From: "Dave Coull" <d.y.coull-AT-dundee.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 1999 16:19:14 GMT
Subject: Re: The Anarchist Attitude To War


Unca Bart wrote a lot of stuff to which, right now, I just 
don't have time to reply. So forgive me Unca if I only 
reply to a few chosen points. 

Bart writes

>"Anarchists," as nearly as I can discern from several years
>membership on this list, believe a wide variety of things.

Yes, it's true that anarchists do believe quite a wide variety 
of things, but there are limits beyond which the term "anarchist"
is no longer applicable. It is a fact that a great many people
on the anarchy-list do not even claim to be anarchists, 
and it is a fact that there are a great many people on 
the anarchy-list who are not in fact anarchist. That has 
always been the case, and it has never been more obviously
true than at this present time, when so many people on the list 
seem keen to back NATO. The discussion about the Yugoslav 
war on the organise-list has been quite different. But then,
the organise-list does define itself as specifically anarchist.

>Dave, I'm going to send you my laundry bill.  And ask you
>to send me, off-line, the name of your suplier.  You be
>smokin' some awesome, bodatious shit fer shur!

Unlike some others on this list (perhaps including Bart)
I have never had a "supplier". I have never even bought
so much as enough weed to roll one single joint.
If the thoughts I think are awesome and bodatious
(whatever that means), then it is all down to the pure,
unstimulated workings of my own mind. You might
think I'm crazy, but if so, it's all my own craziness.

>No offense intended, brother.  We have a fundamental
>difference here.  We see different realities, and that's
>a fact.

No offense taken. Of course we see different realities.
In the very first post that I sent to the anarchy-list I was
talking about an anarchist/libertarian socialist revolution.
That was in 1994 I think. While I may have modified
my views in some respects since then, I think fundamentally
they have remained the same. Indeed, I think you could
say that fundamentally they have remained pretty much
the same for about thirty six years now. I am an advocate
of an anarchist or libertarian socialist revolution. Bart says 
pigs will fly first. There is nothing new about my views,
and nothing new about Bart's. There comes a time when
you just shrug your shoulders and say, okay brother,
you do your thing, and I'll do mine. 


Dave