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[perhaps the horse can sing]

Maybe he did hear voices, if I recall the tinfoilers used to say Nixon thought his dog could talk to him

One day, while Nasreddin was visiting the capital city, the Sultan took offense to a joke that was made at his expense. He had Nasreddin immediately arrested and imprisoned; accusing him of heresy and sedition. Nasreddin apologized to the Sultan for his joke, and begged for his life; but the Sultan remained obstinate, and in his anger, sentenced Nasreddin to be beheaded the following day. When Nasreddin was brought out the next morning, he addressed the Sultan, saying "Oh Sultan, live forever! You know me to be a skilled teacher, the greatest in your kingdom. If you will but delay my sentence for one year, I will teach your favorite horse to sing."

The Sultan did not believe that such a thing was possible; but his anger had cooled, and he was amused by the audacity of Nasreddin's claim. "Very well," replied the Sultan, "you will have a year. But if by the end of that year you have not taught my favorite horse to sing, then you will wish you had been beheaded today."

That evening, Nasreddin's friends were allowed to visit him in prison, and found him in unexpected good spirits. "How can you be so happy?" they asked. "Do you really believe that you can teach the Sultan's horse to sing?" "Of course not," replied Nasreddin, "but I now have a year which I did not have yesterday; and much can happen in that time. The Sultan may come to repent of his anger, and release me. He may die in battle or of illness, and it is traditional for a successor to pardon all prisoners upon taking office. He may be overthrown by another faction, and again, it is traditional for prisoners to be released at such a time. Or the horse may die, in which case the Sultan will be obliged to release me."
"Finally," said Nasreddin, "even if none of those things come to pass, perhaps the horse can sing."

Come on folks, a sense of proportion please.

WBC is a small group of extremists, basically a large family, that picket US service personnel funerals and basically spend their lives acting like complete douche bags. They love getting taken to court, they love being hated. I sent a donation to the Patriot Guard Riders a couple of years back so they could buy some gas and ride out to funerals and blockade the WBC nutters.

Whilst repugnant the WBC hardly seems to be representative of anything other than the narrowest of narrow minded hate mentality. They cower behind the First Amendment. Here in the UK they would be prevented from publishing such vitriol because of our 'incitement' laws, which try and balance the right to free speech with the responsibility to not shout fire in a crowded room.

I doubt Robert Anton Wilson would be surprised by that reading list. Reading only that which reinforces your prejudices, and failing to take in other viewpoints, is a recipe for closed mindedness. Unfortunately in this case it seems that the individual was working with a faulty processor, and rather than getting clarity was instead locked into a fucked up ego fueled delusion. The media pundits and rent-a-expert will fill the airwaves with psychoanalysis for months to come.

Remember that Philip K Dick, Robert Anton Wilson and Kerry Thornley all navigated the labyrinth of Chapel Perilous. Dick received a cosmic message and produced the Exegesis, VALIS etc; RAW became an ultra-agnostic; and Thornley went from seeing everyone as a friend to fearing everyone as an enemy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQczen4rECY

Uncle Bob talks about Anarchism.

Why is this so much more important than a cop getting shot, of a mother or a father?

Because all victims are equal, but some victims are more equal than others  

Political violence is nothing new, and this is just the latest expression of it. Debate is much simpler when you kill your opponents, you get to win the argument by the simple expedient of replacing 1-person 1-vote with 1-bullet 1-vote, the ammo box speaks louder than the ballot box.

It may well turn out that the shooter is some delusional loner, sitting at home with his twisted logic and right-man complex. And whilst people of the Left and Right argue ad infinitum on the web about his political affiliation the truth (if we can ever get close to it) may be that he created his own fantasy world, lost his connection with other people, and that this is a result partly of our increasing isolation from each other as a society and as human beings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO7tGOr2NU0

Old Bob seems to have this down.

It may be a problem of language, with the accepted political/philosophical use of Anarchy and Anarchism having been subsumed by the modern use of the term.

I use the term in relation to Bakunin, Goldman, Makhno (and Revolutionary Army of Ukraine), Durruti, Joe Hill etc. The modern usage seems mostly to in relation to brick throwing youths and failed third world states. This, for me, is like confusing Communism with Stalinism.

A PC Huck Finn, the literary equivalent of...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf7h6o3I8yw

Anarchism seems to start with the premise that people are sucky to each other because of the machinations of the Rulers.

By removing the Rulers one frees people to be less and less sucky to each other. Because nobody can rise to a position of Rulership the king-rat syndrome will gradually diminish.

I cannot think of any large scale long lived example of this actually happening. I suspect that Hakim Bey was on the right track with his idea of the TAZ and being the closest form of pure anarchism that can exist.

Instead of paying rent, lodgers – who are vetted and checked by the charity that runs the project

CRB checks for the homeless, yeah that's gonna work like gangbusters!

Monbiot is a douche. He probably thought that the window tax was a good idea and decided to update it for the 21st century.

If I take some non rent paying random homeless person in do I lose my 25% council tax reduction? At which point i'm on the breadline, stop paying the mortgage, lose my home and...end up living in someones 'spare' bedroom  

This appears to leave just one likely explanation: money. My guess, though I can find no research or figures either to support or disprove it, is that the richest third of the population has discovered that it can spread its wings. A report by the International Longevity Centre comes to the same conclusion: "Wealth ... is the key factor in whether or not we choose to occupy more housing space than is essential."

Monbiot shouldn't let a lack of facts get in the way of his dogma (and doesn't). Single occupant households are not always rich households. An ageing population leaves people in homes (asset rich) but often unemployed or retired (income poor). 

If you live by yourself, regardless of the size of your property, you get a 25% council tax discount. The rest of us, in other words, subsidise wealthy single people who want to keep their spare rooms empty.

Yeah, but Monbiot has no idea at all if these single occupiers are actually rich.

If he knew anything about housing (which he doesn't seem to at all) he would know that the supply of 1 bedroom accommodation is quite low. Most developments of housing or flats are 2 bedroom or more. Why? Because people want room to spare in case they have kids, or a spare room for visitors, and because building a 2 bed is more cost effective than building a 1 bed property.

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