Restructuring Inner-City Schools for the Global Marketplace: Locke High School and the Green Dot "Solution"

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Big Media Steals 5,100 Digital TV Channels

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A quote from San Francisco mayor Willie Brown

“I say to people who are poverty-stricken, I know how much you love San Francisco, but, because of the nature of cost of living here, you are better off being poverty-stricken where the cost of living is not so great.”

Primaries & Class

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Campaign Reflections 2008

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Why there is no Left within the United States

The United States is a rich country. All countries with vibrant democratic lefts have an impoverished majority.

Also, the United States is a corrupt society. Even many of the poor have bourgeoisie values, as the United States is a rich country, and thus relatively speaking there is no “poor” in the US.

The primary reason for the rising rate of incarceration in the US is the elite’s prediction that the US will have a long-term economic decline alongside increased inequality, thus producing increased poverty, thus leading to a democratic society, thus leading to an empowered majority. They are attempting to preempt this inevitable movement through mass incarceration. They are exploiting the racism that they have carefully built by primarily targeting poor blacks (thus not raising the anger of racist whites (the vast majority of whites)) – but as the rate of poverty in the US increases state terrorism will more and more fall on the poor of all races. Whites who now point their finger at the “black criminals” will soon find themselves “criminals” as well.

How tragic it is that the left in America talks so much about “American poverty”, when billions of humans live in worse poverty than almost anyone does in the US. Tragic in the sense that this lack of education and conscience is exploited by the same forces that will further impoverish Americans. The sooner the American left joins a global socialist movement, the better off everyone will be. Right now most of the American left stands in starry-eyed wonder at the prospect of stealing from the criminal class – taking the blood money that the American criminal class extracted from non-Americans and passing it to the American poor. That’s what they call “social justice”. Billions of non-Americans most likely have another name for it.

Our ‘Managed Democracy’

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To Fire 5/1/08 – the truth about psychological “diseases”

Hi Fire,

Learning is suffering. This process of learning can be ongoing, sporadic, or it can be turned off entirely. Most humans turn it off from an early age and throw away the key.

Criminals are those who need to change, not victims. When doctors prescribe pills for those people who “haven’t adjusted”, that’s like treating a stabbing by only focusing on the victim. Society commits crimes just as individuals do, and society must be held just as responsible as individuals for any such crimes.

Psychologically, taking pills for a problem “fixes” the problem. But the problem is like a stabbing – it doesn’t fix the problem because the perpetrator is not brought to justice, doesn’t learn from his crime, and most likely continues to commit like crimes. By taking pills the victim not only ruins his own perception of the incident(s) which led to the pills, he is himself committing a crime against humanity, since he is not bringing to justice the criminal who abused him. This leads to more crimes, more victims, and more people who think the best solution is for them to take pills.

Various psychological terms used by doctors are not objective or any other kind of truth – they are explanations. Here’s a better truth than that used by anyone who proscribes pills – humans find happiness in different ways and humans respond differently to the world. Humans who “suffer” from a “psychological disease” are instead humans who are sensitive to the crimes of society. They suffer not so much from the world but from the complete lack of help they receive in the world, a world that prefers to let the criminal continue to rampage while “fixing” the victim with pills.

The final solution in this monstrous procedure is for the victim to transform his experience into normality. That is to say, for stabbings and other abuse to become normal, and no longer be considered a crime. This is always the project of the criminal class, that is to say the ruling class. Under this project taking pills is a necessity. That is to say, anyone who takes pills to “fix” the problems caused by society is collaborating with that criminal society.

People who are not sensitive to the crimes still have the crimes perpetrated on them – they just aren’t conscious of it. It’s the responsibility of those who are sensitive to stop the crimes from being committed – this is the whole point of the counter-project to the extermination of morals being perpetrated by the ruling class.

People who take pills know all of this on some level, but reject it because of their lack of power in stopping the criminal. That is to say, *they themselves* can’t destroy the ruling class and stop their crimes, so they consider the best solution to be for them to take pills, in a sense destroy themselves, and call it a day. Conveniently, the knowledge that this “solution” is itself a crime is whitewashed by the same pills causing their other sufferings to “go away”.

I agree that “you yourself” can’t stop the crimes of the criminal class. All people who have stopped the criminal class throughout history have done so through massive organizing efforts.

Take care,

Brian

Alicia Keys Hits a Not So Strange Note

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Media Shit Storms and Heartland Reality

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WELFARE for Wealthy, as U.S. Poverty, Hunger Increase

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Critique of the Elite and India: Disappearing the Poor

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Although this article is largely about India, it’s equally true in the United States. India is becoming an imitation of the US in terms of it’s elite culture.
I don’t own a television (haven’t since June 2000) but I watch some at work.
The Judge shows are proliferating on daytime TV. These shows run parallel to garbage “freak shows” like Maury Povich. The singular features of both Jerry Springer and Judge Judy and their imitators is that they serve to demean and dehumanize the poor and the working class. It’s tragedy as spectacle. These shows should be illegal and would be in any moral society. They are far more damaging than a stabbing that can get someone put in jail for many years and they are several orders of magnitude more damaging than smoking pot which can likewise earn a hefty prison sentence. But in a nation run by a ruling class that has killed millions, impoverished somewhere between tens of millions and billions and abused billions, I suppose drawing some logical relationship between degree of damage and punishment is irrelevant.
In terms of daytime TV the best thing on is soap operas. It’s a sad day when that is the case. Soap operas are insipid, worn out, lifeless, and often poorly acted, but at least they aren’t aggressively abusive. Are you aware that there is now a TV show where spouses are given a lie detector test to determine whether or not they are telling the truth when they say they are not cheating on their spouse, with their spouse present (for the reaction shot when the “lie detector reveals the truth!”)
After the sun goes down “reality TV” comes out – nevermind that there is no reality and can never be when the cameras are out and the “real people” become actors. Reality is what happens when there are no cameras. Instead comes more abuse – classically related by Simon Cowl on American Idol but present in one form or another on all of reality TV.
There is always only one reason for abuse – the ruler loses his just authority. This vast increase in abuse by the elite, seen in any number of ways (economic policy, reaction to disasters, causing disasters, manner of “entertainment”, etc.) means they no longer are trying to be a just authority, which means they have lost control of themselves as rulers. When rulers lose control over their ability to create just actions but retain their power very very bad things happen. I see no end to this problem because I see no end to the present configuration of the ruling class. Americans just aren’t responding to this condition. They aren’t turning off the TV, they aren’t doing critiques, they aren’t debating, they aren’t caring. Britney Spears’s “Hit Me One More Time” was quite accurate.
Another sad but I suppose potentially good thing – Americans are more outraged about gas prices than anything else. Truckers have now implemented a major strike. Countless dead in Iraq – no problem. Hundreds of billions funneled from American taxpayers to a few American multinational corporations by way of death and destruction, billions impoverished by American policy – no problem. Gas prices go up a couple dollars a gallon and it’s time to be outraged! I keep hearing that “Americans are a compassionate people”. Obviously this is true – they are outraged at the death of cheap gas. The extinction of a species!
In any case – tomorrow’s another day on the neofeudal corporation plantation of wage slavery in order to avoid further impoverishment. Another day of seeing hopelessness and despair on the people and abuse on the television that “entertains” these people, free of charge of course through irrationalist advertising designed to program their consumption and colonize their imagination. It’s another day of seeing overpriced food that causes malnutrition and early death – the row of vending machines issuing sweets and salts. On the wall next to the machines is a poster that urges a healthy lifestyle, and next to that is one that tells employees earning $7 to $9 that they are “remarkable”. It’s funny how those signs are never present when workers earn $12 to $14 an hour. Or rather, it’s “funny”, since what it truly does is presents a quite effective moral argument that the most just action one can take is to destroy the American ruling class.
I remember reading dystopian short stories. Why were they always set in the future? The dystopia is now. Stories of life in hell should be set in the present. Stories of life on earth should be set in the future. Earth is to me what heaven is to people who fantasize.
There is a followup to Martin Luther King Jr.’s phrase that “There can be no great disappointment where there is no great love” – Love is only fulfilled on a two-way street. On earth that two-way street exists and King’s love comes back to him. In hell King’s love is trampled.
Where are we living?

Let Them Eat Ethanol!

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What Do you Call a Permanent Surge?

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China, Olympics, & Propaganda; Democracy or Economy; Destroying a 5,000-Year-Old Civilization

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War Against the Third World

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Part 14

Part 15

Part 16

Wall Street or Homeowners: Guess Who’s Getting a Bailout?

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The War of Bread

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COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story

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The $200 Billion Bail-out for Predator Banks and Spitzer Charges are Intimately Linked

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Liberalism, tolerance, and America

This derives from a recent email:

Neoliberalism is the economic agenda of both the Neoconservatives and the Liberal Elite. The liberal elite is another name for the congressional democrats and their allies outside of congress, more or less. Hence using the American economy to dominate and repress others through such agencies as the International Monetary Fund, for example, is supported by both the Neocons and Liberals.

The “old-fashioned liberal beliefs” you speak of I suppose to be “open-mindedness” or “tolerance” and are related only to some extent to, let’s say, Barack Obama’s or Hillary Clinton’s beliefs. They are related insofar as tolerance encourages commerce, and commerce (per the free market) favors whoever is in the better bargaining position, which in turn depends on relationships of power. This is one reason why even the old-fashioned liberal beliefs were corrupt, and also leads to liberals believing they are superior to those people who are “close-minded”, and this superior feeling in turn leads to aggression, which turns out favorably due to the power disparity, and in turn subjugates the victim and again allows for “tolerance”. The one thing a liberal never tolerates is intolerance, and that’s the logic behind it.

Or look at it another way – modern human history is dominated by commerce and war. Liberals love commerce (because due to the power disparity they profit from it) and hate threats to commerce (such as communist systems with their closed-off economies). Harry Truman got the Cold War going and liberals like John F. Kennedy were particularly passionate about it, arguably even more so than Reagan. What happened to “tolerance” toward the Soviets? Oh wait, they threatened commerce due to their “intolerance of the West”. Time to bring out the guns! Time to bring out the nukes! Time to bring out the threat to human existence! All because one (albeit powerful) country denied commerce with the West!

Or look at it like this – people who favor peace profit from peace. Bill Gates loves peace and only loves war if he makes sure Microsoft gets a piece of the pie. The entire mythology of America being a “nation that loves peace” is not just false from an empirical standpoint (given all the wars of aggression they fight) but it’s false from a moral standpoint – America only loves peace because America profits from it. Bin Laden doesn’t hate the West for it’s freedom – he hates the West for it’s economic and military domination. Bin Laden doesn’t want war with the West because he loves war – he wants war with the West because the alternative for Islam (as he sees it) is a slow, grinding, economic death – a death caused by peace. The same death that 20,000 people each day receive, many in “peaceful” countries, of starvation and/or disease caused by the poverty created by the “peaceful American economic system”. He believes that to be the future for Islam (and Muslim countries if they continue in something resembling their current identity) unless war (which is always a wild card) is instigated. Whether a Muslim joins Al Qaeda or does not has little to do with his religion but has much to do with how he sees the future of the world – it’s a matter of vision and worldview, not politics, ideology, or religion.

Or look at it like this – what does a shopkeeper want you to do when you enter his shop? He wants you to buy something. Why? Because he profits from it. If you go into his shop and refuse to buy anything, he gets angry. Eventually, he calls the guns (the police). Does any of this seem familiar to someone like you who is familiar with the Cold War? What is America if not a shopkeeper of the world? Buy, buy, buy!

It’s not quite true that the business of America is business. The business of America is profit. The business of America is power. Any threat to that profit and power is exterminated. The American elite is currently deciding whether Iran is such a threat. Hopefully for Iran as well as the American people they will decide negatively. Hopefully for justice and freedom Iran will not have to subjugate itself in order for the American elite to reach that decision.

Hopefully one day we will exterminate the American elite. The real enemy to all of us exists in Washington D.C. and to a lesser extent scattered about in other places around the world.

Empire, Class Warfare, Triumphalism, and Dehumanization in the Gaming Industry

79% of mainstream PC games feature killing. The reason for this is to condition players (largely youth) to view obstacles as things to be eliminated. The concept of negotiation in a computer game is seen by players as ridiculous – the majority have never played a obstacle-oriented game with anything but killing whatever opposes the protagonist (controlled by the player). The typical gamer’s idea of what is done in a video game other than killing is building up a base before killing or building an empire before killing (and taking over the world). War is the overwhelming motif used time and again in video games.

There is a massive difference between the mainstream games market and it’s 79% killing rate and the amateur games market and it’s 49% killing rate. Consider that the primary source of inspiration for the design of amateur games IS the mainstream games market.

Mainstream games developers have given a few reasons over the years for why they make so many games about killing:

— It’s exciting for the player. Therefore the player enjoys it, therefore the player buys our game, therefore the game makes money, therefore publishers continue to fund our games, therefore we continue to work in the industry.

— It’s simple to develop.

— Game developers themselves are young, immature, and male, and therefore they themselves enjoy killing in games and hence develop those games.

All of these reasons are problematic. Ratings on Newgrounds show that players enjoy games that don’t include killing just as they do ones that do.

When immature young male writers write stories they don’t feature killings by the protagonist 79% of the time, or anything close to that.

It may be “simple to develop”, but that’s only because the industry has a long history of developing games that include killing, to such an extent that the development of the industry itself is dominated by that. Hence the prevalence of “physics engines”, which are often used to track bullet trajectories and the flying apart of objects following violence.

The one reason heard least often but which is the most interesting is that developers make so many games which feature killing because publishers want it that way. Money talks and the money is saying “Make us games that feature killing”. This begs the question of why.

The publishers of video games are overwhelmingly from modern industrial Western countries. Japan and the US dominate the industry, with the UK and other European and Western-friendly Asian countries trailing behind. This Western bloc as a semi-unified force has been an Empire since the end of WWII.

The US requires propaganda to turn children into killers to be fed into the war machine. No other country has this requirement to any similar degree. This fact has startling repercussions on the industry. Japanese publishers are far less favorable toward killing in games. Whole genres have been created by the Japanese, such as dating sims and pet management (breeding and raising creatures). American publishers tend to favor “shooting shit and blowing stuff up”.

Other aspects between allied Western powers however converge. Triumphalism, Supremacy, and Dehumanization are traits that all imperial states need to instill in their populace. A popular genre in Japan as well as the US is the role-playing game, where players lead a group which cleanses (exterminates) the world of monsters while completing a world-saving quest. Over the span of this game the players become more and more powerful, gaining supremacy over the world and ultimately standing triumphant. At the end of the game, truly nothing and no one can stand in their way (and barely anything remains to even try).

“Saving the world” is used time and time again as the justification for absolute atrocities. Every obstacle in the way of “saving the world” is deemed a monster which not only can be slaughtered without thought but should be slaughtered, nay, must be slaughtered, or the world will not truly be saved. Game developers must be proud – not even the Nazis were this ruthless.

As the player progresses through the game, he becomes stronger and stronger, and this kind of hedonistic “progress” is similar to the “rise” of a drug dealer who devastates whole communities as he enriches himself. Except even a drug dealer usually avoids killing.

Is it really any wonder that humans who have spent in many cases years playing these kinds of games can go to Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Iran, or wherever the Empire wants to strike next, call the people there “monsters” which is equivalent to “hajji”, and exterminate them? These people truly are victims of their upbringing. I’m not so much surprised that American forces commit so many atrocities as that they sometimes don’t.

The game publishers are part of the capitalist class, the ruling class, the elite, that benefit from war as well as economic and military domination. Hence US publishers finance games which feature killing, and US, Japanese, and other friendly publishers finance games which feature domination, extermination, dehumanization, triumphalism, and supremacy. All of this is done to control and dominate the target group, the first victims – their own people. The buyers that they claim to “serve”. Poison is always this chef’s special of the day.

Pure Pwnage is a landmark game-parody series which covers a few of these issues, especially triumphalism and supremacy. It’s very light-hearted and fails to draw connections between gaming and the larger world, except in terms of culture.

Alcoholism and Racism – a study in contrasts

America is a racist society and likes itself as such. By contrasting racism with alcoholism (which America does not like) it becomes easy to see this.

For alcoholism the elite (those with positive access to state-supported power) set up Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and facilities, where alcoholics go and receive support and treatment. The idea here is to combat and perhaps eventually to eliminate alcoholism.

In contrast, when anyone stands up and announces he is a racist (see examples such as Michael Richards, Don Imus, Mel Gibson) he is vilified, given attention, and shunned. This is virtually the opposite treatment shown to alcoholics.

According to the American elite, the crime that Richards, Imus, and Gibson committed is not racism, because if that was their crime they would be encouraged to go to Racists Anonymous meetings for support. Their crime is a *display* of racism. That is to say, their crime is to show the world the racist that they are.

If we shunned alcoholics, what they would do is to be alcoholics in private and try to hide their alcoholism in public. Since we shun racists, this is exactly the way they usually behave, and when they don’t they are publically abused.

Except to the industry that produces alcohol and minor related industries, alcoholism is harmful. An alcoholic has reduced, sometimes severely reduced, productivity. He becomes more dangerous. Alcoholism has a negative impact on the economy and therefore the elite does not like alcoholism, despite it’s weakening of the individual.

Racism, however, is a completely different story. While racism hurts the economy as a whole greatly, it helps the economy with respect to the elite, as any slaveowner in the old south could tell you. Racism allows the elite to divide and conquer the working class, as they play one side against another and keep them from unifying to increase their wealth.

The elite don’t have anything in particular that they like about racism, so if some other methodology to divide and conquer or otherwise control the working class arose, in theory racism could be done away with.

But for now, the elite will not show compassion for racists, they will not establish Racists Anonymous meetings, and they will not treat racism as they do alcoholism. Because that could actually end racism, and they can’t have that.

Chomsky on why Iraq is missing from 2008 debates

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Framing Muslims and Locking Up Their Money

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