News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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http://tinyurl.com/557xzj
Men on a mission
In a rundown suburb of Washington DC, a group of anti-Iraq war
protesters has set up home. But they are no ordinary activists -- they
are all veterans of the conflict. Daniel Nasaw talks to them
by Daniel Nasaw
The Guardian,
Wednesday August 20 2008

The mock soldier's grave in the front yard, along with the bottles of
urine in the refrigerator and the anti-war posters festooning the first
floor, tell visitors this is not just another group house for
politically minded Washington DC twentysomethings.

The bottles, says Adam Kokesh, a tattooed, muscular former US marine
sergeant and prominent member of a community of virulently anti-war Iraq
veterans based in the house, are to be tested for depleted uranium, a
munitions component thought to be harmful to soldiers exposed to it.

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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http://tinyurl.com/5zo7t3
Neocon Crybabies
by Steven LaTulippe

Although the unfolding drama in the Caucasus has been a tragedy for its
innocent victims, the response by America’s political and media elites
has been an entertaining and delusional farce.

To recap events, the government of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia
launched a surprise invasion of South Ossetia (an autonomous republic
within Georgia that has been functionally independent since...

The following open letter can be better viewed with clickable links
here: http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=8706 OR here:
http://nihilo0.blogspot.com/2008/08/open-challenge-to-chomsky-zerzan-zinn.html

Like many others around the world, I owe a great deal of my political
awareness and social consciousness to Noam Chomsky, John Zerzan and
Howard Zinn.

From reading Chomsky I was made aware of the ongoing effects of
bureaucratic policies sanctioning war and death squads. Zerzan made
clear the depths of alienation from sustainable pathways and the need
for truly radical change. Zinn not only impressed upon me the honest
brutality of American history, but his his promotion of Gandhian non-
violence (which I don't wholly agree with) is so much more promising
than the useless finger-wagging and petition-passing undertaken by so
many in the name of activism.

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://tinyurl.com/62ra8y

A remarkable FOX News interview with a twelve-year-old girl and her
Ossetian aunt who were caught up in the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia.

--
Dan Clore

My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

My latest column on NolanChart:

A Libertarian View of the Olympics

by Dan Clore

Summary: Nation-states force taxpayers to pay for a meaningless
spectacle in which governments "promote peace" by trying to prove their
superiority over each other, pitting their chosen champions against each
other at totally arbitrary activities.

Continued:

http://tinyurl.com/5ou7lv

--
Dan Clore

My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

[I don't know if the author of this piece knows it, but there really was
a show called Gilligan's Planet. It was a Saturday morning cartoon that
lasted a single season.--DC]

http://tinyurl.com/5ldf6q
Gilligan’s Planet
Last week in Beijing, Georgia and Russia faced off on opposite sides of
a line drawn in the sand.
Sunday, August 17, 2008 11:36 AM EDT

Last week in Beijing, Georgia and Russia faced off on opposite sides of
a line drawn in the sand.

Powered by a pair of hired guns from Brazil, the Georgians routed the
Russians in less than an hour.

While four women in bikinis settled the ancient question of beach
volleyball supremacy in the Caucasus, Russian tanks and planes were
reminding Georgia and the rest of the world who’s still boss in a
sandbox rivaled only by the Middle East in mindless brutality and
disproportionate international influence (oil).

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Marie Equi: courageous and unconventional
Sunday, August 10, 2008
JOHN TERRY
The [Portland] Oregonian

(First of two parts)

Were Marie Equi's only claim to fame that she horsewhipped the
superintendent of schools in The Dalles, she would be on record as
striking an obvious blow, or blows, for women's equality.

As it was, Equi progressed not only to a controversial career in
medicine but also passionate crusades for workers' rights, free speech,
women's rights and birth control. And along the way she managed to run
counter, mostly by design, to the ultra-moralistic temper of her time
and place.

Equi arrived in The Dalles in 1892 in pursuit of her relationship with
Bessie Holcomb, a teacher at Wasco Independent Academy, "an esteemed
institution for students at the primary grades through high school,"
according to Equi biographer Michael Helquist.

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

[It looks like the thoughts behind these programs to put poppy-farming
to productive use making painkillers instead of heroin echo my own
thinking over the years. I speak as an individual who suffers from
severe chronic pain and is deprived of the use of such painkillers by
government drug-warriors.--DC]

Peace Magazine
http://tinyurl.com/6dhvkv
Poppies for Medicine: An interview with The Senlis Council's Norine
MacDonald
Instead of forcibly burning poppy fields in southern Afghanistan, the
international community could be assisting Afghan farmers with a program
to produce much-needed painkillers instead of illegal (and deadly)
heroin. Similar programs have worked in India and Turkey, as Norine
MacDonald explains in conversation with Metta Spencer.
By Metta Spencer (interviewer), Norine MacDonald (interviewee)

SPENCER: Were you already living in Afghanistan when you conceived this
idea?

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

I don't often post links to videos, but this one is worth watching, and
the Real News Network (http://therealnews.com/t/ ), a member-supported
TV-news station, seems worth checking out:

http://tinyurl.com/55pyuk

--
Dan Clore

My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

http://tinyurl.com/6xxmus
Media Advisory
Georgia/Russia Conflict Forced Into Cold War Frame
8/14/08

U.S. corporate media frequently evoked the Cold War as a key to
understanding the conflict between Russia and Georgia over South
Ossetia. This was certainly true of the media themselves, which
generally placed black hats or white hats on the actors involved
depending on whether they were allied with Moscow or Washington.

On August 11, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams referred to "what's
being called the Russian blitz of the nation of Georgia, former Soviet
republic that split away and is now threatening to split apart from
within." NBC reporter Jim Maceda followed up: "The powerful Russian war
machine is moving ever deeper into Georgia, and teaching all of us
really a lesson about what makes Russia tick." Maceda then gave what has
become the standard media template for describing the conflict: