Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

Killer Coke – Coke is the Drink of the Death Squads:

http://www.staticbrain.com/archive/kill ... th-squads/

[Alf]

We have seen that fascism is not just something those other people did. No. It's right here. In this room. Scratch the surface and it appears. Something in all of us. The belief that human beings are basically evil. A belief that demands a strong leader and discipline to preserve social order.

The third wave, 1967: an account- Ron Jones

If human beings are not basically evil, how strange that fascism is just under the surface in all of us. Maybe martians put it there?

[American Dream]

The Second Pamphlet of the White Rose Society

The White Rose was a close-knit group of friends in Nazi Germany. They anonymously published a series of pamhplets, distributing them to scholars, medics, and pub owners. They began to do public grafitti critical of Hitler. Several were caught distributing fliers and they were all rounded up and executed.

It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialism because it is not an intellectually defensible program. It is false to speak of a National Socialist philosophy, for if there were such an entity, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. In actuality, however, we face a totally different situation.

At its very inception this movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one's fellow man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of "his" book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, in spite of the fact that it has been elevated to the position of the Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers): "It is unbelievable, to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it."

If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body. The greater part of its former opponents went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars, there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and sun, gradually to choke to death.

Now the end is at hand. Now it is our task to find one another again, to spread information from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow ourselves no rest until the last man in persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system. When thus a wave of unrest goes through the land, when "it is in the air", when many join the cause, then in a great final effort this system can be shaken off. After all, and end in terror is preferable to terror without end.

We are not in a position to draw up a final judgment about the meaning of our history. But if this catastrophe can be used to further the public welfare, it will be only by virtue of the fact that we are cleansed by suffering; that we yearn for the light in the midst of deepest night, summon our strength, and finally help in shaking off the yoke which weighs on our world.

We do not want to discuss here the question of the Jews, nor do we want in this leaflet to compose a defense or apology. No, only by way of example do we want to cite the fact that since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way. Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings - no matter what position we take with respect to the Jewish question - and a crime of this dimension has been perpetrated against human beings.

Someone may say that the Jews deserved their fate. This assertion would be a monstrous impertinence; but let us assume that someone said this - what position has he then taken toward the fact that the entire Polish aristocratic youth is being annihilated? (May God grant that this program has not fully achieved its aim as yet!) All male offspring of the houses of the nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor, and the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the bordellos of the SS!

Why tell you these things, since you are fully aware of them - or if not of these, then of other equally grave crimes committed by this frightful sub-humanity? Because here we touch on a problem which involves us deeply and forces us all to take thought. Why do the German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? Hardly anyone thinks about that. It is accepted as fact and put out of mind. The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so. Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cried out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake?

It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at least start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt. For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this "government" which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all! Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!

It is not too late, however, to do away with this most reprehensible of all miscarriages of government, so as to avoid being burdened with even greater guilt. Now, when in recent years our eyes have been opened, when we know exactly who our adversary is, it is high time to root out this brown horde. Up until the outbreak of the war the larger part of the German people were blinded; the Nazis did not show themselves in their true aspect. But now, now that we have recognized them for what they are, it must be the sole and first duty, the holiest duty of every German to destroy these beasts.

"If the people are barely aware that the government exists, they are happy. When the government is felt to be oppressive, they are broken. " "Good fortune, alas! builds itself upon misery. Good fortune, alas! is the mask of misery. What will come of this? We cannot foresee the end. Order is upset and turns to disorder, good becomes evil. The people are confused. Is it not so, day in, day out, from the beginning? " "The wise man is therefore angular, though he does not injure others: he has sharp corners, though he does not harm; he is upright but not gruff. He is clear-minded, but he does not try to be brilliant." - Lao Tzu

"Whoever undertakes to rule the kingdom and to shape it according to his whim - I foresee that he will fail to reach his goal. That is all. " "The kingdom is a living being. It cannot be constructed, in truth! He who tries to manipulate it will spoil it, he who tries to put it under his power will lose it. " "Therefore: Some creatures go out in front, others follow, some have warm breath, others cold, some are strong, some weak, some attain abundance, other succumb. " "The wise man will accordingly forswear excess, he will avoid arrogance and not overreach." - Lao Tzu


Please make as many copies as possible of this leaflet and distribute them.



http://www.historyisaweapon.org/defcon1 ... se.html#2/

[American Dream]

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.

—Malcolm X

[American Dream]

Laura Nelson and her son were both lynched and of course the “justice system” made no attempt to prosecute the mob...


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[American Dream]

We have seen that fascism is not just something those other people did. No. It's right here. In this room. Scratch the surface and it appears. Something in all of us. The belief that human beings are basically evil. A belief that demands a strong leader and discipline to preserve social order.

The third wave, 1967: an account- Ron Jones

If human beings are not basically evil, how strange that fascism is just under the surface in all of us. Maybe martians put it there?

Is it essential and/or cultivated, I wonder...

[American Dream]

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/23443

Convergence to block the return to class in Quebec !

Saturday July 21, 2012 00:36 by Pollo - CLASSE

Support Quebec's student's movement

Since February, students across Quebec have been on strike against a 75% tuition hikes. These students have maintained picket lines, disrupted classes, blocked bridges, and continually taken the streets in fierce resistance to the neoliberal agenda of the Charest Liberal government.


Police officers facing student's piquet lines in Quebec


In May, the government passed the repressive and draconian Bill 78 (the "special law" or “law 12”), aiming to legislate striking students back to class in August and to criminalize dissent through the imposition of huge fines on individuals and associations seeking to continue the strike. The creation of this law has heralded an explosion of popular resistance of workers, students, and citizens alike, through street demonstrations, direct neighbourhood-based democracy, and other initiatives.

As workers, students, and citizens, we have come together to broaden the struggle into a social strike against neoliberal capitalism; to bring the fight beyond the universities and CÉGEPs and into our workplaces and neighbourhoods. But there can be no social strike without the student strike, and with the government-mandated return to class looming, we need your support! Throughout the week of August 13-17, striking Cégeps will be forced back to class by the Charest government, despite continued strike mandates voted by democratic student associations.

We know that capitalist austerity touches all of you in your own contexts, as governments the world over seek to whitewash their corruption and greed through the false rhetoric of cutbacks and privatization. We honour your local resistance but also seek your support as comrades in the struggle. The week of August 13-17 in the Montreal-area (where most of the striking Cégeps are located) is a crucial moment for the student strike. Either the strike will be crushed by Charest's "special law", or the strike will continue, with the support of individuals from all over Quebec, Ontario, the Maritimes and the USA converging onto Montreal between August 13-17. Join us in the streets and on the picket lines at CÉGEPs throughout this week. Consult http://bloquonslarentree.com for more details about housing and other useful information for anyone considering coming to Montreal to re-inforce the student strike.

All out against the "special law"! Block the return to classes! Strike back against neoliberalism!

BACK TO CLASS MEANS BACK ON STRIKE !

Montreal – August-13th to 17th

Related Link: http://bloquonslarentree.com

[American Dream]

“US neoconservatives favour corporate power, private enterprise, and the restoration of class power. Neoconservatism is therefore entirely consistent with the neoliberal agenda of elite governance, mistrust of democracy, and the maintenance of market freedoms. But it veers away from the principles of pure neoliberalism and has reshaped neoliberal practices in two fundamental respects: first, in its concern for order as an answer to the chaos of individual interests, and second, in its concern for an overweening morality as the necessary social glue to keep the body politic secure in the face of external and internal dangers.

In its concern for order, neoconservatism appears as a mere stripping away of the veil of authoritarianism in which neoliberalism sought to envelop itself. But it also proposes distinctive answers to one of the central contradictions of neoliberalism. If ‘there is no such thing as society but only individuals’ as Thatcher initially put it, then the chaos of individual interests can easily end up prevailing over order. The anarchy of the market, of competition, and of unbridled individualism (individual hopes, desires, anxieties, and fears; choices of lifestyle and of sexual habits and orientation; modes of self-expression and behaviours towards others) generates a situation that becomes increasingly ungovernable. It may even lead to a breakdown of all bonds of solidarity and a condition verging on social anarchy and nihilism. In the face of this, some degree of coercion appears necessary to restore order. The neoconservatives therefore emphasize militarization as an antidote to the chaos of individual interests. For this reason, they are far more likely to highlight threats, real or imagined, both at home and abroad, to the integrity and stability of the nation.”

— David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

“… because changing laws is too often the assumed method of changing the lives of marginalised people, we have to take into account the ways in which law reform has been both ineffective and co-optive in the context of neoliberalism and the nonprofitisation of resistance. We have to carefully consider the limitations of strategies that aim for inclusion into existing economic and political arrangements rather than challenging the terms of those arrangements.”

— Dean Spade in ‘Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of the Law’

[American Dream]

Why Isn't Closing 40 Philadelphia Public Schools National News? Where Is the Black Political Class?

-- Bruce A. Dixon, Black Agenda Report

In what should be the biggest story of the week, the city of Philadelphia’s school system announced Tuesday that it expects to close 40 public schools next year and 64 by 2017. The school district expects to lose 40% of current enrollment to charter schools, the streets or wherever, and put thousands of experienced, well qualified teachers, often grounded in the communities where they teach, on the street.

Ominously, the shredding of Philadelphia’s public schools isn’t even news outside Philly. This correspondent would never have known about it save for a friend’s Facebook posting early this week. Corporate media in other cities don’t mention massive school closings, whether in Chicago, Atlanta, NYC, or in this case Philadelphia, perhaps so people won’t have given the issue much deep thought before the same crisis is manufactured in their town. Even inside Philadelphia the voices of actual parents, communities, students and teachers are shut out of most newspaper and broadcast accounts.

The black political class is utterly silent and deeply complicit. Even local pols and notables who lament the injustice of local austerity avoid mentioning the ongoing wars and bailouts which make these things “necessary.” A string of black mayors have overseen the decimation of Philly schools. Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous and other traditional “civil rights leaders” can always be counted on to rise up indignant when some racist clown makes an inappropriate remark about the pretty black First Lady and her children.

But they won’t grab the mic for ordinary black children. They won’t start and won’t engage the public in a conversation about saving public education. It’s not because they don’t care. It’s because they care very much about their funding, which comes from Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, from Wal-mart and the Walton Family Foundation, from the corporations that run charter charter schools and produce standardized tests.

To name just one payment to one figure, Rev. Al Sharpton took a half million dollar “loan” from charter school advocates in New York City, after which he went on tour with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Newt Gingrich extolling the virtues of standardized testing, charter schools and educational privatization. Bill Gates delivered the keynote speech at the latest gathering of the National Urban League. And the nation’s two big teachers’ unions, NEA and AFT have already endorsed Barack Obama’s re-election, and will funnel him gobs of union dues as campaign contributions, despite his corporate-inspired “Race To The Top” program which awards federal education funds in proportion to how many teachers are fired and replaced by inexperienced temps, how many schools are shut down, and how many charter schools exempt from meaningful public oversight are established and granted public funds.

The fix has been in for a long time, and not just in Philadelphia. Philly’s school problems are anything but unique. The city has a lot of poor and black children. Our ruling classes don’t want to invest in educating these young people, preferring instead to track into lifetimes of insecure, low-wage labor and/or prison. Our elites don’t need a populace educated in critical thinking. So low-cost holding tanks that deliver standardized lessons and tests, via computer if possible, operated by profit-making “educational entrepreneurs” are the way to go. The business class can pocket the money which used to pay for teachers’ and custodians’ retirement and health benefits, for music and literature and gym classes, for sports and science labs and theater and all that other stuff that used to be wasted on public school children.

[American Dream]

"Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless. In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.”

— Noam Chomsky



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[American Dream]

“I feel that the fight for sexual and economic freedom and the fight against prejudice and discrimination are part of the same fight, and as people begin to question neoliberalism in a sustained way for the first time in 30 years, the most important hurdle to get over is people’s belief that they’re already free, or at least as free as they can be. Look at what female empowerment has become—a [thing] we use to sell shoes, chocolate and overpriced dildos.”

—Protest, Desire, and Cheap Dildos: A Q&A with Laurie Penny

[American Dream]

“…the bourgeoisie launched a successful war on a troublesome working class in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That assault – wage-cutting, speedup, deregulation, outsourcing, union-busting, cutbacks in the welfare state, all the familiar stuff gathered under the name of neoliberalism – created a problem for a system dependent on high levels of mass consumption both to maintain aggregate demand and to secure its political legitimacy. Why put up with the volatility and tsurris of American life if there’s no promise of plentiful gadgetry and upward mobility? So the answer was to counter the downdraft of falling wages with rising borrowing, via credit cards and mortgages. That model seemed to hit a wall in the recent economic crisis, but there’s no real recognition of that fact, and no new model for accumulation. In orthodox terms, the U.S. would be ready for a serious austerity program, but our ruling class is afraid to push too hard on that, at least for now. So I think we’re going to stumble along for some time until some new economic and political model emerges. Or if one doesn’t emerge, maybe we’ll just fall apart.”

— Doug Henwood

[American Dream]