Getting through these times --

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Fri, 09/09/2016 - 10:29pm

Yeah, it's beginning to look like a few years ahead of things getting worse while the counter-movement assembles itself some more. Walter Benjamin, from 1940:

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the "emergency situation" in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history which corresponds to this. Then it will become clear that the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency...

I am still waiting for fantastic stadium-filling Jill Stein rallies in my neighborhood, smashing the obvious class divisions between the nice neighborhoods and the ones where the cheap labor is obliged to live. Until then:

Note for commenters: if you're posting music please post stuff w/ guitar...

Tags:

guitar

Friday night

Potluck postponed

Tennis matches finished

Vote

Comments

Submitted by Tall Bald and Ugly on Fri, 09/09/2016 - 10:53pm

That Sam Fish

was Rightous! Thanks!

—

Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Fri, 09/09/2016 - 11:10pm

I like Sam Fish.

But I think her tour will only reach CA with two stops: Chico and Modesto.

—

"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Submitted by HenryAWallace on Fri, 09/09/2016 - 11:44pm

Bernie had some jaw-dropping rallies, even as a 74-75 year old

with an accent most Americans do not like.

If we don't face the ugly reality that politics is not fair and has little to nothing to do with what average people want or need, or do, , we're screwed. We may well be screwed, no matter what. But, we are for sure screwed if we don't face reality: If you misdiagnose, you are likely to misprescribe. If you misprescribe, improvement is unlikely.

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Fri, 09/09/2016 - 11:35pm

He did.

I miss them, as well as the pre-concession-speech Bernie.

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Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 8:10am

the media machine couldn't entirely suppress the fact

of his existence, b/c he was running in a duopoly party.

Of course, at the end of the run, you have to pay the piper for that--and he did.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by WIProgressive on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 10:20am

So very very true HW.

—

O.k. When is the next meeting for the revolution?
-FuturePassed on Sunday, November 25, 2018 10:22 p.m.

Submitted by Tak on Fri, 09/09/2016 - 11:42pm

A little feedback...

OK, a lot of feedback.

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 8:09am

Build an extensive and well-organized indie media

(crowdfunded, of course).

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by Meteor Man on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 11:48am

Marxism Sucks!

From your Walter Benjamin link:

“Labor is the savior of modern times... In the... improvement... of labor... consists the wealth, which can now finally fulfill what no redeemer could hitherto achieve.” This vulgar-Marxist concept of what labor is, does not bother to ask the question of how its products affect workers, so long as these are no longer at their disposal. It wishes to perceive only the progression of the exploitation of nature, not the regression of society. It already bears the technocratic traces which would later be found in Fascism.

Among these is a concept of nature which diverges in a worrisome manner from those in the socialist utopias of the Vormaerz period [pre-1848]. Labor, as it is henceforth conceived, is tantamount to the exploitation of nature, which is contrasted to the exploitation of the proletariat with naïve self-satisfaction.

Good shit, but the language of the Marxist/Hegelian historical dialectic is pathetically obtuse:
https://www2.bc.edu/~heineman/marx.html

Even the legal profession has conceeded the necessity of "plain English" to eliminate archaic legalese. Marxists? Not so bright and they talk about stupid shit for daaaays and daaaays. Long Marxist story short? Forget about it.

—

"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Submitted by Meteor Man on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 11:51am

Radical Rock?

My favorite:

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 1:01pm

Please keep in mind that in Benjamin's day --

i.e. before that fateful day in September of 1940 when he killed himself rather than be captured by the Nazis -- Marxism was not what it is today. At that point Marxism was still significantly an invention of Engels and of the Russians and had yet to be humanized and set out as a basis for something other than Leninism. The 1844 manuscripts, for instance, were only available in English in 1959, and the MECW only started publication in English in 1975.

There is thus a significant literature out there attempting to reconcile the more recently-promoted humanistic, secularized Western versions of Marxism with Leninism, or to reject the humanistic, secularized Western versions of Marxism in favor of some version or other of Leninism. Philosophy emerges from theology, as it did with Thomas Aquinas.

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Submitted by Meteor Man on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 2:22pm

Why do Communists have to be atheists?

There is not a necessary contradiction between political beliefs and religious beliefs.

In fact Communism/Socialism are both far more spiritually aligned with New Testament Christianity than Capitalism. The whole anti-religion schtick is counterproductive.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 3:38pm

They don't.

And a lot of them aren't.

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Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 3:51pm

Marx and religion

In fact Communism/Socialism are both far more spiritually aligned with New Testament Christianity than Capitalism. The whole anti-religion schtick is counterproductive.

Although Marx himself was an atheist, the only demands he ever made regarding religions is that they fund themselves out of the contributions of devotees alone, and that they stay the fuck out of non-devotees' business, including such functions as education and medicine. In other words, Marx wanted Church separated from the State -- and he saw medicine and education as secular State functions. His famous quote:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

source

has as its principal (and usually forgotten) point that the solution to this problem wasn't to just snatch the "opium" away from the people, but to remove the pain from the people which causes them to resort to the "opium" to begin with!

The "mandatory atheism" aspect for which Marxism is notorious today is largely the work of Vladimir Lenin, who was reacting to a peculiarly Russian situation. In the Russia of his times, State and Church were quite inseparable, a single united organism which, rather than alleviating the people's pain, was the principal source of it. Therefore, the whole "beast" needed to be slain. This can easily be contrasted with the situation in Germany by the times of Marx and Lenin, where the Christian religious establishnents, Catholic and Protestant alike, were actually engaged in efforts both spiritual and temporal to alleviate the pains suffered by the German people.

As you correctly point out, mandatory atheism has never worked, is a bad idea, and has a track record of catastrophic failure everywhere -- including in Russia, but also in France, the Cristero Wars in Mexico, etc.

And again: Although I am a Socialist, I'm not a Marxist by any means. My alignment is more with las anarquistas.

—

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Submitted by Meteor Man on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 8:38pm

Thank-you for this

(Marxism) has as its principal (and usually forgotten) point that the solution to this problem wasn't to just snatch the "opium" away from the people, but to remove the pain from the people which causes them to resort to the "opium" to begin with!

The cant gets repeated so often I had no idea there was more to it.

Excellent information!

—

"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 9:03pm

opium cant

The cant gets repeated so often I had no idea there was more to it.

Excellent information!

Thank you!

—

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 3:25pm

Marx on Marxists

Even the legal profession has conceeded the necessity of "plain English" to eliminate archaic legalese. Marxists? Not so bright and they talk about stupid shit for daaaays and daaaays. Long Marxist story short? Forget about it.

Karl Marx himself on this very subject:

"All I know is that I am not a Marxist."

source

In the original French:

“ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste” (“what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist”

source

The latter source has this to say about the context of Marx's remark:

So Marx, on this point at least, reckoned he was “not a Marxist” not because his teachings had been distorted by openly opportunist currents, but because he did not agree with those who were ready to ditch the “minimum” programme and substituted revolutionary phrases for the patient work of building the class party [...]

This is pretty much the same objection you have expressed. Marxists have this rather nasty habit of crawling into their theory books when modern revolutionists should be about the business of getting the laboring class everything it is entitled to (read: everything, period).

I have always been more of an anarcho-socialist than a Marxist for these reasons, among others.

—

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Submitted by Meteor Man on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 8:44pm

My Opinion of Karl Marx Just Escalated

The Marx and Engels and Weber we studied in college courses was a crash course burn out.

—

"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Submitted by Alligator Ed on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 5:56pm

Sorry, Joni, your dogfight was too tame

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8xNn4td37k]

Submitted by Meteor Man on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 8:41pm

Lovin it! AC/DC Rocks Dog Eat Dog!

I missed that one. Thx.

—

"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Submitted by Meteor Man on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 10:50pm

I Still Prefer Joni's Lyrics

Land of snap decisions
Land of short attention spans
Nothing is savored
Long enough to really understand
In every culture in decline
The watchful ones among the slaves
Know all that is genuine will be
Scorned and conned and cast away

Dog eat dog
People looking seeing nothing
Dog eat dog
People listening hearing nothing
Dog eat dog
People lusting loving nothing
Dog eat dog
People stroking touching nothing
Dog eat dog
Knowing nothing
Dog eat dog

http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=225

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Submitted by Creosote. on Sun, 09/11/2016 - 5:17am

And starting at the front end

It's dog eat dog
I'm just waking up
The dove is in the dungeon
And the white washed hawks
peddle hate and call it love

with thanks for the link

Submitted by Hawkfish on Sat, 09/10/2016 - 6:25pm

I'm waiting for the Green rallies too

Still, there is something very different about their fundraising success. To date, Jill has about 1500 major contributors, but as of 1-1/2016 Bernie already had about 58,000. Plus, rallies take cash for promotion and rental, and the greens have had to spend lots of their hard to come by money on signature gathering for ballot access.

As a Dem, Bernie also got about $500M in free media coverage. Jill gets none of that. I'm not saying that The Greens couldn't do a better job, but the money situation is a really harsh chicken and egg problem.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg