This lingo is undeniably inviting… “a small demand.” I’m guessing something of non-violence training involves not only refraining from violence against persons, but also against material disparity. Threatening redistribution of wealth will certainly provoke a violent defense of corporation-as-person personal property. Why can’t the non-violent crowd preach the non-violent forfeiture of capital loot?
That’s never been the purview of religion has it? They can’t ask the miscreants at the top to get religion, they are just after the low man on the totem pole to accept his fate.
This sort of cultural anarchism is so trite, such a turnoff to those who actually do go to work (the working class) and produce the necessities of life, and so non anticapitalist that it is rather disgusting to almost all of us. In fact, it looks as if the cops put this crap out?
If in fact, the ‘anti-capitalist bloc’ are not cops? as I imagine them to actually be, then they should go out for truth in advertising and rename themselves the ‘anti-capitalist blockheads’. They are just pathetic.
The fellow from the Quebeçoisie Black Bloc and the policeman’s boots leaps to mind.
it strikes me that a more effective Incisive Action would be to wear Cammie-jammie (BDU) bottoms, a Gawd Bless George Bush tee-shirt, go to the roped-off Right Wing Hate-filled Nutjob section of the Free-Speech Zone, scream ‘This one’s for Rush’ and toss a couple of beer bottles filled with a ‘cocktail’ of
leave a can of oysters opened and out in the heat for a couple of days
a little goes a loooooonnnnnngggg way so…
Mix it with a half gallon of cooking oil….
Le Gendarmerie will be looking away from the HateMob anyway.
OK Eric, let’s envision a scenario for redistribution of your wealth.
It’s February, 2009, Obama has been inaugurated, and the Pelosi/Reid Economic Equalization bill has been overwhelmingly passed by the 95% Democratic Congress. You are at Toons celebrating the victory, and get into the MiniMite to return to your Bookman store. Upon your arrival, you notice signs going up over the vacant stores next to yours: “Libros de Hombre” proclaims one, while the other reads “XBooks by LeeRoi”.
You unload the new copies of “The Anarchist Cookbook” from the MiniMite, and walk toward the door, but notice that it is already open. Stepping inside, you notice two brown shirted men loading your inventory onto carts, and two other men watching them. “Hey, what are you doing?” you shout.
One of the brownshirts says, calmly, “Mr. Verlo, Carlos and LeeRoi here are opening bookstores next door under the new law, but they don’t have any money for books. The law requires that we assist you in redistributing your wealth of books to get them started. I’m sure you won’t mind, given your kind assistance in the past, which is most appreciated. One third of your inventory will go to Carlos, and the other one third to LeeRoi. The one third remaining should be more than adequate to keep you busy. By the way, please give the keys to the truck to Carlos, who will be using it for the next two days. He will then turn it over to LeeRoi, who gets to use it until Sunday. You can have it for two days then.”
You exclaim, “But what about Barnes and Noble? Can’t they give them some books to sell?” To which the brownshirt replies “90% of their inventory is being sent to Darfur, since the law placed the assets of larger companies under U.N. control. Oh, by the way, you will be helping Carlos and LeeRoi get their accounting set up, under the provisions of the Economic Equalization Law. Three nights a week isn’t too much for you, is it, Mr. Verlo? After all, they will have to pay their fair share of taxes, so the children of India won’t starve.”
Or we could just continue redistributing wealth to the already wealthy like has been done for centuries…
…and since those whose wealth is being redistributed to the already wealthy at shall we say, OUR OWN EXPENSE, since we get a little tired of the Bullshit Sophisms of the Corporate Thieves, get a little angry and decide not to Redistribute our wealth further up the ladder to Slave-Trading (literally) families like the Bushes, and their favorite Charity Yale University…
And people like Richard Cheney who made their Corporate Fortune for instance fucking off MY right ankle and Left Knee, did you know that the Slave Market in Texas that sent me on that job, Michael, is a subsidiary of Tidewater, which is a subsidiary of Halliburton Kellogg Brown & Root?
Yeah. They redistributed the poverty my way. Did a fucking bang up job of it too.
but if we resent or dare to be ANGRY about bullshit like that, then assholes like YOU call us thieves and sic your fuckin’ corporate Pigs on us.
Of course the measures necessary to keep the Angry People in line, and redistributing our labor, our wealth, to the Top wouldn’t be anything like Terrorism or whatever, right?
That wouldn’t be Robbery of any kind now would it? and since it’s not Really, according to Right Wing Propaganda, Not Really backed up by the armed might of the Government, that Non-Robbery wouldn’t also be ARMED Robbery, would it?
The Poor, misunderstood Corporate Leaders who make “Their’ money from such actions like sending a publicly funded, taxpayer funded WAR in the direction of foreign nations in order to keep Them redistributing Their wealth to the Bush’s and Cheneys, they make their money at other peoples expense.
PEOPLE Michael.
But they don’t owe extra taxes simply because they make their money by the expenditure of Taxes, through government giveaways like the Bush Regime GIVING the oilfields of Iraq to their corporate overlords.
Of course it took the lives of at last count at least 2 million Iraqis, mostly civilians, a good share of them BABIES, and more than 4000 of the Not-Wealthy Americans who somehow owed it to these Rich Bastards to go over there and kill, and Die, in order to give the oil fields of Iraq to them.
Oh, no, those poor, suffering, starving Corporate CEOs, we owe THEM more, and you, Michael, are one of those who feel they can make sure we give them more.
Michael, I’d say you’ve painted a realistic picture of the sacrifice that social justice will require. Digging graves for our dead, caring for our ailing, aspects that used to define humanity without it having to be pointed out, always entailed having to work. I hope you don’t presume all of us aren’t up to the challenge.
Michael, I’ve asked this before, only with more words, and maybe you considered it a Lefty Loon Rant and refused to read it all the way…
Since Redistribution of Wealth has Never Been Done, (other than redistributing the wealth of the Workers to the Non-Working Class like Bush and Cheney)…
How exactly would you KNOW that it couldn’t possibly work?
Personally, I’d love to see Cheney working as a field hand. His pacemaker wouldn’t be any more of an impediment to him than this titanium shaft in my ankle would be to me…
Oh, and I DID work for one of his subsidiaries again afterward… just at Minimum Wage to me, and his “Labor Contracting Firm” actually received MORE for my labor than I did. And that was BEFORE they did the ankle fusion that is currently keeping me from having the new nickname Stumpy.
And Michael, drop the sneers, OK? Doing manual labor does not mean that one is stupid or inferior to you or your Ruling Class in any way.
If you ever want to stem the tide of Revolution, perhaps a little more respect would be a first step.
Only a step, though. It’s a long and difficult journey.
Redistribution never been done? How about the October Revolution, Mao’s China, Fidel’s Island Paradise, the New Deal? massive failures, all. I speak only for the right of each individual to his or her own life, to keep or dispose of the fruits of one’s own labor, as one sees fit. Free men are more productive than slaves, and charity is much more soulful when done voluntarily.
As for being a member of the “ruling class”, I can’t even get my dog to do what I say!
Neither the ‘New Deal’ nor Cuba have been failures at all, Michael. And as for ‘Mao’s China’ and the October Revolution, there really wasn’t any wealth to redistribute since the wealth had already been looted by other folk besides the Evil Reds, who had no wealth at all left to loot.
Your more ‘successful’ capitalism, on the other hand, is destroying the entire planet’s ecology. Don’t let that bother your addiction to Ayn Rand Thought though. The ‘free market’, like Jesus, is the only road to salvation.
ah, but Jesus was a socialist.
and what makes Republican’ts develop nervous tics to contemplate it, Peter and Company were actually all the way Communist.
They’ve sometimes been successful at co-opting Him, or His name at least, to fool people into letting them take massive profit margins and pay the workers less money.
Some today are even saying that we go against God Himself when we oppose George Bush.
His war, incidentally, Michael, is the ultimate expression of Capitalism. In order to keep Capital afloat, you have to keep securing more and more resources. And keep the Corporate Slaves like, say, the entire population of Guatemala, from getting restless and just kicking the Parasites off the land.
Now we get to see the End Game of the Capitalist Pyramid Fraud.
Iraq having a nationalized Oil industry was too much for the Corporate WhoreMasters to accept. Their screams of rage rang out “How did OUR oil get under THEIR land? We must rescue the oil from their Evil Socialist Grip!
Yet we are too yellowbellied to fight for ourselves,
how DO we convince the Proletariat to take up arms and Loot eerrr I mean RESCUE the Land of Iraq?
(and we’ll just charge the Iraqi people a modest 25% off the top for our services to them, and if they don’t like it we’ll keep “Our” troops there forever to make sure they obey)
And, Michael, the wealth of Russia was tied up in offshore investments, likewise the wealth of Cuba, and now, the wealth of America has been offshored.
And how exactly is “Work for us at the wages we decide are all you and your pathetic families need to survive, or we’ll imprison the lot of you, and shoot those who resist”
in any realistic kind of way Freedom?
Like your capitalist Heroes did at Ludlow.
Seems they used the Publicly Funded Troops to do that little terrorist Murder Spree too…
Is that not ‘slavery’?
And your capitalist freak prisonmasters force inmates to work for them, for free or maybe a dollar a day.
But that of course, isn’t slavery either.
Maybe giving Public Lands to the Corporations isn’t Theft either.
Did you know, Michael, that your President has given Native American Lands directly to the Oil and Coal industries? The ones he and his President of Vice happen to be representatives thereof.
There’s a link to A.I.M. on the right hand panel next to these comments, if you ever get enough moral courage to look at the thefts you advocate so well.
The one in Chattanooga is particularly galling.
That would be the former Capital of the entire Cherokee nation and now the Capital of the Eastern Band, mainly because your Capitalist Heroes, who of course earned every penny of what they have, without outright gifts from the government (that would be Welfare, and Socialist, oh my!) like the Indian Removal Act backed up most forcefully by the United States Publicly Funded Army against the Cherokee Nation in what is known as the “Trail of Tears”,
But suddenly, when there’s one of the biggest seams of Coal left in the Eastern half of the U.S. and just by coincidence is on Cherokee Land… but the Cherokee aren’t building skyscrapers or Modern Factories on it, so it simply MUST be abandoned land, right? Couldn’t possibly be because it’s Sacred Ground or anything foolish like that oh dear me no….
kind of like Glen Eyrie and now Cedar Heights being built on Land That Did Not Belong To The Developers Thereof… otherwise known, at least in civilized societies, as Stealing…
See it all works together in a mad pattern of take take take take on the side of the very wealthy, who each earned his bread with the honest labor of his own two hand, right?
Doesn’t matter that people were robbed by the Government on the behalf of these Wealthy Individuals, no, they didn’t gain anything through that, they were merely Stewards yeah, that’s the ticket, Caretakers of the Land… and the arduous labor of directing people to do this, do that tote that barge and lift that bale… that deserves a “rich” payoff, for after all, the Mental exertion of Directing Other People’s Labor is so overwhelming and exhausting that the Pigs need to have the windfall apples and all the milk, and to occupy the farmhouse, because it’s for the Greater Good of All that it be done that way.
oh, and the Sacred Mountain in Tennessee, you as a lawyer would love this little scam…
shit, you might have even taken part, drawn up some briefs for them…
at a hundred dollars an hour which is nearly seventeen times what Minimum Wage workers get for Honest Labor.
But get this, you’re probably giggling your ass off over it in anticipation, you know the Legal term Imminent Domain, right?
Where the rightful owners are granted public hearings and supposedly offered “fair compensation” for their possessions which are about to be lawfully Stolen?
Unless, of course the Governing body seizing the land can’t seem to locate the Rightful Owners… now, where are those pesky Cherokee Nation who are such a huge proportion of the population of the South?
couldn’t possibly be in their Capital, Chattanooga, just by a co-inky-dink very near the place they want to Strip Mine errr I mean, Turn The Wasted and Idle Land into a Great Park, for the enjoyment of all, and grant the Development Company the mineral rights so they can extract the coal first, through strip mining, and then build Low Income Housing on the fringes of the park.
Isn’t that a wonderful thing Capitalism is doing? They’ll give the Poor in Chattanooga a marvelous Housing Development on top of a toxic Strip mine, and a Toxic Park for our children to play in, their rosy little cheeks burned red not by the sun but by Sulfuric Acid, hear their Shrieks of Joy as they romp through the oozing pustulent suppurated landscape that was once overgrown with trees and other useless hindrances to Progress..
And wade through streams purified with only the Finest of Industrial Chemicals, no naughty fishies or butterflies to distract them, no sir!
Corporate America will see to That!