2/25/2009

I mean that there is a relationship between the way that women are raped and your socialization to rape and the war machine that grinds you up and spits you out: the war machine that you go through just like that woman went through Larry Flynt’s meat grinder on the cover of Hustler. You damn well better believe that you’re involved in this tragedy and that it’s your tragedy too. Because you’re turned into little soldier boys from the day that you are born and everything that you learn about how to avoid the humanity of women becomes part of the militarism of the country in which you live and the world in which you live. It is also part of the economy that you frequently claim to protest.

And the problem is that you think it’s out there: and it’s not out there. It’s in you. The pimps and the warmongers speak for you. Rape and war are not so different. And what the pimps and the warmongers do is that they make you so proud of being men who can get it up and give it hard. And they take that acculturated sexuality and they put you in little uniforms and they send you out to kill and to die.

2/15/2009

The non-domesticated know that, as Vaneigem (1975) put it, only the present can be total. This by itself means that they live life with incomparably greater immediacy, density and passion than we do. It has been said that some revolutionary days are worth centuries; until then "We look before and after," as Shelley wrote, "And sigh for what is not...."

The Mbuti believe (Turnbull 1976) that "by a correct fulfillment of the present, the past and the future will take care of themselves." Primitive peoples do not live through memories, and generally have no interest in birthdays or measuring their ages (Cipriani 1966). As for the future, they have little desire to control what does not yet exist, just as they have little desire to control nature. Their moment-by-moment joining with the flux and flow of the natural world does not preclude an awareness of the seasons, but this does not constitute an alienated time consciousness that robs them of the present.
Ask a method? Do you ask Spring her method? Which is more necessary, the sunshine or the rain? They are contradictory yes; they destroy each other yes, but from this destruction the flowers result.

2/14/2009

2/11/2009

Anarchism says, Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license"; and they will define and define freedom out of existence. Let the guarantee of free speech be in every man's determination to use it, and we shall have no need of paper declarations.
I do not want to "love my enemies," nor "let bygones be bygones." I do not want to be philosophical, nor preach their inclusion in the brotherhood of man. I want to hate them -- utterly. They have the power, they have the weapons, they have the law, they have the prisons; and what they have done before they will do again, whenever and wherever people try to be rid of them. They will do it until the people become stronger. And then -- perhaps -- then when they are beaten and thrown down, when they are made to understand how useless they are as they are, will be the time to think about forgiving them and teaching them to do some useful service in the world.

2/09/2009

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

2/07/2009

Better the worst Stalinist terror than the most liberal capitalist democracy
It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present.

2/06/2009

Sickness is a state.
Health is just another, more base. That is, more cowardly and mean.
No patient has failed to grow.
The healthy always betray you to escape sickness, like the doctors I've had to endure.
I've been sick all my life, and ask only to keep it up. For the periods of privation in my life have always taught me a lot more on the plethora of my power than the petty-bourgeois credence of: HEALTH IS WEALTH.
For my being is beautiful, but awful. Beautiful because it is awful.
Curing a sickness is a crime.

2/01/2009

The bourgeois sets the example, he absorbs surplus value for ends that ... have nothing to do with his own enjoyment: more utterly enslaved than the lowest of slaves, he is the first servant of the ravenous machine, the beast of the reproduction of capital. 'I too am a slave'- these are the new words spoken by the master.
The modern fact is that we no longer believe in this world. We do not even believe in the events that happen to us, love, death, as if they only half concerned us. It is not we who make cinema; it is the world which looks to us like a bad film.
I did say I was cautiously pessimistic about Obama's Presidency - but this is simply acknowledging the reality of an American Empire that is out of control and on the verge of collapse. Let us not forget that on the eve of the election, we witnessed a near-trillion dollar robbery of the US treasury. That robbery is still taking place. I do not blame President Obama, but I do not believe the financial and corporate interests that own and control this country will fold so easily. I do not question the integrity of the man as much as the power of his office - which I believe has greatly diminished over the years. I believe the Federal Reserve Bank, the Military Industrial Complex, and the massive corporate interests that run this country have more power than our new President. I hope I am wrong.

After 9/11, I witnessed most of this country become obsessed with squashing dissent and silencing critics. I hope this election does not turn Black America towards this same, fascist mind state; but already I am starting to see it, and it saddens me greatly. I absolutely wish our new President and his family success and safety. But after all I have witnessed in my lifetime, and especially in the last eight years, I am not ready to lay down my skepticism or my outrage for this government. To do so would be unwise and, ironically enough, anti-American.