Nobody at the Welsh Assembly

Is this supposed to be the much vaunted Democracy that we are all too eager to impose by force on other countries?

I am still waiting for the English turnout to be declared to see if non-voters are still in a majority following the last local election. It seems there are still two councils that have not declared yet. How long is it supposed to take? What a total cock-up this election was, what with the dodgy postal votes, all those spoiled ballot papers and counting machine malfunctions.

do you really think that the people not voting are calling for anarchism, no offense but dont you think it could be that most people dont even care about politics?

There are normally about 10-15,000 spoiled ballot papers in Scotland out of an electorate of about 2 million, and not of them will be deliberately spoiled - and not all for reasons you would approve of.

The turnout up here was higher than expected, but still at a level that would have shamed any 70's government. So maybe the deliberately spoiled ballots has increased by about the same amount for the same reason, people becoming disenfranchised and disinterested from representative democracy.

The vast majority of spoiled ballot papers up here though were thwarted votes - much like the blacks whose votes were discounted in Florida in 2000. It was a Labour minister who commissioned this election, a Labour Lord who was on the company who ran it, and now a Labour MSP has the cheek to challenge it's validity.

Can anyone English or Welsh tell me if the same sort of gerrymandering went on down there ? Were the votes electronically counted and if so were DRS doing the counting ? Did as many postal votes go missing ? I'm guessing not, I'm guessing that was seen as 'just a local election' not worth stealing.

I can't verify this story but it is funny and relevant. There was supposedly one election in London once where the National Front encouraged it's members to put a swastika next to the name of a Jewish candidate, although the electoral officer judged it was close enough to an X to count - and the NF votes were enough to swing it.

congrats.check out noam chomskys wonderful book profit over people neoliberalism and global order to see why anarchism is a valid alternative to this rotten capitalist system.

"It's not complicated, some would call it common sense, the NHS should be run by the doctors, nurses and patients, schools should be run by teachers, pupils and parents."

Sure - and the police will be run by the police and the army by the army. It all makes great sense!

Don't be telling that there won't be an army or a police - that will be for them to decide. After all, in an anarchist society people will be free to be policemen or soldiers, won't they?

Even in recent history there have been anarchist societies, and due to outside militray pressure they have had armies. Those armies even had generals, who were paid the same as everyone else, they just didn't have court martials. Volunteers fighting for their own free societys fight better than mercenaries and conscripts.

This is like the guy who had an elephant gun in his back yard, and claimed it was a stroke of genius because he'd never been bothered by elephants in his garden. The fact that he lived in Pontypridd wasn't relevant, he claimed.

Ditto with this. Whatever reasons (and they are numerous) for people not voting, I doubt if any more than 10 people did so because of your puerile little campaign.

Bourgeois democracy is deeply flawed on a number of levels, but refusing to take any part in it is a symptom either of deep immaturity or of a smug self-righteousness which is of near-Blairian proportions.

Grow up.

Here is the actual link! Sorry about the smudge on the lens!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD9N1iSEUhg

There have indeed been anarchist armies; the best-known example being the CNT militia in 1936-37 during the Spanish Civil War.

George Orwell served in the POUM (independent marxist) militia, but he writes in "Homage to Catalonia" that the anarchist militia were organized in a very similar fashion. All ranks were paid the same wages (ten pesetas a day, a very good wage then!) They did have officers and NCOs, and orders did have to be followed, but this was achieved by argument and persuasion, not by fear. In theory courts-martial did exist (they were supposed to consist of one officer, one NCO and one private) but Orwell never heard of one taking place. A very small number of militiamen were shot for desertion.

One of the most interesting things about the militia on the Aragon front was their approach to psychological warfare. Basically neither side had enough weapons to successfully attack the other side's entrenched positions. So the militia used megaphones to shout at the Fascist lines, trying to persuade the soldiers to desert, using political arguments (solidarity with their class, etc.) and also telling them that conditions were much better in the militia. In fact this was true; most of the Fascist army were unpaid conscripts, and the food was also much better for the militiamen. Largely this was because the local peasants supported the militia, who were at least preferable to their old landlords.

Unfortunately, the militia were also being undermined from the rear by the Communist-controlled government, who refused to provide them with weapons, while the police in Barcelona walked around with shiny new automatic pistols supplied by Stalin. Clearly, the Communists were much more worried about the anarchists than they were about the fascists.

War by shouting sounds rather silly but it actually worked. Orwell says that on a line of front defended by about 1000 troops, there were about 15 deserters a week from the fascist side! Just imagine if they had developed this tactic. When the wind was in the right direction, they could have held barbecues in the front-line trenches, demoralising the hungry Fascist conscripts with the smell of chorizo y costillas a la brasa.

Well, anyway. This is 2007, not 1937, and there's no point in getting carried away by dreams of what might have been. Just remember the military potential of the megaphone and the barbecue.



The Italian soldier shook my hand
Beside the guard-room table;
The strong hand and the subtle hand
Whose palms are only able

To meet within the sound of guns,
But oh! what peace I knew then
In gazing on his battered face
Purer than any woman’s!

For the flyblown words that make me spew
Still in his ears were holy,
And he was born knowing what I had learned
Out of books and slowly.

The treacherous guns had told their tale
And we both had bought it,
But my gold brick was made of gold —
Oh! who ever would have thought it?

Good luck go with you, Italian soldier!
But luck is not for the brave;
What would the world give back to you?
Always less than you gave.

Between the shadow and the ghost,
Between the white and the red,
Between the bullet and the lie,
Where would you hide your head?

For where is Manuel Gonzalez,
And where is Pedro Aguilar,
And where is Ramon Fenellosa?
The earthworms know where they are.

Your name and your deeds were forgotten
Before your bones were dry,
And the lie that slew you is buried
Under a deeper lie;

But the thing that I saw in your face
No power can disinherit:
No bomb that ever burst
Shatters the crystal spirit.

Cos in free Spain- about a half of the country - the anarchist half - did vote. They voted virtually everyday on virtually every issue. And in the Ukraine. Not everyone voted, just the interested parties. Anyone could vote though. Go to Faslane or any anarchist peace camp - residents vote twice a day at least on the slightest issue.

Now that is a bit different from voting in a rigged state election, I admit that. And I have the greatest respect for Emma, really the greatest respect. So much respect that I wouldn't care to predict her actions or opinions if she was alive today. From reading her I think her greatest priority was always peace. Now I'm anti-nuclear, and I have to assume that Emma would be anti-nuclear if she had lived to see the nuclear age, but she wasn't. Times change, principles stay the same. And if you forgive me generalising then Emma was two things you seem to forget - she was a pragmatist who woked with what she had, and above that she ws a pragmatist.

Noam Chomsky is the closest thing we have to a free intellectual akin to Emma today. You can slag him for being middle-class etc, and he and she taught us not to worship personalities, but few anarchists would deny his body of work and effect have been impressive. Worlds favourite intellectual is an anarchist don't ya know ? And he recommended voting to the US elecorate in the 2000 election. Ani Difranco, no moron herself, and Utah Phillips of the IWW recommended voting to the US electorate in 2000. They weren't saying vote Kerry, they were saying vote against Bush or else millions will die. And guess what ? Millions died. I have no shame in reccomending the ballot box as a harmless if comparitively ineffective means to achive real change. Voting might not change much, but you voting doesn't cost anything and can't hurt.

Now if you are 100% sure Emma would disagree with these more current US anarchists, I'd like to hear your reasoning. I fadmit that I feel dirty for voting, but I voted against Blair, against Iraq, against Trident, against nuclear power,against the British state. And you know - at least in my local nation, I got a result. I don't feel that dirty, one shower and I was clean.

I have read everything Emma ever wrote and I don't think she would disapprove of me. In a way she is my best chance of a shag. Voting isn't a replacement for action, it is a supplement at times of crisis or mass-genocide.

New York (office and Denunciation) - Federico Garcia Lorca

Under the multiplication
a drop of duck's blood;
under the divisions,
a drop of sailor's blood;
under the additions, a river of tender blood.
A river that sings and flows
past bedrooms in the boroughs -
and it's silver, cement, or wind
in New York's conterfeit dawn.
I know the mountains exist.
And wisdom's eyeglasses,
too. But I didn't come to see they sky,
I'm here to see the clouded blood,
the blood that sweeps over waterfalls
and the soul towards the cobra's tongue.
Every day in New York, they slaughter
four million ducks,
five million hogs,
two thousand pigeons to accomodate the tastes of the dying,
one million cows,
one million lambs,
and two million roosters
that smash the sky to pieces.

It's better to sob while honing the blade
or kill dogs on the delirious hunts
than to resist at dawn
the endless milk trains,
the endless blood trains
and the trains of roses, manacled
by the dealers in perfume.
The ducks and the pigeons,
and the hogs and the lambs
lay their drops of blood
under the mulitplications,
and the terrified bellowing of the cows wrung dry
fills the valley with sorrow
where the Hudson gets drunk on oil.

I denounce everyone
who ignores the other half,
the half that can't be redeemed,
who lift their mountains of cement
where the hearts beat
inside little forgotton animals
and where all of us will fall
in the last fear of pneumatic drills.
I spit in all your faces
The other half hears me,
devouring, pissing, flying in their purity,
like the supers' little children in lobbies
who carry fragile twigs
to the empty spaces where
the insect antennae are rusting.

This is not hell but the street.
Not death, but the fruit stand.
There is a world of tame rivers and distances just beyond our grasp
in the cat's paw smashed by a car,
and I hear the earthworm's song
in the hearts of many girls.
Rust, fermentation, earth tremor.
You yourself are the earth as you drift in office numbers.
What shall I do know ? Set the landscapes in order ?
Order the loves that soon become photographs,
that soon become pieces of wood and mouthfulls of blood ?
No, no: I denounce it all.
I denounce the conspiracy
of these deserted offices
that radiate no agony,
that erase the forest's plans,
and I offer myself as food for the cows wrung dry
when their bellowing fills the valley
where the Hudson gets drunk on oil.

A couple more pictures from the Nobody victory rally.