The Breakdown of Globalization

Special thanks to Mo for sending the link to this incredible lecture

“The Poverty of Philosophy”; Immortal Technique on Latin America

Most of my Latino and black people who are struggling to get food, clothes and shelter in the hood are so concerned with that, that philosophising about freedom and socialist democracy is usually unfortunately beyond their rationale. They don’t realize that America can’t exist without separating them from their identity, because if we had some sense of who we really are, there’s no way in hell we’d allow this country to push it’s genocidal consensus on our homelands. This ignorance exists, but it can be destroyed.

N’s talk about change and working within the system to achieve that. The problem with always being a conformist is that when you try to change the system from within, it’s not you who changes the system; it’s the system that will eventually change you. There is usually nothing wrong with compromise in a situation, but compromising yourself in a situation is another story completely, and I have seen this happen long enough in the few years that I’ve been alive to know that it’s a serious problem. Latino America is a huge colony of countries whose presidents are cowards in the face of economic imperialism. You see, third world countries are rich places, abundant in resources, and many of these countries have the capacity to feed their starving people and the children we always see digging for food in trash on commercials. But plutocracies, in other words a government run by the rich such as this one and traditionally oppressive European states, force the third world into buying overpriced, unnecessary goods while exporting huge portions of their natural resources.

I’m quite sure that people will look upon my attitude and sentiments and look for hypocrisy and hatred in my words. My revolution is born out of love for my people, not hatred for others.

You see, most of Latinos are here because of the great inflation that was caused by American companies in Latin America. Aside from that, many are seeking a life away from the puppet democracies that were funded by the United States; places like El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Republica Dominicana, and not just Spanish-speaking countries either, but Haiti and Jamaica as well.

As different as we have been taught to look at each other by colonial society, we are in the same struggle and until we realize that, we’ll be fighting for scraps from the table of a system that has kept us subservient instead of being self-determined. And that’s why we have no control over when the embargo will stop in Cuba, or when the bombs will stop dropping in Vieques.

But you see, here in America the attitude that is fed to us is that outside of America there live lesser people. “Fuck them, let them fend for themselves.” No, Fuck you, they are you. No matter how much you want to dye your hair blonde and put fake eyelashes in, or follow an anorexic standard of beauty, or no matter how many diamonds you buy from people who exploit your own brutally to get them, no matter what kind of car you drive or what kind of fancy clothes you put on, you will never be them. They’re always gonna look at you as nothing but a little monkey. I’d rather be proud of what I am, rather than desperately trying to be something I’m really not, just to fit in. And whether we want to accept it or not, that’s what this culture or lack of culture is feeding us.

I want a better life for my family and for my children, but it doesn’t have to be at the expense of millions of lives in my homeland. We’re given the idea that if we didn’t have these people to exploit then America wouldn’t be rich enough to let us have these little petty material things in our lives and basic standards of living. No, that’s wrong. It’s the business giants and the government officials who make all the real money. We have whatever they kick down to us. My enemy is not the average white man, it’s not the kid down the block or the kids I see on the street; my enemy is the white man I don’t see: the people in the white house, the corporate monopoly owners, fake liberal politicians those are my enemies. The generals of the armies that are mostly conservatives those are the real Mother-Fuckers that I need to bring it to, not the poor, broke country-ass soldier that’s too stupid to know shit about the way things are set up.

In fact, I have more in common with most working and middle-class white people than I do with most rich black and Latino people. As much as racism bleeds America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue. Many of us are in the same boat and it’s sinking, while these bougie Mother-Fuckers ride on a luxury liner, and as long as we keep fighting over kicking people out of the little boat we’re all in, we’re gonna miss an opportunity to gain a better standard of living as a whole.

In other words, I don’t want to escape the plantation, I want to come back, free all my people, hang the Mother-Fucker that kept me there and burn his house to the god damn ground. I want to take over the encomienda and give it back to the people who work the land.

You cannot change the past but you can make the future, and anyone who tells you different is a Fucking lethargic devil. I don’t look at a few token Latinos and black people in the public eye as some type of achievement for my people as a whole. Most of those successful individuals are sell-outs.

But, I don’t consider brothers a sell-out if they move out of the ghetto. Poverty has nothing to do with our people. It’s not in our culture to be poor. That’s only been the last 500 years of our history; look at the last 2000 years of our existence and what we brought to the world in terms of science, mathematics, agriculture and forms of government. You know the idea of a confederation of provinces where one federal government controls the states? The Europeans who came to this country stole that idea from the Iroquois lead. The idea of impeaching a ruler comes from an Aztec tradition. That’s why Montezuma was stoned to death by his own people ’cause he represented the agenda of white Spaniards once he was captured, not the Aztec people who would become Mexicans.

So in conclusion, I’m not gonna vote for anybody just ’cause they black or Latino, they have to truly represent the community and represent what’s good for all of us proletariat.

Porque sino entonces te mando por el carajo cabron gusano hijo de puta, seramos libre pronto, viva la revolucion, VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

10 steps to fascism… PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE watch (45mins.)

A lecture by Naomie Wolf, author of “End of America, A letter of Warning for a Young Patriot” at the University of Washington. She has carefully studied the political and social environments that led to the ‘installment’ of totalitarian regimes in the 20th Century (Stalin, Mussollini, Polpot, Hitler and numerous other ’smaller’ dictators) and concludes that there is a blue print of 10 characteristics that each of these regimes has followed. All 10 of these characteristics were present in the lead up to all of the totalitarian regimes, and all 10 are currently present in America right now… YOU are NEEDED to save democracy in America. Action needs to be taken immediately.

Wayne on the spiritual perspectives of America’s role as sole superpower

Hear the brotha speak….

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/audio_library/ram/wv/wv_030512b.ram

Imperialism’s impact on ‘the other’? When $2000 Holt Renfrew high heels take on a new meaning…

” PULITZER PRIZE ” winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine.
The picture depicts a famine stricken child crawling towards an United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.
The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.
Three months later he committed suicide due to depression.

Does imperialism have any moral fibre whatsoever?

Cecil Rhodes: the man who financed the Cape-Cairo railway project, founded the De Beers Mining Company, and owned the British South Africa Company which established Rhodesia for itself. He wanted to “paint the map British Red” and declared “…all of these stars … these vast worlds that remain out of reach. If I could, I would annex other planets”.

21st Century Imperialism

IMPERIALISM…. the conceptual reality of conquering foreign territory in the name of political and economic dominance, for the desire of ‘empire building’, requires at its most fundamental level a subdued racial prejudice. One of the most dominant political forces of our time, imperialism has been, and continues to be, in a state of perpetual change. Once blatantly obvious, imperialism has survived through its ability to evolve. Imperialism is a well oiled machine that realizes it can no longer prevail unless it works in the shadows, behind the scenes; whereas once you sent your explorers overseas, dominated local tribes with your military might, established colonies, exploited natural resources and created new markets, we now send our bankers to G7 meetings or WTO forums and simply create global economic policies that continue to serve the same empire building objectives that traditional forms of imperialism did (prosperity for the powerful at the expense of ‘the other’). What traditional imperialism and newer forms of economic and political dominance have in common is a reliance on an inherent form of racism that allows the population of the prosperous nations to feel a sense of greater entitlement than the people who populate the countries we continue to exploit. Fanatical patriotism erodes our ability to feel empathy for ‘the other’; separated by seas, by differences in culture and belief, by skin colour, these differences are perpetuated by imaginary social barriers that the ‘empire builder’ has constructed over time and engrained in our culture. How is it that 3 families can have more wealth than the poorest 48 countries combined? How is it that we in the west do not feel a moral sense of obligation to our brothers and sisters in Bolivia, in Nigeria, in Lithuania, in Burma? Patriotism is so deep and engrained that to question the direction and the moral fibre of one’s nation is to be ‘unpatriotic’. Without social support networks to reinforce one’s convictions, it is very difficult to stand out in a crowd where your beliefs, ethics and morality will see you chastised. Blind faith in the direction and leadership in our leaders without questioning the consequences of their actions on our country or on the countries of others is anything but patriotic; we need to encourage debate, we need to encourage and challenge people to seek a new direction, we need to encourage people to realize that dissent in the name of real progress is a fundamental responsibility for every citizen fortunate enough to live within a democracy.

Peace and Love to all,

D-Fungus

Morning Dew–from my Prison Notebooks

I’ll try and kick it off…(Just woke up 5 mins ago, giving some stream of consciousness a shot here…)

Listening to some Ben Harper from Lifeline–Younger than Today & Fight outta you

“I would rather take a punch, then not give you a shot…I’d rather find out who you are, then who you’re not…Don’t let it take the fight outta you” BH

Last meeting, we talked about Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s introductory essay from the Socialist Register, can’t remember the exact title right now, but it is from the 2004 edition on the Imperialism of Our Time.

http://socialistregister.com/recent/2004

The whole book is basically about reintroducing the word Imperialism into discourses, conversations, thoughts about Amercian power, American Hegemony, American Exceptionalism–whatever you might’ve (or are) calling it according to Panitch and Gindin actually refers to the Imperialism nexus of the present, that grows out from the past era of inter-imperial rivalry upto WWI.

Summaries aside, the importance of this article is that it helps the FUNGUS name the powers it wishes to speak truth to, or even more correct–it helps having a historical, conceptual, theoretical analysis of what we like to call the MACHINE.

Aside–the Machine, or evil?, just think Morpheus in the Matrix giving you the choice–blue pill or red pill–depending on what you choose, you’ll know what we’re talking about when we speak of the machine–a system, a structure, ways of organizing life that put the living species and ecosystems of earth in the slavery of the interests of a very small few elites, maybe their fucked up aliens? I don’t know, but it damn near time for our generations to really start fucking them up…sand in the wheels of the machine–to put those damn grinding gears to halt!

Ok, back to the Socialist Register–we read little more than half the article, and will finish today. After which I’ll put up a better analysis, with some questions for online folks to answer…

BUY NOTHING DAY

2nd outing of action in the name of the Fungus, and well, we had a great day of action. Spreading the good word, if sometimes problematic, of the busters, downtown.

I consider it like giving people a little shock, nothing taser deadly, but maybe like putting a fork in socket or something. And you could see it, sometimes, jolting people out of there zombie shopping states–double takes, stares, looking(but not looking), scowls, some smiles too!

We’re (I’m) not saying that buying nothing for a day will solve everything, we’re just trying to show folks (including ourselves) it doesn’t have to be like this, it shouldn’t–consuming more than you need, trying to fill some void (that emptiness inside you that most aren’t sure what to call) at the expense of others, on the backs of others. Maybe that’s one of the problems, that we see them as others…those whose slave-like service for the production of goods for our gross overconsumption.

Forget about what Jesus would do…think about What your gonna do differently from this day forward about your consumption and act on it muthafucka!

Myself included…I speak to myself on this as much as I do the readers of this thing.

Other:

• Meet again today
• finish Imperialism article
• discuss Mission Statement(s)
• think about future actions, I’ve got one in mind:
  • http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_01.php?cd_news=2402&cd_language=2
  • Instead of the centralized events of past editions, WSF 2008 will have thousands of activities organized by social movements, unions, groups, networks and other organisations in their own regions. This will cover a one-week period, culminating in a Global Day of Action on January 26th. The global mobilization will be directly linked to the local agendas of social actors, making the week full of debates, cultural and artistic activities, demonstrations, protests, direct actions, meetings and many other ways of showing that another world is possible.
• Fungus.co.uk? Starting up a UK fungal node–care package to get them started?
• Podcast–musical score

To Do’s:

• start working on podcast
• fix up website/blog
• format for the next few meetings–articles, projects, art, thoughts anyone?
• insert more here if I missed any…

Quote of the Day:“African-Amercian orator, Frederick Douglass, a militant abolitionist and himself an escaped slave, who wrote”:

Those who profess freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful wrath of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without demands–it never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. And these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

-from Taiaiake Alfred’s Wasase: Indigenous pathways of action and freedom

peace.

Imperialism blamed for Pakistan’s woes

News Features By Travis LupickPublish Date: November 15, 2007Hari Sharma knows how to piss off a government. In 1965, he left India forwork in the United States. Three years later, he was asked to leave for”fraternizing” with Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers,and other iconic groups of that era.After relocating to Canada, SFU hired Sharma as a professor. Over the nextfew years, political activity resulted in his Indian passport beingrevoked and a year-long battle for Canadian citizenship.Today, Sharma is 74 years old and president of the South Asian Network forSecularism and Democracy. His view on the present situation in Pakistanhas been shaped by a life of activism for secularism and peace.“Get the fucking Americans and Canadians out of Afghanistan and thatproblem would be solved forever,” Sharma said, answering a question on howto control Pakistani Islamists.