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Went on the (seemingly annual) Save Our NHS march in Leeds today, which was also the world premiere of our branch's super swanky new banner. Very well attended, but it usually is, and the Healyites were also there, late of Michael Pablo's fair, what a scene. I bought a pamphlet off them about Brexit.
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Catching up on the news I missed this week: General strike in French Guiana, South Korean president arrested, Venezuelan HIgh Court stripping the legislature of power, etc., etc.
Also, follow up from Vermont:
Is ICE Targeting Undocumented Activists for Arrest? Organizers Speak Out After 11 Days in Jail
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Released Vermont undocumented workers leaders protest Ben and Jerry's.
Migrant Justice Protest During Free Cone Day
Check your local media for local actions, but I chose this one focusing on Chicago:
Fight for $15 and the Movement for Black Lives Join Forces on the Anniversary of MLK’s Assassination
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Ahoy, comrades! That's right, it's me, Comrade Anklebiter! Time to share some fun socialist news.
Bernie Sanders Planning National Tour To Boost Candidates, Grassroots Party Activism
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The Thursday episode of BBC Radio 4's In Our Time will be about Rosa Luxemburg.
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Ahoy, comrades! That's right, it's me, Comrade Anklebiter! Time to share some fun socialist news.
Bernie Sanders Planning National Tour To Boost Candidates, Grassroots Party Activism
Hmm. Well, I hate the Democrats, and I hate scabs, but I have to like any post that introduces yet another parody hommage to moi.
O-oh! Hey, Comrade Anklebiter! Fancy, um, seeing you here! I—I thought you were still striking for better wages from Paizo Forums H.Q. Figured you wouldn't mind me...weighing in here. Ha ha. Ha.
*Starts backing away*
Have a cup of tea, little scaly Comrade in disguise. That'll sort you out.
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Some educational materials for the DoodleScab
1917-2017 Russian Revolution Centenary International Online Lecture Series
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Professor Sue posted this picture of an odd Christian proselytizing banner. Third down on the right.
Many thoughts come to mind while perusing the list, but the one that nags at me is why do they spell it "M-----baters"?
Some educational materials for the DoodleScab
1917-2017 Russian Revolution Centenary International Online Lecture Series
Thank you, I have been neglecting my centenary-marking duties.
O-oh! Hey, Comrade Anklebiter! Fancy, um, seeing you here! I—I thought you were still striking for better wages from Paizo Forums H.Q. Figured you wouldn't mind me...weighing in here. Ha ha. Ha.
*Starts backing away*
'S all right. A big part of my current activities is trying to influence the NH branch of the Democratic Socialists of America to ditch the Democrats and become communists, so I guess I had better pay better attention to what the Berniecrats are up to in the Resistance. Keep 'em comin', Comrade Scab!
Also, I'm not on strike at the moment, but Mrs. Ex-Comrade, who I shall hereby redub "Comrade Landlord," came by over the weekend to exact some feudal services from her tenants. Well, Mr. Comrade, anyway, not me, I wasn't sticking around for any of that f*&#ing bullshiznit, unh uh. And none of that cool "first night"-type stuff, neither; apparently Mr. Comrade had to fix her fence, pick up her trash, yuck.
Anyway, she also took her computer to Boston so we've gone from having it hooked up to the flatscreen tv, which was awesome!, to doing everything on some piddling Chromebook we scored from one of our public educations connections--your tax dollars at work, America!--and it's made internet browsing and streaming much less fun. Point being, I might not be around as much as I used to, so feel free, comrades, to fill my page with all the leftie articles you can find!
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Labour leader pledges to introduce £10 minimum wage
Which, I believe, is not far off the $15 US comrades have been fighting for.
'Countess of Boston' might be a good alternative name for Comrade Landlord if she's trying to exact feudal services from the Peasant Masses of New England.
And I was wondering about that sign, too. Do you get points for each one that applies to you, and is it weighted, so 'Female MMA fighter' is worth 10, 'D*$& with Bike' 15, 'Jew who disobeys Jesus' 25 and so on? I think I'd probably be on around 50, given that I am both a Devil Healer and The Pope.
Finally, I think it's spelled 'M---bater' to show what happens to your r---ing and w---ing skills if you do it too f----ently.
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Comrade Samnell's response to photo:
"These are like the easiest going religious people ever: you can obey Hellfire or Jesus. Either's cool and they have a list of all the kinds of people they welcome."
Readings for presentation on "The National Question" that I have to give this weekend:
Lenin: The Socialist Revolution and the Rights of Nations to Self-Determination
Lenin: The Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up
Woods and Grant: Marxism and the National Question
(I briefly considered the same work by ol' J.V. but decided against it.)
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I'm sticking with "distinguished Goblin family" until proven otherwise.
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Continued discussion of this burning issue of our times led me to google search. 15 seconds later I discovered that "Ankle biters" is actually a recurring motif in these odd proselytizing banners.
From which I gleaned:
2005-05-17 21:51:16 Anybody have an idea what they meant by "ankle biters" and why they make them sick? I thought ankle biters referred to children (who you'd think would do less sinning than the lot of us). I'm confused, anybody have a guess? —AbbyLawson
2005-05-17 22:12:35 An "ankle biter" as they used it was someone who quipped a comment as they passed by, but didn't stick around for the guy to attack and yell at. —JeyKottalam
2005-05-17 22:12:35 I asked him this exact question. He told me that an ankle-biter is like a little dog that just makes a lot of noise and tries to bite your ankles, that an ankle-biter is someone who throws out judgments, comments, and random words that are intended to flame the recipient without encouraging respectful conversation. Although this is, in fact, what most people do to them (harass)... it seemed to me that these guys weren't aware that this is exactly what they do as well. Another interesting point I'd like to bring up, is that one of the guys claimed that being liked was something that would very much frighten him. He cited passages from the bible, wherein jesus said that true messages must be spread through harsh resistance. He then said that if he went anywhere and everybody liked him, that he would feel quite scared. This is really interesting, if not for the message but for psychology. What would cause such a self-concept? —MichaelGiardina
Sounds a lot like my posting style, actually.
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Global Capitalism: Monthly Economic Update APR 12 2017
7:30 Tonight!
Judson Memorial Church
239 Thompson St, NYC
These are great lectures about Socialism by esteemed economist, Richard Wolff. If you can't attend tonight's lecture, or just want to know more, past updates, and a lot of other great content is free to view online.
Readings for presentation on "The National Question" that I have to give this weekend:
Lenin: The Socialist Revolution and the Rights of Nations to Self-Determination
Lenin: The Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up
Woods and Grant: Marxism and the National Question
(I briefly considered the same work by ol' J.V. but decided against it.)
Woops. J.V.'s work was entitled The National Question and Marxism.
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Comrade Anklebiter's Unbridled Extravagant Capitalist Luxury Thread
The Doodlemobile has been retired.
:(
I'm thinking of parking it on Comrade Landlord's vegetable garden and letting all its fluids render her land barren. Don't know if Mr. Comrade will let me do it, but anyway...
Spent the last couple of days visiting used car lots and looking at even older Lincoln Towncars (mine was a '97) with less mileage, but they always ended up being just sold.
Finally broke down and bought a 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis. It's not as awesome as a Towncar, but it does have a cassette player, which, really, was all I was looking for.
Huzzah!
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[Pours 40oz. of antifreeze on curb in memory of Towncar.]
[moment of silence]
All hail the Grand Marquis de Sade!
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Does it have a built-in whip rack?
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Everyone has a built-in whip rack!
Robert Mapplethorpe Children's Museum Celebrates Grand Opening
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WaPo article on the meteoric rise of the Communist candidate in the upcoming election in France. Melanchon - according to this article - has pledged to found a "Sixth Republic". Interestingly, this fellow appears to have more followers on YouTube than the rest of the candidates combined and has gone so far as to field a browser game called "Fiscal Kombat" in which players whack bankers with a boss appearing in the guise of the French director of the IMF.
Have been watching from afar; this past weekend at branch I had to explain the Five French Republics to the youngsters, got most of it right, but I thought DeGaulle and the Fifth had to do with the '68 revolution instead of the collapse of the French colonial system.
Anyway, not too conversant with Mélenchon, but I'm pretty sure he isn't a Communist. I mean, maybe in some vague way, but he's a former Socialist Party member who left to found something called the Left Party and now, I believe, is running on the ticket of "Unsubmissive France," a coalition of which the French Communist Party (PCF) is allied for this election.
If this seems mind-blowing to American readers, it should be remembered that the PCF was in the governing coalition as recently as 2002. It should also be noted, that the PCF has been a leading contender for "Worst Communist Party Ever" for years running and would probably have already won this accolade if it wasn't for the existence of the Communist Party USA.
So says a Yankee, anyway. Got any French Paizonian lurkers in this thread?
Just the title of this talk is worth posting
"Revolutionary Change and the Prospects for Democracy: Appraising the Impact of Leninist Violence on Postcommunist Regime Outcomes"
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General election in June.
Well, well, well.
General election in June.
Well, well, well.
I hereby call for a snap election in the United States!
Even if voting is for Ninnies.
Haven't been able to follow the Brexit thread as close as I would like, but from what I'm gathering it could lead to: the unraveling of the European Union; the dissolution of the United Kingdom; the collapse of the Conservative Party.
All sounds good to me.
[Crosses fingers]
Similar vibes coming from France and Italy. Should matters in the UK, France and Italy go sideways as they might, the EU will be, what, primarily sustained by Germany?
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With a 2-year-old at home, I end up watching way more children's movies than I would otherwise prefer. Baby Gersen's latest favorite is The Lion King, which I hadn't seen in 20 years, and I was dismayed upon re-watching it. Here's a synopsis:
Everything is awesome and perfect under the monarchy, until a populist usurper lets in all the illegal immigrants, who immediately become welfare queens when the state forces the lionesses to hunt for them. This fails, and everyone has to stand in Soviet-style bread lines. Meanwhile, the heir to the monarchy becomes convinced by the church that his eating grubs with the hoi-polloi is somehow bad for fabric of society. He goes back, and the new religious monarchy kicks out all the illegals and builds a wall, and prosperity magically comes back through the power of trickle-down economics and removal of church-state separation.
I was surprised to find how disgusted I was, and have since been trying to steer her to other movies. Luckily, she seems to have re-kindled her interest in Minions, which, while also pro-monarchy, at least plays out from the viewpoint of the proletariat.
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I haven't seen any of those, but I approve the message.
A visiting nine-year-old was watching Zootopia at my house not too long ago and I enjoyed it enough to finish it after he left. Also, E.T., which still got laughs out of me when they were explaining Dungeons and Dragons to their mother and, later, when Michael was singing an Elvis Costello song.
Oh, what a surprise, the Coloured Princess from earlier in the thread gets a pic in The Boston Globe...about petty-bourgeois artisan hipsters complaining about their taxes.
Lowell’s artist-friendly reputation takes a hit with tools-materials tax
More Lowell fun:
The Lowell Education Justice Alliance is planning their next meeting for the beginning of May and used a photo of the following sign for their event page:
Education Is a Right Not a Priviledge
I keep trying to think of ways to point out the irony without coming across like a dick.
Ar gluorius laeder quoting Lenin, apparently
'Yes, but why are your hair, your eyes and your face all the same colour? Have you been putting colloidal silver in your gin again?'
For the last month or so we've been hitting the UMass Lowell campus trying to build student solidarity for the May 1st Day Without an Immigrant march in Lawrence.
It was only yesterday that I was informed by a fetching young hipster/activist woman that I had never met that, although she very much wanted to come, May 1st was finals week.
[Sighs]
I wish I had known that before we started doing this, although, I guess, we probably would have done the same thing anyway.
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Still attempting to subtly sway Toddler Gersen's TV viewing away from xenophobe divine-right monarchies (The Lion King) and tales idolizing pastoral gentry (Winnie the Pooh), I'm capitalizing on her interest in hyperkinetic mayhem to sneak in Jackie Chan movies. Last night I streamed Legend of the Drunken Master on Netflix, and was pleased to see Jackie absolutely beat the snot out of a bunch of anti-union strikebreakers. Toddler Gersen loudly expressed appreciation of the outrageous fire-walking stunts ("He fell in the fidedworks!"), alerting Mrs Gersen to what was going on and spurring her to immediately toddle Toddler Gersen off to bed. Nevertheless, I shall eventually prevail.
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I had been meaning to watch Legend... (never saw any of Jackie Chan's pre-Hollywood breakthrough movies; come to think of it I don't think I've seen many of his post-Hollywood movies either) on Netflix and now it rockets to the top of the queue!
Louise Michel - the rebel France could not crush
Stealing for Facebook.
Two articles from the Seattle Weekly and a series of comics about Comrade Kshama all in one link. Haven't yet read the "Marxist Critique of Identity Politics," so I don't vouch for it.
More 1917 Centenary leaflets:
‘For a general strike against autocracy’
March 12, 2017 (Petersburg Interdistrict Committee)
To the Peoples of the Entire World (Chkheidze and Sukhanov)
Funny anecdote about Sukhanov: He was one of Martov's Menshevik Internationalists; his wife was a Bolshevik. When the Bolsheviks planned the seizure of power in October, they did so at Sukhanov's house. Legend goes that he was busy at the Soviet, was going to head home, but his wife said something along the lines of "No, it's okay, dear, I know you're busy, just sleep in the office." Hee hee!
‘Mandate for Soviet Elections’ (Pravda)
April 1917: Lenin’s arrival in Russia ("A previously untranslated reminiscence by Grigory Zinoviev")
The Combahee River Collective, Ignatiev and Allen, and "Why are there no POC in this meeting?" Well, I haven't read it thoroughly yet, but it's striking all the right Comrade Anklebiter Confirmation Bias points.
Asad Haider:
I’ve written a little about the history of the term. It comes out of some groups that split off from the Communist Party in the ’50s, and really came to prominence in the’ 60s. Its primary architects were Theodore Allen and Noel Ignatiev, and they called it “white skin privilege.” The idea of white skin privilege was that white workers had been bribed. The American ruling class, especially the Southern planter class dating all the way back to the 17th century, had bribed white workers with greater social status and privileges so they would not unite with black workers—from enslaved workers in the 17th century to super-exploited black wage workers in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s—and pose a challenge to the ruling class.
The idea was that white skin privilege was actually harmful to white people, because despite the fact that they were granted some advantages over black people, they ended up even more entrenched in their condition of exploitation precisely by accepting these advantages. As a result, they did not build a movement across racial boundaries to fight their common oppression. The fact that the idea of white privilege is used today to show why we can’t possibly unify—that’s a reversal of the core idea.
I cringed at the first half of the last sentence, too, as the weakest part of the blurb. I don't know of any theoretical claims of white privilege theory to justify that assertion, but it does pop up in practice often.
I'll append the next paragraph:
That’s quite an amazing phenomenon, that it’s turned into essentially its opposite. Now in an organizing meeting, any discussion that takes place between a white person and a person of color will be tense and guarded, because at any time the white person may be accused of white privilege, and thus denounced for bringing irreconcilable political interests into the group. That is a very different kind of politics, and not one that tends to result in open strategic discussions, building trust between activists, or effectively broadening towards a mass movement. But socialists have to understand that this also cuts in the other direction! If accusations of white privilege are made, it’s usually a sign that something is missing in that organizing.
---
This has been a common complaint by the comrades, of all colors, since at least Occupy. As a white man I never would have articulated it like that, but he's brown so I guess he can say what he wants. Don't recall if I went into this before, but recently I attended an event at UML with a speaker from Black Lives Matter Boston (I, alas, forget his name at the moment) and Nino Brown of the Party for Socialism and Liberation/Mass Action Against Police Brutality. I had already known that Mass Action was a leftie split from BLM and that the latter had hurled accusations of "white privilege" against the former but I didn't know, until a conversation with Nino after the meeting, that the split occurred back in the beginning of the movement when Nino and his comrade (both black men) were elected co-chairs of the meeting over the BLM speaker and his colleague. The fact that Nino had white comrades was enough, apparently, to call into question his credentials. This is, admittedly, word-of-mouth, but I believe it.
I, of course, live in one of the whitest areas of the country, so my exposure to these kinds of white privilege-baiting has been limited, and, ironically, always came from middle class white professionals rather than people of color. I understand, and expect, suspicion of white lefties from people of color and counsel patient explanation and proving solidarity with action not words, so it never bothered me, but hearing it from well-off white people has always gotten my goat.
His contention that white skin privilege started as a Maoist theory about how white workers were being held down by racism and has been turned into a liberal theory about how all white people, including white workers, benefit from racism is one that I agree with and have posted about often