Anarchy Magazine, NAMBLA, and Bookfair workshops on roadkill and herbal medicine

rise

Urgh! The whole thing sounds awful - sorry you had to endure it!!

That paedo line isn't just embarrassing - it is sick and offensive and these are all either paedos themselves or the kind of weak, foolish and misguided people who will believe pretty much any old crap - as long as the right buzz-words are used. Do the 4th Int. really swallow this crap? They are even more misguided than i thought.

In future i think the right thing to do would be to nick all the offensive stuff off the table (including anything at all by Bey ) and burn it. (Obv. don't go alone. )

Love

LW XXX

Saii wrote a blog on paedophilia which I more or less agree with.

Now can admin please lock this thread before anyone finds it. Rise you may or may not know that paedophilia's one issue which simply can't be taken seriously on here, which is a pity, cos it's actually quite important to figure out an approach to it.

I think the age of consent laws should be abolished and replaced by the formula (x/2 + 7) < y.

rise, stop oppressing the pedophiles. That conference sounds like a waste of space for its stated purpose. Though I do feel that abortion options (hopefully they actually work) and how to eat dead animals could be somewhat useful, it sounds like they were presented as part of a carnival of subculturals

Perhaps they can put the workshops into the next 'zine fair instead, and NAMBLA and Bey can hold a joint "autonomous zone" workshop on how to molest children.

Surely this DIY shit is just endemic of a retreat from politics into a pathetic DIY ethos, why not focus on mass campaigns to defend the right to abortion, so that it's accessible to for all women in safe environments rather than having to fuck about with homebrew kits like it's the fucking 1940's. I don't want any women I know having to use some fucking hippies recipe and instructions for a homebrew abortion sandwhiched inbetween an article about 'Loving your vagina' and shit poems about 'Mother nature'.

You should read about the history of the fight for abortion in the U.S., and maybe the notion of access to abortion in the hands of women will make more sense to you. I, myself, cringe when I see the info thrown around haphazardly, as getting it wrong can be quite dangerous, but where I live, abortions start at $500, so those of us on the broke side of things need options. And all the folks I know who engage in herbal abortion practices are out there, doing clinic defense, going to protests, working on access, etc etc, as well.

yes but it's the mistaking of this individualised solution (and one women have been doing for many many decade's regardless of DIY zines and the like) for an actual political position, to the point where i've heard anarchists argue that DIY and herbal abortions are more 'anarchist' cos they empower women independently of the medical industrial complex. I mean yes herbal and DIY as a last resort but lets be clear it's not what we should be aiming for, just as yes, plenty of working class people scam free food, shoplift and pull various scams to get by and just survive these things shouldn't be seen as aims in themselves, we shouldn't have to do this shit. I'd certainly shit two house worth of bricks if I found out a female friend of mine was going to try a herbal or diy abortion.

i'm terribly naive, but i'm a bit shocked to see them actually come out and defend pedophilia and nambla. i always just figured that folk who liked bey's (non-pedophile) writings just loved that stuff *so* much they tried to turn a blind eye to his pedophilia.

apparently, they knew quite well. and accept it. hm.

i know it's obvious to everyone here, but the fact that the age of consent is somewhat arbitrary doesn't logically mean there shouldn't be one. i mean it's not like the terrible oppressive capitalist state is going round locking up 16 year-olds with 15 year-old girlfriends en masse, although if they have sex it's technically rape. Of course, non sequiters are very handy if you want to fuck pre-pubescent kids in the name of anarchism.

yeah Saii's blog is pretty spot on iirc.

That said I'm sure I've read/heard about at least one young lad getting put on the sex offenders register as his partner was the wrong side of sixteen and he was the other.

yeah i'm sure it happens, but the vast majority of the time even the state manages to be far less letter-of-the-law than the NAMBLA lot claim - i mean i'd guess the instances of such 'rape' and subsequent legal action are at least 3 or 4 orders of magnitude apart, and yet there isn't the difficulty of establishing (lack of) consent there is with adult rape cases as the law just requires proof of sex (much easier). and even then, we're not talking about pre-pubescent kids getting fucked by 50 year-old beardy mystics, so there is an entirely different set of power relations at work and NAMBLA are drawing a false analogy.

Thank god for that, being more urban than some of our American friends, I thought this was about cannibalism.

What is somebody is 12*. Do the maths.

Devrim

*I didn't have sex at twelve, but there were girls in my class at school who were pregnant.

That's a big fucking hope! DIY herbal abortions are dangerous, not properly tested, they don't work, and they can be lethal. I can't believe people can be allowed to promote this crap at "radical" events. You wouldn't let pharmaceutical company reps there, so why the snake oil salesmen?

A hippie herbalist saved my daughter all manner of physical discomfort, possibly some long term damage from reflux, and likely our family from bankruptcy. We'd probably still be traipsing from one specialist to another, without her help. (I was initially skeptical, but desperate enough to try it.) Medical doctors don't treat patients, they sell medicines. Market economics 101. So it really pisses me off to see herbalism grouped with pedophilia.

Moving on: If I am not mistaken, indecent exposure is a "sex offense". Get caught skinny dipping, go on the sex offender list for life (in the usa). So I wouldn't let a distaste for MBLA (ask any gun totin' good ole boy with a son or daughter, what he would do to a child abuser) blind us to the reality of the draconian measures being enacted by the state, to appease the Bush administration's fundamentalist constituency.

Of course, this may not be the forum for a serious discussion of the matters...

Also, it's painfully obvious (in the SE usa at least) that a 17 year old boy is more likely to be tried as an adult sex offender, if he is black and his 15 year old girlfriend is white. Which can be difficult to discern from news accounts, since the race of news subjects is routinely ignored. All in the interests of color blind objectivity, you know.

crass reductionism 101 - you think there aren't 'natural remedy' entrepreneurs? i've no problem with herbal remedies if they look good in double-blind RCTs, anecdote doesn't cut it with lives at stake.

yeah, but NAMBLA are using those concerns to promote fucking children. like saddam hussein really was a complete fucker, but i don't have any time for Bush's preaching about 'freedom and democracy' that has proved a treatment far worse than the disease

When I was 16 I had sex with 31 years old woman. Will that be legal in libcom?

hmm lets see

31/2 = 15.5

+ 7 = 22.5

nope, you're a paedo.

No shit? Point being, the Bush administration's fronting for it's racist, fundamentalist constituency (same as Nixon, Reagen ad naseum) is a major event in usa poltiical life. MBLA is a freak sideshow. Most folks have never heard of it.

Anarchism is hardly the word on everybody's lips either, and i think anarchists are entitled to get pissed off at people trying to appropriate their ideology to rationalise child abuse though.

Sooo, when the medical industry gives their approval to age old, time tested remedies, folks should give them a try, but not before? Don't hold your breath, the pharmaceutical companies will never allow it.

And bankruptcy via medial care is hardly anecdotal, either. Try reading about this thing called "a health care crisis". Like climate change, it's gotten so bad even the bourgeois media admits its existence!

Fine, be pissed off. I'll join you. One of my best friends used to regale us with tales of assaulting child molesters during his prison term.

But as political organizations, I would like to see us thinking in more relevant strategic terms, such as how best to oppose the fundamentalist tide.

so when i write 'evidence' you read 'CORPORATIONS' - wtf? in what way does a randomised double-blind RCT equal 'the medical industry' - capital is more than happy to sell actual medicines and snake oil placebos, in matters of life and death i don't think asking for evidence is akin to blind faith in drug companies

yeah i don't think any anarchist organisations are organising against NAMBLA, let alone making them a strategic target. only thing i'm aware of is i think Freedom stopped carrying his books (iirc?).

But in the haste to distant themselves from NAMBLA (or whatever the acroynym is) some are making statements such as

Yes, that ishappening, though not (as you say) en masse. Worse, it is happening selectively. Depends on who your family is--money, social stauts, and yes, race-- whether or not you get prosecuted.

Pardon my ignorance. Who, aside from corporations and governmental bodies, performs these tests?

yeah sure, but like i say since it isn't happening en masse it isn't one of the major points of struggle - i mean the justice system is fucked - class-skewed, racist, you name it - in all sorts of ways. but i think if we are discussing it it's vital we differentiate ourselves from paedos, just like when discussing immigration it's important to distinguish ourselves from the far right or pro-cheap labour liberals.

edit: "it's vital we differentiate ourselves from paedos" - never thought i'd write that!

corporations and governmental bodies do all kinds of shit we need in order to survive, that it's done by Teh Man!!! doesn't automagically make it wrong. and I'd rather take something I have some reason to think will work than slurp fermented rat poo and hope for the best. this doesn't exclude natural remedies, it just means holding them to some standard of proof.

as regards age of consent: http://xkcd.com/314/

oh, and paedos are shit.

going by the millions spent on 'alternative medicines' every year i don't think a lack of evidence is due to a lack of resources. in many cases (e.g. homoeopathy) there have been abundant trials that have shown it no better than a placebo - and homoeopathic remedies must be the perfect commodity (think of the mark-ups on pure water!) so if anything 'the medical industry' has a vested interest in pimping them.

so too with herbal remedies, if there's an active ingredient i'd be surprised if pharma companies weren't trying to identify it, concentrate it and sell it in pill form - to do that would require double-blind RCTs to establish an effect in the first place.

but even if all the gateways to evidence-based medicine are patrolled by corporations who filter out things they don't like (this is supposition as far as i'm aware, there may well be cases but i'm not sure it's the norm at all, let alone hegemonic), i'm still not happy to just take the advice of some random anarchist on anecdotal evidence, especially when they see e.g. herbal abortions as a point of political principle not a regrettable necessity.