Comrade Anklebiter's Fun-Timey Revolutionary Socialism Thread


Off-Topic Discussions

2,251 to 2,300 of 2,749 << first < prev | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | next > last >>

US-Led Bombings in Syria Kill 77 Civilians, Including Many Children


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Fergie wrote:

Well, I'm off on a bike trip from Omaha to Galesburg, IL, with RAGBRAI in the middle. Wish me luck!

Don't get arrested, and if you do, get it on film.

I'll see everyone in a fortnight.
Fergie

Take care, Comrade Fergie!


I hadn't posted about this one before, but I'm glad to see it turned out well:

Yale Dishwasher Corey Menafee, Who Broke Racist Window, Wins Job Back


Cross post!

Comrades of Mine in the News, Well, Prison Planet at the RNC

It's 10+ minutes, though. I'll have to watch it tomorrow.

Socialist SJW Triggered at RNC


Well, they've changed the steering committee, changed the name (twice), put up new pictures, and lowered the fundraiser target, but we're still shy of our goals. Please help bring about goblin revolution near you, well, near you if you live in New England.

Save the Lowell Justice Collaborative!

Tell 'em the Dood sent ya!


Acquaintances of Mine in the News

Up the road from Lowell is the other formerly decrepit mill town turned gentrifier's playground, Lawrence (home of Amy Dube, who seems to like a lot of Mr. Comrade's Facebook posts but none of mine and that makes me feel [La Principessa walks into the room] great, I don't care what that floozy does!)

Professor Forrant spoke at our International Woman's Day forum.

Polartec is in trouble. Here’s a strategy that could save it


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

Posting a link to a gofundme for our office. No pressure, but if you you want to throw some money in, tell 'em Comrade Anklebiter sent you!

SAVE LAST LINE LOWELL!!

Well, I've sent you some quids - be careful with them, though, as they're sure to become collector's items after our 'inevitable' descent into post-Brexit barbarism.

This week's Partisan Pinups are The Antonio Gramsci Battalion


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Thank you very much, Comrade Longears!

I am touched and honored to invest your hard-earned Britishiznoid funny money in the cause of international proletarian socialist revolution.

[Clenched fist salute]

We just recruited a new member there this afternoon. He's an apprentice union pipefitter who served as a marshal at last week's #BLM march in Manch Vegas (yes, that's what they call it).

It is rumored that the same rabble of white supremacists, Oathkeepers with grenade launchers and members of a Manch Vegas street gang known as, I shiznit you not, The Bros, will make their reappearance.

Thank you once again!


Follow up rally was much less tense and even a little boring.

Black Lives Matter protesters march in Manchester


Mr. Comrade at the DNC interviewed by China Daily

Sanders supporters unbowed in protest

(Mr. Comrade was never a Sanders supporter.)

"Waving the flag of Socialist Alternative, Daniel Keating, from Massachusetts, said dozens of people from the organization were coming to Philadelphia. He said the organization supports Jill Stein, and members want to win over Sanders supporters.

"'We are coming here to talk about how the Democratic Party is a corrupt party. We need to build a party for working people and the 99 percent,' he said.

"Like others, Keating was not surprised by the email controversy. 'I assume that they do things like that every day, right?' he said."

Liberty's Edge

Not surprising, we've known for a while that China, Russia, and North Korea want Trump.


Are you suggesting that Mr. Comrade is an agent of Red China or that only publications from those countries are interviewing protesters at the DNC?


Tell us how you really feel about the RNC and Trump, China

Cursory googling indicates you're wrong about Red China


Further googling indicates that you're right

Beats me.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Been really, really busy, but not as busy as Mr. Comrade who, it turns out, WAS INTERVIEWED BY ABBY MARTIN ten minutes before she was arrested. He also, apparently, was not just mentioned in China Daily but was ON THE COVER! He was also also interviewed by the Boston NPR affiliate alongside Vermin Supreme and received dozens of messages from middle aged + friends and acquaintances saying they heard him on the radio.

Shameless socialist self-promotion for the win!

He also apparently participated in a sit-in that ended with the removal and burning of a Confederate flag, but why there was such a flag flying in Philadelphia, I'm note sure. Also, after he left, Nancy Donovan got arrested as part of the Democracy Spring sit-in. Not sure what else. There's been a lot of people around and a lot to do.

Meanwhile, hosted La Principessa and La Principessa's Single Mother Comrade and La Principessa's Single Mother Comrade's 9-Yr-Old ADHD-Diagnosed Son. All crammed into the apartment with me, Mr. Comrade and the Nigerian Princess. Kinda cramped I admit. LPSMC is starting to piss me off. The Lowell Folk Festival is happening this weekend and tomorrow night's headliner is King Sunny Ade. To make conversation, I asked LPSMC, who knows everybody and everything, if she was familiar with his music. "Oh I met him when I was a little girl," she begins and then proceeds to tell me about how her father was a founder of Shanachie Records and was known as the "Alan Lomax of the Bronx."

I think I am going to dump La Principessa and take up with Her Single Mother Comrade instead.

Liberty's Edge

Yeah, I'm never going to believe a word Abby Martin says. She's either a moron or a liar. She was arrested because she got lost finding her way from the WF Center to FDR park and took a taxi because the road and trains were closed?

B+!%~@*&.

FDR park is all of 500 feet across the street from the WF center.


I really don't care who you believe, Alex.

Silver Crusade

Well Met Comrade Anklebiter, I have a question for you. Why do you and your fellow comrades on the far left think it is ok to burn someone else's property ie a Confederate Flag or an other Flag that does not belong to you regardless if said flag or other object offends you or not.

I personally would not care if you burned a flag that you bought from Fred the Flag maker to burn at a demonstration but when you burn a flag that belongs to another person or the State then you have committed the crimes of theft and arson. Your fellow crackpot leftists would call it a hate crime if I burned a Rainbow Flag [Not that I would, as I would think it s both stupid and wasteful to do that not to mention Wrong even if if I bought the flag from Fred.] Burning any flag is wrong because people place value on a flag as a symbol that they agree with an take offense at their symbol being burned.

From a historical viewpoint I wounder if many on the far left really know that the Flag that they call the Confederate flag really is not the Confederate flag but the Confederate Battle standard [ie. the Stars and Bars] The Confederate Flag is a Single white star on a solid blue field
There is a song about it [The Bonny Blue Flag] you can see an excellent rendetion of the song on youtube in a clip from the Movie Heroes and Generals.

Have a nice Socialist Day. My Favorite Comrade. Or as they say now in Russia Pavakovnic.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Thanks to Glorious First Amendment, all comrades are allowed to burn any symbol they want. Including flags. It's the law

Silver Crusade

Can does not mean should.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Lou Diamond wrote:
Can does not mean should.

When someone uses "should" in a sentence directed at me, it usually means that they have a fantasy that does not coincide with reality and they want me to read my lines and act out their stage directions so they can critique how well I'm following their script.

My reality usually doesn't include coddling them in their fantasy. "That way madness lies" (to quote somebody real famous)

People who want to take away my legal freedoms often tell me I 'shouldn't' want perfectly legal things or I 'should' do things that compromise my freedoms. Silly peoples. Freedom is too scary for them. They keep trying to reduce rather than expand F*R*E*E*D*O*M


I thought the whole point of burning a flag is the distressing reaction it is supposed to evoke. Most consider their group's flag to be a powerful symbol of their own identity; seeing it burned should be an alarm that more civilized discussion has completely broken down, and that serious grievances and oppression is being completely ignored and/or dismissed. Denying the speech of flag burning comes off to the oppressed like another form of the over-used tone argument.

That said, I'm only personally in favor of burning others' flags when they are being openly flown on government property, and thus taxpayer funded. Outside of a museum display or in some Civil War memorial, I have no respect for any local or state government body flying a Confederate flag--the flag of secessionist traitors and slave-owners. As a native Floridian, I accept that flying a Confederate flag on private property comes with free speech; I almost appreciate their open signalling that they are deeply ignorant and/or racist, so I can avoid any interaction with them whatsoever. However, I'm white, so I would expect others to have much stronger arguments against even private property flying.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Not to rain on any righteous speeches deploring theft and such, but it was the City of Philadelphia that took down this flag, not a mob of torch-waving socialists.

The role of the mob of torch-waving socialists, from what I understand, was to sit around waiting for the city to take it down. I presume this is the same incident Comrade Anklebiter refers to, because the sit-in he mentions would be a rather strange way to conduct actual thievery.

Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:
That said, I'm only personally in favor of burning others' flags when they are being openly flown on government property, and thus taxpayer funded.

Streetlight or traffic light or something, by the looks of it.

I can also answer Comrade Anklebiter's musings on why there was such a flag flying in Philadelphia. It's the state flag of Mississippi, which is designed to recall the Confederate national flag of 1863-1865 (i.e., both incorporate the Confederate battle flag in the same position).

Lou Diamond wrote:

From a historical viewpoint I wounder if many on the far left really know that the Flag that they call the Confederate flag really is not the Confederate flag but the Confederate Battle standard [ie. the Stars and Bars] The Confederate Flag is a Single white star on a solid blue field

There is a song about it [The Bonny Blue Flag] you can see an excellent rendetion of the song on youtube in a clip from the Movie Heroes and Generals.

I don't know about the far left, but perhaps the medium left can help. While this was not the case in the first two years of the rebellion, the Confederate battle flag was indeed incorporated into the design of the would-be national flag in 1863. The Confederacy went through a few different national flags before ultimately settling on one that incorporated the battle flag.

The battle flag was not in the actual *state* flag of Mississippi during the Civil War; it was adopted officially along with Jim Crow in 1894, unofficial again for most of the 20th century, and re-officialized in the 21st.


Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:
the flag of secessionist traitors

Who LOST the war.

But General Lee said, "We have fought this fight as long, and as well as we know how. We have been defeated. For us as a Christian people, there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation."

People seem to have forgotten that part.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

BLM protests in four more UK cities

Successful strike wins pay parity for foreign workers at refinery


Sorry I've been away. Earlier, unsubstantiated, reports of Mr. Comrade and Nancy Donovan at the DNC included accounts of the burning of a Confederate flag. As, it looks like, Citizen Coriat pointed out in my Comcast collections department-enforced absence from these boards, the flag turned out to be the Mississippi state flag and it wasn't burned, it was just removed. Put back up later, I believe.

Also, forgot to mention, Mr. Comrade reports that Abby Martin looks less rail-thin and ice queen in real life.


Can't remember what else has been going on since I last posted. The Nancy Donovan drama drove a, thus far, irreparable schism between Mr. Comrade and the Nigerian Princess (I feel like a Cassandra; as I told them, over and over again: the only way living together after you break up works is to not date other people; I mean, srly, the lease runs out in one month, they couldn't keep it in their pants for that long?!?); this has only been mollified by the realization that Nancy Donovan is, um, not mentally stable and Mr. Comrade has already broken up with her. Plus side is that Mr. Comrade realizes that he needs to do something about his low self-esteem or he's just going to end up bouncing from crazy woman who treats him like dirt to crazy woman who treats him like dirt (for the record, the Nigerian Princess is not crazy, but wants to date women, even though when she talks about it with me, gotta be honest, she doesn't sound like a woman who wants to date women). Anyway, messy, messy, messy.

Oh, that's right: There was this dude who was coming up to Lowell from Rhode Island for the Capital reader's circle who we hooked up with our Providence branch and it looks like he's our latest recruit. Woo hoo! And Mr. Comrade said the Capital reader's circle was a waste of time...

Also helped start a BLM chapter in Manchester, NH which was weird. I've been to BLM-esque stuff in Lowell and Boston and Brooklyn but it was only smack dab in the middle of New Hampshire, which is, IIRC, 93% white, that I've ever been to a BLM-esque type meeting that was actually, you know, MAJORITY BLACK. In New Hampshire. Weird.

Anyway, it's been a chore trying to keep the Nigerian Princess involved while she's fighting with Mr. Comrade (and I won't even mention the nastiness that Nancy Donovan tried to pull), but it's been moderately successful and tomorrow, La Principessa and I are taking her down to Brooklyn for what looks to be a fun march.


Comrade Anklebiter wrote:
Can't remember what else has been going on since I last posted.

Oh, duh. We helped collect 6,000 signatures to get Jill Stein on the NH ballot. Which is twice as many as we needed so, hopefully, most of them won't get invalidated.

God, that was boring.

Voting is still for ninnies!


Former Comrades of Mine in the News, well, Democracy Now!

Being internet-less for a couple of weeks means that I missed a lot of the recent news. I had heard, briefly, of Bill Bratton's resignation, but it was only when he showed up today at the Anti-Gentrification, Racism and Police Violence march in Brooklyn (man, that was f$@*in' hot!) that I realized that a former comrade of mine was one of the organizers of the action. Hats off, Comrade Nabil!

August 3rd: Amid City Hall Protests, NYPD Chief Bill Bratton Resigns, But "Broken Windows" Continues Nationwide

As for the march itself, Comrade Imani (who appears to be a member of Workers World} remembered me from the last meeting I attended with La Principessa and it was a source of amusement to me that he kept referring to people coming "all the way from Maine" ("New Hampshire!") for the march. Runner-up in amusing me was the number of women who didn't shave their legs but painted their toenails.

Pretty spirited march, despite the heat, that ended poignantly in front of the precinct station of the officers who killed Kimani Gray while a particularly foul-mouthed public defender led us in various chants before she closed out with the Assata mantra.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Was up in the "Do people enjoy non-medieval European fantasy settings?" thread, saw a post that I wanted to respond to, but couldn't bring myself to press "Submit Post."

Instead I copy-and-pasted it here:

Spoiler:

I tried really hard to restrain myself after reading Citizen Ashiel's original post, but self-restraint isn't one of my strong points, so:

Tales from the Shop Floor

Surly Italian Teamster and Puerto Rican Teamster are the best of work friends (I'm not sure how much they hang out off the clock) and, in the best (worst?) traditions of New England proletarian male-bonding, most of their relationship is based on busting each other's balls. This, alas, includes quite a bit of racist trash-talking on both of their parts. In fact, they used to make a ritual of it: new hire sits down in the office, they go over their litany of racist greatest hits, the supervisor tells them to knock it off, they keep at it until everyone in the room is laughing and/or shaking their heads.

Anyway, part of Surly Italian Teamster's stock material is his insistence that every Latinx comes from the "Dominican Republic of Mexico" and that there is no such place as Puerto Rico. This upsets Puerto Rican Teamster for two reasons: a) the obvious one and; b) he harbors the unfortunately-too-common chauvinism of Puerto Ricans against Mexicans and Dominicans. (This has only been slightly tempered by the lastest new hire, Afro-Dominican Teamster).

One day, Puerto Rican Teamster took leave because his girlfriend (known on the shop floor as "Big Mama" ever since Surly Italian Teamster went on the former's unattended phone and learned their terms of endearment for each other and, pretending to be Puerto Rican Teamster, asked her to marry him; his nickname, in case you're wondering, is "Mookie Mookie Bum Bum") is expecting their second child. Surly Italian Teamster was noticeably bummed out for the next five weeks and missed his partner-in-razzing terribly. One day he got to reminiscing nostalgically about his first encounter with Puerto Rican Teamster.

"So I was working in smallsort with [Random Hated Supervisor], that [creative and colorful expletives deleted], and he sent [Puerto Rican Teamster] to come work with me. So [PRT] comes up, and he says, 'How long you been here, Billy?' And I say, 'My name's not Billy.' And he sez 'Oh, sorry, I call all white people Billy.' So I sez to him, 'Yeah, well, I call all you people Mexican.'" Then they fought, said some more shiznit to each other, and simultaneously realized that they were both really inventive and creative with racist insults.

And thus was born a beautiful friendship.

The end.


Krensky wrote:

Yeah, I'm never going to believe a word Abby Martin says. She's either a moron or a liar. She was arrested because she got lost finding her way from the WF Center to FDR park and took a taxi because the road and trains were closed?

B%#+!~%%.

FDR park is all of 500 feet across the street from the WF center.

So, due to the word-of-mouth nature of my DNC posts, lack of internet access and lack of interest in who Citizen K(e)rensky believes, I never got around to looking into what Comrade Martin had to say about her detention.

Finally did, most of the articles seemed to be the same transcription, a couple of others, but couldn't find any where she claimed that she got lost going from the convention hall to the park. In fact, in one of the videos, she mentions the park is across from the hall.

I couldn't find any mention of where she claimed she was coming from (swank hotel? trendy restaurant? leftie swingers party?) but seeing as she claimed she wasn't credentialed for the DNC, I'm guessing it wasn't the Wells Fargo Center.

What a waste of time. I should've stuck to my guns and ignored Alex's mud-slinging.


Had been hearing some grumbling from local organizers for a while; glad they finally made it public:

BREAKING—Fight for $15 Organizers Tell SEIU: We Need $15 and a Union (Updated)


2 people marked this as a favorite.

The life of an old Bolshevik

Review of a bio of a personal fave of mine, Alexander Shlyapnikov


2 people marked this as a favorite.

'Kindred' by Octavia E. Butler is to be made into a graphic novel


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Working Class Party Secures Ballot Access In Michigan
Newest Party Certified Today

Along with an actual state-level candidate who can make a difference
Mary Anne Hering, running for State Board Of Education


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Thank you, Citizen Seas. I've never heard of the Working Class Party before. They have a good-looking website and I look forward to poking around in it.

For a Working Class Fight

Workers should not pay for the bosses' crisis!

F#*$in' a right.


It looks like the workers at the Trump Taj Mahal have managed to strike themselves out of a job.

The new owner who took it over from the previous failing establishment, rehired the old employees, but has decided to wash his hands of the business when they went on strike.

It's been a rough year for Atlantic City casinos as New York City and Phileadelphia have both gone into the casino buisness, with the Taj Mahal and the Revel both canceling their reopenings. leaving AC with 5 survivors left from the original 8.


Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

It looks like the workers at the Trump Taj Mahal have managed to strike themselves out of a job.

The new owner who took it over from the previous failing establishment, rehired the old employees, but has decided to wash his hands of the business when they went on strike.

It's been a rough year for Atlantic City casinos as New York City and Phileadelphia have both gone into the casino buisness, with the Taj Mahal and the Revel both canceling their reopenings. leaving AC with 5 survivors left from the original 8.

Yes, found out about that a couple of weeks ago.

Mr. Comrade's now taken up with a pre-op transman who was recruited by the local lesbian UNITE-HERE organizer as part of her "queer labor mafia" (not my words) and he went down to Atlantic City for a week.

Win some, lose some.


Comrade Anklebiter wrote:
the local lesbian UNITE-HERE organizer as part of her "queer labor mafia" (not my words)

Speaking of whom, just saw her tooting her union's horn regarding work at Yale that paid off in a recent NLRB decision:

NLRB: Graduate Students at Private Universities May Unionize

Organize the unorganized!


Speaking of tearing down Confederate flags, UMass Lowell started its semester today with Bree Newsome as the opening speaker.

Me and Mr. Comrade popped down to peddle some socialist newspapers and get a couple names to start a student club, but security wouldn't let us in without student id's. :(


The whole outrage over burning flags sounds really strange to me to be honest. As far as I understand, it is actually a valid symbolic gesture when you perceive the flag, respectively what it stands for, as being desecrated. Here is the excerpt from http://www.usflag.org/us.code36.html

"§176. Respect for flag

No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.
...
(k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning."

Ergo, if you feel that something that has happened has been so harmful to the reputation or the ideals of the United States that it desecrates the flag, the flag SHOULD be burned.


That is an interesting interpretation, Citizen Shaman, but although I am all for the burning of the flag of the United States of America, we were discussing burning, or more accurately, tearing down the flag, or rather, as Citizen Diamond would interject, the battle flag, of the Confederate States of America

Anyways, more Existential Comics:

The Young Hegelians


I checked on the bearded status of some of the other Young Hegelians, to disappointing results:

David Strauss
Bruno Bauer
Arnold Ruge
Moses Hess
August von Cieszkowski


*flicks the Vs at Hegel's ghost and adherents* You messed things up badly!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

I checked on the bearded status of some of the other Young Hegelians, to disappointing results:

David Strauss
Bruno Bauer
Arnold Ruge
Moses Hess
August von Cieszkowski

Come on, now. August was trying damn' hard, and Bruno had a pretty stupendous pair of sideburns.


I think some of them suffer from youthful, less hirsute, pix.

I found a later one of Bruno that's, indeed, glorious, and it's kind of hard to imagine that a guy named Moses Hess didn't grow a great big beard in later life.

Anyway, here's the famous picture of Marx as a young 'un in which he looks like Prince.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

I miss Prince. :(


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Comrade Anklebiter wrote:

I think some of them suffer from youthful, less hirsute, pix.

I found a later one of Bruno that's, indeed, glorious, and it's kind of hard to imagine that a guy named Moses Hess didn't grow a great big beard in later life.

Anyway, here's the famous picture of Marx as a young 'un in which he looks like Prince.

Lately I've added ancient-Mesopotamian-king beards to several of my characters. I have to say that it's been pretty great.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

India Engulfed in Red Banners as Workers Strike Back

Possibly, as the reports keep saying, the largest labor action in the history of the world.


Truly impressive, Comrade Ankelbiter.

2,251 to 2,300 of 2,749 << first < prev | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Gamer Life / Off-Topic Discussions / Comrade Anklebiter's Fun-Timey Revolutionary Socialism Thread All Messageboards