Here we have your basic Emergency Open Thread
The sun is up, I'm up and there is no OT. OTOH, I've got a ton to do today, no plan, no topic, and no real inspiration. However, some ideas
The machine demands a permanent underclass. Desperation for jobs keeps wages down & production up. Desperation for goods & services drives the desperation for jobs. Eschew faddist crap and non-necessities. Share. Re-use, repair, repurpose, recycle.
The first truth is that all life is suffering
The Second Truth is that this suffering is caused by selfish craving and personal desire.
So, aren't we all negroes today?
WEB DuBois - Socialsim
Food for thought:
This was triggered by the following article in The Christian Science Monitor. It is a stub for a future essay, disjointed and incoheent, but ...
https://www.csmonitor.com/Daily/2017/20170906/In-capitalist-Russia-a-soc...
The article discussed how a soviet collective farm survived the change to capitalism by morphing into a cooperative projet in the guise of a "closed shareholder society". They have guaranteed housing, medical care and education as well as salaries about 3 times the national average. The article takes about 6 minutes to read and is well worth it, but also implicitly presents some interesting considerations for anybody contemplating trying something similar here.
The people in the community covered by the article have an agricultural "commune" quite near Moscow, producing fresh fruits and veggies and such. They can command somewhat premium prices due to the freshness of their product. This could be the first stumbling block toward replicating such an endeavor here, because most resident of the USA don't really give a shit about fresh fruits, veggies and produce, but prefer frozen fish sticks and microwave dinners. This means that an agricultural commune here would have to be self sufficient as to other goods as well as what they grow.
Nomenclature
An intentional community is a planned residential community designed from the start to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision and often follow an alternative lifestyle. They typically share responsibilities and resources. Intentional communities include collective households, cohousing communities, coliving, ecovillages, monasteries, communes, survivalist retreats, kibbutzim, ashrams, and housing cooperatives. New members of an intentional community are generally selected by the community's existing membership, rather than by real-estate agents or land owners (if the land is not owned collectively by the community).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_community
A commune (the French word appearing in the 12th century from Medieval Latin communia, meaning a large gathering of people sharing a common life; from Latin communis, things held in common)[1] is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, often having common values and beliefs, as well as shared property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work, income or assets.
In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become important core principles for many communes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commune
The International Cooperative Alliance defines a cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) as "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise".[1] Cooperatives may include:
non-profit community organizations
businesses owned and managed by the people who use their services (a consumer cooperative)
organisations managed by the people who work there (worker cooperatives)
organisations managed by the people to whom they provide accommodation (housing cooperatives)
hybrids such as worker cooperatives that are also consumer cooperatives or credit unions
multi-stakeholder cooperatives such as those that bring together civil society and local actors to deliver community needs
second- and third-tier cooperatives whose members are other cooperatives
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
This is an open thread, do your thing
Comments
All power to all of the people, now.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Mornimg EL
I'm sure we'll see Smiley7 next Saturday.
I'm waiting with bated breath for what you do with the number one on Monday.
I'm being lazy today. Expect a 'Peruvian Beach Shack Report'(TM-No Rights reserved) - 'On the mend' edition tomorrow or Monday.
Gee...three sentences in a row beginning with 'I'm'...enough about me.
Have a great day all.
I want a Pony!
Hey, good morning Arrow, how's the foot and infection?
And beach shack? Are you back home?
I figgered number 1 should be all about murca, 'cause we're numbah one, but then I discarded that idea.
Also not included is a harangue on how 1, the least and lowliest integer, nonetheless contains an infinity of real numbers and is hence "ever so large".
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
1
is the first mistake, because it introduces separateness to the numbers, and separateness is false; all of the numbers are present in 0, and they are better off there.
Indeed and yet not so. We live in a vector or tensor universe,
but for various purposes we make snapshots and/or approximations using scalars. Though (e)numeration causes division and divisiveness, for day to day survival in today's society, numbers can be a great boon. Though we can say all is (in) zero (or equally, all is (in) one), there are times when it behooves one to know that one needs 3 each 2 inch number 10 machine screws in order to restore the refrigerator to functionality.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
can we go back to year zero yet?
the ancients didn't count years in negative integers before CE, so why should we compound mistakes by adding to an unknown beginning?
sometimes
the humans go to a Year Zero (France, Cambodia). But then they start counting again, and it all goes to Hell.
in some spheres
tomorrow is January 0. It somehow allows the machines to make sense of time, for predicting the location of other spheres.
We get, I suspect, into imponderables. My theoretical
physics and cosmology isn't really up to the task, but moment zero would be the big bang. However, space has been expanding continuously ever since, and since is but an aspect of time-space, where does that leave time? Was year zero fabulously short, or fabulously long?
If we pick an alternate cosmology, such as that of the old testament, we can get back to ground zero for humans or ground zero for the universe, if time doesn't require an observer, by stacking all of those meticulously recorded begattings, but the duration of each life span is problematic, especially given the record's problems with numbers. (The deluge lasted but 40 days and nights, and when the waters began to recede (to where?) Ararat appeared, so it rained over 421 feet per day, while the world record is somewhere around 6. The pressure per square foot would've been over 25,000 pounds, fwiw, so the earth to which they returned would be devoid of all life, including plants and such, except those growing on mountain tops and arable land would be virtually non-existent due to soil compaction.) Nonetheless, various folks have computed that start date, so we could simply adopt a date system based thereupon, or use the Hebrew calendar, but then why not that of the Maya or Chinese.
This may be why Baba Ram Das said "be here now", but that's another matter.
Personally, I opt for moment zero being 01-20-1981, the beginning of the Reagan Presidency, which will make 01-20-2018 the beginning of the 38th year of the Reagan Revolution.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Speaking of Bad Arithmetic, that should be 1,010,400 pounds
per square foot, or roughly 500 tons psf.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
whoa, that's heavy
the time lines you are describing make a lot more sense when these "histories" are considered more as parables. If these people lived 500 plus years, inverse logic could push the deluge into more of a 40 or 400 year 'reign'. That could allow for some of the physics. A lot of those old stories defy understanding with today's science. Guess that's why we are told to have faith!
Cheers
my understanding
is that all is light. But sometimes it incarnates into primordial matter, which is dark chocolate bars with almonds in them. These can be seen as the monoliths in the true-life documentary film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The numbers are then invented to count the chocolate bars. Or, for those who get obsessive, the number of almonds in them.
it is an illusion
that this is a vector/tensor universe. But you are right that it is sometimes convenient to pretend there is a refrigerator, to preserve the dark chocolate with the almonds in it.
EL still in 'murica'
Have to have 60 days of IV antibiotics which requires skilled nursing. (oops-spoiler alert). But things is good. (Damn...gotta quit giving away the plot line.)
I want a Pony!
@Arrow
I'm betting on a happy ending; the protagonist winds up better than ever, and though this horrible process gains new antibodies and even further insight and great power, playing an even more important (if possible) role in not only the site, but in aiding in the fight against the disaster capitalists and the global capitalist disaster they're creating.
We probably just need to dump penicillin on that infection as well, to make them melt away into a small but icky puddle on the door-step, to be eternally and safely stored in secure toxic waste containment. Maybe on Mars, where at least some of them seem to want to go anyway, before they turn Earth into the same sort of non-living environment?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Hey EL
Brilliant minds meld together. You covered the topic I had cued up for Tuesday. Time to get creative!
Thanks, enjoy the rest of your year!
How about the Paris Commune?
The Commune of 1871 was the first real attempt at a new working class society. It only lasted a mere two months, but its legacy has set the ground work for every worker revolution to come.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx-jmd1o9nk (2.5 min)
and/or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXlHGseyvfw (14 min)
There's a 1929 Russian film "The New Babylon" about the commune.
about the movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5upNADaDvg8 (14 min)
and here's the 1.5 hour silent film with English subtitles and scored music if anyone has an interest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyOhcTuFYe0
Richard Wolff has offered to help workers develop coops at his site
http://www.democracyatwork.info/
https://dawn.coop/
http://action.democracyatwork.info/
Thanks for the OT el. We better learn to help each other as we move into the next year.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Good morning, Lookout, and thanks for all of the information
and links.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Thanks for the emergency OT.
I'm doing some emergency garden chores today to prepare for some unusual (for us) freezing temperatures.
This article syncs a bit with some of the ideas you mentioned;
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/29/the-coming-transformation/
From truthdig: More on
Russiagate, the lessons not learned (from 2016 election), and wherefore art thou Dem party?
"American politics have rarely presented a more disheartening spectacle. The repellent and dangerous antics of Donald Trump are troubling enough, but so is the Democratic Party leadership’s failure to take in the significance of the 2016 election campaign. Bernie Sanders’s challenge to Hillary Clinton, combined with Trump’s triumph, revealed the breadth of popular anger at politics as usual—the blend of neoliberal domestic policy and interventionist foreign policy that constitutes consensus in Washington."
truthdig story
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
how that band could
even play before noon that day is amazing.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Icaria Speranza "If you build it., they will come."
Greetings comrades. Lost the signal 911 severe symptoms and nowhere to take 'em, system is "beset with deficit" -- after the wildfires it seems Sonoma County is living the shock doctrine. The housing situation is scary, I don't go along the river it is full of desperate people with no proper shelter, some are quite angry. Me too. Peace.
Thanks to the kind person who PM'd me, that was nice to read on Christmas. The darkest time is really really dark, thanks goodness for the return of the light and the shift in energy it brings. Thanks.
...
The lot next door is still "ready to build", there is some righteous labor history here in Cloverdale and the Green Rush is on for subversive anti-capitalist action. "Bring it."
Cloverdale once home to Icaria, a communist utopia
The lesson is, never borrow from a bank! Oh yeah, California needs community control of wealth outside the stinking central banking system, join the rest of the sane world preparing to escape. Opportunities galore, late-stage capitalism is early-stage _____ ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_anarchism
HNY 99%
Good afternoon, eyo, thanks for dropping in. Thanks for the
Cloverdale history, too. I had never heard of the Icaria community before.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Thank you, el, for this wonderful rescue...
just got in from another holiday rates day on the mountain, busy as hell, slopes wall-to-wall skiers and riders, been so busy in ski school the past two weeks, i forgot what day it was and am so tired i didn't notice.
Been a lucrative week, yesterday and today, particularly, in tips. Resources coming in... yeah!
Cheers, good man!
Good evening and cheers to you, smiley7. Glad to hear that
the resources are coming in, we all need them, and I suspect that we will all need them more than ever soon. The first rule of monkeywrenching, after all, is to ensure that you survive it, and that requires resilience and assets as well as allies and imagination. Have a great Sunday and the week to follow, the whole new year as well.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --