With my charming can-barely-use-the-can-opener techno-incompetence ever-increasingly integrated into what manifests as my ‘personality’, I have, surprisingly, managed to alter the settings on this blog so that comments should no longer automatically go to moderation.

As I recall the seemingly libertarian Mao line alluded to above has a third section, after the flowers blooming and the schools of thought contending or whatever: something about weeds still needing to be pulled up. Take note all, and especially anyone tempted to end their comment with the line: “Let’s see if you have the guts to publish this in the interest of debating the issue.” If you are considering such a dramatic sign-off, why not just conclude with a literary flourish to the effect that you are a moron, instead?

Those who have some familiarity with the marginalia of the history of the organised Lefts of the twentieth century may have heard of the ‘trotskyist’ tendency which formed around Argentinian Juan Posada - operating in Trotsky’s International from its inception and working closely with the more-famous Pablo-ists before eventually asserting the natural right of all Trotskyists to claim their own International, in this case the Fourth International (Posadist) formed in 1962.

The Posadists were legendary in the Trot micro-ecology for two positions. Firstly, they developed a remarkable enthusiasm for nuclear war, for a planetary atomic catastrophe which would herald the coming of socialism. Posada and his group actively urged the Soviets and Chinese to launch their missiles in preemptive attack, “preventative war”, declaring that “every button they press is part of the progress of history”.

From this attractive praxis - their ‘transitional program’ focussed on the tasks after the bomb, during the uprising which would begin, they said, mere minutes after the Big One - the Posadists moved to an even more original version of Leninism. After all, the Soviets did have the bomb, and the Chinese regime had declared that the USSR should have stood firm during the Cuban missile crisis even at the risk of nuclear war, noting that socialism could be built The Day After such a holocaust. The point is, at the height of the Cold War this bizarre version of politics intersected with wider realities that were also bizarre. In January 1955 Mao had written his text The Chinese People Cannot Be Cowed By The Atom Bomb, which informed all that

The United States cannot annihilate the Chinese nation with its small stack of atom bombs. Even if the US atom bombs were so powerful that, when dropped on China, they would make a hole right through the earth, or even blow it up, that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole, though it might be a major event for the solar system.

The other notable Posadist position, however, really set them apart from the entire organised Left, however widely defined. I refer, of course, to the position of the Posadists concerning flying saucers (a term with which they have been comfortable): “We must call upon beings from other planets when they come to intervene, to collaborate with the inhabitants of the Earth to overcome misery. We must launch a call on them to use their resources to help us.” As late as the eighties Posadists were complaining that Posada’s views on Flying Saucers and other proto-new-ageisms were not, at the time, well received: “All these problems met at the time, scepticism and irony on the part of the communist currents and the world proletarian movement, and also a certain incomprehension in the ranks of the Fourth International itself’.”

Well, yes, I imagine it would have.

Why do I raise this moment in revolutionary history? Not simply to make fun of a Trotocracy more outlandish than usual. No, this history has come to my mind recently because of recent experiences that are all-too-similar.

I am signed up to a certain e-list, the Green-Left Discussion list (see this for some dull discussion). A list whose participants vary from Green and Social Democrats, ALP Left types like Bob Gould, and (mostly, or most visibly) people supportive of Socialist Alliance. A lot of cheerleading for Cuba and Venezuela. A couple of other quasi-trotskyists. That is the spectrum.

Not, in other words, my natural habitat.

Now, there is one consistent contributor to this list whose expressed positions are in many ways closer to my own than those of the positions more usually expressed: he has a strong critique of national liberation movements, of Chavez’ Bolivarian revolution as centred on the projects of a section of capital, of nationalism in all its forms, of the ’state capitalist Left’ (his sometime term). While I may not always agree with the details of his positions, he does approximate left-com or similar positions on many issues, which I find relatively congenial.

At the same time, and this is the key point, when regular participants in discussions of just these pkind of issues become impatient with the writer in question, they sometimes make fun of the fact that he believes in UFOs. Which it seems he does. Very strongly.

As Nick pointed out to me in conversation some time ago, UFO abduction stories sometimes reflect the kind of culture in which people are more comfortable claiming (to others or themselves) that they have been seized by aliens than they are admitting that another interpretation is possible of the available facts: went out drinking/taking drugs, lost some time, have vague memories of lights and maybe some kind of fight, woke up in an alley without any pants on. Bloody aliens. I’m sick of that happening.

Obviously this does not exhaust the phenomenon. People have other reasons. But, as I prefer to believe I need hardly point out, there are no aliens from space hanging around.

Which makes the turn to UFO discussion, every time some lefty decides to pick on Nemo, pretty horrible.

That is all for now, but I intend to think about this some more.

Anyway, as Carl Schmitt said:

Humanity as such cannot wage war because it has no enemy, at least not on this planet. The concept of humanity excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy does not cease to be a human being–and hence there is no specific differentiation in that concept. That wars are waged in the name of humanity is not a contradiction of this simple truth; quite the contrary, it has an especially intensive political meaning. When a state fights its political enemy in the name of humanity, it is not a war for the sake of humanity, but a war wherein a particular state seeks to usurp a universal concept against its military opponent. At the expense of its opponent, it tries to identify itself with humanity in the same way as one can misuse peace, justice, progress, and civilization in order to claim these as one’s own and to deny the same to the enemy.

So the repression goes on and on after the anti-G20 events, including newspapers prominently reproducing many photos of people the cops want to ‘get’ and inviting the public to assist. I seem to recall British tabloids running a similar get-the-troublemakers photo display after certain anti-Poll Tax events in Trafalgar Square, with, if I recall, some very bad consequences. (Of course the events in question were on a somewhat grander scale and part of movements of somewhat greater significance, but this is Australia 2007 and that’s what there is.)

Most of the Left apparently believe that ’solidarity’ means yelling ‘it was them, officer, not me’. Thus it is up to slightly more radical types, really, to start to ask what might be done. Maybe even do it. A fundraiser is organised in Sydney for this Wednesday, and a group has formed in Melbourne, we are informed, to act in solidarity with those being or likely to be subjected to unpleasant state attentions since the anti-G20 actions last November. Though seemingly untitled, the group has released the statement below, which I first saw here. In addition to the phone number given at the bottom of the media statement, those interested in opposing the media-police/corporate-state alliance-for-repression can apparently call 0408 307 722. I haven’t had a chance yet.

I don’t think much of the politics expressed in the media statement, which seem hauntingly similar to the kind of liberal democratic twaddle I projectile vomitted around the media landscape for years during my last ‘defence campaign’. (A text I helped publish was banned and we were charged with producing and distributing a publication which ‘instructed in crime or violence’: after upholding the ban, the Federal Court proceeded to repeatedly publish the entire text in publicly-available legal documentation and on its website - far wider distribution than we had managed at the time we were initially arrested.)

Media Release 18th January
OPERATION SALVER: A CRACKDOWN ON THE RIGHT TO PROTEST

Protests are an important part of participatory democracy. The aim of the arrests and house searches that have followed the G-20 protests is to intimidate a group of young politically engaged people and stifle dissent more generally.

The laying of charges such as riot and affray constitutes a gross over-reaction by police, in the face of what was overwhelmingly a peaceful demonstration. Police have described their investigation – Operation Salver – as being concerned with ‘the upper end of criminality’. This statement is so exaggerated as to be absurd.

In fact, the intimidation and mass arrests which have followed last November’s G-20 protests is part of a wider process of the criminalisation of protest and the silencing of political opposition.

The protests surrounding the November meeting aimed to highlight issues discussed at forums such as G-20, where decisions are made about war, poverty, labour rights and climate change that impact on the planet and its people.

The G-20 protests were widely reported as being a raucous affair that, on occasion, tipped over into violence. Coverage of the protests has often been tinged with hysteria, and rumour has consistently been reported as fact.

In contrast to inflated and often inaccurate depictions of ‘protestor violence’, media coverage has overwhelmingly failed to mention or acknowledge the violence and excessive force used by police over the course of the weekend.

The posting of peoples’ photos along with the caption ‘Taskforce Salver’ and alongside media articles on the violence of the protests implies that those people are guilty or are implicated in actions, where they may not necessarily be facing any charges.

While police have yet to reveal whether the 28 people are witnesses or stated offenders, they are named on the Crime Stoppers website as ‘most wanted’. This implication of guilt has potentially severe consequences for the civil liberties and rights of those identified.

We refute the argument of Detective Superintendent Richard Grant of the Salver Task force that ‘Victoria police respect the rights of individuals and the community to protest and express their opinions lawfully’, as on many occasions peaceful protestors were treated with excessive force and prevented from lawfully protesting outside.

In particular, the peaceful protest outside Melbourne Museum on the Sunday was broken up by police with extreme and well-documented violence that left many injured, with one woman so badly hurt she required hospitalisation.

This media release was written by a collective in support of G20 arrestees.

For further comment contact: Jonathon Collerson 0438136093

I’m going to start posting here my notes for a piece on the involvement of Australian universities in activities related to assisting in the development of more ‘effective’ military and intelligence agencies.

Given the ever-developing forms of subsumption of universities into capital, militarization cannot really be discussed separate from processes of commodification and commercialization in institutions of education and research. Nor can such militarization be understood divorced from the newer forms of integration of military, policing and intelligence activities, as part of ambitious projects of expansion and reorientation of systems of surveillance and control manifest in the War on Terror and the ‘revolution in military affairs’. The goal centres on massive and high tech expansion of intelligence and surveillance integrated with equally high-tech reorganization of communications, intended to make possible new practices of warfare and social control - reconstituting if not collapsing any distinction between them. Such, at least, is the more-or-less declared intent to which enormous energies and capital are being devoted.

The relation of Australian universities to this set of interrelated projects is not widely understood, and it is this which I intend to document.

The world biggest media stunt.

When planes were hitting the World Trade Center, I was sitting on the seventeenth floor of a Brunswick Street Housing Commission high-rise watching it on cable TV news, from a bit before the second plane hit anyway. And one of the things I most remember is that for over an hour of the hours I watched the network concerned kept repeating an ‘unconfirmed report’ that the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) was responsible. The proposal seemed a bit ridiculous since the DFLP has a reputation in part defined as a group that opposed plane hijackings and pretty much all international armed actions by groups within the ‘Palestinian national movement’. But nonetheless, for some time the world was being told that this smallish Palestinian group had launched these attacks.

With less illusions than Mustapha Khayati.

Palestinian groups most prominent in the seventies, overwhelmingly secular, nationalist, in some senses leftist, are often taken to be the inspiration for Monty Python’s oh-so-unamusing portrayal of a proliferation of similarly named anti-Roman groups in ‘Life of Brian’ - the Judean People’s Front, the People’s Front of Judea, etcetera. The reasons for this are quite simple: in the late sixties a number of groups, tendencies and individuals, some emerging from within the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), joined together to form an alternative to the Fatah bloc associated with Arafat. These groups were each more radical than Fatah in some, and not always the same, sense. The new group was called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The new group was unstable, however, and within a couple of years groups were leaving, pretty much along the lines that had existed before they had joined together. However, since the PFLP has succeeded in making somewhat of an impression by then, they didn’t take up their old names or become anonymous. Instead they took up versions of the PFLP title: the DFLP was an early split, at first called the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP) before dropping ‘Popular’.

The PFLP-General Command - another (and in many ways the most right-wing) of the central three tendencies to have emerged from within the original PFLP alliance, made the global corporate media last year when it was reported that the group was working with Hezbollah to fire rockets at Israel during the latter’s incursion into Lebanon.

The other reason for the proliferation of similar names is that some people and groups would use a different name almost every time they undertook an armed action. I’m looking at you, Carlos.

Along with the Palestinian Communist Party (now the Palestinian Peoples Party) these groups made up the central organised Left opposition within the PLO, and working together were in many ways key components of the first Intifada.

Now, I’ve been a bit unwell recently, for a few reasons, so I started a project I could undertake mostly over the net: a project of writing about the left and radical scenes in Israel and Palestine, centred on a series of e-mail interviews I’m setting up.

So far I have interviews lined up with people within the Anarchists Against the Wall group, within the previously mentioned Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and within the Organization for Democratic Action (ODA), the lefty group responsible for Challenge magazine. I am trying to set up interviews with a couple of other groups, and especially with someone who can talk from within the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) - which overall would give me an interesting spread of the organised Left anyway. (I don’t equate Left and radical, nor organised Left and Left for that matter: this is not all I’m doing, but it is an important part.)

Now the DFLP, and even more so the PFLP if I get an interview, is a banned organisation in many places, labelled terrorist, certainly an armed group which believes in armed struggle, or rather a party with an armed wing. What I am looking for is a way to ask about questions of daily life, organisation, struggle and violence that gets beyond propaganda, condemnation, glorification etcetera. I’m interested in neither internationalism-as-cheerleading-for-various-nationalisms nor solidarity-as-fetishism-of-exotic-third-world-movements. I am, however, interested in finding a way to discuss, not just what distinguishes the analyses and official policies of the DFLP and PFLP, but the forms of life at play. And I am not that happy with this aspect of my preparation so far, or even my ability to communicate what I groping toward: just a micro-fragment of what I am after is captured in the (oft-quoted in bowdleried form) comments a few years ago by Rabah Mohanna of the PFLP about not merely suicide bombing by Palestinians, but the meaning of having organisations institutionalise a process of recruitment, management and deployment of people for this form of death, the meaning of the culture produced. Though his comments were notable as evincing some horror and disgust, which is why they were quoted so much, they also showed a convergence of analysis of tactics, warfare and the CONTENT of politics. I was actually supposed to interview Mohanna a couple of years ago and was interrupted so it never happened, which is one of those things I regret. Anyway, I am going to try again.

If anyone has suggestions…?

Up-date, 19 January.

I am now in discussion with the ‘Internet team’ of the Communist Party of Israel about organising an interview with Dr Dov Khenin, a member of both the Knesset (Israeli parliament) and the Central Committee of the Communist Party. For what it is worth, the Jewish-Arab list run by the coalition in which the CPI plays the major role, the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (DFPE), received 86,000 votes in the March 2006 elections to the Knesset, increasing its representation in that parliament from two to three, out of one hundred and twenty.

Again, if there is anything that anyone thinks it would be interesting to discuss, I’m open to suggestions.

It has come to my attention that some people have recently been visiting this blog. In order to deal with this problem, I’m going to detail one of the dullest exchanges in the history of the Net. I’m going to be thorough and it is going to be painful.

After the anti-G20 events in Melbourne of November last year, I was involved in an argument of sorts with people on the Green Left discussion list, primarily people in the intersecting geometry of the Socialist Alliance/DSP/Resistance/Green Left Weekly. For some context, see http://arushandapush.blogsome.com/, and everything at the StopstopG20 affinity group’s webite at http://stopg20.blogsome.com/.

Let’s start with Dave Riley, a Socialist Alliance activist who mostly seems to stick with the line. Discussing the ‘violent’ actions being attributed to ‘Arterial Bloc’, Dave commented:

“Well I think the whole point about this bout of ultraleftism in melb was that it was done behind the backs of the protest organisers and
treated that group of hard working activists who worked to democratically resolve all issues impacting on the protest and who worked hard to bring out the numbers — this process was treated with total disdain. And acting as a law unto themselves they then expect these people, these thousands who protested, to wear the consequences of their manic indulgences and left the whole movement open to further police harrassment and state crack down.

“It is not a esoteric debate about tactics at all really because these actions fly in the face of how we all try to foster and create all
movements for social change.”

Nice one Dave. And needless to say this fit in with the thrust of virtually everything that appeared on this discussion list, an echo chamber for most of the organised Left’s hostility to the Arterial Bloc’.

Just for the sake of argument, I replied. I know: there are worse things in the world than boredom, but why bring it upon yourself on purpose? Nonetheless, I decided that though a frontal assault on the political assumptions of those on the Green Left list would be a vertical struggle indeed, it might be possible to prise open a little space by contesting some of the ‘facts’ in evidence. Thus my reply:

“Dave

“Nothing was done ‘behind the backs’ of anyone, assuming by ‘the protest organisers’ you mean those in the StopG20 meetings. The Arterial Bloc call-out was public and widely distributed well before the event, and was pretty explicit about the kind of ‘direct action’ involved, and those involved were even clearer in conversation. Organising meetings of the Arterial Bloc in this context were announced at stopG20 spokescouncils in the period immediately before the G20, where again the kinds of action the Arterial Bloc may undertake were fairly explicitly discussed. The Arterial Bloc were even listed on the StopG20 website with again some indication of what they had in mind.

“The tone of the spokescouncil I have in mind was that the Carnival Beyond Capitalism was to be a ‘Community Safe Space’ designed to be conflict-free and also the end-point of the march from the State Library, and so anyone wanting to undertake more confrontational
tactics was requested to do so at some remove. That such people existed was explicitly acknowledged and no-one argued that they were not under the StopG20 umbrella, or that only ‘non-violent’ actions were part of StopG20.

“The claims of people claiming to speak for StopG20 (or as StopG20 participants) that the Arterial Bloc were somehow separate from StopG20 in some way distinct from the organisational independence of any other affinity group were made later and in a spirit of
dishonesty and hypocrisy.

“I remember the lead-up to S11, by the way, when the DSP was arguing against attempting to blockade or shut down the World Economic Forum. We were ultraleftists for wishing to do so. The situations are hardly identical, of course: the point is that accusations of
‘ultraleftism’ are not very interesting in themselves, and are often thrown around a lot by any group or individual confronted by anyone more militant or radical than themselves.

“Benjamin”

Dave wasn’t very interested in discussing most of this, but he had a question for me:

“So how WERE YOU more militant or more radical than these others? I’d like to know. Maybe you can outline for this list the tactics that you thought were useful in regard against the approach of these others who were not –as you suggest — as militant nor as radical as yourself.”

That was the entire response of Dave Riley. None of the other people who had repeated the same kind of thing as Dave felt a need to respond either, comfortable with their, well, complacency I guess. Or just busy with other things, who knows?

Anyway, Resistance, the youth group of the DSP, then put out a statement:

Statement on G20 protest

Resistance, socialist youth organisation www.resistance.org.au

On November 18, upwards of 3000 people marched through the streets of Melbourne to protest the meeting of the G20. The rally was organised by the StopG20 Collective and the Stop the War Coalition, in which Resistance participated both in organising and publicising.

The protest was directed at some of the biggest war criminals in the war in particular Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank, Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Treasurer Peter Costello, key figures in the Coalition of the Killing, and directly responsible for the deaths of over 650,000 in Iraq alone.

Their discussions, carried out in secret behind closed doors, were aimed at further enforcing pro-corporate policies which have been responsible for the starvation and impoverishment of millions around the world and the increasing endangerment of humanity as a whole, particularly through policies that perpetuate environmental
destruction.

The size and mood of the rally is testament to the growing opposition to the policies of the rich G20 nations.

This was despite the corporate media beat-up in the week leading up to the protest about the likelihood of violence, and attempts to derail it - including multi-millionaire Bono whose concert message was focussed on charity not change, and the Make Poverty History events that were specifically aimed at providing a nice gloss to the
attempts by the G20 to look like it was doing something for the world’s poor.

Unsurprisingly, the corporate media covered none of this. Instead, as always it preferred to focus on a small group – Arterial Bloc – and the so-called riots which, at most, amounted to a few broken windows.

The corporate media hypocrisy is clear – focus on the tiny bit of damage to private property and ignore the policies of death beginning discussed behind closed doors.

The reason why is also clear – since the Seattle protests in 1999, which prevented the World Trade Organisation from reaching agreement on a new set of trade rules to impoverish the Third World, the global justice movement has grown. The S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum in 2000 and the M1 blockades of stock exchanges in
2001 spurred on this movement in Australia, helping to discredit these capitalist institutions and their “solutions” to global poverty

That is why the media refused to cover the protest, or report on what went on inside (where it was largely barred) and why it kept a low profile of the key warmongers such as Wolfowitz. It is little wonder that an 67% of people responded “no'’ to an Age poll question, “Did the G20 summit achieve anything'’ two days after the protest.

Resistance rejects the corporate media and government arguments against the protest. Importantly we must defend all activists against the campaign of victimization and sweeping up of activists post-rally. All those arrested must be supported, particularly the extremely worrying case of Akim Sari, who has been denied bail until a court hearing next February. This sets a very dangerous precedent.

The brutal attacks by the police against peaceful protesters on the night of November 18, and the following day against peaceful protests outside the Museum, demonstrate on which side the real violence lies.

But this shouldn’t stop the movement from having an honest discussion about tactics. Having played a part in initiating and organising the G20 protest, we do not think Arterial Bloc played a constructive role. Covering their faces, acting in an undemocratic manner and isolating themselves from the majority at the rally, their decision to skirmish with the police played into the hands of the right-wing media and G20 spokespersons, such as Costello.

Resistance is also not opposed to civil disobedience. In fact we, along with many others, helped make the S11 blockade the success that it was, and initiated the M1 protests. But civil disobedience is only a tactic, and its usefulness, or otherwise, has to be judged on whether or not it helps or hinders in building the movement. That is the reason why we criticize the actions of the Arterial Bloc.

Because if we’re serious about building a movement to overthrow the system that G20 wants to prop up - capitalism - we have to win the working class majority to our side, and we’re some way from that.

Carrying out tiny “militant” actions such those of the Arterial Bloc, give a free kick to the real thugs – those holed up inside the G20 meeting.

We have no control over the corporate media, but we are not so naive as to not take into account that the coverage will have an impact on working people, and whether they will be prepared to join us at the next protest or not. We know that the corporate media will always seek to marginalise us, and that scuffles with the state will take
priority in their reporting over a peaceful protest of working people against the corporate rich. Similarly, the government will use such actions to push through more draconian state terror laws.

This is not an argument against civil disobedience: as a tactic it can be indispensable when used correctly - when it helps build and inspire a mass protest to become even bigger. In this particular instance the actions Arterial Block did nothing of the sort.

The global justice movement is naturally going to be diverse; but the movement also has to take some responsibility for its actions and work out what helps its growth and what doesn’t. The debate over tactics is useful as long as it stays concrete, and lessons can be learnt from G20 that can be carried into the discussion that has already started about the Stop Bush protest at APEC in Sydney next year.

Well, not the worst statement put out after the G20 (that award goes to Mick Armstrong of Socialist Alternative - by contrast the group Solidarity at least showed some). After the Resistance statement was posted on the Green Left list, I made the following comment:

“The ‘Statement on G20 protest’ put out by Resistance states that the Arterial Bloc acted in an ‘undemocratic’ manner, a theme which also appeared in Dave Riley’s posts on
anti-G20 events. I was wondering if anyone is willing to explain what they mean by ‘undemocratic’ in this context. It is one thing to debate goals, strategies, tactics, but I wonder what definition of ‘democratic’ other people were answerable to while Arterial Bloc can be said to have ignored it.

“This is a serious question: I honestly don’t know what is meant.

“I tried to ask Dave, quite specificly [sic] in relation to the way in which anti-g20 events seemed to have been organised and occurred, but he didn’t seem inclined to meaningfully respond or back up his statements. But there must be others from Resistance, for example, who might care to explain what is meant.

“Benjamin”

This time another Green Left-ist replied, Fred, who set me straight about what was meant by ‘undemocratic’:

“How about taking actions that could endanger the safety of all protesters yet in no way attempting to consult with the several thousand people who were also present on the march. Given the idea was a peaceful march down to the Hyatt, what the overwhelming majority of the crowd came for and what had been organised for at the time, i would imagine that any group - and not just the arterial bloc - should be accountable to the rest of demonstration in regards to their actions.

“If they want to carry out their juvenile actions elsewhere, well so be, but when they come to a rally and carry out actions that put everyone at risk of police violence, the least they could do is act in a democratic manner, that is actually argue out why there actions should be supported by and involve everyone present.”

Tireless if not not pathetic, I replied:

“Fred

“But Arterial Bloc were entirely public about their intentions in almost every conceivable way for weeks prior to the event, it was spoken about at Stopg20 meetings and spokescouncils and appeared on the Stopg20 website, and at a Stopg20 spokescouncil just prior to the event there was no decision that the whole rally should be ‘peaceful’ but rather a recognition, clear and explicit, that people may desire to pursue a variety of ways to protest/resist/whatever the g20 meeting and that thus people/affinity groups who wished to initiate or be involved in potentially conflictual activities should maybe keep themselves a bit spatially separate from the ’safe community space’. Thus the Stopg20 spokescouncil involved substantial recognition of a desire precisely that Arterial Bloc should be ’separate’ from the rest of the protest in ways which precisely would not have involved their having to subordinate themselves to the preferred tactics of other organisers or the presumed desires of people involved in other activities - but this request also would have made it more difficult and in many ways a violation of the request of others for Arterial Bloc to have substantially involved others in their processes of decision-making.

“However, all involved in the Stopg20 spokescouncil at least were invited to the Arterial Bloc organising meeting prior to the anti-g20 events and were free to go and be a part of decisions about what to do, in a context where the kind of intent represented by the Arterial Bloc was clear.

“Very clear.

“Well in advance.

“Widely promoted.

“As part of the Stopg20.

“In other words, the explicit form of organisation preferred by eg. the Stopg20 recognised NO imperative that groups or individuals all agree on anything to do with peacefulness or any idea of democracy or any decision-making process of ‘official organisers’. Any suggestion otherwise - like any suggestion that Arterial Bloc were somehow more ‘outside’ of Stopg20 than other affinity groups - arose entirely AFTER the anti-g20 events so far as I can tell.

“But hey maybe none of that is relevant - it just seems like a bit relevant to these kind of suggestions about ‘undemocratic’ behaviour (as a criticism, that is - myself I don’t have a problem with ‘undemocratic’ behaviour per se).

“Rohan’s response, based on related assumptions of ‘majority protester opinion’, and on assumptions about the relation of this to political activity that were NOT prevalent in Stopg20 so far as I can tell, is otherwise mostly just rhetoric, not discussion.

“All the best,

“Benjamin”

Oh yeah, rohan’s response. Pretty much the same kind of thing, but if anyone is really interested and wants me to I will track it down and post it here too. Ah, the cut and thrust of real intellectual debate.