“Your hands are full of blood.”

“…even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.”
-Isaiah 1:15

While searching through picture’s from Ed Kashi’s book Curse of the Black Gold I came across this:

I couldn’t think of a more damning portrait of Christianity than this pic right here.

None shall be barren

Empowering families and generational leaders for global impact

To the left it says:

It’s a session of…

• Salvation
• Deliverance
• Healing miracles with God

This is the bullshit that makes me absolutely sick to my fucking stomach.  This is the type of shit I used to encounter at my ex-girlfriends church, Shiloh Christian Fellowship (in Oakland); talk of “outpouring encounters,” “generational movements,” “no longer being [spiritually] barren.”  There will no doubt be a special place in hell for people like “Bishop” Sam Amaga and Mrs. “Dr.” Sam Amaga and “Bishop” Jolomi.

One thing that is routinely brought up in the Nevi’im (book of prophets in the Hebrew Bible) and in the Christian New Testament is essentially God’s siding with the poor and oppressed.

I remember my Hebrew Bible professor once saying, “Wanna read some of the most ‘anti-Semitic’ stuff in the world? Read the Tanakh [Hebrew Bible]! That has some of the most anti-Israeli stuff ever created!”

And indeed it does, there is nothing more damning to religious and political leaders whom bring up the Bible and “Biblical values” than the actual fucking Bible itself.  As we can see in the quote I opened up God is essentially saying he will no longer answer Israel’s prayers because the leaders and priests of that country have the blood of the poor and oppressed on their hands.

As we can see with the picture here we have the contrasts and contradictions of reality here on earth and a fucking billboard proclaiming “None shall be barren!” while the people in front of the billboard more than likely have had barren stomachs and empty pockets quite a few times in their life while the two bishops have so much money overflowing from their pockets they can afford nice suits to showcase on their own private billboards.

To give an example of what happens in these “outpouring encounters” one of the pastors described what had happened when he was in Nigeria during a “revival.” He described the church being packed with poor and working class folks experiencing miracles at the hands of pastors and elders (church folk, a step bellow a pastor or priests) and during this whole event the people where actually stuffing trash cans filled to the brim with money from donations.  The pastor was describing money being piled up on the fucking stage and being shoveled into large bags and bins.

Why, you ask, would poor folks do this?  Well, it’s not that surprising as when people are desperate and on their last rope they will do anything to attain any kind of salvation.  As Marx stated:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances. It is the opium of the people. [Emphasis mine]

Marx is not knocking religion per se nor is he knocking poor people for taking to religion like a drug.  The lives of people are so fucking miserable that they need something to take their mind off the pain; this comes in form of drugs, alcohol, religion, etc.

I myself am not knocking Christianity or the concept of God either (for one, I’m getting my masters in theology and studying to be a priest for the Episcopal Church) but what I am upset about is the fact that people whom claim to be followers of Jesus are actually the ones exploiting the poor they are so intent to “save.”

Religion has become a selling point, like the capitalist who exploits the worker the priest exploits the follower.  The worker creates commodities and gives the capitalist wealth while the capitalist (whom can’t create anything without the worker) hoards most of the profits (to further turn into capital); the parishioner goes to church for spiritual salvation and forks over money to the priest while the priest does nothing to actually organize and help uplift the poor and working class from their oppressive chains.  The priest in this form is nothing more than a drug dealer making his customer sink further into obliteration because she or he is trying to forget his or her problems in the material world.

These priests and modern day pharisees would rather spend money on fancy suits and billboards than rather actually take up the Bible literally and speak truth to power and help working class and poor communities organize for the distribution of power and wealth.

I ain’t sittin in your pews less you helpin’ me resist and refuse
Show me a list of your views
If you really love me
Help me tear this muthafucka up
Consider this my tithe for the offer cup

-Boots Riley, The Coup

[Hat Tip: Hossam]

The West and Intervention

I read an interesting (but ultimately trivial) opinion piece in today’s Finnancial Times by Chrystia Freeland titled “The new age of authoritarianism.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with the piece as long as people realize that it’s essentially given from the bourgeois viewpoint that the West inherently looks after the good of the world and that free market globalization is something that (while it gives huge profits to Western corporations) is ultimately good for the rest of humanity.

This quote more than sums up her take on the last 20 odd years or so:

the implosion of Soviet communism inspired hundreds of millions of others around the world to embrace freer markets and demand more responsive governments. The great global economic boom of the past 20 years, which has brought more people out of poverty more quickly than at any other time in human history, would not have been possible had the Soviet way of ordering the world not been discredited first.

I’m not going to argue with this point (you all can read my other blog posts to see what I think), it’s just to illustrate her point-of-view.

Most of what we have been reading in the news about the authoritarian regimes of Russia, China, Iran, etc. have been whole heartidly from the view points of those who espouse a liberal bourgeois capitalist mindset (whether they bee slightly left, right, or center) while there has been very little room for the opinions of radical labor organizers, anti-capitalists/globalization organizers, home grown Third World activists, etc.  This essentially gives the reader of mainstream news a very narrow outlook on global affairs and ultimatly stiffle critical thinking as there is much more out there than the capitalist bourgeois mind set and there are more ways to analyze the situation of global affairs (especially when it comes to the South Ossetia conflict).

This piece by Freeland is a perfect example of this mindset that dominates the mainstream media (print and TV).

In it she essentially parrots the views of those who came before in saying that the end of a Soviet dominated Third World brought freedoms to untold millions (I’m no fan of the capitalist degenerated state that was the Soviet Union mind you) and that poverty has been reduced world wide.  She goes along the classical neo-liberal (as supposed to realist) line of authoritarian China and Russia and their imperial endvours around the world and how the West should stand up to them, etc. but does not turn her analysis on the West itself.

One thing I find liberating about Marxian/Marxist political thought (as supposed to Smithan and Ricardian or neo-classical lines of thought) is its grounding in class analysis and how the capitalist class essentially shapes the economy and the world.  With this line of thought we don’t need to look at the world in a Black and White Western imperial adventures = good and non-Western imperial adventures = bad.  We can look at the world in a different light to broaden our analysis.

The Porn Industry and Exploitation

I go from not supporting porn to being ambivalent about porn.  One thing that never wavers for me though is support for porn workers (when we say “Workers of the world unite!” that means all workers) and condemnation of porn industry executives.

Just when I thought I was completely anti-porn (well, I guess, me confuse) Renee blogs:

Normally I am in agreement with most things that Noam Chomsky has theorized but in this case I must respectfully disagree. The idea that the decision to work in the porn industry is simply a result of womens exploitation ignores the degree to which womens agency can make this an active choice. While all paid labour in a capitalist economy is defiantly exploitation, working in the porn industry is not more exploitative because what is being produced is sex, or rather the imitation of reciprocal sex.

Why is sex work necessarily more degrading than working at McDonalds, or a Dunkin Donuts for that matter? Both involve the sale of ones body, and labour power to a certain degree. Both involve not being adequately compensated vis a vis profits versus wage, yet pornography is deemed horribly degrading. I submit that this because womens sexuality is only culturally acceptable when it is virginal in nature.

Pakistani Bear Market Has Investors Raging in the Streets

Just saw this picture passing a news stand.

Oh shit, click on the pic to read the New York Times article.

Capital, Vol. 1: Ch. 3

Chapter three, titled “Money, or the Circulation of Commodities” is the last chapter in the Part 1 called “Commodities and Money.” David Harvey went over the entire chapter for his lecture as he said it was the most difficult chapter to comprehend and that most people who quite, or almost quite, reading Capital, Vol. 1 almost always do it at or around reading chapter three.

However, despite its reputation for being hard (which it is, let me tell you) one can actually easily work through it be going at it step by step and by keeping in mind Marx’s main argument for a particular section you are reading.  With that, one realizes Marx’s argument in chapter three is quite simple.  The make-up of the chapter essentially goes like this, in the first part Marx goes over the value of money, in the second part he goes over it as a means of circulation, and then he ends by describing it as a universal equivalent on the world market.

The main structure of chapter three is similar to the previous two chapters in Capital.

One of the interesting points from the lecture and from chapter three is Marx’s explanation of money on the world market and how money is essentially based on imaginary forms, not based on actual gold.  This is kinda complicated to explain out right but he leads up to it by first explaining the measure of value of money in the market (sec. 1), then by explaining the means of circulation of commodities and money in the market (sec. 2), them by explaining money (sec. 3) and how money (the universal equivalent of all commodities) went from physical gold to essentially paper money (partly due to the convenience of paper money in everyday transactions); which leads to one of the interesting things about Harvey’s lecture on section three part B in chapter three on world money.

The nation-state itself plays an important role in the management and regulation of the money system.  At first by regulating gold to regulate inflation and deflation, then by backing up paper money and metallic tokens (creation of the state) with gold, and then by removing the gold back up and allowing the speculation of money.  But, once on the world market the state essentially losses all control of the regulation of its own money.

In 1973 the world market de-metalized its money.  Because of this speculators and economists still wanted to associated currencies around the world with certain commodities (like it had done with gold).  At first, Harvey says, there was talk of the Petro-dollar being the new standard, money in relation to oil.  But soon the oil crisis of the 1970s destroyed this thought.

Now, to find out the worth of money (which is essentially worthless peices of paper and metal) currency speculators and economists look at the productivity of a whole national economy (i.e., unemployment rates, stock market, accumulation of capital, national debt, trade balances, etc., etc.) and compares this outlook with other national economies across the global market.  While there is some type of control the state can exert over its currency there is a fiction of a national economy.  There is no national economy as the national economy is also based on the performance of other national economies that are connected to that economy.  If China is in a slump trade to the U.S. will fall which in turn would cause a rise in prices and other adverse affects in the U.S., etc.  So while there is a “national” economy it is also dependent on the international market.

There is an imaginary understanding of money now.  States collect massive amounts of data on money through statistics.  In order to understand the value of money statistics comes up with all sorts of mathematical equations and comparisons in order to give money value.  For example, statistics on GDP, GNP, collected on certain countries by the IMF or the World Bank.  Speculators step in and debate on what measures are right and what measures are wrong in the measurement of value of certain currencies, hence why George Soros was able to make a billion or so dollars within only a few days be speculating the British Sterling against that of the Euro.

Marx would essentially argue all of this is due to the masking of the true value of money over the decades by the market.  Marx states many times in Capital “We imagine it to be like this…” and “We imagine it to be like that…”  The reason why Marx talks so much about the imagined world of the capitalist market is because the capitalist market depends on imagination, the imaginary things are socially necessary, we can’t get rid of them within capitalism.

Image from:
celsias

Fannie and Freddie Get a Helping Hand

While individual citizens get shitted on by the government.  The New York Times reports:

Alarmed by the sharply eroding confidence in the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies, the Bush administration on Sunday asked Congress to approve a sweeping rescue package that would give officials the power to inject billions of federal dollars into the beleaguered companies through investments and loans.

…

While senior Democratic and Republican officials in successive administrations have for many years repeatedly denied that the trillions of dollars of debt the companies issued is guaranteed, the package, if adopted, would bring the Treasury closer than ever to exposing taxpayers to potentially huge new liabilities. The two companies could face significant new losses this year as the wave of housing foreclosures continues.

From Clive Crook’s blog:

Covering the agencies’ losses on their loans and guarantees is going to require an actual outlay, which will fall on taxpayers. You could plausibly call the rest – namely, bringing these “government-sponsored enterprises” explicitly inside the public sector – just a bookkeeping entry. But what an entry! It would surely shake financial markets, raise the government’s cost of funding and put heavy downward pressure on the dollar. Meanwhile, the turmoil impedes or paralyses the GSEs in their crucial life-support role for the housing market.

So we can afford “socialism” for mutli-billion dollar corporations but not the masses?

So we’ve got corporations divesting capital from America and interjecting it into developing countries, further exploited Third World peoples and causing Americans to loose good paying jobs, we’ve got gas ready to hit $6 a gallon within the next half year, and there was a near food riot in Milwaukee plus a 20% increase in demand for food at food banks.

The only reason why most of the American petty-bourgeoisie and proletariat are able to afford certain amenities is through exploiting the labor-power of Third World workers.  We’re all going to hell in a gift-wrapped hand basked made by a young Cambodian child for 5 cents (via Nike).

Green Party and Class Politics

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Dave Marlow blogs:

Fellow blogger Renegade Eye put it best: “I don’t believe the Green Party is the alternative party formation, since it lacks a program and class basis.” The Green Party is incapable of leading a successful workers revolution, at least in its current manifestation, because of its inherent ties to reformism and its separation from class struggle. They are not a genuine proletarian party and so any progress achieved through the Green Party will be limited to the confines of a non-revolutionary framework.

Youth and students from different countries gather at ILPS conference

My kasama from LFS-SFSU wrote an article for LFS National in the Philippines (where he is currently visiting) about the Third International Assembly for the International League of People’s Struggles. Here is a quick excerpt:

The youth summed up the basic root problem of daily life as “the life-depriving character of imperialism, which the world’s people are plunged into, continuously worsens as the capitalism crisis of overproduction deepens. Exploitation of labor, imperialist plunder and maximization of profit continues wantonly at the expense of the working and oppressed peoples of the world.”

Capital, Vol. I: Ch. 1 & 2

As I’ve stated in a previous post I’m re-reading Capital, Vol. 1 along with the lectures by David Harvey.  Every week I’ll post a blog on one or two things I found enlightening and/or interesting about my readings from that week and from the leasson.  I suggest to everyone that if anyone has been thinking about reading Das Kapital to actually start doing it now because these lectures are fucking dope and will help you understand (especially if your reading it you second or third time, etc.) some of the complex points wihtin the book and will also help you understand how to read and grasp the book for yourself.

One of the reasons why reading Marx’s Capital is so hard is because we are used to a modification of Hegelian logic which unflolds as thesis followed by antithesis, and then synthesis.  Harvey states that Marx does not follow this line of logic.  His points aren’t synthetic instead they internalize intention, then point out contradictions which need to be expanded and then looked at and then this is furthered by more examples and logical conclusions until he expands his concept so much as to bring us to the next logical point.  An example can be seen when we look at Marx expanding his arguments in chapter 1 about the commodity until he brings us to the commodities universal equivalent in the end of chapter 1, money.

Example of how Marx does this:

Comodity has use value and exchange value which are both turned into overall value value is then brought about through sociall necesary labor time which has two concepts itself, concrete labor and abstract labor which both equal a certain exchange on the free market which in turn has relative value and equivalent value which in turn brings us to the universal equivalent money.

Kinda complecated huh?  Essentialy, to make an overall point Marx starts with the basic, then builds on extra elements through his explanation which in turn creates a graduatl expansion of his argument from a narrow conception of the commodity on the market to broader and broader conception of the commodity on the market.

Another point I find worth mentioning was that Marx saw that there needed to be an alternate system of values in order to free men from the market.  The destruction of capitalism had to lead to an alternate social and economic system other than the one in place now which was only in place since the beginning of the 17th century (capitalism is a relatively new concept).  Marx saw that human beings were alienated from each other through the system of capitalism.

Harvey explains it as a religious person saying, “I care about having good face to face relations with my fellow man, with being a good person and living life to the fullest and respecting others.”

But when asked about what this fellow thinks of the market economy. “I couldn’t give a hoot about that.”

That in turn is the folly.  How could a person care about human beings he sees face to face but not about his fellow humans who cloth, feed, and shelter him? This is because the capitalist market hides this.  If we trully knew what went into our breakfast and cared about how it went into our breakfast then we would demand that those who put our breakfast on our tables be paid good wages since we would care enough about those who feed us.  That is: the workers at the supermarket, the truck drivers, those who make the trucks, those who pump the oil from rigs, those who pluck the eggs, slaughter the pigs, raise the pigs, work the farms, pick the strawberries, etc., etc.

Photograph by:
David Bacon

Solidarity With Zimbabwe Socialists

Via Hossam.

The office of the International Socialist Organization in Zimbabwe (not affiliated with the American ISO which was kicked out of the International Socialist Tendency group) was ransaked on June 7th by government thugs. ISO Zimbabwe reported:

OUR OFFICES IN CENTRAL HARARE HAVE BEEN RAIDED. POLICE CAME IN THE MORNING AND DEMANDED TO SEE SEVERAL LEADERS OF OUR ORGANISATION. THEY REMOVED FILES FROM OUR OFFICE.

THE POLICE CLAIM THAT OUR LAST NEWSPAPER ISSUE WAS “INFLAMATORY” OR “INCITING”.

THEY ALSO DEMANDED TO KNOW WHO WRITES FOR OUR NEWSPAPER, WHERE IT IS TYPED AND WHERE IT IS PRINTED.

OUR COMRADES MANAGED TO JUST ESCAPE WITH OUR ONLY COMPUTER.

Violence has marred the country for a few months now after elections in which, in all likely hood, Mugabe lost to his MDC rival Tsvangirai.

CNN reports:

Violence and intimidation targeting Zimbabwe’s opposition party — the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) — has “extinguished any chance of a free and fair” runoff election, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.

…

The HRW report — titled “Bullets for Each of You” — said there was “extensive evidence of the role of senior-ranking army and police officers in inciting and organizing the violence.”

It accused Police Assistant Commissioner Martin Kwainona of Mugabe’s Presidential Guard of “inciting, leading, and perpetrating violence in Mt. Darwin, Mashonaland Central.”

“All MDC members in Mt. Darwin must be made to disappear, we are busy training our youths to do just that,” the report said Kwainona told a witness.

“President Mugabe and his government of Zimbabwe bear full responsibility for these serious crimes,” Gagnon said. “They have shown gross indifference to the plight of the people, allowing senior-ranking security officers, ‘war veterans,’ youth militia and ZANU-PF free rein to commit horrifying abuses.”

South African ANC president Zuma is also alarmed by the rise of violence in the region.

While much of the problems in Zimbabwe are the result of imperialism it is also the result of the ZANU-PF’s move right ward, which makes sense in the post-Soviet world and due to the regulations imposed by the IMF and World Bank. While the West was supportive of Mugabe when he followed the imperialist line it wasn’t until recently that they used “democracy” as a rallying cry to oust Mugabe. This however is only due to the fact that Mugabe decided to change course, all be it superficially, and use “anti-imperialist.” Also, and more importantly, Mugabe outlived his role as a useful tool for the imperialist West because of the extreme downward trend in Zimbabwe’s economic situation. But his repression of his people is nothing new. Only now does the West feel concern.

Fred Weston writes:

Now Mugabe is like Frankenstein’s monster. He is a creature of the bourgeoisie, but now the imperialists and white elite in Zimbabwe no longer have any control over him; he holds the levers of state power firmly in his hands. He has his own agenda, which is that of holding on to power at all costs. In the process he is devastating the economy even further.

Unfortunately the MDC is not so much different from the ZANU-PF. The only difference is that they support (at least now) democratic reform. However, they too have drifted right ward since their founding and support by trade unionists in Zimbabwe and have sought to emulate the model of Tony Blair.

The only real alternative for Zimbabwe is the ISO and other like minded socialist organizations and workers.

Image From:
Sydney Morning Herald

“What you look like with an AK bullet hole across your back!”

I’m in the music mood today. I originally blogged on this song a while back; here it is in its entirety.

Democracy and Fascism

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

A blogger at the Revolutionary Democratic Front (India) blogs about the rise, and current trend, of Hindu fascism in India, relating to the BJP and RSS parties:

The Hindu fascist ideology has been in existence for as long as seven and a half decades with the inauguration of the RSS in 1925 at Nagpur. But it did not play any significant role in state power. It has risen to power in the last 25 years and since then has become a strong political force. Initially its bases were upper caste people and Hindu merchant communities. In 1980s ruling classes decided to develop this fascist ideology. It has increased day by day and has made a place even amongst the dalits and backward castes. All the ruling classes have played a significant role in developing aiding and abetting the growth of fascist forces. The different fronts made with an intention of parliamentary alliances have legalized Hindu fascism. It has maintained a mask by making alliances with regional parties. BJP in its tenure associated with big commercial households and together with its organizations-CII, FICCI, and ASOCHEM-formed various committees with different ministries. It went so far as to make acquaintances with the PM office. We see that Hindu fascism is basically a result of a course of political events, which has been brought by the ruling class, which centers on imperialism and increasing political and economic crisis of national and foreign capitalists and ruling classes.

My Country

A short Al Jazeera English report on my home country of Guatemala via Hossam.

“Globalize” resistance and protest

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Carol P. Araullo, the chairperson of BAYAN, a large umbrella front of progressive and left-wing organizations in the Philippines, blogs on the food crisis and the culpability of President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines:

But this time around, we can readily agree that the rice/food crisis is happening worldwide and its immediate causes and historical roots cannot be strictly confined to the specific policies and concrete situations obtaining in particular countries. Indeed, the international agribusiness cartels such as the small clique of corporations that control the world’s fertilizer and pesticide market, the largest seed companies (e.g. Monsanto), the largest grain traders (e.g. Cargill) and the world’s big food processors (e.g. Nestle), their local business partners in third world countries and the homegrown trading cartels (e.g. in rice) have made a killing in the midst of growing hunger, food riots and panic buying by governments and households.

Having said that, we reiterate that the Arroyo regime is not blameless, in fact it must own up to and be held accountable for the neoliberal policies and programs it has perpetuated and even accelerated in implementation that today aggravates the rice crisis.

The Future of Socialism and the Failures of Capitalism

A short clip from a speech Randhir Singh gave in India not to long ago:

The ‘actually existing socialism’ — which was not Marx’s socialism whose possibility remains open — has, of course, failed.  But, surely, the ‘actually existing capitalism’ — which is the only kind of capitalism possible — has not been the success it is made out to be.  In any objective judgement, capitalism too has been a failure in our times.  Other considerations apart, capitalism has been a failure in terms of possibly the most legitimate criteria for assessing the performance of a social system: ‘fullness of employment’ and ‘goodness of employment’ of the actual and potential resources available in society.  Never before in human history has the gap between society’s potentiality and society’s performance been so immense as it is today in capitalism’s current stage of development.  Evidence is there in the extraordinary productive capacity that three successive industrial revolutions have put at the disposal of humankind and the poverty and illiteracy, squalid slums and homelessness that are the lot of millions of families in the wealthiest countries of the capitalist world and the hunger and misery of hundreds of millions of people, living out their empty and barren lives in the hovels of the peripheral or semi-peripheral poor countries of the Third World.  The Third World today is indeed a monument to the failure of capitalism in our times. . . .