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From Z Communications - By Howard Zinn and Ziga Vodovnik

"History shows that whenever people have been living under tyranny,
people would rebel against that."

Howard Zinn, 85, is a Professor Emeritus of political science at Boston University. He was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1922 to a poor immigrant family. He realized early in his youth that the promise of the „American Dream", that will come true to all hard-working and diligent people, is just that - a promise and a dream. During World War II he joined US Air Force and served as a bombardier in the „European Theatre". This proved to be a formative experience that only strengthened his convictions that there is no such thing as a just war. It also revealed, once again, the real face of the socio-economic order, where the suffering and sacrifice of the ordinary people is always used only to higher the profits of the privileged few. Although he spent his youthful years helping his parents support the family by working in the shipyards, he started with studies at Columbia University after WWII, where he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in 1958. Later he was appointed as a chairman of the department of history and social sciences at Spelman College, an all-black women's college in Atlanta, GA, where he actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement. From the onset of the Vietnam War he was active within the emerging anti-war movement, and in the following years only stepped up his involvement in movements aspiring towards another, better world. Zinn is the author of more than 20 books, including A People's History of the United States that is "a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories..." (Library Journal) His most recent book is entitled A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, and is a fascinating collection of essays that Zinn wrote in the last couple of years. Beloved radical historian is still lecturing across the US and around the world, and is, with active participation and support of various progressive social movements continuing his struggle for free and just society.

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From Infoshop - By Brian Kvenvolden

Ants are not the deft little erectors, foragers, and soldiers people think they are. Actually they are quite inept at all of the skills people laud over them. Ants are not clever and quick, but ant colonies are.

Ant colonies solve problems that would be impossible for an individual ant to solve. Finding the most expeditious route to local food sources, the allocation of assignments to members of the colony, building structures, and defending territory from invaders are impossible tasks for an individual ant. While the individual may mishandle a situation, the colony remains responsive to its environment, making quick and effective decisions by using what is referred to as “emergent complexity.”

Emergent Complexity answers questions arising in nature, such as: How do the facile actions of individuals accumulate to form the complex behavior of groups? How do large numbers of animals make a critical decision, when many of them disagree? What empowers animals to coordinate their movements in precise, fleet and trenchant movements so as to act like a singular organism? This collective ability of each animal to contribute to the big picture without grasping what the big picture is, may have the appearance of the supernatural, until we start to unravel exactly how it is done.

From Third Party Watch - by Wayne Allyn Root

Recently a controversy has arisen over statements Mary Ruwart made in her book Short Answers to the Tough Questions regarding the rights children possess. The most salient quote on this subject is found on page 43 in her book:

Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it’s distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess; this is part of life.

And when given an opportunity to clarify her beliefs, Ms. Ruwart recently made it clear that she continues to be opposed to all age-of-consent laws, even in the case of pre-pubescent children. In a May 1, 2008 prepared statement posted on her website she states:

On Monday April 28th, 2008 Indigenous Warriors on Coast Salish Territory blocked a vital intersection used for commercial shipping to the United States. The action was done in solidarity with the Tyendinaga Mohawk community. Five Warriors from Tyendinaga had been arrested and attacked by the OPP days before. SWAT teams and paramilitary units were on Tyendinaga Territory surrounding dozens of other unarmed Warriors who were peacefully occupying a rock quarry claimed to be on their territory.



Solidarity actions also happened in Six Nations and Guelph. With the mounting pressure from coast to coast, and steadfast position of the Tyendinaga Mohawks the SWAT teams and paramilitary units left Tyendinaga Territory without additional attacks.
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On the night of May 7, 2008 we set fire to a Kiewitt & Sons work truck. Peter Kiewitt & Sons is currently working on expanding the Sea to Sky highway between Vancouver and Whistler, the main artery for the Olympics, also paving the way for investment into land exploitation, tourism and development. This is not the first act of resistance to PK+S and hopefully not the last; in 2007 people occupied eagle ridge bluffs to prevent its destruction by the Sea to Sky highway. PK+S filed an injunction causing the arrest of camp occupants and the imprisonment of Squamish elder and warrior Harriet Nahanne who died shortly after suffering illness in prison.

PK+S constructs the spaces that house many institutions of physical as well as social control including; air force and navy operations centers, mines, dams, highways, and industrial nuclear experimentation facilities. This act, for us, was an attack against repression and those who construct its systems.

Anonymous

John Zerzan, anti-civ anarchist writer and theorist will be giving 3 talks in Montreal on May 15, 16 and 18. In Montreal, there has been for several years a number of green anarchists of various persuasions, and a number of anarcho-communists or situationist and marxist inspired leftists that would rather that the green anarchists disappear.

With the appearance of the north eastern federation of anarcho-communists, an organisationalist, platformist group, the gulf between the non anarcho-communists and them tended to widen. Montreal's green-anarchists were found in groups such as Liberterre, and in the Mauvaise Herbe, which is still active as a green-anarchist group.

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From Telegraph UK - By Richard Dorment

Banksy - arncha sick of him? The first few times I saw graffiti by the mystery man from Bristol, I was struck by his bitter wit and sure sense of design and scale. But unlike, say, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Banksy's art didn't make the transition from public space to art gallery easily.

A one-line visual joke that made you smile when you saw it stencilled on to the 20ft-high wall of some grubby parking lot in East London wasn't nearly as funny transferred to a canvas hanging in a West End art gallery. That's because any graffiti artist worth his salt keeps both the image and the message simple enough to be grasped from the top of a moving bus.

From Anarkismo

Common Cause Hamilton participated by organizing several events. As part of the week long series of discussion groups and film screenings, we organized a showing of the documentary, Grass Through Concrete, which chronicles the hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful struggle to stop the building of a major highway through Hamilton's urban forest, the Red Hill Valley.

We also organized an anarchist discussion group called "Love, Rage, & Revolution; Exploring Anarchism in the City." Turnout was small for both events though we did connect with several people who we hadn't met before. The main event was the Street Festival held on May 3.

From the AP

ATHENS, Greece: Youths hurled petrol bombs at the offices of Greece's main opposition Socialist Party, damaging the entrance of the building in central Athens, police said early Saturday.

No one was hurt in the attack that occurred shortly before midnight Friday.

Police said about 30 youths threw at least 10 petrol bombs at the offices of the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement.

From The Spectator

Victoria Marie lights a cigarette on the porch of the E. Pender St. Catholic Worker house in Vancouver, British Columbia. Like Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, she enjoys a smoke on occasion. Her roommate, Sarah Bjorknas, just laughs. As roommates go, these two are as unlikely as they come. Marie is a Franciscan nun, Bjorknas is a Christian anarchist and a library worker. One committed to the Catholic faith, the other dedicated to rejecting structures of power.

The Catholic Worker movement was founded by Day and Peter Maurin on the belief that every person possesses god-given dignity. According to the organization’s Web site, catholicworker.org, they are “committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, and the Works of Mercy as a way of life.” The groups are committed to providing an environment where “the homeless, the hungry, and the forsaken would always be welcome.”