Saturday, December 31, 2011

Three Commentaries: Repairing Ourselves -- Selections from the Husia: Sacred Wisdom of Ancient Egypt -- Kwanzaa: The Challenges of a New Season --

Worrill’s World
By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, PhD
BlackCommentator.com Columnist


Repairing Ourselves

Day in and day out we can observe the increased number of African people killing each other, mentally and physically abusing each other, stealing from each other, being dishonest with each other, and the list goes on and on. These negative incidents occur, in part, because segments of the African community in the United States are disconnected from the moral and ethical traditions that have characterized relationships among African people in the past. It is critical that we repair ourselves as we build the Reparations Movement.


The problem with segments of African people in this country being disconnected from the great contributions of African people to the civilizations of the world has resulted in far too many of us believing that the current situation in which we find ourselves cannot be changed. Many African people believe that the condition of African people in America is permanent and there is
nothing we can do to change our circumstances. Therefore, this disconnected group of African people has chosen the easy road. They travel on the road of cooperating and collaborating with the forces of white supremacy who continue to demonstrate they will do any and everything in their power to keep African people in this country, and the rest of the world on the bottom. This has resulted in many African people in America (and the world community), developing a “bottom mentality.” In other words, many of our people buy into whatever the white supremacy forces feed us through the media, (mis)educational institutions, and religious institutions.


What we are constantly being fed is that we are on the bottom and we will remain on the bottom. What the white supremacy forces offer individual African people in America is that, as an individual, you can get off the bottom if you join us, if you “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Never mind your group, your family and your cultural ties, “there is nothing that can be done with those people. Join us and everything will be alright.” If you join us, “you can obtain a good job, buy a nice house in a good neighborhood, buy a nice car, take nice vacations, and some of you, whom we chose, can even live with us.”


We were not always like this as a people. We did not have a “dog-eat-dog” mentality and this is what we must examine as we continue to struggle to overthrow the system of white supremacy and its impact on us as a people.


The Creative Force of the universe has endowed us with the capacity to make great contributions to the world. A simple inspection of the ancient Nile Valley civilization of Kemet (Egypt) should inspire all African people to respect their history and to hold themselves in high esteem. Kemet and the Kemetic people, our ancestors, were the creators of math, science, architecture, writing, governance, astronomy, astrology, medicine, art, and so much more. The Kemetic people amassed great wisdom that was left as instructions written in Medew Netcher (Divine Speech) or what Europeans call hieroglyphs.


One place we can examine this ancient Kemetic wisdom is in a book titled, Selections from the Husia: Sacred Wisdom of Ancient Egypt gives insight into how our ancestors viewed life, death, human relations, marriage, parenting, use of power, God, family, and the standards of moral and ethical conduct. Reading these spiritual texts elicits strong feelings in and for African people in a most profound and spiritual way. Peruse these words from The Husia: The Book of Ptah Hotep:


”Do not terrorize people for if you do, God will punish you accordingly.
If anyone lives by such means, God will take bread from his or her mouth.
If one says I shall be rich by such means, [he] she will eventually have to say my means entrapped me.”


This passage continues:


”If one says I will rob another, he will end up being robbed himself. The plans of men and women do not always come to pass, for in the end it is the will of God, which prevails. Therefore, one should live in peace with others and they will come and willingly give gifts, which another would take from them through fear.”


Written about five thousand years ago, the wisdom of these words of instruction should cause African people to reflect on their significance as we struggle to create a greater good for our race. The wisdom of our ancestors should give us the inspiration to rededicate ourselves to the continued struggle for the liberation of African people worldwide.


As a race of people our survival and development is dependent upon each other. A greater responsibility is placed upon those of us who proclaim the African Way after the ravaging of African civilizations, African culture, African minds, and African lands.


As I have repeated many times in previous columns, we have a responsibility and a duty to our brothers and sisters to build institutions based on African spirituality, ethics, and morals, and give back that which the Creator has given us, “All Life, Power, and Health, like the Sun Forever.”


I urge all African people to take a meditative moment and look deeply inside of ourselves as a people. Let us restore what the ancient Black people of Kemet called Maat: Divine Order, Harmony, Balance, Truth, Justice, Righteousness, and Reciprocity.


We had, and lived by Maat before the coming of Europeans. We must return to the ways of Maat so we can survive the white supremacy genocidal onslaught. We must look deep into ourselves! And as our respected ancestor Dr. John Henrik Clarke often said, “If we did it once, we can do it again!” In view of what is happening in the world, we must never lose sight of who we are and our condition.


Get Ready For Kwanzaa 2011


In the wake of the rising African Centered Movement in America, it is important that every segment of the African Community in America begin preparing for the Kwanzaa Season. It is estimated that more than 30 million Africans in America participate in some sort of Kwanzaa activity or event.


In order for this occurrence to continue, parents, teachers, principles, ministers, business people, and community activists must begin preparation immediately.


The first question, that obviously should be asked in preparation for the 2011 Kwanzaa Season is: “What is Kwanzaa and why is it so important for African people in America to celebrate?”


In 1966, the Black Power explosion shook up America. The call for Black Power was a major shift away from the Civil Rights Movement, during that era.


The Civil Rights Movement had successfully dismantled the system of racial segregation (by law) in the southern region of the United States. However, among the masses of Black people in America, there was a deeper meaning to the idea of freedom, justice and equality that had not been advocated by the Civil Rights Movement. The call for Black Power by Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Kwame Ture (a.k.a. Stokely Carmichael) and others, gave a new impetus for the Black Liberation Movement in America.


When the smoke cleared from the Watts Rebellion in 1965, an organization emerged in the Los Angeles, California area, called US. Its leader was Dr. Maulana Karenga. After intense study of African cultural traditions, Dr. Karenga and the US Organization established the only nationally celebrated, indigenous, non-heroic Black Holiday in the United States and they called it Kwanzaa.


The concept of Kwanzaa was established for Africans in America and was derived from the African custom of celebrating the harvest season.


In Dr. Karenga’s own words he says, “The origin of Kwanzaa on the African continent are in the agricultural celebrations called the ‘first fruits’ celebrations and to a lesser degree the full or general harvest celebration. It is from these first fruit celebrations that Kwanzaa gets its name which comes from the Swahili phrase Matunda Ya Kwanza.”


Further, “...Matunda means fruits and ya Kwanza means first. (The extra “a” at the end of Kwanzaa has become convention as a result of a particular history).”


Kwanzaa is officially celebrated December 26th to January 1st and each day a value of the Nguzo Saba (seven principles of blackness) is celebrated. The Nguzo Saba (Seven Principles) are:
Umoja~ Unity
To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.


Kujichagulia ~ Self Determination
To define ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves, instead of being defined, named, created for, and spoken for by others.


Ujima ~ Collective Work and Responsibility
To build and maintain our community together, to make our sisters and brothers problems our problems, and to solve them together.


Ujamaa ~ Cooperative Economics
To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

Nia ~ Purpose
To make as our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Kuumba ~ Creativity
To do always as much as we can, in the way we can in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than when we inherited it.

Imani ~ Faith
To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

With the assistance of current Malcolm X President Anthony E. Munroe, the Kwanzaa Celebration Committee, over the past several years, has sponsored Kwanzaa Celebrations and activities during the seven day observance. These celebrations have drawn thousands of people and added to the growing Kwanzaa Movement in the Chicago area.


Kwanzaa is a step in helping African people in America to fulfill the need and desire to be a united people, with a common set of experiences that lead us toward a common set of goals and objectives for freedom, independence and liberation.


Kwanzaa: The Challenges of a New Season


As we enter a New Kwanzaa Season, we must remind ourselves of the continued challenges that we face. The fundamental issue that Africans in America must face is centered around the continued assault by the systems of racism and white supremacy that keeps us in bondage, servitude, and often times, confusion. What is at stake is our survival as a race of people. We must come to grips with the following challenges as we enter a New Kwanzaa Season.


Family Development: There is no question that the African in American family is in major disarray and is in need of major repair. Without strong African in America families, raising and nurturing our children, the future will remain bleak. Families are the foundation for the survival and development of a people. African men and women need to close ranks and reestablish the tradition of strong Black families in America.


Economic Development: Many Africans in America women and men continue to remind us that we earn in excess of 600 billion dollars a year in this country. The tragedy of this economic potential in the African Community in America is that the overwhelming majority of this income we earn, we spend with other people and not with our own. Other people still continue to dominate and maximize profits from our communities for their own advancement. When are we going to stop this awful practice of allowing other people to benefit from the dollars we earn?

Political Development: We have often said that politics is the science of who gets what, when, where, and how. And in this regard, we should recognize that the white power structure and its Black allies are doing everything possible to rupture our continuing movement for Black political empowerment. In electoral politics the lessons are clear. Personality clashes and individual personal conflicts have no place in the world of politics! The only thing that matters is what is best for African people in America. If we don't remain unified politically, we will not benefit from our efforts to increase Black political power in Chicago or in any other cities in which we live.


Cultural Development: Why should other people profit from our artistic and creative endeavors? It is clear that we are a creative people with a unique culture of our own. However, in this area the writers, poets, musicians, dancers, singers, actors, etc. must strive to control what we create and the entire African Community should aggressively support their efforts.


International Affairs: We must work harder to support the struggle of our brothers and sisters in Africa, the Caribbean, and South America in their continued liberation struggle for land and independence.


Historical Discontinuity: It appears the more we are oppressed under the system of racism and white supremacy, the more we forget our history. One generation from the next has difficulty remembering our great struggles, battles, and movements.


Harold Cruse points out in his book The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, “The farther the Negro [Black person] gets from his [her] historical antecedents in time, the more tenuous become his conceptual ties, the emptier his [her] social conceptions, the more superficial his visions.”


It must be clear, at this point in history that African people need to determine for ourselves solutions to the many serious problems we face. We should realize going into this New Kwanzaa Season that no one will do for us what we really need to do for ourselves.


It is time we begin providing for ourselves in all areas of life. No longer should we listen and adhere to how other people define us and our struggle. Accomplishing the objective of elevating our struggle to a higher level will require that we become more skilled in organizing our communities toward our liberation and freedom.


As an old African proverb points out, “Those who are dead have not gone forever. They are in the woman’s womb. They are in the child who whimpers.”


BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the National Chairman Emeritus of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click here to contact Dr. Worrill.
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Legends of the Fail By PAUL KRUGMAN

November 10, 2011

This is the way the euro ends — not with a bang but with bunga bunga. Not long ago, European leaders were insisting that Greece could and should stay on the euro while paying its debts in full. Now, with Italy falling off a cliff, it’s hard to see how the euro can survive at all.

But what’s the meaning of the eurodebacle? As always happens when disaster strikes, there’s a rush by ideologues to claim that the disaster vindicates their views. So it’s time to start debunking.

First things first: The attempt to create a common European currency was one of those ideas that cut across the usual ideological lines. It was cheered on by American right-wingers, who saw it as the next best thing to a revived gold standard, and by Britain’s left, which saw it as a big step toward a social-democratic Europe. But it was opposed by British conservatives, who also saw it as a step toward a social-democratic Europe. And it was questioned by American liberals, who worried — rightly, I’d say (but then I would, wouldn’t I?) — about what would happen if countries couldn’t use monetary and fiscal policy to fight recessions.

So now that the euro project is on the rocks, what lessons should we draw?

I’ve been hearing two claims, both false: that Europe’s woes reflect the failure of welfare states in general, and that Europe’s crisis makes the case for immediate fiscal austerity in the United States.

The assertion that Europe’s crisis proves that the welfare state doesn’t work comes from many Republicans. For example, Mitt Romney has accused President Obama of taking his inspiration from European “socialist democrats” and asserted that “Europe isn’t working in Europe.” The idea, presumably, is that the crisis countries are in trouble because they’re groaning under the burden of high government spending. But the facts say otherwise.

It’s true that all European countries have more generous social benefits — including universal health care — and higher government spending than America does. But the nations now in crisis don’t have bigger welfare states than the nations doing well — if anything, the correlation runs the other way. Sweden, with its famously high benefits, is a star performer, one of the few countries whose G.D.P. is now higher than it was before the crisis. Meanwhile, before the crisis, “social expenditure” — spending on welfare-state programs — was lower, as a percentage of national income, in all of the nations now in trouble than in Germany, let alone Sweden.

Oh, and Canada, which has universal health care and much more generous aid to the poor than the United States, has weathered the crisis better than we have.

The euro crisis, then, says nothing about the sustainability of the welfare state. But does it make the case for belt-tightening in a depressed economy?

You hear that claim all the time. America, we’re told, had better slash spending right away or we’ll end up like Greece or Italy. Again, however, the facts tell a different story.

First, if you look around the world you see that the big determining factor for interest rates isn’t the level of government debt but whether a government borrows in its own currency. Japan is much more deeply in debt than Italy, but the interest rate on long-term Japanese bonds is only about 1 percent to Italy’s 7 percent. Britain’s fiscal prospects look worse than Spain’s, but Britain can borrow at just a bit over 2 percent, while Spain is paying almost 6 percent.

What has happened, it turns out, is that by going on the euro, Spain and Italy in effect reduced themselves to the status of third-world countries that have to borrow in someone else’s currency, with all the loss of flexibility that implies. In particular, since euro-area countries can’t print money even in an emergency, they’re subject to funding disruptions in a way that nations that kept their own currencies aren’t — and the result is what you see right now. America, which borrows in dollars, doesn’t have that problem.

The other thing you need to know is that in the face of the current crisis, austerity has been a failure everywhere it has been tried: no country with significant debts has managed to slash its way back into the good graces of the financial markets. For example, Ireland is the good boy of Europe, having responded to its debt problems with savage austerity that has driven its unemployment rate to 14 percent. Yet the interest rate on Irish bonds is still above 8 percent — worse than Italy.

The moral of the story, then, is to beware of ideologues who are trying to hijack the European crisis on behalf of their agendas. If we listen to those ideologues, all we’ll end up doing is making our own problems — which are different from Europe’s, but arguably just as severe — even worse.
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Killing the Euro By PAUL KRUGMAN

December 1, 2011

Can the euro be saved? Not long ago we were told that the worst possible outcome was a Greek default. Now a much wider disaster seems all too likely.

True, market pressure lifted a bit on Wednesday after central banks made a splashy announcement about expanded credit lines (which will, in fact, make hardly any real difference). But even optimists now see Europe as headed for recession, while pessimists warn that the euro may become the epicenter of another global financial crisis.

How did things go so wrong? The answer you hear all the time is that the euro crisis was caused by fiscal irresponsibility. Turn on your TV and you’re very likely to find some pundit declaring that if America doesn’t slash spending we’ll end up like Greece. Greeeeeece!

But the truth is nearly the opposite. Although Europe’s leaders continue to insist that the problem is too much spending in debtor nations, the real problem is too little spending in Europe as a whole. And their efforts to fix matters by demanding ever harsher austerity have played a major role in making the situation worse.

The story so far: In the years leading up to the 2008 crisis, Europe, like America, had a runaway banking system and a rapid buildup of debt. In Europe’s case, however, much of the lending was across borders, as funds from Germany flowed into southern Europe. This lending was perceived as low risk. Hey, the recipients were all on the euro, so what could go wrong?

For the most part, by the way, this lending went to the private sector, not to governments. Only Greece ran large budget deficits during the good years; Spain actually had a surplus on the eve of the crisis.

Then the bubble burst. Private spending in the debtor nations fell sharply. And the question European leaders should have been asking was how to keep those spending cuts from causing a Europe-wide downturn.

Instead, however, they responded to the inevitable, recession-driven rise in deficits by demanding that all governments — not just those of the debtor nations — slash spending and raise taxes. Warnings that this would deepen the slump were waved away. “The idea that austerity measures could trigger stagnation is incorrect,” declared Jean-Claude Trichet, then the president of the European Central Bank. Why? Because “confidence-inspiring policies will foster and not hamper economic recovery.”

But the confidence fairy was a no-show.

Wait, there’s more. During the years of easy money, wages and prices in southern Europe rose substantially faster than in northern Europe. This divergence now needs to be reversed, either through falling prices in the south or through rising prices in the north. And it matters which: If southern Europe is forced to deflate its way to competitiveness, it will both pay a heavy price in employment and worsen its debt problems. The chances of success would be much greater if the gap were closed via rising prices in the north.

But to close the gap through rising prices in the north, policy makers would have to accept temporarily higher inflation for the euro area as a whole. And they’ve made it clear that they won’t. Last April, in fact, the European Central Bank began raising interest rates, even though it was obvious to most observers that underlying inflation was, if anything, too low.

And it’s probably no coincidence that April was also when the euro crisis entered its new, dire phase. Never mind Greece, whose economy is to Europe roughly as greater Miami is to the United States. At this point, markets have lost faith in the euro as a whole, driving up interest rates even for countries like Austria and Finland, hardly known for profligacy. And it’s not hard to see why. The combination of austerity-for-all and a central bank morbidly obsessed with inflation makes it essentially impossible for indebted countries to escape from their debt trap and is, therefore, a recipe for widespread debt defaults, bank runs and general financial collapse.

I hope, for our sake as well as theirs, that the Europeans will change course before it’s too late. But, to be honest, I don’t believe they will. In fact, what’s much more likely is that we will follow them down the path to ruin.

For in America, as in Europe, the economy is being dragged down by troubled debtors — in our case, mainly homeowners. And here, too, we desperately need expansionary fiscal and monetary policies to support the economy as these debtors struggle back to financial health. Yet, as in Europe, public discourse is dominated by deficit scolds and inflation obsessives.

So the next time you hear someone claiming that if we don’t slash spending we’ll turn into Greece, your answer should be that if we do slash spending while the economy is still in a depression, we’ll turn into Europe. In fact, we’re well on our way.
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Will China Break? By PAUL KRUGMAN

December 18, 2011

Consider the following picture: Recent growth has relied on a huge construction boom fueled by surging real estate prices, and exhibiting all the classic signs of a bubble. There was rapid growth in credit — with much of that growth taking place not through traditional banking but rather through unregulated “shadow banking” neither subject to government supervision nor backed by government guarantees. Now the bubble is bursting — and there are real reasons to fear financial and economic crisis.

Am I describing Japan at the end of the 1980s? Or am I describing America in 2007? I could be. But right now I’m talking about China, which is emerging as another danger spot in a world economy that really, really doesn’t need this right now.

I’ve been reluctant to weigh in on the Chinese situation, in part because it’s so hard to know what’s really happening. All economic statistics are best seen as a peculiarly boring form of science fiction, but China’s numbers are more fictional than most. I’d turn to real China experts for guidance, but no two experts seem to be telling the same story.

Still, even the official data are troubling — and recent news is sufficiently dramatic to ring alarm bells.

The most striking thing about the Chinese economy over the past decade was the way household consumption, although rising, lagged behind overall growth. At this point consumer spending is only about 35 percent of G.D.P., about half the level in the United States.

So who’s buying the goods and services China produces? Part of the answer is, well, we are: as the consumer share of the economy declined, China increasingly relied on trade surpluses to keep manufacturing afloat. But the bigger story from China’s point of view is investment spending, which has soared to almost half of G.D.P.

The obvious question is, with consumer demand relatively weak, what motivated all that investment? And the answer, to an important extent, is that it depended on an ever-inflating real estate bubble. Real estate investment has roughly doubled as a share of G.D.P. since 2000, accounting directly for more than half of the overall rise in investment. And surely much of the rest of the increase was from firms expanding to sell to the burgeoning construction industry.

Do we actually know that real estate was a bubble? It exhibited all the signs: not just rising prices, but also the kind of speculative fever all too familiar from our own experiences just a few years back — think coastal Florida.

And there was another parallel with U.S. experience: as credit boomed, much of it came not from banks but from an unsupervised, unprotected shadow banking system. There were huge differences in detail: shadow banking American style tended to involve prestigious Wall Street firms and complex financial instruments, while the Chinese version tends to run through underground banks and even pawnshops. Yet the consequences were similar: in China as in America a few years ago, the financial system may be much more vulnerable than data on conventional banking reveal.

Now the bubble is visibly bursting. How much damage will it do to the Chinese economy — and the world?

Some commentators say not to worry, that China has strong, smart leaders who will do whatever is necessary to cope with a downturn. Implied though not often stated is the thought that China can do what it takes because it doesn’t have to worry about democratic niceties.

To me, however, these sound like famous last words. After all, I remember very well getting similar assurances about Japan in the 1980s, where the brilliant bureaucrats at the Ministry of Finance supposedly had everything under control. And later, there were assurances that America would never, ever, repeat the mistakes that led to Japan’s lost decade — when we are, in reality, doing even worse than Japan did.

For what it’s worth, statements about economic policy from Chinese officials don’t strike me as being especially clear-headed. In particular, the way China has been lashing out at foreigners — among other things, imposing a punitive tariff on imports of U.S.-made autos that will do nothing to help its economy but will help poison trade relations — does not sound like a mature government that knows what it’s doing.

And anecdotal evidence suggests that while China’s government may not be constrained by rule of law, it is constrained by pervasive corruption, which means that what actually happens at the local level may bear little resemblance to what is ordered in Beijing.

I hope that I’m being needlessly alarmist here. But it’s impossible not to be worried: China’s story just sounds too much like the crack-ups we’ve already seen elsewhere. And a world economy already suffering from the mess in Europe really, really doesn’t need a new epicenter of crisis.
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Friday, December 23, 2011

Mom sent me this letter from heaven:



Dear Mark,

I have much to apologize to you for, most specifically, and significantly, for having taken the easy way out, and bought into the fiction of your mental illness. What I have come to learn up here in heaven is just how sane you are, and have always been, save for the times you were on anti-depressants, which so limited the range of your emotional responses that you experienced neither joy, nor sorrow, that you could not even cry, and now, even on the mood stabilizers, how you can't cry. My bad. Think of it, ME, the all-time follower of rules - first thing I wanted to do after each of my depressions was, after the veil of depression was lifted, was to go off meds. Which I did, but always with disastrous results. That was not, however, because I permanently needed to take anti-depressants, but because I never dealt with the root underlying causes of my depression, so much of which was invested in you, and trying to get you well, and seeing you as well, especially during those three years when you were diligently taking your meds, most recently, and we were all so happy, as you gained 100 pounds in three years, got out of bed twice a week to shower and shave, and never once returned to a church, the mosque, Rainbow Records, or even the Barrington Area Library. But, at least you were docile, not angry, not giving away all your money to strangers (okay, I only fronted you the $10 / week, and you spent half of that getting your hair cut at the Hometown Barber Shop, from which you were ultimately banned, because the customers were talking about you. Again, it was your behavior that so upsets people. Your sudden shifts to anger, yelling at me, cursing me ... it just hurt so much. What had I ever done to you? All I ever wanted to do, once John died, was to save you from death itself, even if it cost you life itself. Surprising, and ironic, isn't it - I could see how there are things worse than death (we discussed this with regards to Jimmy Hockett), and yet, I never saw how that applied to you and your life too. I was blinded; they call it the mote in one's eye. It was just so much more convenient to assume you were sick, and that your sickness made you do it (all those things that so upset, startled and frightened me), and so convenient too, since that assumption meant I never had to look in the mirror, or to try to walk in your shoes, or view the world as you view it, to see my own culpability in thwarting your plans, your dreams, your ambitions, none of which were part of what I saw and chose to mis-remember about you. I was so proud of you working as an actuary - you always dressed so nice (well, not so much when you were living with Linda - PLEASE, whatever you do, avoid her like the plague, famine, and pestilence - she is toxic for you), and you dated our beloved Susan B Gillies, who was always such a blessing in our lives, and in yours, and all those wonderful actuary friends who thought so highly of you.

And I never saw how ashamed you were to be a member of the white race that has inflicted so much pain / suffering / violence / death all over the globe, to be a member of the Christian faith community in whose name all these national sins have been committed, to be a citizen of the United States - the greatest purveyor of misery and destruction known to human kind. That explains to me your goofy hair cuts and your dying your hair all those ridiculous colors, using the most insane household items for dye - shoe polish? REALLY? Mark, nobody does that, so, of course, you MUST be sick. Well, no, not really. You are the most moral, righteous man I ever knew - kind and giving to strangers, all those homeless people you brought home, and all of them, so accomplished. I am ashamed now that we weren't more generous with Marla; oh how my heart aches for that poor woman, beset upon worse than Job, and young Bradley - he of the kindest, biggest heart - a wild child, but god-loving, so loyal to his grand mother, and wanting only a better life for his daughter ... but they so frightened me, and your association with them so burdened me, plus, I was dying all the time anyway, not seeing the doctor about my congenitive heart failure was pretty careless; somehow, I just never thought I'd die. And then things seemed to suddenly get better - we had the great shopping adventure to Aldi's, that was so much fun; and when I had the stroke, you were like a guardian angel, doing everything that could be done in an attempt to save my life, which was gone, save for the final gasp after the life support was pulled. It was your behavior, Mark, that so upset me, and it is your behavior that all the fancy schmancy smart folk use to diagnose you as mentally ill, when, if any of us had wanted, we could have simply asked you to stop misbehaving - but then, you would have said, "Just lay down the law - tell me what you don't want me to do, and I will never do it (so as we would ever find out), but MARK - had we done that, you'd have come up with even more outrageous ways to upset us; we knew that about you then, and we know that about you still. What is the point in laying down the law for you if you are never going to behave or conform to our expectations and standards? Do you really thing you are a law unto your own self, answerable only to your God? Well, yes, I know you do, it's just that I would never have been comfortable knowing that, or at least having heard you say that to me -- I had my own idea about God, and yours was so radically different. How is one to resolve such dichotomies? (Yes, I know, you are thinking, "but, of course, dear mother, with lobotomies, and now whose lobotomy shall it be? Mine, or yours?")

I guess the only way they'll ever get you to conform is to either crucify you, or lobotomitize you, and based on your inability to get yourself committed to a mental hospital last Saturday night, neither of those seems likely. So, sad to say, keep on doing what you do, God and the Angels and the Saints and the Prophets are with you 100%, and i'm maybe even starting to come around, to about 15%. I've always loved you. But you never used to be so difficult to like.

It does seem, however, since your loss inventory epiphany that you are far more calm, far less angry, than in what we once called your most “man-icky moments,” which cannot be a bad thing, although, you REALLY don't care if you live or die, where you live, what you do, or any of that. It's a ZEN-thing, I understand, in principle. I'm just not happy about it in fact, and I rather doubt any of our family is either. But you've made it clear you simply don't give a damn about what they think, you don't need them, and you don't even want them in your life. They had their chances and they all deserted you. Who wouldn't have? You just seemed so out of control.

Why'd you have to change?

Love,

Sam Beardsley's mom
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Sad and tragic beyond words - we MUST view HEALTH CARE as a National Security Issue and a RIGHT of each and every citizen

Johan Persyn - Dec 18, 2011 - Public
M Monica originally shared this post:
How The American Medical System Almost Killed Me

Just a heads up: This post is very long, shocking, and personal. This is your warning.

I keep getting questions about why I'm in a wheelchair, why I have lupus, and I have never fully addressed them; so here you go: a complete explanation. It's a bit long, but if you think it's long to read it, imagine how long it was for me to live it.

From The Beginning:

When I was 15 years old, in 1995, I was diagnosed with systemic lupus. Lupus is a disease in which the immune system malfunctions, becomes confused, and begins attacking the body instead of doing what it's supposed to do, which is to attack infections and viruses. When lupus flares, the immune system can choose to attack almost anything in the body. My immune system first targeted my blood system. When I was 17, I was hospitalized for 3 months with a severe case of hemolytic anemia, a condition in which the body destroys its own red blood cells. After several months, they told my family that I was probably going to die.

The treatment was repeated blood transfusions and high dose corticosteroids as administered by IV. I made a slow recovery, but survived. When I was released from the hospital, I was not strong enough to return to high school full time, but did most of my work at home. I even applied to college. But I was turning 18 and was about to be dropped from my parent's insurance plan; they did not know how else to get me the medications I needed to survive. My parents tried to arrange a marriage with an older man who had health coverage and a good income. They told me I would not survive if I did not marry him.

I was determined to complete college. I refused to marry. However, my first semester of college, I was hospitalized again with pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in my lungs. I wasn't able to breathe well and I was in severe pain. The recuperation process was slow and painful. My relatives again pressured me to marry. I gave in. The pulmonary embolism had illustrated their point. Marriage for health insurance is a much more common practice than is suspected in the United States. Many severely ill people marry (or stay married) because without health insurance or medication, they would die. The process of applying for Medicaid can take months, or even years. If you are severely ill, often you don't survive. I got married when I was a teenager to someone I did not love because I was told I had no other choice. And perhaps I did not; I look back and I'm not sure what else I could have done.

I became extremely depressed as a result of the arranged marriage. It is horrible to be married to someone you do not love. I was able to get the drugs I needed, but my hospitalizations continued through the next 7 years. In late 2006, I decided to leave. It was difficult; he was violent. And manipulative. Every time I thought about leaving, he pointed out to me that due to America's healthcare system, I was unlikely to survive more than a few years if I left. I reached the point where I did not care. Freedom was worth more to me than survival.

Marriage should not be the main thing that healthcare access is dependent on. But this is our system; health coverage is structured around two things: where you work and who you are married to.

When I left, I decided to pretend I was well so I could get a job and get my own health insurance. I moved to Colorado, and got a job as a receptionist. I never told my coworkers how sick I was, but eventually I couldn't hide my complications. Several times I got staph infections in my arms (and once in my blood stream) which were bad enough that I required surgery. During one hospitalization, they considered amputating my right arm. In the end they were able to save it after 5 days of IV antibiotics. During the winters, I get pneumonia almost every single year. Last year it took me 3 months to get rid of it. My immune system is suppressed so that the lupus doesn't flare, but this means that I catch everything I come into contact with. It is likely I will get pneumonia again this year. My immunoglobulin levels are so low that I need to start receiving IV infusions of the IGA fluid in order to help prevent getting sick. That means, essentially, that my immune system is so impared that a flu or pneumonia shot will not work on me. I will need to get these IV infusions every month for the rest of my life.

During the year I attempted to work, from August of 2008 till September 2009, I was hospitalized 7 times. I was a temp; I had no benefits, and the company I worked for would simply get another temp to replace me when I went into the hospital. I had several TIAs (mini-strokes) during this time. But I disguised the symptoms and kept working to try and afford medicine. I was still on my ex-husband's insurance, but the copays for the drugs I needed cost $17,000 a year. I made just $17,200 at my job. As I began to run out of money, I started rationing my medication. I started living on the cheapest foods I could find to survive; rice and Gatorade. Lack of proper nutrition further damaged my body. And then eventually I ran out of money to pay my rent.

I had no car. I was dependent on public transportation. This was risky; I developed a condition in which I began to pass out when I stood up or walked for long periods of time. Several times this happened on a bus; I would be sitting and riding the bus, and suddenly, I'd pass out. The first time it happened, I woke up slumped forward, with my head hitting the seat in front of me. I'd be awake and aware, but not physically able to move for 10-15 minutes. This has since been diagnosed by my neurologist as neurocardiogenic syncopy. It's basically a miscommunication between my brain and my heart.

Then I went half blind. On a Saturday morning, May 2, 2009, I woke up and I could no longer see out of my left eye. While I'd slept that night, I'd had a huge central retinal vein occlusion. My doctor admitted me to the hospital and they did chemotherapy to try and control my immune system.

The vision loss is now unfortunately permanent; I am told by the retinal specialist that I may lose the sight in the other eye at any time. Usually I do not think about the possibility of going fully blind; I'd rather not think about it.

Last year, the divorce with my ex-husband was finalized. I lost insurance coverage as a result. I applied for disability and Medicaid immediately afterward, but I went into the hospital 3 times in the 3 months immediately following. I had dozens of pulmonary embolisms in my lungs. The good thing about this is that it resulted in Medicaid getting sped up for me. Normally it takes longer than 3 months, but because I had been hospitalized in the ICU, the hospital put pressure on the government help get me Medicaid faster than normal. Unfortunately I had to almost die for this to happen. I was costing them thousands and thousands of dollars for each day I stayed in the ICU.

I am now able to get the medications I need. But I'm dependent on Medicaid for survival. If it is cut and the medications I need are no longer available, I will have more strokes, pulmonary embolisms, and I could go into a coma due to adrenal crisis. My adrenal glands have atrophied after being on prednisone for years.

I dealt, and still deal with pain from arthritis, fibromyalgia, nerve pain, and pain from lupus. Many of the things that make one type of pain better unfortunately make another type of pain worse.

However, I try and hide it. If you see me here on Google plus, in hangouts (live video chat), you will probably notice most of the time I'm sitting or lying down, logging in from bed or a recliner. On a normal, average day, my pain is about a 7 on a scale of 1-10. When the pain is worse, I usually don't hang out. On those days I'm just trying to cope.

Here's The Summary

I have been extremely lucky to survive as long as I have. Most of the things I have been through should have killed me; it has been like dodging bullets.

I recently got engaged to a supportive man who is very kind and helpful, but I cannot marry him. If I did, I would lose Medicaid. If I was on his insurance plan, he would not be able to afford the medications I need to survive. He'd go medically bankrupt within a few months, and I'd end up risking my life again. So we are just engaged and will remain that way until the healthcare system changes.

A question people commonly ask me is: "Are you going to be all right?"

The best answer I can give you is: I'll try. Everything I've done since I was 15 years old was with the end goal of survival in mind. The best thing you can do to help me survive is advocate for the government not to cut Medicaid. That would help more people like me survive. But the odds are not in my favor. The system wore me down. I don't have much strength left. And if I do die; don't feel too bad; despite the pain, I've enjoyed my life. Perhaps that's all we can ask of life in the end.

We need a long term solution in the form of a single-payer healthcare system. We need it very badly. The health insurance companies and drug manufacturers conspire to squeeze the maximum amount of profit out of the system: and in cases like mine, they don't care if you die in the process. I found this out when an insurance company, United Healthcare, tried to force me out of the hospital right after I did the chemotherapy in 2009. I'd been hospitalized several days, and apparently they felt this exceeded the limit I was entitled to because of the diagnosis my rheumatologist had admitted me under, even though I was not well enough to leave. First the insurance company went to the doctors and tried to get them to discharge me from the hospital; when my doctors refused, saying that would be dangerous, a nurse from the insurance company then called my cell phone. She told me I was well enough to leave the hospital, and threatened not to cover the cost of the stay if I didn't leave. I was scared of medical bankruptcy. I attempted to leave, and passed out in the process. My heart rate dipped dangerously low, so I was rehospitalized in the cardiac unit. The hospital eventually called the insurance company and told them they would sue them on my behalf if they did not stop trying to intimidate me into leaving before I was recovered.

This is what happens with companies that are after the bottom line: profit. Dollars are what matter. Lives are secondary when profits are the goal.

My medicines would not be that expensive if the drug companies and insurance companies were better regulated; but they are not. Right now, the system only profits if, when you are chronically sick, you are dropped from their insurance, or you die. The American healthcare system exists to bankrupt and exploit the most vulnerable, who, lack the tools or strength to fight back.

By the way, if you see me on hangout's video chat, I don't usually want to discuss my healthcare problems. That's why I wrote this post. I come on Google Plus so I can forget about it. Hangouts and the interaction I get with people has changed my life. For years I have gone in and out of the hospital and felt horribly lonely. Hangouts are a fantastic tool for people with a severe disability. Now I get to interact with people around the world. It's amazing. The Google Hangout Team is to be commended for creating a life-changing tool which revolutionizes the lives of the disabled.

And thank you, btw, for reading this post. It's hard to condense 15 years into several paragraphs. People like me usually don't get the chance to share their stories because when their condition gets as severe as mine, they've usually dead by now. I, however, by luck or chance, am still alive. This my testimony as to the cost of that survival.

(Picture attached is my hospitalization when I went fully blind in my left eye, in 2009. A friend has brought me crab for dinner as hospital food is notoriously bad.)
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Wendy and Richard end their sailing adventure, begun last April - Wendy is such a fantstic chronicler!

Preveza, Wednesday 12th October 2011

We have made our way here via Paxos and Emerald Bay, Anti-Paxos where we met up again with Shirley & Colin on Silent Wings. Still gloriously sunny and warm and the sea really is a clear greeny blue. We made our way together to Preveza and timing has been perfect. We arrived here just ahead of the weather and it has thundered and rained since. Spent 3 nights on the free town quay, whilst sussing out the next steps. Preveza town is across a mile wide inlet from the boatyards - there is a tunnel connecting the two that is for vehicles only - no pedestrians or bicycles.

We got a town map from a nice lady in the town hall / public information office. It turned out her brother worked in the tunnel office - she gave him a ring and arranged for us to go to the tunnel office, wave at the camera, he would see us and get a chap in a truck to come and pick us and bikes up, take us through the tunnel and to the marina. After a couple of hours when we were ready to come back, we were to cycle to the tunnel entrance, wave again at the camera, and eventually truck would appear to take us back across. No charge! And it did sort of work like that. We went to the marina, to confirm our lift out for Monday, 10th (we had kept changing our minds, trying to judge when would be least wet and windy). It looks a good yard, much better than Cagliari, and they are extremely helpful.

They also advised us we needed to get our Dekpa transit form signed and stamped by the Port Authorities in Preveza town before we could be lifted - we duly went along and were bemused by the variations in bureaucracy. We were signed in and out, stamped three times, had our boat papers and passports photocopied and told to come back in the spring to go through the whole process again before putting the boat back in the water. This is not some central database. All these bits of paper go into the chasm of a rusty filing cabinet and stay there I am sure.


So we have taken sails off (before the rains), spread out and packed up on Preveza town quay in view of passing tourists and locals. Then over to the boatyard side and into the "box" in readiness for the slings first thing next morning. After an uncomfortable windy night, we were lifted in improving conditions and had the rest of Monday and all Tuesday in sunshine to carry out all those jobs necessary for putting a boat to bed for the winter. We had a Swedish chap come and ask if we wanted to sell our boat! He asked 3 times and left his card - persistent so-and-so.

Today a fascinating 5 hr journey by bus along the Gulf of Corinth, past Patras and Delphi, to Athens to fly home - time to go, it has been a long journey and very good. But looking forward to home time.

Closing off this year's trip. We'll be back next April to start the Eastern Med adventure - probably mostly Greece, but may end up in Turkey. Who knows. Really looking forward to that part of the journey - we feel we have finally arrived!

Καλη νύχτα (Kale nikta). Αντίο μέχρι το επόμενο έτος (bye until next year). xx to all. Wendy & Richard & "Myrica"

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Last of the Honey - temp goodbye to Greece from Agios Nikolaos, Greece | Richard and Wendy sailaway | Off Exploring

























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Friday, December 2, 2011

ओन्स्किऔस्नेस्स रैसेद!

Seismic Insights; Cosmic Understandings; Meta- and Uber- well communicated.

Heard just this evening for the first time ever your interpretation of Gordon Light Foot's Song for a Winter's Eve and I am trembling with emotion - this is as unique and brilliant a rendering of a cover as anything I have ever heard and you not only capture all of what the original was, and a little more - you send one's mind reeling through an entirely different prism of experience, joy, and delight. Warmest regards, and best wishes always for your art and musical sensitivities; and your deep, deep, and profoundly insightful view of the human condition.

I segue from Summertime (Porgy & Bess) into my own rendering of this tune, but I've never explored to such infinite depths of emotional soul-filled, soul-bleeding humanity as this. I've learnt a great lesson.

Be well, be blessed, you are beloved, my dear, dear friend, and faithful followers.

http://youtu.be/f660fEGaaJw
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सिस्मिक इन्सिघ्ट्स; कॉस्मिक understandings

Seismic Insights; Cosmic Understandings; Meta- and Uber- well communicated.

Heard just this evening for the first time ever your interpretation of Gordon Light Foot's Song for a Winter's Eve and I am trembling with emotion - this is as unique and brilliant a rendering of a cover as anything I have ever heard and you not only capture all of what the original was, and a little more - you send one's mind reeling through an entirely different prism of experience, joy, and delight. Warmest regards, and best wishes always for your art and musical sensitivities; and your deep, deep, and profoundly insightful view of the human condition.

I segue from Summertime (Porgy & Bess) into my own rendering of this tune, but I've never explored to such infinite depths of emotional soul-filled, soul-bleeding humanity as this. I've learnt a great lesson.

Be well, be blessed, you are beloved, my dear, dear friend, and faithful followers.

http://youtu.be/f660fEGaaJw
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Thursday, December 1, 2011

are the three of us going to come back with bruises from mutual frustration and headbanging?

What I love about facebook are those snippets of conversation between mutual friends who have a LOT of history together, who love each other, and care enough to speak only the truth, with no fear of reprisal or judgment, or of losing the friendship.

With friends such as these, you can survive a family that deserts you at a VERY young and tender and impressionable age (provided these friends have already signed on, and you have made that life-long committment to love, honor, cherish and obey each other; that you will ALWAYS have the other's back.

More treausred than all the gold in Fort Knox.

Max and Megs - I sure hope you know and understand full well how blessed you are for the knowing of and loyalty to each other!

God Bless You Both, and may His Peace be upon your souls forever and ever, AMEN.


---------------------
=====================

MAX: Wow, you found someone who makes you give in?? DAMN

MEGS: Yeah its not the first time either. Hes as stubborn as a mule.

MAX: Nah, you're the mule, he's the rock.

MEGS: Lol a rock that i constantly beat my head against.

MAX: None of that! Haven't we been over this? Or are the three of us going to come back with bruises from mutual frustration and headbanging?

MEGS: Lol it is possible. I've heard that im really good at frustrating people.

MAX: You,?? Frustrating?? Nah!!!

MEGS: Thats what I'm told but I don't believe it. LOL.
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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Triggering Worldwide Consciousness क्ष्पन्सिओन




Scientific Proof that Galactic Energies Have
Triggered Worldwide Consciousness Expansion
ScienceSaturday, February 5th, 2011


New energy from the galactic center is raising consciousness, which is triggering an upgrade to our DNA.

On Coast to Coast AM, scientist David Sereda provided evidence that our Solar System entered a new field of cosmic energy that set off a chain of events including the vibration of the entire planet, the largest storm ever recorded on Saturn, and an early sunrise in Greenland (related to a wobble of the Earth and magnetic pole movement). The sequence of events began the day after the combined Winter Solstice and total lunar eclipse on December 21, 2010 – exactly two years to the day before the end of the Mayan calendar.

On Dec 22, 2010, one day after the Winter Solstice/total lunar eclipse, earthquake sensors all over the planet all went off at the same time with full signal strength. According to Sereda, this was not an earthquake – the entire planet vibrated.

On Dec 23, 2010 NASA reported that the largest storm ever recorded on Saturn erupted and is still going on today. Saturn is usually a very smooth object to look at. But, the storm on Saturn is massive. (Note that the storm may have also begun on Dec 22, but wasn’t reported until the next day.)

The Sun normally rises over Greenland’s most westerly town, Ilulissat, on January 13, ending a month-and-a-half of winter darkness. For the first time in history, sunlight crept above the horizon two days early on January 11, 2011 [1.11.11] at 1pm. The media attributed the cause of the early sunrise to the melting of Greenland’s ice. According to Sereda, that is laughable. Even Time Magazine said no. Many, many miles of ice would have have melted for this theory to be correct.

There was also a report that compass readings in Ilulissat were off by 3-4 degrees on 1/11/11, but returned to normal three days later. A compass is measuring the magnetic field – not the physical earth. However, the back and forth reading of the compass along with early sunrise indicates that the Earth actually wobbled. It must have wobbled at least a degree to have the sunrise occur two days early, according to Sereda.

Einstein said the field is the sole governing agency of matter. Fields of energy dictate the behavior of everything – from subatomic particles to massive planets. When you see a sudden change in an energy system, it will cause a sudden change to an ecosystem. With the giant storm on Saturn and the changes occurring on Earth, there is no doubt that something significant has happened from an energy or field perspective. Sereda concluded: “When you go into these new energy fields, changes are very sudden. you get these sudden vibrations. And, there it was. Everybody missed it.”

Other indications that the entire solar system is undergoing change are the melting poles on Mars, massive storms on Jupiter, and temperatures rising on many of the planets. All of these changes on the planets indicates that the entire solar system has entered a new field of energy.

Sereda also pointed out that the human body has an electromagnetic field that can be affected by activity on the sun, as well as energies coming from the galactic center, as the Earth moves through it. Fields of energy have either chaos or harmonic information inside of it. According ot Sereda, if these energy fields that are coming in from the galactic center contain harmonic information, then there is absolutely no doubt that you can scientifically prove that it is causing a consciousness shift on this planet and will continue to do so through 2012.

One of the theories of 2012 is that we are going to receive this new energy that will cause a shift in consciousness and it will affect everything on the planet – including the planet itself. Bruce Lipton has said that consciousness tells energy to tell the DNA what to do. Your genes are not your blueprint. Consciousness is your blueprint. Therefore, it is likely that along with a shift in consciousness, our DNA will be upgraded.

A worldwide consciousness expansion is happening now and will continue through 2012, which is now confirmed by science and the events that are currently unfolding around the world.

David Wilcock, among others, has been lecturing for several years now about energy coming in from the galactic center that will trigger higher consciousness and a DNA upgrade. You can learn a whole lot more by watching his outstanding film, “2012 Event Horizon”:

http://youtu.be/cEyqT2_ricA
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Sunday, November 27, 2011

Don’t Mourn, Balkanize! Essays After Yugoslavia.

Andrej Grubacic on Yugoslavia
Don’t Mourn, Balkanize
by PAUL BUHLE


By Andrej Grubacic, Introduction by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Oakland: PM Books, 269pp, $20.

This is a splendid time for the North American reader to meet the extraordinary Andrej Grubacic. After something of a letdown following the Seattle 1999 events– including what many of us perceived as an ideology-driven sectarian turn–anarchists are back in the news with the Occupations. No, not the anarchism of Bakunin or even Bookchin, but anarchism in a new key as well as a new generation, more practical and more open.

Grubacic, the natural citizen of an exterminated republic (Yugoslavia) happens to be the grandson of one of Tito’s key aides and a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement that sought unsuccessfully to break the lock of the Russians and Americans over world affairs. Faced first with the break-up of Yugoslavia, then the radiation-spewing population-bombings of NATO setting the model for future “humanitarian intervention,” he found his intellectual footing in what I would call anarcho-syndicalism. He also found himself out of a job, and made his way to SUNY Binghamton, aided by Noam Chomsky and then Immanuel Wallerstein. Since then, he has emerged as a theorist and activist in several quarters, all of them vital. If he was not in the front line with Occupation, he was in the second line of innovative thinkers; with Staughton Lynd, meanwhile, he posed (in thebook Wobblies and Zapatistas) ways for the return of an IWW-style politics of labor and community that could logically be called Syndicalism (although Wobblies almost never did).

Don’t Mourn, Balkanize! reflects one or two of his predilections less well-known than his espousal of anarchist organizational notions (mostly in Z-Net) and his running commentaries in various places on the emergence and significance of Occupations. It would be a mistake to see one subject as distant from another. He is looking for a wholesale reconstruction of politics along voluntary, collectivist lines, across all the usual borders; and behind a tough analysis, he is looking for what we now Old New Leftists used to call the beloved community, ways of linking human beings in urgent need of solidarity, making possible the solution of problems faced on the planet.

There is a backstory that does not quite emerge in these pages but deserves a mention. Slovenians and their partners (or rivals), Croats, were once vital forces in the American working class Left, and their cooperative movements, through ethnic halls and fraternal associations, outlasted most of the rest of the blue collar Left across a scattering of states. Until recent times, tamburitza bands played to good-sized audiences (driving in from the suburbs, most likely) in Croatian Halls that had back rooms with libraries and portraits of Karl Marx. Slovenian votes, it was said, provided the margin of victory for Richard Trumka in the United Mine Workers, and projected his rise at the moment when the AFL’s corrupt, thuggish leaders had lost their sway. Scarcely aware of this ethnic history of labor struggle and cooperative efforts, Grubacic is a descendent in many ways.

First of all, for any post-Yugoslavian radical, there is the need for refurbished collaboration among Croats, Slovenians, Serbs and others who once lived in a state together, not without resentments but without fratricide. In Grubacic’s critique, the CIA and State Department played upon centuries of distrust, adding hundreds of millions of dollars of fuel to the flames, then sweeping down relentlessly, pitting one nationality against another.

Yugoslavia, he emphasizes, was always a dream of the Balkans, never quite a reality despite the victory over Fascism and the Tito decades to follow. The fragility of the model, a kind of market state-socialism with a bureaucratic class ruling over others, was bound to come apart, although without the global market stress and CIA operations, it would have lasted longer and perhaps evolved into something better. The dark side of the Balkans, a kind of escape valve for the Western European imagination with rugged landscapes, pirates or the Robin Hood type (or the opposite, today’s drug-dealers and sex-traders), was the veritable opposite of Victorian England or pre-Hitler Germany. The darkness was as much cause or hope as despair, and like victims of the other kinds of colonialism, a lifting of the pre-modern shackles seemed the key task of socialists, then communists. No leftwingers in Europe, at least, faced bigger problems of ethnic rivalries and old grudges.

Grubacic offers hope for a voluntary, cooperative future for something we might (or might not) call Yugoslavia, and this is a hope for all the rest of humankind. He does so with a precision of detail that no review can capture, but with a kindliness, an openness to possibility and a resistance of dogma, that anarcho-syndicalism or anarchism of a new kind looks as promising on the page as in the Occupation. Quite an accomplishment.

Paul Buhle is a retired senior lecturer of history and American civilization at Brown University, a Distinguished Lecturer at the Organization of American Historians and American Studies Association, the founder of Radical America magazine, and the founder and former director of New York University’s Oral History of the American Left archive. He is also the recipient of the 2010 Will Eisner Award for The Art of Harvey Kurtzman. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
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Andrej Grubacic on Yugoslavia Don’t Mourn, Balkanize by PAUL BUHLE

WEEKEND EDITION NOVEMBER 25-27, 2011


Don’t Mourn, Balkanize! Essays After Yugoslavia.
By Andrej Grubacic, Introduction by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

Oakland: PM Books, 269pp, $20.


This is a splendid time for the North American reader to meet the extraordinary Andrej Grubacic. After something of a letdown following the Seattle 1999 events– including what many of us perceived as an ideology-driven sectarian turn–anarchists are back in the news with the Occupations. No, not the anarchism of Bakunin or even Bookchin, but anarchism in a new key as well as a new generation, more practical and more open.

Grubacic, the natural citizen of an exterminated republic (Yugoslavia) happens to be the grandson of one of Tito’s key aides and a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement that sought unsuccessfully to break the lock of the Russians and Americans over world affairs. Faced first with the break-up of Yugoslavia, then the radiation-spewing population-bombings of NATO setting the model for future “humanitarian intervention,” he found his intellectual footing in what I would call anarcho-syndicalism. He also found himself out of a job, and made his way to SUNY Binghamton, aided by Noam Chomsky and then Immanuel Wallerstein. Since then, he has emerged as a theorist and activist in several quarters, all of them vital. If he was not in the front line with Occupation, he was in the second line of innovative thinkers; with Staughton Lynd, meanwhile, he posed (in thebook Wobblies and Zapatistas) ways for the return of an IWW-style politics of labor and community that could logically be called Syndicalism (although Wobblies almost never did).

Don’t Mourn, Balkanize! reflects one or two of his predilections less well-known than his espousal of anarchist organizational notions (mostly in Z-Net) and his running commentaries in various places on the emergence and significance of Occupations. It would be a mistake to see one subject as distant from another. He is looking for a wholesale reconstruction of politics along voluntary, collectivist lines, across all the usual borders; and behind a tough analysis, he is looking for what we now Old New Leftists used to call the beloved community, ways of linking human beings in urgent need of solidarity, making possible the solution of problems faced on the planet.

There is a backstory that does not quite emerge in these pages but deserves a mention. Slovenians and their partners (or rivals), Croats, were once vital forces in the American working class Left, and their cooperative movements, through ethnic halls and fraternal associations, outlasted most of the rest of the blue collar Left across a scattering of states. Until recent times, tamburitza bands played to good-sized audiences (driving in from the suburbs, most likely) in Croatian Halls that had back rooms with libraries and portraits of Karl Marx. Slovenian votes, it was said, provided the margin of victory for Richard Trumka in the United Mine Workers, and projected his rise at the moment when the AFL’s corrupt, thuggish leaders had lost their sway. Scarcely aware of this ethnic history of labor struggle and cooperative efforts, Grubacic is a descendent in many ways.

First of all, for any post-Yugoslavian radical, there is the need for refurbished collaboration among Croats, Slovenians, Serbs and others who once lived in a state together, not without resentments but without fratricide. In Grubacic’s critique, the CIA and State Department played upon centuries of distrust, adding hundreds of millions of dollars of fuel to the flames, then sweeping down relentlessly, pitting one nationality against another.

Yugoslavia, he emphasizes, was always a dream of the Balkans, never quite a reality despite the victory over Fascism and the Tito decades to follow. The fragility of the model, a kind of market state-socialism with a bureaucratic class ruling over others, was bound to come apart, although without the global market stress and CIA operations, it would have lasted longer and perhaps evolved into something better. The dark side of the Balkans, a kind of escape valve for the Western European imagination with rugged landscapes, pirates or the Robin Hood type (or the opposite, today’s drug-dealers and sex-traders), was the veritable opposite of Victorian England or pre-Hitler Germany. The darkness was as much cause or hope as despair, and like victims of the other kinds of colonialism, a lifting of the pre-modern shackles seemed the key task of socialists, then communists. No leftwingers in Europe, at least, faced bigger problems of ethnic rivalries and old grudges.

Grubacic offers hope for a voluntary, cooperative future for something we might (or might not) call Yugoslavia, and this is a hope for all the rest of humankind. He does so with a precision of detail that no review can capture, but with a kindliness, an openness to possibility and a resistance of dogma, that anarcho-syndicalism or anarchism of a new kind looks as promising on the page as in the Occupation. Quite an accomplishment.

Paul Buhle is a retired senior lecturer of history and American civilization at Brown University, a Distinguished Lecturer at the Organization of American Historians and American Studies Association, the founder of Radical America magazine, and the founder and former director of New York University’s Oral History of the American Left archive. He is also the recipient of the 2010 Will Eisner Award for The Art of Harvey Kurtzman. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
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