Animal liberators face a dilemma. Livestock deserve to be freed, every last piglet and lamb. But animals bred for captivity won't survive without it. Emptying a CAFO will precipitate an equally calamitous tragedy outside its door. The remedy of course is to stop breeding sentient beings for human consumption. The same probably holds for people. Social justice advocates can aim to liberate the "sheeple" but into whose hands?
Tag: Socialism
D’ya think ANTIFA might be a trap?
By all means shout down the fascists. Shout down white supremicists. Bash the alt-right. Do it in black bloc, if you must (and yes we must). March on, against, and over, capitalism. Declare yourself anti-fascist. Express solidarity with ANTIFA protests and counterprotests across the country. I would rethink, however, opening an Antifa franchise without knowing who elsewhere can now act IN YOUR NAME. No one owns the ANTIFA brand. Like "black bloc", it's a tactic, not a movement. Except as this moment's zeitgeist, the brand has indeed become a movement. The imperative to repudiate emboldened Nazis lacks for neither urgency nor legitimacy. Antifa is horizontal like Occupy, no leaders. Its membership is fully self-nominated. Except where Occupy Wall Street offshoots offered local casts of characters, Antifa participants remain undercover. The problem becomes whose undercovers. I fully support confronting fascists. I might quibble about picking fights with inarticulate Nazi cosplayers. Our corporations, the media, and the police who protect both are the full grown, authoritarian fascists. I likewise support black bloc as an essential strategy for effective protest actions. I encourage picking fights with dogmatic nonviolence passivists who continuously thwart the potential of public demonstrations. I support Antifa as I do Earth First, as I do ELF, or ALF the Animal Liberation Front, or Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Intifada if you're begining to catch my drift. I stand with them without wearing a mask because my expression of support is my political right. I do not act as them, wearing a mask. Antifa may be serving the establishment just fine by diverting youthful rebellion from directing its energy at STATE fascism. It may be suiting populist urges just fine too by allowing discontents to vent our disgust against punchable twits instead of the impregnable powers that be. Ideally those inclined to resist fascism will catch on to who really needs the pounding. When that begins to happen however, some Antifa chapter (the media will call it a "cell") in Reseda or Des Moines or Stuyvesant is going to commit an outrage of domestic terrorism and the Antifa brand will be blown. It may be government black ops conducting a false flag, or three percenters shy of a full load hoping to ignite a race war, or misguided revolutionaries jumping the gun. It won't matter. "Antifa" will be declared a terrorist organization. Pardon the pun, that will be trump. And while we know Antifa is not an organization, intelligence records will have mapped out who were the ringleaders and daredevils of concern to national security. Authorities may or may not round up suspected co-conspirators and charge them with racketeering. That's not even my worry. Once discredited and forced underground, Antifa enthousiasts will recede into the woodwork. All the organizing, educating and networking will have come to naught. I anticipate that my thoughts here are not going to find favor with my many friends currently marching behind the Antifa banner. But I know a number of idiots among them too, and worse, suspected moles bent on disrupting productive
April 15: NYC took a bridge, Chicago & Seattle took the streets, Portland took Town Hall, and Denver took the cake
DENVER, COLORADO- Yes, Denver's FIGHT FOR FIFTEEN march kept to the sidewalks. When ISO members (organizing the local "15 NOW" group) pushed the boundaries, SEIU marshals criticized them not just for agitating, but for pushing their socialist agenda. Occupy Denver activists held a prominent banner which referenced reigning minimum wage champion Socialist Alternative. Most of the attendees were union members whose representatives have obviously failed to credit the SA party or Seattle Councilwoman Kshama Sawant for the nation's first $15 minimum wage victory. We fielded questions all evening from marchers eager to know if an SA chapter was brewing in Colorado. TO BE FAIR, Denver's march did take an adventurous turn, by Denver standards, but the rally began as might be expected from an event dominated by the SEIU and other corporate unions and their immobile nonprofit cohorts. Denver's 4-15 rally started in the middle of CU-Denver's Auraria campus, invisible from any street and unseeable to even partipants arriving, until they turned the corner to find it, behind the Tivoli Center. Then organizers had a lineup of speakers which stretched well past expectations, trimming the crowd by over a third as supporters opted to slip away due to the unexpected cold front. Next participants were admonished to stick to the sidewalk, even on campus grounds, and applaud the police who'd agreed to permit the march. We were heading to a neighboring McDonalds, at least we were taking the scenic route. Throughout the rally and march, a brass band played, and members of the local band Flobots led chants and songs. This lent a fun energy but it did preclude ordinary marchers speaking out or centering the vocal messaging on anything more than the generic themes of financial discontent. Even as crowds lingered in front of McDonalds, the band played on, when poignant denunciations might have provided a suitable climax. Fortunately, a "Silver Brigade" had been deployed to patronize the fast food monster beforehand, to prevent managers from being able to lock the doors when the marchers arrived. McDs managers did lock the doors and they discussed a number of interesting defensive tactics under the noses of our operatives, but the managers were ultimately unable to refuse senior citizens demanding they be allowed to exit. This exit was timed to allow the Fight-for-Fifteen procession to march straight up to the counter, demanding a living wage, etc. Their objections heard, the marchers left and eventually crossed the street and dissolved into shortcuts through the Auraria campus. (Note: My account of our inside job may appear indiscrete, but I include it purposefully. One, because even with advance knowledge it's a difficult tactic to prevent, and two, because organizers of successive protests of establishments such as McDs need to include this tactic if they don't want to remain locked out.) The highlight for me was infusing the event theme with the S-word. Desperate as they were today to fight for a living wage, vowing "we'll be back" or else to "shut it down", these union adherants will shortly become the
Another FOX brainwash session
They're reporting the mine collapse in China as being a failure of the Communist economic system, and just not pointing out that it's CAPITALIST deregulation that caused it, just like the mine collapses in New Zealand, Chile, Peru, West Virginia.... and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf Oil spill Massive Petroleum Hemorrhage were caused by the POP principle. Profits Over People. The difference is that in China the Death Penalty applies to murder by Corporation. The CEO of the Chinese mine is likely to become an unwilling organ donor. Don L Blankenship, the Retired CEO of Massey Energy, who created 29 job openings with one (predictable AND predicted) reaction to defiance of existing regulations, will continue to be a multi-millionaire and will continue to donate to Right Wing Causes like, loosening regulations even further... so he can KILL more miners, Oil workers, factory workers, construction workers, farm workers, unlike himself REAL workers, and feast on the proceeds of their life and death. Those who like myself are merely crippled by their policies will be discarded, jailed, treated as psychotics and criminals and, if the plans of Blankenship and his allies, and their political appointees, to buy the entire governance of the world for their own profit, if those plans come to fruit then I and ever other like me will also die of our injuries. It's a big issue in the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Main Street movement. The Chinese had an epiphany more than a century ago when the Emperor Pu Yi demonstrated his willingness to sell China to the same Corporate Interests who are running Wall Street and Washington DC and Denver and Colorado Springs today. And FOX News celebrates and promotes Corporate Fascism and promotes Blankenship as a Hero. Recap: Don Blankenship, Political Donor, Chinese Mine Owner following his Political "leadership": Organ Donor. That Blankenship, Massey Energy, British Petroleum etc are directly subsidized in every aspect of their attainment of riches, from acquiring the "rights" to mine or drill in any land mass or ocean of their choice through TAXPAYER funded Military Action, and the police and courts shielding the Rich from the consequences of their MURDERS and thefts, is nothing short of Fascism in every classic definition of the term. Their use of the Tea Party and Minutemen as Brownshirt (Germany) or Blackshirt (Spain, Portugal, Italy, France) Stormtrooper Militia seals the definition tightly onto their foreheads. The Security Chief at Upper Big Branch was recently "sacrificed" by Great Big Hero Blankenship and his pals, even though he, like Hermann Goehring and Josef Goebels and Heinrich Himmler, was "only following orders". Yeah, I DID compare Corporate Amerika to the Nazis. Bite me. That and I pointed out the TeaParty, Fox News, and the Minutemen as being Nazi oriented if not directly affiliated.
Genghis Khan’s socialism of the fittest
An interesting exhibit about Genghis Khan's "enduring legacy" hit the Denver Museum of Nature and Science two years ago and continues its US tour, so you can still learn about "the ruthless warlord who conquered half the known world," but who "is also revered as an innovative leader and statesman who brought unity, stability, and much more to his people." When it comes to curatorial decisions at a museum, I always wonder: why now? Indeed it's hard to deny, when you look a little deeper, that Genghis Khan was a renaissance man for the Bilderberg set. No seriously. Genghis Khan used to vie with Attila the Hun for most cruel overlord. Their reputations for inhumanity defied the western imagination. Now apparently it's thought that both leaders of barbarian hordes have been undervalued, and dare it be suggested, unfairly maligned? I'll tell you what's happened. It's becoming transparent that the techniques of Western war making, invasion, mass killing and ruthless administration of foreign occupation look a lot like the work of Khan. So it's small wonder elements in our culture want to pay him tribute. A key to what drove the Mongols to exterminate all the peoples in their path was that they had no need for them, their cities and hungry mouths. The Mongols and the Huns needed only grasslands for their herds and yurts. Expanding agricultural societies were cancerous tumors against their interests. Except for craftsmen who offered goods which the growing nouveaux riche Mongols could appreciate, they had no use for non-Mongols. I'm thinking about the jet-set now, surrounded by the hoi poloi who are no longer needed in factories and fields now fully mechanized. Except for the outward most reaches of exploitable third world labor, they have no use for common man. If they were Khan they could just queue us up to kill us. When it came to thinking about sustainable populations on limited environmental resources, he had an unappreciated wisdom that Khan.
Bank of America to Americans: “You gonna be our bitch”
Yes, our old friends who took a billion dollar gift from America, paid no taxes... Got us again. Seems they're going to make the consumers pay for regulations which prevented them from unannounced and hidden fees. The smug perfectly manicured bastard interviewed by NBC news said: "People should complain to their congressmen" because Congress told them they're not allowed to steal (sometimes not allowed) from us and thus they "lost" MONEY THE THIEVING BASTARDS DIDN'T ALREADY HAVE, IT WAS STILL OUR MONEY AND THEY WERE PROHIBITED FROM STEALING IT. Yes, by those calculations, anybody who buys a watchdog or installs a burglar alarm Owes The Burglars Compensation. The Smiling Smug with the hands that never touched a shovel said "Well, somebody's got to make up the cash, it's just going to have to be the Consumers" .. Like he ever gave two shits about the well being of consumers. Watch as they give out another billion in year end bonus payments, and sneer at us Mere Peasants who dare to believe we shouldn't be ripped off. And they wonder why people throw airplanes at their buildings. I put "Ron Paul 2012" in the tags just because so many Tea Bag Morons are looking for it and it'll show up in their google search.
Things to De-Celebrate this National Hate Week
Which is a smack to the back of the head to all those who told us in 1984 that the Police State setup from the BOOK of the same name couldn't possibly happen in America because it was all about Socialist Dystopia and nobody, no not ever, could set up a CAPITALIST dictatorship. God, they're stupid. But here's what the post 9/11 "patriotism" has gotten us. Eight years of a moron for president, an evil moron but a moron. His crew of more intelligent evil people used the occasion to make it unpatriotic to question their plans to deregulate American industries. We've seen a 9/11 worth of dead Americans every single month due to denial of Health Care. We've seen pollution that al Qa'eda could only hope to inflict on any one small town, done daily and across the nation. We've seen our national surplus turned upside down, and many multiples of the amount of that surplus in debt, due to the Wars started by the aforementioned Moron in response to 9/11. The badly misnamed USA PATRIOT Act is being invoked against Julian Assange and Wikileaks in response to their telling the TRUTH about 9/11 and the aforementioned wars, the moron who started them and the morons who still follow his leadership even though it's destroyed what used to be America. Those Morons have banded together into Right Wing Terrorist Groups such as the TeaParty, Minutemen and other "patriotic" front-ends for the Ku Klux Klan. They'll be flying plenty of the Hate Flag. By Tea-Klan MORONS such as this couple who made their Wedding into a Hate-fest. Yep, that's right, they're celebrating their wedding with symbols of Starting A Racist War which killed half a million Americans in order to keep according to the 1860 census 3,950,528 Americans in perpetual bondage based on the color of their skin. To deny AMERICANS the rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness spoken of, ever so nobly, in a revered document written by a Slaveowner. So much for the "original intent", Jefferson spoke of Liberty in one paper then wrote whole books demonizing Black Americans and condemning them to slavery. You find that a lot in the "original intent" doctrine espoused by those who want to return America to an official slave nation. Emboldened by the level of pure ignorant and racist Hatred engendered by 9/11. So, De-Celebrate it by burning the Racist Flag. And, not just those of us who are of Darker Skin, or mixed "race". Every WHITE person in the world has a stake in this as well, a huge stake because it will only be by the WHITES rejecting the label the Racist PurkMeisters like the Tea-Klan want to place on All White People. They would have me and thee and she and he and we and everybody in the whole world believe that all white people are as stupid, ignorant and hate filled as they are. So I'm calling on the so-called "white race" to step up and redeem and reclaim the dignity
Temporarily embarrassed millionaires cursing guilty Casey Anthony, as theft of Social Security and Medicare begins
Thinking about the Tea Party Poor: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." — John Steinbeck Think our judicial system is broke? It is, but not because it gave young Bad Mom Casey Anthony a chasmic benefit of the doubt. It's broken because of Walmart, Citizens United, and all the corporatist, anti-democratic rulings that guarantee that ordinary Americans no longer have recourse in the courts.
Banned books: the subversive dystopia
Banned Books, p.2-- I put a lot of faith in an internet resilient enough to remain an unrestricted archive of crowd-sourced human knowledge, even more I hope public data will eventually permeate the proprietary, but continued access to subversive literature I have little doubt will meet the full brunt of digital book burners. If there's any text not to download unto your Kindle, as an easily vaporized or expurgate-able file, it's one of these classic oft-censored, perpetually-offense-giving titles. These are the dystopian novels and science fictions which paint a bleak picture of the society we are engineering. As pictured, here are some notoriously subversive dystopian novels, (as differentiated from commercial drivel which reinforces mainstream dogma, such as Lord of the Flies, or Hunger Games) Atwood, Margaret, THE HANDMAID’S TALE Bierce, Ambrose, CAN SUCH THINGS BE? Bradbury, Ray, FAHRENHEIT 451 Burgess, Anthony, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE Ellison, Harlan, THE GLASS TEAT Huxley, Aldous, BRAVE NEW WORLD Karp, David, ONE Lewis, Sinclair, IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE London, Jack, THE IRON HEEL Orwell, George, NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR Pohl, Frederick, & C.M. Kornbluth, THE SPACE MERCHANTS Rand, Ayn, ANTHEM Vonnegut, Kurt, PLAYER PIANO Wiener, Norbert, THE HUMAN USE OF OTHER BEINGS Zamiatin, Eugene, WE Haven't heard of many of these? Curious, don't you think?
They never vote themselves off the lifeboat….
There's a Psych101 example that just about everybody who experiences college in America would find familiar, the Lifeboat Question. Setup for it is, you're on a lifeboat, with absolutely no hope of rescue, You have passengers on board whose needs exceed the supply of fresh water and food. You have a baby, an elderly professor, a laborer, ... that kind of thing. Then you're told to group up and discuss who you would kill. Drown, Toss from the lifeboat. The discussions get long and involved but somehow a few basic facts never get mentioned. Like: The one person who NOBODY tosses off the boat is himself. If there's no hope of rescue or landfall with the extra person on board, there's not really any chance without him either. If you're in a lifeboat then you're in a shipping lane, unless every vessel on the sea suddenly vanished, you're very likely to have one come near. If every ship on the ocean has vanished, then so, apparently, has civilization. You and the fellow lifeboaters would be, as far as you know, the only living humans left. It would be up to you to restore any semblance of civilized behavior. Yet to do it, according to the TRICK question, you would first have to make a human sacrifice. What kind of a sick society can you build on that foundation? Hint: it's all around us. Right now the debate in Budget Committees, especially those in the House and thus, top heavy with so-called "conservatives", is centered on who to toss out of the lifeboat first. I say "first" because that sort of thing is damnably hard to stop once it gets started. Their figures and calculations all pointedly leave in THEIR source of income, the Military Industrial complex which is the only driving force left for Capitalism. They're not tossing themselves out of the lifeboat. It's more like get in the canoes and take grandma out, put her on an ice-floe and smear her all over with seal meat to draw the polar bears. Then row away with all the villagers chanting traditional Leave-grandma-to-die songs.
Paradigm, Buzzword, Keyword, and persuasion
Paradigm is a "consciousness" term. One of the best known ways to demonstrate it is visually, not verbally, there's a really famous illustration of three forms, if looked at one way, the form in the middle would be the first thing you see, a lamp with a fancy shade. Looking at it from the two side forms it's two human faces close to each other. I think but could be wrong, it's part of the Rorschach series. Much like when we look at clouds, and see faces in them, or animals, flowers, sometimes extremely profound abstract concepts. But whatever we see is a projection of what we were looking to find anyway. Fear or hope, love or hate, friend or foe, food or poison, human faces or lamp. In European Celtic lore the moon has the face of a man, in Japan it's a rabbit. Abstract the paradigm a little, with the faces in the original, are they arguing, speaking words of wisdom, about to kiss? Advertising companies need the psychological data from mass sources, years ago it would take, well, years... to form a basic paradigm from data collected around the world. And then modify it as needed. Which would also take considerably longer than it does now, each modification taking between a week or a year. Now, with Twitter especially, web logs and Facebook, which could be described in advertising terms as "Weblog Lite", we (or more importantly "they" whoever "they" are on any particular day) can analyze with a fair amount of accuracy what the people across the world are thinking on any subject, simply by counting the occurrences of any given word or short phrase. Key Words. If the keywords show up steadily over the course of a normal work day, 8 hours would be a good arbitrary starting point, they become "Trending" keywords. Using those trending keywords in the short term could make huge differences in Capitalist Stock Exchanges because you can literally buy or sell an entire nation's production within those 8 hours. Knowing what words are most interesting to most people, at least from the representative sample of words used on the internet, can show you which products, services or concepts people are most willing to buy within those 8 hours. From the point of view or "base paradigm" of an independent grocery store owner, who purchases a week or month in advance, the keywords have to trend for whatever his spending cycle is, a week, two weeks, a month.. People in marketing literally sell their own lives because in order to succeed they have to buy other peoples thoughts and then resell them. They HAVE to live on what other people are saying. In 1925, Aldous Huxley wrote a short novel, "Brave New World", where he didn't mention things that were on the verge of becoming technical reality, like the Television, Nuclear Explosives, antibiotics, reliable chemical birth control, or advances in
“Capital” Punishment, forced compliance with Money-Worship.
If, as a Corporate Lawyer and somewhat friend suggests, Capital were the be-all and end-all for progress, economically, politically, technologically, and even spiritually, why then is Participation Made Mandatory? The Capitalist PIGS go after not only nations who opt for a more socialist economy, but communes within the Capitalist CONTROLLED countries. Communal economies such as Anarcho-Syndicalism are brutally repressed, Unions are Brutally Repressed, by taxpayer funded State Manifestations of Power, like the Ludlow Massacre. The PIGS who murdered the 4 students at Kent State had loaded submachine guns, (M16A1) simply because earlier that day they were “negotiating” with a Teamster strike. At gunpoint. Since the guns weren’t pointed at the Corporate Faction in any of this, it’s patently obvious who exactly the Ohio National Guard were representing. Their Rich-Bitch Owners. If, as the Capitalists assert, it’s their own initiative, their own industry and entrepreneurship which gained them their riches, and anybody who takes government handouts is a Welfare State Junkie... Why then don’t they “just say no” to the Welfare State subsidizing THEIR INDUSTRIES far above and beyond what pittances are accorded the Public at Large. Instead huge amounts of Public Money is spent to ensure that the Public never rises in power. The People are kept down, especially the Working Class, by Police and Military and Court so-called “authority”, Union activity and other organized and coordinated collective action groups which benefit the individual workers above the Corporate Masters, criminalized and punished, yet so-called “revolutionaries” organized by the Corporations to protect the status-quo of Corporate Hegemony, both at home and abroad, like the so-called Tea Party so-called “patriots" not merely protected by the police and military but actually encouraged? If the Capitalists had such hegemony, not only the right but the Duty to bring every nation and every person on earth under their dominion, if it were really patently obvious, as they insist it is, why would they spend more than half the Government Budgets of the United States, the states themselves and local “authorities” to FORCE compliance at gunpoint? Why would it be necessary to send soldiers to other countries, to force those countries to obey the Capitalist Ideal, and why would it be necessary to lie and call such forced compliance “freedom”?
Following Right Wing political theology
Faith based politics where you have to believe fervently the dogma handed down by the High Priests of Capital... But according to their gospels of greed, there has never actually been any revolution where wealth has been redistributed to the poor from the wealthy. In other words, the wealth has been transferred from one group of heavily armed rich thieves to another. Lateral instead of Vertical economic mobility. Thus, no real Socialist state or more importantly, Socialist Economy has ever existed, at least according to the Ayn Rand Theology. Yet somehow, it's the Communists and Socialists, the ones who never had their hands on the missing bread in the first place, who crashed the economy repeatedly over the past 500 years of straight-on Capitalism. For instance the Mortgage Crisis that immediately preceded the crash of the War-expense Bloated Debt Economy. Not the approximately ten trillion dollar difference in Budget surplus projected v the budget deficit Actual. Part of that went to Enron in a pyramid scheme. To end all pyramid schemes? Nay verily. Kenny Lay died, basically in jail, ready to make the trip to Club Fed where Rich Thieves spend a few months of "hard" time. Without the money and, importantly, without ever telling anybody who exactly was holding the cash. Bush and Cheney, Suspects Prime and Secondary, generously brushed aside any suspicion of their guilt in the matter and since they controlled the Justice department, so did the DoJ. But that's not the straw that broke the camels back. Nor was the massive War Budget, unfunded save for credit, issued against Future Taxes. By putting Future in front of the word Taxes GW and his merry band of thieves managed to say that they hadn't raised Taxes. The correct and true way to put it would be that they hadn't raised CURRENT taxes. Making War Profits basically untaxable granted the richest pigs in America virtually tax free existence. Massive tax cuts to the people who make all their money on the spending of Tax Generated money. A double gift of Corporate Welfare and Corporate Warfare. But it's the Socialists who never had their hands on the bread who are to blame. With the Mortgage Crisis, one of many investment scams that went wrong all at once, people who control less than a percent of the income in America are alleged to have brought the entire house of cards down. People, I'm capable of a LITTLE bit of math, m'kay? Which would you think, logically speaking, mathematically speaking, to be more likely, that people with full control of 95% of the wealth crashing the economy or the less than a percent "controllers"? According to the Right Wing Theology, it's obviously the < 1%. Up is black, east is sideways and Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia. Oh, and the Weathermen who are alleged to have killed 4 people, including 3 weathermen.. Are the supremely violent ones, not the Big Pigs who kick open the gates of Hell and start scooping in
Nonviolence is the refuge of cowards
I say this with the full authority of my own personal experience: nonviolence is for cowards. When push has come to shove, I stepped to the sidewalk but I am so full of admiration for those who stayed in the line of fire. Today much of the world commemorates Bastille Day, France's unique independence day, because it launched the French Revolution. Not just a revolution for the masses of humanity, but their Enlightenment. Storming the Bastilles was no small transformative event, and the sans-culottes were not led by urgings to keep it nonviolent. The monarchy took heed, as it had for every historic concession, because the citizenry had it scared to death. Have you changed social inequity by voting in the polls? Have you found justice via protest? Sought, beseeched, was as far as you got. Violent uprising has not lately looking too effective either. But it's got the track record. I'm not saying I'm up to the task, but I assure you I have the courage to be nonviolent in spades. It is a most self-aggrandizing dishonesty that holds nonviolence to be brave. There is nothing easier than to take the path of least resistance. I don't mean to downplay the audacity to protest, as opposed to conforming, although isn't sticking to your principles squarly self-indulgent? I claim no credit for failing to bend on matters of principle. In fact, sometimes I feel positively anti-social. But taken the next step, what's easier than subjecting yourself to the authority of the sword? Again it's the principle of not becoming like your abuser, another no-brainer, but no-bravery required. Standing up for what you believe? Easy-peasy. To the death? Positively cowardly lion. This is you inner dialog, be honest: I defy your authority, but only so far. I reject your physical oppression, but just kidding. I call for the total destruction of your hierarchy, but only in words, I'm entitled, and you can't lay a finger on me because I'm playing by the rules. Hope of getting anywhere: dismal. Modern social movements have only Gandhi and Mandela as purported success stories. But I'll not insult the elders. The Gandhi and Mandela of our textbooks bear no resemblance to the reality, they are false role-models put forth by fascists who want to blunt every effort to rise against power. Oh, nonviolence is the higher ideal, sure. Lovely. Browny points for the afterlife. Trickle-up transcendence has as much potential for success as awaiting extraterrestrials or building playing fields for disgraced baseball reincarnates. Unless power wants to transcend the human experience, and lift all of us with it, mankind is not going anywhere. The only way you're going to levitate powerful heads is with a guillotine. Dreadfully eighteenth century, but check out the horrific bygone days from which they're reconstituting torture and feudalism. You can probably contrive a litany of rationalizations for why it would be beneath you, but imagine picking up a gun and having a go against the overwhelming power of the state. Now that's terrifying.
Kidnap and Torture… Corporate Failure in Mexico…
Man is kidnapped in front of his wife, taken to a secret prison and tortured for 7 months... government stonewalling, ...CIA? According to the Propaganda, Narco Gangs in Mexico. The way the story is slanted, the Mexican Federal Government is a "failed state" and the country is run by Terrorists. Like, yeah... Ford Motors, Coca-Cola, Baxter Pharmaceuticals.. oh, not THOSE Terrorists. So are "we" going to mount Operation Mexican Freedom? Go in and occupy their country, set up a(nother) Puppet government backed by Run By U.S. troops? Maybe set up arbitrary checkpoints to limit the travel of the native population... We already did. 165 years ago, to a third of the land area of their country, set up arbitrary boundary lines which they can only cross with the Royal Permission of the U.S. Government. Knocked the Mexican Republic, the parts "our" Corporate Government didn't outright Conquer errr.. "Liberate", down to a shadow state run by the French, aka Holy Roman Empire. Then sent American troops whenever the Mexican people rebelled against this setup. When the "Outlaw Regime" of Pancho Villa finally threw off Foreign Ownership and Natoinalized eerrrr "Stole" the Lawfully Conquered holdings of the Foreign Overlords, first he was assassinated (but not by an American or a paid agent of American corporate interests, no, everyone KNOWS that Americans don't commit crimes like that) and the U.S. Government waged Economic Warfare against the Parti Revolucionaria Institucional. Finally restored Corporate Dictatorship with the American financed and run Parti Action Nacional, under the Puppet Dictators Vicente Fox and now Calderon. So now what? Will they blame PRI and it's partisans for the unrest, instead of the Corporate Thieves who have now taken away everything that the PEOPLE of Mexico officially owned? Certainly it can't possibly be blamed on the almost 8 decades of unrelenting American Corporate attacks on the economy and by proxy the People of Mexico. Because that would be an admission that the Almighty Capitalism has failed. Can't have that, now, can we?
Joe Stack’s Piper Cherokee Manifesto
It's getting so you can't fly a plane into a federal office building and hope somebody will finally find your website. Though engineer Joseph Stack left an online statement to explain his last act of desperation against the IRS, it was deleted "in compliance with a request from the FBI." I guess his web hosts think the 1st Amendment has an FBI exemption. Even Google's cache was expunged. This has freed Reporters to characterize Stack's missive as a crazed rant. Nothing threatens the establishment like this conclusion: "Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, ... violence ... is the only answer. The cruel joke is that [those] at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at ... fools like me all along." I don't know about you, but when I hear that a self-made engineer-businessman who has his own plane, commits suicide on principles he has articulated in a manifesto, I'm curious to hear him out. I'm reminded of the sad story of the desperate antiwar activist who set himself on fire as a final protest of the escalating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He knew accomplices would only dissuade him, so he chose an isolated spot where he could proceed unmolested and set up a video camera to record the act. Naturally, policemen were the first to encounter his body and thus the footage of dramatic statement are consigned to the obscurity of their files. Fortunately the internet is still too porous for redaction on the grounds of national security, or whatever reason the FBI contrived to censor Stack's suicide note/screed/diatribe. The Smoking Gun has the usual non-text scans of what Joseph Stack wrote before he piloted his single-engine Piper PA-28 into the Austin TX IRS office. Here's the full text of Stack's manifesto. If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our
The future of socialism and LGBT rights in Cuba
The future of socialism and LGBT rights in Cuba, an interview with Mariela Castro. I thought this interview might be of some interest to Colorado's LGBT community, as it shows not quite the monster leadership of Cuba as is usually portrayed by the Right Wing here in NORADlandia when they talk about Human Rights. Ted Haggard might even ought to ask for political asylum in Cuba? Take your whole family, Ted, and at least have a vacation there! Break the law! Psst... I hear you're changing your views as a Christian... right?
Defining ourselves by what others fear
It could be confused for being contrarian or reactionary, but how else do you build upon what you learn? Instead of letting life buffet you while you strap yourself to a mast to drift to a predestined shore, why not sail a bit? You've got a rudder and centerboard to limit your drift. Let those who live back in the age of the square sail think that weather can only lead downwind. In public protest, as in arguments, I can tell I'm on the right tack when authorities object to what I'm saying. I've learned this much, if they don't like where you're standing, you're closing in on the sweet spot. The 2008 presidential campaign offered some great insight on political positioning. I'd like to consider the attempts to slander Barack Obama as a point of reference. A good place to start for what most scares authority. Middle name Hussein? Sounds like a fine middle name to me. Adopted by any of us, "Hussein" commemorates cultural tolerance, specifically, irreverence for ethnocentric bigotry and false fear-mongering. Paling around with Bill Ayers? We should all be so lucky to know a real 60s Weatherman. Where were you on the Vietnam War? Any less radical ideology would probably be indefensible now. Maybe "Bill Ayers" makes an even better middle name to adopt, if you want to pay tribute to youthful idealism and audacity. (BTW- The Weather Underground Organization (WUO), was a militant antiwar group known originally as The Weathermen, named from a Dylan lyric referencing Kerouac. Splintered from the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), a subgroup of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Weatherman formed a "white fighting force" in solidarity with the Black Liberation Movement after the murder of Blank Panther leader Fred Hampton. BTW2- Neither Bill Ayers nor the WUO were terrorists. The bombs they planted were not to terrorize people but to symbolize the need to destroy the mechanisms of US imperialism. Warnings were always issued beforehand to prevent casualties.) Agree with Reverend Jeremiah Wright? Wow. Who could but hope to have the moral courage of Reverend Wright? Especially his temerity, eloquence and perseverance. "God Damn America?" If any Nationalist Hypocracy ever deserved a wrathful kick in the ass, we do. God Damn America most certainly. Americans joke about Hell in a Handbasket, but where are those who dare leap out and try to lead their companions to deserving a more honorable fate? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The Stars and Stripes fly over monumental crimes for which Americans have never atoned. We worship false Gods if they do not damn our immoral economic enslavement of everyone in our grasp. As a politician, Barack Obama would not have had the latitude to express agreement with Reverend Wright. Or admiration for Bill Ayers. It's nothing to do with conviction and everything to do with the compromises of an elected office in the face of a slanderous press. But while Obama makes his pragmatic choices to get neared the seat of power, we
Working
One of America's great socialist leaders, Studs Terkel died last week during the pre- election hoopla. What made Studs Terkel stand out from all the other Americans of lesser stature was his respect for the average working person as a human being. He proselytized on behalf of the common people, even as American society increasingly began to devalue those who actually do the work of society, as opposed to holding up high those that are profiting from the work of others. Studs was best known for his book,WORKING, which was not a novel, but rather a book of interviews where working people told of their lives. In today's America, the reading of this book would be a revelation for many, who grew up and learned only the warped values of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Cheney Era. See Democracy Now for interviews and programs about Studs Terkel, a Great American leader of the First Class, the American working class.
Is Barack Obama the Socialist candidate for President?
Stephen Colbert and Brian Moore discuss the question of whether Barack Obama is actually the Socialist candidate for President of the United States. The conclusion between them was that Obama actually was not, but he seems a bit brighter than the real Socialist Party candidate for President actually appears to be. That's one more reason I do not plan to vote Socialist Party myself. My party's candidate certainly is no later day Eugene Debs, and we have a long way to go to get back to that. However, I would vote for Moore becoming the Mayor of Colorado Springs against Lionel Rivera. True, Lionel is for 'socialism', too, but for the benefit of Lockheed and the Pentagon. He's for big government spending, PLUS he's a dishonest lying creep. Mayor Moore, unlike Mayor Rivera, would have pushed for a municipal proposal condemning US government torture of POWs. Rivera blocked that proposal and instead talked about what a great job the troops were doing. Moore is not for using torture against other people, while Rivera is. In short, Rivera kind of has a way of turning people's stomachs. He's another Republican creep.
Colorization of the Grapes of Wrath
I think it's time to colorize The Grapes of Wrath. And I don't mean the Turner Classics process exactly. It may help to dumb down the artistic contrast of the black & white for a contemporary audience palate of splashy Disneycolor, but how about trying to make Steinbeck's theme more accessible to today's spoon-fed viewers? Let's colorize the skin of the poor migrant workers to reflect the inhumanly-treated populations of today's displaced im-migrants of color. I can't remember where I come down on colorizing the old movies. No one's insisted on infusing CMYK into Ansel Adams or Picasso's sketchbook, why are masterpieces filmed in black and white supposed to be pigment deficient? We don't presume to dub dialog over the silent movies made before the age of the talkies. As yet. Of course, Ted Turner was concerned for reviving interest in old intellectual properties, many of which were already in-artful. And perhaps his salesmanship maneuver has been proven effective. When my family sat down to watch Grapes of Wrath, the grey image tuned a number of youthful eyes away. Like Dorothea Lange's famous photographs, John Ford's film depicted disadvantaged Okies with whom the American audience could identify. We may not know what it feels like to be forced off our homes, but how the families cope with the hardship, we all can recognize. I'm curious how the film was received by Californians in 1940, coming less than ten years after the original plague of destitute Oklahoma refugees. How would the characters have faired with our sympathies if they had been played as coarse hillbilly Crackers with guns and a poor person's chip-on-the-shoulder desperation? The poor protagonists of The Grapes of Wrath were weakened skinny po-folk, who staked their relief on the strength of a single hopeful job listing flyer, who protested their oppression without resorting to violence, and who accepted hardship as their lot. Seeing into their daily lives, viewers were shown a dignified, earnest people who treated others with respect and compassion. Antagonist characters in the film were less charitable, taking advantage of the hard-luck migrants with guile, violence and authority. People into which the Oklahoma refugees traveled, New Mexico, Arizona and California, treated the migrants like vermin. Even as onlookers might express admiration for the Okies' determination to cross Death Valley, the better fed Californians held them in disdain for not knowing enough to be in such a predicament. The Okies were blamed for their own poverty. They threatened to burden everyone's already depleting resources. Only the viewers understood the unfair actions which had landed the otherwise self-sufficient sharecroppers to have to leave their livelihoods. The circumstances of the Dust Bowl cum great depression era forced removal of the small Oklahoma farmers is eerily familiar to today's economy and its foreclosures. Homesteaders find themselves made homeless, as a consequence of business decisions between corporations, banks and regulators. The Oklahoma farmers wanted to point their shotguns to warn the financial disruptors from their land, but found the conduits of
WaMu shares fall from $39 to $2 in one year
The Domino Theory at work! Next to fall- Washington Mutual. Nothing related to Vietnamese Communism at all, but to American capitalism itself. And what does Wall Street and Washington, D.C. advocate now? Why socialism! They advocate socialism for themselves,The Rich, where profits are privatized for the super elites and losses are socialized for the poor to pay the costs of bad business dealings done by private owners. They call that 'bailout'. So if we are to have this form of socialism in place in the US one begins to wonder about having a much different form of Socialist Movement return to the scene, where benefits are privatized and the super rich must pay their fair costs to a society that they have been looting from? Well why not? Why should government always be benefiting only the rich, where corporate corruption allows Big Business to seize control of the government to use only for themselves? Also, we need to ask ourselves whether Big Business will ever care for Nature? The answer seems obvious that NO it will not, since looting nature is part of the essential business ethic of making profit for owners at the expense of others (workers and Nature). Yes, Socialism is back and we need to see that it is not the National Socialism of the rich for the rich that shall predominate, but rather Socialism of those who do the work for those who do the work, that is put into effect. Because one way or the other, it is what's now on the agenda. After WaMu, which next? The corporate-run government is bankrupting itself to stop bankruptcy! The FDIC will have to spend another $20 billion if this bank blows bringing itself almost to the point of insolvency. The money for bailouts and bankruptcies is not endless.
Bootstraps? Fiddlesticks!
Sticks to play the fiddle? Absurd! Here's another sign our cultural literacy level can't handle satire: "bootstraps." It's become a keyword for the conservative/libertarian dismissal of society's need for a safety net. Apparently lazy welfare recipients won't "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps." As if it takes but the effort, even as we can only interpret what was the procedure, since few of us come close enough to wearing riding boots to recognize a bootstrap. But I've heard social advocates offer this meek argument for their disadvantaged/minority/ailing charges: "but what if you don't have bootstraps?" Well give that person a bootstrap if they think they can levitate with it. Bootstraps may be colloquial to us now, but they only ever could assist you to pull up your boots. Perhaps we could suggest new idioms for the poor like: lose weight by tightening your shoelaces. Or if that's going to be dated soon: hang on to your earnings with Velcro. When did hard nose conservatives assume command of the expression that used to ridicule the inhumanity of their tough-love logic? "Bootstraps" now asserts that taking care of oneself is so self-evident it doesn't merit thinking about. Does "let them eat cake" register as elite class disconnect anymore? I wonder because the affluence brought by modern capitalism has proved Marie Antoinette cynically prophetic. The disadvantaged have their cake these days. Little Debbie's. It's pseudo-food rat poison. We won't give them bread.
$6.55 an hour? Oh, whoopee…
Notice how all the big guys look out after themselves. They got themselves a 'bailout' of several tens of billions of dollars over at Fannie Mae's and Freddie's houses, and it will be paid to them from much of the work of all those who, today, will get a big boost up to $6.55 an hour! More than that would be socialism they say. Federal Minimum Wage to Increase to $6.55 on July 24 What cons these business men are, because people believe them with their idiotic nonsense justifying their own largess at others expense, too. Their looting of the National Treasury is never called socialism at all. And it's not. It's just pure thievery and real socialism is not thievery at all, like what the American business community practices daily. Real socialism is nothing more than helping out the less fortunate in society, instead of helping out the more fortunate in their robberies of the rest of us.
Was Albert Einstein all that bright?
"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals." Socialism is not inherently totalitarian. To advocate for an equitable distribution of wealth, to look after the poor and feeble, to provide health, education, and opportunity for all, is to be a socialist. Not by coincidence, these are the very reasons socialism is feared by capitalists and slandered by their educational system. The Red Scare was not about Commie infiltrators but a creeping social consciousness. "Democrats" are the lip service which corporate power has to pay to keep human beings from wising up and demanding their due. Is there a single humanitarian whom you admire for his/her brilliance and grace, who advocates capitalism? Albert Einstein was a socialist.