PEGIDA

[archytas]

There are any number of anti-Islamist protests around Britain, usually clashes between the EDL (English Defence League) and AFF (anti fascist front).  These close our town centre and there is some violence.  Germany is having bigger demonstrations - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11309449/Record-numbers-rally-against-Islamisation-in-Germany.html

Gabby has mentioned before that the same goose-steeping fetishists may be involved wherever the demos take place. 

Organised religion makes me uncomfortable generally.  Like Spinoza, I don't want it to be a major part of public, political life, though don't like these demonstrations.  We don't seem to be able to sensibly and effectively protest anything these days.  My last try was in the Thatcher days, but even then I joined the Labour Party thinking Blair was something of a way forward, not a warmongering creep out to line his own pockets.  In the once bitten twice shy mode since, I'm worried even the Greens could let me down in the same way.  I thought I was living in a largely secular society (even if a fair number remained privately religious - even I probably do).  I'm not likely to be out supporting PEGIDA, yet I do worry the attack on secular values is a form of sedition.  Here we have an almost credible fascist party - UKIP - appealing to some pretty deep hatreds of immigrants - and we are seeing some change away from the perspective that even such discussion is racist.

I see no sensible discussion on any of this and wonder if there is any here.  It's not that long since I was expected to go about tub-thumping the virtues of Japanese management practices when they were, in fact, running the country into the ground - something our corporate-political elites seem set on everywhere.  The rich seem the correct target for any rage, but Occupy has so far been limited.  I've been aware of answers for years - all in esoteric-academic corners hardly anyone gets to know like surplus capital theory.  War was our last 'cure'.  This may be where they intend to turn current anger.

[Gabby]

Okay, I get what you are saying. Now, what exactly are your questions? I still need to say something on your big brother assumptions, so it would be helpful if you could specify your fields of interest in the meantime here. Thank you.

[archytas]

To be honest Gabby, I feel lost, though not on big brother assumptions.  I can understand and take part in Occupy - merely surprised here that we aren't taking the streets en masse.  I could protest kids staying at home 'forever', not having decent earnings, homes and so on -  but can hardly see EDL, UKIP and various similar across the EU as protests I can join.  The same is true for me on various black protests basing themselves around police shootings.  I don't see the latter as right or excusable (considerable incompetence is usually involved), I do see the discrimination generally, but the focus into race seems wrong, to include a romanticist notion of those shot and a lot of false positive and negative notions on what we can expect from police officers - though I think the wider justice system is shot through with injustice.  I know what big brother can do when unleashed - most recently here in Northern Ireland.  Yet there remain important questions about 'violence from the other side'.  I protested with a million others against the Iraq War, though we had as little effect as the same number of Germans who turned out in Berlin before WW1.  We seem as far from democracy as ever and unable to find protest against what matters to me, and a lot of what is happening scares me as opening the door to fascism whether black or white - the bent promises of great leaders.

You'll have to say what you mean on big brother assumptions.  I've seen the kind of files that are kept and what various agencies do when complained about from petty town halls to those who can cover up through Public Inquiries.  This has gone on since Byzantine days.  My assumption is it is dreadful and operated by people I wouldn't trust to issue dog licences. 

[Molly]

Here in the states, protesting has become a for hire proposition. The same people swoop in and employ the same tactics for every issue, even if the original issue is grass roots. The pundits call it issue blending, and a protest that might begin as civil rights or against big banks becomes about every issue, thus obscuring any issue.  Here in the D the occupy movement suffered the same fate, losing focus and giving its organization up to the protest for hire gang, and so, losing its following. I see my share of this "democracy in action" as it usually happens on the street outside my office and sometimes erupts into the building until security regains order. The bigger the protest, the more likely the same old faces appear, making me wonder about the very nature of protest. Maybe it is a sort of rage bubbled over from fascist oppression, a natural, mechanical and all too human response. But it feels like something deeper on the collective level goes on. I do think the civil rights movement of the 60s and the Vietnam war protests had an effect and changed the world.  Haven't seen anything here since that made as much sense, but then, there wasn't the issue blending going on.

[gabbydott]

Here on the internet the farming and harvesting obeys different interdependencies than saw in springtime and harvest at fall.
When I say I need to say something on the big brother issue before, I mean I need to get back to the big brother issue first. Thank you for your understanding.

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[facilitator]

Part of the problem is people confuse the right to speak with the right to be heard.  If they feel their right to be heard is not being perceived then the volume is increased using the violence button.

People do not have a right to be heard.  Or even to stop the traffic of others till they are seen.

[Molly]

I completely agree.

[archytas]

Violence lies deep and may be as difficult as Gabby's cryptic absurdity.  Against the deep green standard we probably inflict it driving to work, before any road rage grips.  There's endless philosophy on the violence of pen scratching paper and Nietzsche's highly unoriginal dive into the molten furnace of reality, only to return to masses that will not listen.  Fascism's classic is the slogan, issued over and again because the public has endless ability to forget and is confused and probably revolted by multi-faceted argument.  Resistance is often banal, like the furtive posting of Samizdat, yet the police state is absurdly gathering our underwear into airtight jars for the dogs to sniff before being set on our trail (a Stasi trick).  Visits from female friends, spied behind the moving curtain next door, turn one's neighbour into the dreadful seditious lesbian dragged away by the Gestapo.  Big Brother is built on petty informing and the suppression of any right to be heard other than in his socially approved hygiene.  Those pesky, bastard freedom fighters - turned rent-a-mob-professional-protesters - made me late for work and spoiled the view.  Who will be left to express the right to be heard when they come for Molly and Tony?  Their protests will be heard, but we will all know how to listen to these "professional protesters" by then.

Rights are too slippery to define, either in terms of us having them or not.  Does the foetus have a right to life or the woman the right not have the rapist's child?  My answer favours the woman's choice, but does not address the issues of the sanctity of life.  It doesn't get much easier on the right to be heard either.   Do we not want abused kids to have the right to be heard?  This doesn't stop Molly and Tony having points here - though one guesses we have to hear them, even if they don't have the crude insistence of the mob blocking my bus.

There is very little I want to listen to, so I make a poor advocate for any right to be heard.  Most organisation of being heard seems little to do with rights anyway.  Hitler was good at organising being heard speaking dreck.  The television speaks through a thousand channels with nothing on.  What could ever be listening, if it listens to such as this, to be worth uttering voice to?  Build a holy tower bigger than this Tony!

I suspect the right to be heard has been usurped, suggesting I think there is one.  We do it in classrooms, ostensibly so our good sense can be imparted without being drowned by gossip.  Gabby has found splendid new ways never to listen on the grounds she hasn't worked out where she wants to start talking from, though overcome by smell wherever she happens not to want to say what she means to oafish ears unworthy of the endless deferment of origin on what she might say later.*  This I can understand, in the sense of 'no need to listen'.  Sharing some of Molly's view from the office and Tony's ire that a bunch of protesters is preventing timely delivery of his apple core to my ants, I'm inclined to think we have lost the plot on how to shake ourselves out of virtual reality,  Outbreaks of wet-fish-slappy-to-the-face-dancing might help more.

We're going to war.  Who amongst those of us surviving will be first to say they saw it coming and meant to do something about it?  They won't make the mistake of having a draft this time and will recruit volunteers from mass poverty.  

*The German word for this sentence actually has more letters in it, so something may be lost in translation..

[facilitator]

"Rights are too slippery to define, either in terms of us having them or not.  Does the foetus have a right to life or the woman the right not have the rapist's child?  My answer favours the woman's choice, but does not address the issues of the sanctity of life.  It doesn't get much easier on the right to be heard either."

It is not the "Rapist's child".  It is simply, a child.  No person born to this date had the ability to choose their parent(s).  In this country a woman has the right to murder her unborn children.  I am not that woman and cannot make that choice for her but I do not appreciate the government telling me I must pay for it.

Two of my children were the result of rape.  It was against all odds, family and societal pressures that these young women decided to give birth to the second victim of that rape.  I am very thankful they did.  They were also born interracial and I am very thankful for that as well.  When the other five couples ahead of us on the list heard that the forthcoming child might be "Black" they backed out.  We got him instead and the irony is he is blond and blue with perfect Afro features.  My daughter is a beautiful Ebony with caucasian features.  Unfortunately the "Pro-choice" people only seem to give the woman one choice.  

With all of the tensions going on over here about "Black vs White" I am thankful I have chosen to be in the gray area.  Accepting neither.

[archytas]

Not possible to argue against that Tony - at least in the sense I admire the story and could see myself doing the same as you - indeed, a grandchild fits the theme here.  I was abroad at the time and may have stopped the father (I might still be doing the time), but had I done so there would be no young boy my daughter dotes upon.

Of course, there are arguments against what you say, both in terms of women's rights and who should pay (prevention of back-street abortions etc.) - these are too well rehearsed to bother with.  My position in these has much to do with the practical squalor I witnessed as a cop and fear the libertarian in me is impositional on others.  Tails chase and keep philosophers in cheese and biscuits.  None of this prevents me feeling admiration for what you chose to do.

My government, with EU approval, has chosen to leave immigrants drowning in the sea 'pour encourager les autres' not to come.  I could not do that myself.  I would not stop a woman having an abortion and would want her to get the best 'treatment' possible, yet what if this was my child?  God it's tough.

Much love to you and your family.  Your art touches me and it;s good to know an artist can be so morally decent.  Is this 'allowed'?

Neil

[facilitator]

Thanks Neil !

Certainly allowed but more importantly appreciated!

Toe Knee

[archytas]

Grandchild just made fleeting visit and disappeared with some of my tabs, beer and small donation.  He has some autism, can make me cry playing the guitar and shares little character other than my inflated sense of moral outrage and penchant for rude jokes.  I like kids, but don't tell any of them ...