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This morning I had a wonderful breakfast conversation with my grandma. She read a letter to the editor on the topic of the current media and political circus around contraception where a reader pointed out that Hitler was never excommunicated from the Catholic Church. She was clearly dismayed, noting that she and my (“step”) grandpa were excommunicated from the Church when they got married, because both were divorcees, my grandma having divorced my abusive biological grandfather. They lived happily married until my (step) grandpa passed away from cancer.
Such are the priorities of the leaders of the Catholic Church. Abuse is fine. You can’t divorce abusive husbands. Hitler was fine. The Church collaborated with him. But birth control? That needs a “debate”. Even when 85% of Catholics support the right to birth control.
The Church is serving a very destructive role at the moment. We need comprehensive healthcare. Yet the Catholic Church, in opposition to the opinions of the overwhelming majority of of its members, is saying that one component of healthcare is “sinful” and that Catholic health services should be except from providing whatever services it chooses.
Its almost unbearable to listen to the President these days. He talks about “religious freedom”. But what “freedom” is there in denying services that the vast majority of people want access to (because they need access to it)? The media circus is meant to distract us from the need for comprehensive healthcare reform – and to distract from the insurance industry giveaway that was Obama’s healthcare program.
Thankfully, it seems, that not many people are falling for the attempts at divisions.
“Listen, Agnes.
I am working-class.
And that really does make a difference. I know what’s useful,
and what isn’t.
I know the price of things,
and I know how to give things up.
I know what it is to struggle -
these tough little lessons
I dont think you people ever learned.
I hold tight, and I do my work.
I make posters for good causes.
Even if they get torn up, I make them, even though we live in a country
where theory falls silent in the face of fact,
where progress can be reversed overnight,
where the enemy has stolen everything, our own words from us,
I hold tight, and not to my painting . . . not only to that.
Pick any era in history, Agnes.
What is really beautiful about that era?
The way the rich lived?
No.
The way the poor lived?
No.
The dreams of the Left
are always beautiful.
The imagining of better world
the damnation of the present one.
This faith,
this luminescent anger,
these alone
are worthy of being called human.
These are the Beautiful
that an age produces.
As an artist I am struck to the heart
by these dreams. These visions.
We progress. But at great cost.
How can anyone stand to live
without understanding that much?”
-Gotchling, a character in Tony Kushner’s play A Bright Room Called Day, set in Weimar Republic (Germany) in the 1930s as country falls to fascism. Tony Kushner is the author of Angels in America.
(Source: Wikipedia; click to view full size image)
Here is a picture of the charred remains of the residents of Tokyo after the U.S.’s firebombing campaign of 9-10 March 1945, which killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians and left millions injured and homeless.
Last year in the United States a mere 20 Muslims and Arabs were accused of involvement in terrorist plots or association with terrorists, with few actual plots attempted, with many instances of government entrapment and frame-ups reported in recent years (which must be put in the context of a well-funded government war on Arabs and Muslims, including FBI spying and illegal CIA anti-Muslim programs run in conjunction with local police). Aside from the fact that we can’t trust the racist courts of the 1% in these matters, individual plots – - mostly done out of desperate frustration and retaliation against the most violent and racist imperial power the world has ever seen, and sometimes done at that government’s prompting – - are defined by the ruling class as “terrorism”, yet the incendiary- and atomic-bombing of Japan are praised as bringing “peace”. The interested reader can look to Glenn Greenwald’s excellent writings to better understand how meaningless the term “terrorism” is, and how hypocritical its usage.
Someone recently commented that while the attack on Pearl Harbor (a military target) is mourned and remembered, the U.S. government’s mass murder of millions of Japanese civilians, supposedly to bring about “peace”, are ignored – and when they aren’t ignored, they are praised. Mass murder, racist imperialism, and the promotion of fear through atomic and incendiary firestorms are aren’t called “terrorism”, but rather “peace”. Well, look here. This is capitalist ‘peace’!
“To put national or racial oppression against class exploitation is a sophomoric sociological enterprise; it is not Marxist analysis. That people of color can fall across class lines – a few of them – has befuddled our thinking insofar as we are metaphysical and not dialectical. Class exploitation and racial and national oppression are all of a piece, for in their joining lay the victory of capitalist relations.” – Eleanor Burke Leacock, Myths of Male Dominance: Collected Articles on Women Cross-Culturally
“At the end of the 1920s, advertising beat the drum to spread marvelous news: “Fly, don’t ride.” Leaded gasoline made you go faster, and going faster meant getting ahead in life. The ads showed a car going at a snail’s pace, and the embarrassed child inside: “Gee, Pop, they’re all passing you!”
“Gasoline with lead additives was invented in the United States, and from the United States a barrage of advertising imposed it on the world. In 1986, when the U.S. government finally decided to outlaw it, the number of victims of lead poisoning was incalculable. It was known all along that leaded gasoline was killing adults in the United States at a rate of five thousand a year, and causing irreparable damage to the nervous systems and mental development of millions of children.
“The principle authors of this crime were two executives from General Motors, Charles Kettering and Alfred Sloan. They have gone down in history as generous benefactors of humanity. They founded a hospital.” – Eduardo Galeano, Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone
Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone is a wonderful book of poetic short stories, telling stories from history, always from the prospective of the downtrodden and oppressed. Almost all of the stories are between a few paragraphs and 2 pages. Great subway, bathroom, before bed reading. You can literally open the book up randomly whenever you have a few spare moments. No matter what page you find yourself on, you won’t be disappointed. Check it out today.
“We call our dialectic materialist, since its roots are neither in heaven nor in the depths of our “free will”, but in objective reality, in nature. Consciousness grew out of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the organic world out of the inorganic, the solar system out of the nebulae. On all the rungs of this ladder of development, the quantitative changes were transformed into qualitative. Our thought, including dialectical thought, is only one of the forms of the expression of changing matter. There is place within this system for neither God nor Devil, nor immortal soul, nor eternal norms of laws and morals. The dialectic of thinking, having grown out of the dialectic of nature, possess consequently a thoroughly materialist character.
“Darwinism, which explained the evolution of species through quantitative transformations passing into qualitative, was the highest triumph of the dialectic in the whole field of organic matter. Another great triumph was the discovery of the table of atomic weights of chemical elements and further the transformation of one element into another.
“With these transformations (species, elements, etc.) is closely linked the question of classification, equally important in the natural as in the social sciences. Linnaeus’ system (18th century), utilising as its starting point the immutability of species, was limited to the description and classification of plants according to their external characteristics. The infantile period of botany is analogous to the infantile period of logic, since the forms of our thought develop like everything that lives. Only decisive repudiation of the idea of fixed species, only the study of the history of the evolution of plants and their anatomy prepared the basis for a really scientific classification.
“Marx, who in distinction from Darwin was a conscious dialectician, discovered a basis for the scientific classification of human societies in the development of their productive forces and the structure of the relations of ownership which constitute the anatomy of society. Marxism substituted for the vulgar descriptive classification of societies and states, which even up to now still flourishes in the universities, a materialistic dialectical classification. Only through using the method of Marx is it possible correctly to determine both the concept of a workers’ state and the moment of its downfall.
“All this, as we see, contains nothing “metaphysical” or “scholastic”, as conceited ignorance affirms. Dialectic logic expresses the laws of motion in contemporary scientific thought. The struggle against materialist dialectics on the contrary expresses a distant past, conservatism of the petit-bourgeoisie, the self-conceit of university routinists and … a spark of hope for an after-life.” – Leon Trotsky, “The ABC of Materialist Dialectics“, December 1939
“Our governments have failed us… Its beyond fuel subsidy… They are tired of being used as mercenaries for the government… My parents stopped me today, but I damned the consequences… If I die, I die. But Nigeria has to move!”
Martin Luther King Jr. talking to Harry Belafonte: “I said, ‘What’s the matter, Martin? You seem very agitated.’ He said, ‘Well, I am, because I’ve come upon a thought that I don’t know how to deal with at this moment.’ I said, ‘Well, what is it?’ He said, ‘We’ve fought long for integration. It looks like we’re gonna get it. I think we’ll get the laws,” he says. “But I’m afraid that I’ve come upon something that I don’t know quite what to do with. I’m afraid that we’re integrating into a burning house.’”
“The three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” – Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor
James Baldwin responds to William F. Buckley Jr. in debate.
He talks about the American Dream, and coming to the consciousness that the American Dream does not serve people of colour. An excellent series of comments on coming to ‘true consciousness’ against the ‘false consciousness’ of the racist capitalist system.
Barack Obama’s Defense Department has released a memo (“Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense“) reiterating the strategy of the U.S. government. Particularly of interest is the continuing hostility towards Iran, and U.S. government threats and plans for forcible regime change in that country.
Under the heading of ‘Counter Terrorism and Irregular Warfare’, the memo says that:
“U.S. military forces must continue to hold al-Qa’ida and its affiliates and adherents under constant pressure, wherever they may be.”
That is, the U.S. will continue to intervene in countries without their permission, including when permission is explicitly denied, even if those nations explicitly agree with U.S.’s claimed aims of the elimination of terrorism (which many do; and all implicitly do because, what people, after all, are interested in promoting terrorism within their countries?).
Some images from Iran. This is the country, all all the countries before it, that the U.S. and its allies want to raze to the ground (click image to go to video page):
The Israeli state bombs Iran. So the Iranian government responds against Israel. U.S. troops are in occupied Palestine during the attack. There then exists a direct pretext for U.S. intervention.
Too simplistic? Hardly. “Missile defense” programs are a first strike weapon.
* * *
“Several thousand US troops headed to Israel for ‘unprecedented’ joint missile defense exercise
On Dec 20 Jerusalem Post reported thousands of American soldiers were deploying to Israel to take part in the “the largest-ever missile defense exercise” in Israel’s history. So far, the U.S. media is not covering it, but Iran sure is.”
The concept of ‘flip flop’ which is thrown around in the corporate media is a tool (like all their tools) designed to constraint the terms of acceptable debate. So, for example, a politician who once supported something, and now opposes it, might be accused of ‘flip flopping’, which is implicitly defined as bad, though they never say why. The implicit assumption is that changing your views is wrong and unprincipled.
Now most politicians usually change their positions from one bad position to another, or sometimes to a ‘good’ position which they either (1) don’t intend to implement, (2) will never have the power to implement, or (3) like 2, will be structurally constrained from implementing. But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is they changed their position, regardless of what their previous and new positions are, or even if there is any substantial change in position (that is, even if its only a rhetorical shift – which it often is).
So if someone once supported drone attacks, but then came to oppose it, the members of both party might call that a ‘flip flop’ to bring them back in line, never questioning the substance of their previous or current position. Its a method of completely avoiding any substance whatsoever. (This is obviously a hypothetical example since almost all U.S. politicians support drone attacks).
But more importantly the idea that changing your views is bad or unprincipled – even if you change them to better positions – re-enforces the terms of elite ‘debate’, and attempts to guilt people into never questioning or changing their views. Because if you change your views, you might eventually change them in a direction that is contrary to the interests of politician elites and the members of the ruling class they serve.
An excellent video from a really rad 13 year old. Check it out. She rocks.
Glenn Greenwald has contributed from a leftwing perspective an excellent corpus of writings analysing the insidious nature of recent U.S. interventions around the world, and the attacks on civil rights within America’s borders over the course of the last several years. While I don’t always agree with his precise analysis, I highly recommend that anyone who can regularly read his journalism on Salon.com, where he posts almost daily (and sometimes several times daily); or watch his excellent talk from the Socialism 2011 Conference here for a good introduction to his views:
That said, different people, using the same evidence, can come to different conclusions. I think that is the case with Greenwald’s New Year’s Eve post on Ron Paul (“Progressives and the Ron Paul Fallacy“, Salon.com, 31 Dec. 2011). He is writing with the illusions that many liberals still have in Barack Obama in mind. Particularly Greenwald is taking aim at Obama supporters who attack Ron Paul but hypocritically do not critique the president’s imperial policies.
So many pets are surrendered and euthanised every day. The top reasons? “Owner evicted”. “Owner foreclosed”. “Owner sick”. “No time”. “Too expensive”. “No room”. “Allergies” (which can also in many cases mean, “not enough room” or “no healthcare”).
In a system where people are overworked, underpaid, cramped into tiny spaces, denied healthcare, and are forced to use for-profit veteranarians, its no wonder that millions of pets are killed every year.
The solution? Well, its great when people adopt pets from kill-shelters. But there’s basically only one ultimate solution: Send capitalism to the kill shelter.
Kill capitalism, not our pets.
“Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.” – Dorothy Day
Socialist Politics:
Recommended Readings
