Shaharazade style. There is something in the air and wires that feels like spring even though it's the dead of winter in more ways then just the weather. Maybe I'm just sick of being pessimistic and full of fear so I have cooked up the sense that somethings happening here there and everywhere. Maybe I'm seeing things from a different perspective, one where segments of the world's population are waking up to the game at hand. Regardless today I'm okay with the ongoing mess for this week at least. Perhaps a little emotional detachment offers relief from a tainted perspective of fear and anger.

Because I read some good articles on Martin Luther King that did not portray him as an icon of the paritsan, moderate, mainstream, left I was able to observe MLK Day. National Service Day buries his powerful visions of equality and has tamed his continuing legacy. This year I didn't get schooled by Denise about how my white privileged ass had no right to whiteslain' about his vision of universal equality, social injustice, or what he stood for or even what he meant to me in my formative years, politically and as a human What a treat to read about the MLK with out the filters of Democratic partisan 'moderates' who have co-opted his 'fierce urgency of now' into the politically safe mainstream left icon in the still oppressive system fought against. The incremental urgency of now just doesn't cut it as far as human and civil rights go.

This is an excellent essay From Jacobin Magazine...

Restoring King
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/restoring-king/

Every year, in January and April, we commemorate the extraordinary career of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. But there is probably no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted, whose message is more bowdlerized, whose powerful words are more drained of content than King.......

In media accounts, King was quickly labeled the “Apostle of Non-Violence” and, by the mid 1960s, portrayed as the antithesis to Malcolm X. While King adhered to nonviolence for his entire career, the single-minded focus of the media on the horse race between Malcolm and Martin led reporters to ignore King’s more radical pronouncements. They simply didn’t fit into the developing story line.....

King’s radicalism is lost to the obfuscating fog of memory. In American culture today, we have several Martin Luther King Jr’s: the Commemorative King, the Therapeutic King, the Conservative King, and the Commodified King. Each of these Kings competes for our attention, but each of them represents a vision of King that he himself would not have recognized.

Another excellent Jacobin article about Martin Luther King

The Evolution of Dr. King
By the end of his life, Martin Luther King Jr was an avowed socialist.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/martin-luther-king-socialist/

Because I live in Oregon I have gotten caught up in the bizarre story of Eastern Oregon's invasion by the fundamentalist Mormon RW Cowboy Militia who need snacks. The people of Harney county, which is strongly Republican, have despite their differences with the Feds told them to Go,Go Go. they don't seem like they are going anywhere except to go shopping and recruit more armed loons to join their righteous crusade against the Feds and the birds.

Oregon Standoff
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/01/oregon_standoff_anger_...

In sometimes highly personal remarks, speaker after speaker vented anger – at public officials, at the federal government and at the man in the brown cowboy hat sitting high in the bleachers to take it all in – Ammon Bundy.

"It is time for you to go home," Grasty said to Bundy, vowing to meet with Bundy anytime, anyplace – outside of Harney County. A chant then grew in the gymnasium: "Go, go, go, go, go."

But the audience of perhaps 300 people had plenty to say, and it seemed the cork had come out of the county.

Today our governor, Kate Brown said she wants the Feds to step up and do something to get them outta here. I'm not in favor of another violent bloody Waco siege but surely this is not the only alternative to giving them free access to come and go as they please in their deranged range war and armed occupation of the wildlife refuge. What's up with this? Why didn't they arrest them when they came to town to hear what the locals had to say?

Kate Brown criticizes federal response to 'unlawful occupation,' wants funding to help pay costs
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/01/kate_brown_oregon_s...

"This situation is absolutely intolerable and it must be resolved immediately," Brown said, saying she'll continue to press her case with the White House and FBI and also seek federal reimbursements. "The very fabric of this community is being ripped apart."

She confirmed that federal authorities had asked her office and other local officials to say as little as possible about the occupation to keep from adding any fuel to the occupiers' rhetorical fire. But that didn't stop her from speaking out all the same.

"This spectacle of lawlessness must end," Brown said.

Another take on the invading Mormon cowboy militia from Mother Jones. Hey MJ this is not Oregon's militia it's not our native Militia specie. Other then this beef it's an interesting point of view

The Oregon Militia Is Picking the Wrong Beef With the Feds
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2016/01/malheur-militants-are-pi...

Ursula K. Le Guin weighs in
Novelist Obliterates The Bundy Militia — And Oregon’s Largest Newspaper — In 194 Words
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/01/19/3740829/ursula-k-le-guin-ore...

Because socialism is breaking out all over and it seems to be catching I'm in a good mood.

Martin Luther king weighs in on communism and capitalism. Is the higher synthesis not socialism?

"What I’m saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated."

We always wrung our heads too much
We know the reasons, but such and such
On your own,
You will not catch your unknown

And so on and so on