[For some reason the previous attempt to post my blog on Trump ended with that ridiculous bloody smiley thingo. So bugger it, I'm not trying again. Anyone interested can check out my blog memengineering. Ciao, Peter]

[Another blog for the great roaring void that is IOPS and its four or five readers. This is a response to an email I got the other day about Trump from a friend of mine who is, or was, a progressive, now retired academic specializing in public health. My friend’s quoted arguments have been extracted and numbered by me. I thought the exchange perhaps of more general interest.] 1. “So much of the anti-Trump tirades distracts attention from the systemic problems, making him out to be some…

By Fred Nagel, April 21, 2017 Whenever there are obvious conflicts within the ruling class, the concept of a Deep State is brought out to explain why our government seems to be coming apart at the seams. When the tired rhetoric of our two party system can’t bring us to a satisfying catharsis, there is always the deus ex machina of grand conspiracies and hidden rulers. The actual nature of our oppression, however, has been in plain sight for decades, although assiduously avoided by much…

"By itself, free playing does not directly require practice and study, which when self-constructed provides the seedbed for exploration and change. Practice is associated with what most of us remember from study: repetition aimed at perfection, essential for a music where one will be punished for mistakes. For many, free playing is a release from that disciplinary system. The career orientation encourages practice to keep one's chops and bag of tricks competitive. As free improv has increasingly…

hey friends, just a hope that you and your peoples are doing alright.  

  Talking while marching, the global revolution. Humanities opportunity in the face of fascism, authoritarianism, terror, and the inescapable path toward a better world

I have now posted an e-book that I published five years ago which discusses using participatory economics as a lynchpin for activism organizing.  One of the chapters of that book discusses possible tactics for winning such an economy.  I am posting the contents of that chapter here, for consideration and discussion. Perhaps the best way, and seemingly the hardest way to win adherents, is to ultimately show not only how [participatory economics] works but that it works -- demonstrate the…

Towards Police State Australia in the Post-Liberal Era At least since 9/11 almost all western countries have been involved in a gradual slide to post-liberal, more authoritarian states. Some are gradually becoming outright police states. Australia is no exception, and is in fact in the vanguard of these developments in many respects.   Australia is the only democracy without a national Bill of Rights. This is also because there is almost no grassroots revolutionary tradition of autonomy in…

Out in March by Palgrave Macmillan