“The State, like the Church, by its very nature is a great sacrificer of living beings. It is an arbitrary being, in whose heart all the positive, living, individual, and local interests of the population meet, clash, destroy each other, become absorbed in that abstraction called the common interest, the public good, the public safety, and where all real wills cancel each other in that other abstraction which hears the name of the will of the people.”
—Mikhail Bakunin
October 2011
1 post
January 2011
12 posts
Truth Cafe': WikiLeaks: Julian Assange 'Faces Execution or Guantánamo Detention' →
truthcafe.tumblr.com
Esther Addley guardian.co.uk, Tue 11 Jan 2011 14.21 GMT
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, could be at “real risk” of the death penalty or detention in Guantánamo Bay if he is extradited to Sweden on accusations of rape and sexual assault, his lawyers claim. In a skeleton summary of their…
“The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy. That State is the best governed which is governed the least.”
—Mahatma Gandhi (via 18goingon80)
“He [Marx] says, ‘Poverty produces political slavery, the State,” but he does not allow this expression to be turned around to say, ‘Political slavery, the State, reproduces in its turn, and maintains poverty as a condition of its own existence; so that, in order to destroy poverty, it is necessary to destroy the State!’”
—Mikhail Bakunin, Marxism, Freedom, and the State, p. 16
“My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing.”
—
Barack Obama
rhetoric v. real life
House GOP Kill Global Warming Committee
House Republicans have killed the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming. Meanwhile, Republicans have introduced at least three different bills aimed at blocking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
Obama Taps JPMorgan Exec William Daley for Chief of Staff
President Obama appointed William Daley, a top financial executive and former Clinton administration official, as his new White House chief of staff. Daley is the Midwest chair of JPMorgan Chase, a board member of Merck, and former head of SBC. Obama will also reportedly name former Goldman Sachs consultant Gene Sperling to head the National Economic Council. We speak with Ari Berman of The Nation magazine.
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
—Albert Einstein
Palestine to open embassy in Brazil
Some hopeful news to start off the year :)
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has laid the cornerstone for an embassy in Brazil - what will be the first such Palestinian delegation in the western hemisphere.
A ceremony was held on Friday to initiate the building’s construction in Brasilia, the capital, and Abbas thanked Brazil for recognising his naiton’s statehood, adding that other countries were following suit.
“We thank Brazil for its support in the construction of a Palestine state. This is a favour we will never forget,” Abbas said.
Brazil was the first of several South American countries in recent weeks to recognise a Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders.
‘Seriously harmful’
Since then Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador have done the same. Chile, Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua are said to be considering recognition.
Israel says the moves are “seriously harmful” to the Middle East peace process and Washington has called them “premature”.
However, direct peace talks revived by Washington in September after a year’s suspension collapsed within weeks, and a US-backed drive to keep the process alive is in limbo.
Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from Brazil’s capital Brasilia, said that Brazil’s growing international influence is reflected in their recognition of a Palestinian state.
“When Brazil openly proclaims its recognition of Palestine, it does so because of its growing clout,” he said.
In the face of US opposition to a unilateral declaration, Palestinian diplomats are lobbying for widespread recognition of a state within the 1967 borders, recognised by the global community as Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Riyad al-Maliki, the Palestinian foreign minister, said in a recent interview with local radio that as and when such support reaches critical mass his government is hoping to take their campaign to the UN Security Council (UNSC).
“At a certain point, broad international recognition of statehood will enable the Palestinian leadership to turn to the UNSC and request full membership of the UN,” he said.
“The efforts now under way to get [individual] states to recognise statehood are in preparation for turning to the UNSC.”
UN push
Should the UNSC push fail due to a veto by one of the permanent members - the US, Russia, France, China and Britain - Palestinians argue that they could use a rule applied in the past that allows for the same request to be put to the General Assembly.
A draft resolution by the Palestinians and Arab states calling for Israel to halt all settlement activities due to go before the UNSC shortly will show whether the US is willing to use its veto in support of Israel, as it has often done in the past.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the outgoing Brazilian president, has surprised many with his mediation efforts in the Middle East peace process.
He also angered Washington earlier this year when he held talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, over the country’s nuclear programme.
In a further sign of growing pro-Palestinian sentiment in South America, Mercosur, the regional trade bloc, signed a trade agreement earlier this month with the Palestinian authority.
Bolivia broke ties with Israel in 2009 after an attack by the latter on the Palestinian territories.
Abbas will attend the swearing-in of Brazilian president-elect Dilma Rousseff on Saturday.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/12/20101231172518620189.html
Free Dr. Binayak Sen
Life imprisonment of Sen is just another travesty of the justice system in India.
He worked with the tribals in the poor Chhattisgarh area when he could’ve worked anywhere in world. He fought for justice for the poor when the international corporations, with the help of government, looted (and continue to loot) their rich lands for profits, all the while displacing them from the lands they’ve been on for centuries. He’s been convicted and charged with sedition and conspiracy in an apparent unfair trial.
December 2010
15 posts
“When pre-prescribed duties are not being performed, a variety of conformist, corporate entertainment is available to fill the gaps. Hollywood films, professional sporting events, amusement theme parks, and of course, banal television programming are all useful to ensure that no time is spent in original or subversive thought.”
—Mental Anarchy
“The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class or other; a priestly class, an aristocratic class, a bourgeois class, and finally a bureaucratic class, when, all the other classes having become exhausted, the State falls or rises, as you will, to the condition of a machine; but it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of the State that there should be some privileged class or other which is interested in its existence. And it is precisely the united interest of this privileged class which is called Patriotism.”
—- Mikhail Bakunin, Marxism, Freedom, and the State
