Interview w/ Photo

*

The Feminine Mysteries of Love

Now, the idea of God is, in the first place, an exceeding contradiction. The sign God, so Deists tell us, was invented to express the inexpressible, the incomprehensible and infinite! Then they immediately set about defining it. These definitions prove to be about as self-contradictory and generally conflicting as the original absurdity. But there is a particular set of attributes which form a sort of common ground for all these definitions. They tell us that God is possessed of supreme wisdom, supreme justice, and supreme power. In all the catalogue of creeds, I never yet heard of one that had not for its nucleus unlimited potency.

Now, let us take the deist upon his own ground and prove to him either that his God is limited as to wisdom, or limited as to justice, or limited as to power, or else there is no such thing as justice.

First, then, God, being all-just, wishes to do justice; being all-wise, knows what justice is; being all-powerful, can do justice. Why then injustice? Either your God can do justice and won't or doesn't know what justice is, or he can not do it. The immediate reply is: "What appears to be injustice in our eyes, in the sight of omniscience may be justice. God's ways are not our ways."

Oh, but if he is the all-wise pattern, they should be; what is good enough for God ought to be good enough for man; but what is too mean for man won't do in a God. Else there is no such thing as justice or injustice, and every murder, every robbery, every lie, every crime in the calendar is right and upon that one premise of supreme authority you upset every fact in existence.

What right have you to condemn a murderer if you assume him necessary to "God's plan"? What logic can command the return of stolen property, or the branding of a thief, if the Almighty decreed it? Yet here, again, the Deist finds himself in a dilemma, for to suppose crime necessary to God's purpose is to impeach his wisdom or deny his omnipotence by limiting him as to means. The whole matter, then, hinges upon the one attribute of authority of the central idea of God.

But, you say, what has all this to do with the economic tendency of freethought? Everything. For upon that one idea of supreme authority is based every tyranny that was ever formulat- ed. Why? Because, if God is, no human being no thing that lives, ever had a right! He simply had a privilege, bestowed, granted, conferred, gifted to him, for such a length of time as God sees fit.

// posted by Alice @ Monday, November 28, 2005 0 Comments

–Augustine of Hippo, The City of God (410 CE)

_

The war in Iraq is a staggering catastrophe. The Global War on TerrorismTM is already lost, having been rebranded recently by the Pentagon’s Department of Silly Phrases as the “struggle against violent extremism.” This is reminiscent of Bush’s slip of a few years ago calling his wars a “crusade;” it’s now a “struggle”—or, jihad in Arabic, or Kampf, as in Mein, in German. It seems, however, as we go to press, there’s some confusion boiling within the Inner Circle. Bush just used the “War on Terror” five times in a speech, confounding Secretary of War Rumfeld’s continual use of the new phrase. They can’t even get their lies straight. So, do we believe Chimpy McFlightsuit or Dr. Strangelove on this one?

// posted by Alice @ Sunday, November 27, 2005 0 Comments

Eager children scramble for them in Zimbabwe. Camels carry them through remotest Kenya. They are impossible to to buy from a legitimate seller in Sierra Leone. They have solved problems, launched businesses and careers, created dreams, fired imaginations, changed lives and saved lives. They are taken for granted in Britain, but 113 million children worldwide do not have access to them.

// posted by Alice @ Sunday, November 27, 2005 0 Comments

"What A Friend We Have In Peaches" (Gospel Tune)

-

What a friend we have in Peaches

all our wild words on the Blog are here !

What a privilege to be a Blogger

and know that Sam Seder really cares !

Oh, what Peaches we ofen forfeit

Oh, what needless things we bare

all because we do not always carry

our precious Peaches to the Blog and everywhere !

// posted by Alice @ Saturday, November 26, 2005 0 Comments

THE BOOK OF PLEASURE (SELF-LOVE)

Or

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ECSTASY.

// posted by Alice @ Friday, November 25, 2005 0 Comments

http://teresi.us/html/writing/howard_zinn.html

"I remember going to school and I would learn about Indians who came to Thanksgiving dinner gratefully. I would learn about Custer’s Last Stand, I would learn about Sitting Bull. There were a few moments in Indian history that we’d learn about. What we didn’t learn about was the fact that the American colonists that came here from the beginning were invading Indian soil and driving the Indians out of their land and committing massacres in order to persuade the Indians that they’d better move. And the history of the U.S. is a history of hundreds of little wars fought against the Indians, annihilating them, pushing them farther and farther onto a smaller and smaller piece of the country. And finally, in the late 19th century, taking the Indians that were left and squeezing them onto a reservation and controlling them."

"The story that’s not told is the deceptions that were played on the Indians, the treaties that were made with them, the treaties that were then broken by the American government. It’s important to know that, because if you do, then you will become aware that the American government can lie. It can deceive people. It can do it not only in relation to Native Americans, it can do it in relation to all of us."

-Howard Zinn

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Ultimate_Betrayal.html

The quick Thanksgiving visit of Bush to Iraq, much ballyhooed in the press, was seen differently by an army nurse in Landstuhl, Germany, where casualties from the war are treated. She sent out an e-mail: "My 'Bush Thanksgiving' was a little different. I spent it at the hospital taking care of a young West Point lieutenant wounded in Iraq.... When he pressed his fists into his eyes and rocked his head back and forth he looked like a little boy. They all do, all nineteen in the ward that day, some missing limbs, eyes, or worse.... It's too bad Bush didn't add us to his holiday agenda. The men said the same, but you'll never read that in the paper."

-Howard Zinn

// posted by Alice @ Thursday, November 24, 2005 0 Comments

Hopefully, this can help make anarchist texts and ideas more accessable. Beyond the obvious appeal for people who don't like to read (or don't have time to read in this busy on-the-go world), hearing a book read aloud can also be enjoyable.

The Audio Anarchy project is organized in a distributed way. Instead of having a single person or group of people read an entire book, different people read separate chapters to distribute the work load. Ideally, this site will do more to help facilitate that kind of organization in the future.

http://www.audioanarchy.org/emma.php

Emma Goldman Essays

1. Anarchism: What It Really Stands For 2. Anarchism: What It Really Stands For Continued 3. Prisons: A Social Crime And Failure 4. The Tragedy Of Woman's Emancipation 5. Woman Suffrage 6. Marriage And Love

Download the entire album with BitTorrent

// posted by Alice @ Sunday, November 20, 2005 0 Comments

Foreword by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert

"To the People of Druid Heights"

*

There are many who believe that we stand at an important turning point in man's power to control and expand his awareness. Our research provides tentative grounds for such optimism. The Joyous Cosmology is solid testimony for the same happy expectations.

Timothy Leary, Ph.D. / Richard Alpert, Ph.D.

Harvard University, January, 1962

*

We are dealing here with an issue that is not new, an issue that has been considered for centuries by mystics, by philosophers of the religious experience, by those rare and truly great scientists who have been able to move in and then out beyond the limits of the science game. It was seen and described clearly by the great American psychologist William James:

... our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question,-for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge toward a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance.

// posted by Alice @ Saturday, November 19, 2005 0 Comments

Two Arabs are chatting. One of them has his wallet out and is flipping through pictures.

"Yeah, this is my oldest. He's a martyr. Here's my second son. He's a martyr, too."

There's a pause.

The second Arab says, wistfully, "Ah, they blow up so fast, don't they?" *

// posted by Alice @ Tuesday, November 15, 2005 0 Comments

-Milarepa

// posted by Alice @ Friday, November 11, 2005 0 Comments

1. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - 2 Sick Bastardz [ft. Neizvesten].mp3
2. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Alice In Wonderland.mp3
3. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Back In Bizness.mp3
4. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Black Hole.mp3
5. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Contact [Intro].mp3
6. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Darksteps The illest.mp3
7. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Destroy You.mp3
8. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Dopeass.mp3
9. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide [DJ Sniffs Theme].mp3
10. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Exterminate All Humanz [ft. redOne].mp3
11. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Fat Punks Cant Pogo.mp3
12. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Gearbox [ft. CJ Saturn].mp3
13. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Ghost [Poltergeist Mix].mp3
14. 02/12/05 - DJ Darkstep - Squeeze The Trigger.mp3
15. 10/05/05 - MD Beddah + DJ Darkstep - Prosto Prase.mp3
16. 09/28/05 - Bilkaria + DJ Darkstep - Opasen Izhod.mp3
17. 09/28/05 - Bilkaria + DJ Darkstep - V Ochite Na Slepcite [feat. Atila].mp3
18. 10/05/05 - Neizvesten + DJ Darkstep - Freestyle Zaraza [feat. Krasta].mp3
19. 10/05/05 - Neizvesten + DJ Darkstep - Big Bad Beatz [feat. Screwball mc].mp3
20. 10/05/05 - Neizvesten + DJ Darkstep - Plesnica.mp3
21. 10/05/05 - Screwball mc + DJ Darkstep - Losho Nachadeni [Freestyle].mp3
22. 10/05/05 - Sensei + DJ Darkstep - Vervam Ti [feat. Ramon].mp3
23. 10/05/05 - MD Beddah + DJ Darkstep - Liriko Otrova.mp3

// posted by Alice @ Monday, November 07, 2005 1 Comments

kiss

kiss

kiss

kiss

// posted by Alice @ Sunday, November 06, 2005 0 Comments

This site is dedicated to the women who have ruled since the beginning of times. There have always been female rulers. Some Egyptian Queens are believed to have governed from around 3000 BCE, and the first to be named by the sources without any doubt is Ku-baba, who ruled the Mesopotamian City-State of Ur round 2500 BCE.

First female ministers However, it was not until after World War I that the first few women became members of democratic governments. Nina Bang, Danish Minister of Education 1924-26 was the world's first full female cabinet minister. Nevertheless, development was slow and it was not until the end of the 20th century that female ministers stopped being unusual.

First female Prime Minister and President In 1960 Sirivamo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka became the world's first female Premier Minister and in 1974 Isabel Perón of Argentina became the first woman President - two women had been Acting Heads of State before that.

Today the only two countries which never had a female member of government in at least a sub-ministerial position are Monaco and Saudi Arabia. In 1999, Sweden became the first country to have more female ministers than male. 11 women and 9 men.

Current heads of state and government There are 191 members of the United Nations and a few independent states outside. Of the monarchies, there are Queens in Denmark, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom - and the British Queen is represented by female Governor Generals in Bahamas, Canada, New Zealand and Saint Lucia.

The 5 female Presidents are in Finland, Ireland, Latvia, The Philippines and Sri Lanka.

There are 4 woman Prime Ministers; in Bangladesh New Zealand, Mozambique and São Tomé e Princípe. For more details see: Situation in 2005

Content of www.guide2womenleaders.com The site contains lists of female Heads of State listed by country, a chronological list of Women in Power from B.C. 3000, female Prime Ministers, Ministers of Finance and Ministers of Defence and Ministers by country, female Chairpersons of Parliament, female Governors, Premiers and local Leaders by country, female Party Leaders for each country, a chronological list of female Presidential Candidates, Ambassadors to the United Nations and first female ambassadors for each country, lists of women's ordination to priesthood and female bishops and finally a list of female Danish leaders.

// posted by Alice @ Saturday, November 05, 2005 0 Comments

*

Me and my babe went to the show

I and babe went to the show

Did we sit on the end? No

Cos a fallen girl was in the very front row

She got real lace curtains on her door

She got Brussels carpets on the floor

But she don't wear no silk or lace

No, Lords, she don't wear no corsetwaist

*Words & music : Kid Bravo (Jean-Yves Prieur)*

*

*

Dreams II

// posted by Alice @ Friday, November 04, 2005 0 Comments

RENDAN, "THE CLEVER ONES." The sufis use a technical term rend (adj. rendi, pl. rendan) to designate one "clever enough to drink wine in secret without getting caught": the dervish version of "Permissible Dissimulation" (taqiyya, whereby Shiites are permitted to lie about their true affiliation to avoid persecution as well as advance the purpose of their propaganda).

On the plane of the "Path," the rend conceals his spiritual state (hal) in order to contain it, work on it alchemically, enhance it. This "cleverness" explains much of the secrecy of the Orders, altho it remains true that many dervishes do literally break the rules of Islam (shariah), offend tradition (sunnah), and flout the customs of their society--all of which gives them reason for real secrecy.

Ignoring the case of the "criminal" who uses sufism as a mask--or rather not sufism per se but dervish-ism, almost a synonym in Persia for laid-back manners & by extension a social laxness, a style of genial and poor but elegant amorality--the above definition can still be considered in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. That is: some sufis do break the Law while still allowing that the Law exists & will continue to exist; & they do so from spiritual motives, as an exercise of will (himmah).

Nietzsche says somewhere that the free spirit will not agitate for the rules to be dropped or even reformed, since it is only by breaking the rules that he realizes his will to power. One must prove (to oneself if no one else) an ability to overcome the rules of the herd, to make one's own law & yet not fall prey to the rancor & resentment of inferior souls which define law & custom in ANY society. One needs, in effect, an individual equivalent of war in order to achieve the becoming of the free spirit--one needs an inert stupidity against which to measure one's own movement & intelligence.

Anarchists sometimes posit an ideal society without law. The few anarchist experiments which succeeded briefly (the Makhnovists, Catalan) failed to survive the conditions of war which permitted their existence in the first place--so we have no way of knowing empirically if such an experiment could outlive the onset of peace.

Some anarchists, however, like our late friend the Italian Stirnerite "Brand," took part in all sorts of uprisings and revolutions, even communist and socialist ones, because they found in the moment of insurrection itself the kind of freedom they sought. Thus while utopianism has so far always failed, the individualist or existentialist anarchists have succeeded inasmuch as they have attained (however briefly) the realization of their will to power in war.

Nietzsche's animadversions against "anarchists" are always aimed at the egalitarian-communist narodnik martyr types, whose idealism he saw as yet one more survival of post-Xtian moralism--altho he sometimes praises them for at least having the courage to revolt against majoritarian authority. He never mentions Stirner, but I believe he would have classified the Individualist rebel with the higher types of "criminals," who represented for him (as for Dostoyevsky) humans far superior to the herd, even if tragically flawed by their obsessiveness and perhaps hidden motivations of revenge.

The Nietzschean overman, if he existed, would have to share to some degree in this "criminality" even if he had overcome all obsessions and compulsions, if only because his law could never agree with the law of the masses, of state & society. His need for "war" (whether literal or metaphorical) might even persuade him to take part in revolt, whether it assumed the form of insurrection or only of a proud bohemianism.

For him a "society without law" might have value only so long as it could measure its own freedom against the subjection of others, against their jealousy & hatred. The lawless & short-lived "pirate utopias" of Madagascar & the Caribbean, D'Annunzio's Republic of Fiume, the Ukraine or Barcelona--these would attract him because they promised the turmoil of becoming & even "failure" rather than the bucolic somnolence of a "perfected" (& hence dead) anarchist society.

In the absence of such opportunities, this free spirit would disdain wasting time on agitation for reform, on protest, on visionary dreaming, on all kinds of "revolutionary martyrdom"--in short, on most contemporary anarchist activity. To be rendi, to drink wine in secret & not get caught, to accept the rules in order to break them & thus attain the spiritual lift or energy-rush of danger & adventure, the private epiphany of overcoming all interior police while tricking all outward authority--this might be a goal worthy of such a spirit, & this might be his definition of crime.

(Incidentally, I think this reading helps explain N's insistence on the MASK, on the secretive nature of the proto- overman, which disturbs even intelligent but somewhat liberal commentators like Kaufman. Artists, for all that N loves them, are criticized for telling secrets. Perhaps he failed to consider that--paraphrasing A. Ginsberg--this is our way of becoming "great"; and also that--paraphrasing Yeats--even the truest secret becomes yet another mask.)

As for the anarchist movement today: would we like just once to stand on ground where laws are abolished & the last priest is strung up with the guts of the last bureaucrat? Yeah sure. But we're not holding our breath. There are certain causes (to quote the Neech again) that one fails to quite abandon, if only because of the sheer insipidity of all their enemies. Oscar Wilde might have said that one cannot be a gentleman without being something of an anarchist--a necessary paradox, like N's "radical aristocratism."

This is not just a matter of spiritual dandyism, but also of existential commitment to an underlying spontaneity, to a philosophical "tao." For all its waste of energy, in its very formlessness, anarchism alone of all the ISMs approaches that one type of form which alone can interest us today, that strange attractor, the shape of chaos--which (one last quote) one must have within oneself, if one is to give birth to a dancing star.

--Spring Equinox, 1989

// posted by Alice @ Thursday, November 03, 2005 0 Comments

An Anarchist FAQ

Introduction

Section A - What is anarchism?

Section B - Why do anarchists oppose the current system?

Section C - What are the myths of capitalist economics?

Section D - How does statism and capitalism affect society?

Section E - What do anarchists think causes ecological problems?

Section F - Is "anarcho"-capitalism a type of anarchism?

Section G - Is individualist anarchism capitalistic?

Section H - Why do anarchists oppose state socialism?

Section I - What would an anarchist society look like?

Section J - What do anarchists do?

Appendix - Anarchism and "Anarcho"-capitalism

Appendix - The Symbols of Anarchy

Appendix - Anarchism and Marxism

Appendix - The Russian Revolution

Bibliography

// posted by Alice @ Wednesday, November 02, 2005 0 Comments