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freshwest

freshwest's Journal
freshwest's Journal
March 3, 2015

Okay...



March 3, 2015

And I have video of O'Donnell proudly saying to Greenwald he's not a progressive, either.

O'Donnell said then he's a Socialist, because 'progressives' are evil, doncha know. But now he's going with conservative billionaire owned MSNBC for the bucks!

This is just tossing anything that the GOP Koch Libertarian M$M thinks will stick - the outrage du jour - just using Segretti's method. It's been working for 40 years, why stop now?



March 2, 2015

I've seen that framed as 'the 1% doesn't care about civil rights, only money.' So we don't either?

Was it not social acceptance of the denial of civil rights that preambled income inequality? And the idea that some people don't deserve equal treatment with the privileged is not a form of economic darwinism?

Watching how 51% of the people's concerns are mocked and their rights to controlling their own bodies, such as slaves never had, has been an eye opener. Voting rights that affect POC to keep them out of competing with the privileged, is 'old hat' now, only the civil liberties of those who already had those protections, thus privileged, matter now.

It's like what Tim Wise said:

Whiteness, NSA Spying and the Irony of Racial Privilege

Tim Wise - June 19, 2013

That said, I also must admit to a certain nonchalance in the face of the recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s snooping into phone records, and the dust-up over the leaking of the NSA’s program by Ed Snowden. And as I tried to figure out why I wasn’t more animated upon hearing the revelations — and, likewise, why so many others were — it struck me. Those who are especially chapped about the program, about the very concept of their government keeping tabs on them — in effect profiling them as potential criminals, as terrorists — are almost entirely those for whom shit like this is new: people who have never before been presumed criminal, up to no good, or worthy of suspicion.

In short, they are mostly white. And male. And middle-class or above. And most assuredly not Muslim.

And although I too am those things, perhaps because I work mostly on issues of racism, white privilege and racial inequity — and because my mentors and teachers have principally been people of color, for whom things like this are distressingly familiar — the latest confirmation that the U.S. is far from the nation we were sold as children is hardly Earth-shattering. After all, it is only those who have had the relative luxury of remaining in a child-like, innocent state with regard to the empire in which they reside who can be driven to such distraction by something that, compared to what lots of folks deal with every day, seems pretty weak tea...


http://www.timwise.org/2013/06/whiteness-nsa-spying-and-the-irony-of-racial-privilege/

This refrain is now old with many of us as we see people thumbing their noses down at the 'lesser people.' Wise has issues with the Democratic Party as Chris Hedges does with pornography, because in the end, being a progressive and a liberal is about individual lives.

That is left out by pundits celebrated by Putin supporters in online forums, cable shows by Republicans, and talk radio pundits like Alex Jones. The latter come out actively against the government that supports the rights of women and the poor against the privileged and powerful. They have determined what their place will be in the society they want - and it's not what Democrats want, so we must be eliminated totally.

Those civil rights issues are the dirty underbelly of empire and privilege and how the population is felled by the status quo. Dismiss one civil right, and they'll go after all of them. And some of them claim to be from the 'left' as some now define it. It's not how I define it, but I see a pattern. Tell me how this is not the way that some are defining the Democratic Party and its followers:

Lumpenproletariat is a term that was originally coined by Karl Marx to describe that layer of the working class that is unlikely ever to achieve class consciousness and is therefore lost to socially useful production, of no use to the revolutionary struggle, and perhaps even an impediment to the realization of a classless society.[1] The word is derived from the German word Lumpenproletarier, a word literally meaning "miscreant" as well as "rag". The term proletarian was first defined by Marx and Friedrich Engels in The German Ideology (1845) and later elaborated on in other works by Marx. The Marxist Internet Archive writes that "this term identifies the class of outcast, degenerated and submerged elements that make up a section of the population of industrial centers" which include "beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables, persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements."[2]

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), Marx gives this description of the lumpenproletariat:

Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème.[3]

In the Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx rhetorically describes the lumpenproletariat as a "class fraction" that constituted the political power base for Louis Bonaparte of France in 1848. In this sense, Marx argued that Bonaparte was able to place himself above the two main classes, the proletariat and bourgeoisie, by resorting to the "lumpenproletariat" as an apparently independent base of power, while in fact advancing the material interests of the "finance aristocracy".

For rhetorical purposes, Marx identifies Louis Napoleon himself as being like a member of the lumpenproletariat insofar as, being a member of the finance aristocracy, he has no direct interest in productive enterprises.[4] This is a rhetorical flourish, however, which equates the lumpenproletariat, the rentier class, and the apex of class society as equivalent members of the class of those with no role in useful production...[citation needed]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpen_proletariat

'All Men (women) Are Created Equal' isn't in those perjoratives applied to victims of class warfare. They don't count as they are unwilling to give up all they are left with, their very lives for the guiding hand of the intellectual elitists. Nor do the social policies promoted by progressives to mitigate the genocide committed upon them matter. They are denied humanity for what was done to them, despite the identity politics used to claim they are part of the cadre. If they dare squeak about the voting to support the pillars of democratic socialism such as are in the New Deal and fought for by Bernie Sanders, they are supporting continuing evil, supposedly. Like living an imperfect life isn't worth it. Conveniently given advice by those who are not on the chopping block.

Their lives, thus their survival as 'losers' don't matter in the face of ideology, only the revolution matters. The one ending up creating a system of feudalism with a different name, with little worker input. Evolution of society as preached from feudalism to the paradise of communism, sans any talk of civil rights, ends up being no different than the Biblical view of 'every man with his own vineyard' as the ultimate society. Don't bring up the uncomfortable issue of who is going to be doing the childbearing and menial work. Social stratification benefits those at the top, not the rest. Let's not talk about what enables and sweeps that under the rug.

You never answer my replies, but you struck a chord, and thus I answered with my take on just how screwed up the support, some of it coming from a misguided vision of Putin remaking the USSR or a communist society based on Marx coming to pass. That is not what Putin is doing. He's an oligarch and friend of oligarchs and if people would open their eyes up to that fact, they might see him as the fascist that he is, no matter how he presents himself.

Russia is now an experiment melding religion, corporate and state power working together for the benefit of the corporations and destroying civil society and protections. That is the way that Mussolini termed what he was doing with Fascism in Italy.

The West has successfully combined corporations, oligarchs, monarchs and strong state government to afford individual rights and freedoms to its citizenry, but that is going to fall in the face of what is now embraced in the USA and the Anglosphere, and more directly by ISIS.

The voices against the Democratic Party, IMHO, are not for democratic, accountable government but for a simplistic vision no one will be able to ignore when they destroy the state. It will seamlessly control everything necessary to live. Yes, that is a pessimistic view and I am still working these things out in my mind, seeking to find a way to define my position on maintaining the living. I'm a 'WIP.'



March 2, 2015

VIDEO movie trailer. Rape is never a joke. It's a source of deadly rage:



This piece of filth will keep on preaching his sickness until his last breath. He is still enjoying life and proud of himself.

That's why women were in the street calling for the death penalty over this. Some deny the primal rage rape can engender in many women.

See mark 1:20.

The justice being called for was not a sentence in prison. Her parents wanted the death penalty. Some stand aloof and say nice things about how life should be. These women don't have that luxury.

I was not surprised to see the union was there to lend to lend their support. I wish all groups in society would stand up for the rights of women to be free in the most basic parts of their lives.

March 2, 2015

Never believed in the Big Bang. It's just 'scientific' Creationism.



Logically, he universe is infinite, what they have described is a local space perspective. Wondering why they are announcing just now what myself and doubtless millions realized decades ago.

I suspect that voices from on high insisted on this narrow conception and by repetition, made it TheTruth!© until 'no one dare say nay.'

NASA isn't operating on that low level, they are going for empirical facts. Those who are incapable of doing hard sciences are fed 'pop science.'

March 1, 2015

Too late! We're all gonna die! All together holding hands. Check out this placid scenery:



The Yellowstone Caldera. Seems nice. Don't be fooled. It's coming. Muahaha.

*JAWS music in background..*


March 1, 2015

He's worth more than the Koch brothers at $200B. No wonder he and others think highly of him.

Russia's former largest foreign investor: Putin is worth $200 billion

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026231601

The Koch brothers are now worth $100B, and stood to double that with Keystone, something Obama noted in an interview as a reason to reject it. They want to buy the government Citizens United style.

They have been squalling about not getting it since Obama arrived in office, promising to take revenge if he didn't go along with the first CR after his election in 2009. And they followed through, funding the Tea Party and getting in control in 2010, as a first shutdown fight was on with the 2011 budget.

It's never ended, and their voices from all sides have assisted in their efforts to shutdown government to force that tax free gift to the Koch brothers. Some don't want to know what is going on with these oligarchs, they blame government as if thought up all this stuff by itself. But it's under a heavy siege and in order to protect the many, it makes compromises it wouldn't do otherwise.

In Russia, the oligarchs are much more direct in their demands. It's very sad to see those people being abused as they are now. If we let them consolidate their elected edge, I expect the same will come here, unless Americans get their act together and stop falling for the Reich wing media.

$200B, like $100B, buys a lot of friends...

March 1, 2015

Meanwhile, it's blissfully boring in the region I live in, except for:



That's up in Canada. For more regional oddities, a video and stories here:


http://www.komonews.com/weather/blogs/scott/2-routine-events-combine-to-make-a-spectacular-scene-over-Canadian-skies-293565611.html

Will be calling friends and family in NM and TX, thanks for posting this story, OS.

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