Wanted: Scientists for Dean
Posted on:: December 18th, 2003
David Isenberg and Bob Kopp of Scientists for Dean are looking for scientists who are ready to get behind the Governor. After all, this administration is bad news for science in this country. David and Bob are particularly searching for some scientifical leaders who would be willing to lend their credibility to the effort.
So, do you know a Nobel Prize winner — and not in one of them wussy humanities categories! — who’d be interested?
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Instead, the prison movement has continued to grow and spread throughout the country in the seven years since the cold- blooded murder of the BPP Field Marshal. Each week, THE BLACK PANTHER receives dozens of letters from prison inmates whose ideas strongly reflect the work and beliefs of George Jackson. Who can deny that the Attica Prison uprising of September 11, 1971, was partially caused by inmate anger over the killing of their beloved leader?
REFORMS DISMANTLED
George Jackson, as well as others across this country, ushered in a period of reform in the prison system, one that only lasted about five years. When I came in, the remnants of what they had done were still there, but you could see that the prison administration had begun to re-establish the control they had had, pitting groups against each other, allowing in the flow of drugs as a means of control. They dismantled reforms that had taken place in respect to higher education, different culture groups, things that had provided outlets and education that would assure that when you left prison you would do something more productive with your life. All those things were being dismantled when I entered the prison system and were basically eliminated when I returned to prison 10 years later.
Today, it is definite that there is more repression. In terms of the prison struggle, the ruling class has been really successful in pretty much eliminating those who would be organizing. Most of them are isolated and separated and kept away from the general population. In the 1990s, I see a totally different mindset among prisoners. The type of prisoners who existed during George’s time were awakened and conscious of the repression that they were subjected to. The mindset of the prisoners today is one of disorganization. Across the board, across racial lines, they have been so divided.
The American political landscape today resolves itself into two factions: the Hobbseans and the Rouseaueans. The Hobbseans hold firm to the belief in the absurdity of freedom; that man is born a blank slate, into a war of all against all in his struggle to survive, and that it is only by actively agreeing to agree with power, and by joining in established power with the sovereign, that he can ensure his continued survival. To disagree with established power means banishment, isolation, and death, for this is the contingent and avoidable seed of civil strife. This is essentially the Rebublican position.
The Rouseaueans, on the other hand, hold fast to a belief in the rationality of freedom; that man is born with an inherent right to live and to flourish and with a corresponding obligation to be productive–to contribute to the common wealth–and to follow the commonly accepted laws: that he is already joined to a great common wheel upon entering the world. Discord appears only when men shirk these predispositions. This is essentially the Democratic position.
Today, the Hobbsean position is becoming widespread to the point of a universal ideology fueling the ethics young, for lack of any strong and coherent alternative, as well as a force splintering old Rousseaueans, who have taken to reacting to them, rather than setting and following their own true course.
The Democratic party has become obsolete. It is no longer respected, or welcomed at all. I may be tolerated for awhile, but it is impotent to affect the American landscape. The problem of our time is to either become a Hobbsean, or to risk the journey into new and uncharted reality.
The choice of Bush over Clinton was a social decision for repression over liberty. The events originating from September 11th anchored that decision for good with the forces of repression.
People don’t vote for a party, they vote for the comfort they see in the candidate.
The Republicans control the military, and only the military will provide that comfort. We will be beaten over our heads with the “ideology of Sept. 11th” until uncharted reality becomes our new home.
In fact, the Bush family is no more than a great big American Mafia–you either kiss the ring, or be damned. The Iraq war is a shootout between two competing Mafias, and I guess we just about killed all the Capos now.
A family should not be allowed such control. People know that. But the same forces that create little ones, create the big ones.
Sept. 11 was the best thing that ever happened, or could have happened to the Republican party. However sick this logic is, it is true. They will beat that Gdamed drum til the end of freakin time.
Zeno was the student of Parmenides. He was killed and captured while smuggling arms into the hills to fight the Athenians and keep his town’s independant Anatolian origins. The point is that we must grow cucumbers on Mars in order for the Beagle to be worth much. I just can’t imagine what would come of it if the cucumber patch became a further source of contention!
Good News!:
Philosophy is a dangerous and detrimental thing to civil society. Therefore, we have systematically removed it, over the past 15-20 years, from all but the most elite institutions (where students end up rich, not radical), except in a distilled and manageable form as Intro., Ethics, and Abstract Logic. So, it is now, finally and for all time, safe to study it at the cheaper State institutions. The cancer is all but petrified.
Religion, too. I forgot to mention that it is OK to teach things like, Life After Death (though they don’t mention they are in the process of killing your mind), and World Religions (like you can really teach that as if you are classifying plants), and Buddhism (take a peek, but don’t fall in), and The History Of God (oooooooooh, right).
So, if you have young children in these State schools, who wish to study anything beside mathematics, you are now safe to do so. These Religion classes will edify you, enhance your life, make you happier, and console you in a pickle.