Month: May 2012
But the point is, if things ever come to a crunch in the United States, this massive part of the population ( Fundamentalist Christians ) – I think it’s something like a third of the adult population by now – could be the basis for some kind of a fascist movement, readily. For example, if the country sinks deeply into a recession, a depoliticized population could very easily be mobilized into thinking that it’s somebody else’s fault: “Why are our lives collapsing? There have to bad guys out there doing something for things to be going so badly” – and the bad guys can be Jews, or homosexuals, or blacks, or Communists, whatever you pick. If you can whip people into irrational frenzies like that, they can be extremely dangerous: that’s what 1930’s fascism came from, and something like that could very easily happen here.
Understanding Power – Noam Chomsky
ERIS
Book of the Goddess, by Anna Livia Plurabelle
I.
Sing now, my muse, of the Goddess of Chaos,
Arising from primeval Quantum foam born,
Goddess of Entropy, Goddess of Anarchy,
She who creates and destroys innumerable cosmos
In the gap between dawn and the rise of the sun,
She who dances between unseen fractal dimensions,
In a small still place all enfolded in storm,
Where tempests so huge, lighting rends open the quasars,
So massive no light escapes from her shroud,
She who sunders our soul from our sweet earthly flesh,
And brings us rebirth with her ghastly sweet breath,
Lover of Death and Lover of Life,
She dances a dance on the edge of a knife,
A gulf of ten thousand light years on each side,
And She never misses one step in the dark,
Singularity bound, in a teardrop of light,
Cocooned in the smallest, suffused in the largest,
Immortal Chaos wreathed with broken planets and dust,
Thy name is Eris, world shattering Goddess,
We ride your wave breathless and are towed under again.
Singularity Goddess, you approach inverse zero,
Still more drowned worlds loom in Thy billowing shroud.
Asleep and awake she dreams our creation,
The sound of a bell in an dark empty cavern,
The scent of a rose in a room long abandoned,
The dance of the motes in the eye of the Goddess,
The touch of a breeze in the heat of the noon,
The taste of wine from an ancient tomb offering
She is there always, and not there ever,
Look and you will miss her,
Close your eyes and she is before you.
Most terrible and most beautiful name of the Goddess, Eris!
“Usually when people are sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.” — Malcolm X
Well, our economic system “works,” it just works in the interests of the masters, and I’d like to see one that works in the interests of the general population. And that will only happen when they are the “principal archi-tects” of policy, to borrow Adam Smith’s phrase. I mean, as long as power is narrowly concentrated, whether in the economic or the political system, you know who’s going to benefit from the policies-you don’t have to be a genius to figure that out. That’s why democracy would be a good thing for the general public.
But of course, achieving real democracy will require that the whole system of corporate capitalism be completely dismantled-because it’s radically anti-democratic. And that can’t be done by a stroke of the pen, you know: you have to build up alternative popular institutions, which could
allow control over society’s investment decisions to be moved into the hands of working people and communities. That’s a long job, it requires building up an entire cultural and institutional basis for the changes, it’s not something that’s just going to happen on its own. There are people who have written about what such a system might look like-kind of a “participatory economy,” it’s sometimes called.
But sure, that’s the way to go, I think.
Understanding Power – Noam Chomsky
An extremely disturbing report on the emerging police tactic of employing brutal sexual assault against Occupation protesters as an intimidation and provocation tactic. Police have engaged in rape and sexual assault against civilians since time immemorial, but the use of such tactics against Occupy may finally serve to bring some light to the intrinsic evil, exploitation, and misogyny of the United States law enforcement industrial complex.
Arbitrary violence is nothing new. The apparently systematic use of sexual assault against women protestors is new. I’m not aware of any reports of police intentionally grabbing women’s breasts before March 17, but on March 17 there were numerous reported cases, and in later nightly evictions from Union Square, the practice became so systematic that at least one woman told me her breasts were grabbed by five different police officers on a single night (in one case, while another one was blowing kisses.) The tactic appeared so abruptly, is so obviously a violation of any sort of police protocol or standard of legality, that it is hard to imagine it is anything but an intentional policy.
For obvious reasons, most of the women who have been victims of such assaults have been hesitant to come forward. Suing the city is a miserable and time-consuming task and if a woman brings any charge involving sexual misconduct, they can expect to have their own history and reputations—no matter how obviously irrelevant—raked over the coals, usually causing immense damage to their personal and professional life. The threat of doing so operates as a very effective form of intimidation. One exception is Cecily McMillan, who was not only groped but suffered a broken rib and seizures during her arrest on March 17, and held incommunicado, denied constant requests to see her lawyer, for over 24 hours thereafter. Shortly after release from the hospital she appeared on Democracy Now! And showed part of a handprint, replete with scratch-marks, that police had left directly over her right breast. (She is currently pursuing civil charges against the police department)
xaos:
- Nature: done and, to some extent, doing;
- Tom: I liked him in Risky Business, but I’ve read ‘Dianetics’ and Scientology is not for me;
- Spaghetti Monster: I had the bumper sticker, but Pastafarianism does not have enough bite for me, even if it’s al dente;
- Obelisk: My PIN is 2001, and I really want Jupiter to bloom into a new star, but no;
- Sauron: although I like the Ainur and Valar, I never felt like I knew Sauron well enough;
- Nothing; if nothing = everything, then I’ve followed Tao for a time;
- Zarquon; I’ve read H2G2 several times, and I do appreciate his second coming, but no;
- Dicky Dawkins; Until I see him with my own eyes, I’m not going to believe in his existence;
- Giant Lizards; well, David Icke would have us believe that we serve the lizards by default, and I for one do not welcome our reptilian overlords;
- Anubis: I’m seriously considering adding Set to my current post-modern pantheon, so I make no comment here;
- Science: some people be-lie-ve in science, I simply respect that science is bloody useful process;
- Prince Philip: although British, I have little understanding of Mr. Windsor’s constitutional role but I fully respect the people of Vanuatu who seem to know what to do with him;
- G d Almighty; but there are so many! One of the three Abahamic g ds? One of the Hindi Trimurti? I could go on;
- Cthulhu; his dreams frighten me, so perhaps that’s a good reason to throw a prayer his way.
In our society, real power does not happen to lie in the political system, it lies in the private economy: that’s where the decisions are made about what’s produced, how much is produced, what’s consumed, where investment takes place, who has jobs, who controls the resources, and so on and so forth. And as long as that remains the case, changes inside the political system can make some difference—I don’t want to say it’s zero—but the differences are going to be very slight.
Noam Chomsky