h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>There are exceptions of course Peter Kropotkin the libertarian communist and father of modern geography was a Prince.

The libertarian communist? Those are pretty much diametrically opposed philosophies. Can you direct me to any information on him?

Pyotr Kropotkin was an aristocrat with a conscience who was a military officer, a scientist, an editor, a writer, and a philosopher who was quite famous in England, France, Switzerland and Russia during his lifetime. He considered himself and he was charged with and jailed for being an 'Anarchist' in both Czarist Russia and France. He lived for over thirty years in England

He had serious problems with the International after he joined it in 1872 and much later with the way Lenin chose to run things.
He wrote a book called 'Mutual Aid' in which he told the Social Darwinists that they were all wet because cooperation as well as competition is found in the natural world.

I found his bio under a simple search calling him 'Peter'.

In a book called 'Memoirs of a Revolutionist', he said,"Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none."

He died, in Russia, in 1921.

"Libertarian", means "one who believes in absolute freedom.". In the US, this tends to mean Economic Freedom and Small Government. "Libertarian socialists" (Libertarian communist is not a good phrase, really) believe in small, localised governments (or, in some cases, no real government) and social co-operation without state coertion. They differ from right-wing libertarians because they are generally hostile to competition, which they would claim leads to alienation and social dysfunction and even eventually tyranny. There's little of them left as they were largely wiped-out by rise of Communism before the second-world war. In some cases they were actively destroyed by the Communists, because with their dislike of a Centralised State and enforced collectivisation they were enemies of the communist ideal. The Spanish Civil war is a good example of this.

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I will send you some if you wish Two Bit, i'll post it to your personal space.

As i have tried to explain in the past, Communism is a very broad church, having both libertarian and totalitarian schools of thought.

Kropotkin wrote a fantastic book called MUtual Aid, a book on comparative anthropology showing communal behavior modes in animals and humans - a fantastic read, which shows you how the 'law of the jungle' really works.

Despite having always been at odds with the Bolsheviks, Kropotkin was accorded a state funeral in the fledgling Soviet Union (he died in the early 20's), and the marching crowds carried both the red and the black flags, apparently the last time that open mass support for 'other shades' of communism was allowed on the streets of Moscow.

Beaten to the post there really.

I've found myself increasingly agreeing with the idea that humans are naturally co-operative and competitive. If you try and make them entirely one or the other, you have major problems.

eg. The USSR wanted people to be entirely co-operative. This meant people felt frustrated and creatively unfulfilled. They felt they had no freedom, it was oppressive.

However, the US example, where people must be completely competitive creates a society where people believe they have no friends and no social support. This makes them latently paranoid and very insecure. This, in my opinion, is the real reason there is so much violence in the US and recession-hit Japan.

Another, perhaps less accurate and certainly more biased, way of putting it is that left wing libertarians take the possibility of economic coercion seriously whilst right wing libertarians do not. Or to put it in an even more biased way, right wing libertarianism is what you get when you take liberty as your fundamental ideal but stop thinking at precisely the point where if you continued thinking it would undermine the religious belief in capitalism.

Back on topic?

This is a real worry, and Two-bit may even agree.

Under what legal code were these suspects removed from Afghanistan? They weren't extradited. They haven't been removed to US territory. There is no publicly available evidence that they have anything to do with September 11 other than the assertion (which I tend to believe, in a limited way) that they were picked up in places which indicate membership or association with al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

Being a member of an organisation like the IRA which has killed people with bombs is illegal in various jurisdictions. You can argue with it, but there's some logic to it. Membership of al-Qaeda could be considered in the same light. But membership of the organisation cannot be allowed (in a democratic society which believes in the rule of law - remember that?) to be conflated with guilt for September 11.

And the Taliban - whatever the UN records say - was the effective government of Afghanistan when the US started bombing. Whatever Mr Rumsfeld says, the US was at war with that effective government. If these people in the Cuban cages are labelled Taliban, then they are prisoners of war and protected by the Geneva Conventions.

Then there's the standing of the military tribunals, the standard of due process, the fact that the death penalty might be available on a weaker measure of proof than is required for a parking ticket... And we call ourselves civilsed?

I don't really need much more information on Peter, I get the drift.

We don't need a statute to transport people who are captured in comabt. Except for John Walker, we're not treating this as a civilian criminal matter. As close as I can figure, we're treating them as war criminals. That's not to say that we have already determined that yet. They have to face judicial proceedings to be found guilty of war crimes and be punished for that. Right now they're being held until a tribunal will be held. Until they are found guilty of either a war crime or a civilian criminal offense, they should be afford the rights of prisioners of war.

I have not taken a position on whether or not they are prisoners of war.

Also everyone is protected by the Geneva Convention. It extends rights even to unlawful combatants.

I take this stuff very serioulsy. I have been a soldeir, and may take up arms again. I take the Law of War very seriously. I feel that it is to our benefit to conduct ourselves in accordance with the law.

I think it would be failr easy to prove that al-Qaeda is a criminal organization. I doubt that a conspiracy prosecution would be terribly difficult to obtain against anyone who we could prove was a member.