#1: That this is a rich planet. Therefore poverty and hunger are unworthy of it, and since we can abolish them, we must.
#2: That we are a civilized species. Therefore none shall henceforth gain illicit advantage by reason of the fact that we together know
more than one of us can know.
John Brunner, Shockwave Rider
Joe Toscano and Radical Independents for the Australian Senate
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Dr. Joe Toscano of the Anarchist Media Institute and Public Officer for the Isocracy Network, is standing as a candidate as a Victorian Senator. A copy of his policy statements is available for download, distribution and advocacy. His platform argues against corporate welfare, a public bank, mutualist economics, a climate and population plan based on scientific research, a treaty with the indigenous population and other very good policies.
http://isocracy.org/files/senate2010.pdf
Petition for Same-Sex Marriage
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An initiative of the Isocracy Network, the [Australian] Victorian Secular Lobby, has started a statement for religious clergy who support same-sex marriage. Currently we have a number of Unitarian and Uniting Church ministers who have signed, with plenty more coming! If you know any religious leaders who would like to be added to this list please contact them as soon as possible; we hope to do a press release in two weeks in time for the National Day of Action on same-sex marriage!
http://victoriansecular.org/node/2
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=141629729180972
News of Emancipation and Oppression
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1) Wikileaks Publishes Afghan War Diaries
Wikileaks has published almost 92,000 documents of classified 'Secret' internal U.S. military logs of the war in Afghanistan and made the logs available to The Guardian, The New York Times and Die Spiegel. The leak, the largest in U.S. history, reveals how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, probable collusion between the Taliban and the Pakistani intelligence agency. With no sense of irony, states who are engaged in the invasion have claimed that the release of the documents threatens lives.
The entire database of documents is available at the following URL: http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/
2) Dafur War and War Crimes
Sudan's state media has claimed that more than 300 fighters from Darfur's rebel group Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) have been killed by Sudan's army in recent clashes and 75 of its own soldiers were also died. The JEM have claimed to have been victorious in the clash and that the numbers are a fabrication. President Bashir of Sudan has been indicted on seven charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur by the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, Amnesty International has accussed Sudan of using arrests and torture to brutally suppress dissent. Southern and Western Sudan have long suffered a lack of representation and public funding despite representing the majority of the country's population.
http://www.africanews.com/site/Sudan_300_Darfur_rebels_killed/list_messa...
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2010/07/19/114272.html
3) Suicide bombers target Iraq militia
Twin suicide bombings killed at least 47 people in Iraq on Sunday, the deadliest in a series of attacks across the country that were aimed at the Sunni Sahwa militia, also known as Awakening Councils, that work with government forces to fight al-Qaeda and nationalist insurgents in Iraq. The larger attack targetted militia lining up to collect their paychecks near a military base southwest of Baghdad.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/07/20107181483330423.html
Review: Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition
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Hannah Arendt is considered one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century. Two of her major works include The Origins of Totalitarianism, a sociological study of the Stalinist terror and Nazi genocide, and On Revolution, which combined political science with history, both highly important for an isocratic perspective. Arendt is difficult to position in a traditional political sense; she is a supporter of constitutionalism and the rule of law, yet she also disparaged representative democracy in favour of high levels of deliberative participatory democracy and the revolutionary spirit.
More at: http://isocracy.org/node/62