Diesel Civil Trust

…After allowing a small group of people to burn police cars and smash windows unimpeded on Saturday afternoon, many of the 20,000 police officers deployed in Toronto changed tactics that evening and during the last day of the gathering.

Why would anyone let protesters burn police cars unimpeded? Emphasis mine.

Jean-Claude Trichet tells us the world faced a second Lehman crash in the days and hours before EU leaders launched their €720bn (£612bn) defence fund. If the European Central Bank’s president is correct, we are in trouble. The EU-IMF package is already unravelling. What will the West do for its next trick?

morningstar:

(Via: azspot)

An Open Letter to Glenn Beck from the AK Press Collective

Hi Glenn.

How’s it going? Since Forbes magazine says your annual earnings are in the ballpark of $32 million, we’re guessing that it’s going pretty well. You can’t put a price on defending the little guy, right?

We are the AK Press collective. In case the word “collective” throws you, it means people who work together toward a shared goal in a democratic manner, without bosses or leaders, and with everyone having an equal say in each decision. For us, that shared goal is publishing and distributing books. If you want, you can learn more about us here: http://www.akpress.org/about/aboutakenglish .

We’re thrilled that you featured our book We Are an Image of the Future: The Greek Revolts of 2008 on your May 3rd show. We were, however, a little confused by your description of the book, and the way that it fit into the overall argument you made.

Okay, to be honest, we weren’t sure what your argument was. We watched the clip on YouTube a dozen times, but it was beyond us. Of course, you’re the guy with television, radio, publishing, and Internet empires. We probably spend too much time thinking about rent, food, and health insurance to fully understand the big picture you’re painting.

We do, however, know a few things. We’re anarchists and we publish books about anarchism. We Are an Image from the Future is one of them. Now, we assume that you actually read the books you talk about on your show. Yet you somehow managed to claim that a book written by and about anarchists was “written by communist revolutionaries.” “They are not anarchists,” you claimed, “but they will use anarchy to their favor.”

As you made clear earlier in your show, you know the difference between Communism and Anarchism. We don’t want to split hairs by bringing up the complex history of communism (with a small “c”), which includes both democratic and nasty authoritarian versions. So we’ll stay on your page here and say, yes, when Communists takes state power it’s always ugly. But, as you must know, anarchism has always opposed state Communism. State Communism is the ultimate “big government.” You won’t find an anarchist on this planet in favor of that. Not to mention that, historically, when Communists get in the driver’s seat, anarchists are usually the first to face the firing squad. The capitalists usually get cushy managerial positions.

So we asked ourselves: What could account for this guy waving around a book written and published by anarchists, while never quoting a single word from it, and then going on to associate the book with political groups — like the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Workers World Party — that no one in the book, or associated with the book, would endorse? How could he miss something so obvious?

Then it dawned on us: you’re afraid of anarchists. You’re not afraid of the fake media portrayal of anarchists as bomb-throwing maniacs: that’s your bread and butter. You’re afraid of real anarchists, the actual ideas they espouse, the real work they do.

We don’t blame you, Glenn. When we sift through your rants, we realize that there’s a lot of overlap between you and anarchists. The difference is that anarchists are more honest, aren’t part of the same elites they criticize, and they make a lot more sense. They see you, and raise you one.

Like you, we believe that people’s lives would be much better off without government intervention. Centralized power suppresses individual and community initiative and keeps people from achieving their full potential. Like you, we don’t think the solution to our current economic crisis lies in socialized industry or new layers of well-paid government bureaucrats. And, like you and many of your tea party pals, we agree that bankers and fat-cat corporate elites aren’t exactly concerned with our best interests. As you put it, it’s time to take down the folks who “line their pockets with wealth gained from enslaving a whole group of people.” And, although you seemed a bit confused on this point, that means putting “people before profits,” which is pretty much the central concern of the protestors in Greece right now. And we mean all people, regardless of income, race, gender, sexuality, or immigration status.

You’re right: we’re revolutionaries. But aren’t you? Remember the part of the Declaration of Independence that says that when a government starts screwing with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”? As anarchists, we’re dedicated to the idea of abolishing the state and capitalism altogether. We believe that without the coercive relations and competition imposed by governments and markets, people would be free to create a more just society in which resources are controlled collectively and decisions are made by the people who are affected by them. We don’t want a government (revolutionary or otherwise); we want a society based on cooperation and common sense instead of arbitrary power and exploitation.

From what sense we can make of your show, you seem happy with “altering” rather than “abolishing” a screwed-up system. For you, replacing the old boss with a new one (Sarah Palin?) is good enough. We understand that you’re confused — these are confusing times. But, deep down, you and the tea partiers know that you can’t trust any politician, or banker, or corporate hack, or union bureaucrat … or anyone who makes their living sucking power and profit from ordinary people. Which, unfortunately, probably includes multi-millionaires like you.

So, Glenn, we’re guessing that’s why you’re so afraid of us. We don’t fit neatly into your black-and-white formula. You simply borrow some of the best ideas from our 150-year-old anti-authoritarian tradition. We take those same ideas and not only run with them, but improve on them. We follow the logic to its ethical conclusion. And we include corporate media moguls like you in our Hall of Infamy.

But we’re reasonable folk. We understand that you find it scary to think about what will happen when ordinary people realize that they actually have the power to make their own decisions and take control of their own lives. So, here’s what we suggest:

Just admit you’re afraid of us. Admit that your passionate and convoluted rants are a nervous dance around your inability to support real freedom (anarchism) over unbridled power (Communism and capitalism). And then use your massive wealth and power for the force of good.

(CNN) — Concerns over Facebook’s new privacy policy and the online social network’s recent efforts to spread its information across the Web have led some of the site’s faithful to delete their accounts — or at least try to.

Greek’s weak productivity and profligacy now threatens the early retirement age, extensive unemployment benefits and guaranteed vacation time of the Greek worker. While US laborers would consider the Greek system to be more akin to summer camp than actual labor, the Greek population is rioting in the streets.

Eurozone members and the IMF have agreed a 110bn-euro (£95bn; $146.2bn) three-year bail-out package to rescue Greece’s embattled economy.

If you read my last post “Visa denial” you will know that my visa to stay in Turkey was denied.

It’s not even the fact that my visa was denied that makes me realize that the Turkish government doesn’t care about human rights, because I know visas can easily be denied.

But, they don’t care…

The purpose of this study was to assess the potential use of calmatives as nonlethal techniques. This research included 1) defining the advantages and limitations of pharmaceutical agents as calmatives with potential use as non-lethal techniques, 2) providing a comprehensive survey of the medical literature identifying pharmaceutical agents that produce a calm sate and developing this information into a database of me relevant literature on calmatives, 3) providing an in-depth review of selected calmatives identified by the literature search with high potential for further consideration as a non-lethal technique, and L) to identify and provide recommendations on new areas in pharmaceutical drug development that may 2 uniquely meet the requirements of calmatives as non-lethal techniques.

Bob Herbert recently wrote about the overzealous enforcement of “peace officers” assigned to New York City schools. The officers are accused of detaining, searching, handcuffing, and arresting students for silly things like drawing on desks, or handling — not using, but handling — cell phones in school.