More of Savant's Commentaries

Conditions are largely different here than in Europe. Socialists and even Labor Party types are completely marginal here. So, caution is advised. Still, a pointed critique of liberal Democrats must be maintained. Especially those "liberal " Dems who are more centrist than anything else. But we shouldn't talk as if there's no difference between liberal Democrats and increasingly fascistic Republicans. I was attracted to the strategy suggested in 2012 by Noam Chomsky: In any state in which Mitt Romney hasn't even a prayer of winning, maybe some folk ought to vote Green or other alternatives. Where the Republicans could win if you don't pull out all the stops, by all means vote Obama. Actually, I voted for Obama even though Romney hadn't a prayer of winning Maryland. I wanted the margin of Mit Romney's defeat to be as large as possible. I guess I was pissed by the 47% comment. Ann coulter talking about how "OUR Blacks are better than THEIR Blacks", and her lame attempts to defend those statements made me angrier. I will support Bernie Sanders if he runs. And there's a woman whose name escapes me, a women who seems progressive, whom some want to run for the presidency. You've mentioned her before but her name escapes me now. If she runs I will vote for her. If she runs in the primaries against Bernie Sanders???? Well, I will have to wait and see. For me at present, the critical thing is to form a Movement. What if there had been an Occupy Movement within a few months of Obama taking office, or just prior? Again, we forget that there was a militant labor movement in progress when FDR took office. Rosa Parks and Montgomery had jumpstarted the Black freedom movement (which help inspire other movements) BEFORE Kennedy or Johnson took office. I believe (not sure) that the sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina started around January or February of 1960. This had to have been BEFORE Kennedy took office. Even if my dates are wrong the YEAR is right. The Freedom Rides in 1961. What was missing in 2008 was a progressive mass movement. Perhaps with a progressive wind at his back we might have seen a different Obama, the Obama we hoped we were voting for. Without popular "street heat" even an FDR might have been just another politician with (like Obama decades later) a few tinkling reforms here or there, but little of substance.

 -Savant

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 One more thing about this. Attai's language here actually seems to derive from the way in which things are often talked about in the Black community itself. In his zealous solidarity with our cause he sometimes adopts our rhetoric. When he told Barros that he heard Black people referring to the president as "Oreobama " that pretty much is true....though Blacks disappointed with Obama don't usually say that outsider own company. And it's not the kind of thing you expect a white person--even very progressive to say. Blacks often say of police that they're Klansmen with badges. That is precisely what my mother said in the aftermath of the recent killings of Brown, Garner, Tamir Rice and others. My uncle Oscar, who fought at Normandy, called the cops who brutalized Rodney King "California Nazis". And when the all white jury exonerated the cops, Uncle Oscar called them "a Nazi/Klan court." I have on occasion been so angry at some incident of police violence (like the beating of an elderly church woman in my old neighborhood) that I said "The Klan has traded in its sheets for police uniforms and badges." Now rarely are such statements meant LITERALLY. And people do not usually mean that each and every policeman is a raving mad racist. But a pattern of violence against the community is regarded as racist regardless of the particular personality or race of this or that individual cop. It is the police as an INSTITUTION that is the issue. That is why even the increase of Black police officers, let alone Latin or Asian ones, are often seen to matter little. The institution is dysfunctional and operates in a racist manner. And on that note, I should also point out what most Blacks know: Black cops often operate the same way as white cops. In fact, in order to "prove" themselves as members of the club, some blak cops may even be MORE brutal. This was seen in South Africa as well where, by about the mid to late 80s, perhaps 30%--40% of the police were Black; but they operated violently in defense of the same apartheid system. To take a more extreme example, the Kapos (though Jewish) were often among the most feared guards among Jewish captives of the Nazi regime. Why, racism is a SYSTEM, not simply a matter of prejudices and attitudes. So are all forms of oppression.

 -Savant

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 The statistics, which have themselves been critiqued, wouldn't prove any such thing even if those stats were of unquestionable reliability. Racial characteristics cannot be proven. Indeed race itself cannot be proven. And what of the news? It is interesting how you right wing white racists who are so skeptical of the so-called "liberal media" can so gullibly swallow anything you receive from that media when it seems to support your racism. No doubt you've not even heard that reporting of crime INCREASED even as crime itself DECREASED. Moreover, studies seem to indicate the PERCEPTIONS of Black crime commonly exceeds even the skewed statistics you've been fed. But it's interesting to see that you still believe in the "liberal " media after all.

 -Savant

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 I've seen nothing that he has written which justifies your interpretation. In fact, his comment in the thread about the NYC cops killed recently he says that this kind of street justice is NOT what we need. At most he might say that police abuse helps precipitate that kind of irrational violence. Attai may at times romanticize Black folk, and even at times make posts that are virtually "ultra left." But he's not so dumb as to actually promote criminality. But at least on one point he would concur with me that, as Insect insightfully put it, "oppression begets dysfunction" --however much both he and Barros hate to agree on anything. LOL! -Savant


____________

 So let's try again White are 75% of the population of the USA. Blacks about 13%--14%. Latinos almost 20%. The PROPORTION of Black killed by fascist pig cops is greater than among whites. ProPublica.org published a 10/10/2014 report on this entitled "Deadly Force, In Black and White." If Masud could read I'd recommend he read it for himself. I won't go into all the details. But the report of studies done on police use of deadly force indicates that young Blacks are about TWENTY ONE times as likely to be offed by the cops as are whites. Huffington Post also published this. So, whites are killed too . Duh..... Your delusional sense of white superiority doesn't change the fact that MOST of you are SERFS of a primarily WHITE RULING CLASS! And sometimes the pigs come after you too. Only the reactionary regime regards us as ENEMY NUMBER ONE. An elder (who was a college student in the 1960s) once told me that during a visit to Baltimore in 1967, Dr. King said to a group of our people: "The REAL difference between us andour benighted white brethren is that we KNOW we're not free, but they think they are. Racism has BLINDED them." And most of you whites in this thread are still blind as your parents or grandparents were 50 years ago. And I'm supposed to believe in your alleged superior intelligence. LOL! No!

 -Savant

 ___________________

 An interesting thing is happening in Baltimore. The growth of the Latin population, mostly poor, has led to the emergence of a new poor or proletariat. Over the past 10+ years there have been militant labor actions and strikes pitting Black and Brown and some white poor against their bosses. There were strikes at Johns Hopkins University, Camden Yards and at some of the larger hotels near the inner harbor. In each instance reactionaries--mos tly white, but also Black and Brown--tried to pit Black nd Latin workers against each other, and thereby break the strike. In each case, the reactionaries FAILED. In each case, the workers won. When I look at this, at the Occupy Movement of a few years ago, and now the massive multiracial Movement against police brutality, I think: "we can win this battle!" In Bobby Seale's words we must "Seize the Time!". A blade in the throat of oppression!!! -Savant

 _____________________________

 But you know, a good number of psychological studies of racist seem to reveal a weird obsession, often erotic or homoerotic, on the part of racists to the objects of their racial disdain. Adorno seems to find this in his studies in THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY, Sartre notices this among many anti-semites in his La Question Juive. This same kind of obsession has been noted in the USA for a long time. Also, a good number of psychologists whom I happen to know also say that homophobia, at least when it becomes extreme or militant, usually is a sign that the homophobe has his OWN ISSUES with homosexuality. Somehow that doesn't surprise me. Right wingers probably contain more hidden or subconsciously gay homophobe than does any other demographic. Like those right wing Republicans always ranting and raving about gays and then getting caught themselves doing the nasty with some guy (or even under age page boy). And I suspect that if we met some of those women, men and boys whom Miss gar gar claims to have impressed, they would probably tell us that there's nothing "gargantos " about him. -Savant

 _________________

What more interesting is that you white racists like to trot out the same tired old statistics which have been critiqued by scholars as skewed an inflated. I mentioned just one author, Lisa Bloom, who pointed out this fact in a book of hers. I mentioned it to Go Blue among others. But somehow you seem not to notice evidence you don't like. If you keep trotting out statistics whose reliability has been questioned by SCHOLARS studying these matters, and don't even attempt an argument to defend those statistics, then you're guilty of the petitio principii fallacy, assuming that which you need to prove or argue for. Numbers don't tell you how they were arrived at. And even assuming the numbers were correct, they don't tell you how to INTERPRET them. -Savant

 __________________

 This time the reservation isn't just for Native Americans. Moreover, the explosion of the prison populations and police violence are due not only to racism, but also to growing economic inequality. Not surprising to me. In the AA intellectual and political traditions it has been commonly perceived that economic and racial injustice are intimately interwoven. But the majority of whites cannot escape economic injustice even if that injustice is more intense in communities of color. By the way, there's an interesting article in AlterNet.org by Lestor Leopold entitled "How Runaway Economic Inequality and Racism are Linked to Police Killings." I think it appeared on December 15, my mother's birthday. -Savant ________________

Even if they come from the FBI. As for Black communities most residents know that the police do little anyway when it comes to crime. Indeed, cops and criminals often work hand-in-hand. Dick Gregory was right when he said that every KID in the ghetto knows who the dope dealers are, and also the cops who work with them. What James Baldwin wrote in the 1960s about cops in Harlem remains true even in 2014 in black communities throughout America. "Rare, indeed, is the Harlem citizen, from the most circumspect church member to the most shiftless adolescent, who does not have a long tale to tell of police incompetence, injustice, or brutality. I myself have witnessed and endured it more than once." (NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, p. 62). So have I, brother Baldwin. So have I. The incessant harassment and abuse falling short of murder on TV falls upon Blacks from wealthy entertainers, to middle class professionals and all way down to the most destitute of les miserable in the ghettoes of America. You should get down on your KNEES and kiss my people's feet for holding primarily to NONVIOLENT means to resist the police terror. And by the way, Dr. King's father named him Martin whether the authorities got it right or no. Hence his name was Martin, and that's the end of it.
 -Savant


______________________

So let's try again White are 75% of the population of the USA. Blacks about 13%--14%. Latinos almost 20%. The PROPORTION of Black killed by fascist pig cops is greater than among whites. ProPublica.org published a 10/10/2014 report on this entitled "Deadly Force, In Black and White." If Masud could read I'd recommend he read it for himself. I won't go into all the details. But the report of studies done on police use of deadly force indicates that young Blacks are about TWENTY ONE times as likely to be offed by the cops as are whites. Huffington Post also published this. So, whites are killed too . Duh..... Your delusional sense of white superiority doesn't change the fact that MOST of you are SERFS of a primarily WHITE RULING CLASS! And sometimes the pigs come after you too. Only the reactionary regime regards us as ENEMY NUMBER ONE. An elder (who was a college student in the 1960s) once told me that during a visit to Baltimore in 1967, Dr. King said to a group of our people: "The REAL difference between us andour benighted white brethren is that we KNOW we're not free, but they think they are. Racism has BLINDED them." And most of you whites in this thread are still blind as your parents or grandparents were 50 years ago. And I'm supposed to believe in your alleged superior intelligence. LOL! No!

-Savant

 __________________
 Now your reply to his comments about the NYC mayor was at least relevant, though the issue is a bit complicated. An issue that has plagued the left (at least in capitalistic republics) for decades. But this comment is waaay below that level, and more akin to what we'd expect from the brain dead reactionaries. AS you know, I also believe that Obama's progressivism has proven to be more fluff than substance, though he's preferable to the protofascist Republicans. I will be observing di Blasio who I hope (as I once hoped of Obama) that he'd be at least a fighting liberal. (I'm not dumb enough to expect him to be Eugene V. Debs any more than I expected Obama to be Paul Robeson). If I've a problem with Attai's critique, it's not that I think he's completely wrong. But I fear he pushes the critique to he point of obscuring distinctions between protofascist reactionaries of the Republican party, and centrists (who are just barely liberal) of he Democratic party. That can be dangerous. There is a difference between Obama's lame reaction to police atrocities and to racism, and the outright racist demoninzation of communities of color by the right. There's a difference between di Blasio's "can't we all get along attitude" and those who would like to unleash the military against the Black community if they could. And what should we actually be doing? We must resist the Right, but cannot simply surrender to the unreliable leadership of centrist liberals. So, it is a difficult matter.

 -Savant

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 It is YOU who look through a white racial lens while pretending to look through a non-racial lens. The pretense of colorblindness or postraciality is often the more fashionable guise in which white racism expresses itself. The fact remains that the police, the armed enforcers of the status quo, are capable of repressing anyone, and sometimes do slay people of any and all races and ethnicities. Partly, this is because the status quo is a capitalist class society as well as a racist one. The cops protect that. But the fact still remains that the slayings of Black and Brown youth by fascist pigs cops are far greater in proportion than the slaying of white youths. Just as fascists in an anti-Semitic society may kill other people than Jews, but kill Jews in greater proportion, in a white racist capitalist regime like the USA, cops kill all kinds of people, but Blacks and (increasingly Latins) more than others. Even members of the privileged classes in communities of color suffer abuses at the hands of the police which their class equivalents in white America would find unbelievable. But don't worry. The repression cannot be restricted to Black and Brown communities. It will knock at your door soon enough.

 -Savant

 __________________

Only mentally deranged Black men hate our sisters, And I don't think most of us are that whacked out. Sisters--most of them--have had our backs over the past 400+ years. It is only well and fitting that we have their backs also. Look at those demonstrations in support of the black male victims and families of victims of police killings. You will see Black women there in the thousands and tens of thousands. We need to be there for them as well. That's what community is about, and that's what it means to be a MAN, not a punk.

-Savant

 ______________ ____________

 First of all, many Black women as well as men--the majority if surveys are revealing--believe , Know, that racism is rampant in American society. And in America, capitalism and racism are intricately interwoven. Always have been. And if it is paranoid to believe that racial oppression is REAL in America today, then it is no mere "black male" paranoia. Nor even Black male/Black female paranoia. It is a belief widespread among Latinos as well. Moreover, what you call paranoia is shared by the United Nation's Commission on Racism, Amnesty International, ACLU, and numerous scholars (many of them actually white). Again, T-BOZ ought to at least read something above the level of a text message. As you are personally detached from the experiences of most Black people, I could provide you with a bibliography which you might read before posting again. Start with THE RACIAL CONTRACT, or Ezorsky's RACISM AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE. Read any number of books by Manning Marable, or Angela Y. Davis---her more recent ones, in particular (e.g. ARE PRISONS OBSOLETE, or THE NATURE OF FREEDOM AND OTHER DIFFICULT DIALOGUES). Read MIchelle Alexander's THE NEW JIM CROW. Nothing personal, but only right wingers (who are usually racist themselves) and simpletons go around saying that racial oppression no longer exists in America. The WHOLE WORLD as well as the vast majority of Black people know that racism is still rampant. And by racism we don't mean only prejudice, the institutionalized racism; racism as organized privileging of one group to the disadvantage of others. -Savant ______________

 Yes indeed. The wave of protests against police terror against the Black community may offer an opening an be a beginning: seizing what Angela Davis calls "the historical moment." -Savant

Research on the Black African Diaspora

http://diasporicroots.tumblr.com/post/17566143158/afro-latin-americans

http://socialistworker.org/2012/12/07/kings-unfinished-struggle

More Wisdom

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 The outrage in the Black community is real, not manufactured...except perhaps in your imagination. The outrage is real and a consequence of repressive behavior of the police and the injustices of the judicial system. But fortunately, MOST of us do not respond in the manner of the guy who shot those two cops. But if the misconduct of the police continues despite legal and extralegal nonviolent protests, and if the criminals in badges are continually exonerated by a corrupt judiciary, the numbers turning to armed retaliation or resistance will increase. And it won't be just some random act by a whacked individual, but systematic and organized counterviolence against the police. -Savant __________________

It would be interesting to study the linguistic history of Jewish people. For it seems that after the Babylonian captivity most Jews who returned to Judea spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew. Something happened. I recall one rabbi on the history channel who argued that the reason Jews scribes in Alexandria and elsewhere started translating the OT from Hebrew (or Aramaic) to Greek was because many Jews in the Hellenistic period no longer understood Hebrew and were completely Greek speaking. Apparently, at some point Jews began to try to regain Hebrew as their original language. It would be almost like African-Americans choosing one of the ancestral languages--maybe Yoruba or Ashanti--adopting it as the national language of the Black people of America, but still speaking English in a predominantly Anglophone country. There have even been some African Americans who have suggested such a thing. Some AA folk I've even heard pointing to the example of the Jews who survived by claiming or reclaiming their heritage while making whatever accommodation they had to in largely hostile gentile societies. -Savant __________________ T-BOZ shows repeatedly that she is a white racist regardless of her actual skin color. Notice that she speaks of the actions of the killer of NYC cops as in "typical black male fashion." I don't recall her referring to the white Sandyhook killer of about 20 white schoolchildren (after murdering his own mother) followed by suicide as in "typical white male fashion." In fact, I've yet to see her post ANYTHING against white racists--not even when they killed BLACK WOMEN. All this adds up to racist disdain for Black PEOPLE concealed in the idiom of gender. Is it a mere coincidence that she writes pretty much the same thing as do the white racists--sometimes in explicit SOLIDARITY with the racists? All enemies of Black people are not white. Some are folk who, in the current vernacular, "look like us." -Savant

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 In fact, America is divided into the haves and have nots. Which is about 1%-- 5% vs the rest of the population. A few Blacks, male and female, may belong to that elite. The great majority do not. The 1% are still 99% white. Truth be told, the great majority of whites do not belong either. Most whites are serfs of their wealthy white overlords. I believe it was Dr. King who once said that the difference is that Blacks KNOW in general they don't belong, but whites are generally unaware of their unfreedom. But there are some Blacks these days (though not in the same proportion as the whites) who are also unaware.

 -Savant

 _________________


 I stated numerous times in this and other threads that I do not think that violence is the best route to take, at least not unless and until it has been shown to be necessary. I've pointed out that the movement against police repression in Black and Brown communities--a movement that has begun to become INTERNATIONAL--has remained 99% NONVIOLENT. Even in Ferguson on the day of the decision, when rioting did break out, if you watch DEMOCRACY NOW or Al Jazeera, you noticed that MOST of the protests by Blacks and non-Black allies, were nonviolent. I wholly COMMEND that movement. I have participated in some of the demonstrations, and have told my students (Black, white, Latin and others) how proud I am of them for not only protesting, but for doing so in a dignified and nonviolent manner. So, the answer to your question should obvious. But I can only wonder whether your sympathies are uncritically pro-police and against even nonviolent protest, or where exactly you stand. But while I do not favor such actions as those which happened recently, I also recognize--and History shows---that where peaceful legal or extralegal measures do not avail, violent alternatives will be used. And eventually it will be random violence of a whacked individual, but systematic and clandestine violence in resistance or retaliation against the police. All of those who oppose, or are at best lukewarm to the nonviolent protests (often with reference to black crime as a pretext) need to check need to check yourselves and notice what time it is.

 -Savant

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I don't favor this kind of response if indeed it was intended as a response to the killings by police. I still favor massive civil disobedience, massive resistance by means other than armed force. But if these measures fail more and more people will resort to armed retaliation against racist cops. But if it comes to THAT, then we'd better do some serious thinking about logistics; and we'd have to be thinking in terms of clandestine armed resistance. Somewhat like in THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR. I hope we don't have to go there.

 -Savant

 ___________________________

 Well, the range of nonviolent resistance are nearly immeasurable. I couldn't name them all. Mass protests on a scale which itself largely disables a city or town. Peaceable occupation of government buildings, or places of business. Strikes, boycotts, maybe even a tax revolt. (Noam Chomsky during the 1960s advocated, I believe, refusal to pay taxes until the Vietnam war ended. Henry David Thoreua refused to pay taxes to a government which enslaved the Black population and invaded Hispanic lands during the Mexican War. Dr. King was planning to virtually shut down the nation's capital if he and his cohorts could not get some positive action along the lines of employment for the poor, and a Economic Bill of Rights amendment). Soldiers can refuse to fight---like some Israeli soldiers who refuse to invade and carry out actions against Palestinian civilians. Young men can refuse to register. Demonstrators who are ordered to move or disperse can refuse to do so. Believe it or not, even police (like the Israeli soldiers) can refuse to obey orders which involve racial profiling or the use of excessive force. Not many of them do so. I know of one Black police officer who is suing his own dept in Philadelphia on account of excessive force and harassment of Black people. I don't know if this will cost him his job. A Latino officer some months ago started reporting the New York police chief explicitly ORDERED his offers to profile and harass Blacks and Hispanics. So, if nonviolent opposition and disobedience is possible to some extent by police and soldiers themselves, it is possible even more for ordinary citizens. The alternatives really are only SUBMISSION (which erodes sense of dignity) or ARMED RESISTANCE, which could mean a blood bath. I'd prefer even armed resistance to submission, but nonviolent resistance to armed resistance if possible. I think it is still possible.....at least for now.

 -Savant

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 Ah yes, now we get to the heart of the matter. The SYSTEM.....The judicial system, the system of e police....I'd go even further and talk about the entire socioeconomic system which breeds poverty, misery, alienation and criminality (which some use as an excuse to defend police terror), and the violence of the police whose job is really to defend this bankrupt, and to do so with force of arms. It's remarkable when you read Dr. King, the original Black Panthers, Stokely, Angela Davis, Du Bois and others they were saying the same thing about the SYSTEM....and if that didn't change very little else would either. So, we're still engaged in wars for essentially the same reasons that Dr. King spoke of in his address against the Vietnam War (April 4, 1967) called "Breaking Silence." We're still having the problems with the police and judiciary for more or less the same reasons explained decades ago by post-Mecca Malcolm X and the original Panthers. Yet, it's remarkable that so many people---including SOME Black people, and maybe MOST white people---still don't get it!!!! It's the SYSTEM, people. And you're going to miss the train if you don't pick up on that reality.

-Savant
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 The struggle against racism and imperialism is one thing Blacks in America and Africa have in common. And having ties with white racists (at least where such can be avoided) is indicative of mental illness. And that's regardless of whether the racist is from your own country or elsewhere. And yes, I'd prefer to marry a woman from Ghana or the Congo before I'd marry an American with racist. Yet, I'm not even opposed to interracial marriage since I think freedom means being able to choose whom you love. Racists are a different matter. -Savant

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 Indeed, domestic terrorists is a good descriptions of the killer cops who murdered Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and others. Perhaps they should be tried in the world court since these terroristic killer cops are so readily let off by the corrupt judiciary of the USA. -Savant ________________

 Meanwhile the killers of Garner, Brown and even little Tamir Rice are neither fired nor subject to criminal charges. And Blacks are 21 times more likely to be killed by cops than are whites. -Savant

 ________________

 The usual deflecting talk about black crime is usually a predictable expression of white racism. But that aside, the same system that gives rise to police terror creates the conditions that promote Black crime....and white crime. Therefore, what is needed is a radical social movement to change that system, and to transform the criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality. When you're ready to consider that option we can talk. In the meantime, maybe you should worry yourself more about white crime since you're more likely to be murdered by another white if you are white than to be murdered by a black....or Latino -Savant

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 What we need is not random acts of violence, but a social movement to combat police violencend judicial injustice. But the Movement must also combat the entire system of class and racial injustice, entire system of concentrated wealth and power. Random acts of violence, even if directed at the specific cops who killed Eric Garner, would not solve the problem because it is the ENTIRE SYSTEM that must be radically transformed. StaggerLee is right about that, and has made perhaps the most perceptive observations on this matter. The police are the armed instruments of the Establishment, of the racist corporate state and the classes that uphold it. Unless that establishment is changed even killing the actual killers of Garner, Brown or Rice will mean little. The system will simply replace them. And yes, such actions will become an excuse for even more police repression. What we need is a movement not only to end police brutality, and the fascistic tendencies illustrated by an increasingly militarized police; we must change the entire social order which makes this kind of police possible (if not necessary) and of which the cops are mainly tools. And for those who are always ranting and raving about "black crime"--usual ly as a deflection from the issue of police brutality--it ought to be known by now that criminal activity is mainly a destructive and self-destructive reaction to an oppressive social system. The Movement which seeks to end social conditions which make police terror possible also seeks to alter the conditins that promote self-destructive behavior among poor blacks, whites, latins and others. MOvemets of the 1960s & 30s show that during times of great liberatory social movements and high social consciousness ordinary criminal activity declines, sometimes disappearing totally. Hence Dr. King noted the drop in crime in Black Montgomery (a 60% drop) during the Bus boycott. Even riots that broke out in Baltimore and other cities after King's assassination led to the radical reductions in crime. If you take a look at Thomas Jackson's FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO HUMAN RIGHTS: MARTIN LUTHER KING AND THE STRUGGLE FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE, it is clear that Movement leaders noticed that. The Black Panthers also tried to steer young people from crime to Struggle. Similar observations have been observed in other counties---in parts of Latin America by Paulo Feirie, in part of Africa by Frantz Fanon. For the aim of the struggle is to build a new community of freedom, with new bonds of solidarity; in that new community there will be no place for police terror, for poverty amidst an ocean of material wealth, and for the kinds of alienation in which one's neighbor is one's enemy. You're right, Stagger Lee. The system must be change----radicall y and fundamentally.

 -Savant

 ________________


 I have been involved in mass demonstrations in Baltimore and Washington over issues of police brutality and the corrupt judicial system. As for the "MLK nonviolent" you ought to have noticed (if you really called off from work to be at the demonstrations) that the demonstrations were overwhelmingly NONVIOLENT. Even on the day of the jury's decision in Ferguson when riots did break out, MOST of the Black community and its allies engaged in nonviolent protest. Moreover, the "MLK bullshyt" as you call it was actually quite effective in its time. And it just may be effective now. And yes, some baastard killed Martin Luther King, but people who engage in violent struggle against oppressive authority sometimes suffer casualties as well. More people died in the riots of 1967 than in the previous ten years of nonviolent struggle in the South. I would also submit for consideration that a nonviolent revolution, if it can happen, reduces the dangers of a new tyranny replacing an older one. Without the violence I doubt that a Robespierre or a Stalin can arise. And violence must be a choice, then it ought to be our LAST recourse; what is left when all else has failed. Part of the moral authority of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress derived from the fact that when they decided on armed struggle after the Sharpesville massacre, it was at the end of FORTY YEARS of failed nonviolent strategies in which they were more oppressed than when they started out. Under THOSE kinds of circumstances it is quite understandable that recourse is had to armed struggle. I would have taken up arms myself against the fascistic apartheid regime in South Africa. Even Frantz Fanon and karl Marx both believed that in SOME countries, under SOME conditions, nonviolent transformation is possible. Before I consider taking up arms and risking the lives of hundreds of thousands of people (or more), I want to be damned sure that either no other options exist, or that they have proven to be ineffective in the fight against oppression and injustice. -Savant
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http://socialistworker.org/2014/12/18/when-soldiers-declared-peace-on-earth


http://socialistworker.org/2014/07/28/capitalisms-first-world-war

Unfortunately, you're no better---at least not much--than "lol"; substituting personal insult for argument, and name calling for debate. But anyone besides the racists, or mentally twisted Blacks like T-BOZ or SBT, knows what I've stood for since I accidentally discovered this "forum" about six or seven years ago. Some may be familiar with my thread "NONVIOLENT REVOLUTION: IS IT POSSIBLE?" Some may have seen my thread "PROGRESSIVE WHITE PEOPLE: WHERE ARE YOU?" Or maybe "MARTIN LUTHER KING'S LEGACY AND THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT". Even those who paid close attention to my thread "BRING BACK THE BLACK PANTHERS?" know that my preference is for NONVIOLENT ACTION even though I do not, as King seems to do, take armed resistance completely off the table. It is a question of reason, sanity and moral sense of justice and human dignity. A sane man--he need not be King, Gandhi or Bishop Tutu---prefers peaceabE means for at least as long as he thinks them possible. Even if I had reached the point, as Mandela did after the Sharpseville Massacre, that nonviolent resistance was no longer an option, I wouldn't advocate random acts of violence. Even then there would have to be discipline and adherence to modern norms and rules of combat. As it stands, I am convinced the NONVIOLENT options, both legal and extralegal, are still options. Perhaps you should explain where YOU stand. In my Panthers thread you told me you posted Mike Brown's mother to essentially tell her off for not properly raising her son. Like the typical white racist you called him a criminal. But you didn't refer to Wilson nor other cops who kill men, women and even children as criminals. And when I asked you what post you sent to Wilson I noticed a deafening silence. You were noticeably cool toward the tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of mainly nonviolent protestors throughout the country (even in foreign countries). But now you come here upset about the killing of police. Could it be that you need to re-examine your own moral compass? (


 -Savant

More Research

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/lanesboro-ma/TFD3392P5PK1QNDOK/p16

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/05/cuba-m10.html

http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/TML5GR6CA7GEQO02U/p2

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/naacp-union-net-neutrality_n_5606854.html

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/nan-naacp-other-hypocritical-civil-rights-organizations-assert-constitutional-right-conceal-

http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/TVG7O4BOHC6387O60

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/17/3/gpr170315.html


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Many whites, by that same logic, don't think white life matters either. Only nobody uses that as an excuse for police terror against whites. Most crimes against whites are committed by whites. Yet paranoid white simpletons stress over Black crime while being violated (87% of the time) by other whites. Now Blacks are in general more RATIONAL in this matter and far less paranoid. We know that most crime in every group (Native Americans maybe excepted) is INTRARACIAL, not interracial. And we don't lose sleep over how many of you kills or rape each other. Indeed, white husbands more commonly murder than wives than Black husbands. But you don't find Blacks obsessing over white crime. We are indignant about WHITE RACISM, not white crime. THAT we are directly affected by. And you racist buffoons who are always obsessing over Black crime, or using it to deflect from the issue of anti-Black terror by the police, ought to check out Lisa Bloom's article "White People Commit the Most HEINOUS Crimes, So why is America Terrified of Black Men?" in the May 13, 2004 edition of AlterNet.org. Oh yes, the author happens to be white. Trying to talk some sense into some of her more benighted fellow whites....like yourself.

 -Savant

 ________________________

 Several years ago I read an interview involving Noam Chomsky in which Chomsky said that if the police conduct that is status quo in Black and Latin communities were to become COMMONPLACE in white American communities (and not just he white poor) America would already be regarded as a Fascist. Well the police terror so common today in Black and Latino America may very well become commonplace throughout the WHOLE of America. We then will have a Fascist USA; and even many current conservatives and reactionaries and even racists will wish they had opposed police terror while it was still mainly directed against communities of color. But by then it may be too late. Indeed, there are a few conservatives (it seems mainly "libertarians ") who are beginning to perceive this danger even now. At present, most of our allies in white America are---unsurprising ly---center/left. Not unlike the 1960s.

 -Savant

 ___________

 Those people for whom HUMAN lives matter, are more incense over the killing of Michael Brown, Eric Garner or Tamir Rice than about scattered outbreaks of looting of property. For persons, unlike property, have INHERENT value. And since it was destruction of human life, and judicial support for the destroyers which provoked the attack on property, the obsession with burnt buildings may indicate a definite alienation from all that is human. Moreover, those for whom HUMAN life is valuable, for whom the dignity of human personhood is inviolable, the very thought of racist use of words like "Mexican Jew"---as if being Mexican or Jewish lowered one's worth as a human being---the whole way of thinking indicated by the language is unacceptable to persons for whom human life matters. But such ethical and socially conscious people do not include depraved individuals like Max Fascist "Devil".

 -Savant

 ______________

 The racist trolls are deflecting. I've a concern more relevant to this thread. Where do we go from here? I also wonder about the similarities and dissimilarities between the mass protests against police terror and the Occupy protests against plutocracy. Police are the armed extension of the state. Plutocracy is the rule of the privileged classes which dominate the state. Somehow relation must be drawn between economic oppression and police violence, and also between racism, economic oppression and political repression. A new movement must think through these matters very carefully. -Savant

 _____________


 The CIA has been training dictatorial regimes in torture tactics for decades. -Savant

More Wisdom

Some people have learned very little. The same sort of thing that precipitated riots in LA in 1965, or Detroit and Newark in 1967, were allowed to be repeated in Ferguson in 2014. But I am glad that YOUNG people in Ferguson and elsewhere (including some of my students) are becoming conscientized and socially active again. We may be on the verge of a new MOVEMENT for social justice. -Savant

 ___________________

Meanwhile, AMERICA is a white racist cesspool of plutocratic corruption. I certainly will not romanticize Europe given its ugly record of colonialism. But the ugly record of American racist imperialism hardly gives this "land of the free and home of the brave" any special honors either. Oh, and let's not forget that the French helped save George Washington's a____ at Yorktown....as did a fourth of his troops who were AFRICAN AMERICANS--naively believing that they would win their freedom while dying for the "liberty " of white America. -Savant


 ____________________

 There are African Americans who have negative attitudes towards Africans, and Africans who have negative attitudes towards Africans. Anyone reading just THIS THREAD can see that. But there are other African Americans and Africans who are much more progressive in their thinking. I count myself in the company of the latter. Hence I despise Chief Buthelezi for the same reason I despise Clarence Thomas--for being a bootlicker and a traitor. But the African people as a whole, like my fellow African Americans, I love as my Black brothers and sister. -Savant

 ________

 The "European people" are not a monolith. There are enlightened and progressive Europeans who are opposed to racism--be it American or European racism---who actually believe in democracy and human rights as more than catch phrases. And there are others like the racists, and the racists' heroes Hitler, Himmler, Merkel and the loons of the National Front who think that human rights belongs only to "their" race or to their nation. Same thing we find among your white cousins here. Hence some whites RALLY in solidarity with us whether in Mississippi in 1964, or Ferguson in 2014. And some American cretins, like their cretinized racist European kindred, rally to the banner of racism, of barbarism and tyranny. Some Europeans opposed colonialism and imperialism, others did not. Same here. Both in Europe and America the struggle against racism and plutocracy is becoming, as Wendell Phillips described the fight against slavery, a "struggle of civilization against barbarism." The fight against racism and plutocracy is a fight against barbarism. -Savant

 ____________

 If you are speaking of white AmeriKKKans, then you're quite correct. But as you know, I distinguish between them and those who oppose the lunacy. I think it's the same in your country and in other European countries. A fight between civilization and barbarism. By the way, you ought to take a look specifically on the chapter on Angela Davis that appears in the book, DREAMING IN FRENCH. 
-Savant

 ______________________

 Well, you will never hear these racists say that indiscriminate police violence and repression against WHITES are ok on account of white crime, In fact, white racists don't seem to worry about white crime, only black crime--despite the fact that 87% of all crimes COMMITTED against whites are committed by whites. Native Americans are the only group in which most victims of crime are victimized by somebody outside their group. Nonetheless, we don't stress white crime. We get pissed about WHITE RACISM and white privilege, which idiots like OhReallyStupid believe to be "propaganda " --immense research findings even by whites scholars to the contrary notwithstanding.

 -Savant

 ________________


 Strange that not only tons of evidence by scholars (black,white and other)repeatedly support my analyses, and UN committees on human rights, Amnesty International and other reports basically support the essence of my analysis, but somehow it is I, not OhSmelly, who can't discern evidence. Research REPEATEDLY supports our claims about judicial racism, racism and brutality of the police, continuing racism in the JOB market, and so forth--but it is WE who are delusional. And much of the supporting evidence actually come from WHITE scholars and researchers, both in America and Europe.

 -Savant

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More Links about Conscious Information

http://pmeaye.tripod.com/kingondubois.pdf

 http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/T717DK9U8VMB0HU32/p3#c48

 http://links.org.au/node/3674

 http://links.org.au/node/4151#comment-321350

http://aattp.org/white-racist-runs-over-black-man-feeding-the-homeless-blames-obama-video/

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http://socialistworker.org/2014/08/27/what-divides-black-america

https://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/the-difference-between-debt-free-money-and-interest-free-credit/

Other News

http://www.gaiahealthblog.com/2013/06/05/nike-training-club-carmelita-jeters-15-minute-hit-high-intensity-training-workout/

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/22/is-police-brutality-color-blind/

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/24/pers-o24.html

http://www.moishistoiredesnoirs.com/index.php/en/

http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-1997/problems-in-studying-the-role-of-blacks-in-europe

 http://rolandsheppard.com/?page_id=350

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/22/ebol-o22.html

http://blackagendareport.com/node/14466

http://truthseeker2473.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-articles.html

Conscious Words

Actually, you can find the Cornel West interview in DEMOCRACY NOW with Amy Goodman. I think it happened on October 6. I learned that Cornel West was arrested yesterday in Ferguson. The BOOK is called BLACK PROPHETIC FIRES, and involves an interview between West and a progressive German Christian and scholar. Unfortunately, I forget the German guy's name. -Savant _____________________ Peut-etre le choix de Mossadegh. La lute pour la liberte CONTINUE Dans tous le pays un chemin de la liberte est possible, mais difficile. Paths to freedom must be found in every country, Islamique et non-islamique Tous les hommes are destinied for freedom, though there will be setbacks and defeats as well as victories and great advances. Meme a Egypt, hardly had the Muslim Brotherhood taken power than there was already popular resistance. Where do you think it came from? Not solely from the Christian or secular minorities. Popular resistance in a Muslim country means much resistance is coming from Muslims themselves--in some cases even from Muslims who foolishly voted for the loony Brotherhood. (A sign of the times? In Christian Germany there was no almost immediate popular resistance within less than a year of der Fuhrer taking power. There would be now, and we also see it now in the Muslim world. Hegel has a point even if I cannot fully embrace his metaphysics: World history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom. The Zeitgeist, the spirit of freedom spreads over the whole earth. But what Hegel calls the Zeitgeist is actually the spirit of man. Freedom isn't some mere property or faculty that we have. It is what we ARE. It constitutes the being of the human--les Mussulman compris.. What has remained is for human beings to develop ever higher awareness of freedom as their destiny as well, growing awareness of the dignity of the human being. I am not naïve. This will involve an PROTRACTED struggle. But I am not pessimistic. The liberation of every man, woman and child on earth will be the fruit born of that struggle. We human beings are so constituted that it can hardly be otherwise. We will be free or we will not be. Human beings will never stop striving for freedom. And in every corner of the globe freedom will rise like the dawn).The only question is : How can I aid its rising? -Savant ________________________ In post# 895 I quoted your exact words, you stupid g___. Go read what you wrote! LOL! And credibility with YOU? LOL! That is funny. At any rate, I won't waste more words on you. Your four year old nephew would probably make a more intelligent interlocutor. And your obtuseness may be infectious. Au revoir. Countering the war against Black America--for it's not just against men--and the war against the poor, the working classes and other oppressed groups is what everybody should be talking about. Mass demonstrations are happening in Ferguson and elsewhere. Militarized police--who look like Yankee versions of the gestapo--are setting upon NONVIOLENT demonstrators with mace and gas. Not long ago they used rubber bullets. ARRESTS are mounting in an atmosphere which is becoming more and more fascistic. And it hasn't helped that the Supreme Court during the summer of 2013 gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965--once regarded as the crown jewel of civil rights victories of the time. And throughout the nation conservative state government are enacting stiff you requirements for voting which disproportionately work to disfranchise Black and Brown folk. So, while Capree, SBT and others continue their Jerry Springer level chatter, the more mature and socially conscious among us must face the growing shadow Fascism spreading across the land. Now this gets us back to the real issues. And I insist that the war is against Black America. It extends to other oppressed groups as well. And the more conscious and committed must figure out how to prepare our defenses. And also how to strategically mount an offensive. -Savant

Trojan Pam's Words

TrojanPam says:

August 20, 2014 at 7:59 pm @ Courtney H.

 I believe the media/government is using black people and STAGED RIOTS to not only demonize us as a group but also to set the stage for larger society. It’s like we’re a dress rehearsal for what is coming. Now, there’s a new ‘black’ movie coming out where a black male is terrorizing a black female and her child ALONGSIDE a movie with Denzel Washington where he becomes a superhero “The Equalizer” saving and assisting white people. I try to warn people that ANYTHING YOU SEE ON TV AND COMING FROM HOLLYWOOD is promoting white supremacy and anti-blackness (which amounts to the same thing) and while we’re sitting in these movies we never ask “How come there are no movies where a black man protects black women and black children?” coming out of Hollywood?

More of Savant's Words

HEDY EPSTEIN I want to send a shout out to Hedy Eptein, German Holocaust survivor, who was recently arrested in protests against the injustice in Ferguson, MO. It seems she has had a long history of progressive struggle ever since she arrived in this country. Apparently, this German Jewish lady whose parents sent her to England (thereby saving her life, though not their own) has been involved him human rights struggles since at least the 1940s. It seems she was shocked to learn about the realities of racial segregation in this country during the 1940s. And many of the racially repressive laws directed against Blacks at that time reminded her of similar measures in Germany just prior to Hitler's the "Final Solution." I am perturbed to learn that she has a long history of activist solidarity with Black freedom struggles, but that it was only with her recent arrest that I learned of her. When I began this thread years ago to both elicit the voices of progressive whites, and to celebrate their contributions to emancipatory struggles, it was people like Ms. Eptein that I had in mind. She belongs to that tradition of the Tom Paine, Grimke sisters, the whites of the Mississippi Freedom Summer and many others who have sought justice even if it had to be at the expense of white privilege. Of course, as a European Jew in the Third Reich she belonged to the most detested and persecuted race in Europe---as we have long been in America. I can only imagine that when she saw those militarized police pitted against the Black community ---against NONVIOLENT protestors---she was reminded of the gestapo cops who turned Europe into an inferno. And perhaps she reco9gnized that the fascistic tactics directed against our people must eventually become the commonplace way in which America as a whole would be ruled if it is ignored when done in the Black community. For some Jews--unfortunatel y not all--"Never again!" never again only for the Jews. But never again can atrocities be accepted against ANY human community. She may not represent the majority of white America, but she does represent the BEST of white America....the best in all of us. May she and others like her live ad prosper until the rivers run backward

-Savant

 ________________

 learned long ago not to take what you say at face value. Suffice it to say that some African Americans might find a TRIP TO DENMARK quite pleasant. And even though I know that there is racism in Europe, I doubt that Denmark or any Western European country is more racist than the good ole USA. -Savant

 __________________

 Probably PEOPLE saw the dangers of Fascism in the 1960s because of the repression against movement which intensified in the late 60s. Students shot by National Guard, Panthers killed and railroaded, the atrocities of Mayor Daley's police during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the trial of the Chicago 7, etc. George Jackson actually believed that America was ALREADY Fascist, not just moving in that direction. But we have seen that it could get even worse, the Neoconservative movement has tried to undo the progressive accomplishments of the 1960s. So, our struggle must CONTINUE before America does become Fascist, totally and for real. In some collection of his writings, Noam Chomsky stated that if police were allowed to operate throughout the WHOLE of America as they do in Black and Latin communities, the USA would already be regarded as a fascist or police state. Take that as a warning!!! Some whites--like Hedy Epstein--have seen the writing on the wall. We had all better unite soon in defense of what freedom we have left before it's too late. Death to Fascism!

 -Savant

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Submitted by Brutal Truth on Tue, 09/11/2012 - 16:20.
Obama had 2 years from January 2009 through January 2011 when this country had a Democratic supermajority in the Senate, a sizeable Democratic majority in the House plus an ostensibly Democratic president. Golden opportunity to actually get off their asses and do something about the minimum wage, the Employee Free Choice Act, single-payer health care... What do we have to SHOW for it?
Minimum wage stuck at $7.25/hour -- great for business owners but absolute sh___ for the average low-wage worker. No Employee Free Choice Act because it would give the capitalist ownership class acid reflux. No single-payer health care, not even a public option, no ability to reimport affordable pharmaceuticals from Canada because that would cut into Big Pharma's profit margins. No, instead what we got was a health care "reform" bill that only Big Pharma and the HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES could love. If you don't believe me ask yourself why did the stocks of big insurance companies skyrocket as soon as word reached Wall Street that the "reform" bill was going to pass in Congress? We also have had an administration that floated a trial balloon in the Washington Post a couple of years ago suggesting they want to privatize public housing. If a white Republican president had suggested that they'd run his a___ out of town on a rail and call him the biggest racist since David Duke. But an African-American Democrat president suggests it and I hear crickets chirping. If a Republican president had ramped up the failed natural gas pipeline war in Afghanistan the anti-war protesters would have come out of the woodwork... but Obama does it and the left doesn't make a sound.
Just what exactly do you expect the billionaires' puppet and corporate (___) Obama to do in the next four years? When he has absolutely no pressure whatsoever from having to face another election? If he didn't do jack nor s____ these last four years knowing he'd have to face progressives at the BALLOT BOX in 2012 what the h___ kind of leverage do you think we'll have with him over the next four? Get real buddy, as Glen Ford and others on this blog have said before Obama is not the lesser of two evils but the more effective evil. Don't be an enabler for him. Vote for none of the above. Refuse to give your endorsement to a transparently phony and meaningless process. Refuse to lend it undeserved credibility. Otherwise you're part of the problem.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/we-know-tea-party-repubs-are-scary-are-democrats-congress-worth-defending-all
 ________________

Has anyone noticed that Assdurratin's postions here are identical with those promoted by far RIGHT wing racists. Those Voter ID laws are actually more like the poll taxes and other measures which politically disfranchised our ancestors after Reconstruction. It is no coincidence that most people blocked from voting by the new voting restrictions are Black and (increasingly) Hispanic citizens. Also notice Assdurratin's RHETORIC: "Obama the MARXIST." Only a philosophically and politically illiterate simpleton could think that Obama is a Marxist after reading Obama's writings and speeches. But then again, only a political or philosophical illiterate could read Nkrumah and not see that he was a Marxist, though Assdurratin (who claims he's an Nkrumahist) vehemently denies Nkrumah's Marxism. What a phony he is: an a___ kissing Uncle tom reactionary pretending to be a follower of a left revolutionary African statesman. And now he's DEFENDINGmeasures by his right wing white masters to disfranchise us again, a ,mere 50 years the Civil Rights Act, and 49 years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. "Traitor go to h___!" -Savant ________________
Thanks. Now something interesting happened at my university last week. No classes yet, just some faculty meetings. In one session I an a few others were asked to share our experiences as faculty who were first time or first generation university graduates. There was myself, a brother from the "hood" of east Baltimore, and son of parents who had left the Jim Crow South, a white working class woman from a poor family for whom it was uncommon even to complete high school. A woman from Africa living in the USA, from the lower rungs of the Nigerian middle class, but whose family had never gotten anywhere near a UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. And then there was the organizer of the panel---the daughter of Holocaust survivors. All first time educated folk from underprivileged backgrounds. After telling my story, my family's struggle to secure a decent education for me and my little sis, the lady who organized the panel stated to the audience "I can really relate to Dr. Savant's story because I am also a first generation college graduate. And like Professor Savant, I am a child of people who had to escape racial persecution, and long years of poverty. My parents were also Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, like Ms. Epstein of whom Savant speaks so eloquently. They were not as poor as Savant's parents--not until Hitler took from them everything they had. And they remained poor for some time after they got to America. But they, too, had that passion for education, the same passion for at least the education of their children that Savant tells us his family and that most people in his community once had." I suggested that with the Jewish people, a "people of the book", learning (or at least love of learning) was also an ancient tradition which she inherited. At one time--not so sure about now--education was virtually a religious devotion in Black America, commonly seen as a key to collective freedom as well as personal advancement, and partly because so many whites (beginning with slaveholders) were so determined that we not be educated. But it's important that we continue to advocate education, not merely for personal economic advancement, but for personal and social liberation and freedom. Education for freedom.


-Savant

Controversial, but Interesting Words

Submitted by Brutal Truth on Tue, 09/21/2010 - 23:03:

True communists are not dictators but in favor of a truer democracy than you've ever experienced with the flaccid, pale puppet SHOW that is American bourgeois "democracy". You don't seem to understand that I'm not talking about a bureaucratic government ownership of the means of production but rather a system in which there is direct worker ownership of the means of production, i.e. businesses being owned jointly by all of its workers (except for those that are small enough to be worked entirely by its owner like hot dog stands or newsstands) which would itself be worker ownership because he or she would be doing all the work on their own. If you think you can reform a system that is built around greed and screwing over everyone else in order to enrich a tiny clique and somehow transform it into something that really represents what's best for everyone who isn't rich then you're tilting at windmills. Capitalism is doing what it's designed to do and the whole American system including its constitution written by the elite slaveowning planter class in the interests of the elite would be laughable for its irony were it not for the immense HUMAN suffering it overlooks being obviously no laughing matter. It mouths nice and high-minded principles but they have never been lived up to and since the 9/11 false flag operation the mainstreaming of police state measures and descent into overt fascism have been plain for anyone to see.

What you don't seem to grasp is that myself and people like me don't advocate some kind of tyrannical police state with a nightmare of a bureaucracy but the opposite, a transparent, widely decentralized (council communist) government which can be recalled at a moment's notice if it strays from representing the interests of the proletariat. Debate should be encouraged, not curtailed. And the underlying laws governing society would be based upon advancing and bettering society as a whole and transitioning to a classless society; part of this includes being able to do what one wants to do as long as it's not violating anybody else's civil liberties, in other words an adult could choose to smoke herb or choose not to without fear of legal punishment but someone couldn't kidnap a person and force them to smoke it. Likewise someone could work where he or she pleases but the old ideas of (bourgeois) property relations would be discarded , meaning it would be impossible for a citizen to be in a position to economically oppress others in an employer-employee relationship.

Instead it would be a beautiful paradox: Nobody in the bourgeois sense of the word would be a BUSINESS OWNER but at the same time everyone would be a BUSINESS OWNER by being a worker and part-owner of whatever business in which they work. The betterment of the proletariat is what true communists work towards and that is why we always bring forward the property question. We want a world in which the worker owns his or her own home but not a world in which a person can personally own his own homebuilding business unless he can do all the work himself. Otherwise it would be owned by its workers and whatever would be its profit margin rolled back into payroll. FREE HEALTH CARE, free education through college, a good opportunity from birth for everybody. These are the things that true communists want. To answer your question, if they differ from these things that I mentioned then they are not true communists.


_____________

Submitted by Brutal Truth on Wed, 09/22/2010 - 00:48.

Anyone can claim to be working in the interests of something but the proof is in the pudding. As I stated, when Lenin dissolved the workers soviets (councils) from that point onward it couldn't be considered a truly communist state so any comparison isn't valid any more than someone could consider crusaders claiming to be operating in the name of Jesus then beheading villagers in the Middle East to be genuine Christians. It's only a problem for small minded people who can't understand that someone claiming to be something doesn't necessarily mean they are what they claim. Read what I just posted if you want to know what true communists are in favor of and what we aren't then get back to me. You're repeating points like about bureaucracies I already explained to C.N. Regarding religion however I think that while national and international church hierarchies have no place in a socialist SOCIETY because they have always been used as a mouthpiece for the elite in whichever country one finds them there should be no problem with churches at the local level and attendance should neither be encouraged nor discouraged. Some communists definitely need to be less dogmatic regarding religion and realize that it isn't religion that is evil but the abuse and manipulation of people by using religion by the establishment that is evil. Again, read what I posted above and you'll see what I am saying about non-violation of others' civil liberties underlying the new SOCIETY'S laws. As long as someone isn't violating anybody's civil rights or oppressing others, including economically oppressing them in an employer-employee relationship, then they aren't breaking the law. Debate should be encouraged, I noted that already. "disregarding culture and viewing HUMAN societies to be merely a series of class relationships is universal? "

What's universal is that proletarian socialism is UNIVERSALLY APPLICABLE to any people's situation because in the capitalist economic model the problem is always the same everywhere, the workers are everywhere enslaved, just in varying degrees of wage slavery. In other words a worker in a maquiladora in Los Angeles has infinitely more in common with a worker in a sweatshop in Cambodia than either of them has in common with the bourgeoisie in their own country. To answer your question about why systems such as the Soviet Union or P.R. of China have betrayed their originally-stated or at least purported intentions is that by their own weakness the ones originally leading the SOCIAL revolution become corrupted through an over-centralized format of government in which they are the center of it, they lose sight of working in the people's interest and (this is key) the people didn't ensure that they were installing a transparent government that can be recalled if it starts to go off the rails. I already addressed how transparency is absolutely critical and this is why. The Soviet Union became what it hated, a SOCIETY with classes only in their case the ruling class was the pseudo-communist bureaucracy enjoying privileges and wealth unobtainable by the average citizen. It goes without saying that such a system doesn't adhere to communist principles any more than a Muslim theocracy would be a genuine Muslim theocracy if it encouraged everyone to eat pork and get drunk.

Though it would be patently obvious that the latter situation was false it somehow eludes many people that a system that entrenches a new class division in place of the old one and doesn't allow the workers to remove the government if it becomes counter to their interests is (gasp!) not what genuine communism is about at all but 180 degrees away from it. Basically you're arguing the same exact argument that certainly Leonardo da Vinci had to endure if ever he showed his plans for the flying machine with flapping wings to anybody. "That thing will never fly and it SHOWS that people were never, ever under any circumstances meant to fly through the air. People being able to fly is an unnatural concept and will simply never happen!" But lo and behold in 1903 people were able to take off in a heavier-than-air fixed-wing aircraft and humanity didn't look back. Humanity's advancement will eventually catch up with its visionaries.


_______________


Communism is both economic and political in that politics cannot ever really be DIVORCED from economics. "...in favor of a bureacracy which was supposedly focussing only on the class relationships(as if this was the most important thing). " The class relationships/class struggle is most certainly the most important thing. You need to understand the historical nature of the struggle and how history MOVES in a certain pattern. All of it comes back to one central issue, that a thread running through all of recorded history is class oppression. It was true when feudalism was the in thing and all the bourgeois epoch has done is substituted a simplified and more overt version of class oppression for the multitude of sub-class gradations of the past like feudal lords, guildmasters, journeymen, serfs, slaves; all that has been simplified into two great opposing classes: the bourgeoisie (the wealthy, ownership class) and the proletariat (which should be considered everyone else who isn't rich.) Until you realize this universal truth that applies to every capitalist society from the U.S. to Poland to Nigeria to Syria, then you won't be able to grasp where communists are coming from when we talk about the universality of capitalism's oppression. Do you honestly think that a guy flipping hamburgers in the hot ass kitchen of a fast food restaurant has more in common with some bourgeois pig in his own country living in a gated community sipping mint juleps and bitching about how inefficient his servants are, than he has in common with someone spinning yarn in a sweatshop in some other country? If so there's not much for us to talk about.

I'm not in favor of eliminating cultures. Someone's culture should be embraced as it's a part of them and part of what makes them who they are. Great, no problem. But that doesn't mean that we should allow the world's (and each individual society's) cultural differences to balkanize us into acting like HUMANITY is more than one species. When we do that we are just doing the work of the bourgeoisie. They want us to remain artificially divided with this ethnic group distrusting that ethnic group because it keeps us from coming together and kicking the shit out of them. Who benefits from white workers living in trailer homes fearing and loathing African American workers living in apartments who make the same starvation wages? The working class whites and AAs? Or the PARASITICfilth that keeps both of them living from hand to mouth? We have to remember who the real enemy is.

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Submitted by Brutal Truth on Wed, 09/22/2010 - 19:05. Russell Means is way too caught up in narrowminded cultural-nationalist thinking to be able to see the forest for the trees so to speak. The answer isn't to distrust everything that doesn't originate within one's own community. Again, that's just lending a helping hand to the ruling elite by ensuring that no one group gains a critical mass of PEOPLE and that everyone remains divided into tiny ethnic enclaves. He fails to comprehend the big picture and seems too hooked on cultural exclusivity. What's the difference between a white bigot claiming that white-oriented culture is superior to all others and a Lakota Indian claiming that indigenous native culture is superior to all others? The solution isn't to try to revert to some prehistoric Luddite wet dream of a social order where we all worship "mother Earth" and shun advances in TECHNOLOGY and new ideas if they originate with someone who grew up speaking a different language or having a different culture. Likewise Means falls into the same philosophical trap that you seem to be falling into regarding condemning all Marxist thinking by the examples of societies like the Soviet Union that blatantly deviated sharply from genuine Marxist teachings. For example, in Means's railing against Soviet destruction of the environment he overlooks that they were doing so explicitly counter to Marxism. Consider that it states in chapter 2 of the Communist Manifesto that one of the goals of a truly socialist society is "the bringing into cultivation of wastelands and the improvement of the soil GENERALLY IN accordance with a common plan." Nowhere does it say to rape the environment. It would be like me criticizing Christianity for advocating the beheading of people that refuse to convert to Christianity when the crusaders were obviously acting completely 180 degrees against what Christ's teachings were. The actions of the crusaders no more condemn Christ's actual teachings than societies claiming to be acting in the name of Marx but pervert and ignore his precepts could be used to condemn Marxism. If I claim to be a radical environmentalist and in the name of the planet decide to go to an oil refinery and EXECUTE everyone then cause a giant explosion that destroys the surrounding town then does that mean that environmentalism is ipso facto evil because of what I did?

Of course not. This point doesn't need to be belabored, it's self-evident if you think about it. There are certain universal truths in life. One of them is that if someone who owns a business is allowed to then he or she will inevitably pay his or her workers no more than he thinks he can get away with paying them. Honestly, and this may sting a little but it needs to be said: An African American BUSINESS OWNER with a shop in Harlem employing black workers is no more likely to treat them any better than a white business owner in Bel Air would treat his white workers. It is a class issue, a difference of haves and have nots. Moreover, regardless of ingrained prejudices that affect so many of our white brothers and sisters, a black businessman in the conditions of his economic existence has infinitely more in common with white businessmen than he does with his own black workers. The solution: the abolishing of bourgeois property in the interest of the betterment of everyone who isn't of the propertied class. This is the solution whether one is talking about the economically oppressed here or wherever capitalism is the dominant economic system.

True HUMANprogress can only really be defined in terms of economic equality, of advancing to the stage where nobody is born into poverty and nobody is born into wealth. A society's development has to be measured against how close or how far away it is from that end goal. Maybe I'm ahead of my time, in fact I'm pretty sure I am but that's OK. The world will eventually grow the hell up and the vast majority of its people will eventually decide that what is in their own best interests is also in the best interests of their brothers and sisters of the oppressed proletariat much in the same way that nobody in the developed world sends their kids to work in a coal tipple anymore. It's progress and it can be delayed, it can even be reversed temporarily but it can never and will never be permanently derailed. Progress is inevitable. The bourgeoisie is on borrowed time.


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Submitted by Brutal Truth on Wed, 09/22/2010 - 20:47. Yes, the proof is in the pudding as it is very easy to tell if any person or SOCIETY that claims to be Marxist is actually Marxist in the same way that any person that claims to be Christian is actually Christian. It involves nothing more than actually reading their respective literature then comparing and contrasting the actions of the person or society in question with the literature they claim to embrace. Pretty effing simple. Jimmy Swaggart was a con artist. Does that mean Christ and everyone who is a genuine Christian is a con artist? "my disagreements with marxist theory is that it posits that HUMAN societies most important elements are merely economic relationships(thus reducing the HUMAN experience to merely economic relationships(without considering and to the detriment and neglect of the countless other things that make a HUMAN SOCIETY whole) " Well human societies' most important elements that determine its current condition are in fact economic relationships, namely the state of its class struggle. Regardless of national differences, cultural differences, differences in cuisine and religion and its own shared group experiences there is something that is unavoidably present in every capitalist SOCIETY and looming over it: The oppression of about 95% of its population by the other 5%, give or take a percentage point or two one way or the other. In essence it is unavoidable that with capitalism one has two distinct and extremely unequal sets of people, the haves and have nots. We can massage it and try to reform it and make it into something that has some compassion for the have nots but trying to reform it offers no changes beyond the cosmetic. If it wasn't about the "sanctity" of an individual being able to economically oppress others for his own personal enrichment then it wouldn't be capitalism. As an economic model it works great for the comparatively tiny clique that owns the wealth but for the rest of the people? Not so much. That's why the BEST BET for the bourgeoisie is to keep us as ignorant of our plight as possible and keep us as divided against one another as possible. Having a narrow focus or disregarding ideas simply because they were put on paper by a white man/European/whatever is closeminded to the Nth degree and playing right into the enemy's hands.

Ultimately what I'm saying is this: Underlying every capitalist society is the same oppression by the haves against the have nots. Yes there are a multitude of different cultures and religions and nationalities and that's a good thing as it would be a pretty damned boring world otherwise. But those differences in no way whatsoever change the fundamental class struggle that itself is the underlying problem within every single capitalist SOCIETY in the world, just in somewhat varying degrees. That much we all as HUMANS have in common if we live in capitalist countries, that this phenomenon is present. With this economic model it has to be present because capitalism is the polar opposite of anything that places human dignity and worth and the advancement of the average person over the narrow class interests of a tiny well-to-do minority. Anything that says the profit margin is more important than people's lives and well-being is inherently evil to its core and is beyond reforming. Tear it down and start over.

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 Submitted by Brutal Truth on Thu, 09/23/2010 - 21:48. In Christian literature one doesn't need to go beyond the four gospels and doesn't need to consider anything beyond Christ's actual teachings. Those are pretty straightforward and don't contradict each other. Regarding Marxism, I agree with the vast majority of its tenets but in its application I personally tend to favor a more decentralized approach perhaps somewhat like the anarcho-syndicalist radical leftists in the Spanish Civil War carried out in the territories under their control from 1936-'39. This may just be a problem of interpretation or where the emphasis is placed more than a problem of substance. It isn't the power itself that corrupts a person or a group but the ability to exercise power unchecked with citizens unable to have any recourse or avenue for redress of grievances. This is why I've emphasized transparency in any workers state government. Once the class structure has been smashed it has to be the overriding goal to prevent another class structure from emerging in its place, e.g. a bureaucratic class unto itself that enjoys privileges that the regular citizens do not. This helped sink the Soviet experiment. When Marx speaks of centralizing this or that in the hands of "the State" he's speaking of the ideal, 100% democratic workers state which would represent the will of the proletariat but even so I like yourself would rather place more power in the hands of local elected councils with the central government being nothing much more than a "meeting place" for representatives of these local councils to decide the few POLICIES that need to be decided at the national level.

All of them certainly subject to recall if they stray from the path of what's best for the proletariat. This is true council communism and the Soviet Union would have been a beautiful thing had it maintained this form of government rather than quickly discarding it in favor of their circular logic of "the Bolsheviks always know best and we're the Bolsheviks so we automatically represent the will of the proletariat so there's no need for elections." No way José, that route can't be taken. Obviously there would have to be some kind of equivalent to a federal government if for no other reason than to organize the common defense of the workers state; in that vein I favor instead of a large standing army like seems to be popular among pseudo-communist countries/deformed workers states rather having a military that is sort of like a high-tech militia that can be called out when needed. Sort of borrowing from the Hezbollah model. It would be nothing that could be used to mount a real invasion and occupation of another country but something that is intended for deterrence against foreign counterrevolutionary incursions. Regardless I think the key to the whole thing is transparency and ensuring that any central government that would necessarily need to exist would be 100% subject to the workers councils. The best way to accomplish that would be a national-level "parliament" made up entirely of elected workers who also serve in their local councils. That's how I've always envisioned it as it dovetails nicely with worker ownership of the means of production and exchange.

Decisions affecting a locality, e.g. whether or not to build a broom factory there or convert acres of pastureland into cropland would have to be approved locally with a referendum, with the federal government in a position to advise but not insist. No permanent bureaucracy and no unelected officials. No CAREER politicians. As long as it is transparent and accountable to the will of the people at every moment then I see no problem in a central government being formed. My difference with Karl Marx is in the emphasis, in that I would want the default to be the decision being made at the local level and anything that could not be decided locally would then have to be decided by the "federal" government which in my opinion should be just an extension of all the local governments. Above all else we would have to remain careful to not allow any government to become a class unto itself or else we've defeated the whole purpose. I think you and I agree on most of this anyway. We're definitely on the same side.

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 Submitted by Enlightened Cynic on Wed, 09/22/2010 - 10:40. You can't conflate Chavez with Castro. Whether you like it or not, Chavez is DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED. Usually in overwhelming majorities. Your criticisms of "socalism" aside, don't buy the Pentagon, CFR, and Mass Media hysteria about Chavez being a dictator. No more "dictator" than GWB who stole 2 elections. (Where was the UN on that one?) You might aver that Chavez manipulated the Constitution to engineer additional term(s) blah, blah, blah. But didn't the UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT manipulate the Constitution to engineer a Bush win in Florida? Didn't Diebold and the GOP steal Ohio in the subsequent election? How many Black (or other) felons are still denied the right to vote, or work for wages cheaper than those in Barundi under the prison system that incarcerates more PEOPLE than anyone in the world? Try to start a new political party and watch how much money or how many legal obstacles are placed in your path. Americans like to believe we are a democracy, we have freedom of speech, we can own "property," blah blah blah. Bull___. We have manufactured consensus and election results engineered by the Elites.

Freedom of speech? Don't make me laugh. How many times do we need to see peaceful protesters arrested whether on sidewalks or the Halls of Congress for speaking truth to power? If most, if not all of us said what we write here at BAR at work, in our local papers, in our churches, we'd be fired and ostracized to high heaven. The "consensus BUILDING SYSTEM" would punish us economically and marginalize us socially for not adopting American Exceptionalism, the root and branch of global racism. Think 9/11 Truthers.. tell your co-workers you believe 9/11 was an inside job and watch what happens to your PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL. All of a sudden C.N. becomes a "poor fit," "he's not a 'team player' anymore," and soon his ass is unemployed and blackballed. Say what you will in America but pay dearly. Just because we can go to WalMart every other weekend and get on-demand porn don't mean we're "free."

 Cuba would be faring much better were it not for the criminal US embargo, Venezuela is doing better than us despite repeated US covert actions to subvert the will of the PEOPLE. Despite decades of the US foot on it's throat Cuba has the finest medical system in Latin America. Both Castro and Chavez have raised standards of living of the general populace because they don't interpret "property rights" through the Western lense. Many of these so-called "socialist countries" would do fine if the US just left them the fuck alone. But you know as I do that anyone that doesn't toe the line is a "threat" which typically means anyone who speaks truth to power is a threat. Or anyone who experiments with a different political economy is a "threat." Start kicking up the dust around the lunch/breakroom about the real deal behind 9/11 if you doubt me, and you'll see how fast you on the outside looking in, on the sidewalk eating twinkies standing in the unemployment line. Hey I'm all for self-help and sufficiency, which Blacks engaged in for millenia in the global sphere and hundreds of year in the American sphere. I mean, exactly WHEN were Blacks fully integrated into the "Capitalist System?" or are we even fully integrated NOW? Somebody please pencil in the date for me. Give the Euro-centric worldview a rest, it's bullshit. Read the article on Hudson's address to BRIC. "Not so fast my friend."

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Submitted by Brutal Truth on Mon, 09/20/2010 - 18:43. "As flawed as USA capitalism is, I still think it is the best system in the world." It's not even the best system compared to other capitalist SOCIETIES like those found in western Europe where at least the workers have a little bit of clout, the government isn't unabashedly union busters and the people are educated enough to realize that socialism isn't a dirty word but the opposite. Capitalism is a heartless and evil system that works great for the wealthiest 1% or 2% or sometimes even 5% of the population but hands a giant shit sandwich to the remaining 95%+ percent and expects them to like it. Capitalism is very good at doing what it's designed to do: Make the rich richer with the consequence of making the poor poorer. It should not be applauded or apologized for but torn down and replaced with a system designed around what's best for the average non-wealthy person, not the average Rockefeller.

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 Submitted by Enlightened Cynic on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 23:20. Part of the difficulties in establishing new paradigns is because of the uncritical acceptance of "received wisdom" about what particular, iconic terms mean. Below is a definition of capitalism and it's one that's clearly slanted towards the "system." As evident by arguing that MOST importantly is a "moralistic system." Get that, a moralisitic system. LOL Now anyone with half a brain knows better. http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Politics_Capitalism.html Here's another ANALYSIS that get's at my point:
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Capitalism#Capitalism_in_political_ideo... "Many Greens, Marxists and anti-Globalists agree that the governments of the major industrial economies are not serving in the role of protecting "the FREE MARKET", but would go on to say that these governments are, in fact, acting to protect the owners of capital and corporations as their first priority, sometimes expressed as "socialism for the rich, capitalism (cut throat competition) for the poor." These critics, therefore, would assert that the correct term for the core industrial nations is neither capitalism, nor mixed economy, but corporatist. Libertarians and other free-market advocates may also share this opinion regarding some or all of the major economies. Nevertheless, mainstream economists, for their part, admit that the present economic systems have diverged from earlier forms labeled "capitalism", and many believe that some of the modern economies are still best described as being "capitalism" rather than "mixed economy" or "corporatist."" There you have it folks. Capitalism is a loaded term. It is also distinctively Euro-centric and thus ethnocentric. It comes encrusted with American (and Western) Exceptionalism and other potent toxins. (Which is why it underlines the rhetoric of the Tea Party) Why are we describing the exchange of goods and services, whether through trade or batering or other forms of mutual economic exchange as "capitalism?" We need to be mindful that "trade" existed long before capitalism, long before the system of indebtedness that followed capitalism, long before excess production/consumption or concepts of private property, long before the Euro-centric political economy. Capitalism makes us "slaves" although we think we're free. The system squashes free thought and speech, punishes us economically if we speak or write or otherwise step outside the box. The system will blackball us into extreme poverty. F___ the western definition of capitalism which is racist, ethnocentric, and narrow minded. Africans, Asians and other cultures were engaged in trade when Whites were still in caves or warring for 100 years. That's not intended as an expression of who's superior, just a simple expression of FACTS. And most importantly a reminder that the "West" didn't invent FREE TRADE. We don't need no stinkin capitalism, we can create fairer instruments of trade. Islamic culture for instance frowns on usury to this very day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Africa "HUMANITY originated in Africa, and as soon as HUMAN societies existed so did economic activity.

Earliest humans were hunter gatherers living in small, family groupings. Even then there was considerable trade that could cover LONG DISTANCES. Archaeologists have found that evidence of trade in luxury items like precious metals and shells across the entirety of the continent." Thanks to you all for the many insightful suggestions. But let's keep in mind that usage of the term "capitalism" is full of unnecessary baggage. It confuses and stunts the dialogue between "Left" and "Right." The Left wants to categorically assume capitalism is unfair but yet want to be fairly REWARDED for their talents and labors, the Right assumes socialism is bad, yet negates the fact that capitalism institutionalizes inequalities. The language is nothing but an intellectual straight jacket. Until we begin to think outside the box in terms of what is or isn't "capitalism," until we acknowlege the true origins and facts of world COMMERCE and trade we'll continue to hamstring our efforts to create a new and workable paradignm. Everybody engages in trade, but not all trade is "capitalistic." Well, it certainly doesn't have to be so, does it??

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 Submitted by Brutal Truth on Thu, 09/23/2010 - 21:11. Considering the country's infrastructure is literally falling down around our ears I think there is a hell of a lot of opportunity out there for PEOPLE to be employed in rebuilding it if we had a government that put a priority on employment rather than toadying to the oil barons. Who really benefits from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Those who 1.want to force a different way for natural gas to be transported out of Turkmenistan without having to go through Russia or Iran; 2.those who want to take advantage of Iraq as the soon-to-be center of gravity of the 21st Century world's oil production and get their hooks in it to privatize its resources into being subsidiaries of Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco and Conoco Phillips; 3.the armaments manufacturers; 4. the mercenary "contractors" like Blackwater/Exe, Triple Canopy etc. In other words a pretty small slice of the American population. The enormous amount of CORPORATE GIVEAWAYS to this tiny sliver could be infinitely better spent on programs of social uplift and employment projects like a second New Deal. Maybe call it the Real Deal? The late great Dr. King once said that "Any society that spends more on military defense than it spends on programs of social uplift is headed for spiritual death." From where I sit its spiritual EKG is looking pretty damn shaky. ____________

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