Question Everything

Most people who hate Chomsky are crazy right-wingers who hate him because he has an excellent critique of US foreign policy. They can't refute his critique so they make up all sorts of bullshit about him (he supported Pol Pot, he's a holocaust denier, etc.)

Most anarchists, including myself, have a major disagreement with him over his support for the welfare state. Basically he thinks anarchist revolution isn't going to happen for a very, very long time and so he says we should basically act like social democrats for the forseable future. Chomsky is an anarchist, but a hypocritical one who denies the radical implications of his own work.

If the wall was put slightly inside Israel, I mean inside the 1967 green line, it would probably prove more effective at deterring attacks than the way it is now. That way they could mine the outside, have patrols, stick all the weapons they want about it, etc. and no one (save Hamas & co) would complain. It's be 100% legal under international law and would be more effective at stopping attacks.

I've yet to see any proof that this "Jesus Christ" actually existed, let alone walked on water and all that. The bible contains several miraculous events surrounding the life of Christ which should have been observed even by nonbelievers, yet no observer at the time wrote of it. The bible wasn't written until at least sixty years after Jesus allegedly died, quite possibly over a century later. There were people in the area at the time who wrote detailed accounts of events at the time, yet said nothing of this allegedly miraculous man who came back from the dead.

Christianity actually has many similarities to other cults at the time. The Mithras cult believed that Mitrhas was born to a virgin mother on December 25th, died and was resurrected. They claimed Mithras was the chief agent of the "good god." The Mithras cult was a subset of Zoroastrianism, which was the first religion to have a good god and a bad god - the first idea of a Satan/God came from them. The Mithras cult predated Christianity by several centuries. And Mithras wasn't the only cult like this, many cults at the time had similar stories - virgin birth, messiah, ressurrection, etc. Christianity was just the Jewish version of it. It just happened to become the largest one and was the only one to really survive into the present day.

Freedom means controlling one's own life, rather than taking orders from other people. Freedom is thus incompatable with any kind of hierarchical authority (relations of command and obediance) because they involve taking orders from others and thus one does not have control over one's own life. Anarchism thus offers far greater freedom than the present system because it destroys all hierarchies and gives everyone control of their own life. Being able to get in a position where you can dominate others (which is what becoming a capitalist is) is the very opposite of freedom.

We need gun control for all police and militaries. Until they are disarmed disarming ordinary people shouldn't even be on the table.

The British Empire didn't truly die it just switched from colonialism to neocolonialism, became America's attack dog, and renamed itself the commonwealth. Look at Britain in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Iran, etc.

Some interesting Articles:
Democracy in an Arab State
Terrorism: A World Ensnared by a Word
IraqnoPhobia
Not Quite A Dream Team: Some of John Kerry’s Foreign Policy Advisers Should Give Pause to Progressives
Kerry and War
We Don't Need Laws About Love

Nuclear bombs are technology and are bad, hence technology can't be inherently good. Some techs are good, others are bad. Both the technophiliacs and the primitivists err in making broad overgeneralizations about technology. Different technologies have different properties. Some are good, some are bad. I find the medical arguement a persuasive position against the primitivist rejection of all technology, but we do need some major changes in the kind of technology we have. There's a whole raft of harmfull technology that should be abolished, and some technologies promote centralization and should be dismantled. Others are better and should be kept. We need a Kropotkinesque decentralization of industry. I find luddite theories of technology are often more helpfull than technophiliac theories in determining what techs are good & bad because the later is often based on cliches and straw men.

Two major problems with the standard "difficult conditions made them do it" Leninist defense of Bolshevik authoritarianism are:

1. The Bolsheviks were already becoming increasing dictatorial by the time the civil war, imperialist invasions, etc. happened. The civil war started on May 25, 1918 with the revolt of the Czech legion. In spring 1918 the Bolsheviks lost the soviet elections. Their response was to disband all the soviets that voted the wrong way. This is what caused party dictatorship to come about, not the civil war. They also started disbanding factory committees in March 1918 and in April launched raids against anarchists. Anarchists were jailed and newspapers shut down, all before the civil war started.

2. If these things caused Bolshevism to degenerate and become authoritarian then Bolshevism will always degenerate and become authoritarian. Lenin claimed that civil war was inevitable in the course of revolution, and it's pretty unrealistic to think that you can have a revolution without resistence from the capitalists. If Bolshevism cannot overcome that resistence without turning into a totalitarian nightmare then Bolshevism is to be avoided because it will always turn into a totalitarian nightmare.

Capitalists like to babble on and on about how in capitalism it is allegedly possible to go from "riches to rags," that even the poor can become rich. In Colonial Brazil it was theoretically possible for a slave to become free and become a slave owner, and there were a few (rare) examples of this happening. That does not make the system just, nor does it change the fact that the way the system works the immense majority will be oppressed by their masters and have little chance of ever changing positions. The same is true of capitalism. Just because it is theoretically possible to become a small time capitalist does not justify capitalism. In practice, it is extremely difficult to do so and most people have no choice but to remain wage-slaves. The existence of social mobility does not justify a social system.

Christians just interpret the bible so that it says whatever they want it to say. If a christian supports slavery then he interprets it as being pro-slavery. If s/he opposes slavery then s/he interprets the bible as being anti-slavery. The same is true of capitalism and other things. Even people who claim to interpret it literally don't; they don't believe in the parts which claim the world is flat.