Today's Topics:
1. [Indonesia] Anarchist arrested for wearing "anti-police"
T-shirt By ANA (it, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. London Anarchist Federation: Pushing up Against the
Boundaries of Liberalism - A Review of The Dictator's Handbook.
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Class War: DOMINIC CUMMINGS FATHER IS STOCKPILING FOOD AT
HIS CASTLE (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Czech, afed: Protest in Exarchy -- The cop who killed Alexis
Grigoropoulos is at large. Athenian anarchists immediately
expressed disagreement. (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
In Jakarta on Friday, August 16, 2019, a young anarchist ended up at the police station
because the shirt he wore had, according to authorities, "an offensive image insulting the
police." He was attending a labor protest outside the city's Parliament Building. ----
According to local press, the person arrested was wearing a black T-shirt, stamped with a
police photo wearing shields and helmets, and in front of the police line a man urinating
and the inscription 'Fuck You'. ---- Most detained ---- During the protest, seven other
anarchists were arrested, accused by police of being part of the anarkosyndicalist group
"Anarko", which, according to authorities, is the group "suspected of being the brain
behind the destruction of various public facilities and vandalism in the protests. 2019
International Labor Day in Bandung last May. " Police also stated that "this group was not
allowed to hold a demonstration in front of the Parliament building."
Until the afternoon of Monday (19/08), the eight anarchists were still detained in a
Jakarta police station.
Related Contents:
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2019/05/22/indonesia-declaracao-da-frente-anti-fascista-de-bandung/
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2019/05/09/indonesia-young-anarchist-andgrown-by-policia-durante-o-may-day-bandung/
https://noticiasanarquistas.noblogs.org/post/2019/05/06/indonesia-updating-of-posio-and-apelo-a-solidariedade-internacional/
anarchist news agency-ana
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Message: 2
The Dictator's Handbook is both a deeply enlightening and a deeply frustrating book to
read. Not because it is badly written, or inaccessible, or because its main points are
wrong, but because it fails to follow through on its conclusions. This book is one of the
most theoretically coherent arguments against political authority I have ever read, but it
was written by a pair of authors who can not escape the limits of liberalism in dealing
with the implications of their own critique. ---- The main thesis of the book, neatly
summed up by its tag line, is that bad behaviour is almost always good politics. Its
analysis is consistently materialist, although the authors of The Dictator's Handbook
would likely never use the term and the book is thankfully free from the kind of overly
academic obtuseness that afflicts much avowed materialist analysis. It treats ideology as
entirely secondary to the systematic limits and incentives imposed by government. In the
same way that any good socialist might lay out the argument that the capitalist must
prioritise profit above all else if they are to be successful, the authors argue that any
successful politician or CEO must prioritise power above all else, including any
ideological commitment or well meaning benevolence they might have.
The authors spend much of the book talking about the techniques for gaining and holding
power across both dictatorship and democracy, which they consider not truly separate
systems but two points on a continuum, still affected by the same systematic incentives.
These techniques revolve around the creation and management of a coalition of essential
backers whose interests any leader is beholden to if they wish to stay in power.
The book is at its most cutting when it is using this framework to examine dictatorships.
It breaks down the idea that any dictatorship could ever be absolute and discusses the
ways in which gaining and maintaining the support of military, political, and economic
elites is necessary for any dictator to stay in power. The flip side of this is that
anyone who is not one of those essential backers is either a threat, someone to be
exploited to fill the pockets of those essential backers, or to be ignored. This analysis
utterly demolishes the concept of the benevolent dictator as a possibility. Benevolent
dictators take resources that could be going to their essential backers and spend it on
the people, and so will be replaced by those backers by someone more in line with their
interests.
The book is far weaker when it comes to its critique of democracy. It is not that the
critique is not there, but that the authors seem to back pedal from it when they shift
from talking about specific examples of a democracy to the concept of an ideal democracy.
The book is full of examples of corrupt and non-functional "democracies", but ends up
arguing in favour of an idealised version of democracy as the only available solution to
these woes.
The authors' argument is that democratic leaders are still engaged in a game of building
coalitions of essential backers, and must put their interests above the interests of the
rest of society. However, because this coalition of backers is much broader than that of a
dictator, democratic leaders are more inclined towards public goods which benefit everyone
as a method of serving their mass coalition as opposed to the often blatant corruption
used by dictators to serve their smaller, more elite coalition.
I think this oversells the advantages of a democracy. While it is likely true that the
need to secure a larger coalition has a restraining effect on democratic leaders, this
still allows majorities to inflict some pretty horrific abuse on minority groups. The idea
that certain kinds of public goods which are useful to a democratic leader's coalition
will also enrich those outside that coalition does not change the fact that there are a
lot of situations in which this simply is not the case, or that in many cases what the
majority wants is directly harmful to minorities.
The other problem with the authors' arguments is that it assumes that an ideal democracy
is in any way possible. They rightly base their analysis of dictatorship on rejecting the
idea of an ideal dictator whose authority is absolute and not beholden to anyone else, but
they do not question the ways in which democracies might systematically fail to be democratic.
This is partly due to ignoring factors outside of formal democracy that might affect the
importance of any particular backer. While in theory a warehouse worker and a media
magnate each only have one vote, in practice the support of the media magnate is worth far
more to any would-be democratic leader than that of a warehouse worker. They simply have
so much more economic, social and informal political power outside of the formal political
power of their vote.
But the authors also fail to ask about the limits of democracy as a practical method of
organisation. As the size of any organisation increases it will quickly get to a point
where its inner workings are so complex that not every important part of its governance
can be voted on in some kind of central assembly. At the size of states, the vast majority
of government decisions are made with little to no democratic oversight. Anyone living in
a modern democracy has very little democratic say over what their leaders do, other than
getting to vote them in or out every four or five years. Past that point leaders are often
fairly free to do whatever they want. The vast majority of the political and economic
apparatus that a democratic leader needs the cooperation of in order to rule effectively
is also not itself democratic.
All of this leaves me very suspicious of the author's idea of democracy. It often appears
to be talking about the incentives within a system that does not exist and cannot exist,
while those of us in real democracies are stuck in something far closer to a dictatorship;
its leaders susceptible to many of the perverse incentives towards corruption that the
book lays out.
The authors' acceptance of democracy as the best we can do regardless of its flaws shows a
depressing lack of imagination and daring. What their critique hammers home over and over
again is that a system in which positions of leadership are dependent on a subset of
essential backers will result in the exploitation of everyone else. This would imply that
at least looking at organisational forms which try to eliminate those positions altogether
would be a worthwhile pursuit.
But the book has no discussion of federal or networked organisational forms, or of
consensual decision making. There is no discussion of any possibility of an organisational
form that does not allow a coalition of essential backers to ride over the interests of
everyone else. The book shows no conception of organisation based on mutually agreed
compromise instead of arbitrary authority. It simply defaults to liberal democracy as the
furthest possible limit of inclusive organisation.
But this should not put any potential reader off The Dictator's Handbook. I have focussed
on my criticisms of the book, but I believe that the analytical framework it offers is
incredibly useful to anarchists and socialists more generally. The places it falls short
are doubly frustrating for the missed potential. It discusses many more interesting things
beside the core thesis I have discussed here; how the nature of the coalition of essential
backers affects and is affected by war, revolution, disaster relief, natural resources,
and much more.
All of this is coloured by liberal biases and an infuriating lack of political
imagination, but none of that detracts from the power of the basic framework presented by
The Dictator's Handbook. But it is up to the reader to take that framework and push it
past the liberal assumptions of its authors.
https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2019/08/19/pushing-up-against-the-boundaries-of-liberalism/
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Message: 3
Yes indeed after a weekend visit to the tea rooms at CHILLINGHAM CASTLE - family home of
SIR EDWARD WAKEFIELD, father in law to Dominic - we can report that stockpiles of food in
considerable quantities can. be seen stockpiled.
This will be the first case for our FOOD DISTRIBUTION GROUPS TO ACT ON.
We say it clearly now - we will redistribute this food as an example to others - BREAD
LAND AND LIBERTY
SIR EDWARD WILL BE FORCED TO PUBLICLY RECANT
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Message: 4
Around a thousand people gathered at night on August 1, 2019 in the Exarchia district of
Athens, where police killed a 15-year-old anarchist Alexandros Grigoropoulos in 2008. They
protested against the release of the cop who killed Alexis. The protest grew into street
clashes with the police. ---- A former police officer, Epaminondas Korkoneas, was released
from jail shortly before the Court of Appeal. He shortened his life sentence to thirteen
years, and since Korkoneas had already served a third, he was released. ---- After the
demonstration, the anarchists clashed with riot units, throwing molots, stones, as well as
tables and chairs from a nearby café. Two people were detained. ----------------- MEDIA
---- Some 30 hooded individuals clashed with police in the downtown Athens district of
Exarchia on Wednesday night, marring an otherwise peaceful protest over the release from
prison of a police officer who shot and killed a teenager in the area in 2008.
The assailants hurled Molotov cocktails, rocks, and tables and chairs from nearby bars at
a riot police squad stationed outside the office of the PASOK party on Harilaou Trikoupi.
No injuries were reported and two people have been arrested over the incident.
The violence came a couple of hours after a few dozen people had gathered a few streets
away, at the spot where 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot by police special guard
Epameinondas Korkoneas.
The gathering was organized to protest the latter's release from prison on Tuesday
following a decision by an appeals court in central Greece to reduce his life sentence to
13 years.
Korkoneas was released after having served one-third of his sentence under the provisions
of the new penal code introduced by the previous government during its last days in power.
There is a memorial at the location on the corner of Mesolongiou and Tzavela streets where
the killing took place on the night of December 6, 2008, an incident that sparked
widespread riots in Athens and other Greek cities.
http://www.ekathimerini.com/243192/article/ekathimerini/news/protest-rally-against-grigoropoulos-killers-release-marred-by-violence
https://www.afed.cz/text/7011/protest-v-exarchii
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