I know the cut and paste is a half-arsed way to write a blog, but I'm doing anyway. I got sent this and thought it deserves to be shared. Nice to see what is still possible.

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Check out this place in Spain, Marinaleda "A Utopia Towards Peace" (the local council's slogan!) in Andalucia, where they have reclaimed 1500 hectares of land from the local count and have set about building their own little utopia!

http://pathsthroughutopia.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/a-utopian-detour/

"This is a message and story for all the Balanda [white people] who are doing the protest for Indigenous people about the new laws of ‘the Intervention’.

Our home is a small community by the sea in North East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, called MataMata.

Before, we thought that it was safe to allow the new government to share our canoe. But now we can feel they are paddling in the opposite direction. Now it’s too difficult and hard for Yolngu people.

It doesn’t matter that the government has changed – their attitudes haven’t changed. The two governments are both in their own world. They are both in their different world without the Indigenous people.

The following is not an anarchist analysis, but general analysis of one aspect of the new Intervention laws affecting Indigenous people in the Northern Territory:

As the quarantining of Indigenous welfare payments rolls out across the Northern Territory, its alleged benefits need to be weighted against the possible cultural and economic consequences. The end results may well be opposite to those desired. Quarantining could make it harder to access services, increase the cost of food provision, constrain saving patterns, and in turn, exacerbate the conflicts it intends to curtail.

The recent Federal election featured large in remote Aboriginal communities. In between conversations about kin, hunting and weather patterns there was much discussion about the ‘new laws for Aboriginal people’ - a collective reference to the various aspects of the Howard government’s ‘Emergency Intervention’.

Communist philosopher Anthony Hayes has written an good anti-Warhol blog as the blockbuster exhibition continues at the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art this week (23/1/2008).

http://antyphayes.blogsome.com/2008/01/09/p18/

I added a comment:

I thought Ant was clear — I had more problems understanding the relevance of the divisions Patrick raised [this refers to the previous comment on the blog site pasted above, though my comment here should make sense even if you do not go to that blog]. To show why a short comment may be useful.

Taken as an entirety, Warhol’s praxis is thought to engage with the market in a clever and appealing manner. Aware of the influence of pop culture, like ‘his’ Velvet Underground or later The Ramones etc, Warhol as artist and person then became an icon for those who are attracted to a cultural alternative to the mainstream. He is taken to be important to “counterculture,” and shares the appeal that counterculture understandably posseses. Thus in Queensland the Warhol exhibition was opened by figures like Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens, a band that began in a scene opposed to Sir Joh’s conservative vision of post-war Australian society.

This is an excerpt from Chris Crass' essay in the 'Going To Places That Scare Me: Personal Reflections On Challenging Male Supremacy' at Znet

"What do you mean I'm sexist?" I was shocked. I wasn't a jock, I didn’t hate women, I wasn't an evil person. "But how can I be a sexist, I'm an anarchist?" I was anxious, nervous, and my defenses were up. I believed in liberation, for fighting against capitalism and the state. There were those who defended and benefited from injustice and then there’s us, right? I was 19 and it was 1993, four year after I got into politics.

Nilou, holding my hand, patiently explained, “I'm not saying you're an evil person, I'm saying that you're sexist and sexism happens in a lot of subtle and blatant ways. You cut me off when I'm talking. You pay more attention to what men say. The other day when I was sitting at the coffee shop with you and Mike, it was like the two of you were having a conversation and I was just there to watch. I tried to jump in and say something, but you both just looked at me and then went back to your conversation. Men in the group make eye contact with each other and act like women aren’t even there. The study group has become a forum for men in the group to go on and on about this book and that book, like they know everything and just need to teach the rest of us. For a long time I thought maybe it was just me, maybe what I had to say wasn't as useful or exciting. Maybe I needed to change my approach, maybe I was just overreacting, maybe it's just in my head and I need to get over it. But then I saw how the same thing was happening to other women in the group, over and over again. I'm not blaming you for all of this, but you're a big part of this group and you're part of this dynamic.” This conversation changed my life and it’s challenge is one I continue to struggle with in this essay.

Recent studies have warned that China and India risk future famine by using scarce water to irrigate biofuel crops rather than food. The two countries are expected to provide two-thirds of the global growth in biofuels: maize in China and sugar cane in India.

It raises the question of the inevitable increase in competition for ‘other’ resources as the supply of oil declines. Not only scarce water resources, but land, labour and the utilisation and/or monopolisation of other energy resources, for the increased production of ‘biofuel’.

On the rare occasions I drive, I sometimes joke that at least I’ll be speeding up peak-oil. Point being (perhaps not funny I admit), that I have unthinkingly harboured some positive associations with peak oil. I’ve been secretly hoping or assuming that Peak-oil will bring about fundamental structural change. If we can’t start the revolution, perhaps, I thought lying in bed, a world wide shortage of oil might be just the catalyst and opportunity for such change.

Do not vote for Holly Kemp

Holly Kemp is running for the position of secretary with the leftwing Catalyst group in the coming UQ St Lucia student elections. Voters should know that she misrepresents students if she thinks it is in her interest to do so, and that she does indeed think it is in her interest to do so.

At the 2006 SOS (Students of Sustainability) conference Holly Kemp misrepresented my friends and I.

We were interested in campus activism at the 2006 SOS. The main target of this activism was to be campus militarism such as the scramjet program at UQ and Boeing sponsorship at St Lucia. We wrote a leaflet that argued it is irrational to develop military technology when there are other technologies that could benefit from resources currently allocated to the military, and when these other technologies could help us address (for e.g.) environmental concerns. Our recommendation was that we demand more R&D funding for (inter alia) renewable energy, while also pursuing the abolition of research projects into hi-tech weapons. The leaflet took up the counter-argument that investment in militarism is desirable in order to deter attackers, for instance scramjet tech supposedly may have anti-ballistic applications. However leaflet argued the best way to prevent of war is an international peace movement, and that such a movement is incompatible with deterrence (for a copy: s200408@student.uq.edu.au).

OCT 13: This month's movie at Black & Green: " What A Way To Go - Life At The End Of Empire"

A middle class white guy comes to grips with Peak Oil, Climate Change, Mass Extinction, Population Overshoot and the demise of the American Lifestyle. Featuring interviews with Daniel Quinn, Derrick Jensen, Jerry Mander, Chellis Glendinning, Richard Heinberg, Thomas Berry, William Catton, Ran Prieur and Richard Manning. [See more here] Saturday 13th October, from 7pm. Come early for some cakes and coffee!

OCT 17: Meet a Zapatista @ Green & Black Bookstore, 80 Ryan St, West End.

[This article is not an anarchist analysis of the situation but nonetheless offers an important insight into what is going on in Burma at present - it was written by Monique Skidmore,a medical anthropologist who has been researching in Burma since 1994.]

The Burmese People have had Enough

Enough poverty. Enough malnutrition. Enough civil war, torture, arbitrary arrest and incarceration. Enough repression, fear, and censorship.
That’s what the current protest is about, but its roots stretch back to 1962 when the Burmese armed forces, led by General Ne Win, usurped power from Burma’s democratically elected government of Prime Minister U Nu. General Ne Win ruled the country by fear, informers, propaganda and isolation. A civil war has waged since then, with estimates of the loss of life at up to 10,000 each year.