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On 23rd October almost 4,000 workers from different trade unions took part in a demonstration in defence of their workplaces. About 500 people are going to be fired from the Cegielski factory due to the so-called economic crisis. Anarchists and members of anarcho-syndicalist trade union Wokers’ Initiative also took part in the protest.

The demonstrtors first gathered on the premises of the factory and then moved towards the Provincial Office. The bloc of Workers’ Initiative and Sierpien ‘80 together with the anarchists was chanting slogans such as “Government out to the pavement, paving stones on the government”, “One, two, three, four, stop those damn dismissals”, “A worker dismissed, a boss hanged”, “Capitalism isn’t working! factories under the control of workers” etc. Rhythms of Resistance samba group from Poznan supported the demo with their rhythms. A banner saying “A worker dismissed, a boss hanged” was dropped from one building on the route of the demo.

When the demonstration reached the Provincial Office, the leaders of Solidarnosc trade union (which organized the demonstration) were declaring a radical fight in defence of the workplaces and even “burning the office”, at the same time they were buring car tyres. When the anarchists joined the shipyard workers in the back of the office building clashes with the police broke out, then the shipyard workers retreated as they were told to by their leaders.

After the demonstration had finished, the cops on horses surrounded a group of anarchists and WI activists, also those from Cegielski factory and took their I.D.s. At the same time one of the WI activists interrupted a live TV interview given by the boss of Solidarnosc and said “The members of our union are being nicked over there, and people from Solidarnosc are doing nothing about it, where is your solidarity??!!”. This event was trasmitted live to the public TV news. None of the demonstrators was arrested. Three cops and one unionist got injured and hospitalized. Photos and videos below

http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/9961

However, the real winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics is long dead. He too recognized the potential for cooperative ownership. However, unlike most every other cooperative proponent, he saw a very public role in assisting the development of cooperatives, since it is difficult for them to compete unaided against typical capitalist firms.

In fact, part of his vision was realized in the short-lived Paris Commune.

His name? Ferdinand Lassalle.

ONE - God makes sense of the the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.

1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.

2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.

3. Therefore, it is due to design.

The existence of intelligent life depends upon a conspiracy of initial conditions which must be fine-tuned to a degree that is literally incomprehensible and incalculable.

This fine-tuning is of two sorts. First, when the laws of nature are expressed as mathematical equations, you find appearing in them certain constants, like the gravitational constant. These constants are not determined by the laws of nature. The laws of nature are consistent with a wide range of values for these constants. Second, in addition to these constants there are certain arbitrary quantities which are just put in as initial conditions on which the laws of nature operate, for example, the amount of entropy or the balance between matter and anti-matter in the universe. Now all of these constants and quantities fall into an extraordinarily narrow range of life-permitting values. Were these constants or quantities to be altered by a hair’s breadth, the life-permitting balance would be destroyed and life would not exist.

For example, the physicist P. C. W. Davies has calculated that a change in the strength of gravity or of the atomic weak force by only one part in 10 (100) would have prevented a life-permitting universe. The cosmological constant which drives the inflation of the universe and is responsible for the recently discovered acceleration of the universe’s expansion is inexplicably fine-tuned to around one part in 10 (120).
Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of the Big Bang’s low entropy condition existing by chance are on the order of one out of 10 10 (123). Penrose comments,

And it’s not just each constant or quantity which must be exquisitely finely-tuned; their ratios to one another must be also finely-tuned.

Barrow and Tipler list ten steps in the evolution of homo sapiens, including such steps as the development of the DNA-based genetic code, the origin of mitochondria, the origin of photosynthesis, the development of aerobic respiration, and so forth, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred, the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and incinerated the earth.They report that

and

They calculate the odds against the assembly of a human genome at between 4-[180(110,000)] and 4-[360(110,000)]

Also, random mutation and natural selection have trouble accounting for the origin of irreducibly complex systems. In his recent book Darwin’s Black Box, microbiologist Michael Behe explains that certain cellular systems like the cilia or protein transport system are like incredibly complicated, microscopic machines which cannot function at all unless all the parts are present and functioning. There is no understanding within the neo-Darwinian synthesis of how such irreducibly complex systems can evolve by random mutation and natural selection. With respect to them current evolutionary theory has zero explanatory power.
According to Behe, however, there is one familiar explanation adequate to account for irreducible complexity, one which in other contexts we employ unhesitatingly: intelligent design .

The gradual evolution of biological complexity is better explained if there exists an intelligent cause behind the process rather than just the blind mechanisms alone. Thus, the theist has explanatory resources available which the naturalist lacks.

Stephen Hawking has estimated that if the rate of the universe’s expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed into a hot fireball.
P. C. W. Davies has calculated that the odds against the initial conditions being suitable for later star formation (without which planets could not exist) is one followed by a thousand billion billion zeroes, at least.
He also estimates that a change in the strength of gravity or of the weak force by only one part in 10 (100) would have prevented a life-permitting universe. There are a number of such quantities and constants present in the big bang which must be fine-tuned in this way if the universe is to permit life.

There is no physical reason why these constants and quantities should possess the values they do. The former agnostic physicist Paul Davies comments,

Similarly, Fred Hoyle remarks,

Now there are three possibilities for explaining the presence of this remarkable fine-tuning of the universe: physical necessity, chance, or design.

The first alternative holds that there is some unknown Theory of Everything (T.O.E.) which would explain the way the universe is. It had to be that way, and there was really no chance or little chance of the universe’s not being life-permitting. By contrast, the second alternative states that the fine-tuning is due entirely to chance. It’s just an accident that the universe is life-permitting, and we’re the lucky beneficiaries. The third alternative rejects both of these accounts in favor of an intelligent Mind behind the cosmos, who designed the universe to permit life. Which of these alternatives is the most plausible?

The first alternative seems extraordinarily implausible. There is just no physical reason why these constants and quantities should have the values they do. As P. C. W. Davies states,

For example, the most promising candidate for a T.O.E. to date, super-string theory or M-Theory, fails to predict uniquely our universe. In fact, string theory allows a "cosmic landscape" of around 10 (500) different universes governed by the present laws of nature, so that it does nothing to render the observed values of the constants and quantities physically necessary.

So what about the second alternative, that the fine-tuning of the universe is due to chance? The problem with this alternative is that the odds against the universe’s being life-permitting are so incomprehensibly great that they cannot be reasonably faced.
Students or laymen who blithely assert, "It could have happened by chance!" simply have no conception of the fantastic precision of the fine-tuning requisite for life. They would never embrace such a hypothesis in any other area of their lives—for example, in order to explain how there came to be overnight a car in one’s driveway.

Some people have tried to escape this problem by claiming that we really shouldn’t be surprised at the finely-tuned conditions of the universe, for if the universe were not fine-tuned, then we wouldn’t be here to be surprised about it!
Given that we are here, we should expect the universe to be fine-tuned. But such reasoning is logically fallacious. We can show this by means of a parallel illustration. Imagine you’re traveling abroad and are arrested on trumped-up drug charges and dragged in front of a firing squad of 100 trained marksmen, all with rifles aimed at your heart, to be executed. You hear the command given: "Ready! Aim! Fire!" and you hear the deafening roar of the guns. And then you observe that you are still alive, that all of the 100 trained marksmen missed! Now what would you conclude? "Well, I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised that they all missed. After all, if they hadn’t all missed, then I wouldn’t be here to be surprised about it! Given that I am here, I should expect them all to miss." Of course not! You would immediately suspect that they all missed on purpose, that the whole thing was a set-up, engineered for some reason by someone.
While you wouldn’t be surprised that you don’t observe that you are dead, you’d be very surprised, indeed, that you do observe that you are alive. In the same way, given the incredible improbability of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life, it is reasonable to conclude that this is not due to chance, but to design.

In order to rescue the alternative of chance, its proponents have therefore been forced to adopt the hypothesis that there exists an infinite number of randomly ordered universes composing a sort of World Ensemble or multiverse of which our universe is but a part. Somewhere in this infinite World Ensemble finely-tuned universes will appear by chance alone, and we happen to be one such world.

There are, however, at least two major failings of the World Ensemble hypothesis: First, there’s no evidence that such a World Ensemble exists. No one knows if there are other worlds. Moreover, recall that Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin proved that any universe in a state of continuous cosmic expansion cannot be infinite in the past. Their theorem applies to the multiverse, too. Therefore, since the past is finite, only a finite number of other worlds can have been generated by now, so that there’s no guarantee that a finely-tuned world will have appeared in the ensemble.

Second, if our universe is just a random member of an infinite World Ensemble, then it is overwhelmingly more probable that we should be observing a much different universe than what we in fact observe. Roger Penrose has calculated that it is inconceivably more probable that our solar system should suddenly form by the random collision of particles than that a finely-tuned universe should exist. (Penrose calls it "utter chicken feed" by comparison.)
So if our universe were just a random member of a World Ensemble, it is inconceivably more probable that we should be observing a universe no larger than our solar system. Or again, if our universe were just a random member of a World Ensemble, then we ought to be observing highly extraordinary events, like horses’ popping into and out of existence by random collisions, or perpetual motion machines, since such things are vastly more probable than all of nature’s constants and quantities’ falling by chance into the virtually infinitesimal life-permitting range. Observable universes like those are much more plenteous in the World Ensemble than worlds like ours and, therefore, ought to be observed by us. Since we do not have such observations, that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis. On atheism, at least, it is therefore highly probable that there is no World Ensemble.

So that there is an intelligent designer of the universe, seems to make much more sense than the atheistic view that the universe just happens to be by chance fine-tuned to an incomprehensible precision for the existence of intelligent life.

TWO - God makes sense of the origin of the universe

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Given the truth of the two premises, the conclusion necessarily follows.

From the very nature of the case, this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being which created the universe. It must be uncaused because we’ve seen that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be timeless and therefore changeless—at least without the universe—because it created time. Because it also created space, it must transcend space as well and therefore be immaterial, not physical.

Moreover, I would argue, it must also be personal.

For how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect like the universe?
If the cause were a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions, then the cause could never exist without the effect. For example, the cause of water’s freezing is the temperature’s being below 0˚ Centigrade. If the temperature were below 0˚ from eternity past, then any water that was around would be frozen from eternity. It would be impossible for the water to begin to freeze just a finite time ago. So if the cause is permanently present, then the effect should be permanently present as well. The only way for the cause to be timeless and the effect to begin in time is for the cause to be a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time without any prior determining conditions. For example, a man sitting from eternity could freely will to stand up. Thus, we are brought, not merely to a transcendent cause of the universe, but to its personal Creator.

Some might say that the big bang is speculative physics that could change at any moment. But the trend is in favor of an absolute beginning out of nothing. We have had a string of solid, recent scientific discoveries that point in a definite direction, as follows:

Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and the scientific confirmation of its accuracy
the cosmic microwave background radiation
red-shifting of light from galaxies moving away from us
radioactive element abundance predictions
helium/hydrogen abundance predictions
star formation and stellar lifecycle theories
the second law of thermodynamics applied to nuclear fusion inside stars

So, insofar as a person questions these discoveries and the origin of the entire physical universe out of nothing, they are opposing the progress of science.

We now have pretty strong evidence that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning about 13 billion years ago in a cataclysmic event known as the Big Bang. What makes the Big Bang so startling is that it represents the origin of the universe from literally nothing. For all matter and energy, even physical space and time themselves, came into being at the Big Bang. Vilenkin pulls no punches:

P. C. W. Davies comments,

The standard Big Bang model thus describes a universe which is not eternal in the past, but which came into being a finite time ago. Moreover,–and this deserves underscoring–the origin it posits is an absolute origin ex nihilo. For not only all matter and energy, but space and time themselves come into being at the initial cosmological singularity. As Barrow and Tipler emphasize,

On such a model the universe originates ex nihilo in the sense that at the initial singularity it is true that There is no earlier space-time point or it is false that Something existed prior to the singularity.

All matter and energy, even physical space and time themselves, came into being at the Big Bang. As the physicist P. C. W. Davies explains,

What can we infer about the cause?

So, space, time, and matter began to exist. What could have caused them to begin to exist?

Whatever causes the universe to appear is not inside of space, because there was no space causally prior to the creation event. The cause must therefore be non-physical, because physical things exist in space.
Whatever causes the universe to appear is not bound by time (temporal). It never began to exist. There was no passage of time causally prior to the big bang, so the cause of the universe did notcome into being. The cause existed eternally.
And the cause is not material. All the matter in the universe came into being at the first moment. Whatever caused the universe to begin to exist cannot have been matter, because there was no matter causally prior to the big bang.
So what could the cause be? Craig notes that we are only familiar with two kinds of non-material realities:

1) Abstract objects, like numbers, sets and mathematical relations
2) Minds, like your own mind

Now, abstract objects don’t cause of any effects in nature. But we are very familiar with the causal capabilities of our own minds – just raise your own arm and see! So, by process of elimination, we are left with a mind as the cause of the universe.

This cause created the entire physical universe. The cause of this event is therefore supernatural, because it brings nature into being and is not inside of nature itself. The cause of the universe violates the law of conservation of matter is therefore performing a miracle.

I will list each alternative arguments to the Big bang model by name and explain the main problem with each.

The steady-state model: disproved by recent empirical observations of radio galaxy distributions, as well as red-shifting of light from distant galaxies moving away from us at increasing speeds
The oscillating model: disproved in 1998 by more empirical measurements of mass density which showed that the universe would expand forever, and never collapse
The vacuum fluctuation model: the theory allows for universes to spawn at every point in space and coalesce into one extremely old universe, which contradictions observations of our much younger universe
The chaotic inflationary model: does not avoid the need for an absolute beginning in the finite past
The quantum gravity model: makes use of imaginary time which cannot be mapped into a physical reality, it’s purely theoretical

The evidence available today supports the creation of the entire physical universe from nothing, caused by a supernatural mind with immense power. The progress of science has strengthened this theory against determined opposition from rival naturalistic theories.

Speculating about QM or chaotic inflationary requires you to go beyond the experimental evidence to the positing of unobservable realities. I listed multiple lines of evidence in favor of the standard big bang model, and that has been confirmed by multiple converging discoveries.

With each successive failure of alternative cosmogonic theories, the Standard Model has been corroborated. It can be confidently said that no cosmogonic model has been as repeatedly verified in its predictions and as corroborated by attempts at its falsification, or as concordant with empirical discoveries and as philosophically coherent, as the Standard Big Bang Model. This does not prove that it is correct, but it does show that it is the best explanation of the evidence which we have and therefore merits our provisional acceptance.

So we can line up 6 scientific discoveries, based on experimental results.

To deny the premise, one needs some reasons or some scientific data.

There are usually three basic reasons for rejecting a premise: (a) it is demonstrably false, (b) it lacks sufficient evidence or (c) it has at least one counterexample. If a person wishes to dispute (1) then he must categorize the causal principle into one of the three classifications I have stated.

So, I think we need to deal with the data we have today, not imagine alternative realities where untested speculations preserve a belief (weather it’s theism or atheism) from falsification by the progress of science.
Unless a person can name a counter-example to the premise, the deductive argument goes through on modus ponens, backed by the science

Hope this explains why I feel my beleif in God is rational, although obviously these 2 are far from the only reasons. -ST

Leaflet distributed at the Unite Against Fascism demonstration against British National party leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time arguing against censorship and "ruling class anti-fascism".

The recent row over the British National Party’s appearance on BBC Question Time displays the level of anger at the rise of the far-right party. All of us have turned out today because we oppose Nick Griffin’s racist effort to blame immigrants for all of society’s ills, including the economic crisis, and do not want his rubbish to gain more of an audience. But given the level of establishment racism, a campaign to defend immigrants must not stop at mere anti-BNPism, nor can the growth of the far-right be stopped by appealing to the existing authorities to silence them.

The rise of the BNP

The BNP’s electoral support has rocketed in recent years—in the last decade its European Election vote has increased ten-fold, achieving nearly one million votes in this June’s poll. Much greater in number than the fascist core leaders of the party, BNP voters are typically identified as working-class former Labour voters who no longer feel that they have a ‘voice’ with the open pro-business turn of that party. The BNP does not simply advocate its racist ideology, but also plays on very real concerns like poor housing, underfunded public services, and the economic crisis, to win support for their effort to scapegoat immigrants for these same problems. With all the main ruling class parties agreeing to the ‘austerity consensus’ that working-class people have to suffer because of the crisis, for some voters the BNP seem like an alternative.

Ruling class anti-fascism

For this very reason it is mistaken to believe that the Labour and Conservative parties are allies in efforts to stop the growth of the BNP, as Unite Against Fascism does. UAF platforms often feature establishment politicians like Peter Hain, or even Sir Teddy Taylor, one of the most right-wing leaders of the Tories, because they are ‘anti-fascist’, and yet these are exactly the people at fault for the rise in the BNP vote. It is no good to accept the behaviour of the existing parties and keep silent about their racism and their capitalist ‘austerity and cuts’ consensus. This was shown when UAF’s Weyman Bennett, a member of the Socialist Workers Party, debated the BNP’s Simon Darby on the radio, steadfastly remaining ‘apolitical’ and saying nothing as Darby attacked bankers and free-market capitalism for causing the crisis—making it look as if the BNP were the only alternative on offer. This is a dead end both in terms of stopping people turning to the BNP, and stopping the media and political onslaught against immigrants.

Moreover, although the Tory and Labour politicians who have alienated their voter base routinely denounce the despicable racist ideas of the BNP, they do so not because of sincere concern for immigrants, but rather for fear of a challenge to their support. They themselves rail against ‘illegal’ immigrants even more than against the far-right. And these politicians are not just speechifying: for some, this support for racist borders poses a very real life-and-death risk. In 2000, when Jack Straw, who is opposing Griffin on Question Time tonight, was Home Secretary, 58 Chinese migrants died in a truck as they were smuggled into the UK: the direct result of ‘Fortress Britain’s’ borders. Day after day we hear of more police raids on workplaces—such as SOAS or the Willis insurance office in the City of London—where unregularised migrants had spoken out against low wages and long hours. The workers were arrested, imprisoned and then flown to their countries of origin, where they face poverty and violence from paramilitaries. Just last Friday the UK Borders Agency carried out its first mass forcible deportation to Baghdad since the 2003 invasion. Disgustingly, the Daily Express congratulated them, arguing that the Iraqis threatened to bring Sharia law and mass female circumcision to the streets of Britain. These sentiments are not just coming from the BNP—they reflect a racism running deep in British society.

Freedom of speech?

This conservatism of mainstream anti-fascism is also reflected in its tactics, with UAF lobbying the great and good of the BBC as well as the state to silence the BNP. They argue that the BNP is not a ‘legitimate’ party and the state should silence it: yet surely, in the state’s eyes, the radical left, the anti-war movement and militant workers’ struggles are also not ‘legitimate’? We must have no trust in state bans or state censorship: we need only look at its use of ‘anti-terrorism’ laws to silence protests, and its demands on migrants seeking regularisation to show their ‘loyalty’, with a ban on taking part in anti-war demos. The idea of ‘legitimate’ politics, as defined by the existing ruling class, is a total dead end.

Yet that does not mean we want Nick Griffin on Question Time, and we look to a force which can challenge the BNP’s anti-immigrant propaganda: not the courts, not the Labour Party, but the collective action of organised workers. Much like the Sun workers who in 1984 blanked that papers’ lying front page during the Miners’ Strike, media workers should use their power to stop racist views getting an audience—from the BNP, or anyone else.

Our support for free speech in terms of opposing state censorship by no means implies passivity to the BNP finding more and more of a platform. This debate does however pose the question of who changes society: the state intervening to curb the worst excesses of the worst parties, or collectively organised action by workers?

Migrant worker organising

Most centrally, we must challenge the underlying racism in society and insist that everyone has the right to live and work where they please and on equal terms. Only if we determinedly make the argument for this basic democratic right can we even begin to try and push back the atmosphere where Labour, Tories and the BNP trade blows over who can best sort out the ‘problem’ of immigration. Anti-racism and anti-BNPism should not be a propagandist effort separated from the existing struggles of unregularised migrants, which are usually in direct conflict with Labour.

Here we can look to migrant-worker cleaners in the City of London and on the Tube as excellent examples of how to resist the recession. These workers, many of them without papers and living in a perilous unregularised status, have refused to accept management bullying and being paid peanuts. They show the whole working class that we do not have to knuckle under and accept the Labour-Tory consensus that the working class has to suffer because of the capitalist crisis: such community and workplace resistance is the real alternative, not the BNP.

Borders, national identity and ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ status have long been used by our rulers to divide the working class and bulldoze through their attacks. The answer is not to line up with Labour and the Tories, congratulating them on being less hostile to immigrants than the BNP are, but rather to build links between migrant workers’ struggles, resistance to the recession like the Royal Mail strikes, and anti-fascism resting on the power of organised workers rather than state censorship.

Taken from http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2009…w-off-the-bbc/

On 23rd October almost 4,000 workers from different trade unions took part in a demonstration in defence of their workplaces. About 500 people are going to be fired from the Cegielski factory due to the so-called economic crisis. Anarchists and members of anarcho-syndicalist trade union Wokers’ Initiative also took part in the protest.</p>
The demonstrtors first gathered on the premises of the factory and then moved towards the Provincial Office. The bloc of Workers’ Initiative and Sierpien ‘80 together with the anarchists was chanting slogans such as “Government out to the pavement, paving stones on the government”, “One, two, three, four, stop those damn dismissals”, “A worker dismissed, a boss hanged”, “Capitalism isn’t working! factories under the control of workers” etc. Rhythms of Resistance samba group from Poznan supported the demo with their rhythms. A banner saying “A worker dismissed, a boss hanged” was dropped from one building on the route of the demo. read more

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The standard definition of tailism is one where the class-conscious workers are merely behind the struggles of less conscious workers. Programmatically speaking, it means watering down immediate demands to the point where the masses would be compelled to "take action."

However, the comments above have caused me to briefly reflect upon something. The position of "coach" is one that is behind the bench during a game, perhaps on the playing area during practices, and in the locker room during intermissions.

As I considered the above as a potential form of tailism, I entertained the neological concept of "revolutionary tailism" (whereby the class-conscious workers would educate, agitate, and organize with the express purpose of pushing workers ahead and not pulling them ahead), but then realized that "tailism" is tied to workers already on the move.

So what about "coachism," then? Sometimes the coaching might have to be as strict as that of Soviet hockey authoritarian Viktor Tikhonov, but ultimate the players themselves bask in the glory of the sport.