viene el fin de semana todos a la cancha vamos a ir esta todo preparado el bombo y el trapo para salir al equipo que tiene mas aguante lo llevo dentro del corazón saltando cantando prendidos a los trapos dejamos el alma!! en el tablón♪♪♫
borracho yo voy cantando con mis amigos voy festejando un triunfo mas, loco soy por mi trapo te sigo a muerte por donde vas por que la vuelta queremos dar !! queremos daaar♪♫♪♫
viene el fin de semana todos a la cancha vamos a ir todo esta preparado el bombo y trapo para salir al equipo q tiene mas aguante lo llevo dentro del corazón saltando cantando prendidos a los trapos dejamos el alma!! en el tablón ♪♫♪♫
borracho yo voy cantando con mis amigos voy festejando un triunfo mas !! loco soy por mi trapo te sigo a muerte por donde vas por q la vuelta queremos daaaar borracho yo voy cantando con mis amigos voy festejando un triunfo mas!! loco soy por mi trapo te sigo a muerte por donde vas por que la vuelta queremos dar!! queremos dar!
Millos Te Amo
yo no se lo k senti
la primera vez que vi
al ekipo millonarios
jugando en el campin
desde entonces yo te llevo
dentro de mi ♥
no me importa lo que digan
el Azul es mi Pasion
vamos Millos con gran juegos
que tenemos k ganar
vamos vamos millonarios
que queremos
que queremos festejar
una estrella mas
dale embajador una estrella mas
dale embajador
cada vez que millos va a la cancha
mi ♥ late mucho mas
pq es un sentimiento que no es pasajero
y cada dia que pasa yo te kiero mas
fumando marihuana te he venido a alentar
vamos pongan huevo y corazon
hay que salir campeon
embajador pongan huevo y corazon
desde k naci te llevo en el corazon
para todo el aguante que siente en todas partes
pq toda esta pandilla te pide mas alegria
About Friday's Critical Mass
The point about the Critical Mass arrested (drawn from an excellent article in the Bike section of the Guardian online). The Metropolitan Police tried to limit the ride under Section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986, which allows police to impose limits on such an event when "it may result in serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community". The Critical Mass ride has been happening monthly in London for 18 years without even a hint of “public disorder”.
The Metropolitan Police tried to limit the ride to a certain ‘agreed’ route. The route was not agreed. It never is. The direction of Critical Mass is decided by consensus on the day. Critical Mass is intended to promote cycle use and cycle users rights on public highways. It operates within the law and is therefore entitled to the road, and in 2008 the High Courts agreed with this.
The significance is this:
- The police are an unelected body.
- The police assume the right to practically define the meaning of the law. In this case that a demonstration that has never resulted in “serious public disorder” suddenly might and that a procession that doesn’t have to define its route beforehand suddenly does.
- If you want to live in any kind of democracy you have to challenge this assumption by the police.
Today in London
You may not have known but today in London was the monthly Critical Mass bike ride, and overwhelmingly peaceful protest that has gone on for years. If you support the Olympics you support this: the police pepper spraying and assaulting a disabled man on a tricycle.
Cameron to country: "chop-chop Jeeves"
David Cameron reckons Britain must “do more” to recover from the recession it’s in. He blames the Eurozone crisis and the “damage done in the boom and bust years”, although which years he’s talking about are a minor mystery.
“We were the ones with the most over-indebted banks, the most over-indebted households and we had the biggest budget deficit of virtually any country, anywhere in the world.
"It takes time to recover from that but we've got to do more. We're going to roll up our sleeves and do everything possible to get business going in Britain, to get housing going, to get jobs going."
Well, jobs have been ‘going’, cheap housing has been ‘going’, and it’s been his government that has sent them on their way. Also, “roll up our sleeves”? Oh yes, let’s all get busy, says a man whose only real job was working as a TV executive. If it is a matter of doing more then there’s bad news ahead. The only workers who “do more” in the EU in terms of hours are the Austrians and the Greeks (those lazy, lazy Greeks working longer hours than everyone else).
It’s a shame these things need to be stated and restated over and over again but needs must: the recession was not caused by 2.5 million working people suddenly deciding to take it easy, they were thrown out of work.
In David Cameron’s world everything is everybody else’s fault, the EU, the Greeks, the Labour Government, but above all you. So get cracking, little prole, and make Cameron and chums very, very, very… rich.
Oopsie! That nazi moment...
Or: laughing at nazis when they fuck up. Voula Papachristou, racist Greek triple-jumper is “very bitter and upset” about her exclusion from the Olympics for her Nile Fever ‘joke’ on Twitter, subsequently deleted. Check this quote out, a perfect example of modern racism expressed. It’s less white-supremacism more arch victimhood:
"I have not slept at all and to be honest I am still trying to come to terms with what has happened. I am trying to stay calm otherwise I would lose control. I am thankful to my coach and family and so many other people who have stuck by me.
"After so many years of hurt and sacrifices to try and get to my first Olympics I am very bitter and upset. But what has upset me the most is the excessive reaction and speed of the disciplinary decision”.
Boo-fucking-hoo! She says she has never got involved in politics but has been involved enough to retweet posts from the woman-beating nazi, Illias Kasidiaris. At one stage she even wished him (via Twitter) all the best on his saints' day. This was also later deleted: it’s almost like she knew there was something wrong, you know? Question: who on Earth could Kasidiaris patron saint be? Some awful cross between Joseph Goebbels and Jackie Gleason. One of these days, Alice…!
Papachristou’s bitterness extends to the Greek government’s sport programme (or lack of it):
“We have zero support from the state," she said. "There are a lot of things that people do not know about, such as the unacceptable conditions in which we have to train.
"For example, there is no heating and no hot water even to take a shower in winter, no air conditioning in the summer and squalid training facilities and equipment in a state of disrepair.
"These are just the tip of the iceberg without mentioning the financial side and how we have been affected by massive cuts in state-funding for sport."
Now, for all this to make some logical sense you’d have to assume Papachristou thinks Africans run the country. But this is racism we’re dealing with, and racism and logic were always ships in the night.
Climate and capitalism
Socialism will most likely be an emergency regime, the mass application of democracy to solve the huge environmental crisis left over from capitalism.
Environmental catastrophe seems to be eerily coupled with economic depression. Famously the drought of the 1930s drove millions of people from the American heartland into the coastal cities, adding to the already swollen pool of labour.
The dust bowl wasn’t just caused by lack of rain. Intensive farming without crop rotation leading to soil depletion was a contributory factor, deep ploughing, removing deep rooted grasses that helped reduce wind erosion. Such farming was determined by the capitalist prerogative, competitive accumulation.
But more than this, disaster is not just man-made but it seems to strike at exactly the worst moment.
The US is crucial to global food markets as the world's largest exporter of corn, soy beans and wheat, so the impact of the drought will be felt across the globe.
Corn prices have already shot up 40% since June to hit all-time highs, soy bean prices have jumped 30% to record levels, and wheat has surged 50%.
It is not just the US. Unseasonal weather, thought to be caused by climate change, is affecting farmers across the world.
It is not just the US. Unseasonal weather, thought to be caused by climate change, is affecting farmers across the world.
This is quite possibly to do with economic margins and effective political will. A crisis can be averted by effective mobilisation of people and resources. Can the current network of states respond effectively to a food crisis, or will the different ruling classes prove too short-sighted, decadent and corrupt to measure up? We have every reason to be worried:
Flash flooding in Russia could also affect the wheat harvest. Traders are particularly concerned about the latter as Russia might limit exports if it is worried about wheat supplies at home, causing further price spikes.
Shortages have been compounded by huge orders for corn and soy beans to make biofuels, in order to meet quotas in the US and Europe.
Shortages have been compounded by huge orders for corn and soy beans to make biofuels, in order to meet quotas in the US and Europe.
We’re often constrained to imagine wars over water, and they may well happen. Imagine wars over food and see a future techno-feudalism.
An interesting solution to reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide: using iron (via the algae that is attracted to it in nature) to lock carbon at the bottom of the ocean. Of course it’s not yet as simple as dumping iron in the sea. We must be careful of unintended consequences. If we dump the profit a planet-wide response becomes possible.
For anybody who cares
The blog-subtitle poll was going very well. The votes were coming in thick and fast (really?) when, all of a sudden TtSD was overruled by the EU, World Bank and IMF. They insisted the subtitle be "Angela Merkel". But we said no, we will stand by democracy, we will have the people's subtitle, and that subtitle is:
You read it, you can't unread it...Which is true, when you think about it.
Dr Ugs again...
HSBC, a bank that has branches on most high streets in Britain, has been laundering drug money ($7 billion from Mexican cartels – amongst other naughty proceeds), and its executives are very, very sorry. I bet they are! Although, that said, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation has prior form on this, if you count the Chinese opium trade, which it financed.
As was pointed out before, the drug trade is a profitable business. Estimates suggest it accounts for at least 1% of global GDP. That may not sound like much (though $3-400 billion sounds more tasty) but 1% is where many significant profit margins are poised right now.
This is, of course, the logical result of neo-liberal “light-touch” regulation combined with the capitalist prerogative of competitive accumulation. It begs a question. The ruling class is like a tightly knotted fist. From warmongering politicians, to scabby print-barons, to corrupt cops, to light-fingered bankers, they are in it together and they look after their own. Behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Given they are depraved and decadent, even by their own standards, shouldn’t we just lock up every rich person and throw away the key? If we let them out they’ll only do it again.
Thoughts for the brain - or bludgeoning the same point over and over
Marx’s life work was a Critique of Political Economy. We can only regret he didn’t set himself tighter deadlines, because he did not complete the full work, only part one. Marxism is a critical philosophy, a critique of capitalism. So long as capitalism is ongoing Marxism is open-ended, unfinished.
It is a critique based on the point of view of wage workers. When wage workers act as a conscious, independent class with interests they also critique capitalism, but in a different way. A mass strike just as effectively demonstrates the origin of value is labour, the origin of profit is exploitation.
We do not hold with the notion of autonomous anti-capitalist space or with the concept of gradual socialist transformation. The transformation is either a revolutionary critique or an accommodation to the logic of capitalism. Socialism is immanent within capitalism. Realising socialism is a struggle within the context of global capitalism.
So far so base, what about superstructure? We are talking about the Marxist concept that each society produces forces of production, how people work, and relations of production, how they consent to do this. Though the latter arises out of the former they both inform each other, they are two aspects of the same thing.
Culture is a key aspect of capitalist superstructure. We may have left-wing art but we always have capitalist culture. We do not advance our cause by promoting socialist culture but through a socialist critique of culture. There is no such thing as a ‘culture of resistance’.
We do this because we must arm ourselves against bourgeois ideology, capitalism’s second line of defence, a set of presumptions often so embedded that often people don’t recognise them for what they are (the ‘non-ideological’ are the MOST ideological).We also do this because we are trying to raise our cultural level, and the level of those around us. Culture is precious and expensive both in time and money, things working people are often short of. Working class people are the future ruling class, the defenders of human civilisation. They are entitled access to the full back-catalogue of human cultural achievement.
From the mouth of Sauron...
"Hello, I'm Wenlock! Don't I look smart in my police officer’s uniform? I have the important job of protecting you on your journey to the London 2012 Games. Take this figurine on a journey to the London 2012 Olympic Games – we can have lots of fun together!"
Fun together...? Ye, gods it's frightening (I don't want the Olympic Police on my back, go to this link, I promise you it is... well you'll see), and brought to you by the same people who thought that 13,000 soldiers padding you down and pointing a gun in your face, surface-to-air missiles on your roof and a warship prowling the Thames would be 'reassuring'.
But we have the internet, and where there's the internet there are smart-arses. Please enjoy the product reviews before the site is shut down and everyone is arrested. A few samples:
Scared of Stratford said:
I bought one of these for my nephew but before I could give it to him, Wenlock's 'All Seeing Eye' had spotted the leaflet on my kitchen table for an anti-Olympics protest on the day after the opening ceremony. Before I knew it, the building where I live was surrounded by a special armed Olympics police unit and now I'm banned from central Stratford's "Dispersal Zone" until late September.
Olympiad Spectacle said:
I bought this toy to take on my Olympic Journey as suggested by the technical details. Imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning to find that it had left its case, called in reinforcements and kettled me in my bed.
I'm just glad I didn't buy the water cannon or Long Range Acoustic Device accessories.
Extremely Worried:
... Bought this toy last week and although it arrived quickly and it seems to be well made, I have some concerns. Every fifteen minute since I've opened it out of the packaging, it will shout phrases such as 'I AM THE EYE OF PROVIDENCE', 'PAX ROMANA' and 'THE SECRET IS WITHIN THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZA'.
One more. The Red Menace:
Since buying this toy, my neighbours collection of Gollies have all been unduly harassed or locked away in a cupboard for no reason.
Olympics update
We have to remember these things because, sooner or later, they'll change the name of Tower Hamlets to Strategic Hamlets.
Olympic cleaners sleep ten to a room, live seventy five to a toilet. At least it's not London Bridge.
And finally: musicians play for free at the Olympics. How nice of them to do that at an event costing £24 billion! Wouldn't it be a shame for David Cameron and Danny Boyle if the opening ceremony turned out like this? I mean, I'd laugh my socks off, but that's just me...
A note: McLuhan on Marx
All public philosophers have an attitude toward Karl Marx. Ring-wingers regard him as a significant opponent. Lefties (many lefties, though of course not all) on the other hand need to correct him in order to justify the rows of trees felled to propagate their new and vital theories.
McLuhan was no exception. Two points:
He regularly observed that the United States achieved communism before any of the Eastern Bloc. By this he meant democracy and material plenty. We can easily point out the problems with this idea in hindsight but this was a common opinion in the 50s and 60s. For example, Labour MP Anthony Crosland's famous pamphlet, The Future of Socialism, which suggested:
But we must mention, firstly, capitalism's second belle epoque was not beautiful for everybody. From anti-colonial struggles to the civil rights movement, plenty of people had to fight to be included in the good times. The second point is these good times were not bound to last, capitalism is a dynamic system, it's drive to competitive accumulation upsets the most stable and benign social relations: we know that.
Another significant observation of Marx, from Understanding Media was that Marx's focus on the machine, which fragments the work process, was undermined by electricity and automation, which reintegrates those fragments. Of course, Marx did not study the machine but the capital-labour relation. Media have no extra significance outside of class society. Steam power existed since the time of Anciemt Greece, but no one needed labour saving devices until labour had to be bought on the market.
McLuhan was no exception. Two points:
He regularly observed that the United States achieved communism before any of the Eastern Bloc. By this he meant democracy and material plenty. We can easily point out the problems with this idea in hindsight but this was a common opinion in the 50s and 60s. For example, Labour MP Anthony Crosland's famous pamphlet, The Future of Socialism, which suggested:
The characteristic features of capitalism have disappeared - the absolute rule of private property, the subjection of all life to market influences, the domination of the profit motive, the neutrality of government, typical laissez-faire division of income and the ideology of individual rights.It remained for socialists to worry about better cafes, late licensing, more theatres, etc... cultural matters.
But we must mention, firstly, capitalism's second belle epoque was not beautiful for everybody. From anti-colonial struggles to the civil rights movement, plenty of people had to fight to be included in the good times. The second point is these good times were not bound to last, capitalism is a dynamic system, it's drive to competitive accumulation upsets the most stable and benign social relations: we know that.
Another significant observation of Marx, from Understanding Media was that Marx's focus on the machine, which fragments the work process, was undermined by electricity and automation, which reintegrates those fragments. Of course, Marx did not study the machine but the capital-labour relation. Media have no extra significance outside of class society. Steam power existed since the time of Anciemt Greece, but no one needed labour saving devices until labour had to be bought on the market.
More Olympic news...
Residents in East London have lost their legal battle to prevent missiles being stuck on top of their block. The military (who knew about this for many years and did not bother to tell the residents) reasoned thus: we want to put them there and we don't want to put them anywhere else, and not a hint as to WHY they want to put them anywhere. Does Al Qaeda have an air force? Sure, they might (in a million years) hijack a plane, but where's the sense in shooting a plane down over a city of seven million people?
With this in mind - what rights do we have left? London is an occupied city.
With this in mind - what rights do we have left? London is an occupied city.
Marxism 2012 - some thoughts on a festival
I had a minor organising hand in last year's event; this year seemed at least as big and went at least as well as last year. My only quibbles were the meetings filling up on Saturday, it's not good having people pay for tickets but being turned away on the busiest day, we need bigger rooms next year, that and the lack of air conditioning in many rooms...
I saw very good meetings on Victor Serge, World War Two, Revolutions and the Military and Cities Under Siege, the last of which, if the book is as good as the talk, it will rival Mike Davis's 90s works on Los Angeles, City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear. It's good to see the Green Zone theory of ruling class practice elaborated more precisely than I ever could; not that I invented the theory of course, it's just good to know that I'm more than a peddler of whimsy.
Speaking of which, more on Marxism Meeting Title Tombola and other lists and bits of nonsense later. Also, I came away with the new ISJ, a book on Occupy (very kindly given to me) and the new edition of the Liberal Defence of Murder, finally out in paperback and which I'm sure steams a good ham.
That's master race not mastermind
Marxism 2012
It's that time of year again, yay, which means it's also time for Marxism games. In the past we've played Puntanamo Bay, Meeting Title Tombola and Hi, I'm... Of course there's the less successful games, like Socialist Party Rodeo and Let's Pee on the AWL. Given that the Marxism Meeting Mash-up application has just gone on line I guess we should go back to Meeting Title Tombola, however awards will also be given out for Mixed Metaphor of the Week and Crowbarring Simpsons References into meetings.
Let's begin with a few suggestions:
Why do people love sand?
Why does Murdoch love primacy?
Festivals of primacy: how do we deal with the Higgs Boson?
200 years on: are we too late?
Does horizontalism control Hollywood?
Does Engels control John Steinbeck?
Is Iraq becoming dark?
Engels and the origin of withdrawal.
The collapse of Russian knees.
A decade of false knees.
Knees, arms and phone hacking.
Arms and food.
Where next for 1979?
Darwin in 1972.
Reproduction seen from the outside.
A no nonsense guide to genesis.
The case for pedagogy and scapegoating.
Anarchism - the case for murder.
Antonio Gramsci and the dark arts of Scotland.
Primitive communism: results and prospects.
The secret war against results and prospects.
The music of John Coltrane: should marxists care?
Thoughts for the Brain - thoughts about other people's thoughts
The Graun is celebrating/chroniclingthe return of the Stone Roses. The current sharp observation, repeated by everybody, is the Roses represented an age that looked forward to the future. There’s also an interesting piece by Owen Hatherley today about work. There was a time when everyone, from socialists to reformers to technocrats agreed in the future people would work less. OK the socialists, especially the earlier ones, such as Lafargue and Wilde, would have said this prediction was based upon the establishment of socialism.
The fact is this vision is no more. The future has failed. Automation has led to people today working longer, harder and proportionally (if not actually) less than their parents. It is one of the ironies (call it dialectics if you like) that Marx focussed upon in his critique of political economy: the past dominates the present.
Workers slave away making the technology that renders them obsolete. In areas of the economy where working people used to team together in vast numbers, now they are sparse and interstitial. In seeming contradiction to this the refinement of roles means there are more wage workers now than ever. They still produce the same volume of commodities and services, if not more, which gives them and even greater latent power, but this power is only hinted at in episodes like the recent bus strike in London – a few thousand workers holding their own against British capitalism.
The relative marginalisation of workers is part of the crisis for capitalists too. Past labour is only cost. Only present, living labour adds value. This is the tendency of therate of profit to decline.
The last observation: what does this mean for the muscular reformism being debated by the European left? There may be left wing parties arising, occupying the space between the old socialist/communist parties and the revolutionary left (though clearly not in Britain). Given the poor prospects for life under 21st century capitalism, what chance is there for new reforming movements to actually succeed without a bit of revolution thrown in somewhere?
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