Can a fascinating new history help us understand our own violent times? By Andrew O'Hehir

Data for the last 20 years or shows that violent crime has declined.

getting such groups to "work within the system" ...

it's a tough sell ... and then there are the rejectionists in all camps ...

it's hard to cooperate with people who don't want peace, with people who raison d'etre is conflict....

however, a good start would be to not lump everyone into some (pick your own adjectives) unimportant fringe group that is never allowed the microphone ...

no justice, no peace.

. "These lie in the terrain first explored by Marx and Freud, those semi-discredited totems of the last century, and in a question that Ann Coulter and Noam Chomsky might answer in the same way."

Marx, Freud were geniuses and Chomsky is geniuse and Coulter is a light weight loud mouth dingbat. She was not the best person the author could have used to compare with Chomsky. Yes she and him are opposites but like come on you could have picked William F. Buckly or Newt or even the pig Limbaugh for a more equal opposite for Chomsky. Although they are still are not on any equal standing in the way of smarts as Noam.

There's nothing speculative about it.

CIA Adds Economy To Threat Updates

The daily White House intelligence report that catalogs the top security threats to the nation has a grim new addition, reflecting the realities of the age: a daily update on the global financial crisis and its cascading effects on the stability of countries through the world...

The spy agency is following worrisome trends in many corners of the globe, from East Asia to Latin America. In private meetings yesterday, Latin American intelligence officials warned their U.S. counterparts of a crisis spreading throughout the hemisphere, particularly in Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela, Panetta said...

Other key intelligence officials have raised similar alarms in other settings. The new director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told a Senate panel this month that economic woes have largely replaced terrorism as the country's No. 1 security challenge. (MORE)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/25/AR2009022503389.html

I realized a while back that Seattle was a loooong time ago for anyone under the age of 30 ...

I felt a little embarrassed by the media-whore nature of much of the Minn-St. Paul Welcoming Committe ... but also relieved that there actually was better discipline than had been anticipated (and a lot less effective disruption than planned or promised.)

These are rocky times and I'm not sure whether old "labels" mean much -- see today's article on the Republican tea party ... and the attempts by various GOP factions in the last few days to "represent the little guy." If post-WWI Germany is any guide, it's entirely possible for a mass, genuinely proletarian party to arise as a fascist entity. That's what I'm afraid of ... a white male working class law and order party.... throw in some media savvy to finesse racism, classism and sexism as a "family values" and you're on your way.

I have been waiting for the humiliation of 09/11 to catch up with the American psyche ... 09/11, "our" failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, Katrina and our eternally failing schools, with our failing economy as the final coup de grace.

I've seen plenty of lefy survivalist postings in the last eight years ... and I certainly remember the militia movement(s).

I really believe that the best thing we can do is to work for justice and for genuine constitutional "law and order" for all. As the economy settles out, there are going to be a lot of newly disenfranchised people looking for "redemption" and "identity" ... that cohort is in danger of being enrolled into extremist elements.

Give them a voice, ensure their rights and keep them within sight .. I don't know what else we can do.

The "Battle in Seattle" in 99 was the direct result of self proclaimed Anarchists who traveled from various locals with a concentration from Oregon-Eugene specific. Despite the best efforts of those in the labor movement/community/environmental orgs., a relatively small group of dirt bags were able to utilize the work of other organizations to promote their own agenga.

For those who unaware of what went on and those who did not pay attention to it then, it was a complete mess becasue of these folks who came to create the mess they did. Efforts to raise awareness of the negative impact of WTO trade decisions-undermining laws and rights of labor/environment gained through democratic processes-the mass organizing and the message was lost. Instead the focus was upon the violence and damage due to the "protesters"-the arrests were in the few thousand area, people were held in pen waiting areas near a naval base.

This went on for a long week and it was nasty. We are talking about black masks and gas masks domestic terorists and sd. have been treated as such. There was true anarcy in Seattle for a period of times. "People" roaming downtown/Capitol hill, tearing things up, looking for fights, lighting industrial sized garbage cans on fire and sending them down the hills of Seattle into downtown. Some people in the community placed blame on the police but most def. this situation was instigated, provoked by the sorry ass bunch of Anarchists.

These types of people do exist in this country and sd. be deal with by any means necessary to insure they do create the sort of mess they did in Seattle. Good people tried to advance good causes and a bunch of unemployed nasty punks cast a huge shadow upon those who are not interested in breaking glass and caosing caos. Some thought it was good that things got as bad as it did but did not and do not agree.

There is a film-drama type-out available on DVD about these events and believe it is called "Battle in Seattle."

It's just more wishy-washy sentimentalism, giving what was a very conflicted and volatile situation the "Crash" treatment.

Moreover, it's important to recognize that anarchists aren't just one lumpen movement. There are a lot of different agendas and ideas. There's no real cohesion, I mean, it's called anarchy for a reason! More often than not anarchists are arguing with each other over definitions and ideas than they are liberals or other such statists.

As Andrew said, there were a lot of people who didn't agree with violence and especially with random attacks on civilians.

Some of the best and most compelling critiques of hierarchies and the flaws of centralized power have been made by anti-statists. Let's not throw all these ideas out just because some people think it's a good idea to break stuff to express themselves.

I will, however, note that there wasn't nearly as much coverage of how the police reacted to the actions of a bunch of idiots breaking some windows. Massive force, teargassing, huge arrests of people who had nothing to do with it, brutality by the bucketload, illegal detainment and all that other fun state violence stuff.

Keep things in perspective. How many people have anarchists ever killed in the US? How many people die every day thanks to a bureaucratic mess that is state power?

As to your comments about trying to bring them in from the outside, thanks but no thanks. We've seen what it costs to "work in the system". When your aims are the complete destruction of abstracted power and the end of capitalism as we know it, you can't really go through the usual channels.