Stop Me Before I Vote Again

That live feed from AJ was something. I'm sure it had culturally specific spin which eluded me, but to my American eyes and ears it was singularly excellent, given what poison I'm used to swallowing stateside.

And as cynical (original and modern meanings) as I tend to be, I too felt an unalloyed joy at the overcoming of fear and subservience which has so far characterized the Arab (and now, Albanian) wave of insurrection.

And more to commend AJ:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/al_jazeera_releases_egypt_coverage_under_creative.php

I'm taking notes, for today the Arabs teach the world about freedom.

"There's a kind of wonderful inspiration in a moment like this; it transmutes our base human metal into something much finer. Touched by such events, we can take on a kind of heroic stature for a splendid interval; we can speak clearly, directly, eloquently, insightfully; the hidden glories and powers of our strange muddled nature shine through the quotidian tarnish. It's as if this were the thing we were meant to do; the thing in which our deepest dignity and honor as men and women consists -- to break the yoke of our burden, and the rod of our oppressor, as on the day of Midian. "
best of father S in quite some time
rapsodic is a mode
though he ventures into it rarely
he handles like handel

------------------------

however to every glory must a tin can be attached
that is a law of alfred e and the ravens

so ...
since there is no mr neuman here

little as it befits my noble profile
since its time to deliver
"... the usual barking scolding schoolmasterish ..." one upping
i guess i must stand in for a lesser soul

---------------------

you anarchists and almosts anarchist
fellow travellers
listen up...

fuck your catalonian high
its as if this insurrectionary rising
is just a mass gesture ...a mass bender
a fuck you to "cankered power"

you are certain in your minds if not hearts
or hearts if not minds
all will all simply must ..."end" badly
the small gains soon submerged
under
a returning tide of burger boy
innocent blood and swill

ugh you say at best it ends in ...social democracy

at worse ..well.." look its
even worse then... b4 "

maybe a poorly founded sense of forever darkness
ain't so sublime
maybe the sardonic bath tub ain't so emblematic of enlightenment

or at least ...err
consider this:

its as if the uprising in class society
was like a rare anti eclpise

as if we live day to day and for ever
under a regime of darkness

punctuated ever so rarely
by a brief interval of blindingly glorious light
which for ever so brief a moment glorifies our minds
as mjs suggest
and then ....
---------------
i must insist Clio plays a very different
tune in certain ears

though it might take a born again moment to "hear "this music
i witness to u all
it is the authentic
music of the class spheres

----------------

that blurted out

as a school master manque
i'll now bloviate:

insurrection is not a spectator sport

now is not the time for gleeful mania alone
certainly not at ground zero

though god knows that's all i have to offer
here in the belly of the whale is cheers
for the agents on the spot
obviously manic fuel is just what the doctor ordered
but
insurrection is about careful bold 24/7 action
unguided frenzy is just that and no more

the lack of organization must be somehow
over come

its a time to put aside regrets
the optimum org was not in place
and make of the moment what you can

i wish i had the makings of such a figure
in me
but i doubt it

Lacking a visible hierarchy doesn't mean they're disorganized or without organization. This was highly coordinated. It just didn't confirm academic or bureaucratic expectations about how events should unfold.

Yes yes and yes.

"Authorities had blocked internet, mobile phone and SMS services in order to disrupt planned demonstrations"

this can not be defeated by spontaneous actions

emergent organization
has terrible limits
until there is no authority
no die hard core of ruthless agents of the old establishment
ie security forces remain largely intact
only an army gone over to the insurrection
can demolish ..over whelm
these armed diehard outfits
the revolution must sieze the over soul
of the barracks

"Lacking a visible hierarchy doesn't mean they're disorganized or without organization"

obviously jc

"This was highly coordinated. "
no it was emergent and quite loosely co ordinated
nearly spontaneous
like the black ghetto riots of the high 60's
on a long hot summer

"..It just didn't confirm academic or bureaucratic expectations about how events should unfold."
quite wrong i suspoect not just anarcho nihilists see their own image in this
many left liberals do too
of course the road hoped for ahead
splits with you black hearted blood mongers hoping for mayhem
and your lilly pals of the liberal pwogessive left yearning for a color rev like in georgia or ukraine or the fall of the berlin wall
or marcos or suharto
or a rev like englands in 1688
or france in 1830 etc
the list on their side is long

on your side ??

paris commune 1871
and barcelona in 1936 etc
far shorter
the roasd less travelled by
and why ??

well not because of you simpering sardonic self righteous anarcho clowns

what a totally useless know it all you can be

try pointing to precedent unless that's to academical for you

instead of fantasy images of a upheavel
"like no other b4 "

of course its organized in the broadest weakest sense
but not by the likes of you

in tunisia the scales seem to have shifted once the trade union org
--an outfit you would condemn in normal driving --
moved against the regime

and then ...even more heinous
the army shifted into a tilted neutrality
by movng between the unarmed civilians and the security outfits

similar patterns may be about to emerge in egypt

however the organizations trying to guide
the flow now overtly
ie not like these slime loose internet gigs
lovely and a testament to the yearning to be liberated
but hardly ready for an inevitable
protracted struggle
rallying is easy now
as the gears shift ...if they ever do
toward disciplined mobilizing day after day
and the arguous detailed task
of setting up a second set of authorities
--just what you anarcho types hope for
but can't build --
at any rate

the chaotic micro causations
driving this sudden emergence
do leave hope alive

and yet
you orwell libertarian pinks
will be repelled by the likely leader of the insurrection
if it proves to be the muslim brotherhood

if the MB asserts dominance
and eats up the boho secular student elements the trade unions and sundry lumpen street youth contingents ..
i see you holding your nose

"these are not hezzis not even hamasianites"
--------------

foot note ..ill considered i suspect

crow calling others
dogmatic and blind
is richer then fried lard
and his utter lack of anything beyond rah rah vacuity
proof positive
he's a tinker bell rain dancer
uselees as a dog in the ocean

this topic btw
is not really suitable to the mission of this site
but it does prove how far from
the broadly concieved site
able to reach wavering Dembot elements
SMBIVA has drifted
its now a site for sour headed
political left drop outs
with decent
--- if memically narcotized --
moral instincts
but "close for further business" minds

i wager crow hasn't learned a thing here
only found confirmation
and space for refutation

a literary beetle-bug
lost in a sea full of
fluxing pythagorian numbers

this sites message ??

i nominate this futile lesson instiller

hands off barry

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/82416/five-things-you-should-know-about-the-riots-in-egypt

note the crow hurlbut axis forming here

global liberal to county anarchist

madame hurlbutt

"Revolutions often erupt with little warning. Explosions of popular anger on the “Arab Street” have become a cliché. But no one saw Tunisia coming, and few believed that unrest would spread to Egypt..."

"except the Egyptian activists, apparently young and secular at the core, who have been out on the streets every day since."

nice middle class pale pink eyed
patriotic kids

" ... One useful way to think about such revolutions is to remember 1989. There was the revolt in East Germany, which nobody expected to start, and then nobody expected to end peacefully. And then you had Romania, which no one expected to end in a fusillade of bullets... except the Romanians."

".. There are institutions in Egypt, and they will ultimately, though perhaps not today, make the decisive difference."
here you two must agree to disagree eh ??
seems looking at her list she roots for a a secular "cadet party" type solution
prolly in military garb to begin with ...

not i suspect our man crows choice

"America can’t stop this revolt. "

hands off barry ??...not quite

"..But, with talk of a negotiated departure for Mubarak shooting around Twitter, there may come a time when the United States has to become even more involved."

she booms for
"... The most famous face outside of Egypt is former IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei, who is well-known in the West and respected, but not universally loved, at home. His efforts to unite Egypt’s opposition behind him have had mixed results, and he seems to have been free and detained at various points during the day.
"
perfect line for a humanist ineffectual meddler
support ...a humanist ineffectual meddler

" The ‘Islamist Menace’ is overblown."
sigh of relief ...

"... concern about the relative strength of the Muslim Brotherhood, which espouses a fundamentalist strain of Islam and has championed and employed violence in the past, should be balanced against three other facts: (1) The Brotherhood has renounced violence and it has been active in Egyptian politics, transformed by an internal debate about whether and how to participate, for some time now; (2) Thus far, observers on the ground report that it is young, secular Egyptians who are leading this revolt; (3) The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition organization in Egypt, is a first-rank enemy of Al Qaeda, and has been for decades."

full circle coverage there eh ??

first they have self defanged
--answer a split of the memshy bolshy ilk --
second
this upheveal wears jeans .and no head scarfs
.....err so far or at least until recently

ya o far

the punch line
if they prevail hey they're anti al qaeda

three cheers for
islamism in one state al duggash hadin

true democrats—some of whom organize around Islam, ... are doing the struggling and dying right now. Americans, like others around the world, are instinctively cheering for them. They are right to do so."

ah the fatuity of it all

Yeah, it does seem pretty spontaneous to me -- though there may be more organization behind it than meets the eye. If the regime does collapse, then what happens next is anybody's guess, and the pessimist in me says that a wonderful outcome is less likely than a depressing one. Nevertheless, events like this are a necessary if not a sufficient condition for the wonderful outcome, and it cheers me up a lot when they happen.

here a deeply compassionate liberal meddler

taking up the cugels for

democracy seeking organizations
in place b4 the upsurge

first appearances are acknowledged

".. when demonstrations like these erupt, they’re inevitably labeled “spontaneous uprisings.”"

" However,"
hike up your trousers hoss here it comes....

"that characterization is usually more a product of previous media neglect and ignorance than it is an accurate description of protest activity."

no mr
what is a" product of previous neglect"
is the surprise when things explode
in these under reported areas

" If you’re not paying any attention to a country’s politics and only swoop in when things have reached a crisis point, events will invariably look out-of-the-blue. Yet that’s hardly the whole story."
now you;d think
he's about to say what is patently obvious
ie
conditions and earlier clashes pre figured this uprising
recall the november election
nothing if not a candidate for the same plaque ass the southg vietnamese elections of 1971
or the once and future food riots
but no
he thinks this was "organized"
err really ???

one thinks of castro's line
about upheavels being like hurricanes
beyond human agency or control

but first hear his rapsode

(assignment:
compare and contrast
to father's offering above)

"Yes, there are extraordinary moments when public demonstrations take on a mass character and people who would otherwise not have dreamed of taking part in an uprising rush onto the streets."
that said and dropped

now on to the stone footed tap dance:

" But these protests are typically built upon years of organizing and preparation on the part of social movements."

help me here ....bub ???
cause and effect or correlation ??

"I haven’t seen great backgrounders out yet detailing movement activity in Egypt and Tunisia,"
no you haven't have u
and yet ....

".. there have been some signs of foresight and preparation."

wow
shoot me the skinny big guy

" In Cairo... polished manuals have been passed from hand-to-hand among protesters, serving as guidebooks for action...
Anonymous leaflets circulating in Cairo also provide practical and tactical advice for mass demonstrations, confronting riot police, and besieging and taking control of government offices."

how to rise up blue prints ??
surely this pamphlet is a smoking gun eh ??
or
don't that seem more like surfing
the high tide
making of an opportunity rather then generating it ???

more on the pamphlet :

"Signed 'long live Egypt',
the slickly produced 26-page document
calls on demonstrators to begin with peaceful protests, carrying roses but no banners, and march on official buildings while persuading policemen and soldiers to join their ranks."

notice his exhibit A seems to be also his only exhibit

closing argument

"Well-produced twenty-six-page booklets—reflecting a lot of careful thought—do not exactly fit within the image of “spontaneous uprising.” "

careful thought ??
make friends with the armed guys
sounds like ding dong obvious

but maybe i'm too harsh

lets simply say
no qed crow
you may turn out to be right all along
but we'll need a damn sight more then this

-----------------

fan club of democracy send off:

"As we continue to watch this story, I’ll be eager to see pro-democracy organizers who have been at it over the long haul get their due."

priceless !!!!!

http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=362

way to go op

ivory soap with
a tan

in the chuchumatanes
antes y hospitalito de
segundo cuerpo

beyond tactical self organizing be
came absolute necessity

defensive spontaneity cannot be dismissed
it's built in to many communities and can ;flip;
-------

MJS [post reminds me of liminality and communitas - lots to this that i've not thought through in terms of transitioning social relations of production, still, not dramatically uncommon]

Your "we'll" in the "we'll need" is not mine, Owen.

My respect, elation and wonder are unalloyed. They are not burdened by the managerial impositions of scholastic teleology.

Speaking as the gentle irenic-but-not-ironic pastor of this little conventicle, I am grieved that what should be an incredibly joyous occasion for all of us should have provoked yet another spat.

And now please stand for the benediction -- though back in my day, when churches were churches, we would have knelt.

"managerial impositions of scholastic teleology"

crow delights in
attaching naughty words like managerial
to people and things they do

scholastic teleology probably makes more sense then
one damn thing after another

the world teems with
a purposeless puepose

describing must human actions
motivated by an intention
fits the formalism

"my respect, elation and wonder
are unalloyed "

as well they might be

as pure as wind blowing thru a large cavity

obviously you missed my point

we still need to be convinced of your characterization

"This was highly coordinated"
i guess given your wish dream

by an invisible non hierarchical
anarco nihilist outfit

i don't know why this uprising brought out such antagonism in me toward the likes of crow
its not correct
its not useful
but the notion a revolution can succeed without "mangement "
is so idiotic and slip shod

oh well

crow for christ sake don't you think we all would prefer to believe council communism
not only can spontaneously emerging out of the collapse of the ancient regime
but prevail over the massive reaction that follows ??

put away your childish toys

moray Al
won't like this a bit
but when viewing "crow on edgypt"
with his unalloyed crush on the masses
in the streets
i think with a very nasty delight
about barcelona
and how those stalinoid robots
slaughtered the eclectic menagerie
that called itself the POUM

here's a nice account
if you happen to be a trotskite weasil:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_May_Days

and hell the poum was an organization
and that's a step or two beyond crows ambit

adventures of george the badger :

"curious George in his book Homage to Catalonia sees the May days as a suppression of the revolution by parties backed by Stalin's USSR.... He argued that the USSR did not want genuine socialist revolution in Spain."

there u have it comrades

"georgie describes Barcelona in 1936 as a city under the control of the workers - police replaced by workers' patrols, workplaces collectivised - and the egalitarian nature of the militias in Barcelona (such as the POUM militia in which he served). He contrasts this with the oppressive police state that developed after May and the subsequent suppression of the POUM"

get it ?? a police state

darkness comes to the play pen

Michael,

I'm sorry I cannot comment on your website without Owen going into full apoplexy. It's been a pleasure to read you over the last several years, and to be considered worthy enough to sit to the right, in your links.

Thank you.

~ Jack

MJS,

Somewhat similar [and, according to the late Victor Turner, generally the case within communitas], France 1968:

Daniel Cohn-Bendit recalled:

I toured the whole area. Residents were at their windows, offering us food and milk. The atmosphere was fantastic. It’s a moment I shall never forget. People were building up the cobblestones into barricades because they wanted—for the first time—to throw themselves into a collective, spontaneous activity. People were releasing all their repressed feelings, expressing them in a festive spirit. Thousands felt the same needs to communicate with each other, to love one another. That night has forever made me optimistic about history. Having lived through it I can never say “It will never happen”.3 [Nor can I although the type I lived through was very dif than the 68s]

http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=424&issue;=118

of course there was the slightly later 'Grenelle Agreement' within which the [Stalinist]PCF/CGT helped the Guallist admin end the broadening student/worker autogestion and strike.

Crow's points are not completely without merit - mgt, yes but then the form of mgt, whether it transcends the commonplace and not as corporatist or other state-centered.

juan,

"Managerial" modifies "impositions." Op wants to ignore that. If workers manage their work and distribution, is it an imposition on themselves? I don't think so.

The reference, anyway, was to the academic "Marxist" theorizing of which some persons are exceedingly fond, safe as they are in their tenured redoubts, planning a centralized revolution that has long, long passed them by.

Workers councils have never withstood the counter revolution
I suggest you review the events in northern Italy in 1919
If you crave a factual example

Self management in most heads is usually a silly abstraction
Even if there were no counter revolutionary onslaught
Evidence suggests the details of self management begin to morph into
Systems oddly close to present corporate hierarchical forms
Chief reason
Most jobs are shit work if they are systemically total hours minimizing
Per unit of output
Seems given a choice folks prefer shorter hours and higher pay to meaningful control of the production process
Unions on the other hand as a means to extert jouster power
Are critical
The right to strike and to organize a strike
Are sacred class rights if there ever were such things

That being said
Seizing the factory office and warehouse
Blocking the flow of goods etc
These are necessary stages toward system collapse
The protraction of these stages leads to worker self management in the short run in many cases as the job force tries to resume some semblance of production
This is largely symbolic but still necessary
It states clearly "we don't need your fucking class management "

To return to the co op worker self management question
The successful ones usual are shops ffull of skilled producers
Artisans now collected into one unit
Their work benches side by side
So to speak
It's clear in these applications workers self management is straight forward

Actually despite appearances
If I were a party minor cadre
I'd like to be assigned to over see
Credit flows to service co ops
Industrial co ops might require too much engineering for my liking

Btw
Jack I promise to leave your highly valued comments un commented on
What possible impact could it have one way or the other was always aimed elsewhere
U I never felt could leave your shell behind not at this point in your development

Academic Marxist in my experience are huge fans of workers control
Thinking in categories
They share crow 's view that there can be no contradictions and therefore impositions
When all parties share a common class and production unit outlook
Would that experience sustained that pleasant ivy tower pipe dream

Juan contradictions between a production unit and the entire system of production
Contradictions between the production sector and the entire production system
Preclude any easy solution to commodity production once on a mass scale and moving toward full mechanization and beyond that to automation

If anything has seen it's train leave the station it's the artisan class based notion of the member managed co op

The naive reliance on markets to resolve social conflicts between various production units
is obviously silly
And various contrived recipes to transmute prices into just prices
Like time prices or some variant of credit money
Have all run up against their own inherent limiting inconsistencies
With reality

We have little notion of what comes next but it isn't likely to be a dream with an obviously retro spectate point of reference

Each gloomy genetal purpose intellect loitering and dreaming in it's damp and murky cell beneath social reality
Seems best suited to projecting that cell as a utopia in spite of itself
And to scale it up is only to level all cells to one playing field

Indeed that sounds grand
But if it's possible and so obviously grand how did we get to here today instead of to thereb

"there can be no contradictions"?

Do you always debate with the fantasies you've conjured up, Owen? I've never argued or written the theoretical convictions you attribute to me.

Crow you are so abstract and stick figure like you can escape thru any screen

Fine

So u expect contradictions To emerge
I suspect they get resolved by wow wow ? No ?

Your rejection of authority is so personal I doubt you could ever feel
Any hierarchy functional or preferred to a non hierarchy
But if most other opt for functionality then what ?

The evidence suggests job holders like their compensations for necessary labor
To be as large as possible
That suggests a system of production as efficient in the use of their time as possible

I doubt co ops represent that object made manifesti

Crow you are so abstract and stick figure like you can escape thru any screen

Fine

So u expect contradictions To emerge
I suspect they get resolved by wow wow ? No ?

Your rejection of authority is so personal I doubt you could ever feel
Any hierarchy functional or preferred to a non hierarchy
But if most other opt for functionality then what ?

The evidence suggests job holders like their compensations for necessary labor
To be as large as possible
That suggests a system of production as efficient in the use of their time as possible

I doubt co ops represent that object made manifesti

Btw suggest a contradiction that might not be resolved by wow wow
That none the less is not an imposition

Let's resolve this here because after this thread I have a pledge to meet
Never to comment on your valuable comments
And since they are all valuable in some sense
This exchange is our last scheduled exchange
Of course father might end the dialogue out of respect to reality on the streets of urban Egypt

I gave such a gag pledge only once b4
To a fine fellow lobbying the site to remove me from the posting circle
He seemed to be well on his way to a working majority
But for father s and his Greek orhodox sense of hierarchy
Iwas bound to get bunged
And I felt like mubarak might feel now

owen,

sure worker mgt engenders contradictions between firm/sector/production as a whole, between middle managers and workers, between union bosses and workers, etc. - same time it also resolves preexisting ones within thr firm while promoting a broader/deeper socialization outside work, a type that may facilitate socialist distribution [which i see as a - or the - major problem].

not 'projecting' since onr of my employments was largely worrker managed. admittedly only twenmty some odd people and a de jure manager with big orders coming down from 'on high' but day to day r&d handled by those who knew the most, all of us.

if i recall, marx placed co operation as one phase in the run to industrial cap but - after the commune - also saw variants of this a form socialism *could* take -- we've come a ways since then.

as stated i agree with this

"sure worker mgt engenders contradictions between firm/sector/production as a whole, between middle managers and workers, between union bosses and workers, etc. -"
and i think this
" same time it also resolves preexisting ones within thr firm while promoting a broader/deeper socialization outside work"

but"... may facilitate socialist distribution [which i see as a - or the - major problem]."

socialist distribution SD
suggests
too many possible things to me

could you be more specific
what are your particular concerns about SD ??
and how might worker management "facilitate "SD ??

"one of my employments was largely worrker managed"

very interesting what sort of operation was it ?

-------

marx notices three stages of capitalist production as it invades a sector

co operation
manufacturing ---division of labor--
and
mechanization

but his use of co operation is as a technical matter
not as a production relation ..obviously

and yes to turn a 17th century co op
into a worker controled operation
would be a way forward indeed

and since sectors go thru the three stages
in different time periods
today we still have many operations
that take this primal form and could be converted into co ops managed by the producers themselves

co operation in a context of fully socialized credit
might well prosper where in the capitalist credit setting it shrivels and dies

"once b4
To a fine fellow lobbying the site to remove me from the posting circle
He seemed to be well on his way to a working majority"

It isn't the posts its the comments. They are endless!

"It isn't the posts its the comments. They are endless!"

excellent point

should i restrict myself to a maximum of two comments on a none paine post ???

i think that's a jolly good thought

i'll try that
starting with posts after
pitiful giant
for that its already too late

i tend to think folks just skip stuff
on a thread they don't want to notice
but i can envision well...
op the eye sore
like hector heathcote
or that aweful woodie allen character
zelig

everywhere you look butting in
the primal shit don't stink
narcissus fifth wheel