APEC: Neo-Nazis

There is a good article about APEC: Neo-Nazis.

I only saw about ten (10) Neo-Nazis by the time the end of the march reached the corner of Park and George Street. So, I agree with the estimates given in the article. I found the article interesting because it gave an Anarchist's perspective on Neo-Nazis pretending to be Anarchists, and a commentary on the Neo-Nazis' review of their experience at APEC.

I agree with the author's contention that the Neo-Nazis do not have coherent or mature politics.

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Two Messages for America

Frank Gaffney wonders which of the Two Messages for America will be heard. He is particularly worried that:

Or will it be that we must surrender Iraq to such enemies?  Of course, the latter choice will be dressed up as a "strategic redeployment," clearing the way for what is promised to be a more determined and successful effort to go after al Qaeda elsewhere, notably in Afghanistan and perhaps in Pakistan.

Whatever Democrats (and a few Republicans) may call it, however, the second choice is the one favored by Osama bin Laden.  It would be, as he has called it, a defeat for the United States.  Far from it being the end of the fight with Islamofascists like him and his enablers, such a choice would simply embolden them and result in an accelerated, global metastasizing of the struggle against their ilk.

Emphasis Mine

Already, Mr. Gaffney has conceded the strategic initiative to Osama Bin Laden. OBL is now dictating US policy by boasting about what he could do! No longer is the USA is shaping the events in the Middle East; they are reacting to videos from some guy in hiding.

Yet people, like Mr. Gaffney, do not see it that way. They think the US will have lost if their enemy says that the US has lost.

If people, like Mr. Gaffney, no longer believes the US can shape events at the strategic level, then the US ruling class is beginning to lose control. Why should anyone consider the US to be important if the US ruling class does not think so?

What Mr. Gaffney tried to do in his article was shame Americans into supporting the long occupation of Iraq by making the Americans think that everyone would laugh at them if the US left Iraq. Is the US so weak, that laughter can frighten them?

Even though I write about the eventual decline of the US, the US is stil a powerful nation, but only if it concentrates on its strengths and repairs its weaknesses. Unfortunately, the US ruling class considers military might alone to be America's sole strength without realising that the ideological strengths it still has in people like Michael Moore and Google. What other society could produce icons like these? Both of these came from nothing into world-wide dominance in their own fields.

Yet once again, the US ruling class demonstrates that it does understand the source of its own power, prefering to believe its own bullshit.

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Understanding the "Victory Disease"

Major Timothy Karcher, US Army wrote Understanding the “Victory Disease,” From the Little Bighorn to Mogadishu and Beyond in 2004. He warns against using past success as a predictor of future success especially as it leads to the three (3) deadly conditions of "Victory Disease":

1. Arrogance
2. Complacency
3. Using Established Patterns

What is interesting about this book is how relevant the philosophy is to the non-military realm. This is especially so in regards to the "Design Patterns" and "Agile" movements within computing.

If there is ever a way of dulling the intellect, then these two (2) movements are it. For more ranting, see Lefties and Conservatives.

The remedy Maj. Karcher is reading of history and always questioning assumptions. But, as Maj.Gen. J.F.C.Fuller says in Generalship: Its Diseases and their Cure - A Study of the Personal Factor in Command:

The first of these two problems depends upon a remodelling of our system of discipline, which is still largely eighteenth - century. In war, as in peace, individuality Is far more important than uniformity; personality than congruity, and originality than conventionality. 'War', writes Clausewitz, 'is the province of chance. In no sphere of human activity is such a margin to be left for this intruder.'1 As this is largely true, no regulations and no rules can cover the art of generalship. Like the great artist the general should possess genius, and if he does not, then no effort should be spared to develop his natural abilities, in place of suppressing them. Our existing system is, so I think, based on suppression, suppression to a large extent of an unconscious order. The old are often suspicious of the young and do not welcome criticism, yet without criticism, both destructive and constructive, there can be no progress. As I have already mentioned, the easiest course to adopt is to lay down rules and regulations which must be implicitly obeyed; yet chance knows no compulsion, and such rules and regulations are apt to cramp intelligence and originality. This is seen clearly from the frequent use with which 'Bolshevik' is applied to anyone who dares to think independently; yet if this 'vice' will teach us how to rely upon our common sense and how to speak frankly and without fear, what matters a name if common sense and self-reliance will help us win the next war. In place, so it seems to me, our present system of discipline, which is so truly Prussian and so untruly English, is responsible for creating what I will call the 'Cringe-viki', those knock-kneed persuasive tact-ticians who gut an army not with a knife but with a honeyed word.

Emphasis Mine

How true is this of anything under Capitalism - the sin of thinking marks one as a revolutionary!

How long can an economic and political system survive when original and non-conformist thought and action is suppressed? Not very long as the fall of the USSR shows!

The problem then becomes how we manage the transition to either Socialism or Barbarism. We have to choose the future - not let the future be chosen for us.

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Protesters no match as police rule streets

Danielle Teutsch and Daniel Dasey crow that Protesters no match as police rule streets but admit

Despite fears the protesters would resort to violence, the main show of force came from heavily armed police who dragged a number of banned protesters out of the rally and into waiting vans.

The NSW Police says that there were Seventeen arrested in protest activity. Of particular concern is the following:

Two police officers were injured during today’s protests with one officer sustaining a head wound after being hit with an iron bar, the other sustaining a head injury after being hit with a dart.

I was at the protest from about 09:30 until 14:30. During that time, five (5) people were arrested before the rally reached Hyde Park. The protest was quiet until about 14:00 when the police made their first incursion into the crowd to arrest a prohibited person near the Cafe above St James Station. Then came another quick two (2) arrests: one man and a TV reporter. Another man was thrown to the ground by the police. The people then pushed us further back into Hyde Park. The action then moved further south towards Park Street.

There were eight (8) arrests that I know of before I left. The other nine (9) must have happened after I left or just before.

That only one (1) person out of 6,000 (or 10,000) hit a police officer is good on average (0.01%) but very bad in practice because it could mark the beginings of individual terrorism.

There was one group handing out leaflets saying that protest actions were no longer effective:

But after eight years of such demonstrations—starting in Seattle in 1999 and reaching a high point in the global demonstrations against the Iraq war in February 2003—it is time to draw a political balance sheet. International experience has revealed that, to the extent that protests are dominated by the conception that the political establishment can be pressured to change course, no matter how large they are, or how sincere their participants’ motivations, they cannot resolve the problems of war, repression and social reaction.

This group concludes by saying:

The urgent task faced by students and working people in Australia and around the world is the building of a mass international political movement of the working class guided by the program of socialist internationalism. This is the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International and its Australian section, the Socialist Equality Party, developed every day on the World Socialist Web Site.

Here, we have the conundrum of this stage in the struggle: the mass actions are becoming difficult and less effective while the oppression is increasing. This is what the title of the original article. We used to be able to say "Whose Streets? Our Streets!", but no longer.

This underlines the stupidity of the ruling class: they are now relying more and more on naked force to maintain their power, and yet they are destroying the foundation of that power in the Iraqi insurgency as the US Army disintegrates.

The Iraq War is the Battle of the Bulge for US Imperialism: the last grasp offensive to secure vital oil supplies to maintain its war machine and deny those oil supplies to its enemies. There can be no retreat! There is only victory or death. Either the USA will prevail or it will be destroyed.

It is time to start building a world without the USA. We should consider them already dead. This will give up time to try out solutions to the economic and military balances of power.

At this time of history, we will still have a Capitalist world system dominated by PRC and EU. The Russian Federation realises this and is trying to exploit its strategic position between two (2) powers and its proximity to the last remaining major oil fields in Central Asia.

The Communists can only scurry like mammals while the dinosaurs fight it out over access to resources.

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Policing? No one thinks big of you!

Miranda Devine nearly says "Policing? No one thinks big of you!" in her scathing attack on Pumped-up cops are stepping over the thin blue line. She concludes:

But the streets have been swarming with police all week, pumped up, and with nothing to do.

After Thursday's embarrassing security breach, when comedians from The Chaser managed to pass through checkpoints in a fake motorcade almost to the hotel where US President George Bush was staying, the police were even more aggro.

The stunt demonstrated that the security overkill in Sydney was just a big show, designed not to protect anyone from terrorists but to stymie protesters.

This is what happens when you appoint underwhelming neophytes, David Campbell as Police Minister and Andrew Scipione as Commissioner.

It's a sign of an emasculated, rudderless police force, with systemic small-man syndrome, acting like bullies in an attempt to cover up weakness, and chronic dysfunction.

Emphasis Mine

What raises her ire is the brutal treatment meted out to an accountant friend of hers. The police were more heavy handed with a meek white accountant than with those terrible Lebanese who devastated Sydney and left it a smoking ruin (not that anyone noticed - apparently we Syndeysiders are too blase about such things.)

Don't the police realise that they have to terrorise the non-white, non-rich, and non-sycophantic part of the population (aka non-people) and leave the real people unmolested to go about buying ice-cream. Really, what is the world coming to when the police start applying the law equally to all people (and non-people).

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