Radical media, politics and culture.

Uncle Fluffy's blog

April 9, 2004 - 10:55am -- Uncle Fluffy

early morning thought.

Bush and company want me to believe that because of the threat of terrorism, because "everything has changed" that the patriot act is necessary. You see, in these dangerous times we need to take some drastic measures. We have to give up some freedoms and be a little totalitarian in the face of this dangerous threat....

Then I started to think about how the US has just taken down one of the only non-islamic states in the Mid East.

That got me to thinking. If the patriot act is acceptable because of the threat we face from islamic fundamentalism, what the hell would we have to do to sustain a non-islamic government if we were Iraq.

What sort of Draconian tactics would bush and co decide were necessary if we lived the reality of having massive numbers of pro-fundamendalist population (ok, for the sake of this arguement ignore the fact that Bush actually represents the right wing religious fundamentalist faction). How closely would we resemble the oppressive regime of Sadam?

Does running a non-islamic govt in a society that is moving towards fundamentalism require a certain level of brutality? Did we really fuck up that badly, taking out the only thing standing between Iraq and yet another right wing fundamentalist regime? One that partly used brutal tactics to defend the idea of a secular society...

I mean think about it... what would we have to do, how brutal would we need to be to remove the religious fundamentalists out of political power in the US...

just a thought...

now for some coffee.

April 7, 2004 - 2:27am -- Uncle Fluffy

I got an email invitation today from an old associate. He was inviting me to attend a $55 event where I could get the rare chance to see the founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication.

It is a rare chance since this guy has only come to nyc once before in the past 20 years (I guess he is afraid of the big city or something ;)

Below is my rant on the subject of Non-violent communication...

In my opinion the ideas might be interesting but I will never get past the irresponsible re-definition of the important term violence.

Communication can be hostile and nasty and even abusive, but communication never cracked anyones bones.

Using the term violence to describe hostile communication is 100% irresponsible for activists.

To describe angry debate as violence; to even use the term "non-violent communication" degrades the meaning of the term violence in a very dangerous way.

At ABC No Rio, we bar members of our community that have committed acts of violence against another member of our community. If the term violence were to be altered as you are trying to do, such a policy would become meaningless and we would lose the ability as a community to defend ourselves from true violence.

When you walk into ABC No Rio, you can feel confident that it is a safe zone. You will be in a place that does not tolerate sexual or physical assault and violence. But you better walk in ready for real, honest and at times angry debate. That is just part of the reality of being an activist.

If we accept this definition of violence, then we have to accept and even approve of a bunch of demonstrators shouting at the police being called "violent demonstrators" by the media. We have to accept the police's definition of overturning trash cans as violence.

I refuse to accept such irresponsible use of such an important term.

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