Solemnity of All Saints - First reading of The Mass

Apocalypse 7:2-4,9-14 ©
I, John, saw another angel rising where the sun rises, carrying the seal of the living God; he called in a powerful voice to the four angels whose duty was to devastate land and sea, ‘Wait before you do any damage on land or at sea or to the trees, until we have put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.’ Then I heard how many were sealed: a hundred and forty-four thousand, out of all the tribes of Israel.
After that I saw a huge number, impossible to count, of people from every nation, race, tribe and language; they were standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands. They shouted aloud, ‘Victory to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’ And all the angels who were standing in a circle round the throne, surrounding the elders and the four animals, prostrated themselves before the throne, and touched the ground with their foreheads, worshipping God with these words, ‘Amen. Praise and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and strength to our God for ever and ever. Amen.’
One of the elders then spoke, and asked me, ‘Do you know who these people are, dressed in white robes, and where they have come from?’ I answered him, ‘You can tell me, my lord.’ Then he said, ‘These are the people who have been through the great persecution, and because they have washed their robes white again in the blood of the Lamb.’

Excerpted from "Can Obama See the Grand Canyon? On Presidential Blindness and Economic Catastrophe"

By Mike Davis


...Under huge pressure from Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats alike to cut the budget and reduce the exponential increase in the national debt, what choices would President Obama be forced to make early in his administration? More than likely comprehensive health-care will be whittled down to a barebones plan, "alternative energy" will simply mean the fraud of "clean coal," and anything that remains in the Treasury, after Wall Street's finished its looting spree, will buy bombs to pulverize more Pashtun villages, ensuring yet more generations of embittered mujahideen and jihadis.
Am I unduly cynical? Perhaps, but I lived through the Lyndon Johnson years and watched the War on Poverty, the last true New Deal program, destroyed to pay for slaughter in Vietnam.
It is bitterly ironic, but, I suppose, historically predictable that a presidential campaign millions of voters have supported for its promise to end the war in Iraq has now mortgaged itself to a "tougher than McCain" escalation of a hopeless conflict in Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal frontier. In the best of outcomes, the Democrats will merely trade one brutal, losing war for another. In the worst case, their failed policies may set the stage for the return of Cheney and Rove, or their even more sinister avatars.

Anti-eviction protests flare in Denmark 's free city of Christiana

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7699042.stm
http://www.hackwriters.com/Christiana.htm

At least 15 people have been arrested and two police officers injured in clashes in Copenhagen in Denmark. Residents of the self-governing "city" of 'Christiana', a squatter enclave started by hippies and New Left types in the early 1970s, were resisting police regulation of their self-governance with molotov-cocktails and projectiles. Police claimed they were attempting to close the drug-dealing in the squatters flats.

Economic orthodoxy was built on superstition

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2008/10/07/stories/2008100755560900.htm
There is no alternative, went the mantra. Now this corrupt mythology lies in tatters, the crisis of conviction is profound.
By:Madeleine Bunting

...Key [to understanding the economic and political choices arising out of the economic meltdown]is Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation, published in 1944, an economic history which sets out to explain 1929, the Great Depression and the rise of fascism. Polanyi's book came out the same year as another influential Austrian economist, Friedrich Hayek, brought out the central text of neoliberalism, The Road to Serfdom.

Hayek became the founding father of a model of economic management which has brought us to the current crisis; Polanyi, with extraordinary prescience, warned that the crisis would come; he rejected the idea that the market is a "self-regulating" mechanism which can correct itself. There is no "invisible hand" such as the neoliberals maintain, so there is nothing inevitable or "natural" about the way markets work: they are always shaped by political decisions.
At the time Polanyi was writing, there were many who agreed with him that free-market capitalism was chronically and destructively unstable, with terrible political consequences. But in the 70s and 80s, Hayek's neoliberalism began to take hold on the US ruling elite, Margaret Thatcher was recruited - and in due course Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. "Roll back the state, leave the economy to run itself" has held sway ever since. As Ann Pettifor points out on her website, debtonation.org, Alan Greenspan wrote enthusiastically in August that "the past decade has seen mounting global forces (the international version of Adam Smith's invisible hand) quietly displacing government control of economic affairs". He blithely continued that the greatest danger facing the economy was that "some governments, bedevilled by emerging inflationary forces, will endeavour to reassert their grip on economic affairs". Last week, Greenspan did a gigantic volte-face as he pleaded for government to do just that - reassert its grip in the form of the bail-out.
We are now learning what countries across the developing world have experienced over three decades: unstable and inequitable neoliberal economics leads to unacceptable levels of social disruption and hardship that can only be contained by brutal repression. Add that to the two other central charges against deregulated capitalism: first, it may create wealth but it does not distribute it effectively; and second, that it takes no account of what it cannot commodify - neither the social relationships of family and community nor the environment, which are vital to human wellbeing, and indeed to the functioning of the market itself. Ultimately, neoliberal capitalism is self-destructive.
We are now witnessing the collapse of this absurd economic orthodoxy that has dominated politics for nearly 30 years. Its triumphalist arrogance, its insistence on orthodoxy, has been comparable to Soviet communism in its scale. For two decades, we've been told "Tina" - "There is no alternative".
Economists talk of trust, belief, faith; we now understand that all along neoliberal capitalism was a form of mythology. That's why the triumphalism was necessary - you could not afford to have anyone challenge the system or we might all realise we were gawping at the emperor's nakedness. Rowan Williams was right to quote Marx, that "unbridled capitalism becomes a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that have no life in themselves". Richard Dawkins should be critiquing this superstitious belief system.

WHO KNEW?: Over One-third Of Former American Football Players Had Sexual Relations With Men, Study Claims

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071029100619.htm

ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2007) — A study of former high-school American Football players has found that more than a third said they had had sexual relations with other men.

In his study of homosexuality among sportsmen in the US, sociologist Dr Eric Anderson found that 19 in a sample of 47 had taken part in acts intended to sexually arouse other men, ranging from kissing to mutual masturbation and oral sex.

The 47 men, aged 18-23, were all American Football players who previously played at the high school (secondary school) level but had failed to be picked for their university’s team and were now cheerleaders instead. They were at various universities from the American south, Mid-West, west and north west.

Dr Anderson, now of the University of Bath, UK, said the study showed that society’s increasing open-mindedness about homosexuality and decreasing stigma concerning sexual activity with other men had allowed sportsmen to speak more openly about these sexual activities. He found that this sex came in the form of two men and one woman, as well as just two men alone.

He said that the sexual acts described differed from acts of ‘hazing’ or team-bonding that often include pretend-homosexual acts.

“The evidence supports my assertion that homophobia is on the rapid decline among male teamsport athletes in North America at all levels of play,” he writes in his study, entitled ‘Being masculine is not about whom you sleep with…Heterosexual athletes contesting masculinity and the one-time rule of homosexuality’. It will be published in the journal Sex Roles in January.

“These finding differ from previous research on North American men who have sex with men, in several ways. First, previous research describes heterosexual men in heterogeneous group sex as men symbolically engaging in sexual practices with other men. However, I find informants actually engage in sexual activity with other men. But this does not mean that they are gay.

“Second, my informants do not feel that their same-sex sex jeopardizes their socially perceived heterosexual identities, at least within the cheerleading culture. In other words, having gay sex does not automatically make them gay in masculine peer culture.”

Dr Anderson, of the University’s Department of Education, said the same situation was also true for the UK.

He believes the positive portrayal of homosexuality on television, the ease with which homosexuals could gradually ‘come out’ by using the internet, the ability for straight men to talk with gay men on the internet, and the decline of religious fundamentalism has made homosexuality and homosexual acts considerably less controversial for university-aged men. This had made revealing the fact they had engaged in homosexual acts easier.

He said the study was not biased by talking to sportsmen who were now cheerleaders, which is often seen as a feminine activity. Those he interviewed were selected to represent men that considered themselves traditionally masculine, typical American Football players.

Dr Anderson was the first openly gay male high school sports coach in the US. He left coaching after one of his students was assaulted because it was assumed that he was gay. Dr Anderson is now working in the field of sport sociology at the University of Bath, and is the author of In the Game, Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity.

“Men have traditionally been reluctant to do anything associated with homosexuality because they feared being perceived gay,” he said. “There has been pressure on them to conform to the notion that being male is about having traditionally masculine traits, in terms of dress, behaviours and sexual activities.

“But as more men are open about their varieties of sexuality, it becomes less stigmatized to be gay or to have sex with men. It is increasingly not a problem to act in otherwise non-traditional ways.

“I see this in other areas of my research too, including how men behave in straight nightclubs, where I find that university-aged men dance as much with each other than with women, and how heterosexual men are increasingly free to wear clothing styles or colours that once were taboo for them.

“This isn’t something that would have happened ten or twenty years ago. Times are changing and they are changing rapidly for men of this age.”
Adapted from materials provided by University of Bath.

Through the Glasses Darkly What if the between-the-lines Republican message (don’t be afraid, there will be no real change)

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3976/through_the_glasses_darkly/
By Slavoj Zizek, In These Times October 29, 2008


When the hero of John Carpenter’s 1988 They Live puts on a pair of weird sunglasses that he has stumbled upon in an abandoned church, he notices a billboard that once invited us to a Hawaii beach holiday now simply displays the words:

“MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Ad copy on another billboard — this one for a new color TV — says, “DON’T THINK, CONSUME!”

The glasses, then, function as a device for the critique of ideology. In other words, they enable him to see the real message lying beneath the glossy, colorful surface.

What would we see if we were to observe the Republican presidential campaign through such glasses?The first thing would be a long series of contradictions and inconsistencies:

• Their call to reach across party lines — while waging the cultural war politics of “us” against “them.”

• Their warning that the candidates’ family life should be off limits — while parading their families on stage.

• Their promises of change — while offering the same old programs (lower taxes and less social welfare, a belligerent foreign policy, etc.).

• Their pledge to reduce state spending — while incessantly praising President Reagan. (Recall Reagan’s answer to those who worried about the exploding debt: “It is big enough to take care of itself.”)

• Their accusations that Democrats privilege style over substance — which they deliver at perfectly staged media events.

The next thing we would see is that these and other inconsistencies are not a weakness, but a source of strength for the Republican message. Republican strategists masterfully exploit the flaws of liberalism: Its patronizing “concern” for the poor that is combined with a thinly disguised indifference toward — if not outright contempt for — blue-collar workers, and its politically correct feminism that is usually combined with an underlying mistrust of women in power. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was a hit on both counts, parading both her working-class husband and her femininity.

The earlier generations of women politicians (Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and even, up to a point, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton) were what can be referred to as “phallic” women. They acted as “iron ladies” who imitated and tried to outdo male authority, to be “more men than men themselves.”

Writing in Le Point, a French weekly, Jacques-Alain Miller, a follower of the late French philospher Jacques Lacan, pointed out that Palin, on the contrary, proudly displays her femininity and motherhood. She has a “castrating” effect on her male opponents, not by being more manly than them, but by sarcastically downgrading the puffed-up male authority. According to Miller, Palin instinctively knows that male “phallic” authority is a posture, a semblance to be exploited and mocked. Recall how she mocked Sen. Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer.

Palin provides a “post-feminist” femininity without complexity, uniting the features of mother, prim teacher (glasses, hair in a bun), public figure and, implicitly, sex object, proudly displaying the “first dude” as a phallic toy. The message is that she doesn’t lack anything — and, to add insult to injury, it was a Republican woman who realized this left-liberal dream. It is as if she simply is what left-liberal feminists want to be. No wonder the Palin effect is one of false liberation: “Drill, baby, drill!” Feminism and family values! Big corporations and blue collars!

So, back to Carpenter’s They Live. To get the true Republican message, one should take into account not only what is said but what is implied.

Where we hear the message of populist frustration over Washington gridlock and corruption, the glasses would show a condoning of the public’s refusal to understand: “We allow you NOT to understand — so have fun, vent your frustration! We will take care of business. We have enough behind-the-scenes experts who can fix things. In a way, it’s better for you not to know.” (Recall Vice President Dick Cheney’s hints at the dark side of power, as he successfully orchestrated an expansion of presidential executive power.)

And where the message is the promise of change, the glasses would show something like this: “Don’t worry, there will be no real change, we just want to change some small things to make sure that nothing will really change.” The rhetoric of change, of troubling Washington’s stagnant waters, is a permanent Republican staple. (Recall former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s populist anti-Washington rise to power in 1994.)

Let us not be naïve here: Republican voters know there will be no real change. They know the same substance will go on with changes in style. This is part of the deal.

Four years ago, Sen. John Kerry lost because he was President Bush with a human face. Today, Sen. John McCain is Bush with a lipsticked face. It’s a rhetorical lipstick of “No bullshit!” When Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt, author of the bestselling On Bullshit, was asked which U.S. politician breaks out of the predominant bullshitting, he named McCain — and thereby tragi-comically missed a key point. Talking straight, displaying no-bullshit honesty, can be the cleverest form of bullshitting, a mere populist pose.

What if, however, the between-the-lines Republican message (don’t be afraid, there will be no real change) is the true illusion, not the secret truth? What if there really will be a change? Or, to paraphrase the Marx brothers: McCain and Palin look like they want a change and talk like they want a change — but this shouldn’t deceive us, they might very well accomplish a change!

Perhaps this is the true danger, since it would be change in the direction of “Country first!” and of “Drill, baby, drill!”

Luckily, as an electoral blessing in disguise, a sobering thing happened to remind us where we really live: in the reality of global capitalism. The state is planning emergency measures to spend hundreds of billions of dollars — if not $1 trillion — to repair the consequences of the financial crisis caused by free-market speculations.

The lesson is clear: The market and state are not opposed. Indeed, strong state interventions are needed to keep markets balanced.

The initial Republican reaction to the financial meltdown was a desperate attempt to reduce it to a minor misfortune that could easily be healed by a proper dose of the old Republican medicine (a proper respect for market mechanisms, etc.). In short, the Republicans’ between-the-lines message was this: We allow you to continue to dream.

However, all the political posturing of lower state spending became irrelevant after this sudden brush with the real. Today, even the strongest advocates of diminishing the excessive role of Washington accept the necessity for a state intervention that is sublime in its almost unimaginable quantity. Confronted with this sublime grandeur, all the “no bullshit” bravado was reduced to a confused mumble. Where, today, are McCain’s steely resolve and Palin’s sarcasm?

But was the financial meltdown really the awakening from a dream? It depends on how the meltdown will be perceived by the general public. In other words, which interpretation will win? Which “story” about it will predominate?

When the normal run of things is traumatically interrupted, the field of “discursive” ideological competition opens up. In Germany in the late ’20s, Adolf Hitler won the competition for the narrative that explained to Germans the reasons for the crisis of the Weimar Republic and the way out of it. (His plot was the Jewish plot.) In France in 1940, Marshall Petain’s narrative, that France lost because of the Jewish influence and democratic degeneration, won in explaining the reasons for the French defeat.

Consequently, the main task of the ruling ideology is to impose a narrative that will not put the blame for the meltdown onto the global capitalist system as such, but on, say, lax legal regulations and the corruption of big financial institutions. Against this tendency, we should insist on the key question: which “flaw” of the system as such opens up the possibility for — and continuous outbreaks of — such crises and collapses?

The first thing to bear in mind is that the origin of the crisis is a “benevolent” one. After the dot-com bubble exploded in the first years of the new millennium, the decision across party lines was to facilitate real estate investments to keep the economy growing and prevent recession. Today’s meltdown is the price paid for the United States avoiding a prolonged recession five years ago.

The danger is that the predominant narrative of the meltdown will be the one that, instead of waking us from a dream, will enable us to continue to dream. And it is here that we should start to worry — not only about the economic consequences of the meltdown, but also about the obvious temptation to reinvigorate the “war on terror” and U.S. interventionism in order to keep the economy running.

Slavoj Žižek, a philosopher and psychoanalyst, is a senior researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, in Essen, Germany. He is the author of, among many other books, The Fragile Absolute and Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?

Slam Poetry of Scottish Socialist Eamonn Coyle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkUXfvwNaP0


In the Video linked above Eamonn Coyle, of the Scottish Socialist Party Youth section - recites his Slam Poetry
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Here are three written poems by Eamonn Coyle. Eammon is a Glaswegian working-class original who has offered his voice and considerable poetic gifts in the service of the Scottish Socialist Party and the revolutionary socialist movement.


We're In Control

Everywhere I look round here it's always the same
From the lighted street corners
To the darkest of lanes.
A society, no variety
Stagnated by chains
That only seems to breed contempt
Despite it's magnitude of brains.
These attitudes and plattitudes
They make me feel restrained
And then I stop and ask myself
Just who is to blame?

But then we all know whose to blame
For the shame that is poverty
But from that poverty
Can come the social harmony
As people unite
Within their own community
To take on the hypocrisy
The stain on our democracy.
Sometimes I'd rather live
In a Stalinist beuraucracy
Than put up with the bullshit
You're tryin to throw at me!

Now I wish this world was a notebook
So I could fill it up with poetry
Let words and verses reverse the inequality
So we could live in rhyme
And pen a future of real quality
Where 9 to 5 would take a dive
And everyday's a holiday!

Cause from this planet's first year
We've all been stuck in first gear
And the people who were first hear
Probably couldn't have imagined in their worst fears
That after the settling of the dust here
There would be so few people you could actually trust here.

But fuck it, at least we're here!
Every single one of us
Every daughter and son of us
Has the power and the knowldege
To change all that's in front of us
And face down the clowns
Who'll always try and make a cunt of us
Now they'll be runnin' scared
When they have to feel the brunt of us!

So in the darkness of the night time
Don't curl up and shiver
In the heat of the moment
Don't procrastinate or dither
Cause from on high no God shall deliver
It's only us who control the direction of the river.

Now I know we're all different
But we share the same goal
We share the same fire
And the same fearless soul
So whatever your conditions
And whatever you've been told
Never forget it
We're in control!

Eamonn Coyle
29th February 2008


Life In The Faslane

It’s so clear what we’ve got here
Now there’s new fear for nuclear
Look at these monstrosities
And how large they loom
But they’re not just on our doorstep
They’re inside our living room
Sittin’ on our fireplace
Sendin’ us to cyberspace
I’m sittin’ thinking what a waste
What a disgrace
How it’s the politicians, not the weapons
That need to be replaced!

Only half an hour’s drive from Scotland’s biggest city
Where 33% of people live a life so shitty
Let’s dismantle all the bullshit
And get to the nitty gritty
Now you’re makin' us a target
And we’re far from sittin’ pretty.

Cause you can’t always live your life in the Faslane
When people feel real pain
And we could make real gains
We could feed, cloth and train
Every single starvin’ wean
With all the cash you gonnie splash
That's flowin’ down that nuclear drain
Now I know you must be insane
But anyway I’ll say this again
This is human life you’re dealin’ with
It’s not a computer game!

So you can't blame the gangs of neds
Who take away the silence
When you produce these warheads
That threaten so much violence.
You say that they’ll protect us
From all those mad and crazy
Try tellin’ that to single mothers
Strugglin’ in Ruchazie!

Eamonn Coyle

Sunkist Socialist

Whether you're a sunkist socialist
Or a bourgeois nationalist
You're never gonna make the top ay ma list
Cause whether I'm stone-cold sober
Or totally pissed
I'll revolt, rebel and resist
Untill you get my gist
Untill the people's needs
Are at the top ay your list!
But amongst all this
Harrasin' and chasin'
I know one day you're gonna need replacin'
Cause the situation we're facin'
Is gettin' pretty dire
So red stars please don't hide your fires
Let the world see your deepest desires
Cause we can use those pliers
To tear down those liars
And drag this planet Earth from the mire
The work involved might make us tire
But we'll be classless and free
And we can still get higher.
So whether you can sing like Ian Brown
Or play guitar like John Squire
You've got a role to play
And every right to enquire
So come on everybody let's gather round the fire
Cause the revolution's underway so
LET'S GET WIRED!

Eamonn Coyle
8th August 2007