10.28.11
Posted in General at 12:23 pm by nemo
http://darwiniana.com/2011/10/27/the-russian-revolution-and-the-liquedation-of-majority-left/ This strong attack on Zizek was meant seriously, but it is also true that I sympathize with the classic Marxist strain. However, IT WON’T WORK anymore to peddle straight Marxism. The Arab Spring made obvious that Leninist violence has to give way to the Gandhian legacy, at least to start. Whatever the case, the real legacy of Marx is almost impossible to discuss because it has been wiseacred to the point of nullity by its propagandists.
Face it, a huge number of people, the type that once made the left robust, simply cock their pistols at the mention of Marx. Period.
I think the OWS groups are moving in another direction, but this is really the same old direction, nothing ever changes, except that fresh bread goes stale: thus Marxist theory, stale to the point of moulding, greenish yuck. They need, not a neo-Marxist ideology, but a history of socialism as a virtual workable project to the left of their probable basic
orientation in the context of conventional (labor) politics.
This virtual left project should simply ditch Marx, putting him behind the back, to be picked up by the other hand. The whole tradition should be broken down and recast. Its Leninist failures can and must be disowned, what to say of Stalinist latencies.
The Marxist legacy should be recycled around the whole problematic of the modern transition, and start with the Reformation, up to the French/American/democratic revolutions. German Classical Philosophy instead of Hegel, and much else, including a new and better stance toward or replacement for atheist humanism.
How about the classic side potential, Kantian ethical socialism, which had a robust presence in the period of the Second Internationale. It would make a superb replacement for conventional Marxsim:
Kantian Ethics and Socialism
The old left is being sidelined by the rise of a new approach. But people still need to consider the issues of socialism, economic ideology, revolution, in the classic sense of the French Socialists et al. from whom Marx/Engels borrowed everything. That more ancient ground, still hybrid with the issues of the French Revolution would serve better than dead Marxism. Socialism is NOT a marxist monopoly, and the proponents of Kantian ethical socialism were among those murdered and wiped out by the left (and right). They held to a higher standard.
This project could remain a resource, virtual, educational in the context of the current OWS movements. If the world is going to devolve into a revolutionary chaos, then the virtual project is ready.
The left is running out of time, and the rehash of Stalinist nightmares by Zizek is, well, cock you pistol. They have declared they will kill you for a long list of Leninist reasons, so defend yourself.
Van der Heuvel’s book is a gem of the socialist tradition.
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Posted in General at 11:59 am by nemo
http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/chap3_1.htm
Darwinian pseudo-science wants to pull rabbits out of a hat, to serve its anti-theology, but the obvious reality is that ‘climbing Mt. Improbable’ requires a driver to accomplish that.
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Posted in General at 11:36 am by nemo
Dov Henis
universe-life.com/
85.250.32.18 Submitted on 2011/10/27 at 10:59 am
An Embarrassingly Obvious Theory Of Everything
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:27 am by nemo
Dear Friends of NCSE,
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Posted in General at 11:22 am by nemo
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/643659-making-god-mad
Making God Mad By DAVID BARASH – THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Added: Thursday, 27 October 2011 at 9:04 PM
Angry Zeus, Complete With Lightning Bolt The recent earthquake in Turkey, with its horrific consequences, reminds me of the following observation, reported in The New York Times a year and a half ago. A senior cleric, one Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, warned that the “unIslamic” behavior of certain “loose” women is responsible for natural disasters in general and earthquakes in particular. “Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes,” claimed the imam. (Iran, like Turkey, is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries.)
“What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?” asked Mr. Sedighi during a Friday prayer sermon. His answer: “There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion.”
I, for one, can think of a few other solutions: More precise seismic monitoring systems, more efficient, prompt and wide-ranging early warning technologies, strictly enforced anti-earthquake building codes, and so forth.
Turkey, like Iran, is 99-percent Muslim, but presumably its 99 percent hasn’t been sufficiently devout (especially the women). Indeed, it would be interesting to see if the frequency of Turkish earthquakes increased when Ataturk established his officially secular republic and similarly, if Iran enjoyed a parallel reduction in earthquakes after Khomeini initiated his rigorously “Islamic” republic.
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Posted in General at 11:20 am by nemo
The article on Weikart used the red herring of creationism to deflect attention from his views.
I have problems with some aspects of his thinking, but his basic claims are solid. It is important to read his books. Creationism simply isn’t an issue.
Can Darwinists Condemn Hitler and Remain Consistent with Their Darwinism?
Note: article has many interior links, go to source
Richard Weikart October 27, 2011 12:02 PM | PermalinkWhen the Philadelphia Inquirer’s science writer Faye Flam interviewed me recently for her article “Severing the Link Between Darwin and Nazism,” she pressed me to discuss the implications of the Darwinism-Nazism connection that my scholarship has explored (especially in my two books, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany and Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress). I threw down the gauntlet to many of my Darwinian opponents by telling her that if Darwinism is indeed a purposeless, non-teleological process, as many evolutionists and biology textbooks proclaim, and if morality is the product of these mindless evolutionary processes, as Darwin and many other prominent Darwinists maintain, then “I don’t think [they] have any grounds to criticize Hitler.”
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Posted in General at 11:14 am by nemo
Insects Are Scared to Death of FishScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — The mere presence of a predator causes enough stress to kill a dragonfly, even when the predator cannot actually get at its prey to eat it, say biologists at the University of Toronto.
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Posted in General at 11:12 am by nemo
Brain Scans Reveal Drugs’ Effects On AttentionScienceDaily (Oct. 14, 2011) — Scientists have developed a way to evaluate new treatments for some forms of attention deficit disorder.
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Posted in General at 11:11 am by nemo
Researchers Complete Mollusk Evolutionary TreeScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2011) — Mollusks have been around for so long (at least 500 million years), are so prevalent on land and in water (from backyard gardens to the deep ocean), and are so valuable to people (clam chowder, oysters on the half shell) that one might assume scientists had learned everything about them.
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Posted in General at 11:10 am by nemo
Astronomers Discover Complex Organic Matter Exists Throughout the UniverseScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2011) — Astronomers report in the journal Nature that organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the Universe. The results suggest that complex organic compounds are not the sole domain of life but can be made naturally by stars.
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Posted in you've got mail at 11:02 am by nemo
FAIR: NewsHour and the One Percent
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/10/27-12
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:58 am by nemo
Phil Rockstroh: We Shall Not Be Moved: Police Repression, Official Mendacity and Why OWS Has Already Overcome
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/27-2
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:58 am by nemo
Robert Scheer: Thirty Years of Unleashed Greed
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/27-1
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:57 am by nemo
Occupy the New York City D.O.E.: What a Local Occupy Event Can Look Like
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/10/27-1
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:56 am by nemo
GOP ‘Flat Tax’ Would Flatten Poor, Fatten Rich
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/27
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:55 am by nemo
Global Movement Finds Unison: “People First, Not Finance!”
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/27-1
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:54 am by nemo
In Oakland: ‘When the Poor Fight Back It’s Called Violence’
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/27-0
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:53 am by nemo
Yemeni Women Set Veils Ablaze in Protest at Saleh Crackdown
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/27-7
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:52 am by nemo
Eurozone Deal Spells More ‘Austerity, Privatization’ for Greeks
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/27-6
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:51 am by nemo
Occupy Oakland Calls for General Strike Against City
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/27-5
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Posted in you've got mail at 10:50 am by nemo
Chip Ward: Occupy Earth: Nature Is the 99%, Too
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/27-4
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10.27.11
Posted in General at 1:25 pm by nemo
Published on Thursday, October 27, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Occupy Wall Street on the Moveby Ralph Nader
The question confronting the Occupy Wall Street encampments and their offshoots in scores of cities and towns around the country is quo vadis? Where is it going?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/27-7
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Posted in General at 1:11 pm by nemo
Random Evolution: Climbing Mt. Improbable
The core ideas of Dawkins are based on a set of fallacies, with a complete misuse of a computer analogy, one exposed many times. But Dawkins knows he can get away with this deception: his groupies are too far gone for critical thinking.
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Posted in General at 12:35 pm by nemo
http://darwiniana.com/2011/10/27/zizeks-pompous-stalinist-pontification-on-the-ows-movement/
I am sorry to be so hard on Zizek. But the damage possible from the old left needs to be considered. The OWS people, who aren’t thinking in terms of revolutions where someone like Zizek is, might consider the real history of the Russian Revolution, the kind of social transformation Zizek would welcome apparently: all the idealistic Social Revolutionaries (socialists), what to say of the plain vanilla democrats of the first phase, were liquidated. OK? People well to the left of the OWS group all ended up dead, in the tens of thousands. People like Zizek, educated in leftist ideology that can’t even tell its own history, have no real mental image of what the Leninism they applaud really involved. Or what happened at a moment of revolution. Those who preach Leninism now seem to forget the way it attacked socialists as rightists, ending in bloodbath of leftists of all strains. And that was before the Stalinist phase which was arguably simply socially psychotic.
So the OWS people obviously need to consider what they are up to. Actually, this is all nonsense, probably: we are looking at something quite different: the American strain of liberal/left/labor activism to punch a way through the capitalist morass. The Russian Revolution is a phantom at this point, and I doubt if it is relevant. Famous last words. But the liquedation of groups like the OWS en masse was a day’s work for the Leninist/Stalinist left. The White weren’t too nice either, clearly.
This is not a placid rejection of revolution. But those who have failed before, and who refuse to review their failure should face the reality that they have no understanding.
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