Excerpts from an ANSWER Coalition press release.

Police arrest Minutemen member Tyler Joseph Froatz for weapons arsenal and assault.Statement from Sarah Sloan, National Staff Coordinator of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, who was assaulted by Froatz.

On Tuesday, May 1, at approximately 1:00 pm, I was assaulted by Tyler Joseph Froatz. The assault took place in Malcolm X Park during set up for the May Day Immigrant Rights Rally. Mr. Froatz was arrested following the assault.

Tyler Joseph Froatz is a member of the Minutemen. A.N.S.W.E.R. and others have been protesting the Minutemen nationwide - in Los Angeles, at Columbia University in NYC, at Georgetown University in Washington DC, and elsewhere.

The Minutemen are not simply another conservative organization with xenophobic and racist ideas. They are an armed vigilante organization. Their members include many people with longstanding ties to white supremacist and terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi Party. Their armed border patrols are designed to popularize and sanctify armed intimidation against immigrants.

On Tuesday, May 1, local Minutemen member Tyler Joseph Froatz was arrested at the immigrant rights rally following his unprovoked, violent assault. Mr. Froatz was found to be in possession of two knives, one of them with a 12-inch blade - a flare gun and a stun gun. In a subsequent search of his vehicle and apartment, police found what is reported to be a large arsenal of rifles, handguns, ammunition, swords, bows, arrows, machetes, a grenade and grenade launcher. Mr. Froatz also had literature and graphic material depicting violent assaults against immigrants, including pregnant women and children.

The Minutemen are just a tip of a racist and xenophobic iceberg. The Minutemen’s reputation has been sanitized as they are given ample coverage on Fox News, CNN’s Lou Dobbs and other mainstream media outlets.

The Minutemen and their racist and right-wing supporters openly promote armed vigilantism. The arrest of Mr. Froatz after his violent assault on an A.N.S.W.E.R. organizer proves once again that Minutemen spokespersons and organizers not only preach the rhetoric of anti-immigrant violence but they are armed to the teeth.

The Minutemen represent a racist poison, but all of those in the government and mainstream media who have helped create an anti-immigrant hysteria in the country are responsible too.

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and all other progressive organizations who mobilized on May 1 and earlier will continue to campaign for immigrant rights and full legalization. We will expose the Minutemen and the forces of racism and bigotry, and we will continue to march with millions of other people around the country.

More on this as I know more. Yes, Sarah is a friend.

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It’s expensive and so far only generates 11 Megawatts of electricity but it is expected to be able to cater for the 600,000 people of Seville when it’s completed. Prices are eventually expected to fall too as the technology develops. Well it’s a start.

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Today’s election in Britain and Scotland is expected to topple the Labour Party and force Blair to resign.

Blair destroyed everything that Labour was based on, so he can hardly be surprised when its natural supporters reject him. Time’s up Tony.

– Gus Abraham of 1820 in New Statesman

It will also unquestionably lead to pro-independence forces taking the helm in Scotland. This is an election of historic proportions.

And celebrations are being planned in advance of the fact…

Update: A portent? Our liberal pal, Wood in Wales, just voted Communist for the first time ever.

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Why is it that, in spite of the hundreds of billions of dollars the U.S. has borrowed to finance its War on Terror, terrorism has steadily increased? Could it be because violence benefits chaos, rather than stability?

It’s also because the US insists that fighting terrorism must be done by using state-on-state tactics, and it’s not that kind of conflict. The US uses the wrong tactics and the wrong approach, thinking that if they can just cut off the head of whoever they deem as the Chief Evildoer this week, that terrorism will end. This totally misunderstands the tactics and organization of those the US deems as terrorist.

From the inside flap to John Robb’s new book, Brave New War

[The] evolutionary leap in the methods of warfare makes it possible for extremely small nonstate groups to fight states and possibly win on a regular basis. The use of systems disruption as a method of strategic warfare gives rise to a nightmare scenario in which any nation—including the United States—can be driven to bankruptcy by an enemy it can’t compete with economically. We are staring at a future where defeat isn’t experienced all at once but as an inevitable withering away of military, economic, and political power through wasting conflicts with minor foes.

In other words, the US can build all the Green Zones it wants in Iraq, and a few insurgents can still bring down crucial oil pipelines and the electrical grid almost at will, thus eroding the power of the government and of the US, as well as costing them millions, if not billions.

It is time, says Robb, to decentralize all of our systems, from energy and communications to security and markets. It is time for every citizen to take personal responsibility for some aspect of state security. It is time to make our systems, and ourselves, as flexible, adaptable, and resilient as the forces that are arrayed against us.

Those forces can be Islamists, transnational gangs, home-grown militias, or whatever. Their aims may differ, but the tactics and approach are the same. Small, highly mobile, loosely networked groups who inflict major damage despite their much smaller size. Robb sees the state itself as a declining force with its power worldwide starting to ebb, to be replaced by corporations, private militaries, insurgencies, regional networks, and other such decentralized organizations that will emerge in the hollowed-out structure of what used to be a state.

He uses the response to Hurricane Katrina as a telling example. The government wasn’t able to respond quickly. Instead, who was on the ground quickly, offering huge support? Wal-Mart and Blackwater, that’s who. Wal-Mart used their huge logistics system to get food, water, and supplies quickly to people who needed them. Blackwater private military were hired by the wealthy to protect their property and lives. Whether you loathe Blackwater isn’t the point, that they were able to get there fast and efficiently when the government couldn’t IS the point. The US government is preoccupied and probably bankrupting itself slogging through (and losing) wars it started but doesn’t understand. Which is precisely what those opposed to the US want to happen and according to Robb, have deliberately planned to happen.

That “violence benefits chaos” is precisely their goal. Robb, whose blogs I read regularly, is not right-wing, and says he doesn’t have politics or even vote. He’s more of a futurist with a background both in military special ops and high tech software startups. That we are moving towards a highly decentralized world that the US government appears clueless about is, I think, a given. Those who survive will be those who adapt.

[tags]Brave New War[/tags]

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WaterAid has been constructing composting latrines in Third World countries. Not only do the latrines greatly reduce sewage problems, they provide fertilizer for crops.

They quietly do many such good works, their mission being “to overcome poverty by enabling the world’s poorest people to gain access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education.” Good stuff indeed.

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