Anarchy in Baghdad

people are capable and are infact programmed to build their own structures in the absence of imposed structures

well yes of course, but all structures become formalized, and quite quickly. so, i'm not sure how this ties into 'anarchy', whatever that actually means

(anarchy is a loaded word, but I like to start my threads with loaded words, it guarantees responses and keeps me entertained. You can't describe the situation without loaded words, ad hoc social democracy, libertarian socialism, syndicalism, sovietism)

What is the real difference between 'proper cops' and 'some clown with a machine gun standing on a street corner keeping an eye out for people who look like looters'? OK so decent cops don't carry guns. But if the clown on the street corner carries the legitamacy of the comunity with him then there isn't much difference. Law is largely defined by what society as an agregate whole deems to be aceptable.

this is different from vigilanteism how? many in the community would argue that vigilantes carry legitimacy (see attacks on paedophiles etc)

This is a new concept to Iraq.

Essentially it isn't. But you have to ask how much legitamacy do vigelanties carry. There's a difference between a group of people getting together and saying, 'lets get him' and a community deputising people to maintain order. The difference is structure even if its an ad hoc one.

I'll agree though that you would need a very specific set of cicumstances to avoid an oligarchy asserting itself. You'd need charismatic leaders from within the population who weren't interested in the levers of power and you could argue that this is a state to which humans can only aspire, not achieve.

even if the charismatic leader is all that, thats still a tenuous situation, it only takes their departure and what have you got? nothing. all based around that person. so, hardly conducive to long term stability.

Im sure its really heartening to hear how the schools, the banks, the hospitals, the public transportation, the jails, the sanatation department are doing in the absence of authority.

This is true only in the UK. In the rest of the world, tho...

But given the list you're making it sound like a certain kind of bourgeois existence is what is proven by history more than anything else. Marx might have approved (as the last step but one) but I think he was too locked into his own particular framework.

well, i'm not sure about this. but perhaps this is kind of irrelevant? because, in the absence of a tangible structure, how do you stop the more powerful interests of society (the oligarchy is you like), taking care of business early on. i think the utopia you're positing wouldnt last long, it seems like total laissez-faire-ism to me, without a proper structure i dont see how you prevent the stronger and more powerful interests shaping society to their end? ie, are the oligarchy interested in schools?

ah, tracer has posted now. yes, this is totally on point tracer. and why i cant understand why ed thinks such a situation could possibly be a utopia, even potentially

"The practical benefits of LETS are best seen in Argentina. The country's economic crisis has led it to depend on them. Called "Trueque Clubs" ("Exchange Clubs"), they have nearly replaced the national money system. With strict government limits on bank withdrawals in an attempt to prevent the collapse of the financial system, barter became the only way to survive. Turmel reports that LETS systems in Argentina have grown exponentially, and are a good example of how the system works. "In Argentina, the last estimate was eight million members. It's that or starve." While LETS will probably never replace our entire economic system, it could very well become a popular secondary system. If nothing else, it connects people, and makes giving and taking a little more fun." da full txt

concerning higher levels of organization like defense, it would help if not totally solve problems if their neighbours would adopt "pacific chaotic" frontiers with them by adopting similar politics (at least near their common frontiers). I think it is very likely that this is what would naturally happen anyway due to the memes exchanged by a dense population. If only tracks concerning such strategies could rain on irak and this info could be played on their national radio...

the clown on the street corner with an AK47 carries his legitimacy in his hands.

he is subject to no due process, his decisions are completely unappealable, if he decides to riddle someone with bullets there is no comeback whatsoever.

that's very different from the situation in a country with an unarmed police force.

I think humanity is not condemned to fall back into the same patterns over and over again especially when I think about communication technologies that are is getting more powerful and cheaper.
Optimize anarchy now!

mondragon cafe proves this wrong:
"The Mondragón collective was inspired by the successful examples of participatory workplaces already employed at South End Press and Z Magazine (in the United States), as well as the visionary writings on workplace democracy by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel.

A central organizing principle of the collective is the notion of a job complex. A job complex is simply a grouping of jobs and job types that strikes a balance between creative and empowering types of work on the one hand, and more rote and menial tasks on the other. Unlike a traditional business, there is no hierarchical division of labour, based on ownership or management rights. Each worker-member shares in the decision-making process, as well as the different job tasks that the business requires - from book-keeping, ordering, and desktop publishing, to cooking, waiting on tables, and cleaning. One of the goals behind this is to raise each member's knowledge and skills, and prohibit conferring
power and privileges on the basis of one's specialized knowledge or training. How we operate at Mondragón, based on the parecon model, is laid out in our policy handbook*.

We feel that a participatory, democratic workplace such as ours is a revolutionary alternative to both traditional business practices, and traditional leftist workplaces (which often replicate the structural inequalities inherent to capitalist enterprise). It's a simple concept really, one that assumes ordinary people are capable of making the hard decisions that affect their lives (as producers, consumers, and citizens of the world). More than this, it assumes that we are capable of making these decisions in ways that foster cooperation and solidarity among all people, rather than requiring an economy based on competition, greed, exploitation, and massive inequalities of both opportunity and condition. Just the fact that we exist, and operate in a fairly organized manner, demonstrates that these ideals are not utopian fantasies, but very real (and desirable) possibilities"

Too bad I can't locate their Adobe PDF policy handbook.
a network of such projects could replace the state.

No, it didn't, because this sort of business model is an anomaly. This is a statistical fact. If it weren't an anomaly their press material wouldn't keep saying it's "unlike a traditional business" and "revolutionary" and "visionary" and harping on "just the fact that we exist."

It's also, as I mentioned, a business, which is the main reason why I don't see its relevance here in the least -- unless you're the rare anarcho-syndicalist who, like a pre-election George W. Bush, believes in the "government is like a business" trope!

yes!! Seconded!!

you repeat that this is an ordinary business but it's not!
Go at it starting from the citizen then: the citizen inscribes viself into a network of communications and a large part of vis time is spent working. that's all I'm saying. I could have also talked about the importance to hold this anarchist model to the family structure: where everybody is equal and the tasks and decisions are shared equally.

Radical decentralization can maintain the equivalent of sociaist "nationalized ressources". Inspiration left me for now

the 'fun' bit was a gauche way to relate to the readers coming from a culture of leisure.

Anarchy is stupid.

you seem much more utopian/rose-glasses wearing about how ppl will behave in a situation than i am. guess, approach to world

FWIW.

Well, yeah, but looking over the history of the twentieth century, this has been all the harder to do when dictators are involved, to put it mildly.

* - this is not automatically a good thing.

Getting way off-topic, but... don't do that. Your tip is your vote. Don't throw it away. I mean, don't be a dick, but if you feel you've gotten truly substandard service, don't tip well. By doing that, you're sending your message either to the waiter ("maybe you should consider temping") or to the restaurant owner ("you know that guy who's always complaining about how he doesn't make any money? guess why.").

The museum's comprehensive collection was unprecedented. Saddam's secularism and his long-term interest in Iraq's archaeological legacy—in part self-serving; he inscribed his name next to Nebuchadnezzar's in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon—had enriched the National Museum's collection. (According to a Financial Times piece from 2000, Saddam reportedly made extensive suggestions in the margins of all reports filed by Iraq's archaeological director, Donny George. He also made antiquities smuggling punishable by death.)

The military's inaction doesn't seem to have been a question of choosing between protecting civilians and guarding gold jewelry. The Chicago Tribune reported that the U.S. military successfully assigned men to chip away a disrespectful mural of former President George Bush on the floor of the Al Rashid Hotel, even though it failed to protect the museum and library from being plundered.

Only two of the thousands of pieces of art that were stolen after the first Gulf War were recovered, McGuire Gibson, who teaches Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Chicago, has said. Even if a sculpture of a bronze Akkadian king isn't important to the Bush administration, you'd think its own self-interest would be: In the eyes of the world, the war's success will be measured as much by what happens now and over the coming months as by the shock and awe campaign. And the United States now has a black mark that it could have avoided.