Category: Uncategorized

Matt Bruenig – How Did Private Property Start?

Link to an article by Matt Bruenig:

“How Did Private Property Start?”

 

Bonus quotes:

“The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: ‘Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!’”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men” (1755)

“The illegitimate violence by which law sustains itself must be concealed at any price, because this concealment is the positive condition of the functioning of law.  Law functions only insofar as its subjects are fooled, insofar as they experience the authority of law as ‘authentic and eternal’ and do not realize ‘the truth about the usurpation’.  That is why Kant is forced, in his Metaphysics of Morals, to forbid any question concerning the origins of legal power: it is by means of precisely such questioning that the stain of this illegitimate violence appears which always soils, like original sin, the purity of the reign of law.”

Slavoj Žižek, “The Limits of the Semiotic Approach to Psychoanalysis,” from Psychoanalysis and… (Feldstein and Sussman, eds., Routledge 1990).

Maura Ewing – Philadelphia’s New Top Prosecutor Is Rolling Out Wild, Unprecedented Criminal Justice Reforms

Link to an article by Maura Ewing:

“Philadelphia’s New Top Prosecutor Is Rolling Out Wild, Unprecedented Criminal Justice Reforms”

 

Bonus links: “Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner Promised a Criminal Justice Revolution. He’s Exceeding Expectations.” and “Meet Larry Krasner” and “Ending Civil Forfeiture In Philadelphia” and …And the Poor Get Prison

 

No doubt about it, Krasner is one of the most heroic public servants in office in the U.S. today.  Nothing about Krasner’s policies is “wild” though, and it is quite sad that in this day and age they are “unprecedented” — his policies should probably be the norm not the exception.  It is, however, important to note that a key factor in Krasner winning office was substantial funding from out-of-towner George Soros.

The USPTO’s Predicament

The United States Patent & Trademark Office has made a big announcement that it expects to issue U.S. Patent Number 10,000,000 by the summer of 2018.  One (big) problem:  the USPTO already issued U.S. Patent No. 10,000,000 in 1936.

U.S. Pat. No. 10,000,000So, obviously, the original U.S. Patent No. 10,000,000 was a joke, issued to serve as the menu for a banquet in honor of the centennial anniversary of the modern patent office.  Presumably, patent office officials at the time thought that they would never reach ten million patents, or otherwise didn’t consider that in the future they would want to make a big deal out of the issuance of a patent with the same number.  So this raises a concern:  whatever unfortunate patentee is assigned a patent numbered “10,000,000” in 2018 (as the USPTO is announcing it plans to do) will probably face a legal challenge regarding the prior issuance of U.S. Pat. No. 10,000,000 in 1936. Suffice it to say, all this is poised to be an embarrassing mess for the USPTO.

Rob Urie – Democrats and the Crisis of Legitimacy

Link to an article by Rob Urie:

“Democrats and the Crisis of Legitimacy”

 

Bonus links: “No Box For That” and “Malcolm X and the Democrats: Excerpts from Peter Camejo’s Autobiography, North Star“ and Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-driven Political Systems and “Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies”

Joan Roelofs – Alexandra Kollontai: Socialist Feminism in Theory and Practice

Link to an article by Joan Roelofs:

“Alexandra Kollontai: Socialist Feminism in Theory and Practice”

 

Bonus links: “‘If Only There Were More Female Billionaires!’— New York Times” and “Soviet Power and the Status of Women” and “Capitalism and Female Labor”

Ben Norton – Former CIA Director Admits to US Foreign Meddling, Laughs About It

Link to a news video by Ben Norton:

“Former CIA Director Admits to US Foreign Meddling, Laughs About It”

 

Bonus links: “Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies” and Killing Hope and “Overthrow: 100 Years of U.S. Meddling & Regime Change, from Iran to Nicaragua to Hawaii to Cuba”

Bonus quote: “Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.” Frederick Douglass – July 4, 1852

Sarah Bruch & Joe Soss – The Lessons Students Learn

Link to an article by Sarah Bruch & Joe Soss:

“The Lessons Students Learn”

 

Bonus links: “Red Diaper Babies” and Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Richard Shaull Quote (“There is no such thing as a neutral educational process.  Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes ‘the practice of freedom,’ the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”) and Deschooling Society and The Struggle for the Meaning of Society As Such and “Elite Universities Are Turning Our Kids Into Corporate Stooges”