OPEN LETTER TO DISSENT - from an Anarchist Federation member

[Top Dog]

Quite a difference between that and being a complete wuss by rolling over and letting the Trots walk over you,though, isn't it?

oh... dear...

 

[charlie mowbray]

"Don't roll those bloodshoot eyes at me"

Bloodshot Eyes by either Wynonie Harris if you like jump blues or Hank Penny if you like Western swing

 

[In Bloom]

Quite a difference between that and being a complete wuss by rolling over and letting the Trots walk over you,though, isn't it?

Que?

 

[Top Dog]

He's having a pop at me, In Bloom. However inaccurately or pointless

 

[charlie mowbray]

Fun though! especially when you start getting jittery!!
Oh, and not inaccurate, I believe.

 

[Top Dog]

especially when you start getting jittery!!

Que?

Oh, and not inaccurate, I believe.

but all you've done so far is a bit of name calling

...you never did get round to answer any of the points i made several posts back. But if you wanna revisit the whole boring subject fine by me...

You never know, it might mean you get a long overdue 'open' letter of resignation. Then we might see who gets jittery

 

[free spirit]

winjer

Originally Posted by free spirit
'because until bob geldof caused edinburgh council to shit themselves by calling for a million people to head to the g8 they had no plans to run a campsite'

Utter bollocks, the council were planning to provide camping in Niddrie long before Geldof called for anything.

ok - i accept I'm not sure exactly what edinburgh council had been planning when, and they probably had been working on campsite plans prior to geldofs announcement. What i guess i should have put was that afaik dissent weren't aware that anyone else was 100% confirmed to be sorting out campsite accomodation for people, or numbers, or any details until just after geldofs announcement, though i think some people had heard something about this being an unconfirmed possiblity.

maybe you're right, maybe everyone involved in dissent would have been better off relying on the council to sort everything out for us, leaving more time for bickering endlessly...

 

[catch]

I wasn't. I must admit i'd not known about the history of TAZ as stated here,

I think you've misunderstood my post. I don't think anything can be autonomous under capitalism. If your definition is

by the people for the people, with the minimum of involvement form the authorities

then that's a loose enough definition to be meaningless. What "autonomous" often means a sense of liberty devoid of social content, independence rather than freedom; personalistic, atomised; the sort of liberty that sits very well under capitalism since it doesn't offer any real challenge as either a concept or practice. Bey discounts any possibility of social revolution in Temporary Autonomous Zone.

or are you saying that only facists are capable of organising TAZ's? or that anyone organising a TAZ must be a facist...

I didn't call Bey a fascist, I called him a paedophilic fascist sympathiser. Despite promoting those views he's widely accepted as a lifestyle anarchist, his books are printed by (the otherwise excellent) AK Press etc. etc. So those who use the term I wouldn't call fascists, I'd call them other things though.

ok i'll admit it, I imagined it all

You didn't imagine the campsite, but the idea that the campsite was somehow separate from the capitalist society we live in, autonomous from it, that's fantasy, yes.

 

[rednblack]

You didn't imagine the campsite, but the idea that the campsite was somehow separate from the capitalist society we live in, autonomous from it, that's fantasy, yes.

and a dangerous fantasy at that, the state would love it if all libertarian minded people took themselves of to a "self organised commune" or whatever...

 

[free spirit]

Autonomy.... In politics, a self-governing city or region... according to wickipedia

this would be my understanding of the meaning of the word, and in that sense we operated as aunomously as we could do within the framework of the capitalist state controlled society we live in. Yes we had to deal with the authorities, buy and rent equipment for the site, and didn't grow our own food etc. but the point i was trying to make was that we ran these spaces as autonomously as we could do, which was a vastly different way of operating than the edinburgh site IMHO.

and a dangerous fantasy at that, the state would love it if all libertarian minded people took themselves of to a "self organised commune" or whatever...

I'm not quite sure i agree with you, but in any case this wasn't what I or Dissent were advocating, we were merely wanting to create a safe self managed space for people to come to for the period of the G8 protests.

Actually thinking about it, most of the examples I can think of would seem to indicate that the state doesn't like self organised communes or whatever...

And I was thinking about this afterwards, and it occurred to me, that in the
context of years and years (decades?) of defeats, any success, no matter how minor or insignificant would be seized upon, publicised and gloried in.

And the only success I can think of was the G8 protests. Now I can understand that it is not the kind of social struggle that people want, that it was transient, perhaps periperhal etc etc, yet within its own (perhaps limited terms) it did succeed.

So I just think it is weird, that so much time and enegry is spent running it down, as if summit protests were the problem. They aren't.

My thoughts exactly Sovietpop, the government deliberately put the G8 in the most inaccessible place possible in the belief that this would stop people being able to protest, yet we (and I don't just mean Dissent) managed to get thousands of people up there protesting and forcing them to have to bring in reinforcements via chinook helicopters to protect the meeting.

OK so we didn't shut the meeting down completely, or change the world, but we at least showed that we weren't going to take this shit lieing down.

 

[charlie mowbray]

Que?


but all you've done so far is a bit of name calling

...you never did get round to answer any of the points i made several posts back. But if you wanna revisit the whole boring subject fine by me...

You never know, it might mean you get a long overdue 'open' letter of resignation. Then we might see who gets jittery

I've got absolutely nothing to get jittery about ( in your dreams)

 

[cats hammers]

I s'pose Jack "Cock" Upton will make a big deal about it , though.

Because, of course, selling a paedophiles literature isn't a big deal.

 

[charlie mowbray]

Cock

 

[rednblack]

Because, of course, selling a paedophiles literature isn't a big deal.

it's a mistake, but tbh it's about as big a deal as 5 trots going to an anarchist conference...