Moving on

I will be joining Marc at our new blog, whereupon we shall embark on a new exodus of extraneous existentialism and extinguishing arguments. Excitement exceeds extreme exaggeration. Hypberbole metaphore onomatopoeia, bark tweet meow.

To my beloved Readers

I am sorry to inform you that this is my last post. The creative outflow that has been produced by this site has forced me to focus my passions elsewhere. G-Detroit, please check your email to understand my reasoning.

Samuel Melville (Part 2 of 2)

In 1969, Sam's shinanigan's finally got him arrested. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but the term was reduced to 15 years within his first year. He spent time in state and federal prison's, being transferred around. In his first year in prison, he made two escape attempts. neither attempt was successful, although in one attempt he beat up a guard, tied him up with his own belt, and continue running before being caught by another guard. Because of these attempts of escape, he was transferred to Attica. Attica is a very high security prison in New York. Here is one of his correspondences from prison:

"I think the combination of age and a greater coming together is responsible for the speed of the passing time. It's six month's now since my arrest and i can tell you truthfully few periods in my life have passed as quickly. i am in excellent physical and emotional health. there are doubtless subtle surprises ahead but i feel secure and ready. i read much, excercise, talk to guards and inmates, feeling for the inevitable direction of my life."

In prison, Sam played an enormous amount of chess. he even had a game of chess going with his son, and every letter they sent to each other, they made one move. Here is Sam's advice on chess: "In chess, contrary to popular thinking, the bold aggressive stroke, the brilliant sacrifice will almost invariably triumph over the devious, prudent maneuver. great regis! a lesson for the revolution."

Sam spent his time in prison, mainly reading Marx, Lenin and various revolutionary publications of the 1970's. The guards were very skeptical about letting Sam read this material, and often they took it away from him. But he was a revolutionary at heart, and his diet required a great deal of Marx. Sam kept in contact with his lawyer that defended him in his trial. He was hoping to use the lawyer to take up action against the penetentiary system, and get better rights for prisoners. When this did not happen, Sam got involved in the Attica prison riots of 1971.

Before the riot, the prisoners were given one shower per week and one roll of toilet paper per month. In response to a prisoner at another penetentiary being killed, the prisoners of Attica rioted. 1000 of the 2200 prisoners in Attica rioted taking 33 corrections officers hostage. They had 27 demands which they wanted the authorites to give into. The police on the outside, were willing to grant the 27 demands, however they would not grant amnesty for the prisoners invovled in the riot (they wanted to add more years to the sentences of the prisoners). Therefore, the prisoners refused to end their upheaval.


(Here is a picture of the prisoners in Attica during the riot. They spent a lot of time in the main yard. Many of the prisoners were Black Panthers.)


The prisoners held the prison for 4 days, before the state police were sent in to regain it. They fired tear gas into the main-yard, and then fired their shotguns into the smoke non-stop for two minutes. They eventually succeeded in regaining the prison, at the expense of killing nine of the hostages and 28 inmates. Sam was one of the inmates that was killed, willing to die rather than let the state guards re-take the prison.



All Sam knew was revolution. Karl Marx was his Jesus Christ. And every opportunity he got, Sam dedicated to revolution in whatever form possible. I found one quote of Samuel Melville on the topic of Che Gueverra, which is very relevant to the topic of this post. Sam said "While che may be an internationalist revolutionary his thoughts were always anchored to latin needs of liberation from yankee imperialism. his political line was humanist only after it was socialist. che never dealt with a post industrialist society, not that i heard of".

Samuel Melville (Part 1 of 2)

Samuel Melville was an anti-Vietnam protestor and a vehement opponent of American Imperialism. He began his activism working for a left-wing newspaper in New York City. Later in his activism, he started bombing buildings in the united states. Here is an account of conversation that Samuel Melville had, with the love of his life, during the first few months they knew each other:

“This country’s about to go through a revolution,” he told her. “I expect it to happen before the decade is over and I intend to be a part of it.”

“That winter the talk around our kitchen table turned increasingly to guerrilla action,” Jane remembered. “The argument went like this: if the movement was dying, it was because the movement had never really learned how to fight. We had to stop acting like coddled children, scared off by a few arrests, a couple canisters of tear gas.”

Samuel's vision was a world where his own thought, was not influenced by state forces. He takes the typical Marxist paranoia of the state, and moulds it into an incredible revolutionary force.

The first time Sam ever went to a protest, police were raiding a student strike at Columbia University. Sam tried to convince the students to fight back and started dragging 50-gallon garbage cans to the roof of the Low Library to hurl onto the police below. He tried to get the students to join him, but they only scattered in fear and confusion. Police grabbed Sam in the act, dragged him into a building, clubbed him and left him tied to a chair. Sam could never understand why nobody would fight back.

Che Guevera's of Our Generation

Che is an interesting human in Western History. He is a man that devoted himself to bettering the world. As a Marxist, he saw the Capitalist systems infringing upon the world, so he decided to fight the Capitalists.

Regardless whether one is a capitalist or a marxist, Che is a heroe that fought for what he believed in. He went to Cuba with his buddy Castro, and through Guerilla warfare, he and a handful of troops took over the entire country. A small group of men defeating an entire army would be impossible today; yet somehow he accomplished this feat. And once he got into power, he implemented the type of policies that he thought would be for the betterment of the world: marxist policies.

People that have visions, but at the same time must use violence to acheive their vision, are often labelled as terrorists in today's world. Over the next few weeks, i will be compiling posts within the framework of, "Che Guevera's of our Generation: the Man behind the terrorist". It will focus on men (and maybe women), who advocated change, but who did outside of the sphere of mainstream thought. People that thought the government and media's vision for change was boring, so they decided instead to implement their own vision.

Evolutionary problems of Hegelian Dialectics.

When I read Marc's last post I instantly thought of the process of evolution and the state of symbiosis between organisms, or, more accurately, the failed forms of symbioses between the host organism and the malignant bacteria. Man cannot survive without the bacteria inhabiting his gut, and in fact the bacteria themselves have, in their evolutionary cycle, incorporated parts of other bacteria and cells to form their makeup. One great example is the cilia, or motile hair-like structures on some types of paramecium. They're little dinky legs that, in some past time, were themselves little critters until they found they could exist not by themselves, but only as a complement to a sessile organism, like the original single celled animals. That stage could even be considered a Hegelian Dialectic: the paramecium was nothing, the cilia were nothing, but their differences are what eventually defined them as a unified structure. So interestingly enough, certain forms in nature actually appear to embrace, if temporarily, this idea of opposition as a form of evolution.

Another example is the Thorn Acacia tree in Africa and the giraffe. This is a very famous example of evolutionary warfare. As the giraffes got better and better at eating the trees, they evolved longer and longer thorns. The tree being Mcain and the giraffe being Obama, we start to see the resemblance. The giraffe cant exist without the tree, the tree without the giraffe, but they are in constant opposition, and since neither would be alive without each other, and existence is the incontrovertible proof of perseverence... their differences, do in fact, define them as living organisms. You may be thinking "ya, but the tree will be fine, dipshit", except that's not how fucking evolution and population control works you communist bastards, the tree will outgrow it's land and suck the continent dry without any control until eventually no diversity occurs, evolution stops and desertification completely destroys the African continent because all that's left is dead trees and really annoyed giraffes, except they wont have an opposite to define themselves with, and they'll die.

That may not make a lot of sense in retrospect and actually has very little to do with Hegelian Dialectics, but it was still fun to think about.

The hegelian Dialectic

Graham made a really good point. he said something along the lines of artists decide they are artists, not by what they are, but by what they are not. It seems like artists have a cases of the hegelian dialectic. Hegel was a 19th century philospher from somewhere in Europe. He said that all progress of knowledge, takes place within a dialectic framework. a dialectic looks like this: I_I

There are two polar opposites. Both define themselves by negation. The one on the left is Barack Obama. He is not Barack Obama because he is black and charismatic. Rather he is Barack Obama because he is not old and a war mongrol. John McCain is on the right. he does not define himself as a man that is good at running the economy. rather, he is not a terrorist and not new to the game of politics.

Now that one has defined themselves, through the process of negation, they are in a better position to understand the "other". They can then both compromise, and move forward in a shared persepctive.

I
I_I
I_I_I
I_I_I_I

Eventually, everything will be negated, and the entire world will join hands in believing excactly the same thing.

Cool? No fucking way. This is a dumb way of thinking. Who wants to decide themselves by negation? And also, who wants to compromise? Let people be themselves and fight for their individuality till the death. Fuck you hegel. This video is what i feel i have just done to hegel:

Mormon Church

Today Graham attended a Mormon Church session, which was only about an hour long, and it took place at about 11am. So right off the bat, it's later in the day so I get to sleep in, and it's shorter so I can go to Wendy's after and not spoil dinner. But fast food and sleep are not the only things I took away from this experience. Gather and listen.

Mormons are 90% really, really attractive people. My girlfriend explained it like this, and I think she said it quite eloquently: "The ugly ones don't get married". So, I spent the morning in a room full of very attractive religiously devout people under the age of thirty and over the age of 18. It was essentially a very quiet dance club with no dancing. They were a little heavy handed on the whole "get married now" thing, but that's to be expected and not a really big deal.

Mormons are really, really cool about church activities. Instead of christian church which I attended for... 3 Sundays when I was 9... I felt that they actually could care less if I didn't attend, but that if I were to attend something Mormon-related, I should at least feel like I wanted to be there, and not that I was obligated. Mormons 1, most other religions, 0. They even have things called "fire-sides" which in my mind is a bunch of people sitting around a fire talking, and eating potatoes, but in reality is probably quite different. Also, most events have a "potato bar" which I assume is a table with a ton of different potatoes on it. Like the head Mormon guy said: "there's a potato bar, you cant lose"

They get cool young people to address the crowd. The guy who spoke first was a little bit intense, and teared up a few times, but all in all he was an excellent public speaker and knew his audience. Cough cough, pope, cough cough.

Mormons are actually totally correct about their lessons. Today I learned that you have to be nice to people, and discuss your problems rationally without anger. Is this what church is actually always like? Because I pictured a lot more preaching, and a lot less... actual valuable life lessons.

I'm still an extreme atheist. But I appreciate the religion a lot more now that I've checked it out. There's some strange stuff in the book of Mormon, but all in all, they get a bad rap. Plus, like I said, you could set up a Mormon modeling agency and make a fucking killing.

Situationists have been perverted

Modern situationists are the following:

1) artists who cant make art
2) hipsters, or, see 1)

Situationists used to be really interesting. That video is proof. They were fed up with the society of spectacle and decided to rebel and become some of the first modern anarchists.

Now we have liberal art students who are "fed up" with conventional art, and instead differentiate themselves as completely different, new, without borders and, most importantly, unconcerned with what people think.

The problem with that is... you cannot define yourself by saying "I am not this". You cant say "I am Graham, I am the opposite of Jack Layton". It doesn't work. You need to understand who your are first, and then make your art. Superficial art is done, you can't get away with it anymore, and anyone who thinks they can either aren't artists, or they're lucky enough to have the skills to do graphic design work. Graphic design is the real evolution of the situationist international movement; it's become a way to express other peoples ideas through a filter. Since the filter is your own mind, you can distort, pervert, alter or simply express someones ideas. Graphic designers are rigidly defined but at the same time, expressing a form of anarchical thought. Anyways.

So should we keep the Situationist International ideas in the mainstream? Are they already? Yes, yes. We need to have skepticism, we need bohemians, and punk rock has become so mainstream these days that even bands like Against me!, famous for songs like "i'm an anarchist, baby" are writing love balads to party girls. So be an anarchist and leave me alone, because I'm a filthy liberal and I don't give a fuck. I'm a situationist.

Note: Situationists International did not approve of the words "situationism" or "situationist" when used as a descriptor and not as a proper name, and infact consider the terms "anti-situationist"

So ya, they're hipsters. And thanks for the video Marc, that was probably the only video someone's recommended to me that I've actually watched and been genuinely interested in.

yo graham, check out this video.

-marc

Platform Idea

If i was ever elected Prime minister, i would add the word "optimus" in front of the title. when the Rhinocerous party ran for office, they had many similar ideas, here are a list of my favorites:

-Repealing the law of gravity
-Paving Manitoba to create the world's largest parking lot
-Adopting the British system of driving on the left; this was to be gradually phased in over five years with large trucks and tractors first, then buses, eventually including small cars and bicycles last
-Selling the Canadian Senate at an antique auction in California
-Putting the national debt on Visa
-Making the Trans-Canada Highway one way only
-Donate a free rhinoceros to every aspiring artist in Canada
-The Rhino Party also declared that, should they somehow actually win an election, they would immediately dissolve and force a second election.

Unfortunately, the Rhino's have not run since the 1990's. There is a party running only in Quebec, called the Neo-Rhino's. The call themselves "Neo", after Neo from the Matrix.

Election Day

Today marks the federal Canadian election. But there is more important news to be broadcasting. The Breatharian institute, is claiming that today is the day that aliens are coming to our planet to take us to another dimension. "A Federation Of Light Space Craft - 2,000 Miles Long Will Appear in our skies on October 14, 2008 ! & The Return of the Masters" So everyone keep your eyes peeled for this ship. It shouldn't be too hard to see in the sky, because it is 2000 miles long.

The Breatharians do not drink water. Instead they only eat quarter pounders from McDonalds and drink diet coke, first thing in the morning before they meditate. They also stare at the sun for half an hour a day, in order to get their energy.

check out their website at: http://www.breatharian.com/

Answer from vote swap

it is not possible to vote against Michael Ignatieff. This because, the vote swap is an anti-harper campaign. it is only made to ensure that the conservatives don't win. Right now, the Conservative is in second place in the riding. a vote for anyone besides ignatieff, would increase the odds of a conservative win. darn

todays polls:

Nanos: Conservatives 33 and Liberals 27

Harris Decima: Conservatives 35 Liberals 26

Vote Swapping

this is a letter that i made to the vote swapping campaign on facebook. Yes, i used facebook, I used my roomate Reid's. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life. We had to use this thing called an application; whatever that is supposed to mean. I got Reid to do most of the work.


Hi there,

i live in the riding of Saanich golf Idlands and i really do not care about the election. But i would like the opportunity to vote against Michael Ignatieff in his riding of Etibicoke Lakeshore. I really do not like Michael Ignatieff and i want the opportunity to vote against him. This is an opportunity that i think i will have to make many times in the future of Canada, but i want the chance to make it early, before the rest of Canada gets to. Is this possible.

thanks,

Marc Desilets
(using his friends facebook with permission, because he does not have it.)

The Conservatives Have No Platform

This isn't to say that Stephen Harper's promises have been very weak election. I mean that the Conservatives have no platform at all. They are the only party to not have released one. They are said to release one this week (with under a week to go to the election). Talk about running on your accomplishments.

An Update on Mark Emery

Mark Emery is the publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine. He is from Ontario. He is in the process of going through court appeals that will prevent him from being extradited to the United States. The American government wants him for selling an enormous amount of marijuana seeds online, to Americans over the internet. He then funnelled the money into marijuana activist organizations, to help the cause for legalization. Mark Emery is trying to serve his jail-time in Canada, but things are not looking to well for Mark.

In Mark's last visit to the University of Victoria campus, he called all non-marijuana smokers "the problem", and insisted that everyone should smoke weed. He claims that he smokes a lot of weed, and is still the best person at answering Jeopardy questions that he knows.

mark owns a bong shop on Hastings street in Vancouver. He makes pretty good money. He also has an extremely beautiful wife in Michelle Rainey (michelle is also potentially being extradited to the states). He has a lot to lose if he ends up being locked up; less so if his prison allows conjugal visits with his wife.


(ooh lah lah. michelle rainey is a beauty)

Last week i was in vancouver and i went to Mark Emery's bongshop. The staff at the store said Mark Emery was optimistic that his trial would go well. He will likely serve jail-time (the states want him for some incredible number like 15 years), but he will hopefully serve it in Canada. I think the staff was being overly-optimistic. I think the best Mark can hope for is to bunk with Conrad Black down in Club-Fed. Conrad Black will want top-bunk, but Mark will still get access to Mr.Black's Butler.

Couillard Releases Book

Julie Couillard made headline news when she got her ex-boyfriend fired from his job, when she went to the national media and announced that he forgot important documents at her house. Her ex-boyfriend must have been a real dick to her, because this is some pretty huge revenge. But just because he's a dick and she wants revenge, doesn't mean that we have to be bombarded with this type of news constantly.

Obama once said "This isn't news people" . He was talking in regards to the news that Sarah Palinj had a pregneant teenage daughter. He didn't think it appropriate to drag personal affairs into the media spotlight.

But with tabloid magazines drawing so much attention these days on super-market shelves, there seems to be a desire for the media to report on scandalous affairs. I personally believe that there is a time and place for this type of discussion: and that is on people's Wall's on facebook.

Julie Couillard got national media attention. She recieved large sums of money for her television interviews. She is now releasing a book and will make enormous amounts of money on that. She is also releasing the book during the election campaign, to even further make the Conservatives look ridiculous for hiring Bernier.

Bernier is a retard. But he got fired. The C-SIS agent that left important intelligence information at Maple Leaf Gardens did not garner that much media attention. He definitely would have if he was sleeping with Mats Sundin's wife as well.

The point I'm making is, that we have to ask whether media is discussing a relevant issue, or appealing to the desire for scandalous tabloid-like information that poses as a relevant issue.