02.09.12
A New Politics for a Disorderly World
Occupy Wall Street and a New Politics for a Disorderly World
Lessons Learned From #OWS
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shen-tong/occupy-wall-street-lessons_b_1263201.html
Non-violence, the Black Bloc controversy, and the history of violent insurrection and the Civil War
What Progressive Criticisms of Anarchists in Occupy Don’t Understand:
A Response to Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges’ “Black Bloc” takedown is only the most recent in a series of critiques bashing anarchists within the national Occupy movement. Here’s why they’re not helpful.
I linked to Hedges’ article yesterday despite some puzzlement, and the commentary as I discover today has been considerable. I will let it speak for itself (scroll down for multiple links today), but address the more general issue of non-violence. I for one respect the tactics of non-violence implicitly, and they are probably the only strategy open to the left at this point, given the overwhelming force they confront in governmental monopolies on violence.
But, at the same time, the left needs some careful studies of the methods, history, and debates over non-violence, to put the strategic universe of discourse in context. This needs more than reverent citation of the politics of Gandhi. Despite, of course, the canonical grandeur of that legacy, along with that of MLK.
But it is important to consider the larger history here, and the relatively recent appearance of Gandhian tactics. This legacy has made any consideration of violence tabu, when the history shows that this is an extreme position.
The classic revolutions that established modernity were not non-violent, beginning with the Protestant Reformation, the German Civil War of 1525 (the triggers of modern revolution) onward to the American Civil War, one of the bloodiest and most violent civil conflicts in world history prior to the First World War. Thus the record of Gandhian nonviolence is ambiguous, or incomplete, or else still a young or recent legacy. But I have to wonder: I would not trust my liberty in the face of enslavement to the well-wishing activism of Gandhians. History shows that abolition required a long struggle, and a violent conflict. To stand in Gandhian moral judgement on this passage implies that non-violence is a higher principle than abolition, and there I dissent completely. Gandhian non-violence suceeded as a PR victory over British Imperialism. It would never have freed the slaves of the Confederacy.
I think the issue arises because violence became egregiously destructive in the first world war, this in turn influencing the extremes of bolshevik violence. That was the moment when a new strategy arose, with Gandhi.
I cannot propose anything like this for a movement such as the OWS or the Arab Spring, which have succeeded precisely because of the tactics of non-violence. It may be that governmental domination is now so total that insurrectional violence (like the phenomenon of ‘Terror’) cannot any longer succeed against superior state power. The achievements of non-violence may lie in the future. But at the same time, without in any way recommending anything like this for the current left (the Bolshevik left has severely abused violent tactics, and earlier figures invented terrorism in the nineteenth century), making a fetish out of non-violence is a recipe for failure here. A non-violent strategy can still have some rough edeges, and in any case, as I noted, I would not trust my freedom to the saints of non-violence. They will adjourn early and leave me enslaved. So I must fight for my freedom, in the end. It is a difficult question, however, because its basis has shifted over time. It was one thing to flood Paris or Moscow with demonstrations, to watch a set of kingdoms collapse in a day, it is quite another to reckon with the current state apparatus of counter-terror (greatly amplified by the false-flag fraudulent state terror used to justify repression and the finance of security apparatus) which is not easily opposed by any method, and probably not with insurrectional violence. The issues are not clear, but it seems a bit off to be haranguing the ‘Black Bloc’ for frayed-edge non-violence here.
Non-violence is Janus-faced: on the one hand a revolutionary tactic of unique potency, and on the other a gift to elites as an implicit declaration that failure is OK, and that the fight to the finish will not happen.
It is worth considering the Jain non-violence, from which Gandhi learned: it was not a political method, but a ‘fast unto death’ by Jain monks refused Samsaric existence to the point of refusing to step on insects, making simple motions in the existential field problmatical: thence their fast.
Any leftist who has the stomach for this, well, be my guest.
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Warming Ocean Temperatures May Reduce the Survival Rate of Elephant Seals
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Astrophysicist Uses Computer Simulations to Explain Millisecond Pulsars
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European Cave Spiders Produce Extremely Stretchable Silk
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Private Rocket Launch Tests Supersonic Parachute and Reusable Tech
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Explaining Sigma’s Role in Statistical Significance
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Neuroscience Breakthroughs Could Be Harnessed by Military
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Researchers Find Possible Link Between Diet Soda and Vascular Risks
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NASA Searching for Green Propellant Technology
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Asia and America Will Collide in Millions of Years to Form Supercontinent
Amasia -
DARPA’s LS3 to Ease Physical Load on Troops
Darwinists don’t know what evolution is (it is more than genetics)
(i.e. Darwinists on evolution)
Climbing Mt. Improbable
Coyne has a set of criticisms of a definition of evolution, but his views are as confused as those he critiques.
It is an extraordinary fact but trained Darwinists do not understand what evolution is!!!!.
To be fair, I am not fully sure myself what it is, but I have a ‘glimpse’, given by the eonic effect: ‘evolution’ is a set of developmental facts in a sequential pattern of organismic, cultural or other forms. Evolution is at a higher level than genetics, and is an abstract dynamic of development (probably teleological) that probably sets a kind of condition or attractor for microevolution to take over and respond to. The evolution of the Darwinists is thus not evolution at all, but the environmental adaptation of a potential form. Frankly, we don’t know how this works exactly. But the attempt to reduce evolution to genetics has produced endless confusion.
More on fact/theory muddle: link to Evolution: theory not fact
http://www.technicianonline.com/viewpoint/evolution-theory-not-fact-1.2695837
This is the link from Coyne’s WEIT.
I will let it stand for one instance: human evolution.
We have in the previous post tried to clarify the fact/theory muddle. I think this article tends to fall into the confusion. But there is one more issue where the question of evolution is up in the air, technically (not in my mind): human evolution.
A buddhist would ask how a creature such as homo erectus evolved into a creature like homo sapiens with the potential for enlightenement at the top of a complex set of states of consciousness. That’s a good question. Can we really think of any theory of evolution that will work here? The answer should be simple: we weren’t there, and don’t know. But in this case I admit the hypothesis of evolution demands some better evidence: how did homo erectus so rapidly turn into the advanced hominid man? We can’t answer these questions by chaning the mantra of ‘natural selection’, and even the hypothesis of evolution is strained (although not in my mind…).
Fact/theory muddle again
“Only a theory”???
The terms of this discussion have been so distorted (most frequently by creationists, and then Darwinists) that it is hard to repair the discussion.
To me the issue is clear: evolution is a set of empirical facts about fossils in deep time. That set of facts is robust, but the degree of observation of those facts can still be fairly coarse-grained, making the dynamic of evolution less than clear.
But, in the fact/theory verbiage, we can set the discussion straight by noting that evolution is a fact, or set of facts. But the attempts to explain the dynamics of evolution behind those facts leads us into the realm of theory. And the theory of natural selection is just that, just a theory. And it is probably wrong, or incomplete.
The confusion arises because people (in the religious camp) who see natural selection questioned tend to indict evolution for that reason, creating confusion of terms. Darwinists then tend to pick up on that and defend ‘evolution’ when they mean ‘evolution by natural selection’.
This discussion could thus be easily clarified, but noone seems to want to do that.
Plantinga on the Logic of Dawkins’s Blind Watchmaker
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/02/a_bit_unpreposs056161.html
Tom Woodward’s The Mysterious Epigenome
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/02/woodwards_the_m056121.html
America and Eurasia ‘to meet at north pole’
By NEIL BOWDLER – BBC NEWS SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
Added: Thursday, 09 February 2012 at 7:18 AM
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/644891-america-and-eurasia-to-meet-at-north-pole
America and Eurasia will crash into each other over the North Pole in 50-200 million years time, according to scientists at Yale University.
They predict Africa and Australia will join the new “supercontinent” too, which will mark the next coming together of the Earth’s land masses.
The continents are last thought to have come together 300 million years ago into a supercontinent called Pangaea.
Global Sea Level Rise
Global Sea Level Rise: NASA Mission Takes Stock of Earth’s Melting Land Ice
ScienceDaily (Feb. 9, 2012) — In the first comprehensive satellite study of its kind, a University of Colorado at Boulder-led team used NASA data to calculate how much Earth’s melting land ice is adding to global sea level rise
Tiny Primate Is Ultrasonic Communicator
Tiny Primate Is Ultrasonic Communicator
ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2012) — Tarsiers are pint-size primates from Southeast Asia who produce some of the most extreme ultrasonic calls in the animal kingdom, well beyond the threshold of human hearing.
January 2012 Fourth Warmest
January 2012 Fourth Warmest for Contiguous United States, but Alaska Extremely Cold
ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2012) — During January, warmer-than-average conditions enveloped most of the contiguous United States, with widespread below-average precipitation. The overall weather pattern for the month was reflected in the lack of snow for much of the Northern Plains, Midwest, and Northeast. This scenario was in stark contrast to Alaska where several towns had their coldest January on record.
Gene Therapy for Inherited Blindness
Gene Therapy for Inherited Blindness Succeeds in Patients’ Other Eye
ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2012) — Gene therapy for congenital blindness has taken another step forward, as researchers further improved vision in three adult patients previously treated in one eye. After receiving the same treatment in their other eye, the patients became better able to see in dim light, and two were able to navigate obstacles in low-light situations. No adverse effects occurred.
Sound Can Activate ‘Seeing’
Sound Rather Than Sight Can Activate ‘Seeing’ for the Blind, Say Researchers
ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2012) — Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have tapped onto the visual cortex of the congenitally blind by using sensory substitution devices (SSDs), enabling the blind in effect to “see” and even describe objects.
Daly Kos on Hedges
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/07/1062424/-Chris-Hedges-Very-Public-Meltdown
Chris Hedges and Kristof Lopaur of Occupy Oakland debate black bloc, militancy and tactics.
The civil rights battle ignored by the U.S. media
The civil rights battle ignored by the U.S.
media
The
documentary “Black Power Mixtape” tells a counter-history of the 1960s,
through the eyes of foreign journalists
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It was tough enough to track the social and political upheaval of the 1960s
through domestic news coverage, let alone to pay attention to what the rest
of the world was reporting. But journalists from abroad were fascinated by
the roiling changes — and often saw it quite differently.
Though U.S. network coverage of civil rights cruelties helped rally the
country against the worst offenders in the South, coverage of revolutionary
groups such as the Black Panther Party more often took J. Edgar Hoover’s
extremist stance that it was the most dangerous internal threat to the U.S.
Rarely did it look at the accomplishments of its free breakfast programs,
community organizing and determination to stand up to police harassment and
brutality.
Swedish newsmen and filmmakers who didn’t follow the FBI line came to
America to learn what they could, looking at life in largely segregated
black America, talking frankly and seriously with black leaders and closely
following their trials.
Footage of the era, said to have been sitting in a Swedish basement for
three decades, became the eye-opening documentary “The Black Power Mixtape
1967-1975” making its U.S. television debut on PBS’ “Independent Lens”
Thursday night as part of its Black History Month series.
full -
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/09/the_civil_rights_battle_ignored_by_the_u_s_media/?source=newsletter
Apple’s sordid business model
iEmpire: Apple’s Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think
*New research goes beyond the New York Times to show just how disturbing
labor conditions at Foxconn, the “Chinese hell factory,” really are. *
http://www.alternet.org/story/154043/iempire%3A_apple%27s_sordid_business_practices_are_even_worse_than_you_think?page=entire
‘Starve the Beast’
Mike Prokosch: ‘Starve the Beast’ — The Pentagon
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/08-1
Obama Joins the Democracy Sell Off
Tim Karr: Obama Joins the Democracy Sell Off
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/08-4
A Cure or a Curse?
Fracking: A Cure or a Curse?
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2012/02/08-0
Final Debt Talks in Greece
Final Debt Talks in Greece Underway for Austerity Deal
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/08-3and
Obama Wavering
Obama Wavering In Face of Anti-contraception Pressure
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/08-2
Illinois Ban on Recording Police Challenged
In Lead-Up to Mass Protests in Chicago, Illinois Ban on Recording Police Challenged
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/08-1
Panic Within US Nuke Agency
Emails Show Panic Within US Nuke Agency in Wake of Fukushima Disaster
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/08-0
Ousted in Coup
President of Maldives, Climate Crusader, Ousted in Coup
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/08
Kryptonite for US Democracy
Report: ‘Super PACs Are Kryptonite for US Democracy’
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/08-4