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Another Historic sept 11 - The Levellers petition - good article from Counterpunch national |
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news report
 Monday September 09, 2002 16:34 by Oswald Defense lawyer
 www.counterpunch.org was a great site for alternative US views around War in Afganistan and around 911. They have a 911 anniversary special on the front page right now with lots of interesting and provocative comment on the issues around 911. Sure beats the wall to wall TV infotainment being dished out at present which seems, when looked at as a whole, like nothing less than a strategy to instill a pavlovian response in audiences linking Iraq and 911 in their minds. But . . . . there is no link between the two. Excerpt: On September 11, 1648, the Levellers submitted the Large Petition with 40,000 signatures to Parliament. The deed was decisive because it set in motion the terrible events that culminated four months later in the execution of Charles Stuart, King of England, and because the Levellers, the first popular democratic political party in European, if not world, history, announced their opposition to the enclosures of the commons, or the privatization of the English land. It seems to be a pure coincidence that the Large Petition and the attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers took place on the same day and month, though the former was three and a half centuries earlier. The coincidence arises like magic from the dull miasma of created amnesia. We have forgotten the history of freedom and the commons.
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Comments (6 of 6)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6Would it not be more practical and indeed better for this site to encourage original writing!
Why cant indym.just have a list of recommended websites with links to them!
It just seems a little stupid and irritating when perhaps 90% of indym. readers also read other news sources incl. CounterPunch!
don´t get me wrong I respect the importance of the Levellers to British anarchists, but that is it, they are relevant to British anarchists, at most, English anarchists more so.
I wonder where is Ray to say this is irrelevant to IMC ireland.
The levellers were not the first democratic party in either Europe or "the world".
I´m sorry but I get really really pissed off when good thinkers and activists and anarchists in all other ways, make the culturally prejudiced presumption that occidental civilisation class struggles proffered the "first" of anything.
This belies sloppy thinking.
The levellers were cool.
However when recycling articles from elsewhere to place upon the IMC Ireland site remember that the English Civil War and all groupings party to that conflict holds particularly strong resonance and deep meaning for the Irish and their particular stream of "ethnic historiography".
and on my usual lighter note I preffered the Waterboys, they tried to speak gaelic.
We are about building the future.
reclaiming the future if you will from the monster of hyper-capitalism.
This means not holding one ethnic stream over anyother for relevance to the future.
we are looking forward together.
we have the answers have had them for years.
Now in these next few years we will see those answers take on global implementation.
global implementation means true globalisation.
the realisation that we are more than 6500.000.000 people, hearts and minds on one small planet, interconnected by more than capital, by the air we breathe, the ground we walk on and the water we piss into.
The english people and the levellers I´m afraid as well are only a small part in that globalisation.
The Levellers: wasn't that another SWP front?
Peter Linebaugh is known personally by at least some people who use this site regularly, who have an interest in reading what he writes. Personally I produce original work initially for slash.autonomedia.org, with whom I have an affiliation, as do a couple of other posters. In my view, that should not preclude the posting of the same article or a summary and link to it.
There is a dearth of original writing on this newswire, and it takes time to cultivate an 'atmosphere' whereby people take that initiative themselves. If you follow the evolution of any of the successful indymedia nodes you will discover that they all went through this phase.
Secondly, if indymedia.ie has a role, it is one not limited to the production of journalism, but rather a place of aggregation for Irish people with critical views and agendas, some of whom are not resident in the country.
As the poet James Shirley pointed out in his poem "Death the Leveller".....
"Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill:
But their strong nerves at last must yield;
They tame but one another still:
Early or late
They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, creep to death."