A Critique of Armed Struggle
(Talk at Bogotrax festival in Berlin, Sept.10, 2009)

1.
In this short critical talk I will briefly outline a view of particular strains of the communist movement of the 20th century and in particular the guerilla movements purporting to be communist and their historical role.
Central to my argument is the transformation of Marxism as a critical method and communism as a movement into an ideology of so called Marxism-Leninism.
Therefore this is not a critique of revolutionary violence as such, but of its particular manifestation in the form of traditional Marxist-Leninist guerilla movements, both of the rural and urban types. [Read more →]

Lobster 57 (The last hard copy Lobster)
(Hull, Summer 2009, ISSN 0964-0436)

Lobster is a magazine for “parapolitics” that has been appearing since 1983 at roughly two issues per year, edited by Robin Ramsay.
The main themes have always been the machinations of the secret state and various conspiracy theories, so MI5 and MI6, New Labour, Mind Control, JFK, Diana’s death etc featured prominently. Interestingly they stayed more or less clear of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
As announced on the cover of the latest issue, this is the last one in paper format, since Ramsay says he can’t be bothered to take care of printing and distributing 1′000 copies as on the internet many more readers could be reached without the hassle the former implies. If this is true remains to be seen [Read more →]

Ten years ago NATO forces attacked and bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and occupied the autonomous province of Kosovo. The reason for this was on the surface the claim, that the Federal Republic, its army and police units aided by Serb paramilitaries, were conducting a policy of “ethnic cleansing” against the Albanian minority. The intervention was supposed to prevent a “genocide” from happening, it was thus a “humanitarian intervention”, so the official version went. [Read more →]

Controlled demolition of the World Trade Center towers, the absence of a plane at the Pentagon, the shooting down of Flight 93 over Pennsylvania and other theories advanced by the “9/11 truth movement” are false not only logically but contradict the material evidence at the sites and eyewitness accounts. The following are some useful resources that expose the bad science and reasoning behind these theories. People debunking the “truth movement” are not paid by anyone nor do they have a cottage industry bringing in cash via DVDs and speaking engagements like Alex Jones, David Ray Griffin and other conspirationists. Most of their efforts are distributed free on the Internet to combat misinformation about the attacks, and this is only a small selection of the resources available.
[Read more →]

ON CRISIS AND CONTINUITY IN THE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT

How is it possible that increasingly elaborate conspiracy explanations for the events of September 11th 2001 continue to find appeal amongst a growing population of otherwise rational people, despite the day’s events being witnessed by millions and despite these theories being consistently debunked and embarrassed? Why are so many still convinced that the perpetrators of 9/11 were innocent of their greatest accomplishment: the mass murder of thousands for the sake of spectacular Jihad against the west? Why would the partisans of these theories repeat claims long proven false, even at the cost of their own reputations? [Read more →]