The Daniel Singer Prize: $5000

     Hello, I hope this post finds everyone well. Posting has certainly been light this past month, but I have some good excuses (does anyone ever not?). 1). I've been really picking up speed in the research area. I do research in condensed matter physics and since I just started in February I have a lot of reading to do and techniques to learn which takes up a great deal of my time. 2). This past month I got a road bike. It's the first *real* bike that I've ever owned and it's very fun to ride and I've gotten some great workouts from it already. It makes going around the city very easy and I'm also using it as an aerobic replacement for running, which is supposed to be bad for your knees. If you've never ridden one you should really try it out, it's great. 3). My fiancee and I are learning French together. We've only done a couple of lessons but it's something fun that we can do together. Once we know it it'll be like having our own secret language (that 300 million people also speak). We're also going to be in France for a week this summer and it's much more enjoyable to me if I speak a little of the native language. I feel less like a foreign invader and more like I belong there I suppose.

    I haven't had much time to do any "fun reading" in the past month, although a couple of days ago I started the book Prelude to Revolution by Daniel Singer, a socialist writer who has authored a couple of books and written articles for The Nation (as its Europe correspondent) and The Economist. The book deals with the events of May 1968 in France, in which a revolutionary situation occurred which brought out 2/3 of the French workforce in a general strike. It is looked on by some as a sign of hope that even in first-world countries where economic conditions are such that people are not starving that it does not mean that large numbers of people cannot become interested in changing society in order to become more democratic, fair, sustainable, and enjoyable. But at the same time I think that movements like this may actually have a greater chance in first-world countries where productivity, if used for the common good and not for a small group of social parasites whose only contribution to society is being rich, could actually drastically reduce the work week without a decrease in the quality of life. I think the realization of this, and then its strong contrast with what society currently looks like, could very well be a strong motivator towards the adoption of 'radical' ideas.


     Anyway, in doing some background research before starting this book I stumped upon a website by the Daniel Singer Millennium Prize Foundation. Daniel Singer passed away in 2000 unfortunately but in his memory they have an essay contest every year in which the winner receives $5000 and is invited to give a public lecture based on the essay. The question for the essay is "What major breakthrough in socialist theory is necessary in order to move the practical struggle forward?". I thought this was something that some of you may be interested in. It would take a little more effort than a normal blog post, but at the same time there would be a chance at $5k as well as the satisfaction of writing an essay which could influence the outlook of many people. I may write something in a couple of months if I can find the time. If you're not interested in writing something, you might want to check out the essays of the previous winners. I just read the most recent winner's essay, and thought it was very well done.

Book Review: American Fascists

     In the atheist community nowadays we hear a lot of chatter about the threat of theocracy rearing its head in America. While I agree that religious believers who shun reason and prefer to live a life of magical superstition, continuously feel persecuted even while on the offensive, and believe that all social problems can be solved if we "get right with God" are a huge threat to our so-called democracy, I think that there is essentially zero probability that a theocracy will rule the US in the near future. The reason for this belief is that I'm assuming that for a political system to be truly a theocracy, the rulers of the economic and political life belong to religious institutions or are at least strongly controlled by those who are. But I can't see this happening in America. The movement that the Christian Right represents is not anti-capitalist, and this is what they would have to be in order to displace the current rulers of our society. Furthermore, because religion is basically a tool to prevent those from thinking and from taking independent action, it necessarily creates a movement of followers, not leaders. This places all decision making at the top, and the leaders of any organization (whether they be religious, hierarchical worker unions, or even "revolutionary" parties) have been shown to be very susceptible to being assimilated into the thinking and behavior of the ruling class. While other movements can have some hope in the initiative of the rank-and-file members, religious movements have little chance of this happening due to their extreme hierarchical structure, the silencing of dissent, and the deification of their leaders.

     Having said that, the Christian Right does pose a threat, but it's in the form of bringing about fascism, rather than theocracy. Christians will not establish a new order, but will simply lend support to the existing order and help dismantle social programs and liberties that have taken us a long time to achieve. This has been religion's role for centuries, whether its supporting the rule of kings, dictators, or capitalists.

    But to the book. American Fascists is a book by Chris Hedges which holds as one of its claims on the cover that it will argue the similarities between the Christian Right and young fascist movements that developed in Italy and in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. If this is what you're interested in (as I was), do not read this book. Hedges barely even mentions Italian fascism and National Socialism in his book, a far cry from the detailed analysis and comparison I was looking forward to. I even read a book by Daniel Guerin called Fascism and Big Business before reading American Fascists in hope of learning more about the young fascist movements in Europe so that I could better evaluate Hedges' arguments. Guerin's book, written in the eventful 1930s, is a very detailed look at the buildup of fascist movements, what institutions supported them, and how they were able to appeal to the masses. Reading Hedges' book you wouldn't be convinced that he is even aware of all the characteristics of the Italian and German fascists as he routinely misses opportunities to make comparisons that would have been of great interest to the reader and would have made his case more solid.

     The book is written in that very personal style, as if he's simply writing in his diary as he travels the country and attends various christian political events and sermons. Some people may like this style of writing because it resembles a novel, but for an analysis I think it's completely inappropriate. It tends to focus on individual figures and their actions rather than analyze the entire movement from a distance. Here, I just flipped open the book to a random page, and here's what I read:

The opening session is held on the third floor, a large room with a round stage surrounded on three sides with rows of folding chairs. The hall is dimly lit. There are a few thousand people. Large television screens are suspended from the ceilings, and the platform in front of us has a podium and a grand piano.....

....see what I mean?

     So in conclusion, I didn't enjoy this book very much. To me it seemed like a more or less unstructured rant against those who are "hijacking" the otherwise good Christian religion. However this book may reach out to moderate and left-wing Christians (Hedges actually went to Harvard Divinity School) and so I'm glad it's out there. But if you want to learn about fascism and how movements develop then you should look somewhere else.


† The picture at the top is one that I took about two months ago in San Francisco after coming back from the march against the Iraq war. Their website is about what you would expect from a group called "Nation Takers".


     On an unrelated note, I recently decided to make an anarchist shirt on CafePress. What do I hope to come from it? Well, anarchism is basically the political equivalent of atheism in America, and as many atheists seek to convince believers that atheists don't worship the devil, I feel somewhat compelled to try to convince those around me that anarchism does not mean "chaos", but that, as the symbol represents, "anarchy is order". I have also included some text on the back of the shirt which says

Anarchism, simply put, is the radical notion that freedom and democracy are not merely words, but that they represent actual social conditions that we should strive to implement

While it's not the best definition in terms of rigor, I think it at least gets across the idea that 1). Anarchism is a legitimate political philosophy, and is not simply a way for teenagers to get back at their parents for making them take out the trash and 2). That anarchism is associated with democracy, not with disorder. One of the primary goals of anarchism is the creation of an actual, direct democracy, and I hope to introduce that idea into the heads of those who see me wear this shirt. Pictures of the design are below, and if you'd like to see the design on other items, go check out my site.

Capitalism is War

     I think everyone, regardless of their political and religious orientation, hopes for a future in which all of humanity lives in harmony with each other. We hope for a world free from war and the human suffering it entails. But these goals can never be met as long as mankind lives beneath the shadow of capitalism.

     What's so bad about capitalism you ask? And how the hell is it comparable to war? To begin with, let's look at the conventional wars, those fought with formal militaries. What starts them? Perhaps every one was started due to a conflict over resources. They, for the most part, were not fought over religion, as an apolitical atheist may hope you to believe. Religion is often used to placate the masses or to aid in convincing them to participate in the slaughter of their fellow human beings, but the initial motivation is always material in nature. Kings and emperors, the predecessors of todays' ruling capitalist class, started wars with the intent of increasing their material wealth. They have always had others shed their own blood for their material comfort, and if they could not convince their people to fight by calls to religion, patriotism, and the defense of "freedom","democracy", "order", and "civilization" then they resort to drafts and other forced service in their interests.

     Now perhaps this doesn't seem all that bad to some people. After all, eventually a nation will emerge the final victor, having either obliterated its adversaries or having reduced them to a powerless extension of themselves. And then war, outside of minor scuffles and "interventions", will be over. However, this is not the case in my opinion, because I think the mere existence of capitalism necessarily puts humanity in a constant state of war.

    What is war? War is a conflict of interests, in which (typically) one party wins and one party loses. The losing party's quality of life is diminished, and to the victor goes the spoils. But what is capitalism but the glorification of conflicting interests? Capitalism, not by systematic imperfections, but by design is a system that puts people's interests opposed to each other. Worker versus owner, buyer versus seller. These interests are necessarily in opposition. There can be no peace and we cannot work toward common goals if our goals are not the same, if one of us being better off necessarily means that the other is worse off. These conflicts of interests and their outcomes are just as serious as those from more conventional wars. Those who starve, suffer from inadequate health care, curable diseases, and the like do so whether they are the losers on the battlefield or if they are the losers in the marketplace, whether suffering is delivered to them at the point of a gun or handed down to them from the "invisible hand of the market". Even in the "first-world" countries where hard-won labor reforms exist they are constantly under attack by those who lose profit by their very existence. The daily demand for more work from the workers at less pay by the employers and more pay for less work by the workers puts every individual in the society in constant conflict with others.

     I don't believe that anyone is inherently "bad" (if only because no objective definition for the word exists), but I do believe that people act in their own interests, whether they be of a material nature or not. This is a fact that cannot be avoided. So it is crucial that our political and economic structures tie people's interests together rather than set them opposed to each other. No one can reasonably expect any system to be free from conflict, but if you ever hope to minimize it, you shouldn't be using a system that is actually built on it.

Long Time No Post

     Hi everyone, sorry the posting has been very light lately. I recently joined a research group and have been very busy getting myself settled in and trying to get something productive done. It's theoretical physics, although at the moment I spend a lot of time looking at computer code and debugging it before submitting jobs to the supercomputers we have access to. Although I haven't been posting, I have had a little time to read and watch a few interesting things that I'd like to share with you in case you're interested.

    I recently finished a book called America Beyond Capitalism by Gar Alperovitz. There's 4 clips of the author talking at a bookstore on this website so you can get an idea of what he talks about in the book. In addition to some interesting facts and statistics, probably the biggest idea that I took away from it was the importance of local democratic structures and participation as a means of exerting democratic influence on a more larger scale. As Alperovitz says in his book:

The heart of the larger foundational argument-and this is a critical emphasis-might be put thus: Is it possible to have Democracy with a Big D in the system as a whole if you do not have real democracy with a small d at the level where people live, work, and raise families in their local communities?

In this goal of having a true democracy Alperovitz looks at other conditions that are necessary if a government is truly going to be democratically controlled. A lot of this obviously has to do with how wealth is distributed. He looks at a variety of institutional changes, some of which are very radical and some of which are not, and often cites some current trends as to how things are leaning in this direction. Some of the things he proposes are good ideas but have no chance of actually coming into being in the near future. However, he says that he realizes that things are likely to get worse before they get better, and cites a number of issues such as health care, social security, the environment, and a population which sees themselves working harder and harder despite huge technological gains that could drastically minimize work as factors that could radicalize the mainstream of America. Watch the video if you're interested in more.

     A good documentary I recently saw is Militainment, Inc. which is a film about the military and war as entertainment. There are a lot of very good clips of the mainstream media in there that are worth watching. It's available on Youtube, and I've included the first of the 12 portions below for convenience.

            

    Also, a few days ago I ordered a book called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by divinity school graduate Chris Hedges. I usually don't read books by christians, but this guy's politics impressed me in his interview with Democracy Now! so I decided to give it a shot. Apparently in the book he compares the Christian Right in America with young fascist movements in Italy and Germany at the beginning of the century. If you have time check out the interview, he makes a couple good observations. It blows my mind though to see someone who apparently have such a clear depiction of how the world works yet still describe himself as a Christian. Maybe he does it because it will make him more effective in communicating his ideas to a wider audience, or maybe he just can't completely let go of superstition I don't know. But it looks like a good book.

     I'm currently reading Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky. I'm about 1/3 of the way through and have found it fairly engaging. A number of the events he cites I actually know a fair amount about, but there are some things that I hadn't heard before and even with the things that I've had, it's nice to hear his opinion and analysis of it.

    Hope everything is going well for you all. I don't know if I'll be getting any less busy in the next month or so, but I'll try to post every so often and check in with your blogs.

Majority of CNN panel concludes that atheists need to "shut up"

     Some of you may have heard of the recent uproar about the Paula Zahn CNN segment about discrimination against atheists. If not, the videos are below along with some comments.

      

    What I thought was interesting about this segment was the choice of atheists interviewed. You may have noticed that all the atheists chosen for interview were overweight and rather unattractive in general whereas the Christian man who was interviewed was fairly handsome. This is a popular media technique to influence opinion. If those who are undecided on the issue see it they will often identify the "bad" idea with the "bad" looking person. Fox News employs this tactic on Hannity and Colmes. Hannity is a fairly decent looking guy whereas Colmes looks like the child of a zombie and an old turtle. People naturally want to associate themselves with the better looking person, and this can have a huge affect on the subconscious.

Here's the second part of the video:

      

    The first thing I'd like to comment on here is the initial backdrop of "Why do atheists inspire such hatred?". I thought the initial question of the segment was "are atheists discriminated?" not "what do they do to deserve it?". The language used clearly suggests that not only are atheists hated, but that there are reasons that justify such hatred.

    Then to get to the comments. It's incredibly disappointing to see a black woman criticize a discriminated minority and say that they simply need to "shut up" only 40 years after the Civil Rights movement. Now the blonde really reminds me of a character played on Saturday Night Live, although I can't decide exactly who. Her claim of America being a "christian nation" has been refuted so many times it's beginning to cause my ears pain to hear it. America's "founding fathers" were overwhelmingly deist, certainly a far cry from being Christian. Maybe the blond woman should let the black woman (I refuse to honor them with their names) know that America (by the same twisted logic) is also a "white nation". And then finally the blond woman's comment that Europe is "fast falling" and is becoming "Islamic" is certainly ridiculous. Europe is becoming more secular, that's for sure, but not "Islamic". And the countries that are more secular, e.g. the Nordic countries, are also the countries with the highest standard of living for their citizens. They also have more responsive government and hence much higher voter turnout, all signs that their democracies are "fast falling" in comparison to ours.

    In summary, what a ridiculous panel. Our great mainstream media can get a panel of people in a room to discuss atheism (none of which are atheists by the way) and agree that we need to shut up. Damn, Christians sure are persecuted in this country.

Finally, here's a nice remix that someone made.

        

Independent Media in a Time of War

        

Bernie Sanders on Corporate Control of the Media

     Democracy Now! has a good video of Bernie Sanders speaking at the National Conference for Media Reform. Sanders highlights the centrality of the media issue saying

If you are concerned, as been said, about healthcare, if you are concerned about foreign policy and Iraq, if you are concerned about the economy, if you are concerned about global warming, you are kidding yourselves if you are not concerned about corporate control over the media, because every one of these issues is directly controlled and directly relevant to the media

Video here.

Socialism Defined

     Mookie of Meme Processing has a interesting post on socialism that some of you might be interested in. He talks about a number of issues, including the negative connotations of the word and of its true definition, common misconceptions and arguments made against socialism, whether violence is necessary to achieve fundamental change, discusses the apparent paradox of a free market which supposedly protects individual liberty and responsibility while at the same time is not controlled by people but by an "invisible hand" which is independent of human control and thereby relieves people from responsibility for anything that the market affects, among other topics. If you're interested, regardless of your views, feel free to join the discussion.

    Also, I'd like to thank whoever ordered those 4 atheism books after clicking on one of my Amazon links. They give me 4% of the purchase towards Amazon gift certificates. I still haven't gotten to the $10 minimum redemption amount goal, but I'm getting close =)

Pirates and Emperors

    Short cartoon from TayTV based on Chomsky's book Pirates and Emperors, Old and New.

                        

What is the media reporting on now?

     Most days I check out the mainstream media and see what they're reporting on, just for shits and giggles. Today I wanted to see how the media was responding to Bush's call for an escalation in Iraq (20,000 more troops for the slaughter), the fact that polls show that 71% of Americans are opposed to Bush's plan, and also Bush's aggressive statements towards Iran and Syria. I remember back in high school we were told that we needed a President to make decisions because the process of democracy is often too slow to react quickly if the need arises. I don't remember the part where the the President gets to do whatever the fuck he wants, especially if public opinion is directly opposed to it. Withdrawal from Iraq? No, silly citizens, we're sending in more troops. Going to recall me? Too bad, you can't. Impeach me? Too bad, you don't control the Congress or House, and in half of the states you can't recall them. In fact, most of you didn't even have a choice to elect a peace candidate in November to begin with! As always, direct action is the only way to control our lives and our world. I may talk about this later, especially if a war with Iran starts to look imminent.

    Anyway, I just downloaded this great extension for Firefox which lets me save screenshots of the web pages I go to. I made some comments on the news websites I visited. As you'll see, the US media is utter bullshit. Al Jazeera, however, was quite impressive. You may want to click on the photo to make it larger and easier to read. Am I the only one who thinks that ongoing, escalating, and upcoming war is something that should be the focus of reporting in a civilized society?

ABC


CBS



CNN (morning)


CNN (hour later)




Fox "News"



Al Jazeera (my new mainstream news source)

Idiocracy

    I usually don't promote movies on this blog, especially if they aren't documentaries. But Idiocracy is one that I think many of you would enjoy. Besides, if 20th Century Fox won't promote it, maybe I should pick up the slack. Let me borrow a fantastic review from John Patterson of the Guardian

It looks as though Mike Judge, the satiric mastermind behind Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill and Office Space, just got punked again. By his own studio. For the third time.

Seven years ago, 20th Century Fox dumped Judge's anti-corporate cri de coeur Office Space, but it became a bona fide smash on DVD, one of the studio's biggest sellers that year. Last year Fox unceremoniously cancelled Judge's animated hit King of the Hill, perhaps the most socially precise comedy on American television, before giving it a last-minute reprieve.

Now it's the turn of Judge's second feature, the splenetic, pitch-black satire Idiocracy, which wrapped nearly two years ago. Fox didn't screen it for critics, ran no print ads or trailers, and dumped it on 130 screens nationwide. Apparently the lesson of Office Space's success went entirely unlearned.

Knowing Judge's sterling track record as an American satirist, I had to find out what went wrong. Usually a film eliciting such utter contempt from its own backers is a disaster. Far less often, it's a masterpiece.

The plot: in the future, the educated and intelligent will be massively out-bred by moronic A-type prison-fodder and Nascar idiots, to the point that all knowledge of engineering, agriculture, medicine and literature will be lost to misty memory. Luke Wilson plays ordinary Joe Bowers, chosen to be frozen by the military in 2005, who accidentally wakes up in 2505 to find a broken-down, thuggish America where language has become a patois of football chants, hip-hop slang and grunts denoting rage, pleasure and priapic longing, where citizens are obese, violent, ever-horny and narcotised by consumerism, TV and fast food. Everything's branded, and people have names such as BMW, Mountain Dew and Frito. TV features the Violence Channel (its signature show: "Ow, My Balls!") and the Masturbation Channel ("Keepin' America 'batin' for 300 years!"). The President's a Smackdown champ and porno superstar, and there's a mulleted wrestler on the billion-dollar bill. And everyone in the future thinks that Joe Bowers, suddenly the smartest man on earth, "talks like a fag".

There is venomous anti-corporate satire throughout the movie, remarkable mainly because Judge names real corporations. I was astounded - and invigorated - by the sheer vitriol Judge directs at these companies, who surely now regret permitting the use of their licensed trademarks. Like fast-food giant Carl's Jr, which in 2006 sells 6,000-calorie burgers the size of dictionaries under the slogan, "Don't Bother Me, I'm Eating". In Idiocracy, this has devolved into "Fuck You! I'm Eating!" And every commercial transaction has been sexualised: at Starbucks you can get coffee plus a handjob (or a "full body" latte).

Idiocracy isn't a masterpiece - Fox seems to have stiffed Judge on money at every stage - but it's endlessly funny, and my friends and I will be repeating certain lines for months (especially while eating), a sure sign of a cult hit. And word got out fast: I saw it last Saturday in a half-empty house. Two days later, same place, same show - packed-out. There's an audience for this movie, but its natural demographic barely knows it's out there.

Behind the movie's satire lie long-term social changes like the stupidisation of the American electorate over 30 years through deliberate underfunding of public education, the corporate takeover of every area of public and private life, and the tendency of the media - particularly Fox News - to substitute anti-intellectual rage and partisan division for reasoned public debate.

Some will argue that Fox has also given us some of the best television of the last 15 years - true - and that if quality sells as well as garbage, then the bottom line is served either way.

So why was Idiocracy dumped? Perhaps because it taps a growing anti-corporate mood in the nation; perhaps because it expertly satirises the jingoistic self-absorption that now passes for public culture. Or perhaps because more people are sick of the modern America that Fox energetically helped to build than the Fox corporation itself is ready to admit.

    While I don't believe a trailer was ever made for it, here's something that someone put up on YouTube. If you watch it, let me know what you think.

            

To Political and Social Consciousness

     We all grow up with the same idea that freedom, democracy, and justice are things that should be valued. Whether this is due to upbringing or due to some intrinsic desire of mankind is something I haven't particularly thought about, but just about everyone strives for these things in their politics. What type of politics comes out, however, is anyone's guess. Differences in perspective, due to an infinite number of factors ranging from religiosity to historical background, are the cause of such a vast difference in the believed paths to these commonly agreed goals.

    My personal story is one in which my politics changed drastically while at the same time I remained faithful to the previously mentioned ideals. I went from a very patriotic two-time Bush voter to a libertarian communist in less than a period of two years. Below I will try to outline my path, as best I can, to (what I hope) is a more socially and politically conscious position.

    As I described in a previous post, I used to be extremely patriotic. I bought into the lie that our country and our government, which I believed was strongly democratic, stood and fought for democracy, freedom, and human rights. I felt that we were a beacon of hope in a dark world and that we were doing the best we could to spread those fundamental ideals throughout the world. Having believed this,it made sense that I would support our military and hope for "us" to have an ever increasing amount of control over other nations and their people. For if we failed, then perhaps freedom would be extinguished from the human experience altogether. Sometimes we may act imperialistic (I didn't realize how prevalent this behavior was at the time), but it seemed justified to me because we had to make sure that our country got the natural resources and strategic leverage to sucessful fight for freedom and democracy. The reason I supported Bush twice was because he was "good for the military". I also believed that the American people were a unified body with more or less the same interests in how our country was run and what should happen in the world. At least this was how history is usually taught in the US. As Howard Zinn puts in his amazing book A People's History of the United States:

The pretense is that there really is such a thing as "the United States," subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a "national interest" represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media

I bought into this. I didn't realize that capitalism, by the way it forces the interests of the buyer and seller, of owner and worker, to be in direct opposition to each other (and this basic relationship propagates to affect other relationships throughout the society) makes it impossible for there to be a "national interest". And if the citizens of a nation don't have common interests, whose interests do they favor?

    So due to these beliefs, I always supported the US military and its wars. I very much enjoyed watching bombing by US warplanes on the news because we were attacking the "enemies of freedom". I also supported very high tax rates, because that would go into improving our great country. I even somehow managed to think that if I were ever rich one day that I would donate a large sum of my money to the US government, as I thought that it would go to good use (I can't really defend myself here, but let me throw out the fact that I was in high school).

    So how did this view change? It's hard to be exact, as changes in politics or religion tend to be very gradual and in some respects the individual experiencing them may not have a good sense of what is happening. To see that our government represents only a small minority of the country whose interests are opposed to the majority's and that the US government, rather than supporting and nurturing freedom and democracy at home and abroad, actually suppresses it you need to be exposed to new ideas and history that isn't usually taught and never discussed in the mainstream media. The first step then was my disillusionment with the media.

     I used to live in the south, and there the standard news station is Fox News, so that's what I usually watched. They subscribed to the same jingoistic ideas that I did, and besides, they had nice graphics and special effects. It was actually my atheism that ended breaking me free from Fox News. I was in the kitchen washing dishes while I listened to Fox News one day. They had some people come on and they started discussing whether an atheist could be President. So I went into the living room to watch. Everyone on the show, the guests, the anchors (I think it might have been Hannity) all unanimously agreed that an atheist could not be President. Atheists simply just did not have the moral fiber to do so. If they didn't have the common sense to accept Jesus, how could they lead the country? I had never been so pissed off by watching the news before, and since I no longer had any respect whatsoever for the people over at Fox News, I stopped watching it altogther. I then started watching CNN and MSNBC and also the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I think the Daily Show may have influenced me in that I began to become increasingly critical of the Bush administration (his religiosity and opposition to stem cell research also affected this).

     But for perhaps 6 months after this it's hard to discern how my thinking evolved. Some idea can be had by looking at my posts on my blog. Looking at a post from April 2005 (the first month of my blog) I made my opposition to social conservatism well known, but didn't appear particularly opposed to economic conservatism. I know at some point in early 2005 I read a book called Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America. After reading that book, I classified myself as a liberal and felt, at least for a period of a few months, very supportive of the Democratic party. Perhaps it was this identification of myself with the minority party that allowed me to easily criticize the way that the GOP was running the country. In July I made a post to my blog titled Is Socialism Superior to Capitalism?. By the way I answered the many responses that I got it seems clear that I had answered this question for myself at least a few weeks earlier and had educated myself to some extent about socialism. Then in August I made a post about Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media called The Media-A Tool of Propaganda?. The realization that the mainstream media is essentially right-wing propaganda was the turning point which shifted my sources of learning and understanding of the world from the TV to more scholarly resources like books and documentaries. And then basically due to how intersting these topics are I began to consume new information at a very fast rate, always having (and still have) 2 or 3 books waiting in line to be read after finishing the current one. It's interesting to look through my posts indexed by month and watch my political transformation happen as I learn more about both current and historical events and get exposed to new points of view.

     As I said it's hard to really detail the thought process that I went through, but I hope this gives some idea. A good deal of credit also goes to many of you in the blogging community, whom I've had a great many educational conversations with and who've opened me up to new ideas. I look forward to more dicussions with you in our shared goal of understanding more about the world around us and affecting it for the better.

Happy New Year

    Happy New Year everyone! I'm finally back from my holiday break. Both my parents and my fiancee's parents live in Texas, so that's where I was for the entire break. It was nice to see them and have some time off. But I'm very glad to be back. It's only been about two years since I lived there myself, but it's amazing how already things that previously I didn't even take notice of really bothered me while I was there and made me really appreciate living here in the Bay Area (around San Francisco). Of the smaller things was the lack of recycling facilities. Where I live I'm used to getting roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of my weekly trash volume getting picked up on the curb and is taken to be recycled. It seemed so strange to fill up trash cans with wine bottles and cans and just throw them away with the rest of the trash. It made me feel very wasteful and actually bothered me a lot more to not recycle than I would have ever imagined it to. But I think the biggest thing was the complete dominance of large retail and restaurant chains. Driving through Houston on the highway you almost wonder if you're going in circles. Best Buy, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Chili's, Olive Garden, Office Max, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. just repeat over and over again. I must have (honestly!) seen a dozen Best Buys as I drove through one part of Houston. Coming from an area which has very few corporate chains and the only big box stores we have are on the outskirts of the city, I thought this was very depressing. And while it may just be because I live in a fairly urban area in which it doesn't pay to advertise in this way, I was also irritated by the fact that you could see advertising and billboards in every direction that you looked. Everything was an advertisement. Nothing was sacred. And people seemed completely complacent, even happy, about this situation and spent their days rushing about in their SUVs to the next occurrence of the corporate consumer troughs already mentioned. I know this is a generalization and not everyone and every place there can be described like this, but I felt isolated and surrounded in a completely corporate controlled area by politically and socially unconscious people who were fully content with living a "McLife".

    One of the exceptions was when I visited Austin. Austin, at least parts of it downtown, were very nice and reminded me very much of where I live now. I had some very good local Mexican food and one restaurant had the best margaritas that I had ever had at a restaurant. I was also lucky enough to meet up and talk with Mookie of Meme Processing. He showed me a little about the area around where he lives and then we had a beer and talked for a couple hours. It was certainly a pleasant experience and I thank him and his girlfriend (let's call her 'Tookie') for their hospitality and for taking the time out of their schedules to show me around.

    While I was visiting my fiancee's parents (who are divorced) I had a fun 3-hour long political discussion with her brother, her father, and his new girlfriend. All three of them are very conservative and read and listen to O'Reilly on Fox News. So you can imagine how lively the discussion was with someone who doesn't shy away from the word "communist" and who counters "Islam is a religion of death" with "yes, all religions are". I should really give thanks to the generous amounts of alcohol we all had for our discussion to be so candid. While I was certainly outnumbered it takes no time to refute GOP talking points and, as I expected, they hadn't even heard of the historical events which I cited to support my positions. At one point her father tried to argue that history isn't relevant, but at least her brother had the sense to disagree with him on that.

    Over the break I've been reading Homage to Cataloniaby George Orwell. It's an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War (and defeated social revolution). Orwell actually fought in this war against fascism and almost died from being shot in the neck and his experiences are said to have greatly shaped his outlook on the world before he wrote his famous book 1984. I'm not quite done with the book yet, but I think it's probably going to be one of my all-time favorites once I finish it. It's very interesting and I am very impressed with Orwell's understanding of the nature of capitalism, mass media, and the church that he displays in his writing. If you like the Spanish Civil War I think you'll really like this book. And if you don't know much about it, this would be a good introduction to it if you want to get a feel for what happened.

    I'm planning on having my next major post describe, as best I can, how I changed from being a jingoistic Bush voter (twice!) to a libertarian communist. I tried to write this post back in August but had to stop because I started getting ashamed and depressed writing it. So I'll try to approach it in a different way and see how that goes.

    It's nice to be back blogging again. I hope you all had (or are having) a great break.

They Hate Us For Taking Away Their Freedom

     Immediately after 9/11, the media was filled with questions of "why do they hate us so much?" Our country, with all its resources at its disposal, came up with the obvious answer--they hate us for our freedom. This is the equivalent of the high school cheerleader telling her friends that people hate her because she's so nice. One of the main countries that focus was put on is Iran, one of those members of the "Axis of Evil" (too corny even for a comic book). From an American perspective, they see an Iranian burn a flag and therefore, he is evil. He hates America for the freedom and wonder of democracy. But what if we were wrong? What if America had done something to Iran in the past, something that would justify such hate? What if America overthrew the only democratically-elected government that Iran has ever had? And for OIL. Well, it did.

     It all starts with Mozzafar al-Din Shah Qajar, Shah of Persia from 1896-1907. A highly unpopular leader who was hated by his people, Mozzafar also had a very luxurious lifestyle. In order to pay for this, he gave away much of the country of Iran's wealth to foreign businesses. In what is called the D'Arcy Oil Concession, Mozzafar gave away the rights to Iran's oil for 60 years to the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. He sold it for only 10,000 £, which today is approximately $1 million.

    Without going into too much detail, shortly after Mozzafar left the Iranian Constitutional Revolution took place, and that was when Parliament was first established. The Iranian people now had, at least formally, some sort of political representation. Meanwhile, the British oil company was making a fortune off oil revenues (84% of all profits of production never saw Iranian hands).

    Then, in 1951, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh was elected Prime Minister. Mossadegh was extremely popular, both inside and outside Iran and was named Time magazine's "Man of the Year" for 1951. But Mossadegh deeply hated foreign intervention in Iran, and pushed for the nationalization of Iran's oil reserves. Responding to the demands from the Oil Company, Britain immediately put an embargo on Iran. But this wasn't enough, and the nationalization of oil continued. The British government went to the United States for help, and in 1953 the CIA launched Operation Ajax to overthrow Iran's democracy. Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of former President Roosevelt, was the Near East director of the CIA and orchestrated the operation. Using a combination of lies and bribery of politicians, military personnel, and religious leaders, the CIA was able to throw Iran into chaos and drive Mossadegh from power. He was arrested on charges of treason, put in jail for 3 years, and then afterwards lived under house arrest until his death. The Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was forced to step down by the Allies in WWII due to his cooperation with Nazi Germany, was put back in power with the help of the US and Britain. His rule became very dictatorial. The CIA helped Pahlavi set up his own intelligence agency called SAVAK. SAVAK had near unlimited power, had secret detention centers, tortured Iranians, and it is estimated that it killed nearly 15,000 Iranians in the 1960s. In return for this support, the Shah allowed an consortium of British, American, Dutch, and French companies (40%/40%/14%/6%, respectively) to operate the oil fields for the next 25 years. This consortium was supposed to split the profits from oil 50/50 with Iran, but Iran was not allowed to audit the companies accounts and make sure that they were getting their half of the profits.

    This overthrow of Iran's democratic government and the support that the US gave to Iran's dictatorial Shah in exchange for oil is one of the main reasons why Iranians hate the United States. The connection is not usually made, but the reason that the Iranians took over the US embassy in 1979 was that they believed that the United States was going to overthrow the new government established in the Iranian Revolution as it had done with Mossadegh. For this reason they called the embassy the "den of spies".

     These historical events are important to consider when looking at the events of today. Is it believable the the United States wants democracy in Iraq, and isn't there for the oil? Seems unlikely considering the US has shown that it is willing to overthrow democracies in order to get access to oil.

And the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company? They are now called BP.

Privitization of Iraq's Oil Key Component of the Iraq Study Group

     Whenever the American government does something that seriously upsets its people, you end up seeing committees of politicians getting together to "solve" the problem and give Americans the impression that their government can be held accountable, that fundamental change can occur. The media reports as if the commission is offering new ideas that are at least moderately opposed to those that have been carried out. It's important to actually look at what these commissions recommend, rather than simply react with blind support to an hollow statment of "the war isn't working". Antonia Juhasz, author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Timewas on Democracy Now! a few days ago commenting on one of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group-that Iraq's oil industry be fully privitized. She also goes into some of the ties to oil that members of the Iraq Study Group have. The video is here.

Buy Nothing Day

     I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. As a reminder, today is Buy Nothing Day. Much more than a show of consumer solidarity and conciousness, it is a time for people to reflect on how they live their lives. Many of us, driven by effective advertising, live life always wanting more and more "stuff". This consumerism not only generates extreme waste and hurts the environment, but it also distracts people from the important things in life, from spending time with friends and family to being politically active and wanting to create a better world for our children than we currently live in. It is hoped that by having a day like this, people will alter their habits over the course of the entire year, if only slightly.

Here are some videos for Buy Nothing Day (the first video is from a previous year so the date mentioned is incorrect).

On the Nonexistence of Free Will

    If you look up free will in the dictionary, you will get this definition

freedom of self determination and action independent of external causes

Can the definition be any more condemning? Action independent of external causes?! This means that free will is incompatible with the principle of causality. In the physics community, we quickly toss away theories that are non-causal. If events do not have a cause, then you cannot predict them. They are, in effect, supernatural events. In fact, it hard to think of a scenario where one could argue for having free will without believing in some sort of supernatural "spirit" or "soul" that isn't affected by natural events.

    Now someone might say "quantum mechanics has shown us that we cannot always predict what will happen with absolute certainty, perhaps this leaves room for free will?". This is a good try, but it still doesn't cut it. It's true that in modern physics things cannot be predicted with absolute accuracy, but we can predict probabilities of events occuring. So in principle, I could compile all events that happened in your lifetime into a huge computer, complete with all genetic information that may be relevant, and if I knew what events you would later observe I could predict the probabilities of you doing certain actions and of your brain generating certain thoughts. Sure, it would take a huge amount of computing power and a great deal of initial data to compute these probabilities, but they could be computed in principle, and that is all that is necessary to invalidate the idea of free will.

     The ambitious atheist might try to conclude that that absence of free will completely destroys the idea of Christian^TM morality because if humans don't have free will, then they cannot choose their life and it makes no sense to punish nor reward them for their actions as Christian dogma describes. But I have to say, for the sake of intellectual honesty, that I don't believe my argument applies to Christianity in this way, or any other religion for that matter. The reason for this is that Christians, for example, presuppose the existence of a supernatural realm, and who is to say that the principle of causality applies in that realm? Christians actually believe in souls, spirits, angels, and demons. So it's quite easy to see how a Christian might be able to argue that the supernatural realm is non-causal. However, if they do so, some of their ideas of God, particularly those which are related to his anthropomorphic character, are bound to fall apart. For example, if God lives in the supernatural realm, and is a non-causal being, then why should one pray to him? Your prayers don't necessarily cause him to think about your situation, because his processes are not caused by external events! Any story from the Bible where God reacts to earthly events also becomes suspect, since the supernatural world is not causal. The Christian may then argue that some aspects of the supernatural are causal, while others are not. And it's obvious that the things which are causal and those which are non-causal will depend on what it needs to be to be consistent with his worldview. I guess that's the convenience with believing in a magical world where anything goes and one can simply wish it to be true and it is....

     Outside of religious debates, what significance does the absence of free will mean to the normal person? For one, it's something that must be kept in mind when one considers the concept of justice. If people do not actually make choices in a free manner, it makes no sense to punish them for their "wickedness". Instead, one must look for the causes of bad behavior and think about logical ways to prevent it from happening in the future.

     I personally am not concerned with my lack of free will. My choices and thoughts are determined by the experiences I've had in my life, and that's all that I need, not to mention the only thing that makes sense to me.

Little Speech on Religion by Little Girl

She's surely reading lines, but still.

Voices of a People's History of the United States

     I just got back from a live reading of excerpts from Howard Zinn's book Voices of a People's History of the United States. Amazon's book description is

For Voices, Zinn and Arnove have selected testimonies to living history-speeches, letters, poems, songs-left by the people who make history happen, but who usually are underrepresented or misrepresented in history books: women, Native Americans, workers, blacks and Latinos. Zinn has written short introductions to the texts, which themselves range in length from letters or poems of less than a page to entire speeches and essays that run several pages and longer. Voices of a People's History is a symphony of our nation's original voices, rich in ideas and actions, an embodiment of the power of civil disobedience and dissent, wherein lies our nation's true spirit of defiance and resilience

     The excerpts were read by a large collection of very good speakers, including Alice Walker, Steve Earle, Mos Def, Melanie Demore, Aya de Leon, Nora el Samahy, Luis Valdez, John Trudell, Anthony Arnove (the book's co-author), and Howard Zinn himself. Despite there being a couple thousand people there, I got a very close seat. Below is a picture I snapped of Zinn towards the end.



     I didn't even know that this was going to happen until lunchtime today, when I was fortunate enough to have to go to the restroom and there discovered this event being discussed in the paper. I'm glad I found out. It was by far the best live event I've ever been to. Two hours straight of extremely powerful and moving material. I believe my favorite part was a reading of an editorial from the abolitionist newspaper North Star called "The War With Mexico". I wish I had the full excerpt, but I'll have to deal with the only part I could find online.

We have no preference for parties, regarding this slaveholding crusade [here he refers to the Mexican-American war (1848)]. The one is as bad as the other. The friends of peace have nothing to hope from either. The Democrats claim the credit of commencing, and the Whigs monopolize the glory of voting supplies and carrying on the war; branding the war as dishonorably commenced, yet boldly persisting in pressing it on

This is the tail end of what was said. But by the end of the bolded part, the entire audience saw that that was exactly the situation we faced today and broke out into applause. If they didn't understand it before, then after this the entire audience must have finally understood why historians say that history repeats itself. It was truly an awesome moment, and similar moments occured throughout the rest of the night as events from the past were almost identical to those today except for changes in names.

     Everyone's readings were great though. Mos Def was absolutely fantastic as Malcolm X! Probably the best part of the night was a contribution from the Vanguard Public Foundation (not in anyway related to the trading company) which paid for 500 high school students to come to the event. The event must have made a large impact on many of them that will shape their outlook on the world for the rest of their life.

    If anyone has the chance to go to this sometime, you really should. I also plan on buying the book. I won't be able to read it for awhile, but it looks like it will be a great reference for my personal library.

Vermont Elects First Socialist to Senate/Ralph Nader's Analysis of Election Results

     Democracy Now! had two good segments on their show today that I thought were worth watching relating to yesterday's election. The first is an interview with Vermont's Bernie Sanders, who yesterday became the first socialist to ever get elected to the Senate. He talks about his campaign and explains what "socialism" means to him. The second part is Ralph Nader giving his analysis of the election results. He talks about the likelihood of the Democrats solving the main problems that our country faces. The video is here. What I'm referring to starts at the 18:18 mark.

    How is everyone feeling about the election yesterday? Are you happy with the results, or were you disappointed? Do you think the Democrats will do much now that they have power? If so, what and how soon?