Alice

:)

"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."

I hope you're having a nice day.

since when are we now allowed to post big pictures like these? i thought they stretch the blog

this is my Open Mic...

no more war! joy borje

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Zigger-zigger-zig how they frisk and toss

dancing to the beat rattling every bone.

Now a lustful pair sit down on the moss

hoping to repeat pleasures they had known.

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http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.557983

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The lusty Lord, rejoicing in his pride,

He draweth down; before the armèd Knight

With jingling bridle-rein he still doth ride;

He crosseth the strong Captain in the fight.

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God's Bathroom Floor, mp3

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The Democrats are the Real Problem:

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07212008.html

1968 Convention:
http://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/projects/revolution/index.html
July 1968

During my teenage years, back before there was HBO, there was this thing called "Channel 100." It was our first premium movie channel. It played the same movies over and over and over again for a week. One of these movies was S*P*Y*S with Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland, a silly spoof where at least one set of bad guys were bomb-throwing anarchists. That was the germ of the idea.

Later, when I was around 18 or so, I started writing a (really bad) novel called "Freedom At Large." The bad guys were going to be anarchists who've built an atomic bomb. In my mind I had the picture of the anarchists from S*P*Y*S, but I really knew nothing about anarchy or anarchists, and decided I'd better research it. The bad guys in my story had to have some semblance of realism.

I cracked open Volume One of my Encyclopedia Britannica, thumbed through the A's, and found the listing for anarchism. As I read about anarchy, my interest began shifting. I liked what I read. Lord help me – it was the beginning of several strange years. Anarchism, I discovered, has been given a bad rap through the ages – and whoever wrote that Britannica article really believed this.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Of course any government is going to slander and villainize a philosophy which declares government undesirable. Many anarchist philosophers (they weren't leaders, because anarchism doesn't have any) were very peaceful people with a high set of morals. Some were even Christians. They were the one who started the idea: "Educate, don't legislate," and were very much opposed to radical behavior and terrorism. In most historical cases, the acts of terrorism attributed to anarchists were actually perpetrated by the governments trying to persecute them.

So what is anarchism about? For one thing, it's utopian. The goal is to raise everyone's morals and values to the point where laws become unnecessary. The dream is to raise a society where everyone knows what's right, and everyone acts accordingly. Decisions are made by groups in a democratic fashion. Any type of government is avoided because, to quote the anarchist's motto, "Power corrupts." Anyone who has a position of power over others is in danger of becoming corrupt. So in an anarchist society, everyone has power over one person – themselves. Everyone is equal. Everyone. No one is "more equal" than someone else.

This explains what was going on in my head when I adopted anarchism as my philosophy. To an idealistic teenage mind, anarchist philosophy is wonderful. That's because an idealistic teenager has yet to figure out that no one is perfect, and it would take perfect people to make anarchism work. Just look what happened in the 1960's, when people decided that there could be a new, better society. How long did that last before self-indulgence overtook the movement of peace and love? About four or five years, tops.

I think I realized this even back then, but I didn't care. Announcing to the world that I was an anarchist caused some interesting reactions. Within a month I had a whole new persona. The more I studied anarchism, and the more I talked about it and preached it, the stronger this new persona became. People who met me had a label to put on me. "Jerry, you know, that anarchist." It was fun for people to know an anarchist. That made it fun to be an anarchist.

The down side was that, as an anarchist, people expected me to act in an outrageous fashion, and I felt I had to oblige them. Many things I did as an "anarchist" were, in retrospect, very embarrassing. In junior college, when I was first getting into journalism (and reading too much Hunter S. Thompson) I was in a classroom and the students were each asked to introduce themselves. We were asked to share what made us want to become journalists and write for the college paper. When it came to my turn, I stood up and said, "I used to draw on the walls with a crayon, and I feel that qualifies me to write for the paper." The few others in the class who knew I was an anarchist laughed, but the rest stared at me in shock. The instructor didn't know what the hell to say to that. A bit flustered, he went on to the next student.

This wild anarchist persona made it my duty to park in wrong places, to drink on campus, to sit where I wasn't supposed to sit, and to walk through doors that said "Do Not Enter." It justified driving over the speed limit, running stop signs, and ignoring No Trespassing signs. "Property is theft!" I would yell.

My friends who knew me before I'd adopted anarchism would just laugh and say, "Yeah, whatever." Other friends seemed to take pride in knowing an anarchist. My friend Mike, in particular, seemed to enjoy introducing me to people. "This is my friend Jerry, he's an anarchist." That was my cue to say, "Where's the beer?"

As the teen years passed, and I started working up into the twenties, I began shedding the anarchist persona. It was becoming impractical if I wanted to remain employed anywhere. I said goodbye to it by writing a silly novel about pure anarchy, one which had portions published in a San Francisco literary-comedy magazine.

The novel ends with this epitaph:

"…I got older, got married, became a father, and the weight of civilization pressed down on my shoulders. There's no way I could be an anarchist. Morality caught up to me. This novel is all the anarchism that I once held dear."

That about sums it up. I no longer consider myself an anarchist. I copped out, I joined the evil empire. I played the game and made a niche for myself in this capitalist society.

But every once in a while … when someone steps all over me just because they can, because they're in a position to do so … that anarchist inside me pops open a lid and stares hatefully out, riling at the injustice, and wishes for that utopia he's glimpsed and can never quite let go of.
Posted by Jerry at 11:11 PM

I have read a few anarchist novels. "A Girl Among the Anarchists." Set in early 20th century London. Written by members of the Rosetti family. Twin sisters, if I recall. I wrote a review of it.
"We Should Have Killed the King." Set in the time of Jack Straw, and in late 1980s West Coast. Some of it reminds me of some adventures I had.
Ecotopia. I have the book beside me. Jon Elliot made the suggestion recently that the West Coast should secede from the union. We have the resources.

A Girl Among The Anarchists
Isabel Meredith
Edition: pb
ISBN: 9780803281905
Publisher: University Of Nebraska Press
Release Date: 2007-03-09

ITEM OVERVIEW
Originally published in 1903, this is a cracking novel, on the turn of the century British anarchist movement, and the role of women therein. The narrator, Isabel Meredith is the pseudonym of Helen and Olivia Rossetti, daughters of William Michael Rossetti and nieces of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Their fin-de-siecle tenure as editors of the renowned British anarchist journal The Torch provided the experience that went into this entertaining and knowing novel. Includes an introduction by Jennifer Shaddock.
*TLL*

NEAT!

Thank you..I'll order it for the library Monday... :)

We Should Have Killed the King by J.G. Eccarius
Novel describing punk and revolutionary scenes in America in the 1980's. Learn more!
ISBN 0-9622937-1-7
192 pages $ 5.00
*TLL*

Good Witch

*poof*

OMEGA?... aka The End? ;) *Poof*

December 6 / 7, 2003

The Jackboot of Dada

Salvador Dali, Fascist

By VICENTE NAVARRO

The year 2004, the centenary of Dali's birth, has been proclaimed "the year of Dali" in many countries. Led by the Spanish establishment, with the King at the helm, there has been an international mobilization in the artistic community to pay homage to Dali. But this movement has been silent on a rather crucial item of Dali's biography: his active and belligerent support for Spain's fascist regime, one of the most repressive dictatorial regimes in Europe during the twentieth century.

For every political assassination carried out by Mussolini's fascist regime, there were 10,000 such assassinations by the Franco regime. More than 200,000 people were killed or died in concentration camps between 1939 (when Franco defeated the Spanish Republic, with the military assistance of Hitler and Mussolini) and 1945 (the end of World War II, an anti-fascist war, in Europe). And 30,000 people remain desaparecidos in Spain; no one knows where their bodies are. The Aznar government (Bush's strongest ally in continental Europe) has ignored the instructions of the U.N. Human Rights Agency to help families find the bodies of their loved ones. And the Spanish Supreme Court, appointed by the Aznar government, has even refused to change the legal status of those who, assassinated by the Franco regime because of their struggle for liberty and freedom, remain "criminals."

Now the Spanish establishment, with the assistance of the Catalan establishment, wants to mobilize international support for their painter, Dali, portraying him as a "rebel," an "anti-establishment figure" who stood up to the dominant forces of art. They compare Dali with Picasso. A minor literary figure in Catalonia, Baltasar Porcel (chairman of the Dali year commission), has even said that if Picasso, "who was a Stalinist" (Porcel's term), can receive international acclaim, then Dali, who admittedly supported fascism in Spain, should receive his own homage." Drawing this equivalency between Dali and Picasso is profoundly offensive to all those who remember Picasso's active support for the democratic forces of Spain and who regard his "Guernica" (painted at the request of the Spanish republican government) as an international symbol of the fight against fascism and the Franco regime.

Dali supported the fascist coup by Franco; he applauded the brutal repression by that regime, to the point of congratulating the dictator for his actions aimed "at clearing Spain of destructive forces" (Dali's words). He sent telegrams to Franco, praising him for signing death warrants for political prisoners. The brutality of Franco's regime lasted to his last day. The year he died, 1975, he signed the death sentences of four political prisoners. Dali sent Franco a telegram congratulating him. He had to leave his refuge in Port Lligat because the local people wanted to lynch him. He declared himself an admirer of the founder of the fascist party, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. He used fascist terminology and discourse, presenting himself as a devout servant of the Spanish Church and its teaching--which at that time was celebrating Queen Isabella for having the foresight to expel the Jews from Spain and which had explicitly referred to Hitler's program to exterminate the Jews as the best solution to the Jewish question. Fully aware of the fate of those who were persecuted by Franco's Gestapo, Dali denounced Bunuel and many others, causing them enormous pain and suffering.

None of these events are recorded in the official Dali biography and few people outside Spain know of them. It is difficult to find a more despicable person than Dali. He never changed his opinions. Only when the dictatorship was ending, collapsing under the weight of its enormous corruption, did he become an ardent defender of the monarchy. And when things did not come out in this way, he died.

Dali also visited the U.S. frequently. He referred to Cardinal Spellman as one of the greatest Americans. And while in the U.S., he named names to the FBI of all the friends he had betrayed. In 1942, he used all his influence to have Buñuel fired from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Buñuel worked after having to leave Spain following Franco's victory. Dali denounced Buñuel as a communist and an atheist, and it seems that under pressure from the Archbishop of New York, Buñuel had to leave for Mexico, where he remained for most of his life. In his frequent visits to New York, Dali made a point of praying in St. Patrick's Cathedral for the health of Franco, announcing at many press conferences his unconditional loyalty to Franco's regime.

Quite a record, yet mostly unknown or ignored by his many fans in the art world.

Vicente Navarro is the author of The Political Economy of Social Inequalities: Consequences for Health and Quality of Life and Dangerous to Your Health. He teaches at Johns Hopkins University. He can be reached at navarro@counterpunch.org.

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