The Therese Defarge school of Social evo

History for those engaged in creating it. Comprehensive activism and applied memetics.

More on evolution and genetics

I know this is a difficult topic to take on as the debate, like so many popular political issues, is monopolized as a contest between media sanctioned views of science and the political fundamentalism. In this prospective, column A or B, you are with us or with them, the crust of political discussion is denied to anyone whose views fall outside the mainstream political options provided in America's dubious two party system. The tongue and cheek charge that science is an international criminal conspiracy is not so much a joke when you see examples of corporate science effecting our world today.

Those arguing science side in Kansas express the concern that American school children will be left behind and ill prepared in schools unless they teach evolution in the way they desire. This argument is weak to me because american school children are already left behind internationally because of the america's floundering school systems. Get the corporate TV stations out of the schools and start funding education, let parents and children willing to educate themselves through home school and you will do more to insure the product of education than putting energy behind either side of the debate in Kansas. My child was educated through a style of homeschooling called Schooling and the quality of her education is seldom doubted by any who meet her as an adult. In homeschooling support groups I worked closely with a right Christian family, and although I disagreed with much of their lifestyle and philosophy I could not fault them for not providing a better education to their children than the state would have.

One of my concerns with evolution is that I run into even college educated individuals whose understanding is still revolving around the “survival of the fittest” rather than the understanding that the passive process of natural selection creates a preference for the survival of the fit. This is not just semantics, the first statement framed by Sir Hubert Spencer, echoes an underlying religious theme within science connected with the concept of progress. The idea that there is a natural process of moving forward in evolution toward an abstract goal of perfection rather than life being fit to the moment with an understanding that life and moment are ever changing and not related to an abstract best or fittest ideal.

Looking outside of the class rooms I find myself often at odds with the institutions of science, particularly those associated with genetics. Look at the strong arm tactics that state and science as church to get it's way with GMO's. Look at how corporate science pushed Bovine growth hormones not just into the market, but by law an invisible overlay that overnight was guaranteed by the FDA to dominate the market. I am not willing to just sign onto sciences side because they are arguing with the religious right. As a radical I do not want to sign onto either side of the officially sanctioned argument but to begin looking beyond a bismarckian democratic choice.

Where does this argument stand in relationship to uniformed setting of standards in education? How much does it come down to forcing the choice between a limited selection of text books produced by either sanctioned camp? Could a better funding system allow a broader scope through avoiding providing more non-textbook reading, such as a book written by the likes of Anthony Huxley. Why is the major fight in education based on evolution when more and more school are being converted in to prisons were the freedom of students are striped away? What about the degree to which corporate psychiatry has infiltrated the school system and the number of children forced into medicated paths long before graduation?

Consider how much high school subjects just provide a bases for mass propaganda. Only very well funded schools have physical education programs that teach children life long skills to stay fit, while most only train a future audience to be spectators toward sports. I always felt that at the heart of the dissecting a frog business was to bloody each students hands in establishing science's right to kill indescribably for the sake of knowledge. Under the current system of lower education I don't see how evolution can be taught outside of gaining popular support for programs of genetic science and medicine, both of which are institutions I distrust.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 17:00 | link | comments |
meme, evolution, kansas school board

Bring the War home and supporting more than just the troops

"We're going to use our military. It is the last, very last option. No commander in chief likes to commit the military, and I don't. But on the other hand, you know, I have worked hard for diplomacy and I will continue to work the diplomatic angle on this issue." George W. Bush on the Dubai-based television network Al-Arabiya Threatening the use of military force in Syria.

This seems like a pretty amazing statement with growing discontent over the current war in Iraq and the president at a personal low in popularity, yet the Bush administration is not hesitating to move forward in full arrogance;

"shall not apply with respect to clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States, that are carried out by an element of the United States government other than the Department of Defense," The above is George W. Bush proposed Presidential waiver to the bill sponsored by Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham banning military and Central Intelligence Agency use of any "cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment."

The number of US casualty rate in Iraq has receintly pass 2000 and the rate of casualties have increased since the use of bombs aimed at US convoys. The U.S. Military is attempting to explain the failure of it's attempt to reduce casualties by armoring it's trucks on better bombs which they speculate are coming in through Iran. This claim while possible is unsubstantiated adds to the threat of US military expansion of the War not just to Syria but also into Iran. Realistically this remains a concern even if the entire Bush white house was driven from office today as long as US troops occupy Iraq. Those who have seen the recent filmings of the Battle of Algiers might remember Colonel Mathieu comment justifying the use of torture and other brutal tactics. They want us to go and we want to stay, the difference today is that the lies of the administration supported by a large part of the popular press media seek to create the illusion that our troops serve the interest of democracy in Iraq that is welcomed by the Iraq people.

In the meantime we are looking into the illegal leaking, by Karl Rove and Dick Chaney's Chief of staff I. Lewis Libby, of information that outed Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA agent that will likely lead to the political downfall of one or both of the Bush Administration members. This may well lame duck the president until his term expires, but in itself does not end the war, the expansion of the war or the brutal and illegal tactics the administration is endorsing in it's war on terror. Very likely a democrat will replace Bush in the white house in 2008, but democrat or republican they and the american people will be filling the same role of occupying a foreign country that is violently and rightfully opposed to that occupation. America needs to retain it's dignity not by a further show of force but by the application of humility, a part of Christianity the fundamentalist right has always seemed weakest on. We need to pull our troops out and acknowledge the lies that where told to send them in. We need to hold President Bush responsible for those lies and question the political leadership of both parties who fail to demand accountability.

This is not just for the people of Iraq, nor is it just for the soldiers, marines and sailors dying in Iraq. George W. Bush destroyed the US budget with his tax cuts before expanding spending in this war. President Bush has increased discretionary spending at a rate that greater than any president in the past 50 years, Just barely edging out Lyndon Johnson who expanded the vietnam war while promoting the New society spending programs of the 60's. As a result neo-conservatives in congress are seeking to cut 30 million dollars from the health care budget that serves the poorest americans. These are just the latest in budget cuts that undermined the poor and set up some of the horror we have seen in New Orleans. Both the Neo-conservatives and Neo-liberals have been pretending that those americans within the lowest %20 of our population do not even exist. One of the Finest indications of Hope is that both traditional conservatives within the republican party and some democrats are beginning to stand up to the profit over people philosophy that has been driving BOTH parties for nearly 20 years now.

We need to wake up and begin more critically looking at our country and the policies set by our rulers. Rulers is not a term one usually applies to a democracy, but it seems appropriate to the current political reality.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 12:12 | link | comments |

How Oppression negatively effects evolution.

there is a great deal of false science within the popular, and even within the careerist understanding of Evolution. Since it birth during the Victorian era of Great Britain their has been a great social desire pushing Darwinism toward a justification of both imperialism and the depreciation of industrial capitalism. Although the theory contains no suggestion that evolution is tied to a march of progress of lower to higher being the desire to use science to justify a world order has kept this assumption an essential part of popular understanding of the culture.

In nature there is no goal to produce the ultimate best form of any being. As Darwin said of beauty, nature ignore such things as selection is based on preference to survival at the moment, within the environment the individual with the desired trait exists. In the soot filled world were walls are black a black moth survived more easily than it would have 50 years before, and when soot is long gone a white moth survives better, intrinsically there is no best moth involved.

One difficulty with how humans today view evolution is the confusion between artificial selection and natural selection. Darwin looked extensively at how the breeders of doves and pigeons developed fancy breeds through artificial selection to provide a model of understanding how nature work, but did not the significant difference between artificial and natural selection. Those who use evolution to justify an unjust world order fail to see how oppression creates a systemic artificial selection easily masqueraded as natural selection. Money is an abstraction, a social construct of human culture, and great wealth or severe poverty or both arbitrary conditions that effect human survival that may appear to function as natural selection in a world were humans live out of balance in terms of range and population.

It is very common in the animal world to have culturally enforced controls against change. A wolf, for instance, with a different color of fur might not be allowed to remain within a pack and raise through it's social structure to reproduce. The wolf will instead seek a niche for survival, usually resulting in it being driven to the edge of it's species range. It is on the edge of the range of species, were few members exists and were the optimal conditions for survival are at their minimum, that new variations that have successfully adapted new ways of survival tend to arise. If that survival adaptation is significantly enough different that it may survive without competing, the new variety or species (depending on how different it is from it's ancestral form.) Will begin to repopulate the original range adding to the diversity of it's fauna.

We can see some of the differences in human conditions, Oppression does not require or allow those reduced in power and status to escape to outside the dominate range of the oppressor. The poor, and the social abuse of the poor, are needed within the social construct of oppression. The misery of the poor feeds the system that generates profit, in the terms used by the United states treasury the chronically unemployed provide a buffer to inflationary pressure. The united states treasury manages the economy so that a minimum number of Americans are chronically unemployed as a controlling factor that prevents the wages of those minimally employed from being raised, both of these factors keep down the cost of production enough that inflation does not cause the middle class to grow dissenting and instead continue to co-operate with an oppressive system.

This is not a common natural condition, a wolf does not oppress other wolfs even those they drive out of their pack and into the edge of their range. The lone wolf forced to seek succor in the wilderness is allowed it chance to live and reproduce. While it's chance of individual survival is greatly reduced compared to the rest of it's litter, it's likelihood of successfully reproducing has not gone down as far. Not all it's litter mates will end up as a member of a mating pair, nature is pro diversity and it is a wonderfully eloquent mechanism that sends the most severe mutations toward the area were it is free to develop.

This would be the wilderness, the wild area outside, or just outside the dominate range of the human species. But does such a place exist today? Since before the time of Darwin advanced industrial capitalist cultures have moved forward determined to spread human industry and population to every point of the globe. Industrial capitalism is driven to include every human being, by force if necessary, into it's markets, sweatshops, prisons armies and stock exchanges. With the same US industry planning to drill for oil in Alaska and Afghanistan, maybe the last oil on earth. With industrial Capitalism looking to China as it's last growth market, it is hard to understand were humans have room to evolve or develop diversity.

In many of his works Nietzsche argues that the compassion called for by both Jesus and the Jews destroyed the evolutionary process and prevents the superman, the final evolution of humanity from coming into being. He was working on this false assumption of human progression that is itself religious not scientific in bases. He fails to understand that all social animals feel the emotions of empathy and compassion and in at least a small way these contribute to how they interact with other members of their species because compassion is a necessary and useful adaptation for survival if ones survival strategy is to live in groups. (Another way religions masks itself as science is in the denial of feelings to non-human animals despite a great body of evidence that many animals aside from humans have emotions on some level, for instance the many documented cases of an animal dying of grief.) He also fails to accept that the promotion of compassion expressed by the religious movements during the growth of empire is a response to a social attack on the human nature of compassion that acceptance of oppression require and that that oppression itself is a far more serious threat to successful human evolution than compassion is or ever will be.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 12:58 | link | comments |
, meme, evolution

The Battle of Algiers

Last night our local info shop had a viewing of the classic movie battle of Algiers that largo once used as it's a primary recruitment and training film. I went along with some friends who share some of my political life and we talked a little afterwards and will likely talk more with. Their was a discussion after the film by local random, mostly reformist, activist people that we quickly decided not to attend. I wanted to share some of my prospective on what is to be gleaned from the viewing of this powerful work.

I want to point out first that there is a general assumption of correctness in the french officer Colonel Mathieu understanding of the cell organization even though it never really fits how we see the revolutionaries form their connections and interrelate together. Colonel Mathieu briefing to his officer lays out a schemata that is basic to the classic which hunt, that each captive must reveal two names and torture must be used to make them do so. This goes back a very long time, into in fact the history of the inquisition. The premise of the inquisition that allows extraordinary policing powers is that the threat is demonized as supernaturally or inhumanly unstoppable, in this case because of the classic structure itself. In the early days of the inquisition it was understood that the potential power of abuse was great, particularly from false charges in a system in which accusers were kept secret. To check this the accused was allowed and initial interview in which she or he could speak to who might have a crudge against them or might have a purpose to give false witness. If the secret accuser was mentioned charges were dropped. It was only later that it was decided that a stronger more aggressive practice was needed. This was when freedom from the hands of the inquisition required the revelation of the name of two individuals who were then placed into the hands of the brutal system. Two names rather than one insured maintaining a pool of victims to torture, which is at the heart of the brutal oppression. The inhibitions involved in betraying any human life from ones own personal personal associations, the require to produce two such names and the expanding numbers involved do result in some significant number of arrests being made of the actual feared group but this is really a secondary concern. Their strategy is based on polarizing the populace against their grass roots leadership. It is not necessary to create a risk in associating with the underground network. It is only necessary to create an impression that such an association places one at risk. Within the terror of an anti-terrorist torture campaign it is feasible that soon fear hinders association with anyone outside onces closest bonded intimate connections. The natural affinity of those who share cultural ties needed to foster an effective resistance are eliminated. In this situation a movement that has failed to integrate itself into the communities of the oppressed becomes more and more alienated, and can become a lightning rod for unchanneled fear and hate leading to it's destruction.

This is not to say that there is no truth to cell structure existing as tightly disciplined methods of communication that exists clandestinely, as in the dim light of a candle whose glow reveals images that are vague and changing. While individual organizational members have rippling ties of communal association the network allows communication outside those circles for regional and national support and co-operation.

The next significant insight the Mathieu gives us is the constant propaganda theme that the FLN is finished and dying. That it has been effectively rooted out and only a few isolated revolutionaries exists, in days the crisis will be over and the chaos of the reign of terror will end, life will go back to order and society will flourish again. Cooperation with the rebel program will only prolong the injury to the social fabric while cooperation with the State will hasten the return to normalcy, we need only to kill the one or two people at the top in order to all be saved. This is the essential lie that most be told in order to disrupt the social fabric in the way such a brutal and inhuman campaign does. Yes this is horrible we want it over soon which is why our resolution must not be allowed to fade. They are killing less of us each day, we are killing less of them only because there are less of them to kill. Each time, after it seems certain the resistance is over, after statements that they are threw are made and repeated, each time another successful action is then carried out and the State seems more and more like far to expensive a lie for a population to continue to follow and the revolution grows closer to victory. This is what happen in Cuba, in vietnam, even in the american colonies when the worlds finest, at the time, military failed to isolate and destroy the colonial forces and those forces succeeded in fight them to a draw in day long battle in the fields of the garden state. I think it is more important to understanding the growth of a resistance by understanding the nature of cadre and I would like to put forth this definition of cadre I have just posted on Wikipedia

"Cadre form the backbone of an organization and many successful revolutionary movements have maintained thier minimum program of survival and growth through the strenth of a cadre based system. The assumption of the cadre is that she or he is capable of recreating the organization by recreating themselves even if the current organizational form has been destroyed and all other members have been killed or imprisoned. The basic rule of claim for the cadre status is when a cadre you have recruited and trained has successfully recruited and trained another. This both insures the perpetuation of the movement and promotes a culture of emulation over that of competition."

      It is worth noting that in moving toward totalitarianism by a corrupt leadership, an attack on the cadre base is a vital first step, this was as much the case for George Washington with the firing squads at Valley forge as it was for my step father in his politcal purges of experienced cadre.

This is what I noticed right away in examining Che's career, he waled into the Guatemalans Revolution after the insurrection and volunteered his medical skills within their emerging socialist system until the revolution was destroyed by a counter revolution. He came into the Cuba revolution way into their years of marginal survival in which they had built historically through long years of failed struggles. They he attempted the feat again in Bolivia without doing the ground work. He and others went into the woods and began setting up their base of operation without developing close ties to an opposed community. their actions were discovered, they were isolated and destroyed. The state fell into more risk when his diary was released than at any time from his actions.

What works so well against the State here is that it is impossible for the state to kill resistance. Oppression creates a situation in which the daily ability of the oppress to survive is constantly under threat. It's almost a rule of nature like when an action causes on opposing action, when the threat for survival becomes to great resistants builds up to a point were it must erupt into action against the oppressor. The brutal campaign to destroy the resistance brakes down the social order and the economy associated with it. The cost to profitability is unavoidable and the efforts to reclaim lost profit generate deeper levels of oppression creating the potential of a more profound resistance. The state that is caught in this cycle and does not successfully pilot it's way out by either co-optation or the successful isolation and destruction of the movement or some combination of the two is doomed to fall as the natural course of history.

That does not mean there is not a lot of value to learn from the film, it was really used in Largo for it's sobering effect. To build an understanding of just what resistance means in terms of human cost. What individuals and communities suffer and what level of certitude, at times ruthlessness, and always a firm grasp of the reality of the horror a member of the resistance must have. What the American people must understand is that Colonel Mathieu was wrong in his first briefing, but right in one of the briefings to the press when he said that as long as the french all agreed that they must stay in algiers the methods of brutal oppression his troops where employing must continue. To end the war only requires and can only be achieved by pulling out all occupying troops, and the calling to account all of those who have profited from the war in order to avoid the concerns of profit to re-instigate the war before the natural ties of the communities of the oppress can heal. To be free and at peace ourselves we must let Iraq live.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 12:22 | link | comments |
battle of algiers, largo

I want to rap this up today so I can move onto some topics about how global civilization negatively impacts the process of human evolution before the end of the week. My sister has mailed me her first blog for 'You bet your life” and I have posted it. I did not have the time to run it through a spell check but it looked adequate as I read through it. For those interested it is located at http://victoriaeldershow.motime.com/

I left off saying I wanted to start a fresh on describing more what it meant to be a Stalinist in US politics in the later half of the 21^st century. It is almost impossible to over-stress the effects of the red scare and just how much it effected things then as it almost invisible does now. Pseudo-arguments that mingle concerns over property destruction with concerns over violence that shut down any progressive discussion. The overwhelming concern of reformists to maintain an air of respectable orderly citizens sabotaging their participation in practicing non-violence through effective civil disobedience has it's roots in how any expression of freedom unsanctioned by the state, even when guaranteed within the existing social contract justified harsh and ruthless alienation of ones economic and social right to exist. This is one reason why despite having one of the largest populations in the world the US political scene is so feeble, with countries far smaller than the US in population regularly draw large numbers to more militant protest. Two, by some standing three, decades of economic oppression to any who take a militant political stand combined with rigid control of what is taught within schools that exclude whole movements, their ideology and how they were destroyed by government oppression results in a population unable to move into it's power based on mutual cultural bonds that in anyway oppose existing state authority.

One thing very important to remember is that the red scare was not just a bunch of right wingers, in fact their was a share of the right wing fringe that was also targeted and they are still targeted today. The ACLU, american civil liberties union, Threw one of it's founders, Elizabeth Gurley flynn, a former wobbly who had moved on to the more structured communist efforts, because it felt it hurt their image to have a communist on their board of directors. That's right, ACLU took positions during the red scare of shutting their own doors to those being oppressed for their political believes. I had an Uncle who had won the Naval cross during world war two, and during this time he met his wife who had been with the Norwegian underground, I heard stories suggesting this may once have exposed her to being tortured. During the early part of the cold war her uncle had been elected to Norway's government as a communist resulting in my uncle lossing his commission as an officer and living the next decade on the margin of economic existence. In so many ways the stigma was never lifted and I saw decades later the destructive effect this had on their lives.

Freedom of association was one of the most sever points of attack within the red scare. I recommend woody allens the front as just a starting point of understanding. If you can get a hold of and view the Huac hearings regarding hollywood as americans who had committed no crime where brutally striped of their basic human rights before a watching TV audience that was divided by those too intimidated or too bought into the hysteria and fanned on hate to watch with human compassion toward those being striped of their dignity, their economic means of survival and in many cases their lives for the distraction if not the entertainment of the national population.

The hysteria expanded because of the success of Mao in China and the right wing charge questioning why china was “lost” to the communist. The FBI's J Edgar Hoover fed confidential and unconstitutionally obtained information to then congressmen Richard Nixon to use on nationally televised hearings to attack an appointee of a rival political party who was alleged to have communist party association. One of the most brutal abuses of the red scare was within the US postal service that out striped any branch of federal government in iring personnel for their alleged associations with communist, even at times only knowing a friend or having been at a party with a known communist. The horror in the post office was only curtailed when a judge ruled that their was clearly not enough risk to national security within postal work to justify such wide spread and brutal economic suffering. This situation contributed greatly to the oppressive culture that eventually led to outbrakes of violence inside the postal service during the Reagan and Clinton eras.

Because of the intensity of focus within the state departments Asian bureau more talented individuals entering government service choose safer areas where they would not draw the brutal attention of HUAC or any of the other agents of red scare oppression. This definitely may have effected the ability of the state department during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration to pilot a course other than war in vietnam.

Many of the most radical unions had been organizaed by 2^nd internationalist. This is one of the areas most forgotten and at times most economically vulnerable. Having held a union card for one of these unions destined a worker to the ranks of the economically marginalized. The underground communist network organized relocation under false identities when possible so that some could secure some economic means of survival at the cost of giving up and hiding their former lives and identities.

Most important to my point today is within Universities, the federal government had no power to remove individuals who where questioned by the congressional committee from schools. No one attacked by HUAC, not even those destroyed by it had committed crimes unless you consider holding a believe or listening to a viewpoint can be called a criminal act. Like the ACLU, universities moved to comply out of a sensitivity for their respectability during a time of sever government oppression. Many supporters of Trotsky were actively involved in the oppression of communist in the US, providing expert testimony and assistance in identifying communist. They formed the root of today's typical american “Marxist” professor based on an understanding of political history from which their ideological opposition was removed through state sanction violence.

This Marxist (sans Leninist) understanding continues to dominate the intellectual understanding of revolutionary politics. In the late 60's and early 70 their was a resurgence of communist energy because of the successful revolutionary movements growing in latin america. I am including here Castro and the revolutionary militia he helped bring into the world who proved the level of their principles in shedding their blood to stop US imperial expansion in Angola. Yes they are part of a state, but I can't not recognize the importance they played at that moment nor withhold respect that they acted clearly from a position of solidarity and not as an excuse for imperial expansion.

In the US the latin movements inspired a semi-anarchistic communist romanticisms built up around still poster child Che Guevara and a good 5^th of the political guys went around with beret's and a black bandanna noted around their next instead of the still common tie of American society. At least a few managed to be pretty cute in the fashion. But that had so much to do with the Trotsky idea that real revolution had to come from the middles educated class elite who would understand oppression and would be driven to being pure through their class guilt. Aside from all that is dark around guilt it also began from the get go saying a worker can't be put in charge. This is a big thing never questioned in america, if you read Lenin's so called denunciation of stalin it's easy to see how much class concerns, unlike the upper and middle class roots of the other well known Bolshevik Stalin was born the son of freed serfs. In conjunction with this demand that leadership only come from the middle class is that for those who define communism based on the writings of Trotsky the lowest part of the prolitariot, the marginalized, brutalized and illegallised bottom of the working class is not worth organizing. When people I knew from DSOC (the reform oriented Democratic socialist organizing committee) found out I was organizing as a communist in inner cities they warned me I would be in danger because the uneducated people I would talk to could not understand communism. That was the beauty of the canvass, It wasn't about guilt it was exposing these middle class kids to the reality of the world and what shock them was not just the poverty but the willingness to sign onto a revolutionary organization which even the mass organizations were. When I canvassed we knocked on the door and our first words were always that we were organizing for succinct and refused any government funding. This usually got us welcomed right in. I always then proceeded to questions of the necessity to redistribute the wealth, always being clear that the rich would use government violence to suppress any just economic program and that resistance, including armed resistance to that suppression might prove necessary.

Although under the oppressive conditions that existed at the moment we had to be discreet in our political stance I feel delineating ourselves from the state sanctioned Marxist was necessary and could at that time only be archived under the banner of Stalinism.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 14:44 | link | comments |
red scare, huac, stalin

Why Stalin is still my friend.

One year ago I was a respected and recognized member of my community with a history of involvement in social and economic causes particularly related to concepts generally associated with justice. The degree to which I have become public about my step father and my political involvement with a number of organizations associated with him has had a notable effect on my standing and credibility. The cult label thrown at my step fathers last organizing efforts has expanded this as has the label Stalinist as it has some of the same effect of saying devil worshiping puppy slayer. In a recent discussion I had with a supportive activist he suggested that with the confusion regarding what Stalinist means why don't I just use a different word, but there is something essentially disturbing to me as a historian to rewrite the political philosophies of the past to diffuse the cultural prejudice of those living in the present.

I want to point out somethings first about American history. Before the first world war and between the first and second world wars, their was tremendous radical growth in the US. The failed revolutionary efforts in Europe had resulted in many cases with politically radicalized individuals joining the western expansion being promoted by the railroad/corporate land developers such as Credit Mobilier, which in many ways defined the modern practice of corporate corruption. Between the two wars both anarchists such as the wobblies and communists who had signed onto the second international and were structuring their organizations to meet the criteria of a communist party as defined by the 21 conditions that where meant to delineated, by the actual practical work down as a revolutionary party, communist parties from parties of reformed minded liberals. While the US was still remaining neutral in the war against hitler and the nazi, many concerned and political americans volunteered to serve in the Spanish civil war or to help fight as pilots in china's fight against Japanese fascist expansion. When I was first becoming politically active individuals joining the military, the post office, federal civil service and many state and federal institutions of education had to sign legal documents under the threat of 5 years in prison and fines upwards of $25,000.00 if they should perjure themselves that they had not been member of a large list of political groups including the Abraham Lincoln brigade.

I had dropped out of high school in new york after having cut most of my junior year. Within 2 years I had decided to return, but New york had a two term high school and counted the first term as complete although far from successful. Between September and Jan I had missed more than 30 days of a 90 day school term and had received failures in all but one or two subjects. A back door to college for me appeared by living with family in NJ. The NJ school system took a strong stand in refusing to include the first term of my junior year and insisted I repeat it and all my failing grades where obliterated from modern history by the authoritarian NJ school system. It remains a cheering thought for me. I had already become an anti-capitalist, I had a romantic period in which I was inspired by Che, but once I read his Bolivian diary I realized how inept a revolutionary he really was and how much of his ineptness was because of some typical class oriented issues. I had come to the conclusion Stalin had a lot of personal damage, but that while he was often hate driven and had perhaps the worse anger issues in history much of his political contributions were important. I then and now hate the practice of Trotskism, because I see it as an attack on the class I was born to, which he might have called the lumpen and others have called white trash. In my simple understanding of the concept of the DOP or dictatorship of the proletariat, and in the post draft age when resistance to the then continuing US involvement in the vietnam war wained as the North slowly progressed toward victory, it seemed the best practical way to learn about state military structure was to enlist. With the draft ending and it's military restructuring to replace the draft with an extended pool of reservist The Ford and then Carter administrations had begun policies to shift the demography between the reserves and the standing military. I enlisted for the minimum amount of training while exploring the option of an officers program, and it was then that I signed a form stating that I had never been a member of the International Workers of the world , the communist party USA, the Abraham Lincoln brigade... I went father and father down the list and was relieved in part to understand that as horrible as it may have been all of these groups had been so thoroughly oppressed that no individual of an age to enter the service would have had the opportunity to join these groups. I did not come to terms with the real horror of this until years later. Today, in 2005, in the country that birthed the Wobblies and Haymarket incident that inspired the international celebration of Mayday anarchism is looked on as a new movement that began in Seattle rather than one that reaches back to the dawn of the republic. I signed a form that had contributed in burying the history of those organizations and the people associated through them knowing I myself was not at legal risk.

This is one way that my association with Gino and the organizations associate with him differs from the like of Jeff Whitnack and others of peripheral involvement whose writings and reports have dominated the public discussion of the man I identify with as my step father. When Jeff was asked if he was a cadre of another organization he thought it was just a romantic question meant to increase his sense of drama, excite his interest and better manipulate him. With a fair understanding of what a cadre was I understood that answering no would not be as truthful as I felt I needed to be in entering into association with what I still feel was a committed band of revolutionaries. That answer had a great deal of effect on how I interacted with the Party. To some degree this had raised the level of suspicion held all around and this may at times have been important in me not becoming as quickly deluded. More importantly I understood things that others wrote off as important. I don't remember hearing about the timeframe until I think after Jeff article. This might have been because it was simply not as important to me, I felt that revolution was a long term commitment, that statistically failure had to be assumed and that the more rapidly an organization moved toward being successful the more my personal survival might well come into question. It may also have been excluded from the process because of how I answered that seemingly romantic question.

I have to note here that I am very frustrated with how much a “big man” sense of authority was built up and has been expanded on since. He taught me a lot but right from the beginning I argued and at times won on matters concerning the political and practical development of the area I worked in. It was also my understanding that as chairwoman Mary struggler out ranked him, as Polly did in her roles within the political and other party work. Although both respected him and tended to differ to his judgement way too often they both were capable of being strong and independent. I had a close connection with both these woman and Struggler and I explored the possibility of being lovers. I met Struggler in the tunnel system the night she left the organization. I took the opportunity to give her a Christmas present in a discreet if not secretive way and she slipped into tears as we kissed. Officially She left because of disagreements with Polly and two other central committee members. She never shared it with me but i had reason to suspect Gino had used violence to force her out and his level of control increased measurable afterwards. I was attempting to pilot the exit interviews requesting to drop out of party membership but to continue to co-operate as a fellow traveler, having presented as disagreements my critique of the FC staff as well as NOC as it existed at that time (and seems to exist today) my concern about the environment (Gino was retreating to the hard stalinist view that called for man's conquest over nature). I also strongly believed in feminism and felt that Gino growing power violated a party tradition to place woman in leadership roles whenever possible and that Gino was systemically underminding the strong party leadership shown by many woman who I respected. Polly, Struggler, The suffolk and Philadelphia arena operations manager included. I was also concerned about purges focused on experienced field cadre, both men and woman, who were labeled “old China hands” in a document whose sole purpose seemed to silent informed critique of his leadership by experienced field organizers.

But with all this their were reasons we all committed to pursuing the course we did and accepting the infamous label Stalinist. I want to begin again tomorrow to express in more objective terms what it meant to be a Stalinist in the US during the era in which I called myself one, and why despite many things wrong with both the man and the ideology I cannot just renounce him and silence the history of people I knew and loved.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 12:39 | link | comments |

Babylonian Renaissance and Victoria Elder

So far I still have found myself struggling with the direction of this blog. I want to focus a lot more time putting forth my understanding of theory. I need and want to get out of the shadow of Gino and Natlfed and explain systemic organizing in my own right as someone who has organized with it for at this point a longer time than Gino did.

For some time know, several years before beginning this blog, I have used the name Parenti and refered to Gino as my step father. He use to say what he had always been looking for is someone who would go all the way so that he would have someone to play pinnacle with on death row and I well fit that bill. I was even made we never actually played cards. I am as strong a player as I am sure he would have been. Then I realized that in many ways, by being able to understand what he might have been attempting to do and being able to speak to some degree to how he succeeded and failed was the card game he meant. Gino recognized me, in some ways, as his theoretical equal when I joined. Unlike Jeff Whitnack when I was asked about being cadre to any other organization I felt the need to provide a qualified yes by defining what I understood a cadre to be and how I fit that definition based on my history of practice. More than 25 years later I feel Gino would understand that consistent with his understanding of how one learns most of a theory while trying to manifested into reality, that I possess some claim to a greater understanding of systemics and perhaps even the body of Marxist-Leninist theory that could be called parentism. To be better able to speak my piece and yet not drop information from a critical time in my history connected with Gino I have decided on some reorganization. I want to move forward putting into my words my own theory without loosing the local national analysis that Gino framed about the growth of Fascism in the US that occurred from the period between the 1^st and 2^nd world war and lasting until the Reagan years. I have sought some aide in doing this.

My sister was involved in some political work with me before my natlfed days. She was an FOP, friend of party; This does not refer to support of the party but a formal level of awareness. She met and talked to Gino attending new years eve parties while I was at Noc and spoke to him about participating in the “Noir Rouge” the black and red, the idea of a casino like blues house dedicated to the united front against fascism where she was very interested in doing a stand up political comedy act. In exchange for me providing research support for a project for her she will be adding a second voice regarding Gino.

I use the name Parenti, the gender neutral form of the masculine parente, for what I understand the same reason he used the names parente, elder and the old indicating that he formed a bridge in practice between two historical movements whose history based on practice he was presenting in his genesis talks which were meant to be an alternative to the dominate historical paradigm based on great men and great events. Gino did a difficult but successful direct action against the red scare in 58 in order to historically link him with the more significant action of anarchist B. Traven in co-operation with Director John Huston and to a lessor degree actor Humphrey Bogart. It's meaning is almost totally lost today, people forget that it was illegal to be a communist in the US when the movie Treasure of Sierra Madre came out. Based on what a communist party is expected to do as put forth by the 21 conditions of the 2^nd international, and consistent with the anarchist bakunin's position on the organizational work of the 1^st international it is still illegal today. Communist and anarchist who tried to organize workers in the 50's had to go underground and many where murdered violently and in silence as marginalized members of society. The anarchist movement today seems very young, and yet the wobblies where a large organization, many americans volunteered to fight in spain during the civil war some hailed by anarchist today, many volunteered to fight with the Chinese against fascism long before their country took a position against hitler. there is no sign left of this large demography, because if you deny a population the economic right to survey most will not. Those who do survive are driven some deeply into hiding, even from themselves and their children and grand children until their history and their plight become a cultural secret. This is in the nature of a political purge across the broad spectrum of an industrial society, brutal and systemically violent to those caught as victims while invisible to those unaffected. In the midst of this Huston directed a movie in which his own father explained in simple terms an explanation, consistent with Das Kapital, abstract value as a result of alienating the worker from production by explaining the value of gold in relation to the unpaid labor involved in producing it. It was done under the nose of many who would have retaliated with the blacklist and it's importance has been missed by many political individuals who grew up watching it. Being a black and white film it is seldom seen today.

Having succeeded in the Jesus H Christ stunt, humiliating and robbing a red baiting anti-communist within his own town. Gino in someways could present himself as having been a part of both the movement in the 50- as well as in the late 60 and that was when he began first telling an oral tradition of American political tradition from the position of a rank and file member of political movements. I was in a position to hear the genesis in those terms and profit from it, while I know others did not and am sad for that. I know Gino made mistakes but I want the genesis, I want the work and I want the history to move beyond Gino.

So we have Victoria Elder who will be involved in “You bet your life” another blog based in part on the 1950's game show that over a 10 year period served to push the outward boundaries of the voluntary censorship in hollywood. My sister, who has been a moderately successful writer and performer, will focus on the red scare, and also on some inquiries through humor on Gino genesis story. You see it has become clear to me is that one way information was linked is that Gino was talking over many middleclass peoples heads through his humor, often without lower class people realizing the meaning of the jokes where being missed by others. In using the name victoria elder my sister, who has performed on stage in drag, will in someways be doing Gino as a drag queen. This should be ironic for those who remember his homo phobia, but I think if he could transcend that fault he would value both the theory and the design of the package by which it will be received.

Babylonian Renaissance, The little red book shop and Noir Rouge will be three of the game catagories within the blog. Noir Rouge will be something of Vitoria Elders gossips sheet where she will try throguh the revelation of personal annodote will try to put a human face on infamous people in the hopes of promoting a better understanding of human history. The Little red bookshop will contain some useful riddles that will help people understand and think about the genesis if they heard it from Gino. Babylonian Renaissance is an attempt to counter the effect of mass media in co-opting theories of social thoughts and movements and expanding the range of paradigm through which people understand their world. The red scare in america was focused, In describing how the anti-communist networks went after the communist it has been said they fished where the fish where. The unions representing the most marginalised workers, The school systems and unions within the most radicalized geographic areas, plus High universities and Hollywood. Within the pioneers of Hollywood The Babylonian myth was a strong symbolism, they felt that if they could rebuild the tower of babel they could say the world. People like Charles Chaplin where some of the strongest polemicists opposed to the rise of Hitler- many fought the red scare and many went into voluntary exile from the US because of it. I remember as I child Groucho Marx returning to the US around the time of watergate. He was old, in a wheel chair and had difficulty speaking but he held up his wrist and pointed to his vintage tricky dicky watch, a watch from the 50's when Nixon's work to undermined democracy first led to a political scandal. Although he had difficulty being coherent he was able to shout that the man had always been a bastard.

Babylonian Renaissance is a salute to those pioneers but the myth fits as well. Ice put out a call last week around a united front approaching the understanding that Bush will never be impeached as long as the Democratic leadership council holds ideological control of the democratic party, neither will the war end as long as the policies set by the DLC prevent their being any true oppositional party. The mock political struggle between neo-liberal and neo-conservatism needs to be thrown aside so that true political issues can be addressed and the vast majority of Americans concerns forced into the public political debate. If it is not already apparent I am endorsing that call and Babylonian renaissance is how I am manifesting it in my work. It involves Ann coulter and George Bush and is in someway dealing with them from a place of compassions.

I cannot approve of George bush but I do not think he is being honored in the way his lack of intellegence is used to amuse and distract liberal critisim in a way that also diserves true political debate. This comes across strongly to me when I read the bushism that others collect. I laughed when G. Bush said that the problem with the french was that they had no word for entrepreneur, until I told the joke to a young friend and realized she did not know enough about what an entrepreneur was to understand what was funny. I stopped telling that joke because I felt it stopped serving a political purpose. More reciently I saw liberals gaffing at another Bush miswording in terms of what we did not known and what was unknowable. Again well educated liberals enjoyed the joke but not one voluntary provided a clear explanation of what he was trying to say. This served a self interest because the concept of delineating what is known and what is unknown that excepts a devision between what is knowable and known is something that most people educated today would not agree and is easier to mock from a place of ignorance and hate than to seriously challenge the statement and fair terms. With my help my sister will ally with George Bush by taking some of what he says and taking it a little more seriously and seeing where that leads. In a similar way she will be responding to Ann coulter in a way that goes beyond just dumb blond jokes. This will be the “You bet your life” blog part of Babylonian Renaissance. In real life Babylonian Renaissance will be doing some agitprop work within the Hippie culture questioning the degree the yuppie movement has festered a growing materialism that in the 60's would have been diametrically opposed to the values of what it meant to be a hippie. Babylonian renaissance will also incorporate a quote from Richard Nixon describing the energy of the hippie movement, BEFORE the inoculation of the yuppie philosophy during the Reagan years;

“ an orgy of anarchism spreading through the country like a prairie fire”

Richard Nixon

( I hope that resolves intellectual property questions because it will be hard to give quotes credit with stencils)

As an extra note my sister will include into Noir Rouge a conversation she, myself and Polly Gardner had about yuppies as a fashion when the movement first emerged. I think I have said a lot, the You bet your life blog is just getting into process but can be checked out at

http://victoriaeldershow.motime.com/

This should allow me to move this blog into framing my own theory and not defending my step father. I hope to start on that work soon. I should mention that both Ice and I are working on projects utilizing systemics and we have put out the offer to train others in using systems 73, 76 and 79 from individuals with hands on familiarity with the processes involved.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 10:41 | link | comments |
red scare, huac, stalin, babylonian renaissance, gino parente, natlfed

The Machiavelli project

I missed writing last week because I was engaged in the creation of an expansion of TDSSE into a non- Internet forum for survey research and statistical analysis. The pilot for this was the Machiavelli project. The story behind the Machiavelli project is that, having been engaged in educational process over the past few months I became increasingly aware of how little most college educated individuals where informed of matter I assumed most informed individuals would know. It has been at times highly frustrating to talk to so called educated and progressive people who where unaware of significant information, lack of which crippled them in regards to meaningful means of empowerment. It is very frustrating talking to a well educated U.S. Born radical who does not know who only knows the weather underground as an Internet service to tell if it is going to rain and seriously claim to be sincere revolutionaries. I don't remember the specific incident but during one conversation I began to refer to Machiavelli it suddenly occurred to me that the very well educated middle class individual I was speaking to may never have read this work. Considering for just a moment all the middle class activists I had worked with I could not be sure any of them had ever read the Prince, not even those who had referenced this work.

That is when the machiavelli project began, it is still in what a survey researcher would call the pretest stage, doing short sample research in order to learn what questions to ask in order to find the information you are seeking so the 4 samples pools have been small the conclusions have been amazingly overwhelming.

All individuals who did not attend college but who had committed a significant amount of their lives to full time efforts to manifest a better world vision had read the Prince, while the only college graduates who had read the prince where anarchist who had spent a significant amount of years engaged full time in combating state oppression. Individuals who had attended some college, and significant investment in time and energy in manifesting a better world vision. Individuals who spent a significant amount of time manifesting a better world vision who had not finished college where more likely to have read the Prince than those who had.

What does this mean, only that you are less likely to have read the Prince if you attended college than if you had, but it does raise questions about how college education may hinder ones ability to manifest social change. (incidentally their was even an indication that if you could correctly spell machiavelli name you had not read his work). The Prince is not a work promoting an ideology, but as Marx work on capital explains very clearly how and why capitalism must work, so Machiavelli work on power explains how the state must work. In very clear terms and through extensive examples Machiavelli explains how the primary concern of the state must always be to retain power and that in a top down system a successful ruler who seeks to place principles before maintaining power will always fail. This is not about ideology, but it is about the methodology to both maintain and confront the state. The principles examined by Machiavelli have barring today when we consider the democratic party.

After 9/11 the Bush administration pushed through the patriot act , the only significant opposition was from congress woman Cynthia Mckinney. She lost her seat in congress, but not to a republican. The Democratic congressional campaign committee, primary marking branch of the democratic leadership council which is the main mechanism of the neo-liberal committed the efforts of their largest phone bank into insuring that a less controversial candidate won the primary, this candidate then lost to a republican. An even more outrageous concern occurred in the 2000 election when the DCCC spent a vast amount of resources supporting a congressman from Kentucky who had boycotted the democratic national convention due to his opposition to Al Gore and had endorsed the republican plank most especially favoring the across the board tax cut that brought the government back into a state deficit and initiated the downward spiral of our economy. Why, because no principle involved had more importance than maintaining an individual in congress with a D for democrat behind his name. This is the principle outlined in the Prince, the principle aim of those with power is to maintain the power they have.

The democratic party hates and is confused by Ann Coulter. This is a woman who has made at least one public statement saying, tongue in cheek but not entirely jokingly, that she is a nazi. Rather than confront that issue the democrats have spent considerable time trying to demonstrate she is a christen fundamentalist, something she is clearly not. Why, because admitting she is a nazi reflects on them, if Ann and by implication GW are right wing nazi then the democratics are left wing nazi. Nazi do not deal in two party systems and the pentagon has to date been more critical of the war policies of GW Bush than the democratic has so far been.

Last weekend their was a protest in DC opposing the war, an interview of Cindy Sheehan that followed began with questioning how unussual it was for the first war protector to be a mother of a soldier who had been killed. This is only because the reporter was buying into the concept that war is the result of those brutish people in the miltary rather than face a reality that war and oppression is a result of their own refusal to give up their elite status as wealthy Americans. I support as true Ann Coulters statements that liberals have no principles, I would even support a statement that she has more principles than most democrats (it is not a very hard condition for her to meet). I would even support her statements that liberals are traitors to their country, because if they feel that Bush has unjustly stated a war for profit they should do more than use the opportunity created by the Katherina disaster to retake the white house, they would be using the opportunity to hold him accountable for the crimes he has committed and is responsible for.

I have no problem with Ann using any liberals for a punching bag, they have given her this power over them by helping create the image that the only option to a republican (right wing fascist) is a democrat (left wing fascist) and not allowing a real debate of the political concerns confronting us today.

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 00:57 | link | comments |
post-modernist, machiavelli, weather underground, democratic leadership council, ann coulter

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