Watch this video, which I learned of from Liprap, and then act to help save public housing in New Orleans. The architecture in some of these projects is gorgeous, and the sturdy buildings have survived many storms. Many of those who have not been able to return to New Orleans were public housing residents and would return if they had an affordable place to live.
Meanwhile on TruthOut we can see that the rigging of the 2008 elections has started openly in California. Nancy Pelosi was briefed in 2002 on activities at the CIA detention and torture centers and did not object to any practices or plans. Pascal Lamy points out that Marx is not dead.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Yeah good analysis by Lamy. The thing with capitalism is, as I said recently on my site, it is the spiritual equivalent of state Stalinism. Why? Because it artificially creates a condition of spiritual lack. As Lamy says, we are all supposed to live up to an unrealistic image of ourselves. That is what I mean by spiritual lack. So, under this restricted economy of desire that capitalism requires in order to function, we wait in the spiritual equivalent of bread queues to be given back a small portion of who we really ought to be. We are culturally conditioned to lose our own direct appreciation of our sensuality, our generosity, our free interaction with other human beings, indeed our free time. Having given up our direct rights to these, things, we toil and sob, earning them back in piece-meal. But we never really have enough under this system that artifically enforces spiritual poverty. So we have to keep working and working until we die — spiritually emaciated and intellectually craven.
Excellent point – “the spiritual equivalent of bread queues” – yes!
For other readers, the Lamy quotation:
“…this enormous consumerist weight that materializes, commodifies everything…this system that puts people into relation with symbols they are sold thanks to the media and the Internet, so that in essence they buy nothing but their own image all day long. There’s a kind of psychic cannibalism in all that that provokes dissolute behavior. Many people are unhappy because they are constantly being compared to their neighbors, with a fabricated image of themselves they cannot achieve. I belong to those who think we must continue to seek alternatives and that politics must be involved in these questions.”
It’s all pretty craven. These people have gotten their invitation to drop dead and not be messy about it. It doesn’t matter what they are like. They are in the way, just like Iraqi civilians. The enemy is community, because community amplifies the power of the poor.
We can theorize until the cows come home about the evil capitalists and the noble underclasses, but that changes nothing.
I must say I admire Maxine Waters, however.
We can theorize until the cows come home about the evil capitalists and the noble underclasses, but that changes nothing.
It certainly would be quite Christmassy if we were theorising about those sorts of things.
That has to be a good thing, right?
…Or a right thing, good?
It is helpful, I find, to at least understand it. That puts one on surer ground for resistance. Bill Quigley, the human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola, has been arrested over this. There is some actual activism in New Orleans and that is a good thing. I’m also impressed that the WTO director is this clear headed.
We also have a Quigley QC causing (good) trouble over here (concerning police corruption).
All power to the Quigleys!
Just kidding … in sixth grade I wrote a paper on the 1917 revolution in Russia and became enamored of the euphonic “All power to the soviets!” I still like the sound of it but nobody understands it. They do not realize that soviets were workers’ councils and that the slogan is a call to direct democracy.
A novel I read a while ago by Christa Wolff, *Der geteilete Himmel* (Divided Heaven) which is about work cooperatives, among other things.
I must remember to read this book, it has been recommended to me before.
I linked to this post just now, with some additional info on the public housing battle. More to the point, I just heard from activists in NOLA that the demolition of B.W. Cooper has begun.