CULTURE AND CLASS

Culture, Class and Civilisation

Dave Lordan

Culture Matters | September 16, 2020

About 10,000 years ago, after 3.6 million years of the Stone Age, humanity began to slowly and stutteringly transform itself. A nomadic species made up of small egalitarian groups and surviving (or not) on the given bounty of the Earth, changed into a settled, class-based, accumulative society. It was based on agricultural surpluses, and institutional hierarchies and gross inequalities were to become a permanent feature. The domestication of certain animals such as the sheep and the goat, cultivation of high-yield grains, and improvements in food storage methods, irrigation, and farming methods and technologies, gave humanity for the first time the problem of more than enough stuff to go around – surplus – and what to do with it.

Shy gold begins to peep through the sombre green –

the wattle’s wedding dress –

and Spring is near.

Then suddenly it seems,

one golden morning,

the Bush awakes, a living thing.

Flowers bloom, birds sing,

and all the world puts on it’s gayest dress

to greet the laughing Spring.

C. J. Dennis

While posing as a grassroots human rights organization, the World Uyghur Congress is a US-funded and directed separatist network that has forged alliances with far-right ethno-nationalist groups. The goal spelled out by its founders is clear: the destabilization of China and regime change in Beijing.

By Ajit Singh

The GrayZone

In recent years, few stories have generated as much outrage in the West as the condition of Uyghur Muslims in China. Reporting on the issue is typically represented through seemingly spontaneous leaks of information and expressions of resistance by Uyghur human rights activists struggling to be heard against a tyrannical Chinese government.

True or not, nearly everything that appears in Western media accounts of China’s Uyghur Muslims is the product of a carefully conceived media campaign generated by an apparatus of right-wing, anti-communist Uyghur separatists funded and trained by the US government.

A central gear in Washington’s new Cold War…

On 2018, Uber driver Doug Schifter shot himself outside of City Hall in lower Manhattan. His public suicide was, he wrote, a bid to draw attention “to the plight of drivers.” Schifter saw that conditions were only getting worse, and warned in a letter posted on Facebook: “All that is needed now for a total disaster is a serious downturn in the economy reducing riders and there will be at least half million people hit hard. Downturns always come.”

Two years later, amid a pandemic, the economic downturn has arrived. A recent report from the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) shows a 75 percent drop in the number of taxi drivers; with 108,880 who drove in March dipped to 30,675 in June. That same month, drivers, including those on other ride-hailing apps, logged 251,696 trips per day compared to 750,000 daily trips in February. The result for…

Nuclear Alert: NRC & Nuke Safety In the Time of COVID-19    https://www.fairewinds.org/demystify/nuclear-alert-nrc-amp-nuke-safety-in-the-time-of-covid-19 September 14, 2020  By The Fairewinds Crew

First off, we would like to preface this by saying that the world simply cannot afford a meltdown or nuclear disaster on top of the already traumatic times wrought by Pandemic 2020.

Did you know that nuclear plants close for scheduled refueling every 18-months, meaning that 1/3 of the operating reactors are off-line each spring and fall? For the record, more than three dozen reactors had planned to do so in Spring 2020. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) defines this rather temporary closing as an outage. During these outages, used-up nuclear fuel is replaced, and critical safety inspections are performed.

You may remember, that in early May, Maggie wrote extensively about the numerous safety risks to all of us if the nuclear industry continued operating these reactors…

Dear China,

For political reasons that have nothing to do with the citizens of Australia or the citizens of the People’s Republic of China, our governments are engaged in a number of disputes. I think that this situation is a shame, and that the political decisions of governments do not need to become disagreements between people. We live in the same world and breathe the same air. Humanity is not divided by borders, only governments are. 

Stay in touch,

Matthew

Dear everyone,

The world is a bit of a mess right now. It seems as if racism, misogyny, greed and religious persecution shape the global social order, unchecked by the core values that almost all of us say we believe in: freedom, love, dignity, compassion. When I reflect on the tools at my disposal—words—it is easy to become disheartened about my prospects for contributing to a solution. But I actually have more than mere words at my disposal. I am a political philosopher with an abiding interest in the well-being of my fellow humans. I view philosophy as a practical tool for approaching problems, and I think that even if my contributions are small, they can still count for something. With that in mind, I send off this first postcard with a simple message.

Hello.

Some time ago Harper’s Magazine wrote about the antimonopolist history of the world’s most popular board game.

You can look it up here:

http://harpers.org/blog/2012/10/monopoly-is-theft/?single=1

I was especially interested in finding out what “Anti-Monpolist” rules had been suggested!

http://landlordsgame.info/games/lg-1906/lg-1906.html

THE LANDLORD’S GAME
PATENTED JAN 5, 1904.  NO 748628 BY LIZZIE J MAGIE.

E C O N O M I C  G A M E  C O,  N E W  Y O R K.

NOTE TO READERS: The origianl rule set was OCR scanned; however, I did not fully proof
them prior to posting. There are some spelling errors that need corrected. This will be corrected.
If you have questions about any errors you find please email me at landlordsgame@gmail.com

THE MONARCH OF THE WORLD.

The Landlord’s Game is based on present prevailing business methods.  This the players can prove for themselves; and they can also prove what…

Kylee Clements always came home from work to an empty kitchen. She came from her work as principle of the Hudson Street Primary school always in an agitated manner, primarily because of certain incidents that bedevilled her at the school, mostly concerning the behaviour of students and parents reacting to certain students there, or because her husband, now recently unemployed lacked what she considered “ attention to her implicit instructions” to fix this or that maintenance problem or purchased the wrong brand of product from the supermarket when she had made it perfectly clear that if he’d just looked at the nutrition values there on the label, he would have seen that the carbohydrates per hundred grams were by far too many for one with her condition!!…IF he’d just had taken time to read the label.

“Heaven’s knows it is not a difficult matter for one to do” she insisted…