Tag: Anarchism

Anti-Capitalist Meetup: Beltaine with Walter Crane

Every day is May Day which we here at The Stars Hollow Gazette and DocuDharma celebrate in the traditional way- with the clenched fist salute.

The Internationale

Arise ye workers from your slumbers

Arise ye prisoners of want

For reason in revolt now thunders

And at last ends the age of cant.

Away with all your superstitions

Servile masses arise, arise

We’ll change henceforth the old tradition

And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally

And the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction

On tyrants only we’ll make war

The soldiers too will take strike action

They’ll break ranks and fight no more

And if those cannibals keep trying

To sacrifice us to their pride

They soon shall hear the bullets flying

We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.

So comrades, come rally

And the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites the human race.

No saviour from on high delivers

No faith have we in prince or peer

Our own right hand the chains must shiver

Chains of hatred, greed and fear

E’er the thieves will out with their booty

And give to all a happier lot.

Each at the forge must do their duty

And we’ll strike while the iron is hot.

So comrades, come rally

And the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites the human race.

By thanatokephaloides

Note 1: This was supposed to be “Part 2” of a single Beltaine Diary of which my Diary entitled “Bringing In The May: The Heroes of Haymarket” was to be “Part 1”. (So I’m posting this now, even though the First of May 2015 is now long past.)

Note 2: Please allow me to express my deepest gratitude to the Marxists Internet Archive website, http://www.marxists.org, and Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/, for much of the material I am using in today’s Diary. Although in the public domain owing to its age, I would not have been able to gather this material had it not been for these websites and those who operate them. Therefore, I express my thanks for their assistance.

Most of my readers here on Anti-Capitalist Meetup recognize this image immediately; it was used in many of the Diaries and discussions here on Daily Kos on the subject which appeared around Beltaine (May 1) this year:

This classic portrayal of the Heroes of Haymarket Square in Chicago is the work of British illustrator Walter Crane (1845 – 1915).

                                      Walter Crane

It is not quite as well known today, a century after his death, that Mr. Crane was a Socialist; that he employed his not insignificant talents in the graphical arts in the service to the Socialist and Labor movements in Britain and America during his time; and that even today his graphics still strike a serious chord with those of us who believe that all wealth is created by Labor, and Labor is entitled to everything it creates.

For more details — and more Walter Crane images — follow me beyond the fold!

Anti-Capitalist Meetup: A Call to Violence by AoT

This is a call to violence.  Not in the ordinary sense. Instead in the sense that I want you to go out and tell people that they should support a violent policy.  What is that policy specifically?  I want the police to start pulling over and if necessary arresting people who are speeding.  You might think this isn’t a call to violence, you might think that this is simply a call for more police enforcement, but that obscures the real issue of what violence is.

Anti-Capitalist Meetup: No, you don’t want another OWS by AoT

There’s been a common theme lately of calling for a new OWS. I would be overjoyed if all of these calls were in fact calls for a new OWS. But they aren’t. I want to make clear that this isn’t necessarily an attack on people making these calls. They make them for different reasons, and those reasons are often reasons I agree with. But, they are in fact calls for a completely different movement, one that bears little if any resemblance to OWS. I’m going to go through the common refrains of what “the movement” needs and my responses to them.

Let me say first that I think that people really mean that they want another successful and visible social movement when they say they want another OWS they really . I’m completely on board with that, I want another movement with the energy of Occupy. The problem is that the things that made OWS successful are exactly the things people are calling to change.

A Necessary Evil, or Just Evil? by T’Pau (T. P. Alexanders)

We are told we need the law. We need a million rules to ensure everyone has a fair shake,  a level playing field we rely on as we move through life. But if you are lesbian or gay, the majority have recently passed laws giving  people who prefer heterosexual coupling an advantage. The federal government has done nothing to come to this minority’s assistance. These laws are just the latest in a long litany of discriminatory laws.

We are told we need the law to define culture, to give the boundaries of permissible behavior. Yet, do you think you are aware of every law you live under? In every jurisdiction, outdated laws remain on the books. You are likely to have broken some of them without even knowing. In fact, most new endeavors begin with consultation of a lawyer. Legal professionals research for hours to ensure their clients won’t inadvertently break some little known law. Many of these laws unduly invade our private lives to restrict trivial actions, like putting a window in a wall of your home, so the state or some industry can make money.

We are told without the law, our society would crumble into brutish chaos. To me, the image of John Pike, dressed like an SS officer, strutting around a circle of passive students shaking a can of pepper spray, meant to be used at distance on an advancing crowd, is the image of brutish chaos.

Pepper Spray Police

Or perhaps those words conjure up the image of an octogenarian pepper sprayed in the eyes for speaking out against a government that coddles the rich and abuses the poor.

Or the Berkley students night-sticked in the bread basket to discourage peaceful assembly:

Yet, surely our teachers and parents are right. Surely we need the rule of law to guide society. We need some rules.

Or not.

Today we crawl outside one of our deepest and oldest mental boxes to consider the unthinkable—that changes in the law cannot cure society’s ills, because the law, itself,  is part of the problem. Today we take a walk on the wild side in a lawless society.  

A Necessary Evil, or Just Evil?

We are told we need the law. We need a million rules to ensure everyone has a fair shake,  a level playing field we rely on as we move through life. But if you are lesbian or gay, the majority have recently passed laws giving  people who prefer heterosexual coupling an advantage. The federal government has done nothing to come to this minority’s assistance. These laws are just the latest in a long litany of discriminatory laws.

We are told we need the law to define culture, to give the boundaries of permissible behavior. Yet, do you think you are aware of every law you live under? In every jurisdiction, outdated laws remain on the books. You are likely to have broken some of them without even knowing. In fact, most new endeavors begin with consultation of a lawyer. Legal professionals research for hours to ensure their clients won’t inadvertently break some little known law. Many of these laws unduly invade our private lives to restrict trivial actions, like putting a window in a wall of your home, so the state or some industry can make money.

We are told without the law, our society would crumble into brutish chaos. To me, the image of John Pike, dressed like an SS officer, strutting around a circle of passive students shaking a can of pepper spray, meant to be used at distance on an advancing crowd, is the image of brutish chaos.

Pepper Spray Police

Or perhaps those words conjure up the image of an octogenarian pepper sprayed in the eyes for speaking out against a government that coddles the rich and abuses the poor.

Or the Berkley students night-sticked in the bread basket to discourage peaceful assembly:

Yet, surely our teachers and parents are right. Surely we need the rule of law to guide society. We need some rules.

Or not.

Today we crawl outside one of our deepest and oldest mental boxes to consider the unthinkable—that changes in the law cannot cure society’s ills, because the law, itself,  is part of the problem. Today we take a walk on the wild side in a lawless society.  

WWL Radio #140 Handwringers, Hedges and OWS



Listen to Diane Gee live on WWL Radio Friday, February 10th at 6pm ET!



Listen live by clicking the link icon below:

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PhotobucketHolding out Hope still?  President McHope just bent over for the Religinazis, and while thus positioned, gave a reach around to the Bankers on foreclosures while deepthroating the Super Pacs.  

Still think that Electoral Politics mean a damned thing?

The time to Occupy is now more than ever.  It is far past time to remove the sham of Freedom and have a People’s Revolution – perhaps a Jeffersonian Revolution ala a Bolivarian one.

Then we have poor misguided Chris Hedges wringing his hands so hard he broke his Rosary over a broken window while applauding Greek Riots.  Puhhhlleeeez.  

Plenty to rant about tonight, my friends.  I’m ready to roll!

The call in number is 646-929-1264 to join the conversation!

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Join Wild Wild Left Radio every Friday at 6pm ET, with Hostess and Producer Diane Gee to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective….  



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Perspectives On Hedge’s “Cancer in Occupy”

There’s one thing they tell you when you start a cancer treatment schedule, sitting there in wide-eyed horror and shock. “I know this all seems unthinkable right now, but believe it or not, it will soon just become your routine.  Your new normal.”  Anyone who has lived through childhood abuse, or been in an abusive relationship will tell you the same. “Well, most of the time he was nice,” they will say, “its just sometimes it got really scary or bad.”  There has been reams written about co-dependent behaviours already, both personal and societal.  Me?  I think mostly its a matter of acclimation. Its the conversation you have about TV on your way to chemo, and the new meals that become routine; creating food the cancer-stricken might possibly eat.  It kids playing soccer among the rubble where the bombs just fell. It learning your new wheel chair. Or learning to read in Braille.  I say it a lot.  “It is what it is.

Photobucket There’s a flip side to this too. As my husbands 6’1″ frame dwindled to 130 or less pounds, as his hair fell out?  He avoided mirrors like the plague.  Its like the restaurant you no longer frequent because its where your ex-girlfriend and her new man hang out.  Its like changing the channel every time that commercial comes on, with Sara McLoughlin singing and all the abused animals cover your screen.  Its refusing to look at the reality of what homelessness, starvation, or what the ravages of War truly are.  Its the pictures of children struck by depleted uranium you never really look at for long. Put even more basically?  Its blocking someone on Facebook who has been cruel to you. You compartmentalize the bad away, and let normalcy be created by routine – and you  just avoid the damned mirrors.

You see?  Mirrors tell the truth.  Mirrors belie the little boxes in our psyche that say everything is normal. So we veil them.

I like Chris Hedges.  He is what he is. I’m not even remotely insulted he used the cancer analogy as a fresh cancer widow.  

What I find particularly offensive after giving it a night of thought?  Is Hedged opining how a few kids in black pajamas breaking a window has become an unthinkable Cancer to bringing the Public Sway on board to the “treatment” that Occupy is trying to apply to the REAL CANCERS of our Society.  The Cancers that have become both our “normal” and our “mirror avoidance.”

Part II – “!No Pasaran!” – The Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Fight against Fascism in Spain

Crossposted at Daily Kos

What You Missed in Part I of This Diary


Spain has been etched in the hearts of our generation… and carried around like a terrible wound.  Spain gave us our first taste of defeat, and because of her we discovered with an enduring shock that one can be right and still be defeated, that sheer force can trample the human spirit underfoot, and that there are times when courage goes unrewarded.  Without a doubt, this explains why so many people the world over have experienced the Spanish drama as their own personal tragedy.

Albert Camus, Algerian-French philosopher and author, Source: Honoring Fascism’s Forgotten Fighters. Sketch Source: Existential Primer.

“!No Pasaran!” – The Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Spanish Civil War, Part I introduces you to the beginnings of the civil war between the Republicans and the Nationalists; a poignant letter written by Abraham Lincoln Brigade (ALB) volunteer Bill Bailey to his mother in New Jersey; the tense political, economic, and social conditions that existed in pre-war Spain; the response by the American government and its insistence upon assuming a neutral position in this conflict; the personal stories of a few Americans caught between economic depression at home and alarming developments on the international level; what eventually motivated them to secretly travel to and fight in Spain; and the ALB volunteers’ battlefield exploits in Spain.

Link to Part I of This Diary

The story continues below the fold…  

The brilliance and necessity of Julian Assange’s Wikileaks

Originally posted at Polizeros.com

Bloggers like Bob Morris of Polizeros have pointed out that even some who are typically rebellious in their rhetoric are condemning Julian Assange (while there are people like Jonah Goldberg and Chuck Schumer calling for his head), so I think it’s worth pointing out how historically important Assange (and Wikileaks, of course) could be.  With the caveat that we have all yet to see the effects of what Wikileaks is doing, he has the potential to play two essential and complementary roles: radical anti-authoritarian and someone who makes it safe for others to voice similar opinions.

Liberalism Died in 1980 and was buried in 1988 so Let’s Move On

This is just a ramble — some reflections on the arguments going on within the progressive movement. I think we need to move on and think things out carefully rather than moving from news item to news item. What we see is a whole, a system. This system is very robust and we shouldn’t pretend it is not.

The Liberal age was from 1933 to 1980. The Reagan Era signaled a radical shift in U.S. politics. Reagan and his operatives were able to leverage the latent chauvinism, racism anti-intellectualism and class-hatred of the white working-class into a new (old) vision of America and American Exceptionalism. To be called a “liberal” was nearly as bad as being called a homosexual. Liberals were seen as people who deliberately set out to destroy families and all traditional values and thus were existential threats. This was hard for most liberals to understand since they, in the best American tradition, just wanted to make sure we lived in a decent society were people were treated fairly and civilized behavior was encouraged. Interestingly liberals also favored traditional Christian virtues like charity, gentleness towards the sick, poor, disabled, as well as people in classes that were traditionally excluded from mainstream America like African-americans, Native peoples, women and so on. Liberals tended not to get this visceral hatred and what was behind it and what was the ultimate goal of the neo-Conservative movement (it was not a Conservative movement at all but a radical neo-fascist movement).  

Smash the State?

Back in the late 60’s I was part of a loose left-wing collective and we liked to chant “Smash the State” — we were sort-of anarchists and we were young and stupid. We held pep rallies, concerts and LSD was freely being taken. We ran from cops and kept moving.

I don’t think we really understood what we were trying to do. But I think all of us felt we needed to encourage our fellow humans to be fully human and less machine-like. We wanted to break laws and rules not just for the thrill of doing so but to liberate ourselves from our dreadful inheritance as Americans — something we dimly perceived but instinctually understood.

How to Change the World: Yell Louder (and DON’T Take Power)

You say you want to change the world?  Or even some small part of it?  Everyone says to do that you must take power.  State power is the appropriate tool for making change we’re told, on all sides, by parties and politicians of left, center and right.

But if the world is run by people chasing after power to remake the world in their own image by taking power, then how does pursuing power to change things and remake them in our image introduce any true change in the system?  That’s the question John Holloway asks in his book Change the World Without Taking Power.

In the beginning, he advises, we must take an action every DDBlogger knows quite well: yell louder.  In fact, scream.

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