Blaming Socialism for Venezuela's Problems is for Simpletons

Venezuelan media Telesur has been scrubbed from Facebook and Search Engines along with conspiracy theorist douchebag Alex Jones (who still has first amendment rights). The left will only realise what censorship means when it is aimed at them and it didn't take that long in Venezuela.

While I no longer identify with any (left/right) ideology that doesn't tackle which private interests print money and lend to government while charging interest (through taxation), I cannot in good conscience listen to the the capitalist vultures blaming socialism for all of Venezuela's ills.

I have long nuanced positions on public vs private money implementation/investment, and each case is contextual.  I have however been forced to recognise the final outcome of letting groupthink permit a ruling elite to spend the proletariat's money for them.

That has resulted in the genocide of hundreds of millions in China and the USSR and indeed around the world.

Only an unconscionable person would sweep that under the carpet.

Stevi Loves 2 Love U Xx Edits/XX Edits

Stevie Loves 2 Love U

from XX EDITS Volume Three by XX EDITS

The Pseudo Left

As an aside the Republican Party is dead too. POTUS is the GOP.

Ken Loach | Spirit of 1945

It's forcefully evident to me that the British people's booting out of that warmonger wanker Churchill after WWII, for Clement Atlee's Labour Party, has been whitewashed by the corporate media™ and academia.

This is to keep the British people ignorant of the power they have to shape society. One of the best politicians of the century barely get's a mention and it's not hard to see why.

Currently the largest transfer of public wealth to private pockets is taking place, in front of people seemingly oblivious to the historical legacy of 1945.

Ken Loach's Spirit of 1945 didn't teach me enough of the technocratic details I wanted to know, but it does convey the human values that a fair society rests on.

The documentary doesn't deal with the complexities of 21st century living, and so it's not a very good catalyst for encouraging young people to come together and boot out the parasitic elite who run the planet.

It is however a documentary about people who cared for their neighbours, took an interest in their communities, and weren't fixated on greed. status and materialism.

Fidel - The Untold Story

This is a great documentary. I learned so much more than I thought I knew. His early life is particularly gripping though the full history of Cuba is probably a lot more convoluted than just this version of events.

Bernard-Henri Lévy - Grotesque Peacock

A while back, I was getting into Slavoj Zizek and I watched this debate called Violence & The Left In Dark Times, held between Zizek and Bernhard-Henri Levy at the The New York Public Library with host Paul Holdengräber.  I was repulsed by what I heard and infuriated with what I saw; I wrote the following in the comments:

"I'm reluctant to say this as a generalism but the French are insufferable here. The host/MC is a sycophant of the highest order. If manners are about direct eye engagement then Bernard is a philistine of courtesy being fellated by a pygmy of enlightenment".

You can imagine how delighted I was just now to learn, that quite by chance the other moral spirit-level of the times (with respect to who I find inspirational), Tariq Ali has now pursued Bernhard Henri-Levy for a mock trial just recently on January 28, along with activists belonging to the PIR (Parti des Indigènes de la République). Both Norman Finkelstein and Tariq Ali were the only non-French who gave evidence against Levy.

It's a good feeling to see my sentiments echoed from those first few hours I watched BHL in action defending the indefensible with dripping arrogance.

Tariq writes: "I’ve always regarded BHL as a comic figure. On the two occasions — in Berlin and New York– that I’ve shared a platform to debate him he reminded me of a puffed up peacock in heat (hence, I thought, the permanently unbuttoned shirt).

You can read more of that over at Tariq's blog as this now leaves me to pursue the other buffoon in the shape of Paul Holdengräber who portrays Zizek as taking up too much time in the debate. A point I aim to make sure is vindicated as untrue. It's evident he gives too much of the floor to Levy in the video below in pursuit of sycophancy. See for yourself because the next time I watch it, the stopwatch is out and Paul Holdengräber will be acquainted with the facts. Any New York friends go to the public library?

Careless Lisper

Slavoj Žižek had me raising my hand in objection by the first minute over a throwaway comment of reality as abstraction but he quickly settles down to unfurl a devastating rapid response to a series of embarrassingly superficial market capitalists who are increasingly beginning to exude the air of polyester flare-wearing, Boomer swingers. Wealthy but morally bankrupt. Rich but fucking clueless. Wedged up but drenched in Hai-Karate aftershave. The epitome of dangerous anachronisms. Naturally they're the last to realise it in much the same way that Louis XIV was puzzled when the peasants arrived at Versailles and proved themselves to be natural vivisectionists in response to the brutality that small groups of greedy people invariably inculcate through financial and most importantly historical myopia.

I loved watching this and I now have a bit of a man-crush on the Slovenian dissident who I recently struggled with his Lacanian analysis in A perverts guide to cinema. Žižek also tackles some more concrete issues in this so hang in there for some honest critique of why the left are very hypocritical on Afghanistan and so forth. There's a certain amount of professional jealousy from here, as unlike me he got to bone Miss Brazil as the Elvis of cultural theory. 

It's not right, but it's OK. 

Community

This is such an overdue response to a post I wrote over here to Andy from New Zealand but it's an important topic on what we mean by community on the net. Here's some of what I think for what it's worth. I want to get into the video responses a lot more so do add me on seesmic if you wish. 

Also I've added intense debate to my tumblr blog and you can get stuck in there because I'm using that as a social media sandbox more and will eventually strip this down to the minimum for faster loading and do that redesign it's badly in need of. 

Human is the new black but what colour is that for my blog? I need to know. ;)

LEAVE ME ALONE

You may have noticed the new panel I'm sporting on the side of this blog called Google Friend Connect. Well that's there because I've been "Whitelisted" by Google who think I'm a big enough social meeja kahuna to invite me on board.

Yeah, check me out! *throws meaningless gang signs*

So if I haven't spammed the life out of you yet by joining Plaxo (who've allied with Google) and Google Friend Connect, don't feel shy to click on something over there, and join in because it's not like you actually have to really like me loads and loads to be my fwend.

I'm particularly interested in the open social platform as it develops and hey you get to come along for the ride too. Carrying our own social network data around has to be the future for some sort of transactional value relationships with the world of commerce and brands. It's pretty radical but will make a lot of sense when giving permission for interruptive or distractive marketing communications as the quid pro quo for utility or content.

Well something like that anyway, but the reason for this post is also to see if I've managed to get the Disqus comment system finally integrated. The last attempt was a template and commenting form disaster. And now that even Craig, Peggy and Eaon are Disqus'd up I feel I'm on the back foot for my geek creds.

I'd be most appreciative if one or two of you could attempt a comment but don't try too hard as I've probably buggered it up and will have to reinstall that scary .xml file now lurking on my desktop to get back to normal.

In the meantime here's a picture of Sam who has joined forces with Eaon at Geronimo which is where he's going to kick ass in the marketing communications industry. Yesterday on Skype, I made him swear on the baby Jesus and U.S. Supreme court justices not to release a certain "sensitive" file I've graciously shared with him but I have given him permission to show you the screen if you're ever around. Word is bond Sam!

On a more sober note, thanks all of you for the positive response to yesterday's post. I'll respond more fully but I'm really pleased that I can kind of throw that stuff out there and not be cut down in flames. The motivation for writing it was to hopefully encourage the idea of a back up plan. If that has worked then I'm a happy camper :)

Across the universe

everyone is not someone
someone is not a group
the group is not the crowd
the crowd is not you
you are the universe


Richard Buchanan - Tuesday 6th November 2007

Marxist Libertarian

No surprises on the political compass test for me then. I don't really believe in perma-ideology given that nothing lasts for ever, but broadly speaking I'm going to be hanging out with Gandhi and the other libertarian socialists in the bottom left. This is quite a fun little data visualisation and perceptual mapping exercise.

Incidentally I've been trying to persuade advertising agencies to do 3D perceptual brand mapping for years. Sadly not one of the them has had the perspicacity to make a flash designer and excel spreadsheet whizz kid available. So I might as well blog about it instead.

Commercial Break

Quite a few of you have asked me about the signature I use on my email and where its from. I found it on Pajamas media which is a U.S. right wing blogging syndicate that I read. Many might be surprised that The Huffington Post or The Daily Kos isn't content that is more reflective of my political leanings towards Socialism. I love that word Socialist, it gets right up the noses of those who shriek at the word Liberal.

I read these right wing blogs mainly because the content is invariably material that I disagree with - but that doesn't mean always. My political mentor and close friend taught me the value of this exercise a few years back. As hard as I tried I couldn't win any political arguments with him as he was well versed in the hypocrisy of the both the left as well as the right (if those terms mean anything anymore). I fondly recall him saying that both sides wanted to tax the living hell out of him and just spend it differently.

Its my view that planners should able to cut through subjectivity and aim for objectivity by understanding the arguments and not the sentiments. Interestingly I've found that the picture above is deeply ambiguous depending on who reads it, as is the title of this post. Any thoughts?

Ernest Bevin

I'm reading Alan Bullocks' Ernest Bevin at the moment. It's certainly the most comprehensive biography on Ernie Bevin, but its in some ways a disappointing book. So far I've read one sentence on his marriage and one on his daughter after 300 pages, which is a poor show. We're all a product of the people around us, and I feel that his depth has been stripped by focusing on Bevin's ascent from Trades Union Leader to Minister of Labour, by Churchill's invitation in the coalition government during the second world war. No, its not a great political history book and frankly the British never do quite get it right when trying to paint a picture of our politicians. Its generally either overblown puff pieces or pedestrian led tours of duty-to-detail like the late Roy Jenkins biography on Churchill.

Our cousins in the United States however seem to excel in this department. Maybe its because they have a bigger stage like say in Caro's biographical trilogy of LBJ or for a real left field choice, Edmund Morris' biography on Reagan: 'Dutch'. But for the real master of writing history there probably is no greater insight into power corruption and lies, than by writing your own history, as Kissinger memorably did with his autobiographical trilogy, peaking in the craft of non fiction writing with his second book (for his doctoral dissertation) 'Years of Upheaval' which saw shuttle diplomacy invented, not to mention Vietnam, oil shocks and China to mention a few.

That isn't to say the Bevin biography doesn't shine in parts. In the passage below, we find that he is under pressure in the artificial (for him) habitat as a socialist minister in the house of commons, with criticism all round when the Conservative Churchill steps up and soaks up the punishment in his defence from his own 'side' so to speak.

"To abuse the minister of Labour. He is a working man, a trade union leader. He is taunted with being an unskilled labourer representing an unskilled union. I daresay he gives offence in some quarters; he has his own methods of speech and action. He has a frightful load to carry; he has a job to do which none would envy. He makes mistakes, like I do, though not so many or so serious - he has not got the same opportunities. At any rate he is producing, at this moment, though perhaps on rather expensive terms, a vast and steady volume of faithful effort, the like of which has not been seen before. And if you tell me that the results he produces do not compare with those of totalitarian systems of government and society, I reply by saying 'We shall know more about that when we get to the end of the story'

Time and again Bevin struggles to persuade people that the British worker is motivated most when free to choose their own destiny and less commited when compelled. Only Bevin understood this and fought tooth and nail to gain their permission for anything he subsequently requested from them. This is a logic that totalitarianism never grasps.