Clearly I was quite impressed by Tariq Ali. And I just followed up with a bit of research on Google and indeed he gets ridiculed in the media. Paul Holms in New Zealand and reviews in the Observer.I’m gathering together what I think might be informative about the man and his views using storyify.
Tariq Ali on Islam, the US China – Pakistan – Kim Hill interviews
Tariq Ali on Islam, the US China – Kim Hill interview
Very good to hear this interview today. It is incredible that a broad left perspective can be voiced so clearly but so little heeded. Listen to this interview, it is rare to get such crisp insight into world dynamics. It hard enough to understand the world, let alone when most of what we hear is designed to insulate us from insight. If people in New Zealand listened to these perspectives and engaged fully, even to challenge, then we would not be in Afganistan. No one wants a US empire and their assassinations, drones, war machine, and other antics of an empire in its death throws.
It is only a revolutionary socialist’s perspective that ever makes sense to me, but it is one that is largely invisible. Chomsky might be another speaker who has a world perspective worthy of discussion. The dominant media creates a climate where these voices are side-lined and certainly not discussed seriously. It is wonderful that this is in the public domain on New Zealand national Radio – I respect Kim Hill for at least listening without ridicule.
Right click to download, click to play:
Tariq Ali on Islam, the US China – Kim Hill interview
Also
Iraq Withdrawal? Don’t Take It to the Bank | MichaelMoore.com
US gives millions to the Taliban — RT
http://rt.com/usa/news/us-taliban-afghanistan-millions/
‘”A new report out of Washington estimates that around $360 million in US military money went into the hands of enemy insurgents in Afghanistan, including the Taliban.
“A special task force put together by General David Patraeus has estimated that more than a quarter of a billion dollars in US funds trickled into enemy hands while the American military attempted to support combatants and reconstruct war-torn Afghanistan towns. Through several faulty contracts, says the report, millions intended to be used for good instead found its way to the enemy and those with enemy-ties.”
Status Update by Wikileaks on Facebook
*Wikileaks* (wikileaks)
Posted at 2:03 AM August 17, 2011
Walter
Psyberspace
What is this blog about? It might be all over the place but this picture shows how my filter works.
At the heart is a patch where there is a psychological, or soulful aesthetic, cyberspace phenomena that makes the world a better place.
F. David Peat
Listened to F. David Peat on Future Primitive. I liked him after a while. Student of David Bohm.
His central metaphor (from item below):
In terms of social or economic systems, action would emerge out of the natural dynamics of the whole system, arising in a highly intelligent and sensitive way and consisting of small corrective movements and minimal interventions. Rather than seeking to impose change externally and at some particular point in a system, gentle action would operate within the dynamics and meanings of the entire system.
As usual made me wonder why he had not taken on board Marx on these questions. The system is biased, not natural.
Found this item: Gentle Action_Surviving Chaos and Change.pdf
Later: Friday, 20 May, 2016
Listened to a podcast about Hannah Arendt Partially Examined Life
The social in here schema is natural, not political which distinguishes us from animals. Bohm may have the same idea.
Not sure I’ve got it but the whole episode is interesting on social roles.
Misses the idea of “bringing your self into a social role”??
DCA Cancer Cure?
Ok, big pharmaceutical companies are not picking this up, but surely if there is something in it, some sort of open source thing would do the trick? Kickstarter? And if the FDA wont approve it, there are other countries who will, surely?
socialscapegoat.com » DCA Cancer Cure?:
DCA Cancer Cure? Posted by Claire Connelly in Technology Leave it to pharmaceutical companies to prioritise profit over curing the second leading cause of death in America and third leading cause of death in Australia alone. Dr. Evangelos Michelaksis discovered that Dichloroacetic Acid (or DCA) – an odourless, colourless, inexpensive, relatively non-toxic, small molecule which was once used to cure rare inherited metabolic diseases, could potentially be used as a non-invasive cancer cure that has zero side effects. When he added it to the water of mice and rats who were given human cancers, Michelaksis found that over a period as short as three weeks, the cancer growths had shrunk by up to 70%. Unfortunately, because DCA isn’t patented, the pharmaceutical companies have no interest in producing the drug:
Next
Evolution does not happen evenly. It may be gradual, but it goes step to step. Sometimes a small change opens up a whole new range of possibilities.
• the opposable thumb
• fire
• alphabet
• law
• printing
• Internet
• next?
I’ve left out a few, but you get the idea, some things change everything.
Ways of organising ourselves into groups to educate and heal have evolved over centuries. There are modalities like psychoanalysis, and TA and Alcoholics Anonymous and the Red Cross and so on, that all have methodologies and the persist with a sort of DNA that allows these ideas to hold together and spread. My hunch is that one of the big changes coming up, and needed, is that there will be a new way to speed up the process that has been working in an ad hoc way. Imagine there were ways to find tool kits online for running groups that were freely available and could be edited by their users (Wikipedia style). Imagine that these could be classified and rated, and they each had their advocates and practitioners who beleived their group could make the world a better place.
I can imagine such a social network emerging from the need to change on the one hand , and our ability to learn from Wikipedia, Facebook and Linux on the other as well as the fact there are already thousands of thriving forms that each in their own way work towards major social change. Could there be one network that transforms all of this into something new? I say one network because some things tend to towards there being only one, and one works best, for example Google, Amazon and the Internet itself is the best example.
Crazy World
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Society | Vanity Fair:
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.