The Therese Defarge school of Social evo

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

Bush's Legacy to the President after the next
     Having a while back written off the disaster of Iraq as a problem for the president after him to resolve, George W. Bush may leave an even more sever disaster to overwhelm world leaders a decade from now as new scientific investigation indicate that the rapid melting of  Greenslands glaciers may result in a blanket of ice about the size of mexico sliding into the ocean, perhaps as soon as 10 years from now. The resulting 21 foot rise in sea level would destroy the worlds coastal cities devastating the lives of billions of people. George Bush derailed the Kyoto protocol that attempted to address climate change in the early months of his Presidency.
        Until this year scientist had beleaved the massive cold storage represented by the 2 mile think sheet of ice would slow the effects of climate change. It has been discovered that channels in the ice flow are allowing warm water to quickly sink down causing the ice in summer to slide as much as 3 feet a day. Three large glaciers, large rivers of ice, support the main ice slab in a way NASA Jay Zally compared to the flying buttress of European Cathedrals, stating that if these where to colapse the entire Ice sheet may slide suddenly off into the ocean.
      Sadly these two legacies do not stand alone in what George Bush is leaving behind him.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 05:29 | link | comments |

Reflection on my work with Natlfed
     A lot of my energy has been spent processing the diaglog of the former cadre discussion group I am involved in. I find even though I don't always post it still takes a great deal out of me. It is only a few cadre who became post-natlfed political activist, radicals  or revolutionaries. Sadder still it seemed that far too many spent the bulk of thier Natlfed career doing meaningless work in safe houses. Natlfed fed represents 7 maybe 8 years of my nearly 30 year vocation as a revolutionary, but those 7 years where rich and important to my developement as a political radical. I guess having defied NOC by spliting the philadelphia office from national control for a year or so might have heighten the effect of the revolutionary experience. I had begun my experience with the organization in trenton, which had a very successful membership drive, signing up members at a 1 in 3 rate, while the original suffolk county drive had been 1 in 4. One of the reasons I was sent to Philadelphia was to help raise thier faultering membership sign-up rate.  The strata based organizing drive was the primary output of the organization. Organizing low income rural and urban workers into Mutual benefits associations, Tactics like clipboarding, bakesales and bucket drives would raise fund but also get the names of people interested in volunteers, who where called that night about coming to canvass. The canvass' went door to door in working class neighborhoods; it was pretty straight forward, you knocked on the door, define yourself as anti-government and anti-capitalist, we define a position that poverty existed in the US because the nations abunadance was not distributed fairly, that the government served the interest of the rich, and that it was doubtful they where going to give up thier wealth without some kind of fight. One of the important factors in how powerful a tactic the canvass was is that it brought middlesclass volunteers into a position of talking radical politics with working class people. In those cases it blew away the often held persumption of most middleclass americans that workers are somehow unaware of oppression. I remember a few years back I was involved in forming a food not bombs group. I was going door to door advertizing the first meal, some of the middle class activist didn't think we should even bring up the name food not bombs because it would confuse people, they just wanted tell people to come and shared food with them. People would ask, well your having a meal, what is it for. Talking to low-income workers about the name they all quickly caught the understanding that the name refered to how resources that the US should put to feeding people goes toward the making of weapons. It takes some middleclass people a long time to understand that that concept is understood by most working class people. With working class people the role of the canvass is just as important. With the democractic leadership counsil determined to steer the democractic party toward a centrist policy of global exploitation, and aided by both the republicans and the media of eliminating a left of center position from media debate, the views of most americans are left of that of either thier politicians or media. The act of bringing people into direct contact with others in a dialogue based on an awareness of economic oppression allows for a fundementally revolutionary experience for those who actually do succeed in talking to (not at) people. Thier is something to be said of the actual transformative nature of praxis, even though in the end the work of natlfeds field entities were sabotaged from above, I think that the actual practice as far as it went still had it moments of value.

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 19:12 | link | comments |

72% of troops stationed in Iraq say the war should end in 2006
      While growing numbers of US troops deserting, (8,000 according to pentatgon reports) , intentionally failing drug tests and one officer refusing orders to deploy in Iraq, a recent Zogby poll shows that 72% of those stationed in Iraq feel the war should end this year. While only 23% agreed with George Bush that they should stay as long as need, 29% felt they should be pulled out at once.
           While the vast majority of the troops, 93%, recognized that finding weapon of mass destruction was not a reason for the troops being sent to Iraq, most (82%) saw the war as a retaliation for Saddam Hussains involement in the september 11 attacks. Like many americans they remain unaware of the large body of evidence showing Saddam, while not a very nice man, had no connections with the attack.
             So where does supporting our troops come in? Just yesterday senate passed two bills, one providing 65.8 billion dollars to fund the war through till September another providing 50  more billion to fund the war from October to March (another 19.8 billion went to help  those recovering from Hurricane Katrina.)   During this budgeting George Bush vetoed funds that would go to help Veterans. Neither the Bush Administration or the Democractic leadership Council show signs of backing away from a position in firm support of a prolong US military presence in Iraq, rather both indicate expanding the war into other areas such as Iran. The reality is the war will not end unless the power of the people is applied to make it end.

the results of the poll are available at
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 15:22 | link | comments |

One in four americans choose to remain ignorant of US human rights abuse.
     According to a pew poll released Wendesday, June 14th only 75% of the americans polled had heard reports of abuse at Anu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, compared to 90% of europeans polled. I find myself at the same time shocked and yet not surpriced at this finding. I use the term ignorant quite intentionally because the term, derived from the root ignore, implies not just a lack of knowledge but the willingness to not know information that is easily available. Information which because of our own individual responcibility  as citizens of the nation committing these atrocities, we should know and either approve or stand opposed to. It is so important for us to understand that war, fought by what Mao called mobil armies, armies that may move beyond thier home nation while supplied by that home nations economy in order to conduct foreign wars. War thus fought, are not fought by the troops in isolation but by the entirety of that nations and it's economy of which all citizen of the nation are a part. We are all at war unless we take strong and active stands against the war. This is what is so shocking to me that so many remain ignorant, the shock of morale repugnance and outrage, yet not surprice because it reflects a problem that is not very new.
       One primary factor is that americans tend to retain very little historical information, thier addiction to popular electronic media such as TV tends to allow little rentention. A few years back a remote american community whose mountains prevented good TV reception was soon to be wired for cable that would drastically expand the communities access to TV. It was recognized that this created an excellant opportunity to examine the effects of TV on attention spanned and funding was obtained for a prolong study over a number of years to see how the locale population was effected. Within the first year the study was surpricingly concluded, the drastic drop in attention spanned was so massive that further research was felt to be unneeded. That the majority of american receive the bulk of thier information from TV, and that the media is controled by a few large corporate interrest add to the problem. Most americans remain unaware of the level of systemic censorship that thier news sources of choice  function under. The shallowness of the media coverage allows no larger framework of historical or analytical prospective in which to maintain the information that is presented by them. To far too many americans Abu Ghraib was a sensational sex story, like that of Monica Lewinsky, and as such was replaced by the next sensational item that crossed the horizan. Less sensational data arising from Guantánamo and the growing body of evidence indicating the existance of a network of secret prisons in europe that point toward a US policy promoting crimes against humanity do not reach the same level of coverage and so many americans remain, willingly in the dark.
          Another fact is that american culture is resistant to retaining a memory of the past. This is linked to some degree to a meme created by Alfred P Sloan, who introduced the idea of presenting new models of cars each year as a statement in style, which eventually led to the common industrial practice of planned obsolescence. To really understand evolution through memetics it is important to understand that human generations are counted in the hundred of years. It is when the vast majority of a generation is dead that that generation is brought to a close. It is the realationship of grandparent to grandchild that an awareness of ones historic past through direct personal contact with a witness of that pass that the voice of a generation ends. In common ussage though americans express generations as passing within the general range of that of planned obsolescence, that being about 7 -10 years. American culture is more afraid of being out of fashion than alienated from a position of understanding of thier world. Most Libraries in the US will order to buy a book if a subscriber request provided that book is less than 3 years old, still many americans don't utilize libraries because the books are old. Thier is a body of information indicating aremican will forget about current events after the passing of a year or less.
        These and many other reasons make it not surpricing the US citizens remain ignorant of so much they should, reasonable and responcible know, but it remains shocking because of the outrage that that ignorance perputrates against the world and against humanity. Most americans have more available access to information than a majority of the worlds peoples, yet that information remains unaccessed. For thier part most american work hard enough in not knowing what it is thier obligation to become aware of.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba


    

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 16:04 | link | comments |

Bush administration uses gag order to Lie to congress

       While congress considered the matter of renewing the patriot act, important testimony contradicting the testimony of the FBI  where suppressed by the gag order contained within the act. Last summer George Christian, excecutive director of Library Connection Inc received a National Security letter (NSL), hand delivered by two FBI agents, requesting the “all subscriber information, billing information, and access logs of any person” who used a specific computer at a nearby library. The patriot act allows the FBI to send this non-judicial subpoenas out not just in the case of terrorist suspects, but on anyone they feel relevant to national security investigations.
     George Christian and three other library officials turned to the ACLU to challenge the National Security Letter. This act of seeking legal recource is itself a violation of the letter's provision that forbid librarians and others who receive them from discussing the letter with anyone. This secret provision is so strong that the four librarians plaintiffs involved where not allowed to enter the court room when the case was first heard, but watch the proceedings at another federal courthouse 60 miles away. While Judge Janet Hall eventually ruled against the gag order in fall, after the federal government was able to drag out the appeal process to effectively prevent any testimony from the plaintiffs to be presented to congress where the Bush administration falsely stated (aka lied and committed perjury) that no libraries had been approached under the patriot act. This is just one more incident documenting the Bush adminstrations abuse of national security as an excuse to surpress facts or opionions critical of the administration.
     It is important to note that although the FBI produces 30,000 National security letters a year, only the four Librarians, and an anonymous Internet Service Provider in New York have challenged the gag provision as unconstitutional. In the ISP case Judge Victor Marrero of the Southern District of New York struck down the NSL statute and the associated gag provision, but the feds again used the appeal process to stall until after the Patriot Act was renewed by Congress. 

for more info on this matter please consult the links below;

 http://progressive.org/mag_mc060306
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nationalsecurityletters/22023res20051130.html
http://www.westport-news.com/opinion/ci_3918039

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 18:00 | link | comments |

On supporting our troups

        Wendesday  June 7th US Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada announced his refusal to deploy in Iraq, stating that his participation in the Iraq war would make him a party to grave moral injustice and war crimes. The pentagon has reciently reported over 8,000 desertions, Lt Ehren Watada has become the first to make a statement in opposition to the illegality of the Iraq war;
      "It is my duty as a commissioned officer of the United States Army to speak out against grave injustices. I stand before you today because it is my job to serve and protect soldiers, the American people and innocent Iraqis with no voice."said Lt Watada placing himself at risk for court marshall while taking a stand against an immoral and illegal war. Thier is hope that other officers and enlistedmen who will follow his example, but it should be remembered that soldiers take a greater level of risk thru thier disobediance to orders than civilians. It is time for more civilians against the war to place a little more of themselves on line against the war. I think we should look at what tactics we can do in solidarity with Lt Watada, both to bring attention to soldier who do not support the war, but also to parallel the effort to not be a part of buisness as ussual. I think it is time for anti-war and anti-imperialist groups to sponcer days of moratoriums in solidarity with soldiers who refuse to participate in the war. That on these days buisness should be encouraged to shut down, workers should consider staying home from work, people should be encouraged to cancell oil company credit cards, or buy no gas. Soldiers standing against the war face court marshall, those of us who can make meaningful acts at far less direct consequences should look at ways we can be more effective, in groups whenever possible but in the end as individuals taking individual responcibility to take as meaningful a stand as we can accomplish.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 13:55 | link | comments |

Some notes on my braking with CPUSA-(P) and where my vision has moved since.
I am editing out some letters that contain information important to my world vision;
During my last years at NOC I was going through exit interviews. I was not exiting in the sence of physically leaving but was
asking to drop my party membership and contenue as a
fellow travelar working co-operation with the party
within the frame work of a united front, but no longer
agreeing with the official party program. To
understand this position you must remember that I
entered the organization with some closed section
apparratus I had developed prior to joining the party,
and I still controled at least one organization and, I
was the understood leader of the werewolfs and played
a significant role in any closed section prosidium or
open presidium requiring closed section support. As a
non-member I could shift my energies into work
building apparratus free from the organization, and if
a moment to act came when I had positioning to do any
thing about it I would act. My disagreements with the
platform was 1. I knew from direct knowledge that the
organization had failed to take advantage of 3 targets
of opportunity that could have led to a significant
insurrectionist effort. National position was that
they needed to avoid uneven developement and Gino
insisted in an impossible to achieve measure of safy
for the party to survive. I felt that the role of any
soldier of the international was to mount and
insurrection in order to bring home the degree of
facsism are country had developed toward, and brought
attentions away from the third world countries
america's power was oppressing. 2. Gino had taken a
hard line against enviormentalism while I was moving
toward a position that while communist and capitalist
argued over who controled the factory, the existance
of the factory itself. What happened was they used the
prolong time during my exit "process" while doing
thier best too both sabotage or gain control of
organizations I controled and braking me down with
things like sleep deprivation. This is important to
note, groups that use torture know that you create a
torturor is to torture them, If the standard of sleep
is only 6 max hours and everyone is boarder line or
under for sleep, someone losing a night or two sleep
doesn't seem so big a deal, and most people uninvolved
don't notice. It only takes one or two assignments to
things like night officer or other duties done during
the normal sleep time a week to make a barely
sufficient amount of sleep. People suffering sleep
deprevations can easily look lazy asking for more
sleep. Susan A. use to love humiliating me when I
needed to ask for sleep. The significance of this is
that you start losing your credibility with people who
don't see, or maybe have grown to callous to see the
whole story. I had hoped that opening any significant
action within fractional aparttus I controled I could
swing the availavle party apparrtus I had influence
with. As I mentioned I had been a significant
recruiter bring in and often sponcering 18 people into
the party, I felt a responcibility to them to try to
make the organization maintain it obligations with
regards to a stand against the capitalist system. Gino
pretty bluntly messed up anything I controled before I
was allowed to leave/ordered. This began with Greg H.,
thier was a controversy at NOC when Greg left. It was
suppose to be that he had left on a secret mission,
but the next day his lover left obviously to join him,
leaving without going through proper presess. Greg
leaving was a big deal, his conduct in dealing with
heavily armed police in the days following the raid.
You see after the raid itself thier where numerous
insidence of contact with the policy including times
they would coming charging in running with shortguns
aimed and ready then stop and ring the door, obviously
trying to provoke retaliation. Greg, and to a lesser
degree Gnomon, took the lead running out and defusing
the cops while maintaining some control over legal
access to party property. It was immidiately began
running through those who tended to be critical of the
national leadership that It was a lie to cover up
Greg's departure, because it was a significant blow in
faith because of the degree of respect Greg commanded.
What really seemed to be happening was that Gino drug
use, the failure to honor the time frame, and the
degree to which it seemed that the raid had been set
up. It seemed, and to be honest still somewhat seems,
that part of this was because he was injured and
switched (or prehaps added I don't really know)
Morphine to the speed. He started even being paranoid
and it was obvious that some of the leadership where
looking to take control as he seemed likely to die.
Thier started to be something of an uprising from
below, and Gino wanted to thin the ranks of
influential individuals who might not support him or
even stand against him. To tell you the truth an awful
lot of us wanted him to die, and I was pretty much
ready to help out with the if Polly or Struggler told
me to see to it. Greg also had a significant position
in the closed section, especially since Lise had also
left, it made it seem that it was time for serious
closed section people to begin thinking of leaving
within the spirit of maintaining thier revolutionary
commitment rather than forsaking it. Thier was even an
understanding reached that good comrades did not leave
during thier watch shifts or other times that might
endanger the security of the comrades left behind. In
some cases, Gino or polly gave orders for people to
leave and helped arranged logistics, this was
especially if these people had any kind of
disagreements and was respected enough to influence
others. Part of the idea here was these profile people
leaving encouraged thier followers to leave (or at
least discouraging them from staying) and so......
Quickly cutting ahead.....

I will try to get more to the point, it felt necessary
to explaine my political positions developed during
the final stages of my membership, moving more toward
both a neo-luddite anti-industrial position and over
the years I this has rounded into a memetic
understanding of history. Memetics is an understanding
that human evolution has passed beyond the
modification of genes, both through the dominate
super-meme's that form the social and economical
constructs through which humanity as a social species
exists. That human evolution reached a point in which
individual identity became stronger than group
identity, while living in ever larger socio-economic
groups to the point when humanity becomes more an more
alienated from substanable and healthy
interelationship with members of thier own species or
with the planet. Within all likelihood, with the
exhaustion of national resource most exceplified by
peak oil we are rapidly approaching the colapse of the
industrial system. Due to the reality that we have
already exhausted the most easily accessed resources
and depend now on source of minerals and energy that
require an existing industrial complex to mine and
refine once the current industrial ira ends it will be
impossible for a second industrial revolution. It
seems likely atr that point that thier will follow a
large dying back of the human species, in a way
similiar to what has in the past happen to other
species such as lepards, cheetahs, monkeys and others,
that this dying back will create pockets of seperate
and independent strains of human, with a more modest
distribution and impact on the global reality. Much of
the political work I am doing is in the contents of
forming tribal networks based on resistance to the
growth of american imperial capitalism, developing new
non-coersive non-hiearchal means of interelationships
and mutual support. I am still fairly active in
recruiting young people away from college, but now in
terms of encouraging substainable life style as
detached or outlaw from the norm of a 40 plus hour
work week and instead forming thier lifes into such a
way that  creates the opportunity to invest more
personal energy to manafesting a differrent world and
maintaining a substained resistance in a prolonged against 
growth of international corporate capitalism. 

Elizabeth Parenti Soba 

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 13:37 | link | comments |

Discharge petition H. Res 543
      While thier was still time I wanted to mention that it would be worthwhiled to call and ask your congressmen to sign this house, already signed by 112 congressmen including five republicans. If 218 sign it will force a debate on a bill on the Iraq war in congress. The democratic leadership council (DLC) has dug in it's heals in contenueing to support the war with DLC Senator Joseph Liebermann facing a strong anti-war challenge for his parties nomination. If allowed to the DLC will shift away from investigating Bush illegalities to enter the war, and move toward fighting a smarter war, pherhaps expanding the war into Iran. A 17 hour congressional debate on the Iraq war will contenue to put pressure into ending the war.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 03:48 | link | comments |

More on Memetics
        I went on extensively about some of the  memetics that currently dominate the world before taking only a quick glance at one potential memetic. This memetic can be described as that of resistance, resisting the dominate paradigm by opting not to buy in to as much as possible, and to buy out where possible by exploring alternatives outlawed or unsactioned by the state. The result of the successful application of this meme is to free up tremendous amounts of time and labor once under capitalist control and know placed at the individual discretion of the worker. Marxist leninist might regret that the individual might choose to spend thier time in ways that don't apparrently challenge the state. While this has some truth at it, speaking both as an anarchist and one who knows my math, the advantage is that by lessening the amount of time workers are enslaved by wage slavery is in itself strenthening the workers by increasing the demand for and value of labor, and while not all of the energy freed up will go to smashing the state it won't be going to profit it. Further if one really examines what the directions in which an individual might direct thier energy out of passion rather than in the persuit of needed wages a fair amount will go to areas in oppossition to the wishes of the state.
    Largo was reputed to have been inspired by a conversation between to leftist, one of the my step-father Gino Parenti, as they where building mortor. As they worked on this nuts and bolts task it contrast with the various irrational romantics being built up around the gun instead of understanding the gun as a weapon the use of which was to be learned and approached in sober place of responcibility. This was also the idea around connecting the training of individuals in the closed section within the contents of superintendant work for the three buildings own by the party on carroll street. Learning the situational nature of tools and the reason for procedures apllied to thier use while at the same time benefiting from the freedom of movement with a certain reverse degree of privacy provided. The concept behind the omni-labor fraction was to develope closed section cadre, trained in the process of learning practical skills quickly and efficiently, focused on methodology with the goal of being able to apply themselves into any form of struggle the situation called on. Most of the individuals associated with the omni-labor fraction had shown themselves to be both theoretically advanced if somewhat arguementative toward the party leadership. Most where also from the working not the middle class.
        Pinochle comes in here, Gino often sighted this game as an understanding of the importance of being able to count the numbers, and gauge the cause and effect,  an essential part of any physical confrontation, and a core priniciple of understanding the reality of materialism. From a methodological point of view the organizations stressing the importance of understanding the nuts and bolt machanics and numbers involved in producing result was a valid one. I don't play pinochle as much as I use to, having moved on to magic the gather, but the understanding of the primary importance of methodology has not left me.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba 

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 20:34 | link | comments |

Memetics
        I was at an event that included some workshops that allowed me to present some of my thoughts about memetics. Memetics is an understanding of evolution beyond just genes in the the social constructs that dominate the terms on which people associate. Meme are seen as self replicating, as ideas with feet, that are contained within a body of a practice. If you look at coins, these came about in Lydia, I under the riegn of I beleave a King Geyes. They came at a time when trade needed a bono fide currency, and by assaying the value of the coins the King was fufilling a state function.  By ussing the currency whose value is assurred by the King, the merchants are acknowledging the kings power. The coins, with thier value assured allows transactions of trade between strangers where trust maintained through the state sanctioning of the currency establishing the power of the state for the good of the merchant class that acknowledges the state's authority though the act of accepting the legal tender sanctioned by the state as valid. This Abstract value, this money is a meme with feet  in part because it is accepted by the merchants to fill thier need for a vehical of barter, provided by the King, who as the state does have some interest in the health of trade but has an equally if not greater interest in establishing his authority. The King has the merchants interest but an interest (in power) the merchant doesn't have as well. The merchants interest are not inconsistant with the Kings, in fact they may well be consistant. The Kings additional interest, establishing the good order of his rule is at first accepted by these merchants as to thier benefit. This comes to the memetics of state, which became more clearly defined by Niccolo Machievelli in century much later. Under lying the memetics of the state is the principle that reasons of state, the maintenance of good order is of more critical importance than any other morale, ethical or principled motive. State apparratus, self recreating bureacracy, manafests itself in filling the essential functions required in qualifying state sanctioned functions like currency and the banks that grow out of them. This is done by the desecration of the reality at hand to the abstract value that determines not only currency but justice, education and public safety. Thier is the idea the the bureaucracy maintains the order in the height of change, protects against corruption, demigods and the mob. Thier is also the understanding that the arbritrary authority alienated from the humanity of the oppressed, creates chaos and disorder, but unless that understanding is given feet, a practice that propells it until then where does it go. One meme is dumster diving, which challenges the notion that the natural use value is insignificant if it is determined that an abstract value is nullified. A primary meme within american buisness culture is that success is achieved by ensuring low labor cost, a case of soda with one bottle broken may not be worth an employees time to reorganize. Selling damaged merchandise at redused cause lowers the value of the merchandise. Teaching revolutionary workers to challenge the lie of abstract value while gaining access to needed resources without resorting to currency allows a reduction of the number of hours they need to labor to acquire that currency. By using this is an arena to share culled resources with others in mutually beneficial association can be used to build an alternative to state authority. You can see that the practice of groups like food not bombs are working in much the same way to undermined the super-meme of capitalism as the early meme of royal assayed currency did to build it. Laying a very modest but highly utilitarian ground work while fufiling a functioned which reflected on the state as a useful and beneficial entity to an active and quickly more powerful demography of merchants coins liked the authority of the king with trade transactions with strangers (global trade). Dumpster diving reaffirms the inherent value of the commodity in the humanity to which it has use.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 00:29 | link | comments |

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