Sunday Sermon:Noam Chomsky Calls Trump and Republican Allies "Criminally Insane"

Chomsky on the Trump-led Republican Party: "There have been many monsters in the past, but it would be hard to find one who was dedicated to undermining the prospects for organized human society, not in the distant future -- in order to put a few more dollars in overstuffed pockets."

from The Scientific American blogs:

The great linguist and political critic remains hopeful that we can overcome global warming and other threats.

I don’t really have heroes, but if I did, Noam Chomsky would be at the top of my list. Who else has achieved such lofty scientific and moral standing? Linus Pauling, perhaps, and Einstein. Chomsky’s arguments about the roots of language, which he first set forth in the late 1950s, triggered a revolution in our modern understanding of the mind. Since the 1960s, when he protested the Vietnam War, Chomsky has also been a ferocious political critic, denouncing abuses of power wherever he sees them. Chomsky, who turns 90 on December 7, remains busy. He spent last month in Brazil speaking out against far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro, and he recently discussed the migrant caravan on the radio show “Democracy Now.” Chomsky, whom I first interviewed in 1990 (see my profile here), has had an enormous influence on my scientific and political views. His statement that we may always "learn more about human life and human personality from novels than from scientific psychology” could serve as an epigraph for my most recent book, Mind-Body Problems. Below he responds to my emailed questions with characteristic clarity and force. -- John Horgan

Do you ever chill out?
Would rather skip personal matters.

Your ideas about language have evolved over the decades. In what ways, if any, have they remained the same?
Some of the earliest assumptions, then tentative and only partially formed, have proven quite robust, among them that the human language capacity is a species property in a double sense: virtually uniform among humans apart from serious pathology, and unique to humans in its essential properties. The most basic property of the language faculty is that each internal language generates an unbounded array of structured expressions, each of which yields an interpretation at the interface with other cognitive systems (basically a linguistically-articulated thought) and can be externalized in some sensorimotor system, usually speech, in ways that allow others to access our thoughts – a property of language that Galileo and his contemporaries rightly regarded with awe and wonder. Basic ideas about the mechanisms that have these remarkable properties have also proven fairly stable, though there has been great progress in refining them and reducing them to principles simple enough to provide sound explanations for many surprising aspects of language and to suggest a plausible evolutionary scenario. From the outset, 65 years ago, the languages investigated closely were typologically varied, and in tandem with theoretical advances inquiry has proceeded to unprecedented typological range and depth.

Your claims about the innateness of language helped inspire evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics, which attempt to trace human thought behavior to their biological roots. And yet you’ve been critical of these fields. Why?
Not so much of the fields, which are surely legitimate and important, but of some of the practices within them.

You once said we will probably “always learn more about human life and human personality from novels than from scientific psychology.” Is that still your view?
Another thought that has proven robust.

John Ioannidis and other scholars have discovered that many peer-reviewed scientific claims cannot be replicated. Do you have an explanation, and possible cure, for the so-called replication crisis?
Nothing beyond the obvious. Sometimes failure of replication has to do with complexity of what is being studied and with inadequate tools and ideas. The intense pressure to publish and sometimes ugly competitiveness are other factors. As compared with other domains, the scientific culture is quite admirable I think, though hardly without flaws that can and should be corrected.

Do you take seriously the Singularity, the idea that artificial intelligence and other fields will soon radically transform humanity?
One can certainly imagine how, in principle, systems that can detect patterns with massive data processing might find hitherto unknown ways of constructing theories that surpass those within the reach of human intelligence. And that could have all sorts of effects. But among the concerns we face, this doesn’t seem to me to rank high. Even tasks mastered almost reflexively by infants are far beyond the capacities of contemporary AI.

In his recent book Enlightenment Now, your former MIT colleague Steven Pinker argues that life has gotten better and better, morally and materially, and he scolds other intellectuals for knocking western civilization. What's your view of his perspective?
I don’t find these broad-brush observations very helpful or informative. The devil is in the details.

There is work on these matters that seems to me much more compelling. In his very important study on the rise and fall of American growth, Robert Gordon observes that there was virtually no economic growth for millennia until 1770, slow growth for another century, and then a “special century” until 1970, dependent largely on specific inventions. Since the 1970s the picture is much more mixed: in the US, with actual decline in real wages for non-supervisory workers over 40 years and even increased death rates in recent years. These are among the features of the neoliberal era that have led to the rise of the kind of “morbid symptoms” that Gramsci warned about from Mussolini’s prison cell, as we see all too clearly in the western world today. Elsewhere we find different patterns. Thus Russia suffered severe economic decline and demographic collapse when market reforms were introduced in the ‘90s. China has been different again. As Amartya Sen has shown, Maoist China saved about 100 million people – not a small number – as compared with democratic capitalist India from independence to 1980, not from “enlightenment” in the usual sense, but from rural health programs and other reforms. And since then it has undergone spectacular growth and provided the bulk of the reduction in global poverty, in a society that’s not a model of enlightened values. Nazi Germany experienced very rapid growth in the ‘30s, not a triumph of enlightenment. There are numerous other complexities that are of major significance, but that disappear in unanalyzed statistical tables.

As for “moral growth,” there are even greater complexities. The American Revolution introduced the novel and important idea (put aside the fact) that “we the people” should take control of our fate –- and at the same time developed the most vicious system of slavery in human history, the foundation of much of US-British wealth and economic development. Or take Germany again. In the 1920s, it was at the peak of western civilization in the arts, the sciences and mathematics, and even political development, regarded as a model of democracy. Ten years later it was descending to the depths of human savagery. A decade later it was recovering what had been lost.

As for the Enlightenment and modern science, no serious analyst can question their major achievements – or overlook their role in the age of discovery that brought untold horrors to much of the world, devastating the Western Hemisphere and Africa, crushing the leading world centers of civilization in India and China.

With all that, a good case can be made I think that moral horizons are, overall, slowly widening, including recent years, when the activism of the ‘60s has had a considerable civilizing effect in many areas.

Pinker, Richard Wrangham and Edward Wilson have suggested that human males are innately warlike. Do you agree? Can humanity move past militarism once and for all?
Since humans (males and females) are sometimes warlike, it follows that their intrinsic nature permits this outcome under certain circumstances. Under other circumstances they prefer peace – normally I think. But it’s highly misleading to say that they are “innately warlike” or “innately peaceloving.” I don’t know of any argument showing that we cannot create circumstances under which warlike tendencies will be suppressed – as has often been the case in history.

Are you a pacifist? Is violence sometimes justified in pursuit of justice?
Not an absolute pacifist. I didn’t object to entering World War II after Japan attacked military bases in two virtual colonies and Germany declared war, and in fact thought that the US should have intervened more forcefully before. But it’s also worth bearing in mind that the Nazi plague could have been contained before it led to war.

Why did you recently call the Republican Party “the most dangerous organization in world history”?
Take its leader, who recently applied to the government of Ireland for a permit to build a huge wall to protect his golf course, appealing to the threat of global warming, while at the same time he withdrew from international efforts to address the grim threat and is using every means at his disposal to accelerate it. Or take his colleagues, the participants in the 2016 Republican primaries. Without exception, they either denied that what is happening is happening – though any ignorance is self-induced – or said maybe it is but we shouldn’t do anything about it. The moral depths were reached by the respected “adult in the room,” Ohio governor John Kasich, who agreed that it is happening but added that “we are going to burn [coal] in Ohio and we are not going to apologize for it.” Or take a recent publication of Trump’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a detailed study recommending an end to regulations on emissions. It presented a rational argument: extrapolating current trends, by the end of the century we’ll be over the cliff and automotive emissions don’t contribute very much to the catastrophe – the assumption being that everyone is as criminally insane as we are and won’t try to avoid the crisis. In brief, let’s rob while the planet burns, putting poor Nero in the shadows.

This surely qualifies as a contender for the most evil document in history.

There have been many monsters in the past, but it would be hard to find one who was dedicated to undermining the prospects for organized human society, not in the distant future -- in order to put a few more dollars in overstuffed pockets.

And it doesn’t end there. The same can be said about the major banks that are increasing investments in fossil fuels, knowing very well what they are doing. Or, for that matter, the regular articles in the major media and business press reporting US success in rapidly increasing oil and gas production, with commentary on energy independence, sometimes local environmental effects, but regularly without a phrase on the impact on global warming – a truly existential threat. Same in the election campaign. Not a word about the issue that is merely the most crucial one in human history.

Hardly a day passes without new information about the severity of the threat. As I’m writing, a new study appeared in Nature showing that retention of heat in the oceans has been greatly underestimated, meaning that the total carbon budget is much less than had been assumed in the recent, and sufficiently ominous, IPCC report. The study calculates that maximum emissions would have to be reduced by 25% to avoid warming of 2 degrees (C), well above the danger point. At the same time polls show that -- doubtless influenced by their leaders who they trust more than the evil media -- half of Republicans deny that global warming is even taking place, and of the rest, almost half reject any human responsibility. Words fail.

Wasn’t Richard Nixon worse than Donald Trump?
Nixon had a mixed record. In some respects, he was the last liberal president: OSHA and EPA for example. On the other hand, he committed terrible crimes. Arguably the worst was the bombing of rural Cambodia, a proposed article of impeachment but voted down though it was incomparably more important than the others. And the article was much too weak, focusing on the secrecy. There has been little attention to the orders that Nixon delivered, relayed to the Pentagon by his faithful servant Henry Kissinger: “A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.” It is not easy to find comparable orders for genocide in the archival record. But all of Nixon’s crimes pale in comparison with the decision to race towards the precipice of environmental catastrophe.

Are the U.S. media doing their job?
It depends on what we think their job is. They are businesses, so by accepted standards their job is profit. By other standards, they have a duty to the public to provide “all the news that’s fit to print,” under a concept of “fitness” that is as free as possible from submission to power interests or other distorting factors. About this there is a great deal to say – I’ve devoted many words to the topic elsewhere, as have many others. But in today’s strange climate of Trumpian “alternative facts” and “false reality,” it is useful to recognize that with all their flaws, which are many, the mainstream media remain an indispensable source of information about the world.

Can incremental reforms transform the U.S. into a just, prosperous society, or are more drastic measures required? In other words, are you a reformer or a revolutionary?
Both. Generalizations are misleading; too much depends on specific circumstances. But some have a fair degree of validity, I think. One is that there is both justification and pressing need for radical changes in the socioeconomic and political orders. We cannot know to what extent they can be achieved by incremental reforms, which are to be valued on their own. But unless the great mass of the population comes to believe that needed change cannot be implemented within the existing system, resort to “drastic measures” is likely to be a recipe for disaster.

My students are pretty gloomy about the future. What can I tell them to cheer them up?
Apart from the truly existential threats of nuclear war and global warming – which can be averted – there have been far more difficult challenges in the past than those young people face today, and they have been overcome by dedicated effort and commitment. The historical record of struggle and achievement gives ample reason to take to heart the slogan that Gramsci made famous: “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

What’s your utopia?
I don’t have the talent to do more than to suggest what seem to me reasonable guidelines for a better future. One might argue that Marx was too cautious in keeping to only a few general words about post-capitalist society, but he was right to recognize that it will have to be envisioned and developed by people who have liberated themselves from the bonds of illegitimate authority.

A message from to the kids from America's gerontocracy: DON'T VOTE

I don't believe it was just old people, i think it was DUMB, and Racist people... I don't like the anti-age bias. Old people have enough to worry about... but it is bold and makes good points.

from Boing Boing:

This country belongs to whomever shows up. And do you know who shows up for every election? Old people. But only 46% of people18-34 years old voted in the last election.

So the elderly have a disproportionate influence on our politics and our country. And a lot of them would like to keep it that way.

undeniable ... next weeks TIME magazine cover

School of Life Monday: Karl Marx - Political Theory

Karl Marx remains deeply important today not as the man who told us what to replace capitalism with, but as someone who brilliantly pointed out certain of its problems.



BONUS:

Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party

from The Guardian:

f you look at the numbers, Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America – and it’s not even close. Yet bizarrely, the Democratic party – out of power across the country and increasingly irrelevant – still refuses to embrace him and his message. It’s increasingly clear they do so at their own peril.

A new Fox News poll out this week shows Sanders has a +28 net favorability rating among the US population, dwarfing all other elected politicians on both ends of the political spectrum. And he’s even more popular among the vaunted “independents”, where he is at a mind boggling +41.

This poll is not just an aberration. Look at this Huffington Post chart that has tracked Sanders’ favorability rating over time, ever since he gained national prominence in 2015 when he started running for the Democratic nomination. The more people got to know him, they more they liked him – the exact opposite of what his critics said would happen when he was running against Clinton.

One would think with numbers like that, Democratic politicians would be falling all over themselves to be associated with Sanders, especially considering the party as a whole is more unpopular than the Republicans and even Donald Trump right now. Yet instead of embracing his message, the establishment wing of the party continues to resist him at almost every turn, and they seem insistent that they don’t have to change their ways to gain back the support of huge swaths of the country.

Politico ran a story just this week featuring Democratic officials fretting over the fact that Sanders supporters may upend their efforts to retake governorships in southern states by insisting those candidates adopt Sanders’ populist policies – seemingly oblivious to the fact that Sanders plays well in some of those states too.

Sanders’ effect on Trump voters can be seen in a gripping town hall this week that MSNBC’s Chris Hayes hosted with him in West Virginia – often referred to as “Trump country” – where the crowd ended up giving him a rousing ovation after he talked about healthcare being a right of all people and that we are the only industrialized nation in the world who doesn’t provide healthcare as a right to all its people.

But hand wringing by Democratic officials over 2018 candidates is really just the latest example: the establishment wing of the party aggressively ran another opponent against Keith Ellison, Sanders’ choice to run the Democratic National Committee, seemingly with the primary motivation to keep the party away from Sanders’ influence.

They’ve steadfastly refused to take giant corporations head on in the public sphere and wouldn’t even return to an Obama-era rule that banned lobbyist money from funding the DNC that was rescinded last year. And despite the broad popularity of the government guaranteeing health care for everyone, they still have not made any push for a Medicare-for-all plan that Sanders has long called for as a rebuttal to Republicans’ attempt to dismantle Obamacare.

Democrats seem more than happy to put all the blame of the 2016 election on a combination of Russia and James Comey and have engaged in almost zero introspection on the root causes of the larger reality: they are also out of power in not the presidency, but both also houses of Congress, governorships and state houses across the country as well.

As Politico reported on the Democrats’ post-Trump strategy in February, “Democratic aides say they will eventually shift to a positive economic message that Rust Belt Democrats can run on”. However: “For now, aides say, the focus is on slaying the giant and proving to the voters who sent Trump into the White House why his policies will fail.”

In other words, they’re doubling down on the exact same failing strategy that Clinton used in the final months of the campaign. Sanders himself put it this way in his usual blunt style in an interview with New York magazine this week – when asked about whether the Democrats can adapt to the political reality, he said: “There are some people in the Democratic Party who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats.”

In the long term, change may be coming for Democrats whether they like it or not. Sanders loyalists are quietly attempting to take over many local Democratic party positions around the country. While Ellison lost the race for the DNC chair, it was incredibly close – closer than Sanders came to beating Clinton. And Sanders’ supporters are already organizing primary challenges to incumbent Democrats who aren’t sufficiently opposing Trump.

One thing’s for sure: Democrats who refuse to change do so at their peril.

Nadya of Pussy Riot Song Straight Outta Vagina inspired by the idea that ‘female sexuality is bigger than any populist megalomaniac’

from The Guardian

Pussy Riot have released a song celebrating the vagina, in an unashamed feminist riposte to Donald Trump and his boast that when he meets beautiful women he “grabs them by the pussy”.

The Russian punk band’s latest video Straight Outta Vagina, released on Tuesday, features Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova wearing white clerical robes and trademark balaclava, plus a chorus line of men and women sitting in toilet cubicles and standing at urinals. There is also an inflatable duck.

In typically provocative style, the video includes the lyrics: “If your vagina lands in prison, then the whole world’s going to listen.” And: “Don’t play stupid, don’t play dumb, vagina’s where you’re really from.”

Tolokonnikova said she recorded the song in February with the US musician, guitarist and producer Dave Sitek, whom she described as “one of the biggest feminists I’ve ever met”. The video was shot in Los Angeles.

Tolokonnikova said Sitek was inspired by her phrase: “Does your vagina have a brand?”. “So it made total sense to write a song which celebrates [the] vagina with him,” she said.

“This song could be considered an answer to Trump. But I believe the idea of powerful female sexuality is much bigger than any populist megalomaniac man … Vagina is bigger than Trump.”

Pussy Riot are expected to release two more videos commenting on both US and Russian politics as the band respond to the growing influence of populism and nationalism.

Tolokonnikova said the spread of “patriarchal and misogynist ideas” was akin to sexually transmitted disease. “Politicians are praising ‘strong leadership’. Trump openly supports the authoritarian methods of Vladimir Putin. And it’s scary. It’s not the world in which I want to live.”

Tolokonnikova is no longer working creatively with Pussy Riot co-founder Masha Alyokhina, who is currently touring with the Belarus Free Theatre.

The pair spent 16 months in a Russian jail following their anti-Putin “punk prayer” in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. A third Pussy Riot member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, who was convicted alongside them, was freed early on probation and her sentence suspended.

Seizing Chance, Sanders Makes Bold Progressive Picks to Shape DNC Platform

from Common Dreams:



byLauren McCauley

Though compromised allotment falls short of Sanders' suggestion, Vermont Senator doesn't waste opportunity to make progressive choices

Seizing on the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) reluctant concession allowing him to appoint five members to the committee that writes the party platform, Bernie Sanders on Monday announced a suite of picks that included activists across the progressive sphere.

Sanders' appointees to the 15-member Platform Drafting Committee include: racial justice activist and scholar Dr. Cornel West, 350.org co-founder and noted environmentalist Bill McKibben, Native American activist Deborah Parker, Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), and James Zogby, a pro-Palestinian scholar as well as founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI).

The announcement came roughly two weeks after Sanders sent a letter to DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) accusing her of stacking the party's three standing committees, including the drafting committee, with "Clinton loyalists."

According to the Washington Post, party officials and the two Democratic candidates "worked out" a compromise "based on the number of popular votes each has received to date." Under the agreement, frontrunner Hillary Clinton would be allotted six members and Sanders five, while Wasserman Schultz will name four.

The final selections were made "in consultation with the campaigns and the DNC from larger slates of 12 and 10 suggested by the campaigns," the Post reports.

The deal falls short of Sanders' recommendation that each campaign choose seven members for the Drafting Committee and the 15th member would jointly picked by the two campaigns. Nonetheless, it is an improvement over the standing rule, under which the DNC chair would consider a list of ten names from each candidate, choose four from each and then appoint an additional seven.

"We believe that we will have the representation on the platform drafting committee to create a Democratic platform that reflects the views of millions of our supporters who want the party to address the needs of working families in this country and not just Wall Street, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industry and other powerful special interests," Sanders said in a statement.

The list of progressive appointees was welcomed widely. Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein noted on Twitter that two of Sanders' picks "were arrested for peaceful civil disobedience during [the] Obama years," referring to West and McKibben.

As for the remaining appointees, the Post reports:

The Clinton campaign’s choices are Wendy Sherman, a former top State Department official and Clinton surrogate; Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and longtime Clinton confidante; Rep. Luis Guttierez of Illinois; Carol Browner, a former former director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy; Ohio State Rep. Alicia Reece and Paul Booth of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union.

Wasserman Schultz also named former California Rep. Howard Berman; California Rep. Barbara Lee and author and executive Bonnie Schaefer.

The platform announcement comes amid a growing rift between the Sanders campaign and the DNC, which has been accused of deliberately rigging the system in Clinton's favor.

Over the weekend, Sanders threw his weight behind Tim Canova, who is running a progressive challenge to Wasserman Schultz's House seat, and said that if he wins the presidency that the chairwoman "would not be reappointed."

Important Sunday Message

Peoples' not caring about OTHER people as much as they should will bring the end of humans on this planet, sooner rather than later.

What makes me say that today? The fucking news, the overwhelming majority of politicians, and business people who put profits over people and the planet.

Shortsightedness, greed, ignorance, manufactured fear. Made painfully obvious by "healthcare" co$ts, GUNS in this country and peoples perceived need for them, when they should be totally banned. That a pig like Trump dominates any discussion of any kind is a pathetic reflection of what much of the worlds reality has become. It's fucking foul.

Make some fucking noise in any way you can, big or small, and stop this mis-direction of humankind.

Please.

-GEF

(yes I originally posted this on my Social media a few weeks ago, but i believe it needed to be shared again, here at this time of year)

Thanks for your interest and support.

Russell Simmons quote on the cover of NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Gets him a few points of credibility back...

Not knowing where our great friend is standing since he's moved out to LA LA Land, We loved seeing this on the cover of yesterday's paper.

Bernie Sanders + Noam Chomsky: Deciphering Foreign Policy Jargon (1985)

Berned in DC cont. Droppin' Science

from BERNED IN DC on Facebook

HENRY ROLLINS: BEND OVER, AMERICA — HERE COMES PRESIDENT TRUMP

from his column in the LA WEEKLY

America is an angry country. It always has been. Those who came before us cleared out the locals by any means necessary, then sanitized the genocidal slaughter as they self-immortalized their deeds into the stuff of legend.

After the sun dried the corpses, we set upon each other. Our history is splattered in blood and steeped in unrestrained hostility toward all living creatures.

People in countries all over the world trip out on America. Not only do we make films the rest of the planet flocks to see — we are living in them as well. America is so larger-than-life, our reality kills millions of us each year.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining; I’m just saying that part of what the rest of the world considers to be exceptional about America is our ability to bring the pain over great distances at a high rate of speed, and our seemingly insatiable lust to do it again and again.

America has defined the size of the world. For now at least, things are as we make them.

Americans are hard on every possible thing in America, from our natural environment to city infrastructures. Our greatest contempt and top-shelf brutality, however, we reserve to unleash upon ourselves and one another.

Even after all the science, advances in medicine and technological breakthroughs, which have brought about possibilities that were once almost impossible to imagine, many of us long for the pungent ooze of a stagnant past. Ideas of equality and common decency often are seen as being weak or an abomination. Why? I don’t know. It’s one of those things that makes us exceptional.

When you think about it, some of the greatest examples of American music are, in many ways, blood diamonds. You think blues, gospel and soul came from everyone getting along and living comfortably? Billie Holiday’s tone came from all the hugs and free breakfasts? Jazz, America’s greatest single cultural export, came to be because Jelly Roll Morton didn’t spend most of his life being made to feel like a second-class citizen? To listen to this music, conscientious people might have to accommodate what they are unable to overlook and accept that which they cannot change.

Being an American is to understand where you come from and choosing whether you want to repeat the past or invent the future. A huge number of us have chosen the former. The proof is everywhere.

There are not just a few people opposed to same-sex marriage in America. There are millions and millions.

During the president’s recent visit to Oklahoma, protestors stood across the street from the hotel where he was staying, waving their Stars and Bars flags. Not racist; it’s a heritage thing.

Countless Americans see the recent efforts to neutralize Iran’s nuclear ambitions as mere Neville Chamberlain–esque, Kenyan trickster commie-islamofacism — the workings of an arrogant, Israel-hating tyrant who despises America and wants to open the borders for all his buds in ISIS to stream in by the busload. In fact, they’re probably already here, draining your wallet to buy lobsters, steak and extra Qurans with SNAP coupons, thus robbing your children of their subliterate future.

This is who we are. The world outside of America gets it. Some of them think we’re cool, others think we’re violent morons, but they all know we are not to be fucked with. We are armed, we are dangerous, and we will come over there.

Every country needs a leader. A leader who not only personifies the spirit of that country but one who epitomizes it. It can’t be Obama, right? Biggest American blunder of the 21st century! All that peacemongering and compromise. America does not negotiate with terrorists — and almost every country in the world is run by terrorists! (Not Canada, although we could beat their asses and take their shit by next weekend. We’d be treated as liberators!)

So who’s it gonna be for 2016? Hillary the crim (probably a lesbian) and her lying, adulterer husband? She personifies the greatest nation on Earth? She is a billboard for our values and dreams? No way! If elected, she’ll build a mosque on the front lawn of the White House on day one and start on the concentration camps the next! No! Not Hillary!

In a nation of hundreds of millions of people, there is one man born to lead. A man who stands head and shoulders above the rest. A lone alpha who burns incandescent in a vast wasteland of darkness.

When asked to serve in Vietnam, he said no and took a deferment. He took a few of them, actually, because he is his own man.

He got married. The merger didn’t work. She was fired. So was the next one. It’s business, not personal — like America!

He has overcome adversity. Like bankruptcy. And with an almost Michelangelo-like genius, he conquered the K2 challenge of his hair.

He is what America needs. A man with so much self-confidence that, if you put him in the Oval Office, some of it will no doubt trickle down to you.

Who is this man who will put all other world leaders in their place? The same man who just read a cellphone number, allegedly Lindsey Graham’s private line, out loud so the world could hear. (Hey, I laughed.) This man is America.

So bend over, relax and hold onto something solid, because here he comes — here comes Donald Trump 2016. And when he puts it in, you’ll know who your daddy is.

------------------

Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Sunday KCRW broadcast.

In Honor Of His Birthday This Week, Here's Some Real Talk From Bernie Sanders

from The Huffington Post:

Between his large crowds at campaign events and surging poll numbers, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has so far been the biggest surprise in the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. In the past few months, Sanders has gone from "virtually having no chance" to causing concern for frontrunner Hillary Clinton's campaign.

A self-described democratic socialist who has a lot of ideas and a brash demeanor, Sanders can make some interesting statements. We've collected a few of his most intriguing and most provocative words on a wide range of issues, including marijuana and income inequality.

Here are some of the most notable things Sanders has said since announcing his White House run:

"We got to put young people to work, we got to give them an education, rather than putting them in jail," Sanders said in an interview on MSNBC's "The Ed Show."

"Ordinary people are profoundly disgusted with the fact that the middle class is being destroyed and income going to the top 1 percent," Sanders tweeted.

"Folks who do not like guns [are] fine. But we have millions of people who are gun owners in this country -- 99.9 percent of those people obey the law. I want to see real, serious debate and action on guns, but it is not going to take place if we simply have extreme positions on both sides. I think I can bring us to the middle," Sanders said in a CNN interview.

"It is insane and counter-productive to the best interests of our country, that hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, and that millions of others leave school with a mountain of debt that burdens them for decades. That must end," Sanders said during his campaign announcement.

"In the last 30 years there has been a massive -- we’re talking about many trillions of dollars being redistributed from the middle class to the top one-tenth of 1 percent. It is time to redistribute money back to the working families of this country from the top one-tenth of 1 percent," Sanders said on PBS's "Charlie Rose."

“I coughed a lot, I don’t know. I smoked marijuana twice -- didn’t quite work for me,” Sanders told Yahoo.

"So I do believe that we have to move toward a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. I think it's not going to happen tomorrow, but that certainly should be the goal," Sanders said on ABC’s "This Week."

"We’ve got to demilitarize the police -- we don’t need tanks, you don’t need heavy military equipment in the communities of the United States. We gotta pay attention to the African-American communities, to poverty so these kids get the education and job training they need," Sanders told Yahoo.

"Well, no, I do not have dual citizenship with Israel. I'm an American. I don't know where that question came from. I am an American citizen, and I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions. No, I'm an American citizen, period,” Sanders said in an interview with a D.C. NPR affiliate.

"Please don't tell me that the United States of America, our great country, cannot guarantee health care to all people. Don't tell me that every person in this country should not be able to get all the education that they need regardless of their income," Sanders said in Portland, Maine.

"A major problem of our campaign finance system is that anybody can start a super PAC on behalf of anybody and can say anything. And this is what makes our current campaign finance situation totally absurd," Sanders said to the Burlington Free Press.

"Despite the central role that undocumented workers play in our economy and in our daily lives, these workers are too often reviled by many for political gain and shunted into the shadows," Sanders said at the National Association of Latino Elected Officials conference.

"If a bank is too big to fail, that bank is too big to exist," Sanders said in Denver, Colorado.

"Our goal as a nation is that if somebody works 40 hours a week, that person will not be living in poverty," Sanders said in Iowa.

"What I can tell you is this: We have far, far, far too many people in jail for nonviolent crimes, and I think in many ways, the war against drugs has not been successful, and I think we've got to rethink that," Sanders told Yahoo News' Katie Couric.

Bernie Sanders Builds a People’s Army

from The Daily Beast

Across the country, left-wing activists and veterans of the Occupy movement are organizing for Bernie Sanders—and think the Vermont socialist can topple Hillary.

Every year since 2000, Tyson Manker has voted for the winning presidential candidate. And this year, he’s got his sights set on Bernie Sanders.

Manker, a Marine Corps veteran, co-founded the group Veterans for Bernie and said he’s confident the Vermont senator will make it to the Oval Office.

“You could say I’ve got a pretty good history of picking the president, and my support is enthusiastically 100 percent behind Bernie Sanders,” he said. “I expect him to win the nomination.”

Manker isn’t alone. According to organizers, more than 150,000 people have RSVP’d for house parties Wednesday evening to listen to a simulcast from the Democratic presidential candidate and coordinate their volunteer efforts. And what Sanders lacks in funds—he raised about $15.2 million this quarter, while Hillary Clinton raked in more than three times that figure—he may make up in true believers with experience in grassroots organizing. This is not a fluke; some of the most dogged pro-Bernie volunteers are alums of the Occupy movement, where they honed their activism skills.

“The graduates of Occupy are now skilled organizers,” said Katherine Brezler, a Yonkers schoolteacher and national digital organizer at People for Bernie.

She said some of the core organizers at People For Bernie—a grassroots group unaffiliated with Sanders’s campaign that works to mobilize Sanders volunteers—first met in Zuccotti Park during the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests.

“After Occupy, people didn’t just go and sit in a hole,” Brezler said. “After Occupy, people became very involved in their communities and broadened their skill sets, broadened their networks, and now are revisiting a new campaign with revived interest in electoral politics because the candidate is speaking the language of their issues.”

There are numerous constituency groups in the People For Bernie family, said organizer Stan Williams. They range from those representing essential constituencies—including Women for Bernie, African Americans for Bernie, and Labor for Bernie—to slightly more niche groups (the Deadheads for Bernie Facebook page had 1,308 likes at press time). And they relish their independence from the official campaign.

“You could write terrible things about me and no one’s going to care because I’m not Bernie,” said Charles Lenchner, one of the co-founders of People For Bernie. “We’re free. We use that freedom to do what we can.”

That includes curating social media content, training constituency groups, helping smaller organizations write press releases, and generally cheerleading pro-Bernie efforts around the country. They also reach out to some constituencies where Sanders has struggled—especially African-American voters. Nadya Stevens, who works with African Americans for Bernie, said her group is angling to increase Sanders’s name ID among black voters while reminding them of the damage that Bill Clinton’s tough-on-crime policies incurred.

“The Clinton administration—and that includes Hillary—did some terrible things that adversely impacted the black community,” she said.

She added that she thinks Bill Clinton recently apologized to the NAACP for that legislation because it was the politically expedient thing to do.

“I think that he’s doing that for Hillary because Hillary’s not going to do it herself,” she said.

As for organizers’ levels of confidence in the likelihood of a Sanders presidency? They vary.

“I have so little faith in the system to begin with,” Lenchner said. “I would just say that an election is an opportunity to organize, and the organizing that we’re doing is likely to have an impact for years to come.”

Brezler, the Yonkers schoolteacher who said she spends 19 hours a day working on the pro-Bernie efforts because school is out, is more bullish.

“I’m really excited about this possibility and I believe that we will win,” she said.

She added that volunteers are in for the long haul.

“We also know that it’s important to practice self-care and to encourage your teammates to go for a walk, and to check in and have a normal non-Bernie conversation from time to time with people,” she said.

“At the end of the day, Hillary supporters will be Bernie supporters after the primary,” she added.

But not all Sanders backers would jump to Team Clinton. Manker, an independent who voted for both Bush and Obama twice, said he would consider voting Republican again if Democrats nominate Clinton.

“I have yet to meet or speak with a single veteran or military person who supports Hillary Clinton for president,” he said, adding that Clinton’s false claims that she ran through sniper fire in Bosnia still anger veterans.

“That’s not a minor deal,” he continued. “That has not gone away. For everyone who has ever served in combat, to attempt to put herself in our shoes without ever taking the time to hear our stories does a disservice to all of those who have given their lives and have served in the line of duty.”

“Nothing bugs a combat veteran more than someone claiming to also be a combat survivor who wasn’t,” he added.

And Rand Wilson, a volunteer at Labor for Bernie, has found hope in a funny place.

“Who would think that Donald Trump would be taken seriously?” he said. “If you’d asked me two months ago, is anybody going to take Donald Trump seriously, I would have said, ‘Are you crazy?’ That guy’s out of his mind. But look what’s happening. It’s weird.”

Winnie Wong, a co-founder of People for Bernie, said the next two months are key to their efforts, and that the crowds and volunteers Sanders has attracted mean his presidential prospects are likely being underestimated by the political media.

“This is unprecedented, this is amazing,” she said. “And what happens next, I think, will be historical.”

Henry Rollins: When You Claim Racism Is Over, You Get a Dylann Roof

from my old friend, via the L.A. Weekly

By Henry Rollins

Suddenly, several mornings ago, there were photos of Dylann Roof, a miserable-looking South Carolina man with a bowl haircut, on almost every news site. You already know what he has been accused of doing and reached your conclusions about it with great speed.

Leading politicians were asked for opinions on what had happened. Ex-governor of Texas and 2016 presidential hopeful Rick Perry, in an interview with Newsmax TV, characterized the alleged deeds of Mr. Roof as an accident. An aide later said that Mr. Perry meant to say “incident.” I’ll take the aide at his word, but either term is a strange way to categorize what happened.

Before more was known about the now-infamous Dylann Roof, there was a noticeably halting manner in the statements from politicians and in the reportage by media outlets. Some of them seemed unwilling to bring up the idea that this attack on a Bible study class at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by a single white male, which left nine African-Americans dead, had a racial element.

One of the first things known about the event, besides the number of casualties, came from a witness who heard Roof say, “I have to do it. You rape our women and are taking over our country and you have to go.” That sounds pretty racially pointed to me.

I wondered if it was a case of all concerned trying to come up with a way to package and roll this out to America and the world. I wondered if they were playing for time as they strategized the best way to “sell” it.

As we learned more about Roof, it became all but impossible to argue that he didn’t have a strong racial bias. Within a day, several photos emerged of Roof holding a Confederate flag, burning an American flag and, most interesting to me, posing in a sports jersey with the number 88 on it. H is the eighth letter of the alphabet and 88 is used by white supremacists as shorthand for “Heil Hitler.”

Within several hours of the killings, South Carolina’s Gov. Nikki Haley came under scrutiny for flying the Confederate flag on the state capitol grounds. Growing up in America, you have seen the “stars and bars” flag, patch, sticker, etc., more than once. It means different things to different people. For some, it’s a symbol of slavery, racism, Jim Crow laws and a horrific past. For others, it speaks to heritage and identity.

South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham acknowledged that the flag is symbolically a “part of who we are” but also said it was time to take the flag down. He said, “The problems we’re having in South Carolina and around the world aren’t because of a symbol but because of what’s in people’s hearts,” which I think was spot on. He went on to say, “I hope that, by removing the flag, we can take another step towards healing and recognition — and a sign that South Carolina is moving forward.”

I read people’s posts underneath articles online. I believe them. People log on with relative anonymity, so I think they actually say what’s on their minds. From the hundreds of posts I have read, everyone got blamed for what happened. The NRA, the president, the GOP, liberals, gun owners, those who favor more gun control — all of them were set upon.

I think the problem is much bigger than an offensive flag, or the number of guns in America. If Gov. Haley can get her request past the state’s politicians and get the flag removed, sales of the flag in all forms will increase. If you were to magically remove 50 percent of all the guns in America and make it impossible for more to be manufactured, there would still be enough for anyone to acquire one easily.

I couldn’t stop looking at the photographs of Dylann Roof. The disconnected gaze and the dead-end misery in his face was as big an indicator as any flag he was holding, or anything in the “manifesto” that recently surfaced, said to be written by him.

As is true with anyone, there is more to Roof’s story. Maybe he couldn’t meet girls. Maybe he was interested in something else and was unable to handle it. His roommate claimed that Roof was talking about doing harm to people six months ago, yet it seems the roommate didn’t tell anyone. As far as all the disturbing pictures, who took them? Unless you agree with Roof’s purported point of view, wouldn’t you want to have a word with someone so obviously disturbed?

Could it be that Roof took all of his pain and confusion and assigned it to racial hatred? Is it possible that if Roof had stayed in school, a sharp teacher could have seen his distress and done something? In a country so full of people, why was Roof so alone?

It’s not guns, flags and revisionist coatings of the past that are the biggest dangers. It’s the low-hanging fruit of racism. It comes so logically to some in America. It is such an easily accessible ignorance, so well bolstered by ridiculous theories on the Internet, which Roof’s “manifesto” was such a perfect example of.

When you remove the education of the citizens of your country as a top-tier priority, claim “racism is over” and just blame others when things go so tragically wrong, you get a Dylann Roof. He is made in America. He’s not from Mars. He’s one of ours.

Chances are that Dylann Roof will be found guilty and die in prison, one way or another. He’s as good as dead already. He was dead before he entered that church.

Look for your weekly fix from the one and only Henry Rollins right here every Thursday, and come back tomorrow for the awesomely annotated playlist for his Sunday KCRW broadcast.

Bernie Sanders’ first interview as candidate MSNBC Exclusive

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for president, challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Sanders sits down with Ed Schultz in an exclusive interview discussing the biggest issues of the campaign.

The Power of Nightmares The Rise of the Politics of Fear Pt 1

The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. Its three one-hour parts consist mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis's narration. The series was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and has subsequently been broadcast in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

The films compare the rise of the Neo-Conservative movement in the United States and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and claiming similarities between the two. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies.

The Power of Nightmares has been praised by film critics in both Britain and the United States. Its message and content have also been the subject of various critiques and criticisms from conservatives and progressives.

Part 2 next sunday

An Unfiltered Chat With Jello Biafra

from the LA Weekly

For more than three decades, Jello Biafra has remained the brassy conscience of punk rock, willing to knock down the sacred cows of politics and rock and roll. First honing his diatribes in the Dead Kennedys, next dabbling in film and spoken word, and ultimately joining forces with DOA, NoMeansNo, the Melvins, and Al Jourgensen for projects aplenty, he has remained ever-potent and enrapturing, a changeling that never quite sheds his skin.
As a news junkie, edgy showman, political reformist, and punk shaman, he has continued to curate fabled label Alternative Tentacles, survived a bitter feud with former bandmates, and kept retirement far away while firing up Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, his vociferous psych-punk band with ex-members of Victim's Family and Rollins Band.

Rocks Off's David Ensminger rang up Biafra before he hits the road for Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin and Houston's Continental Club this Sunday night. Here are some excerpts.

Rocks Off: Does Rick Perry coming to power instill a kind of fear in you?
Jello Biafra: I would be really surprised if he ever became President, but if he was put in charge of say, Secretary of the Interior, or something in a Jeb Bush administration, then watch the fuck out, especially since he is connected with the New Apostles [the New Apostolic Reformation].

When people talk about the dangers of ISIS or Islamists, we have to realize that America is under threat not just by market fundamentalists but by Christianists, and Perry is a hardcore Christianist, who -- if these allegations of this cult he belongs to are to be believed -- considers himself as one of the new prophets sent by God to cleanse the earth of devil-worshipers and Democrats. But I think on a national level, he is looked at as more of a buffoon now.

On the other hand, so was Ronald Reagan the first two times he ran for President. But after they marinated him long enough and realized the time was ripe to pounce, suddenly he wasn't always portrayed as this scowling, dangerous warmonger or a completely clueless cowboy actor in all the national media. Suddenly he became the guy you always wanted to be your grandpa. And he stormed in, and the rest is sordid history.

And I try to remind people of that when they just missed another national laughing stock by the name of Sarah Palin. I mean sure, she is one hell of a buffoon, but she is also an electrifying speaker and has more stage and screen presence than all the other Republican talking heads combined. And she is younger than I am, so her very existence will torment and plague me the rest of my natural life because I think they are just marinating her until the time is right.

Of course, once they do they can spin all the dumb stuff she's done anyway they want to.

You've also spoken of Texas as giving birth to the Tea Party. What do you think of them right now?

More and more I think they are showing their true colors. Back when I was a kid in grade school, the had another name - they were called the Klu Klux Klan. Now they are smart enough to leave the hoods in the top drawer, plus they have vastly more money both in oil-stained Texas billionaires like the Koch Bros. and whatnot.

I urge people who find the Koch Bros. as easy boogiemen to blame stuff on now, and there's a lot of good ground for that, like actively trying to John Birch-ify this country for decades and helping put up money for the Heritage Foundation and all these other things, but people seem to be forgetting another moneyed family that helped get a lot of that going with money and influence, named Coors.

It's harder to boycott the Koch Bros. because you can't just go out and boycott a refinery or something. It just doesn't quite work that way. Sure, you can avoid Georgia Pacific paper towels, but for most part their money is not in consumer industries. Coors, for the most part, was a different matter. I got hip to what that was when I was still in grade school because my parents kicked Coors out of the fridge and out of the house, and never let it back in, because of Joe Coors' political activities. Later, he was in Reagan's cabinet or was credited to be the one that planted James G. Watt in the interior department.

People don't believe me, but I tell them that's part of the motive of these people is that a lot of them are reconstructionists or dominionists as they are called. I believe Perry is another one, and Palin another one too, and W may have been one too. They believe it is the End Time, and Jesus is going to come back, and when he does, he's going to put all the forests, all the natural resources back, and even all the money that has been looted out of Washington that created the deficit because Jesus loves America.

They believe this shit. Watt came right out and admitted it. So then Clown Prince W gets into Washington and takes another Coloradoan, Gale Norton, to be interior secretary, and guess who she worked for, the Mountain State Legal Foundation, another strip-mine, clear-cut, drill-baby-drill fetishizer.

Who do think is worse, the wolves of Wall Street or the bankers of Dillinger's time, since you sing songs about both on the last album?

I think they are the same animal, are they not? I mean they have been working to rewind the clock back to the roaring twenties ever since the market crashed in 1929. And if they can get it back that far, then hey maybe we can go back another century, the Robber Baron era, then maybe even go back a little further and have a lot of slaves or at least a sharecropper existence for a good part of the population while they laugh all the way to the bank.

Again, they are wealth addicts, like crack addicts, and they already have so much money they can't figure out what to do with it except to scam more.

You obtained a LP by the 13th Floor Elevators in the early 1970s; did that make a profound impact on you?

The first one I got was Easter Everywhere in the free box at the used record store I went to in Boulder. That was one advantage of growing up in a town infested with country-rock and Scientology jazz fusion -- stuff like that the Elevators would show up in the free box, the MC5 would be 50 cents, and I got Fun House by the Stooges for a dime.

Of course, by then I had unplugged completely from commercial radio and pop culture in general and followed my own interests and desires. Finally, I got a hold of The Psychedelic Sounds..., the first [Elevators] album, that's the one that really blew me away. I still love that album. All that Elevators stuff never gets old.

What about the Texas slant on punk rock -- the Dicks, Butthole Surfers -- did you find so appealing?

I think we have to take the two separately. When I saw the Buttholes, I thought, you know, maybe I am getting ahead of myself, but this may be the most important band to come out of Texas since the 13th Floor Elevators. Later, Mighty Sphincter and Sun City Girls came through San Francisco opening for JFA, and the New Mexico bands like Kor-Phu, Bent and others, began to make themselves known.

Tim Yohannon, of [legendary punk zine] Maximumrocknroll, while Sun City Girls or Mighty Sphincter were playing, said, "I think we need to do an entire feature on sun-damaged bands," and the first one out of his mouth besides the band we were looking at was the Butthole Surfers (laughs), which he liked at the time.

You can rewind a little further into early Texas punk, the Texas '70s and '80s punk. I mean, a lot of us were forming our bands and honing our sounds and attitudes almost in a vacuum because there were hardly any independent DIY records in America except a handful of singles, and the ones that got imported from Britain where the scene was a lot bigger. So, a lot of the bands had distinct sounds and personalities.

Big Boys were a good example. Because there weren't all these cookie-cutter punk and hardcore bands and genre-fied styles to copy. It was a visceral reaction against all the stupid stuff going on both politically in the 1970s and especially musically, where the radio was pushing soft rock and adult rock, and we didn't want to be adults. Or they pushed Triumph of the Will-style arena rock for the kids who wanted something heavy. People in different places wanted more, and they put their stamp on it. You couldn't keep them off the stage anymore. I mean, [Dicks singer] Gary Floyd would be a perfect example.

What also characterized those bands and gave them an edge, which we also saw with Really Red and some of the others, was...it's one thing to be up against hostile venues that would rather have an Eagles cover band, than put up with the likes of you and your friends, and jocks coming into the room just wanting to boo you offstage because you're not ZZ Top or Lynyrd Skynyrd, and then of course there is the police.

Outside of L.A., the police department that scared the shit out of people more than anywhere in the country were in Texas, especially Houston. It seemed like Biscuit, Gary, Really Red, and AK-47 with that "The Badge Means You Suck" single, were challenging some of the most out-of-control, violent police departments in America. They were one step away from being full-blown Latin American death squads, meaning they were risking life and limb just to say this shit and play this music.

Nowadays a lot of people take the whole underground independent scene for granted. There's always going to be bands and message boards and blogs and endless things to entertain us, but it was very different earlier on.

Why did you feel compelled to make the Really Red discography available [through Alternative Tentacles] in February 2015?
Because I always loved the band, they were my friends, and they walked a pretty unique tightrope. Sure, they were kind of the main people of the Houston punk scene, or so it seemed, but even though they were a little older than me, or say people in the Avengers or even the Sex Pistols, and a little artier and post-punk, they made the transition to the hardcore audience when a lot of the early punks walked away.

I am sure it didn't hurt that Ronnie [U-ron] had Real Records, the store where a lot of punk and hardcore kids bought their vinyl. So he was always up on what was going on. He called me up once raving about Minor Threat after seeing the five-piece lineup come through Houston and said, "It was almost as if I was seeing the Velvet Underground." That kind of a take on Minor Threat could come from no one but Ronnie.

I didn't know until reading your article [now the liner notes to the reissues] that those guys are a few years older than me to the point where they got to see the Elevators live. They absorbed that stuff when they were young. I didn't have that. I didn't have any older siblings with record collections. I was kind of on my own...I thought if Alternative Tentacles would have been much more off the ground or had more money back in the day, we might well have put out Teaching You the Fear right then and there.

I am really excited that the song I wanted for Let Them Eat Jellybeans! is finally going to come out. Their manager "Bob Philips" [Bob Webber] told me they didn't want to use "Little Death" on Let Them Eat Jellybeans! because they felt it was a puny live recording compared to all the people that had been in the studio, like DOA.

But I still think that was the best song to use, and much to my shock it wasn't even used on any of the albums, so now you can finally hear "Little Death." And I was surprised by what a better sound I was able to get out of the Despise Moral Majority EP, their hand-stamped looking official bootleg 7" EP back in the day. I tried to get them to sound as best as possible and tried to top the originals.

Plus, Ronnie in his lyrics was not afraid to show his own intelligence and depth and try to get people to think instead of spieling out "I hate this, I hate that." They are kind of on another level there, as was a lot of the music, and Kelly [guitarist] had all these unique little post-punk sprinkles going on. I finally threw up my hands while trying to write the press sheet today because I can't compare him to anybody! They were a punk band, and arguably a hardcore band, especially on the New Strings For Old Puppets EP, but they didn't sound like anybody else.

10 Reasons to Hate Capitalism

from Dangerous Minds

 

10. Capitalist corporations suffer from a personality disorder characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, diminished empathy and remorse, and are rewarded by shareholders for acting that way. If corporations could be sent to a criminal psychologist’s office they’d be diagnosed as psychopaths and locked away forever.

 



 

9. Capitalism encourages greed. But greed is only good for capitalists. For normal people it is anti-social and soul destroying, not to mention very bad for our communities, which rely on altruism, compassion and a generalized concern for others.

 



 

8. Capitalism is a system of minority privilege and class rule based on the private ownership of means of livelihood. This gives a few rich people the power to buy and sell jobs, which means they can build or destroy entire communities that depend on those jobs.

 



 

7. Capitalists praise freedom and individualism, but they destroy freedom and individualism for everyone but themselves. The vast majority of us who work for a living are daily asked to uncritically follow orders, to act as if we are machines, and limit our creativity to what profits our bosses.

 



 

6. Capitalists denigrate cooperation and collectivism, but create mass production processes that rely on both from workers. Their system requires us to be cogs in a giant profit-making machine, but because they fear the power this gives us we are told working together for our own interests is illegitimate and bad. Thus capitalists undermine unions and other organizations that encourage workers to cooperate with each other and act collectively.

 



 

5. Capitalism requires the largest propaganda system the world has ever known to convince us it is the only system possible. It turns people into consumers through advertising, marketing, entertainment and even so-called news. Millions around the world are employed to use their creativity to twist our feelings of love, desire, human solidarity and fairness into tools of manipulation, so that ever more profits can flow into the hands of a tiny minority.

 



 

4. Capitalism is a system in which the principle of one dollar, one vote, dominates that of one person, one vote. Those who own the most shares (bought with their dollars) control giant corporations, many of which are more powerful than all but a few governments. Rich people also use their money to dominate the elections that are supposed to give us all one, equal vote. Under capitalism those with the most money are entitled to the most goods and services as well as the most say in directing our governments and our economy.

 



 

3. Capitalism proclaims the virtue of naked self-interest, but self-interest without regard for morality, ecology or common sense leads to environmental degradation, destruction of indigenous communities, colonialism, war and other forms of mass destruction. Self-interest leads capitalists to seek profit absolutely everywhere, regardless of the damage done to other people and the health of the planet’s ecosystem. Self-interest leads capitalists to destroy any rival economic system or way of thinking (such as indigenous communal land use and respect for nature) that can be a barrier to their endless quest for profit.

 



 

2. Capitalism is not a friend to democracy but ultimately its enemy. When pushed, capitalists choose capitalism over democracy. If people use democracy to weaken the power of capitalists the rich and powerful turn to various forms of fascism in order to keep their privileges.

 



 

1. Capitalism is a cancer taking over our planet. Capitalists make profits from global warming, from destroying our oceans, from pumping ever more chemicals into the atmosphere and from patenting everything they can, including life itself. Only by getting rid of capitalism can we rescue our environment.

This is a guest post from Gary Engler. Engler is a Canadian journalist, novelist (The Year We Became Us, about the Saskatchewan Doctors Strike) and co-author of the recently released The New Commune-ist Manifesto: Workers of the World It Really is Time to Unite. You can find more of his work at the New Communeist website

Anarchism In America

from our friend Richard Metzger over at Dangerous Minds:

As the title promises, Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher’s Anarchism in America is a documentary survey of anarchism in the United States. The film presents an overview of the movement’s history, such as the Spanish Civil War, the 1917 Revolution, Emma Goldman, and the deaths of Sacco and Vanzetti, and takes these as the points of departure for what were then (1983) contemporary observations from the outside looking in on Ronald Reagan’s America. Whether viewed as a time capsule or as an able introduction to the various forms of anarchism, the film makes for fascinating viewing and has held up well after 31 years.

What’s perfectly obvious is how much of a libertarian or individualistic route the American strain of anarchism takes—let’s call it “free market anarchism”—in stark contrast to European-style communal living experiments (such as squatters’ groups or farm co-ops). They’re just not quite the same school of thought, although if you were to draw a Venn diagram of what they do have in common, it would be significant but also… probably equally incompatible for the things which they lack in simpatico. Does anyone in Anarchism in America have any hopes for a revolution? Seemingly not in their lifetimes. (Many of them were right, of course. I’ve read that the filmmakers are planning a sequel, so I’d suspect that post-Occupy, post-Piketty, there would be more positive prognostications to be found along those lines today.)



Emma Goldman will not attend your revolution if she can’t dance….

The film also offers anarchist or anarchist-leaning thinkers uninterrupted camera time to make their points. Like Murray Bookchin, who says this:

I had entered the communist children’s movement, an organization called the Young Pioneers of America, in 1930 in New York City; I was only nine years of age. And I’d gone through the entire ’30s as a—Stalinist—initially, and then increasingly as someone who was more and more sympathetic to Trotskyism. And by 1939, after having seen Hitler rise to power, the Austrian workers’ revolt of 1934 (an almost completely forgotten episode in labor history), the Spanish revolution, by which I mean the so-called Spanish civil war—I finally became utterly disillusioned with Stalinism, and drifted increasingly toward Trotskyism. And by 1945, I, finally, also became disillusioned with Trotskyism; and I would say, now, increasingly with Marxism and Leninism.

And I began to try to explore what were movements and ideologies, if you like, that really were liberatory, that really freed people of this hierarchical mentality, of this authoritarian outlook, of this complete assimilation by the work ethic. And I now began to turn, very consciously, toward anarchist views, because anarchism posed a question, not simply of a struggle between classes based upon economic exploitation—anarchism really was posing a much broader historical question that even goes beyond our industrial civilization—not just classes, but hierarchy—hierarchy as it exists in the family, hierarchy as it exists in the school, hierarchy as it exists in sexual relationships, hierarchy as it exists between ethnic groups. Not only class divisions, based upon economic exploitation. And it was concerned not only with economic exploitation, it was concerned with domination, domination which may not even have any economic meaning at all: the domination of women by men in which women are not economically exploited; the domination of ordinary people by bureaucrats, in which you may even have welfare, so-called socialist type of state; domination as it exists today in China, even when you’re supposed to have a classless society; domination even as it exists in Russia, where you are supposed to have a classless society, you see.

So these are the things I noted in anarchism, and increasingly I came to the conclusion that if we were to avoid—or if we are to avoid—the mistakes in over one hundred years of proletarian socialism, if we are to really achieve a liberatory movement, not simply in terms of economic questions but in terms of every aspect of life, we would have to turn to anarchism because it alone posed the problem, not merely of class domination but hierarchical domination, and it alone posed the question, not simply of economic exploitation, but exploitation in every sphere of life. And it was that growing awareness, that we had to go beyond classism into hierarchy, and beyond exploitation into domination, that led me into anarchism, and to a commitment to an anarchist outlook.

Worth noting that Bookchin left anarchism behind, too, due to what he saw as the antisocial element to American style anarchist thought.

There’s one particularly amazing piece of footage (among several included in the film) that I wanted to call to your attention. It’s the demonstration of how a policeman’s truncheon fares against various food items such as an egg, squash, and an eggplant before moving on to a Yippie’s head. That clip comes from an “answer” film made by the Yippies in the aftermath of the Chicago riots that was played on television there due to the “equal-time” rule specifies that U.S. radio and television broadcast stations must provide an equivalent opportunity to any opposing political parties who request it. When Mayor Richard Daley got to tell the city’s side of the story in something called “What Trees Did They Plant?” the Yippies got to tell their side in an extremely whacked-out short film scripted by Paul Krassner. That starts at 30:50 but if you want to see the entire thing, click over to archive.org, they’ve got it. (The guy with the truncheon is Chicago-based lefty humorist and radio broadcaster Marshall Efron, who played one of the prisoners in George Lucas’ THX 1138. He was also the voice of “Smelly Smurf” and works as a voice actor in animated films to this day.)

Toward the end of Anarchism in America, Jello Biafra and Dead Kennedys are seen onstage performing “We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now,” while in the interview segment a level-headed young Biafra suggests that anarchy, or some sort of revolution in the USA, is probably a long, long way off. If they do make the sequel, he’s one of the first people they ought to interview for it. I’d be curious if he still feels that way. I would suspect that he’s much more optimistic these days.