The Antisocial Socialist

Hey, I haven't done a leftist sectariana post in forever. Let's change that. Check out Cause Pimps. (Warning: If you are prone to seizures, don't check it out.)

It was brought to my attention courtesy of two people who seem to be among the author's primary targets. (They're both lovely people, incidentally.) Once again, I was insulted that I have not been included in the directory of Bad People—as Wilde put it, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about—and it occurred to me that perhaps I should join the SPO just to warrant a mention. But I don't like their logo. Anyway.

Cause Pimps is an interesting site for a few reasons. I mean, the most obvious is the hilarious animated gifs and unfortunate colour choices. But politically, it's interesting because it seems to be an attack from the left, or at least from someone who was on the left at one point, but doesn't hesitate to use right-wing talking points, and occasionally swerves right into full-on conspiracy theories. I can almost guarantee that I'd know the author by face, if not by name. This is someone who has been on the wrong side of either an OCAP schism or a CKLN schism, or both. Not a hard thing to do, and however much I respect the work both groups do, it can be a painful, isolating thing, so I might have a little sympathy for our mysterious webmaster. Except, well, he's wrong, and also the site is really terrible and eye-watering.

A few highlights:

The control system seems to work at three levels. The rawest is the police/judicial complex which is widely said to be run by the Masons. The Toronto police headquarters is surrounded by Masonic symbols.

Anyone who has tried to get justice done through either the civil or criminal courts has become aware of a seamless system of denying justice. It runs from the cop on the beat through the legal aid system to the court staff to the judges to the attorney general's office. If the Masons are not the coordinating system in this, then it is some group much like them.

I can think of many, many reasons to hate Toronto cops and cops in general. The theory that they are Freemasons is not one of them.

The kind of people and organizations who you will be given intelligence about on this site are really, really not going to like it. We expect intense efforts to try to take this site down. Let them try.

If, by "take it down," you mean linking to it on their Facebook pages and directing everyone there for a good laugh, yep, that's what they're doing right now.

Should we complain to google? Anyone hitting Andy Lehrer" and "pimp" can find this page due to cross links with other pimps pages. The truth will come through despite all the efforts of the liars to throttle it.

This quote, admittedly, is a hundred times funnier if you know him. Still, I think he'd be pretty amused if people were actually Googling "Andy Lehrer" and "pimp."

The world is also full of people with unresolved mental problems, or who have serious mind circuit problems. The true crazy refuses to accept that there is something wrong with him, not with the world around her. Generally, they think the world is slighting them and sometimes they become violent.

WHAT

Toronto activism is so weird, you guys. So. Weird.

I miss doing Flippant Fridays. Have a playlist:

1. "Paper Planes," M.I.A.
2. "Bend and Break," Keane
3. "A Sadness Song," Current 93
4 "Mad World," Gary Jules
5."If I Ever Leave This World Alive," Flogging Molly
6."Seeräuber Jenny," Lotte Lenya (not as good as Nina Simone's, but classic)
7. "God Bless Our Dead Marines," A Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band (live; part two is here.)
8. "this lamb sells condos," final fantasy
9. "Lucretia, My Reflection" Sisters of Mercy (video is LOLtastic)
10. "If I Had A Rocket Launcher," Bruce Cockburn. I'm embedding rather than linking because, people, this is the official music video. They made a video of this song and played it on MuchMusic all the time. And I don't think CSIS investigated or anything. The world has changed.

Anyway, I want to be in a band again just to cover this song.

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Stolen from pemm: Marxist-Leninist runs for mayor of Minneapolis on the "Lauraist" platform. That's "Lauraist" as in "adherent of Laura Ingalls Wilder." Who wrote Little House on the Prairie.

This is the best thing to happen to leftist trainspotters since the Johnson-Forest Tendency.

"What do we want?"

"No more walking around in circles, holding picket signs, across from the U.S. Consulate, which is closed because it's Saturday!"

"When do we want it?"

"NOW!"

I also seek a moratorium on shouting "SHAME!" as it applies to our ruling class. They have no shame. That's kind of the point, y/y?

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Press coverage here and here, photos here. Note the 100-person discrepancy between the Sun and the Star.

Exciting:

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Not exciting:

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I had grave reservations about an adaptation of Blindness, as it's one of my favourite books and I imagine that it's pretty near unadaptable. But—it's going to be directed by the guy who did City of God. And the trailer suggests that they're not losing any of the allegorical elements that made the book so powerful. So my expectations are high, oh yes.

We do not, however, need another film about the gorram Battle of Seattle. Especially one that looks like it's going to not just suck, but actually suck the entire universe into an epic ocean of its own fail.

Let's engage in some sectarian wankery! Go read A critique of neo-anarchism. Actually, you can skim it; it's quite awful. notnotnevinzehr posted the best bits, along with commentary. I largely concur. Especially with this (italics from the article, roman from notnotnevinzehr's post):

Note as well the neo-anarchists' complete lack of interest in finding out the truth about all the various events that are cynically lumped together under the rubric of "September 11th." Like all Leftists, they are content to dismiss the 911 Truth Movement as "conspiracy theorists" and "wingnuts." Why? It speaks directly of the State and its secret/security services, which are beyond the narrow focus of commodity-obsessed "former"-Marxists.

So anarchists shouldn't consider the "Maoist" Zapatistas allies, but they should consider anti-Semitic, fascist conspiracy theorists allies. Awesome!

Back to this idea of tolerance, and why the 911 wingnuts have such a foothold in the Left. Anarchists know what they dislike: Marxists (authoritarian or autonomous), Maoists, social democrats, and people who wear suits. What's left—a ragtag collection of individualists, anarcho-capitalists, radical liberals, and actual anarchists*——is not enough to form a Movement. Hence, if you refuse to work with the people you dislike, you're forced to let all sorts of movement detritus into your spaces, which these days seems to include a lot of the tinfoil-hat types.

The other phenomenon I've noticed is that the smaller the group, the sharper its critique of every other group. The International Bolshevik Tendency hate all the other Trots. Anarchists either claim the Zapatistas as anarchists (no) or condemn them as watered-down Maoists (what?). It's a micro-version of "with us or against us," except really pathetic.

It's hard to say "no" to people, especially when you're small and you need everyone you can get. But we (and by "we," I mean the Left in general, not anarchists in particular) are at once not tolerant enough of divergent but similar political beliefs, and too tolerant of wingnuttery. I'm not saying that we should purge the Loose Changers, just send them to re-education camps. If we've got people prancing around in front of the cameras with "JEWS DID 911" signs, how the hell do we expect anyone to take us seriously?

On that note, a friend of a friend sent me this article, which is about how the SPP is caused by mind control. As if Canadian politicians aren't happy to betray the voters because they represent the interests of capital and always have—no, it must by mass hypnosis.

Apparently there has also been a desire by a political-military-industrial complex to develop "mind control" to manipulate emotions, and other related "biofusion" manipulation. In Ultrascience, "Weapons of War", Learning Channel, 1997, featured Dr. Michael Persinger, Laurentian University, Canada, Dr. Persinger described weapons using "psycho or influence technology" and electromagnetic radiation frequencies to control what people think, for psychological warfare purposes. Canada's political leaders may very well be controlled through some kind of developed mind control technology in order to ensure Canada can be taken over for the fascist architects of the SPP NAU New World Order agenda.

Man. I hope so.

* Note that I leave out the lifestylists. They're capable of falling into any of those categories and others, though I'd define most as radical liberals.

Shorter Hugo Chavez: ( Trot now! )

In other sectarian news, the IWW resolution to adhere to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle failed by a narrow margin. That's just embarrassing. In the greater scheme of things, it doesn't matter all that much, given how small the Wobblies are, but it means that the organization that I'm part of and that I identify with the most, ideologically speaking, does not have its head screwed on straight at the moment.

Oh yes, and one other little thing. The U.S. just murdered 31 Somali civilians and hardly anyone's said a peep about it. (Hat tip: douglain.)

I can't find my "no pigdogs" graphic to accompany this post. :( :( :(

( cut for IM silliness )

( more IM silliness )

[Poll #699043]

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EDIT: OMG!

You know what never stops being funny? Jokes about Cheney shooting that guy.

You know what's not funny at all? Mudslides that wipe out entire villages. These guys could probably use your help.

Still sick. I've been pretty productive, though:


You know when you move to a new place and you say, "Okay, this time I'm going to be all classy and not crowd my walls with political posters?" Yep, that didn't last for long.

Oh yes, and via brownfist, here are some facts about Kim Jong-il.

( Kim Jong-il is better than Chuck Norris and Vin Diesel rolled into one. )

What did Stephen Harper do this time?

a) Admit that he believed in evolution.
b) Pledge a full military presence in Canadian cities.
c) Eat a kitten during the live televised debate.

( Answer under the cut. )

EDIT: OMG! Rick Mercer did a spoof ad for CPC-ML! Go here, then click on the Communist Party graphic for comedy gold.

This is another one from Uncle Joe. In exchange for sending me that awesome North Korean video, I responded with the article that springheel_jack posted about Stalin's plan to breed an army of man-ape supersoldiers.

Well, apparently a certain listserv is all excited about the article and is furiously researching to find out if it's true (they don't think it is, and actually, neither do I, but since it's completely hilarious I'm going to keep talking about it). The conclusion was that this was as silly as "that article about Stalin's monster crabs."

To which I naturally responded, "You are going to send me the article about the monster crabs, aren't you? Otherwise you are a tease."

Apologies to those of you who might have seen this already.

Stalin's crabs!


"History shows that there are no invincible armies"....unless they're giant fucking crabs.