Asylum For Blood-Feuds-Affected Person -- Lawyer Recommandation

[demakopoulos]

Mafia, with its omerta (bloody secrecy oaths) and its arcane symbols and its vendettas (blood feuds) bears similarity with Freemasons. Omertà literally means "manhood," and refers to the idea of a man resolving his own problems, but the term has become synonomous with the Mafia's code of silence. The Mafia's arcane rituals, and much of the organization's structure, were based largely on those of the Catholic confraternities and even Freemasonry, colored by Sicilian familial traditions and even certain customs associated with military-religious orders of chivalry like the Order of Malta. The duel, for example, gave way to the vendetta, but both were known among Sicilian feuding families in times past.

[decemberist01]

lcn, I think the US would consider this an "honor killing" case.  What would be helpful for your application:  affidavits from relatives or friends who are familiar with your country's laws, can affirm that these types of killings happen in your society, etc; news articles, reports from non-governmental human rights organizations, the UN, or anyone else, which talk about honor killings in your country. 

You might also try to get in touch with the Tahirih Justice Center:  www.tahirih.org.

[thisfriday]

"BUFF"

[obviousl]

I fully agree with mohan. Take his advice to handle this case.

[T]

tag

[kaplan]

It is interesting to observe the contrasting attitudes of our left-liberal culture to the two kinds of crime, organized versus unorganized. Organized crime is essentially anarcho-capitalist, a productive industry struggling to govern itself; apart from attempts to monopolize and injure competitors, it is productive and non-aggressive. Unorganized, or street, crime, in contrast, is random, punkish, viciously aggressive against the innocent, and has no redeeming social feature. Wouldn't you know, then, that our leftist culture hates and reviles the Mafia and organized crime, while it lovingly excuses, and apologizes for, chaotic and random street punksviolence which amounts to "anarchy" in the bad, or common meaning. In a sense, street violence embodies the ideal of left-anarchism: since it constitutes an assault on the rights of person and property, and on the rule of law that codifies such rights.

Anarchy is Order. The A is for anarchy and the circle is represents the order.

Anarchy and anarchism mean "system and management without ruler(s), i.e. co-operation without repression, tyranny and slavery". The words anarchy and anarchism are a bit problematic. Anglophone languages are very much twisted in an Orwellian "1984" "newspeak" way, to fool the people via the education to worship authority.

The word "anarchy" origins from Greek. The original meaning, that everybody should stick to, is the following: The prefix "an" means "negation of", without what is mentioned in the suffix, but keeping what is essential in the matter. The suffix "archy" means "rule (not rules or law), ruler, rulers, superior in contrast to subordinates, etc. Anarchy is management, coordination and administration etc. without ruling and thus without rulers.

And thus anarchy means a) coordination, without rule from the bureaucracy broadly defined, the economical and/or political/administrative superiors in private and public sectors (in contrast to the people), downwards to the bottom, i.e. in a coercive manner. b) Thus, anarchy is higher forms of economical and political/administrative democracy; 1. ideally, i.e. 100% anarchy; meaning 100% coordination on equal footing, without superiors and subordinates, horizontal organization, and co-operation without coercion, or 2. practically, significant i.e. more than 50% degree of anarchy, i.e. more horizontally than vertically organized, i.e. more influence on the societal management  from the "bottom upwards", than from the bureaucracy,  from "the top downwards to the bottom".

The bureaucracy organized as a ruling management , i.e. significant downards to the people and the grassroots - and not just an insignificant tendency in this direction, is also called authority or authorities, the State as a social concept or in a societal perspective - as well as government. Thus anarchy is a way of organizing society where there is management and coordination without ruling and rulers, tyranny and slavery, i.e. the tendencies towards State, authority, authorities, government, bureaucracy and similar are insignificant or zero. The opposite of anarchy is different types of archies, i.e. ruling and rulers, authority, authorities, State in a societal perspective, government - economical and/or political/administrative. Archies may be mainly monarchy, oligarchy, polyarchy, ochlarchy (mob rule) and/or plutarchy.

Thus, the State, administration of State, government, authority/ies, must not be mixed up with public sector, services and utilities, central/confederal/federal or municipal included, 'res publica', as the negation of the private sector and sphere, because State, goverment etc in this context are about special forms of organization (or disorganization), i.e. all systems where the influence on the societal management and coordination goes mainly from the top towards the bottom, slavery and tyranny - chaotic included. Thus public sector, services and utilities, central/confederal/federal or municipal included, organized significant horizontally, are anarchist - and thus not the State, authority/ies etc. or a part of it. The concept of 'central' is here referring mainly to general matters, things concerning the whole country or all of the citizens, and must not be mixed up with centralist, centralism or centralization, the negation of decentralist, decentralism and decentralization.

Anarchism is political systems and organizations coordinated as anarchy in the above meaning and manner, but also the political tendency advocating anarchy understood this way, and the scientifical knowledge about anarchy and the ways to reduce non-anarchist tendencies.
Briefly defined anarchy and anarchism are coordination on equal footing, without superiors and subordinates, i.e. horizontal organization and co-operation without coercion. This means practically or ideally, i.e. ordinary vs. perfect horizontal organization respectively. Thus, anarchy and anarchism mean real democracy, economical and political/administrative, in private and public sector. And thus, anarchy means coordination without government, in the meaning of different forms of vertically organized, i.e. chaotic included, economic and/or political-administrative relations among people, (and thus not without public sector). "Coercion" is defined as restraint, hindrance, compulsion and government by force, ruling, i.e. repression, etc.

[kaplan]

Anarchism is one of four main quadrants of the economic-political map, and economically based on socialism, i.e. the negation of plutarchy (capitalism), and political/adminstratively based on autonomy, i.e. the negation of statism. Furthermore, the other 3 quadrants represent liberalism, based on plutarchy without statism, fascism based on plutarchy with statism, and marxism based on statism without plutarchy.



The map indicates the degree of democracy concerning both the economic and the political/administrative dimensions, taking into account the 16 subsections, i.e. sectors, of the main quadrants:

1. The anarchist ideal at the top of the map, with individualist anarchism to the right, collectivist anarchism to the left, and social individualist anarchism close to the middle of the map.

2. Marxist collectivism close to the anarchist left; social democracy close to the middle, and the more statist and authoritarian socialist left and state communism (leninism) located at the left corner and down, close to fascism, respectively. A large part of marxist collectivism and a part of the social democratic sector, are semilibertarian, i.e. not significant authoritarian degree, but too statist to be anarchistic.

3. Left, right and ultra fascism (nazism and other very chaotic tendencies) are found at the bottom of the map, with left and right populism above towards the middle.

4. Liberalism, i.e. conservatism and the extreme right are authoritarian; social liberalism is close to the middle of the map, and individualism is close to the right corner of the anarchist quadrant. A part of the social liberal sector, and a large part of individualism are semi-libertarian, i.e. not significant authoritarian degree, but too capitalistic to be anarchist.

The closer to the anarchist ideal, the more democratic is the economic-political system.

The middlepoint of the map is defined as the turning-point where the influence on the societal managment and coordination seen all in all, aggregated, shifts from a) more from the bottom, the people, and upwards - than from the top downwards to the bottom, i.e. 50-50, economical and politica/administrative, to b) the opposite - more from the top - the authorities, towards the bottom - the grassroots, economical and/or political/administrative. In other words the middlepoint is a point of the map where the different forms of archies with respect to social organization turns over (revolts) to anarchy. Societies, organizations and social systems may shift coordinates related to the map in jumps, small jumps, steps or small steps. But any significant shift of coordinates is in reality a revolution, as reforms principally are just changes within a given system, i.e. with the same system-coordinates. A significant shift of system-coordinates may be soft as velvet, a velvet revolution, or more dramatic. Passing a border of the anarchist quadrant is in all cases a significant shift, and thus revolutionary, a small or big revolution.

Although theoretically and principally a certain and simple two-dimensional vector-figure may express a systems coordinates, described as a fixed, certain point on the map at a given time, practical mapping and data may be stocastical and influenced by the methods of aggregation. Thus a system's or society's coordinates on the map, may practically be noted just as a most likely figure and/or given by a confidence area that covers the real point on the map by some given probability. And thus, close to the borders of the anarchist quadrant, the real nature of the system, whether it is anarchist or not, may be discussed, and just a most likely, not certain, conclusion may be the result of an investigation, i.e. mapping of a social system. Similar problems of course may occur related to map in general.

The definition of the middlepoint is an independent axiom or assumption, related to the map, defining principally what is real democracy, i.e. identical to anarchy in an objectively way related to the de facto circulation of the influence on the management and coordination of a system or society from the people's perspective. It is however also possible to calibrate the map in more subjective ways. Say, a person 'allergic' to authority may subjectively think the above defined middle point has significant authoritarian degree, say, being fascist ("the Sex Pistols punk perspective"), and thus implicitely placing the 50-50 case in the fascis/populist quadrant on the map, setting a subjective higher standard for the definition of democracy. The opposite tendency, where an undemocratic system is thought of as real democratic, and thus in reality placing the 50-50 case definition above the middlepoint of the map, is also possible. The objective definition, based on the 50-50 influence case, is however also a politically based axiom, and thus in a way subjective or arbitary or conventionally based, but not based on subjective impressions, it is a more politically neutral or balanced definition, related to the flow or circulation of the influence on the management from the people's perspective, whether this flow or circulation de facto mainly is in the favour of the people vs the authorities. Thus, it is objective in a neutral or matter of fact politically oriented way, related to the real meaning of the word democracy, not objective in a non-political way.

[niggalaw]

Wow!

[elly]

It is interesting to observe the contrasting attitudes of our left-liberal culture to the two kinds of crime, organized versus unorganized. Organized crime is essentially anarcho-capitalist, a productive industry struggling to govern itself; apart from attempts to monopolize and injure competitors, it is productive and non-aggressive. Unorganized, or street, crime, in contrast, is random, punkish, viciously aggressive against the innocent, and has no redeeming social feature. Wouldn't you know, then, that our leftist culture hates and reviles the Mafia and organized crime, while it lovingly excuses, and apologizes for, chaotic and random street punksviolence which amounts to "anarchy" in the bad, or common meaning. In a sense, street violence embodies the ideal of left-anarchism: since it constitutes an assault on the rights of person and property, and on the rule of law that codifies such rights.

One great scene in The Godfather embodies the difference between right and left anarchism. One errant, former member of the Corleone famiglia abases himself before The Godfather (Marlon Brando). A certain punk had raped and brutalized his daughter. He went to the police and the courts, and the punk was, at last, let go (presumably by crafty ACLU-type lawyers and a soft judicial system). This distraught father now comes to Don Corleone for justice. Brando gently upbraids the father: "Why didn't you come to me? Why did you go to The State?" The inference is clear: the State isn't engaged in equity and justice; to obtain justice, you must come to the famiglia. Finally, Brando relents: "What would you have me do?" The father whispers in the Godfather's ear. "No, no, that is too much. We will take care of him properly." So not only do we see anarcho-capitalist justice carried out, but it is clear that the Mafia code has a nicely fashioned theory of proportionate justice. In a world where the idea that the punishment should fit the crime has been abandonedand still struggled over by libertarian theorists it is heart-warming to see that the Mafia has worked it out in practice.

Anarchism is a political theory which aims to create anarchy, "the absence of a master, of a sovereign." In other words, anarchism is a political theory which aims to create a society within which individuals freely co-operate together as equals. As such anarchism opposes all forms of hierarchical control - be that control by the state or a capitalist - as harmful to the individual and their individuality as well as unnecessary.

While the popular understanding of anarchism is of a violent, anti-State movement, anarchism is a much more subtle and nuanced tradition then a simple opposition to government power. Anarchists oppose the idea that power and domination are necessary for society, and instead advocate more co-operative, anti-hierarchical forms of social, political and economic organisation. However, "anarchism" and "anarchy" are undoubtedly the most misrepresented ideas in political theory. Generally, the words are used to mean "chaos" or "without order," and so, by implication, anarchists desire social chaos and a return to the "laws of the jungle." This process of misrepresentation is not without historical parallel. For example, in countries which have considered government by one person (monarchy) necessary, the words "republic" or "democracy" have been used precisely like "anarchy," to imply disorder and confusion. Those with a vested interest in preserving the statusquo will obviously wish to imply that opposition to the current system cannot work in practice, and that a new form of society will only lead to chaos. Or, as Errico Malatesta expresses it:

"since it was thought that government was necessary and that without government there could only be disorder and confusion, it was natural and logical that anarchy, which means absence of government, should sound like absence of order."

The word "anarchy" is from the Greek, prefix an (or a), meaning "not," "the want of," "the absence of," or "the lack of", plus archos, meaning "a ruler," "director", "chief," "person in charge," or "authority." Or, as Peter Kropotkin put it, Anarchy comes from the Greek words meaning "contrary to authority." While the Greek words anarchos and anarchia are often taken to mean "having no government" or "being without a government," as can be seen, the strict, original meaning of anarchism was not simply "no government." "An-archy" means "without a ruler," or more generally, "without authority," and it is in this sense that anarchists have continually used the word. For example, we find Kropotkin arguing that anarchism "attacks not only capital, but also the main sources of the power of capitalism: law, authority, and the State." For anarchists, anarchy means "not necessarily absence of order, as is generally supposed, but an absence of rule."

Anarchism can be understood as the generic social and political idea that expresses negation of all power, sovereignty, domination, and hierarchical division, and a will to their dissolution. . . Anarchism is therefore more than anti-statism . . . [even if] government (the state) . . . is, appropriately, the central focus of anarchist critique. For this reason, rather than being purely anti-government or anti-state, anarchism is primarily a movement against hierarchy. Why? Because hierarchy is the organisational structure that embodies authority. Since the state is the "highest" form of hierarchy, anarchists are, by definition, anti-state; but this is not a sufficient definition of anarchism. This means that real anarchists are opposed to all forms of hierarchical organisation, not only the state. They are therefore opposed to what the Mexican anarchist Flores Magon called the 'sombre trinity' -- state, capital and the church. Anarchists are thus opposed to both capitalism and to the state, as well as to all forms of religious authority. But anarchists also seek to establish or bring about by varying means, a condition of anarchy, that is, a decentralised society without coercive institutions, a society organised through a federation of voluntary associations. Reference to "hierarchy" in this context is a fairly recent development -- the "classical" anarchists such as Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin did use the word, but rarely (they usually preferred "authority," which was used as short-hand for "authoritarian"). However, it's clear from their writings that theirs was a philosophy against hierarchy, against any inequality of power or privileges between individuals. This opposition to hierarchy is, for anarchists, not limited to just the state or government. It includes all authoritarian economic and social relationships as well as political ones, particularly those associated with capitalist property and wage labour.

Thus "anarchy" means more than just "no government," it means opposition to all forms of authoritarian organisation and hierarchy. In Kropotkin's words, "the origin of the anarchist inception of society . . . [lies in] the criticism ... of the hierarchical organisations and the authoritarian conceptions of society; and ... the analysis of the tendencies that are seen in the progressive movements of mankind. Thus any attempt to assert that anarchy is purely anti-state is a misrepresentation of the word and the way it has been used by the anarchist movement. When one examines the writings of classical anarchists... as well as the character of anarchist movements... it is clearly evident that it has never had this limited vision [of just being against the state]. It has always challenged all forms of authority and exploitation, and has been equally critical of capitalism and religion as it has been of the state. And, just to state the obvious, anarchy does not mean chaos nor do anarchists seek to create chaos or disorder. Instead, they wish to create a society based upon individual freedom and voluntary co-operation. In other words, order from the bottom up, not disorder imposed from the top down by authorities.

To quote Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism is "the no-government system of socialism." In other words, "the abolition of exploitation and oppression of man by man, that is the abolition of private property [i.e. capitalism] and government." Anarchism, therefore, is a political theory that aims to create a society which is without political, economic or social hierarchies. Anarchists maintain that anarchy, the absence of rulers, is a viable form of social system and so work for the maximisation of individual liberty and social equality. They see the goals of liberty and equality as mutually self-supporting. While there are many different types of anarchism (from individualist anarchism to communist-anarchism -- there has always been two common positions at the core of all of them -- opposition to government and opposition to capitalism. In the words of the individualist-anarchist Benjamin Tucker, anarchism insists on "the abolition of the State and the abolition of usury; on no more government of man by man, and no more exploitation of man by man. All anarchists view profit, interest and rent as usury (i.e. as exploitation) and so oppose them and the conditions that create them just as much as they oppose government and the State. More generally, in the words of L. Susan Brown, the "unifying link" within anarchism "is a universal condemnation of hierarchy and domination and a willingness to fight for the freedom of the human individual." For anarchists, a person cannot be free if they are subject to state or capitalist authority.

[elly]

So Anarchism is a political theory which advocates the creation of anarchy, a society based on the maxim of "no rulers." To achieve this, "in common with all socialists, the anarchists hold that the private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time; that it is condemned to disappear: and that all requisites for production must, and will, become the common property of society, and be managed in common by the producers of wealth. And... they maintain that the ideal of the political organisation of society is a condition of things where the functions of government are reduced to minimum... and that the ultimate aim of society is the reduction of the functions of government to nil -- that is, to a society without government, to an-archy. Thus anarchism is both positive and negative. It analyses and critiques current society while at the same time offering a vision of a potential new society -- a society that fulfils certain human needs which the current one denies. Anarchism unites critical analysis with hope, for, as Bakunin pointed out,

The urge to destroy is a creative urge.

One cannot build a better society without understanding what is wrong with the present one.

Many anarchists, seeing the negative nature of the definition of "anarchism," have used other terms to emphasise the inherently positive and constructive aspect of their ideas. The most common terms used are "free socialism," "free communism," "libertarian socialism," and "libertarian communism." For anarchists, libertarian socialism, libertarian communism, and anarchism are virtually interchangeable.

LIBERTARIAN is one who believes in freedom of action and thought; one who believes in free will. SOCIALISM is a social system in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods. Just taking those two first definitions and fusing them yields: LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM: a social system which believes in freedom of action and thought and free will, in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods.

However, due to the creation of the Libertarian Party in the USA, many people now consider the idea of "libertarian socialism" to be a contradiction in terms. Indeed, many "Libertarians" think anarchists are just attempting to associate the "anti-libertarian" ideas of "socialism" (as Libertarians conceive it) with Libertarian ideology in order to make those "socialist" ideas more "acceptable" -- in other words, trying to steal the "libertarian" label from its rightful possessors. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists have been using the term "libertarian" to describe themselves and their ideas since the 1850's. The revolutionary anarchist Joseph Dejacque published Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement social in New York between 1858 and 1861. According to anarchist historian Max Nettlau, the use of the term "libertarian communism" dates from November, 1880 when a French anarchist congress adopted it. The use of the term "Libertarian" by anarchists became more popular from the 1890s onward after it was used in France in an attempt to get round anti-anarchist laws and to avoid the negative associations of the word "anarchy" in the popular mind. Since then, particularly outside America, it has always been associated with anarchist ideas and movements. Taking a more recent example, in the USA, anarchists organised "The Libertarian League" in July 1954, which had staunch anarcho-syndicalist principles and lasted until 1965. The US-based "Libertarian" Party, on the other hand has only existed since the early 1970's, well over 100 years after anarchists first used the term to describe their political ideas (and 90 years after the expression "libertarian communism" was first adopted). It is that party, not the anarchists, who have "stolen" the word. Only a libertarian-socialist system of ownership can maximise individual freedom. Needless to say, state ownership -- what is commonly called "socialism" -- is, for anarchists, not socialism at all. In fact, state "socialism" is just a form of capitalism, with no socialist content whatever. All branches of anarchism are opposed to capitalism. This is because capitalism is based upon oppression and exploitation. Anarchists reject the "notion that men cannot work together unless they have a driving-master to take a percentage of their product" and think that in an anarchist society the real workmen will make their own regulations, decide when and where and how things shall be done. By so doing workers would free themselves from the terrible bondage of capitalism. Anarchists are opposed to all economic forms which are based on domination and exploitation, including feudalism, Soviet-style "socialism" and so on. We just concentrate on capitalism because that is what is dominating the world just now.

Individualists like Benjamin Tucker along with social anarchists like Proudhon and Bakunin proclaimed themselves "socialists." They did so because, as Kropotkin put it in his classic essay "Modern Science and Anarchism," "so long as Socialism was understood in its wide, generic, and true sense -- as an effort to abolish the exploitation of Labour by Capital -- the Anarchists were marching hand-in-hands with the Socialists of that time." Or, in Tucker's words, "the bottom claim of Socialism is that labour should be put in possession of its own," a claim that both "the two schools of Socialistic thought ... State Socialism and Anarchism" agreed upon. Hence the word "socialist" was originally defined to include "all those who believed in the individual's right to possess what he or she produced." This opposition to exploitation (or usury) is shared by all true anarchists and places them under the socialist banner.

For most socialists, the only guarantee not to be robbed of the fruits of your labour is to possess the instruments of labour. For this reason Proudhon, for example, supported workers' co-operatives, where "every individual employed in the association ... has an undivided share in the property of the company" because by "participation in losses and gains . . . the collective force (i.e. surplus) ceases to be a source of profits for a small number of managers: it becomes the property of all workers." Thus, in addition to desiring the end of exploitation of labour by capital, true socialists also desire a society within which the producers own and control the means of production. The means by which the producers will do this is a moot point in anarchist and other socialist circles, but the desire remains a common one.