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Socialist Worker on bin Laden killing

Cheering for war and empire | SocialistWorker.org:

Cheering for war and empire

Crowds celebrate outside the White House as Barack Obama announces the killing of Osama bin Laden

Crowds celebrate outside the White House as Barack Obama announces the killing of Osama bin Laden

THE ASSASSINATION of Osama bin Laden is being celebrated as rough justice by U.S. politicians across the spectrum and a mainstream media that is glorying in every grisly detail.

It is nothing of the sort. Bin Laden’s death did not make the world “safer” and “a better place,” as Barack Obama claimed in his televised speech Sunday night. On the contrary, this political killing will be used to make the world less safe–by building support for more violence committed by the U.S. government in the name of the “war on terror.”

The hunt for bin Laden while he was alive was never about justice, but justification. Revenge for al-Qaeda’s September 11 attacks was the most effective selling point for U.S. wars and occupations that weren’t designed to make the world safe from terrorism, but to safeguard the flow of Middle East oil and ensure the continued domination of the U.S. empire.

Now that bin Laden is dead, this former U.S. ally-turned-public enemy number one will be exploited again–his killing proclaimed as a vindication of 10 years of bloodshed on a scale far more horrible than anything al-Qaeda was ever capable of.

News of bin Laden’s death produced an outburst of jingoism and anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S. The New York Daily News printed “Rot in hell!” across its front cover. In Portland, Maine, the words “Osama Today Islam tomorow (sic)” were found spray-painted on a mosque. As Obama was announcing the killing on television, crowds of people gathered outside the White House to chant “USA, USA, USA”–the very image of callous arrogance that stokes bitter anger toward the U.S. around the world.

Anyone who cares about peace and justice needs to raise their voice against these celebrations, because they only pave the way for more war. “Whenever America uses violence in a way that makes its citizens cheer, beam with nationalistic pride, and rally around their leader, more violence is typically guaranteed,” wrote Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald.

Continue reading “Socialist Worker on bin Laden killing”

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How to start a movement

I have been thinking (fairly useless activity) about ideas, being fairly useless. The video a few posts back with Rose and Dawkins made something clear to me. The ideas or the code are nothing on their own, they need to be fertilised, and take hold. The ideas are like sperm, they need an egg that will actually hatch. Another way of putting it is that culture is to ideas as is the petri dish to the cell. Things don’t grow in a vacuum, but only under very specific conditions.

“Men make their own history,’’ wrote Karl Marx, ‘‘but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.’’

This video, which I’d seen before, is well introduced here:

Influential Marketing Blog: How To Start A Movement:

Some ideas are a banquet. They go on and on, and invite us to consider what they really mean for hours or days – or sometimes much much longer. Then there are the flashes of insight. The quick sparks that we immediately react to and understand when we hear or see or touch them. These are the types of ideas I wish I could find and share more often. Ideas that inspire in a moment. Starting a movement, for most people, is much more complicated than just having an idea. If you happen to work in a place where this is part of your goal, your questions are often about stakeholders and messages and creating something “viral.” We are all seeking the formula that turns that idea into a movement.

This weekend I saw a short 3 minute video presentation from Derek Sivers at TED that presented an irreverent conclusion – that leadership, your idea and even your “strategy” may be the most overrated elements of creating any kind of movement. Here’s the video:

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Next

George Pór has the audactity to think big.  I see more and more of this around.  Revolution is not a silly idea as it was for a few decades.  Clearly current civilisation is unsustainable and heading for a cropper.  What will come of it?  What can we do? 

There’s Something Happening Here… « emergent by design:

We can bet on the collapse of what is, or on the self-organizing collective consciousness and intelligence of the multitudes maturing into the wiser social system of the future, replacing the status quo. Our strategy and action may not be that different regardless what we are betting on, or it may.

In either case, we can increase the likelihood of becoming more relevant to what is happening here, if we manage to ground our assessment of what is in coupling our passion f0r the Big Shift with a collaborative, systemic analysis of what needs to happen next.

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Differentiation is a birth

I wrote up a lot of the talk Harville Hendrix gave in march. Here is a bit of that in more detail, in its own post, as I’ve been reflecting on it.

Move from imagined connection to participating in felt connection.

Getting to this togetherness can be terrifying and you have to surrender. To abandon the world you have imagined is terrifying.

You can’t connect with a person you are merged with. Differentiation is a sort of birth for each. The self emerges not by saying “I am me!” It is done by releasing the other, and this is where my birth happens as I am the remainder, what is left as I surrender. Learning to tolerate the differentiated other. It is a sort of birth. Imago is a process of giving birth to the other person. I’m the mother of their birth.

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Built in Obsolescence

I was not convinced in the sixties when people said that companies were building things to break, to maximise profit.  But they did. Out fridge is had it after about 15 years, but one from 1950s I know is still working.  With computers it is a little different.  Everyone I’ve bought has replaced a working one, but was a major improvment on the last. 

Any form of crippling information that is easy to copy is simply wrong for humanity.  Information is not intellectual property. The plan is not the building, or the recipe the meal.  The ebook however is the ebook, and writers need to be paid.  The old scheme was useless though.  Writers were paid very unevenly, on a scheme based on popularity rather than merit. Science writing for example needed funding from other sources, and we found ways, imperfect as they are, to do that.

We will find other ways to create ebooks.  HarperCollins has had it. They don’t have a model that is native to the net.  Soemone will think of one, but it wont be them.  How to pay authors and editors, there are new models brewing like LuLu, and the breakthrough will come. 

Boycott HarperColins, so this artificial obsolescence does not gain a hold and launch a new dark age.

Education Petition: Tell HarperCollins: Limited Checkouts on eBooks is Wrong for Libraries | Change.org:

On March 7, 2011, the publisher HarperCollins instituted an expiration policy on eBooks that are licensed to libraries. Under this new arrangement, eBooks would “self-destruct” after being checked out 26 times. This would require libraries to re-purchase the eBook if they wanted to continue to make it available. Libraries across the country are boycotting future purchases of HarperCollins eBooks, but our voices alone will not change their policy. We need your help.

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MOW RIP

Chris trotter got it right here.  Note too that most of the MOW buildings did not go down in the earthquake.  But that old Government Life one in the Square certainly was NOT a good idea.

Maybe it is time for a revolution | Stuff.co.nz:

Did anyone pause to wonder why the huge snowstorm that cut the power supply to so many thousands of Cantabrians a few years back didn’t wreak more havoc on the region’s energy infrastructure?

No. Because we take the excellence of its engineering and the gold-standard quality of its construction completely for granted. It never occurs to us that a privately owned construction company – mandated to provide a healthy rate of return to its shareholders – would never have provided this nation with such a robust and reliable system.

The Rogernomes couldn’t get rid of the Ministry of Works fast enough – and for very good reason.

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Can humans evolve faster than technology? Yes!!

This is a great little article, and gives me hope.  We can evolve things like Facebook, and things like the Imago dialogue and NVC then we can evolve every form of our social sphere.  That’s not what the article is about but what comes up in me, as a human.

Computer says: um, er… | Computers v humans | Technology | The Guardian:

Computer says: um, er…

Since the 1950s, scientists have been striving to create computers that can think like humans. And each year they pit their efforts against a panel of real humans. Brian Christian went head to hard drive…

    Brian Christian at computer

    ‘The chatbots’ attempts to simplify language were eerily reminiscent of human conversation at its most lacklustre.’ Photograph: Mark Mahaney

    It’s early September and I wake up in a Brighton hotel, the sea crashing just outside. In a few hours, I will embark on what I have come here to do: have a series of five-minute-long instant-message exchanges with strangers. It may not sound like much, but the stakes for these quick chats are high. On the other side of the conversation will be a psychologist, a linguist, a broadcaster and a computer scientist. Together they will form a judging panel, evaluating my ability to do one of the strangest things I’ve been asked to do: convince them that I’m human.

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Norman O. Brown’s Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History

Norman O. Brown’s Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History

Alan Gullette
University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Fall 1979
Psychology 4103: Independent Study
Dr. Shrader

In Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Wesleyan, 1959), Norman Brown carries the work of Freud to its logical conclusions in an attempt to arrive at a general psychoanalytic theory of history and culture. Making certain adjustments and reinterpretations of Freud’s theories, Brown replaces Freud’s pessimistic instinctual dualism with an instinctual dialectic that opens up the possibility of a solution to the problem of human neurosis. He takes us through the theory of repression, the development of Freud’s theories of the instincts, the stages of infantile sexuality, and the important theories of sublimation and fantasy. Finally, Brown offers a “way out” through the reunification of the life and death instincts, a cessation of repression, and the “resurrection of the body” though the reinstatement of the natural Dionysian body-ego.

File here

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Notes from the conference on resilience

Resilient futures: supporting recovery in greater Christchurch:

Resilient futures: supporting recovery in greater Christchurch The resilient futures event happened on Monday 18 April 2011. The conference on Monday was well-attended by a diverse crowd of elected, non-elected, community and institutional representatives. Christchurch City Council Deputy Mayor Ngaire Button opened the conference with an inspiring address where she touched on the need to maintain a fair ratings policy that focuses on restoring affected areas without neglecting those areas with less damage. She concluded with a number of personal ambitions for the future of Christchurch which included making the city more cycle-friendly and putting aside space for a School of Performing Arts.

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Evolution of the Good

More on evolution and the basis for altruism.  I heard this show ages ago, I can recall listening to it while scrambling up a steep loose rockface!  (Miles reminded me about it on Facebook) The kinship theory makes total sense to me, but it does not mean the group theory is wrong does it?  Why the either/or here?

The Good Show – Radiolab:

In this episode, a question that haunted Charles Darwin: if natural selection boils down to survival of the fittest, how do you explain why one creature might stick its neck out for another? The standard view of evolution is that living things are shaped by cold-hearted competition. And there is no doubt that today’s plants and animals carry the genetic legacy of ancestors who fought fiercely to survive and reproduce. But in this hour, we wonder whether there might also be a logic behind sharing, niceness, kindness … or even, self-sacrifice. Is altruism an aberration, or just an elaborate guise for sneaky self-interest? Do we really live in a selfish, dog-eat-dog world? Or has evolution carved out a hidden code that rewards genuine cooperation?

Copy of the audio:
The Good Show

Studio-d/flikr