism In The Animal World, countered that male animals are victims of "the beauty myth" as much as females.
"When given a choice, female green tree frogs gravitate toward males that call the loudest and most often," Brown said. "Female Poecilia reticulata [guppies] go straight to the most brightly colored males. But when males evolve exaggerated secondary sexual traits to attract the opposite sex, suddenly they're the bad guys."
Tannen conceded that both genders have suffered as a result of sexism.
"Other than sexual size dimorphism due to same-sex competition, males benefit little from the gender inequity that so strongly favors them," Tannen said. "In a world where interactions are rooted in competition, not cooperation, both females and males are being denied the right to form meaningful relationships."
Annie Secunda, a Boston-based females'-rights advocate, said swift action must be taken to address the problem of sexism within the animal kingdom.
"We need to provide tigresses, hens, and all other females in nature with outreach programs and support networks," Secunda said. "We also need to impose standards through intervention. The males of all species need to hear loud and clear the message that this kind of animal behavior is not acceptable."
Secunda conducts numerous workshops aimed at creating female-friendly biomes and promoting the health and positive self-image of females on both land and in the sea. She also strongly advocates the legalization of infanticide, which would enable females to devour their newborn offspring when resources are limited.
Secunda spent much of 2001 in the Amazon rainforest, working to create safe spaces for female animals. These efforts, however, yielded mixed results: Females have avoided the lighted walkways she built in several dangerously dense areas, and leaflets encouraging females to learn how their own bodies work were ultimately used to line dens for the rainy season.
Far from discouraged, Secunda said she plans to embark on an intensive study of the sexuality of flora.
"Multicellular plants alternate sexually reproducing and asexually reproducing generations, with each plant producing both male and female gametes," Secunda said. "It seems many plants have moved past conventional notions of male-female gender altogether. It's so liberating, I can't help but have hope for all those so-called 'higher' species of animals."
Are you implying that the US government does not have nationalists as rabid as any of the Bolsheviks? Where is Rumsfield(his freinds can call him "Rummy")! You are a disgrace to the American people and should be sent to Guantanamo Bay.
Are you implying that the US government does not have nationalists as rabid as the National Socialists(Nazis) of the Germany of old? Where is Rumsfield(his freinds can call him "Rummy")! You are a disgrace to the American people and should be sent to Guantanamo Bay.
Governments never have and never will protect this "freedom of speech" apparition they helped to create. Governments only take away "freedom of speech". If you had read the article you would have known this.
Slashdot Mirror
Indymedia sucks. Stupid, free speech liberals. They will not delete anything from the newswire, so it is full of spam, conspiracy theories, repostings, trolls, porn, ultra right wing lunacy, and other crap. It seems they rather cater to some ideal rather than make indymedia into a site useful for news.
Let Indymedia die!
Now that I said this, the Greek indymedia's are not ruined yet, but the main site and alot of others are have nothing but shit on their newswires.
That was disgusting. Luckily I am desensitizied to that crap.
I am curious how the hell somone's diarhea can shoot so high.
British eh? Or an Aussie?
No other countries have idiots that play rugby.
Damn you are 30 I bet. That girl is what 12,13? Craddle fucker.
Did you even read his post?
He caught you twice his trolls.
It boggles the mind. They're not even pretending to educate any more. It's right out in the open.
I'm sure we all recognize the kind of student this will attract: Those unbathed, ill-groomed term-room troglodytes we knew in college, who gave out the terminal room phone number as their own and slowly, lumpishly flunked out.
Some of them stayed on anyway, parasitizing an institution that was no longer willing to tolerate their presence.
Now I guess we won't be flunking them out any more, we'll be giving them A's in "Self-Justification of Incompetence", "Advanced Parasitism", and "Stinking Like a Corpse". I can see it now -- UC Irvine will attract every drug-addled adolescent imbecile in the United States to this "program". Academic standards, already lowerd beyond all human tolerance, will sink beyond all nadirs previously imagined.
They're trying to produce a generation of young Americans so dismally uneducated that they'll fall for any idiotic junk-science and pseudo-philosophy that comes down the pike. A nation of perfect suckers to do as their told, a nation of drones incapable of thinking critically. The "recycling" industry will take off like a rocket (I'll be investing tomorrow, believe me) because these sad excuses for "college graduates" will be incapable of finding out where the "recycling" trucks actually go with the trash that the suckers have carefully sorted through (like bag ladies in their own homes, or slaves assigned as punishment to the garbage heap). Where do those trucks go, you ask? The dump, same as the other trucks. It's just obedience-training. The liberals always do what they're told, because they haven't the imagination or strength of will to create their own freedom.
I'm sorry if I'm ranting here, but I'm watching my nation get flushed down the toilet at the taxpayer's expense, and it's a bit hard to take.
Bah the American army could not even defeat France or Germany if they were to fight in a war. It is easy to look powerful when you are fighting cripples all the time like Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua, Afghanistan(we know about all the "mechanical" failures those American made helicopters are having), Yugoslavia(actually they kicked some American tail, first "stealth" bombers shot down!).
So does Bills dick taste good?
Armchair critic. Do better or shut the fuck up.
LEXICON DEVIL:
Im Lexicon Devil with a batt-erd brain
Looking for the future,worlds my aim!
So gimme gimme your hands-gimme gimme your minds-
Gimme gimme this-gimme gimme tha-ea-ea-ea-ttt!
I want toy tin soldiers that can push and shove
I want gunboy rovers that'll wreck this club
I'll build you up and level your heads
We'll run it my way cold men and politics dead...
I'll get silver guns to drip old blood
Let's give this established joke a shove
We're gonna wreak havoc on this rancid mill
I'm searchin' for something even if I'm killed...
Empty out your pockets-you don't need their change
I'm giving you the power to rearrange
Together we'll run to the highest prop
Tear it down and let it drop...away...
I know. ESR should be shot. The man is a loon, slashdot should stop posting all his interviews. All the "Libertarians" are tweaked, from Ayn Rand(the domineering cult leader) to ESR("X doesn't get it"). The only one who does not get it is, ESR.
You idiot. You should have found a more out of shape porn stars to paste those heads on.
"China Before the WTO"
One of the defining features of Chinese society at the turn of the century is the deepening urban/rural split. The big Chinese cities are now part of the first world: huge skyscrapers fill the skyline and are being built at a furious rate, there is a constant ringing from cell phones, gated communities spring up out of farm land on the outskirts of the cities, and the latest fashion is sold on every street. In the countryside, where 75% of the population lives, life is getting tougher and unemployment is growing.
In the late 1970's, the Chinese reforms under Deng Xiaoping began in the countryside by dismantling the collectives and allowing households to take responsibility for growing food on leased plots. Under such a system rural incomes grew rapidly, and, in the late 1980's and 1990's, reform moved on to the urban industries. It is only in the last few years that state industries have had to deal with the pressures of competition. Huge layoffs have been the primary way for these industries to become profitable; still, many have gone bankrupt. It has only been by maintaining a national growth rate of around 8% that many of these urban industrial laborers have been given new jobs, although many remain unemployed. The nature of their jobs has also changed. The old state industries guaranteed one a job for life, health care, schooling for one's children, and housing. These sectors of society are increasingly being privatized and most jobs offer little assistance. Many of the urban unemployed have been given make-work jobs with low pay and no benefits. And most new urban jobs are being created by private and foreign investment.
At the same time the rural economy has stagnated. Rural enterprises had grown in number in the 1980's, soaking up much of the excess rural labor. But as capitalist valorization plays an increasingly important role in decision making, these state supported enterprises have been failing at a very high rate, and only about one quarter of surplus agricultural laborers are finding employment in rural enterprises at the moment. In addition, there is little private and almost no foreign investment in rural areas. In the 1990's, it is the rural unemployed who have grown the fastest (the rural unemployed is estimated at around 130 million).
Yet the state seems to fear urban unrest the most, and, in order to keep the cities stable, it restricts the movement of rural unemployed into the cities. Internal migration is for the most part illegal: one needs a residence permit to live in a city. The state also raised the price of train tickets significantly in order to stem the tide of the rural poor. The status of being illegal immigrants in one's own country has only increased the precariousness of the rural poor, and, at the same time, it has produced a huge reserve of cheap labor. Most of the sweatshops that produce goods for export are filled with such laborers, mostly rural women.
These changes in Chinese society are due to the leadership's decision to bring the Chinese economy under the reign of capitalist valorization. Since 1992, the Chinese government has moved to make Chinese industry competitive on the world market. One of the more significant moves to insert the economy into the global regime of value was the 1994 devaluation of the Chinese currency. This devaluation is one of the primary causes of the 1997 Asian economic crisis, as it made the labor costs of smaller Asian nations less competitive thus hurting their investment. The increase in foreign investment in China (almost all in the coastal cities) has been extremely important in soaking up unemployed labor, but it hasn't been enough. To deal with this problem the government has also rapidly increased its spending on infrastructure. Yet again, most of this investment has been on the coast in the big cities. The government has also tried to spur domestic (urban) consumer spending, giving urban workers two weeks of extra holidays to spend money and lowering the interest rate and raising the taxes on savings accounts. But the famous untapped consumer market of China isn't what it is purported to be. There is very little consumer spending in the countryside where the majority of Chinese live, and urban spending has been much less than hoped for.
Another milestone in China's move to become fully part of global capitalism will be its entry into the WTO (probably in the Fall). Yet this will only compound the rural problems, as membership in the WTO will particularly hurt the rural population. China's agricultural goods aren't competitive on the world market. With WTO entry, cheaper agricultural goods will enter China's cities from abroad, and rural incomes, which are already stagnating, will probably drop. The state is making a lot of noise about increasing rural investment, but such investment is much more difficult than urban investment due, in part, to the small scale of farming in China.
Meanwhile, Chinese society is becoming much less stable. There are now thousands of protests a year in China. Most of these are by workers who haven't been paid or have been laid off. A year ago, the largest of these protests took place in a northeastern mining town. The mine was closed, putting the whole town out of work. This caused three days of riots, which included the burning of police cars and were only put down by the army. Rural riots have also taken place, many over water tights in the increasingly drought prone north. Farmers have even attacked gated communities on the edge of Beijing that had taken their land. Yet these outbursts haven't been able to build into any sort of movement. The Chinese government doesn't allow any autonomous organization. Nor does it allow independent publications to exist. When China recently signed UN covenants on human and social rights, it specifically excluded the sections that allowed for autonomous unions and free association. It is such organization that the Chinese government is most afraid of.
Under such circumstances, the Party has had to recreate its image and build a new ideological foundation. According to a new formulation by Party Chairman Jiang Zemin, the Party should first represent "the development needs of the most advanced forces of production." The Party is now more open about the fact that it has more in common with the budding capitalist class in China than with the workers. Both the government and many of the new capitalists see democracy as a chaotic force in China. The fostering of nationalism has also helped keep the Party in firm control. This is the prime reason for China's spending so much to get picked as the site for the 2008 Olympic Games.
Many questions remain: Will the Chinese state be able to contain the discontent that is generated by the insertion of Chinese society into the global capitalist regime of value? Will such discontent find effective means of organization and action? And, how can we act in solidarity with such struggles?
"Yugoslavia After Milosevic: what next?"
US imperialist hypocrisy and double standards have probably reached their peak during these last few weeks. The mass media treated the world to the spectacle of mobs destroying the Yugoslav parliament and attacking the offices of several Yugoslav left wing parties, hailing these events as "a great triumph of democracy" and other such nonsense. Meanwhile, the leader of the "free world," murderer of refugees and bomber of aspirin factories, Bill Clinton laid praise upon himself and fellow war-monger Secretary of state Madeleine Albright (ever notice how eerily physically similar she is to Maggie Thatcher?). We were all supposed to celebrate seeing magazine covers and newspapers with glorious headlines such as "free at last," while Clinton and company claimed that this was proof that the waging of war against a civilian population and the bombing of a country back to the middle ages is in fact the way to "work towards democracy." But since when has the US been interested in democracy?
The answer is, quite simply, never. Those who have doubts can ask the people of Latin America about the US' "democratic values." They will tell you about the US sponsorship of the Contras to fight against the Sandinista Liberation Movement in Nicaragua. Or of the brutal military dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, who took tens of thousands of lives and how they were sponsored and trained by the US military. Or better yet, of the CIA sponsorship of strikes and sabotage against the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende and the references made to Allende's election by at the time Secretary of state Henry Kissinger. Kissinger could not have summed up the US' appreciation of the concept of democracy any better when he said, "I don't see why we should let a country go red just because it's people don't know how to vote." Of course, how often does one hear the argument that, "that was all in the past and a consequence of the cold war, etc, etc."
So let me present you with a more recent example. Last week, as the hoopla about an elected statesman (true, those in power controlled the election, but where does the class in power not do so?) being overthrown by mobs began to die down, two men, Faisal al-Biloowi and Ayish al-Faridia, hijacked a plane headed to Heathrow airport from the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh. After the hijacked plane landed in Baghdad, with no injuries and no violence of any kind (which is not what can be said of the events in Belgrade), the hijackers stated that they committed the hijacking in order to draw attention to "human rights abuses, corruption, and unemployment" in Saudi Arabia. They also stated that they wanted to be free to choose their own leaders and that "the time of kings and monarchies is over." One would assume that the US, being the great defender of democracy that it claims to be, would make at least a mild gesture towards these, however unfortunately reformist, freedom fighters. Instead, as Saudi Arabia works to extradite them and hand them a certain death sentence, the penalty for hijacking in Saudi Arabia, the US has remained shockingly quiet.
Why is this? Because the United States is simply not interested in democracy. It is a plundering economic imperialist interested in economic gain, at the expense of people, lives, and yes, even it's own twisted brand of bourgeois democracy. The fact is, Saudi Arabia has natural resources, in this case oil, and allows the US to use place military bases on it's territory, hence, democracy is irrelevant. The same is true of Algeria, Turkey, Colombia, and other such dictatorships (yes, dictatorships, regardless of what sort of mock elections they may have periodically) around the world. Unfortunately for what is left of the Yugoslav federation, it has no such natural resources to offer the US.
In view of this it has to accept "democracy." For when the US and its allies say "democracy" what they mean is neo-liberalism. They mean privatization, which was not occurring in Yugoslavia, and subsequent layoffs. They mean the eating away of basic social services and most importantly they mean the surrendering of a nation's economy and a people's culture to economic imperialism aimed at exploiting them and robbing them of their cultural identity. For the US, freedom and democracy means a McDonalds on every avenue and a policeman on every corner.
Of course, no one will argue that Milosevic was a war criminal (although no worse than Clinton or Blair) and a tyrant. And we should be the last to condemn "revolutions" and other popular movements. However, one must look at the consequences of such events. The truth remains that Milosevic, despite his many, many negative qualities, represented one of the last bastions of European resistance to the expansion of western neo-liberalism. Now that he is out of power, or almost, the coast is clear for pro-US puppets, such as Kostunica, to open the doors to the rape of Yugoslavia. Indeed, the west wasted no time in announcing aid and investment, which conveniently means the reconstruction of everything NATO bombed into oblivion a a year ago.
Revolutions and popular movements are great and positive events, not to mention the burning of parliaments, but they are not exempt from the political context of the rest of the world. The Yugoslav students and workers who participated in the storming of parliament may have been well intentioned, just as their counterparts who torn down the Berlin wall were. However, just as is the case in the ex-Eastern bloc, they have been fed lies about western "democracy" and what lies ahead is unfortunately likely to be the same thing discovered by those in the ex-Eastern bloc, namely hunger, unemployment, and misery. It is the same people who ten years ago tore down the wall who are now saying that they would not have done it had they known what was to come, and that they are trying to undo their mistake by voting for the parties of old. It should surprise nobody if this scenario is repeated in Yugoslavia in the years to come. Democracy, real, people's democracy that is, is only appealing on a full stomach. There is no freedom without economic freedom, as they are inseparable. It is only a matter of time before the people of Yugoslavia join the millions of others across the world who have already come to this realization and again choose to do their history as fighters honor by resisting theirs, and the worlds, neo liberal aggressors.
The 5th semi-annual conference of the NorthEastern Federation of
Anarcho-Communists was held in Baltimore, MD from Friday, February 22 to
Sunday the 24. Well over 50 people were in attendance at the conference
which saw a significant expansion of NEFAC's membership as well as a
conscious move to develop a serious long-term strategy centered around
strategic interventions in concrete areas of the class struggle.
The membership of NEFAC has now expanded to include 8 member collectives
and 5 supporter collectives. The member collectives are Sabate (Boston),
Roundhouse (Baltimore), Tute Nere (DC), Sophia Perovskaya (Boston),
Barricada (Boston), Quebec City Local Union, the Montreal Local Union, and
La Bete Noir (Montreal). Supporter collectives are Freyheyt (Toronto), RASH
(Montreal), De Cleyre (Philadelphia), Facing Reality (Montreal), and Thomas
Payne Park (New York). To these can be added numerous new individual
adhesions as both members and supporters.
The most significant development of the conference was the conscious
decision to move out of the "activist crisis" mode (summit-hopping and
reactive politics) and begin developing a campaign of concerted, long-term
interventions in specific areas of the class struggle. After a lengthy
discussion regarding what areas to prioritize, it was decided to create
three separate caucuses around the issues of housing/gentrification,
anti-poverty work, and workplace struggles. The caucuses are to brainstorm
on these issues and develop proposals for concrete federation wide
interventions in the future.
These issues were chosen as they are issues which affect the daily lives of
working people, and thus provide anarchists with an opportunity to conduct
struggles which relate to the day to day life of people, serving as gateways
to radicalization and a broader rejection of the system as a whole and the
building of a revolutionary dual power.
The next significant development was the creation of a permanent women's
caucus to deal with issues relating to gender and patriarchy both within the
federation structure, as well as within our organizing and activity. This
came following small group discussions around the issues of race and gender,
an activity and form of discussion that we hope to see continued at future
conferences.
Furthermore, the conference designated Barricada as the International
Secretariat collective, as well as the official agitational monthly of NEFAC
. There was also a speakers bureau created (to be managed by Roundhouse), a
Warchest fund (by Sophia Perovskaya), a working group to re-write the aims
and principles, and endorsement of the Festival del Pueblo in Boston, the
regional mobilization against the G8 in Ottawa, and mobilizations against
the IMF/WB in Washington DC in October.
People overwhelmingly felt that it was a productive and inspiring
conference, which was also marked by a direct action in conjunction with
ACORN (see Direct Actions Takes Out the Trash article), and marked an
important step forward in the development of NEFAC as a stable and mature
federation with a clear political program and revolutionary strategy.
-------------------
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Distance(ping) does matter bandwith is all that matters when you are downloading idiot.
That is because Swedes are consumerist coolies.
England is an American state you idiot, the 51st I believe. It does not count as part of Europe.
You are a great troll. It was hard for me to tell whether you were xenophobic American or a troll, which is precisely why you are so adept at trolling.
According to a University of California-San Diego study released Monday, sexism is rampant throughout the natural world, particularly among the highest classes of vertebrates.
"When we first decided to examine attitudes and behaviors toward gender roles among non-humans, we were wholly unprepared for what we would find," said Jennifer Tannen, leader of the UCSD research team, a joint venture between the school's zoology and women's studies departments. "Females living in the wild routinely fall victim to everything from stereotyping to exclusion from pack activities to sexual harassment."
Nowhere is the natural world's gender inequity more transparent, Tannen said, than in the unfair burden females assume for the rearing of offspring.
"Take the behavior of the ring-neck pheasant," Tannen said. "After mating, the male immediately abandons the hen, leaving her responsible for the total care for the chicks. For the single mother-to-be, there is no assistance, either in the form of a partner or child support. Nor is there any legal recourse. It's despicable."
Tannen said pheasants are typical of the natural world, where a mere 5 percent of animal species mate for life. Among species that do form lasting pairs, the situation barely improves: Females must remain close to the nest to incubate eggs, nurse, and keep watch over the burrow while males are free to go off hunting and fishing with their friends.
"The sexist attitude that child-rearing is 'women's work' is prevalent throughout nature and has been for generations, probably since reptiles first developed mammalian characteristics in the Triassic period," Tannen said. "Sadly, most creatures never pause to challenge these woefully outdated gender roles."
Tannen stressed the need to hold high those rare examples of species that do form caring, mutually supportive relationships.
"Wolves, beavers, gibbons, and a small African antelope known as a dik-dik all live in stable, monogamous pairs," Tannen said. "Other animals need to look to them as positive models if we are to have any hope of one day creating an ecosystem of understanding and respect."
More seriously, in addition to an unfair division of labor, nature is rife with sexual abuse and harassment. The UCSD study estimates that in 2001 alone, more than 170 trillion cases of abuse occurred in the world's forests, grasslands, and oceans--all of them unreported.
"During the act of mating, the female moose is subject to excessive biting, nipping, and herding," Tannen said. "The male has no qualms about using sheer, brute force to overpower his sex partner, and the female, accustomed to this sort of rough treatment after millions of years of it, doesn't even realize there's something wrong."
"Then, when it's time for the bull moose to complete the sexual act," Tannen continued, "it's over in about five seconds, with no regard to female pleasure whatsoever. Typical."
Adding insult to injury, Tannen said, the bull moose then heads off to mate with dozens more females over a period of two to three weeks, justifying his behavior as "part of the Mardi Gras-like atmosphere of 'mating season.'"
With other species, darker situations unfold.
"To mate, the male Galapagos tortoise simply immobilizes the female with his weight, which, as far as I'm concerned, qualifies as non-consensual sex," Tannen says. "Female southern elephant seals gather in large groups during mating season, and each group has a small handful of males who control them like a harem. It's sick."
When female animals refuse to play along with prescribed gender roles, Tannen said, they are demonized. For example, female foxes, known throughout the animal kingdom for their aggressiveness, are labeled "vixen."
"We've all heard the lurid tales about the female black-widow spider, who kills and eats her mate," Tannen said. "The truth is, male spiders encourage their partners to kill them because it increases the time spent mating and, thus, the number of eggs fertilized by his sperm. But no one condemns the male for his part in this destructive relationship."
UCSD researchers identified 24 distinct male behaviors designed to perpetuate gender inequity and preserve the prevailing power structure. Among these dominance-asserting behaviors are chest-puffing, plumage-spreading, and antler growth.
The UCSD study is not without its detractors. Glen Otis Brown, author of Forced To Strut: Reverse Sexism In The Animal World, countered that male animals are victims of "the beauty myth" as much as females.
"When given a choice, female green tree frogs gravitate toward males that call the loudest and most often," Brown said. "Female Poecilia reticulata [guppies] go straight to the most brightly colored males. But when males evolve exaggerated secondary sexual traits to attract the opposite sex, suddenly they're the bad guys."
Tannen conceded that both genders have suffered as a result of sexism.
"Other than sexual size dimorphism due to same-sex competition, males benefit little from the gender inequity that so strongly favors them," Tannen said. "In a world where interactions are rooted in competition, not cooperation, both females and males are being denied the right to form meaningful relationships."
Annie Secunda, a Boston-based females'-rights advocate, said swift action must be taken to address the problem of sexism within the animal kingdom.
"We need to provide tigresses, hens, and all other females in nature with outreach programs and support networks," Secunda said. "We also need to impose standards through intervention. The males of all species need to hear loud and clear the message that this kind of animal behavior is not acceptable."
Secunda conducts numerous workshops aimed at creating female-friendly biomes and promoting the health and positive self-image of females on both land and in the sea. She also strongly advocates the legalization of infanticide, which would enable females to devour their newborn offspring when resources are limited.
Secunda spent much of 2001 in the Amazon rainforest, working to create safe spaces for female animals. These efforts, however, yielded mixed results: Females have avoided the lighted walkways she built in several dangerously dense areas, and leaflets encouraging females to learn how their own bodies work were ultimately used to line dens for the rainy season.
Far from discouraged, Secunda said she plans to embark on an intensive study of the sexuality of flora.
"Multicellular plants alternate sexually reproducing and asexually reproducing generations, with each plant producing both male and female gametes," Secunda said. "It seems many plants have moved past conventional notions of male-female gender altogether. It's so liberating, I can't help but have hope for all those so-called 'higher' species of animals."
That mirror idea is obvious, I am glad you thought of it for me(NOW I CAN STEAL IT)!
Are you implying that the US government does not have nationalists as rabid as any of the Bolsheviks? Where is Rumsfield(his freinds can call him "Rummy")! You are a disgrace to the American people and should be sent to Guantanamo Bay.
Are you implying that the US government does not have nationalists as rabid as the National Socialists(Nazis) of the Germany of old? Where is Rumsfield(his freinds can call him "Rummy")! You are a disgrace to the American people and should be sent to Guantanamo Bay.
If it were not for governments, you fucking moron, we would not need encryption so badly.
Governments never have and never will protect this "freedom of speech" apparition they helped to create. Governments only take away "freedom of speech". If you had read the article you would have known this.