Morgan Stanley Runs the Meters… So Break Them

Most in Chicago know that the parking meters have been privatized. I don’t drive. I support large expenses on those driving to locations easily excessible by public transit. But that money should be 100% public funds! 0% profit. Now Morgan Stanley gets to make profit off of public land. Morgan Stanley gets to change the rates with no public vote. Morgan Stanley makes me puke.

Does this mean its not public money to fix the broken meters now? If so (as it should be…), everyone start stealing and breaking meters! Free parking! Chicago already got the money, I assume. And we’d just be creating jobs for meter fixers!

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The State

When is a state useful? Is it ever useful? So far I’ve concluded there is one time a state is necessary. One thing a state has that more distributed and anarchic societies do not is a trained and on call army.

Thus, the existence of a state is only necessary to protect against the people being subjugated to a more oppressive state through the use of force. Why do I copyright my programs source code? To ensure it is not used to restrict others freedoms. Clearly this is an action I must take till there is no copyright law. The same as we can not have a revolution simply in this country but spread throughout the world. For a communist society will not last till every state falls.

This is an argument for the intermediate stage socialism before the anarchic communism. Under socialism we have an army to protect against both internal and external threats to the revolution.

Following the success of spreading reovlution to the rest of the world the state is able to be removed.

One point I have yet to see much in communist literature, but is raised by many others, is the threat of the state of a proletariat dictatorship turn again into a Stalinist state while the revolutions attempt to spread. There is a very real chance of an attempt to have a take over of the state, similar to the one which Stalin perpetrated. This involves removing the true communists and stopping the spread of revolution throughout the world. Stalin called this “socialism in one country”.

This leads to the possibility that another revolution would be necessary. But Russia’s revolution came at a very inopportune time for them to defend against internal and external threats and to be able to spread revolution. The country was not only economically backwards but was being devastated by the first World War. It is clear that such a revolt in a country such as the United States would have very different outcomes.

I see the threat of needing to forcefully remove the “socialist state” no reason to be against its creation. That is, until someone is able to convince me that the anarcho-syndaclists are right. Meaning, the proletariat revolution can be one that removes the state and replaces it with nothing…

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Rick Santelli

Biggest douche in the universe.

Ranting to a bunch of schmucks on the Chicago commodities exchange floor about bailing out common people. I assume he had a similar rant about bailing out the rich… Right? Right? You people are the problem. Nothing will be solved till we get rid of people like Santelli in positions of power and have a system where there is no commodities exchange floor for those schmucks to spend their days doing nothing useful for the world. Maybe you guys should get real jobs and shut the fuck up.

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Noam Chomsky and Marxism

Wanting to better understand critiques of Marxism I’ve started reading ‘Statism and Anarchy’ by Bakunin and I have been looking for Chomsky’s reasoning for describing himself as an anarchist as opposed to a communist when his anarchist views match up with the views of communists. I found this quote of his on Marxism:

Marxism in my view belongs in the history of organized religion. In fact, as a rule of thumb, any concept with a person’s name on it belongs to religion, not rational discourse… That means, if you identify yourself as a Marxist or a Freudian, or anything else, you’re worshiping at someone’s shrine.

To me this statement itself belongs to religion and not rational discourse. To throw out the use of a term to describe one’s views solely due to its use of a person’s name is not rational. I understand the problem of idolizing a person and the problems that arise when you describe yourself as of a certain “-ism”. But changing the term Marxism to _ism seems pointless and absurd. If people can’t understand that someone who is a Marxist does not worship Marx and does not hold all beliefs Marx did and holds no beliefs simply because Marx did then that is their fault. And if someone does worship Marx in such a way that is that person’s fault and they should be criticized. Chomsky continues:

If the field of social and historical and economic analysis was so trivial that what somebody wrote a hundred years ago could still be authoritative, you might as well talk about some other topic. But as I understand Marx, he constructed a somewhat interesting theory of a rather abstract model of 19th century capitalism. He did good journalism. And he had interesting ideas about history. He probably had about five sentences in his entire body of work about what a post-capitalist society is supposed to look like.

This is an ignorantly simplistic description of Marx’s contributions. Marx provided a scientific analysis of the history of development, exploitation and capitalism that HAS lasted the test of time. It is true that Marx had little to say about what society will look like under socialism and communism. But I see no fault in this…

It is clear that Chomsky has written off communist theory without fully engaging the subject, especially when it comes to the Russian revolution and Lenin. There may very well be personal reasons for his inability to truthfully take up the subject. But his attacks on Marxism, Lenin and the Russian revolution of 1917 are the same as the unintelligible attacks on anarchy that he must deal with. Is it too much to ask for people to know what communism is before attacking it?

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Religious Laws

I was pondering the stupidity of many religious laws, whether they be Jewish, Muslim, Christian, etc, and realized the purpose was so clear. Like most things in organized religion it is about control and weeding out those uncontrollable.

Take for example Jewish and Muslim laws against eating pork, or any hoofed animal. Clearly worthless. A free thinking person would be open to hearing a teaching such as, “Eating an all pork diet is bad and here’s why. So you should restrict your pork intake”. Only someone who has greeted ignorance with open arms would accept anything else.

A claim I’ve heard besides that pork is bad for you is that living a life in which you refrain from eating pork (or following any of the other stupid laws) shows your obedience and love for God. Now we are expected to believe God is a petty being who doesn’t just want us to show our love by being good people and bettering the world but by not eating a certain animal. A truly great God would not make up ridiculous rules for us to follow and expect us to dress up in silly hats and read texts in Latin, Hebrew, Arabic or whatever to please them.

Obviously, a lot of people understand that laws in these texts were based on that time and important “suggestions” to the people. Eating pork was more dangerous then and being sure to bury your dead 6 feet under helps protect against disease. But even then they should not have been “laws” and today it is all the more insulting.

While there is no comparison of the act of not eating a certain food and the atrocities done in the name of religion, I think it is important to notice what is similar. The unrelenting acceptance of what you are told by “holy men” about a God can both make you lose your Saturday because for some idiotic reason God doesn’t want you to drive your car or push buttons that day can also lead to oppression of women, minorities, suicide bombings, abortion clinic bombings, beheading of wives, etc.

While I don’t see everyone turning atheist anytime soon, I do hope people can at least begin to take a look at their oraganized religion’s heirarchy and attempts to make you accept things with no reasoning on your own. I can mostly stand just making fun of people who won’t do anything on Saturday or won’t eat certain foods, but when it comes to attacking people and oppressing women and homosexuals I’m tired of people using religion, and their freedom to be apart of any they choose, as an excuse. Just because your made up God is against homosexuals and thinks women should have less rights and cover their faces does not mean you should be. If thats a God you want to follow you are a fool. God being a bigot is no reason for people to be. If that is the God that exists then I’ll be happy to find myself in Hell.

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Risque Burger — Deep Fried Bacon, Gravy and Maple Syrup

Risque Cafe in Chicago recently added a new burger called the Risque Burger. Its grilled onions, country fried bacon (deep fried), cheese and a special mayo (I can’t remember). But the best way to get it is minus the mayo and ask for a thing of gravy and maple syrup on the side. Then you can load up the burger with gravy and maple syrup and add a little syrup to each bite. Its amazing! Deep fried bacon with gravy and syrup, how can you go wrong! Check out the pics below, the first one shows the burger before topping with the gravy and syrup (you can see them on the side) and the second is after adding them on top. The crispy looking thing on top is the country fried bacon.

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Time to Push for Universal Health Care

There are two possible conclusions we can draw of the Democrats lack of action on universal health care at this time. They either do not care about providing universal health care or they are too incompetent to take a perfect moment and run with it. As more and more people become unemployed or under-employed the outrageous cost of health care becomes more and more important. But this isn’t just about employees. The high cost of providing health insurance hurts employers as well. The Democrats can use this to not only sell it on the necessity for people to have insurance but the businesses ability to save money by not having to provide it. They can attack Republicans in the very area Republicans pretend to care about the most, small businesses!

I find it hard to believe that in this time, as ever person knows the economy has been screwed by the people at the top and millions are losing their jobs, along with their health insurance, that they wouldn’t want to collectively help each other.

They’ve already ruined the stimulus package that will be far too little and full of tax cuts. Now is the time to break away from the ridiculous notion of bipartisanship. They clearly have no one with a thread of decency left in their party. The Democrats are bad enough, the last thing we need is the lesser of two evils doing their most to bring the other evil to the table.

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