It's early Friday (my Saturday) afternoon, I already drove to Hooksett to get the keys to the Plumbers' and Steamfitters' hall for tomorrow's "What's Next?" meeting, Mr. Comrade's on a nature-walk date and won't be around until evening when we go to the LGBTQ+ mixer to rabble rouse for the rally in Lowell on Sunday, half my branch (including Comrade Who Was Published in Jacobin and the Nigerian Princess) quit to go start a New Hampshire branch of the Socialist Party USA, the other half are at school or work (well, Young Gay Autistic Comrade's probably out having adventures, but I had to chaperone him through last night's International Trans Remembrance event in Lowell which he showed up to drunk and then proceeded to smoke a joint during the march--"But it's legal now!" "Not until December 15th!"--and then passed out at the name-reading; he's a lot to handle, I think I'll see him soon enough), me and the Black Goblin don't work the same shift anymore so I hardly see him, my D&D group fell apart, like, seven months ago when I refused--after eight years--to be the Dungeon Master anymore, La Principessa and I aren't on speaking terms at the moment and now I can't talk about politics with any of my Paizo friends!
Guess I should go rake the lawn or something.
:(
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
What did I miss?
Maybe we need some kind of play by post alternative or something? My gaming group fell apart a while ago, and one of the former members (who was on Paizo a few years back) is moving out of the country today because of... recent events.
I recall back in 2000 (leans back in rocking chair) when a similarly heated election caused a lot of strife in an online community I was part of in those days. I wish I could say that everyone had a good laugh, and everything got back to normal, but well, lot's of stuff was changing, and that community and the world became a different place.
I'm happy to put the political stuff back into the smouldering dumpster for a while, and get my mind on other stuff that isn't depressing. I would also like to hear some opinions from posters and moderators about making discourse here more inclusive. I thought that some of the ideas about arguing your 'opponents' position were good, and another poster had some good stuff about not "arguing in bad faith". I also give credit to Kobold Cleaver for introducing me to the term Edgelord, which I thought was very funny.
In the mean time, here are two 5 gallon jerrycans of "vitamin G" to help you with your leaf problem...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Politics can be discussed... We'll just have to do it IN CODE, like we were ACTUAL CARBONARI (nb: c19th century revolutionaries, not pasta dishes, although we can be pasta dishes too, I suppose)
Just worked out what Vitamin G is, probably; we'd call it Vitamin P, which sounds much, much worse, somehow.
What the heck happened around here?
Hope things work out well, CA.
Thank you, Mad Comrade.
The dude abides.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I just came back from an SDS rally, where Alan Haber (one of the original Port Huron Statement authors) opened his speech with "Power To The People"
Do not give up hope Comrade. We can talk in code and they'll never suspect.
Hallo all you spooks monitoring this thread.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Are SDS still going?
Good news!
If the mods are reading this, SDS stands for Sausages in Damp Spandex and has nothing to do with p*l*t*c* at all.
Oh! I see what you mean!
No, you're not Patrick Swayze.
It's not Patrick Swayze Christmas Time yet, anyway.
We're looking forward to your range of artisan flowerpots and shepherdess figurines, though
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
So far I've perfected Clay Spattered Walls, and Anatomically Correct Amorphous Blobs.
I figure I'll start the bidding at $5,000.
I need to write a paper about Lincoln's motives concerning the Emancipation Proclamation. I've spent about 4 hours on this over the past 3 days and all I've managed to do is rewrite roughly 100 words.
I hope your life gets better soon, CA.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Alpha delta sigma, zeta zeta, omega beta theta, sigma sigma alpha sigma.
Thank you, Sharoth. My life is fine, I just want my old thread back. Oh yeah, and workers revolution.
Vive le Galt!!!
In a bizarre example of history’s sense of humor in action, the election of Donald Trump coincided precisely with the 99th anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power. No, I’m not kidding: To the day. That event is often called the October Revolution, but when you coordinate the dates on the old-style Russian calendar used at the time with the calendar we use now, the fall of the Winter Palace in Petrograd to Bolshevik forces happened on Nov. 8, 1917.
from
We can talk in code and they'll never suspect.
Hallo all you spooks monitoring this thread.
Unos, dos, tres, catorce!
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
UNITE-HERE Local 26 victory party for the UML dining hall workers was pretty fun, the Lowell Queer Labor Mafia was out in force, had some plantains and other Dominican food, Professor Bob Forrant is always a pleasure, and the punk rock lass who made eyes at me at the UMass Feminist Club meeting shyly confessed that she had been trying to get my attention for half an hour before I said "Hello." Ended with a rousing rendition of "Solidarity Forever" even though most of the attendees didn't know the words/
On the way back to the car, we ran into Mr. Comrade's new girlfriend and her sister. Sister attached herself to me in what I thought was an attempt to give Mr. Comrade and his new girlfriend room to talk, but, later, when Mr. Comrade told his new girlfriend to apologize for his rudeness in not saying "hi" to the sister, new girlfriend replied that her sister hadn't said "hi" to him because she was distracted by me.
Hmmm.
La Principessa better make up her mind soon.
Manchester "What Next?" wasn't exactly on fire, but we did turn out a few new faces.
Now I gotta go make flyers for the Lowell rally before I go to work.
Anklebiter out!
--No time to comment on Bannon's alleged "Leninism," but I remember Karl Rove was alleged to be an admirer as well.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
That whirring sound is presumably the well-preserved Vladimir Ilyich doing 1500 rpm in his glass coffin.
¡Viva la revolución!
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
That whirring sound is presumably the well-preserved Vladimir Ilyich doing 1500 rpm in his glass coffin.
Would that be the Perpetual Proletariat Powering Process?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Lowell rally went pretty well, from what I hear. Young Gay Autistic Comrade's BF made his debut speech in front of a crowd of 200 and Mr. Comrade said it was great.
Afterwards, eighty or so peeps retired to Mill Number Five, Lowell's ground zero for hipster gentrification, and had a long meeting about what to do next. Mr. Comrade proposed a mass protest on Inauguration Day, as per the party line. Other proposals were also made and they were all dutifully listed on a easel. The facilitators then revived an old Occupy ranked voting with stickers system. When no one was looking, longtime (well, two years) fellow traveler, Lebanese-American Women Who Is Always Inebriated, gave the comrades extra strips of stickers and Mr. Comrade's proposal carried.
The system is rigged!
Don't know what's happening this week. Lots of overtime, I imagine. Will be the first year in a while that we didn't organize a Black Friday Wal-Mart picket, but I see that there are a few going on in the area. We'll see.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The facilitators then revived an old Occupy ranked voting with stickers system. When no one was looking, longtime (well, two years) fellow traveler, Lebanese-American Women Who Is Always Inebriated, gave the comrades extra strips of stickers and Mr. Comrade's proposal carried.
The system is rigged!
Don't know what's happening this week. Lots of overtime, I imagine. Will be the first year in a while that we didn't organize a Black Friday Wal-Mart picket, but I see that there are a few going on in the area. We'll see.
"All stickers are equal, but some are more equal than others?"
Running Subtheme: Standing Rock
Watched some livestreaming on FB last night of DAPL protesters getting hit with water cannons and concussion grenades. Haven't seen any articles yet.
EDIT: WATER CANNONS FIRED AT WATER PROTECTORS IN FREEZING TEMPERATURES INJURE HUNDREDS
In other such news, former CAJE members, Anarcho-Syndicalist Hipster and Local Teacher-Turned-Rappel-From-a-Bridge-To-Stop-the-Oil-Trains-Environmentalist -Direct Actioneer are speeding across the midwest in a Penske truck filled with supplies for Standing Rock collected throughout northern New England. On their list of needed supplies they listed Marlboro Reds and Camels, so I perversely donated a carton of cigarettes.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Mr. Rorty claims that the left, both cultural and political, eventually abandoned economic justice in favor of identity politics, leaving too many people feeling freaked out or ignored. A prescient book from 2007
“The cultural Left has a vision of an America in which the white patriarchs have stopped voting and have left all the voting to be done by members of previously victimized groups.” “This Left wants to preserve otherness rather than ignore it,”
An interesting read about erosion of the will for progress on the left.
Achieving Our Country
Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America
By Richard Rorty
159 pages. Harvard University Press. $23.50.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hmm. Well, it seems like pushing the envelope into getting threadlocked territory, but recent article in Jacobin about union staffers' complaints about the Dems' GOTV campaign in the Rust Belt:
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That's a nice compliment to this story:
Heh. That was originally published in Jacobin, too.
Jacobin for those that might not know, is the house organ of the hipster wing of the Democratic Socialists of America, who recently recruited Ex-Mrs. Comrade and her new partner.
Now, off to work!
Didn't realise Barbara Ehrenreich was in the DSA. I always thought she was a Maoist.
*Turns back on Humanity and decides to communicate in inarticulate Tankie grunts from hereon in*
Ugh!
She was married to a Teamster, though.
Cornel West, too. Ex-Mrs. Comrade claims that you no longer have to join the Democrats to join DSA, but I think she's just making that up so we won't call her reformist scum.
Responding to Facebook comments about Edmund Wilson brought me to this essay about the only other book of his that I ever read. Probably should go into the Good Books thread, but whatever.
“Patriotic Gore is Not Really Much Like Any Other Book by Anyone”
Revisiting one of the most important and confounding books ever written about the Civil War.
US teens often forced to trade sex work for food, study finds
"The findings raise questions over the legacy of Bill Clinton’s landmark welfare-reform legislation 20 years ago as well as the spending priorities of Congress and the impact of slow wage growth. Evidence of teenage girls turning to 'transactional dating' with older men is likely to cause particular alarm."
But, you know, birds are chirping and folks are going to work...
Nov. 29: #FightFor15 workers in 340 cities are going ON STRIKE and conducting nationwide acts of civil disobedience.
It'd be much more impact if they did it on November 25th in the US.
Not saying you're wrong, but the 29th apparently marks the fourth anniversary of when NYC fast food workers first walked out.
Fight for 15 plans 'most disruptive' wage protest and strike after Thanksgiving
Thousands of low-wage airport and fast-food workers across US plan to protest on fourth anniversary of first major action in light of Trump’s election victory
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Hey Anklebiter, do you still have a working PS2? Want a couple of subversive books? PM me your address!
Alas, no. It hasn't worked for about a year, year and a half now.
:(
Thank you, though.
Well, have the weekend sorted, I think:
Thursday: 47th Annual National Day of Mourning 2016 and then a late Thanksgiving meal because I am a hypocrite.
Friday: Black Friday Protest which will hopefully combine the New Hampshire union activists, the still-running Occupy Seacost and a new group that popped up called Seacoast Young Socialists.
Saturday: Anti Trump Rally I'll probably be at work, but we need to get back to Keene to consolidate our second Young Gay Autistic Comrade (yes, we have two of them now). Although, tbh, I think we're gonna try and pawn him off on Worcester. They're an hour closer than we are.
Tuesday: See if I can convince the young and unemployed comrades to trek down to Boston for the Fight for $15 strike.
Oh yeah, and overtime, overtime, overtime.
For Comrade In the Closet, if he's out there--
PSL in action:
Hoping to Spark Activism, Anti-Trump Protesters March from Harlem to the Bronx
Also, Running Subtheme: Standing Rock
Don't Be Passive Observers of Last Night's Terrorization in Standing Rock: Here's What You Can Do
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well, I only gave them cigarettes, so there's that.
"Tankie" is a term that comes out of the Communist Party of Great Britain (or just Britain, I forget, Comrade Longears might know better) and refers to those western communists who, during the 1956 revolution in Hungary (and, later, the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968) supported the Soviet Union and called for "sending in the tanks."
In the case of PSL, and the group they came from, the Workers World Party, their progenitor, Sam Marcy, was the head of the Buffalo, NY branch of the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party who split with said Trotskyists over the latter's defense of the Hungarian Revolution, so "tankie" still fits. Both groups, PSL and WW, are often called "Stalinists" by their detractors, but members of each one have confided to me that they are "internally Trotskyist."
Nowadays, it is used more figuratively. In the case of PSL, their opposition to US imperialism in Syria, for example, tends to bleed over into defense of the Assad regime and repeating Ba'athist talking points; glorification of Mao and Maoist China; they defended the post-Maoist Chinese regime during the Tiananmen incident; I'm sure there are more.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's normally applied by Trotskyists/Anarchists/(possibly) Social Democrats to anyone in the traditionally pro-Soviet/pro-Chinese left, i.e. the CPGB (it was CPGB in those days; CPB wasn't founded until '88), CPUSA, etc., basically as a term of abuse; 'Stalinist' is often applied to the same people by the various denominations listed, regardless of whether they are or not.
I've not heard it applied to any UK Trotskyist groups, or groups of that ilk, apart from the Economic, Philosophical and Social Review folks, but I don't doubt that it gets thrown around.
EDIT: IIRC, the CPGB opposed sending tanks into Czechoslovakia (but not into Hungary). What a difference 12 years makes...
The Green Party has successfully raised sufficient funds to ask for a recount in Wisconsin. The deadline is this Friday, and they passed the mark around 2 am last night.
The fundraising continues to pay for recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, with Monday and Wednesday deadlines, respectively. PM me for a link if you can't find Jill's campaign website.
Greens have, in the past, helped launch several 'election integrity' initiatives, getting at least one election official in Ohio jailed for fraud.
Mainstream press (except BBC and HuffPo) have not yet reported this, and it probably won't actually change the outcome. But it's sure to send The Cheeto into a rant and it does address some statistical concerns about vote total anomalies.
US teens often forced to trade sex work for food, study finds
"The findings raise questions over the legacy of Bill Clinton’s landmark welfare-reform legislation 20 years ago as well as the spending priorities of Congress and the impact of slow wage growth. Evidence of teenage girls turning to 'transactional dating' with older men is likely to cause particular alarm."
But, you know, birds are chirping and folks are going to work...
I'm not a fan of Bill's welfare reform, but are we making the claim that this kind of thing never happened before that was passed? That seems kind of naive.
I'm not a fan of Bill's welfare reform, but are we making the claim that this kind of thing never happened before that was passed? That seems kind of naive.
I can't speak for Anklebiter, but I think this article has some relevant statistics about the economic aspects related to poverty, and "extreme poverty".
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
So you're aware, I wrote my first paper criticizing the 1996 welfare reform bill back in 1996. I'm not defending that at all. I'm calling that first article cheap and insubstantial. Yes, the plight of those people is awful, and it does them a disservice by explaining the causes poorly IMO.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Walmart ordered to pay truck drivers $54m in minimum wage suit
"Walmart intentionally failed to pay hundreds of truck drivers in California the minimum wage, a federal jury decided on Wednesday, awarding the drivers $54m in damages and opening up the retail giant to penalties."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So you're aware, I wrote my first paper criticizing the 1996 welfare reform bill back in 1996. I'm not defending that at all. I'm calling that first article cheap and insubstantial. Yes, the plight of those people is awful, and it does them a disservice by explaining the causes poorly IMO.
The article's cheap and insubstantial because I pulled out one line that mentioned Clinton's welfare reforms? Man, you are touchy.
I'd continue to ignore you because we have already determined that your thoughts are worthless, but I guess it'd be rude to ignore you in my own thread.
Have a Happy National Mourning Day.
Speaking of which National Mourning Day was aight, if somber.
Leftist Bingo-wise: Both wings of Marcyite tankies (including La Principessa's friend Comrade Imani from Flatbush), black nationalists, Black Israelites, who aren't really leftists but you don't see them everyday, some Cliffites, and we were the only Taafeites.
Up early tomorrow for Black Friday, woo hoo!