Yes, I’m kicking myself for missing this. And I was in New York City that day… I didn’t even know about this festival one month later, when I posted Abida Parveen clips and talked about how much I wanted to see a Sufi music center in New York. Anyway, it looks like there was something really nice and enjoyable happening in Union Square for the first time in a long time!

Another one from the good old RealNews people… This is a commentary by Rick Wolff on the difference between the U.S. “One Nation” demo and the workers’ demos taking place in Europe.

I almost went to the “One Nation” demo, but it would have been a bit of an ordeal to get there on the bus form Upstate New York (where I am right now) and back, and given various small health things that were bugging me also, I had to finally decide not to go. But I think if it seemed like an inspiring demo, I would have pushed myself. I knew there was something really vague and inadequate about the “One Nation” message, and I was afraid that it would mainly consist of misguided liberals championing the Democratic Party – or at best, saying “We’ll support you, but won’t you please, please listen to a few things we have to say?” And apparently, I was right on all counts.

At the European demos, workers are responding to the economic crisis and the governments’ resulting actions in the only ways that make sense. They are disrupting business-as-usual and they are protesting on a class basis, often militantly. Sometimes they are waging general strikes, and rather than pleading, they are making real demands, saying, “We are not going to pay for this crisis!” and insisting that it be payed for mainly by the people responsible – who are also the people who can afford to pay – i.e., the rich.

It seems as though most U.S. workers don’t even understand the concepts behind such an approach these days. It’s times like these when I feel completely alienated from the country that I was born in and have had to live in all my life. (I would say “have had to” because I would have been glad to leave in the past few years. But I lack the means to get moving exactly because of the devastation that I have suffered personally as a result of the economic crisis.)

I once took a class with Richard D. Wolff a few years ago, at the independent school called the Brecht Forum. I don’t know if he was my favorite teacher of all, but sometimes he makes good points. This is a clip of Rick clearly and simply outlining the differences between the European workers’ actions and the vague, weak “activism” by the American “One Nation” “left.”

Part 2 of a RealNews interview with Chris Hedges… I agree with a lot of what this guy is saying… I’ve been looking at a few other interviews or readings with him too, and I have to concur with just about everything, from his ideas about the corporations’ destruction of American democracy (to whatever extend American democracy really existed in the first place), to the extreme evil inherent in the wars of empire, to the recognition that the U.S. is well advanced on the course to fascism, to his assertion that we need to work outside the system and not think that we can make progressive change in the electoral arena through Democrats. That last idea has been obvious to me for quite a while, but I also agree with another idea of his that I might not have supported as much years ago, i.e., that we should oppose the new atheist movement (championed by the likes of Christopher Hitchens) for being as simplistic and destructively self-aggrandizing as a lot of religious fundamentalism. (If I’m not mistaken, Hidges actually opposes this movement as someone who is religious, but I think it makes just as much sense to oppose it as someone who is not. And by the way, he doesn’t get into that in the present interview, but I might post some talks of his about it in the near future.)

In sum, this guy is good. I’m going to add Truthdig to the blogroll now.

Acknowledgments to Democracy Now for alerting me to the great meeting of Tom Morello and Boots Riley.  A few years ago, I would have been hip enough to know about this sort of combination sooner, so that I  wouldn’t need Amy Goodman to tell me about it.  But these days, I spend most of my time listening to old Indian film music.  (Though that’s not necessarily so unhip, is it?  Once in a while somebody comes along who does some brilliant sampling from that stuff…)  Naturally, the song of theirs I like the most (so far, anyway) is their M.I.A. cover.

In terms of my own musical tastes, my preference of the three artists above goes like this:  M.I.A. first (at least when she’s at her best), then Boots Riley, then Tom Morello.  I respect Tom Morello a lot, but I’ve always taken to Boots’ music more.  That having been said, I like what they do with this M.I.A. song for the most part.  Boots says he “radicalized” it a little – and maybe he did.  In terms of lyrics, I wouldn’t mind if M.I.A. sometimes had a little more of what Boots has.  (I would say that even regarding her first two albums, which I liked much more than the latest, from what I’ve heard.)  Anyway, glad to see these guys together…  Maybe in combination, they will be able to get the message(s) out a little more.

Here, RSA illustrates a piece of Zizek’s book – this is great!

RSA Animate video for a talk by Barbara Ehrenreich… I like this a lot!