LEFT IN EAST DAKOTA (via Mowser)

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Support the Iraq Veterans Against the War, not the democrats

One thing that really impresses me about the Iraq Veterans Against the War is that they aren't tools of the democratic party. (Unlike groups like this, who are complete lackeys of the corporate democrats.) They marched in Denver, and were about to get gassed, until an Obama campaign representative came out and gave them some lip service. Sgt. Matthis Chiroux said this:

Iâ€™m here at the Democratic convention, because the Democrats have shown absolutely no initiative in getting the troops out of Iraq. The people of this country put them in power two years ago specifically to end the occupation, and they failed to do that and provide us no legitimate reason, only excuses, as to why our wishes have not been democratically carried out.

I went to a few local anti-war protests and saw how committed people were. Unfortunately, most of that commitment was to get the democrats elected rather than stop US aggression. As soon as the dems took Congress, the rallies stopped and the wars continued.

I know John McCain is a murdering bastard and Sarah Palin's whole life is an insult to women everywhere, but at least they are upfront about how ruthless they are. Joe Biden, a cheerleader for Clinton's death showers in Belgrade, and Barack Obama, the chief advocate for a surge in Afghanistan, will tease us with words of "peace," but leave us with their belief in American exceptionalism. Their type of "peace" is the same as the ND Peace Coalition's type of peace, namely electing a new set of war criminals to be in charge of the killings. While groups like the IVAW advocate reparations for the Iraqi people, something that is simply morally the right thing to do, democrats, including Barack Obama, have been blaming Iraqis for not "taking responsibility" (kind of like black fathers) and are chastising them for having a budget surplus. It appears the democratic party's message to the working poor and the victims of imperial aggression is "personal responsibility," a meaningless conservative catch-phrase that is used to excuse the murder and theft perpetrated by the ruling class. The difference between republicans and democrats is purely tactical.

(Unrelated, but I was interviewed by the Pakistani Spectator the other day.)

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Finally, some hope!

Contrary to what you might think, soul extraction doesn't hurt.

Last night I sold my soul to the devil. I didn't ask for money, power, fame, sex, or anything of the sort. I asked for hope, something I used to take for granted. I realize this is a strange decision, as many would have picked something less abstract, but I couldn't help it. I'm sick of being cynical, pessimistic, and most of all, I'm sick of being frustrated.

Don't get me wrong, I have a strong belief in humanity, I always have. I had, however, lost hope that we could successfully reshape society into something worth preserving. Instead of a society that values many of our worst qualities, which is what I thought we were stuck with, I now have hope for something better. I realize just plain hope won't be enough, it will surely take hard work, but without hope there is very little incentive to put forth the needed effort. It really was a good deal. Who wants to be a hopeless soul?

(Oh, and by the way, the devil claims to be ahead in the soul count. I know, not a real reliable source, but I thought I'd mention it.)

Monday, August 25, 2008

Saro

This page contained an embedded video. Click here to view it.

Sam Amidon's version of Pretty Saro

I was looking for a decent video version of one of my favorite songs, Fall On My Knees, and I stumbled across this wonderful traditional tune. I quickly bought Amidon's latest album and am not disappointed. I still haven't found Fall On My Knees yet (Old Crow Medicine Show, Abigail Washburn and Sam Amidon all do wonderful versions), but I'll find it.

UPDATE: Click here to hear Sam Amidon sing Fall On My Knees.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Joe Biden is change?

If there was anyone who still thought Barack Obama would usher in progressive change if elected, they most certainly lost that belief with the announcement of Joe Biden as his running mate. Biden is a pompous, self-righteous man that is nothing if not a corporate whore (notice all those credit card offers you get in the mail come from his home state, the tax haven known as Delaware). Biden is a fervent interventionist. He was a famous supporter of NATO's deconstruction of Yugoslavia, traveling there several times to shore up support for the imperialist venture. He supports the wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. He had an extremely arrogant idea of separating Iraq's ethnic groups that he actually tried to pass off as a plan to "win" in Iraq. If "Washington is broken," it is largely because of people like Joe Biden. He has been a senator since Barack Obama was eleven years old.

I recently talked to a hope drunk Obama supporter on the phone. (Team Obama set up an office in Fargo and has been campaigning hard in North Dakota.) I told her I wasn't interested in giving any money to Obama because I was a Nader supporter. She urged me to reconsider. I told her she isn't going to change my mind over the phone, in person, or using any other form of communication. It isn't that I am deeply committed to Ralph Nader, it's just that I hate the democratic party. I am in the working class and voting for a democrat is akin to voting for a boss. She was so tipsy off her hope, I thought she was going to start crying.

What is it with the democratic party? I struggle to think of anyone that displays the amount of self-adulation John Edwards, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all do. Do they think working people relate to these assholes? Do they wonder why so many people simply don't show up on election day? I have come to the conclusion that I don't care what the answers are to these questions. The sooner "progressives" figure out the democratic party is a sham, the better. Unfortunately, I don't have much hope of that happening any time soon. Perhaps I should ask an Obama supporter if they can spare some hope? That is, of course, if they have any left.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

You & Me

I've given it two listens so far. Wow. The Walkmen have arrived. They are no longer just a good band with a great drummer. They are complete. They are whole. Wow. (Their myspace page has one song from the You & Me on it. It came out today.)

Monday, August 18, 2008

Purpose driven questioning

Rick Warren recently had a sit down with both John McCain and Barack Obama. Warren, a pastor of a massive church in California, is also known for his best selling book The Purpose Driven Life. The following is a list of some of the questions asked by Warren (I only caught John McCain, but I'm guessing Obama's questions were similar).

What does your faith in Jesus mean to you?

At what point does a baby get human rights?

Does evil exist? What do we do about it?

If the devil changed forms from a fiery red horned fellow into a cute teenage girl, would you still have the courage to stab him through the heart with a cross if the souls of all humankind were at stake?

As an American, what's worth dying for?

Can you list at least four things that make you go hmmm?

On what issue have you changed your mind?

What does sin taste like?

The rest of the world only takes us seriously because of our big guns.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

9.69

This is a view from the stands. Usain Bolt (apt name huh) breaks his own world record. NBC has been taking down any "official" video of the dash.

(Well, there used to be a video here, but it appears NBC can even take down a video that someone shot with their cell phone. I wonder if they "own" the right to people's memory of the race yet or not?)

Thursday, August 14, 2008

"Past One O'clock..."

Vladimir Mayakovsky had a face that exuded revolution. The following was no doubt written with his self-afflicted death in mind. (That is, if you believe he killed himself.)

Past one oâ€™clock. You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
Iâ€™m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Loveâ€™s boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

More US nationalism: When we do it, it's "humanitarian intervention." When Russia does it, it's "imperialism."

Stop me if you've heard this one. There's a region of a country (actually two regions, but we'll just focus on the one for now) that wants to be independent from the rest of the country. The government of that country doesn't want the region to separate and decides it will use force to "retake" the rebel area, which had gained a fair amount of autonomy during the last fifteen or so years. They attack the "capital" of the secessionist region, causing much death and destruction. So much so that a couple prominent world leaders even accuse the central government of "genocide." These same world leaders, who no doubt have a vested interest in gaining more control over the region, lead their own country's effort to back the separatists and secure independence. What starts off with a few "peacekeepers" escalates into an invasion by land and air. Sound at least somewhat familiar?

Campbell Brown was standing in front of a map of the Caspian Sea region today on CNN. Without mentioning any humanitarian concerns that Russia claims to have, she proceeded to speculate that Russia is trying to gain strategic control of an important oil pipeline that goes through Georgia. Campbell! You go girl! When did CNN get all cynical? I don't remember such analysis during the lead up to the Iraq.... oh yeah. CNN, and the rest of the lapel wearing "free press," are Americans first, reporters second. Remember Jeremiah Wright? (How could we forget?) He didn't really start to feel the wrath of the media until it was discovered he didn't, gasp, believe the United States was a purely benevolent force in the world. That was unacceptable.

My local North Dakota pundits are no better. Rob Port, who blogs at "North Dakota's most popular blog" SayAnything, wondered, "will the left step up now when confronted with actual imperialist aggression?" What makes Russia's actions "actual imperialist aggression" and the United States' actions not is left unsaid. But I imagine I can give a pretty accurate guess. Rob was born, and lives, in the United States. That's it. The US is his "home," so the US is right. The same goes for Campbell Brown. There's good guys and bad guys; there's a home team and an away team, and to think in any other terms is completely unrealistic. If Rob and Campbell were born in Moscow, you can bet they'd be lauding Russia's attempt to end "ethnic cleansing."

This sort of fundamentalism, especially given the current potentially nuclear situation, is more dangerous than any extreme interpretation of any holy book. It is used by those in power to stay in power. It makes young men and women gleefully go to their death in numbers that make Al Qaeda's suicide bombers look uncommitted.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Nationalists scared by Russia and China

If the "pro-Tibet" protesters were really pro-Tibet, they'd be in Bentonville not Beijing. But they don't give a shit about Tibet or its people. They are simply scared of China rivaling the power of the US. China has always been at the forefront of civilization. They had a complex culture with many relatively modern innovations while western Europeans were still living like "savages." This isn't completely forgotten. During the run-up to the Olympics we were bombarded by Chinese propaganda. Protesters saw the big buildings and they saw how the Chinese looked and lived similar to people in the west. This is unacceptable, they thought. They know the earth can't sustain a country with China's population living like they do (Al Gore told them so). Determined to show those damn Chinese there's only room for one superpower, they ran off to buy a plane ticket from capitalist San Francisco to capitalist China. No one in China deserves to hear shit about human rights abuses from any American. Talk to the Koreans, or the Japanese, about the United States and human rights.

The Wall Street Journal calls Russia's backing of South Ossetia separatists "imperialism." I don't know, but did they have the same reaction to NATO's backing of separatists in Kosovo? Russia, another brutal cutthroat capitalist country, still has enough pride to not allow itself to be pushed around by NATO. This, as Yugoslavia found out, is not acceptable. Russia, too big to be picked apart like Yugoslavia, has to be demonized and marginalized on the world stage. CNN has a list of "experts" on Russia who are quick to denounce the Kremlin's "aggression." No doubt many of these same "experts" were also called on when the butcher of Belgrade, Bill Clinton, decided to practice that good old liberal "humanitarian intervention." Amazingly, their analysis was in support of aggression that time.

The double standards are rampant. We want international multiculturalism, sure, but only so long as your culture doesn't try and get all uppity and shit. Know your place. And not only that, us holier-than-thou Americans are going to criticize you for doing what we have done, and still do, but don't like to think or talk about. So fuck you China and Russia! Did you guys actually think you were going to be part of what we define as "the international community" just because you both embraced capitalism? Well, think again. You'll only be welcomed into the west, this culture of competition, when we are 100% sure you can't compete with us.

Friday, August 08, 2008

Faced with some democratic accountability, the bosses hit the street

Leopoldo Lopez, darling of the US press, leading the bosses.

The US press' coverage of what's going on in Venezeula, as well as the rest of Latin America, has been horrible. Not surprising at all, of course, but it never stops getting disappointing. LANR and venezuelanalysis.com help sort through the bullshit.

Monday, August 04, 2008

I think it's clicking?

I am completely done with chapters one and two of Marx's Capital and am finding it quite interesting. I sometimes have to go over a passage a couple times until I'm satisfied I understand it, but David Harvey's lectures are helping out immensely. Besides all the terminology and mathematical equations, there is also some humor in the text. Marx switches writing styles regularly and will go from what seems to be a logical pattern explaining commodities, value, labor, and how they all interact on a purely social level during exchange, to wondering what commodities would say if they could talk. It really is exciting.

Marx reveals how the market, at least within the confines of capitalism, promotes a reality that is indeed real, that is we actually do go to the grocery store and buy a head of lettuce, but a reality that also conceals the social relationship between the worker and the consumer, meaning we have no clue how the lettuce was harvested, how it was planted, how it was shipped, etc. Harvey tells a story about asking his students where their breakfast came from in order to highlight how capitalism reduces these social relationships to material relationships (talk about an anti-human ideology). This holds true for most everything we purchase. It's through this distorted reality that capitalism can do so much damage, it's a quiet killer. It isn't as if we buy the commodity directly from the exploited child laborer. This is especially true today.

Marx also didn't hesitate to take on the classical economists. Towards the end of the first chapter he offered a perfect analogy by writing, "the pre-bourgeois forms of the social organization of production are treated by political economy in much the same way as the Fathers of the Church treated pre-Christian religions." Marx argued that even the best representatives of classical political economy, namely David Ricardo and Adam Smith, never fully understood, or at least failed to articulate, that what we call value is a societal construct. There is no reason to believe it has been floating in the minds of humans since time immemorial. Harvey believes the neoclassical economists had to ditch the labor theory of value because of Marx's criticisms. It appears Marx did have some respect for Smith and Ricardo and separated them from what he called "vulgar economists," who simply carved out a living making excuses for the bourgeoisie. Marx did believe, however, that the utopian capitalism pushed by Smith and Ricardo was flawed and would ultimately benefit the bourgeoisie, even given the perfect circumstances.

Which leads me to a question before I start chapter three. Marx was so bound and determined to destroy capitalism, he gives it the benefit of the doubt (Harvey brings this up towards the end of his lecture). He assumes the situations Adam Smith talks about in his utopian theory could, or have, existed, when of course they never have, and never could, exist. I understand why he did this, but I wonder if this conciliation doesn't ultimately hurt his argument? For example, today Marx is associated with the Soviet Union, North Korea, etc., so it is easy for our "vulgar economists" to offhandedly dismiss his philosophy and get away with it. They can say Marx's critique is flawed, but remind us even he recognized how capitalism works. Perhaps if he would have addressed how implausible market capitalism is, in addition to giving it a thorough dismantling, it would have been a bit more difficult for the powers that be to impose this nutty market discipline for the poor, government protection for the rich, system of production we have now? Maybe he does and I'm not aware of it?

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Even the RAND corporation gets it

This is the last couple sentences of the RAND corporation's summary of their rather large report on "how terrorist groups end"-

The authors conclude that policing and intelligence, rather than military force, should form the backbone of U.S. efforts against al Qa'ida. And U.S. policymakers should end the use of the phrase â€œwar on terrorismâ€ since there is no battlefield solution to defeating al Qa'ida.

I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but I was saying this before we invaded Afghanistan. In fact, I remember arguing with a few "left of center" people about whether the war was needed or not. I was more interested in other things back then (mainly getting high), but even I could see the "war on terrorism" was complete bullshit. The fact that a bunch of militaristic corporate clowns are finally seeing the light only shows how stunningly idiotic, and dangerous, the current supporters of our wars are.

P.S.

This isn't related to the post above (well, perhaps indirectly related), but I wanted to make sure I had a link to David Harvey's lectures on Marx's Capital. I'm done with the first two chapters (what is a commodity, use-value and exchange-value, how value originates from labor, the exchange of commodities; that sort of thing). It will be interesting to hear the lecture on what I read and see what others are getting out of it. I recommend taking it on. A big thanks to SeÃ¡n for the link.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

On and on

The top of "Bear's Hump" at Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta.

I can almost see myself living in the mountains. Perhaps it is an overly individualistic fantasy, but I could get used to a living in a little cabin, growing my own pot, brewing my own beer, and doing odd jobs for farmers. It isn't going to happen, but big drives in small cars provoke such thoughts. Waterton, the village shown in the picture above, is actually a village. There were bed and breakfasts as opposed to Holiday Inns. Mule deer roamed the village freely with one eating grass in right field while people played ball. And why not, the place is more theirs than ours. Unlike most parks, Waterton is nearly unmolested by people. We walked trails by ourselves on a sunny July weekend.

All country romanticism aside, I'm considering a move to the city. I have friends throughout the area that will no doubt make the transition more comfortable. I am not, however, looking forward to finding a new company to sell myself to. There is nothing more degrading than trading freedom for currency, but my options are limited. Wage slavery and alienation are real issues that, for obvious reasons, aren't covered by the corporate media or mentioned by corporate politicians. (I wonder how much stress, anxiety, depression, suicide, crime, etc., is caused by a person being effectively isolated from key economic decisions that affect nearly every aspect of his or her life?) I tell myself that diving deeper into the rat race, becoming an "elbower," is one way to change the system. I'm not entirely sure. I am tempted to stick my head in the ground.

At any rate, people find different ways to survive. Nothing changes if we don't learn to be good at being uncomfortable. At least for a bit. As corny as it sounds, I've always admired those who follow their dreams. My problem is I woke up a long time ago and can't seem to dream much anymore. I can't figure out if I'm pessimistic or realistic.