When you say you don't pay attention to politics you're making a political decision. Sitting around and doing nothing is a political act in stating that you choose not to care. Nothing you do is ever apolitical. The word idiot comes from Ancient Greek and was used to deride people who cared only about their own lives and didn't get involved in the running of the polis. It's time to start caring.
I live in Bristol and study politics. Most of the stuff here is usually political, a little bit of stuff from my friends. Marxist. Views, opinions, regurgitations. It all tumbles forth.
“Source: Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism;
First Published: in 1965 by Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd., London. Published in the USA by International Publishers Co., Inc., 1966;”
Tonight I had the honor of attending a reception at the Permanent Mission to the UN of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in New York. The reception was in honor of DPRK leader Comrade Kim Jong Il, who passed away last December. Tomorrow, February 16, would have been his 70th birthday.
My comrade Deirdre Griswold presented a message of solidarity from Workers World Party to Sin Son Ho, the DPRK’s permanent representative to the UN. It was a real pleasure to get to chat with members of the mission’s staff, whose determination, personality and good humor are requirements for working and living in the heart of an imperialist power that constantly demonizes their country.
It was interesting to see who else came. Besides Deirdre and me, there were two comrades from the December 12th Movement (an African American communist/Pan Africanist organization based in Brooklyn). There were many older Koreans who support the DPRK, some of whom came from as far as Southern California to attend. There were representatives of several missions, including Cuba, Belarus and Russia. And finally, there were schmoozers from different agencies and NGOs — some clearly not friends of the DPRK — some of whom, I suspect, spend their evenings making the rounds of diplomatic receptions.
We enjoyed a delicious buffet of traditional Korean dishes (octopus is tasty, people!). I almost got into trouble because I thought Soju was something you drink by the bottle, not in a shot glass. Best of all, we got to share our thoughts on the Occupy movement and the emerging class struggles with representatives of a fiercely independent nation that needs the solidarity of people in the U.S. now more than ever.
Am I the only deeply disturbed by the carefree attitude he takes to cozying up to Stalinists?
Must be CIA.
I’ve read the book. It does a great job of explaining why capitalism sucks and will always suck
BUT
I hate Lenin. He told Rosa Luxemburg that she would have to wait for women’s emancipation.
Not gonna lie, male revolutionaries don’t always have the best approach to gender relations. Guevara’s Guerilla Warfare left me feeling more than slightly awkward in the section that talks about how women can make excellent revolutionaries … they’re much more gentle when treating injuries and can make better tasting food …
Well, the instructions on turning a shotgun into a molotov mortar were slightly awkward as well …
LENIN WROTE Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism in 1916 in the middle of the carnage of the First World War.
The pamphlet was an intervention in the sharp political debate that had torn apart the international socialist movement at the start of the war, with nearly every socialist party in Europe backing its own government in the conflict.
When war was declared in 1914, socialists in the German parliament voted unanimously to fund it, arguing that they had to defend civilization against the despotism of the Russian Tsar. Meanwhile, French socialists said they had to defend revolutionary France against Prussian militarism, and so on, across the board.
Lenin’s Bolshevik Party in Russia was one of the few socialist organizations that maintained principled opposition to its own government. Lenin argued that the war was an imperialist conflict in which all sides were trying to grab more territory and extend their power and influence—or at the very least hang on to territories to which they had no right in the first place.
Lenin’s main goal in Imperialism was to show how the colonial expansion and imperialist rivalry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were rooted in profound changes in the nature of capitalism during the same period. That’s why he called imperialism at the beginning of the 20th century a stage of capitalism.
In a digital economy, Megaupload’s threat was to the tradition distribution of wealth as real estate of the landed classes. We the People may be vampiric digital squatters haunting virtual landscapes, the otherwise potential Imperial territories.
In 1980, 1 MB may have been about 340 USD. Somewhere between Assuck and …And Justice for All, I’ve decided a mean song can be about 4 minutes. In 1980, my hypothetical song would cost $1,360 to store, assuming I had the processing power to compress it.
$1/GB flashdrives aside: This year, a 2TB drive with moving parts is available for a rate of $.00007/MB at TigerDirect.com. I could store my hypothetical 4-minute song for $.00003. (That’s down $.00001 from last year.)
If our digital economy matters, the acceleration of our ability to store senseless songs for later playback is a reflection of market tendency, velocity, volatility, and, more important, of conspicuous consumption and class marketing and identity.
Megaupload didn’t fall for the protection of our patriotic intellectuals and their IP; it fell because the conversion of landscape into territory and ultimately into Empire demanded it. Squatters cannot compete with capital in the name of vampirism.
Speculatin’. If vampiric, squatters not only compete with Capital, but, like Dracula, threaten to consume Empires by hoarding currency and moving across borders.
A train overturned by striking workers at the main railway depot in Tiflis in 1905; during the revolution of 1905, railroads such as the trans baikal railway were seized by revolutionaries and strikers in order to hault the advance of returning russian troops from the russo-japanese war, resulting in the tsar having to transport seperate groups of loyal troops along the trans-siberian railway in order to restore order.
“We should not allow the word “democracy” to be utilized apologetically to represent the dictatorship of the exploiting classes.”
Che Guevara
Arsonists attacking commercial properties with links to people’s homes could be shot by police during future riots, an official review of police tactics said.
The use of firearms could be justified given the “immediacy of the risk and the gravity of the consequences”, legal advice published in the review said.
Plastic bullets and water cannon could also be used by officers facing riots similar to those seen this summer, the review by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary added.
Police need to be better prepared, trained and ready to protect the public if they are to improve their response to similar scenes of violence and looting in the future, the review found. It called for clear rules of engagement to establish “an agreed envelope of available tactics and associated use of force that are likely to maintain public support”.
These rules could include making clear that armed police could use firearms with live ammunition during “arson attacks on commercial buildings with linkage to residential dwellings”.
The review added that plastic bullets could also be considered when barricades and missiles were used by protesters; during violent attacks on the public in the presence of police; and when other emergency services are threatened. They could also be used when petrol bombs are thrown or during arson attacks.
All of these scenes were experienced by officers this summer.
The review added that water cannon were an “effective means of dispersal and incur fewer injuries to the public” in static and slow-moving scenarios. But it conceded there were none on the mainland UK, they cost more than £1 million each and need to be deployed in twos to be effective.
Water cannon also have to be protected by officers and need access to water as they can empty in “a matter of minutes” if used continuously.
It comes in sharp contrast to a report by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee on Monday which said it would have been “inappropriate as well as dangerous to have employed water cannon and baton rounds”. Their use “could have escalated and inflamed the situation further”, the MPs said.
(Source: undecidedeyepatch)
Each star represents a US military base, but just so we’re all clear: Iran is threatening Us
November 11 is remembrance day, remembering the war to end all wars, in which a third of all casualties were civilians. It was followed after 30 years by a war in which a half of all casualties were civilians. 20 years later Vietnam 75%+ of casualties are civilians. Vietnam is just one of many of the “cold war” era conflicts, that saw similar proportions of non-combatants dying and getting injured. In the 21st century we had more than 1 war in which 90%+ of casualties were civilian. November 11 is not the day we celebrate winning World War I. It is the day we contemplate its atrocities, and vow not to repeat them. If we celebrate anything it is the “civilizing” effect the war had on us, we celebrate the Vienna Convention which states that the forcible transfer of populations and the targeting of civilians during armed conflicts are crimes of war. What irony it is, that war had to be legislated and regulated, to in fact attain previously unimaginable ugliness. Is it irony? Or is legislation the modern equivalent of religious commandments; righteous words on justice that serve the victim as an anesthetic but doesn’t cure her wounds?
I’ve always had a problem with remembrance day for a few reasons, and it always seems to be the most consistent point in time where I start arguments. So lets get this one out the way early, and I’m not saying this because I disagree with what johnnydib put but because I guess this is an opportunity to also start a discourse on the matter and establish the playing field early.
I think for anyone who follows my blog it won’t come as a surprise that I have a great distaste for imperialist wars, not least for the “rich man’s wars, poor man’s blood” dichotomy which is ever present.
I also sort of feel it’s a massive cop out. At least in the UK there’s this attitude of wearing the poppy, and through the act of wearing the poppy for the week(s) surrounding November 11th, you’re suddenly actively showing respect. You’ve given your bit of money to charity and now you can partake in displaying what a good, considerate, empathic citizen you are that cares about our troops/doesn’t like the brutality of violence. You’ve taken this act for a day each your and your conscience is salved through this act!
Tony Blair wore the poppy at the appropriate times.
Tony Blair sent our troops to kill and be killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Tony Blair can, with all due respect, go fuck himself.
The greatest atrocity of Remembrance Day isn’t the “rich man’s war, poor man’s blood”, nor the blinding nationalism/patriotism that’s inherent in military parades as such. The greatest atrocity of Remembrance Day is exactly that. Remembrance Day. Is it fuck, have Remembrance Year. Every year. Don’t remember the loss and the tragedy for one day of your year. Remember it every day. If people took Remembrance Day seriously we wouldn’t be stuck in neoimperialist wars in the middle east and north africa. People who think that acting like an elitist shit about anyone who isn’t wearing a poppy, somehow not as good a citizen, is acceptable behaviour can go remove their fingernails with pliers.
Also in reference to the question: fuck the legislation as if that means anything. Power politics shows the truth: the US, Britain, Israel, whoever else attack civilians (or take action they know will effect civilians but doesn’t care enough to prevent). Without an organisation to enforce it adequately then the club that holds hegemonic military power (NATO, primarily) will do whatever they want and the legislation exists only so they can turn to it and say “but no, look how good we are we have rules about this shit.” Global politics is interstate anarchy, and might is right.
Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, has announced that the whistleblowing website is suspending publishing operations in order to focus on fighting a financial blockade and raise new funds.
Assange, speaking at a press conference in London on Monday, said a banking blockade had destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks’ revenues.
He added that the blockade posed an existential threat to WikiLeaks and if it was not lifted by the new year the organisation would be “simply not able to continue”.
The website, behind the publication of hundreds of thousands of controversial US embassy cables in late 2010 in partnership with newspapers including the Guardian and New York Times, revealed that it was running on cash reserves after “an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade” by the Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union.
WikiLeaks said in a statement: “The blockade is outside of any accountable, public process. It is without democratic oversight or transparency.
“The US government itself found that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a US financial blockade. But the blockade of WikiLeaks by politicised US finance companies continues regardless.”
