You can download this episode on MediaFire here.
In our second episode, we discuss some issues that the Labor Party is debating at their national conference: refugees and same-sex marriage. We also cover a number of other topics, including comments on our first episode, anarchy and democracy, Nick’s article for the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, veganism, slavery in the cocoa industry and fair trade cocoa.
Book recommendation: Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World by Lisa Bloom
Clips:
ABC News ‘Gillard Calls for ‘Fair Dinkum’ Conference Debate’
Rise Against ‘Prayer of the Refugee’
The Broadways ‘15 Minutes’
Justin Sane ‘Thanks for the Letter…From a Kindler, Gentler American’
Peep Show (series 4, episode 1)
Doug Stanhope ‘On…Marriage, Gay and Otherwise’ (from Deadbeat Hero)
Chumbawamba ‘The Candidates Find Common Ground’
Lagwagon from the album ‘Live in a Dive’
Lily Allen ‘Fuck You’
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progressivepodcastaustralia 
I just recently read an article, that I used for my High School English Class, that made this statement, “Anarchism has been the least violent movement in the last 200 years.” When I first read this I thought ,even as an Anarchist, wow this must not be true, but then I thought about it. I realized this was true because I looked at the history of violence in the communist movement, the capitalist movement, the colonialist movement, the religious movements, etc. After looking at these movement’s history of violence the Anarchists look like fucking ghandians. Each of these movements killed 5 million people at least (except for maybe the religious movement) and tortured millions more people. The Anarchist , if you include the Spanish Civil war, has killed 20,000 people with about 15,000 comming from the Spanish Civil war (a war to defend themsleves from the Nazi and Fascist invders of Franco, Italy, and Germany). It may be a bit higher than that but not much higher. And they have tortured no one to my knowledge. The reason for these huge murder rates in Capitalism and Communism is not necessiarily because they are bad ideas, which in the case of Capitalism I think it was and is a horrible idea. But the reason for these massive murder numbers is that the State amplifies everything because of regimentation. So what the state does is it takes a human activity like aggressive violence and makes it highly organized so as to bring about the biggest effect. This is the problem with the state, unorganized violence kills a few thousand people, organized violence kills a few million people.
P.S.- Sorry this was sooo long.
Your comrade, Eric
Oh and thank you for mentioning my comment that is so nice of you guys.
Thanks Eric, we really appreciate your feedback and comments!
Our friends at Citizen Radio have an interview with historian Howard Zinn, who explains that while anarchists have obviously committed acts of violence, their violence is absolutely nothing compared to the violence carried out by states:
http://wearecitizenradio.com/2011/02/04/20110204-remembering-howard-zinn/
Wow you’re only in high school?? Very impressive!! I certainly wasn’t thinking about anarchism in high school!
And back to your comments on the first episode – as an Australian podcast, we have to accept there will be comments about kangaroos haha.
Thanks again – Nick
Yea, I am a senior in High School but I became an Anarchist about a year or two ago. I became an Anarchist shortly after I took a Peace and Holocaust class and I realized that every single genocide in history was committed by the State and that all of the systematic torture has been carried out by the State. I also realized that genocide is impossible with the State, because no other institution has the ability to systematically get the identity and track down an entire religion, race, or politcal group of people. So I always make the joke that I became an Anarchist because I saw one too many torture scenes and knew a little bit too much about genocide. By the way have you seen Arundhati Roy’s speech “Come September” ? She talks about how Nationalism has caused genocide in that speech, I will put that part of the speech here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAFCgXIZPUk You will love it!
Cheers Eric, I’m actually just reading Arundhati Roy’s book ‘The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire’ and I just read the chapter ‘Come September’ which is this speech:
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=1OYghwiKjP0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=arundhati+roy+the+ordinary+person's+guide+to+empire&hl=en&ei=2OzbTov8MKmSiAeM8L3wDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
She’s awesome.
Nick
Arundhati has one of those voices, along with Tariq Ali, that I can listen to for hours. She could be reading a cook book and I would still listen. But luckily enough she talks about Nationalism and Imperialism. Oh and I listened to that interveiw when Howard died and I agree it is a very good interview. I have been listening to a lot of his interviews and lectures lately and man do I miss him. My early political education (meaning end of middle school / begining of High School) consisted of barely understanding Noam Chomsky and really understanding Howard Zinn. He made ideas accessible to me and always carried an ora of a warm and kind old professor, which attached very posative feelings to politics for me. He helped me to get a ground work for understand U.S. foreign policy like no one else could have. He helped me loose confidence in leaders and politicans who talked about patriotism and lead people to war. When I found out that the U.S. government had lied about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that they would use the atom bomb on defenseless people just to gaim more power, I began to stop believeing in governments. Also when I saw WW II as an imperialist war, I realized something even more valuable. That when you step outside of the standard explanations for things, the world actually begins to make sense. He also told me that wonderful I.F. Stone quote, when he said “If you only remember one thing I say remember this: Governments Lie.” That would become a very useful quote when growing up in the Bush Administration and dealing with the United States government.
Thank you again for reading my very long comment, Eric
P.S.- I hope that I am not writing to you guys too much, I just have a lot that I think about politically.
Cheers Eric, no problem at all, I’m always happy to hear about anarchism, Roy, Zinn, Ali, Chomsky etc…
Yeh Zinn seems great – haven’t read/heard much of his stuff but I’ve really liked what I’ve heard – the way he links history to what is going on now – the book that Jamie mentioned on the Citizen Radio interview that did that sounded really interesting.
Definitely people in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world could really benefit from keeping that quote in mind.
Hopefully Zinn has made you ready for some Chomsky now!
Nick