Bellaciao Collective in Great Britain

Forum posts

• 5 October 2005, 19:20

  "We believe that it is possible to view our experiences from a European perspective, and bring together the best of the diverse political situations in which we are active."

  It’s fine that you want a left-leaning group that espouses a european perspective, but you fail in the diversity.

  • 5 October 2005, 21:20

    The right wing of course controls all the television and newsprint and allows very little which is critical of the system to appear on their vast empire ofmedia pages and tv stations.
    So Bellaciao are quite right to be sensitive to the mischief making intrusions of the right and to keep them out, thus ensuring that the left here at least has a monoply of space, such space being totally denied to it in the capitalist - ususally lying - corporate press.
    To those righwingers - go write for the corporate press. You will find a welcome there

    TIm Helmon

  • 5 October 2005, 23:11

    You are my pick of the year.

    Keep up the good work.

    I am really glad that you are here.

• 6 October 2005, 12:56

  Thank you for providing this forum.

  In this day, many have a political agenda. In America, George Washington warned the citizens of his day not to get too caught up in the jealousies and antagonisms that seek to divide their nation.

  Europeans/Italians may not be aware of some words spoken by an American revolutionary on this subject. The subject of unity and liberty, regardless of left and right positions. He made this very clear. Wether or not this is helpfull to the European left, I cannot say.

  Very few Americans are aware of this unfortunately, and thus they have created the monster of the duopoly. Is it any wonder why presidential candidates from third parties would be arrested for trying to serve a court order to show cause to the CPD(a monopolized republican/democrat concoction).

  I suppose those reactionaries who fall on the old standby "anti-american" might think George Washington was also anti-american for supporting the diffusion of knowledge. The next time you hear an American pseudo-patriot regurgitate "anti-american" ad-nauseum, remember Washington’s warning and share it with them. Washington would want them to be enlightened, not despised for their ignorance.

  ---

  Excerpts from the Farewell Address of President George Washington

  Sept. 17, 1796

  " The name of american, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the Independence and Liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts, of common dangers, sufferings, and successes."

  [..]

  "While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in Union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from Union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighbouring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty. In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other."

  [..]

  All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

  However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

  [..]

  "One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the constitution, alterations, which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown."

  [..]

  I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

  This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

  The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

  Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

  It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

  [..]

  It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution, in those intrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the Guardian of the Public Weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way, which the constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for, though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.

  [..]

  Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

  Full Text

  http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/washbye.html

  ---

  • 7 October 2005, 12:08

    George Washington was a farmer, a hemp farmer: reading the above, it would seem he was smoking the stuff.