rigorousintuition.ca

RocketMan wrote,
But this is just truly stupid. He just validated the most insipid criticism of himself regarding the not voting issue.

It's such a simple answer, really. Vote or don't vote, but minimize fights over voting. In some places, there are actual choices in elections thanks to proportional representation systems or real left parties. Brand, who's been so good in his speaking generally, was wrong to make not voting into the all-or-nothing stance. In the U.S. waste no time in protracted debates and splits over the spectacle - expose it, then organize. Spend an hour a year voting, say, for the guy who promises you six wars in the Middle East, so as to stopthe one who promises you nuclear war with Iran. Or don't. But don't spend months and years yakking about it either way. Choose your struggles and work for them. In our situation, organizing movements outside the parties and media outside the corps is everything. It's not party activists who saved net neutrality and may stop the TPP.

Iamwhomiam » Sun May 10, 2015 12:30 pm wrote: Advising people not to vote is foolish and unhelpful to those seeking to displace the powerful. I do understand the frustration of those seeking change who ask, "what's the use?", but the only meaningful change one can effect is on the local level, at least in my experience.

RUSSELL BRAND IS A WANKER AND ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS

23/06/2015 · by afed

This morning, a video has been doing the rounds on facebook where Russell Brand calls on the young working class to #lovethepolice and implores us to take to the streets to defend cops *boak*

His argument is that they are just “ordinary working people trying to do a job” like everyone else. In return they don’t get paid overtime normally, they are feeling unhappy about being outsourced to Securicor and G4S (poor diddums), and that the way forward is to help push for them to be able to form a union. He refers to them as “our police” and refers to a time where police were integrated into our communities. This outlook comes, he says, comes from having talked with lots of police (perhaps while being called a turncoat and told to “fuck off back to Miliband” at the weekend?), taking inspiration from the Situationists (???), all before butchering N.W.A.’s Fuck tha Police.

The truth is that police were never part of our communities in the first place and have always been (as Russell puts it) the “henchmen of the establishment”. There is a world of difference between working for a living and enforcing the laws created by the ruling class to maintain power over us. Police are the physical protection of private property and so ensure the theft of wages from billions of workers, the incarceration of millions inside of jails, state sanctioned murder, starvation, poverty… the list goes on.

The truth is we don’t need the police. We can focus on systems of justice that do not focus on punishment or detention. This will require the complete reorganisation of society – a social revolution.

Russell Brand is a wanker and all cops are bastards.

Tragicomic

posted by Richard Seymour

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the day the Beautiful Soul entered Russell Brand. It began to slowly cannibalise his innards, metabolising them into an oddly potent type of spiritual ordure.

At first, he seemed to welcome it, and the ecstasy of its sweet ministry. How could he resist? The oneness of all living things, upon which it staked its colonising zeal, appeared to be the most perfectly sublimated narcissism. The sheer monstrosity of the thing was not yet plain to view. Not until it had metabolised almost every bit of him. Even his previously versatile voice, which slipped effortlessly between Kenneth Williams camp and Joe Pasquale red coat cheer, was gradually usurped by a wheedling undertone.

By the end, he was just a shape of skin; its form preserved, like that of a rubber glove, by that which occupied it. The parasite within gazed out of blank, dark eyes, looking for more bodies to consume.

One day, his cavernous lantern mouth cranked open, and it spoke through him. "Wotcher kids," it offered in a hollow mockery of the host's estuary accent, "the cops are avin a reeeaally hard time, right? It seems like all they see is hate and conflict, yeah? And ah fink, right, what we as a community need to do right is give em a right big ol hug, yeah? What we desperately need is more love in this greed-driven, fear-addled society, so please..."

And as it spoke, mesmerised bodies huddled before their screens and began to hashtag frantically to social media contacts, ‪#‎lovethepigs‬ and ‪#‎giveanofficerarimjobtoday‬. And as they did, it passed into each of them, guzzling and regurgitating them all into a perpetually enlarging, pulsing sac of sanctimonious hippy shit.

The final, terrifying denouement: it shed the carcass, a flimsy paper thin greased exterior by this point, and emerged triumphant and terrible, singing its holy glory across the land in a Latin skewed by unintelligible diphthongs.

That was when I knew it had Charlotte Church in its sights.

Harvey » Thu Jun 25, 2015 8:42 am wrote:The opinion in the article is essentially describing itself and it's own appropriation activities, just as it accurately describes one aspect of the Brand dynamic. You're not wrong, but there are other things going on beside the attitude to authority trope. Even Christ contradicted itself regularly, speaking with many voices as 'he' did, forcing any true Christian to create their own unique synthesis of the 'message,' and a resulting comprehension of the essential truth, what is effectively multiple concurrent and overlapping realities, and from there to pinpoint the real nature of 'God'. Of course, many of the aspects of the message were winnowed out of the picture during the Roman appropriation of Christ, that phenomena itself incorporating diverse tropes, some of them already Roman.

And on it goes.

coffin_dodger » Thu Jun 25, 2015 11:30 am wrote:It appears AD has a new ideaology - kill the fascists, kill the hippies, kill the police.

Who's next?

Kill all anti-semites, perhaps?

one might wonder if one is being given a bastardised 'Spiritual Autobiography'

American Dream » Wed Jun 24, 2015 9:57 pm wrote:

Tragicomic


That was when I knew it had Charlotte Church in its sights.