Dispatches Lives! Here by Permission Is the Full Text of Black Agenda Report's Thought Provoking Essay on Intersectionality

FIRST, MY DEEPEST GRATITUDE TO the tech support women at Typepad, my blog server, for showing me how to bypass my dead word processing system and assemble, edit and write Dispatches directly on my website at dispatchesfromdystopia.net.  Without such expert help -- especially that most recently provided by Anna D. -- I would remain but a lost child in the alien, glitch-haunted forests of Pancomputerdemonium. (The Nurdly consensus is I was not hacked; instead, attempting to run Open Office 4.1.1 in Windows 10, I was yet another of the innumerable victims in Microfuck's ongoing war against open-source software.) Hence this special, catch-up edition of Dispatches, including much of what was to have been 8 February's post but was lost in the WP demise. 

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NOW LET'S GET TO WORK.  As friends, Communist Labor Party comrades and even some kinfolk will attest, I have argued for many years we USian whites will never overthrow Capitalism until we not only join in heartfelt solidarity with our minority sisters and brothers but fully accept minority leadership and thereby take to heart the pivotal lessons, strategic and tactical, these seasoned veterans of extended class-struggle are uniquely qualified to teach us all. 

Nor is my stance unique. In the personal sense it was shaped by my late father -- ironically a skilled  teacher despite the psychological brutality and sadism that made him an abysmally unfit parent -- who fervently believed the 20th Century Civil Rights Movement would, in his words,  "force the United States to at long last live up to its democratic potential." (A few years later, I would for a time hold the same view of the Women's Liberation Movement, believing its original Marxism could save us from Capitalism's march toward fascism.) But my pivotal moment in this thinking was shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Canadian media laid bare a purported Committee for State Security (KGB) estimate of U.S. revolutionary potential in the late 1960s. It concluded that amongst most USian whites, the vast majority of whom were from comfortable bourgeois or petite bourgeois backgrounds, revolution was no more than a passing fad, while within the viciously oppressed African-American, Hispanic and First Nations communities, as well as within a tiny segment of the white Working Class, revolution was correctly viewed as a matter of survival. Hence while the KGB analysts evaluated the revolutionary potential of the Caucasian community as near absolute zero, it rated the revolutionary potential of the minority communities as quite high, though it simultaneously concluded these communities were of themselves too small to qualify for clandestine Soviet assistance.

(Note I write of this KGB analysis from memory; the reportage in question, which appeared in print c. 1992-1993, as I recall in Maclean's Magazine, has either never been referenced on the Internet or has been disappeared down the Orwellian memory hole, though I suspect it could yet be confirmed by any researcher who had access to a major Canadian library.) 

In any case, the implicit conclusion is obvious: either we whites learn to listen to our Black, Hispanic and First Nations sisters and brothers, or we remain slaves forever.  After all, is not listening the first step toward building solidarity? Thus the following, the best (i.e., most thought-provoking) essay on intersectionality I have yet read, reprinted in full with permission from its author, Black Agenda Report Managing Editor Bruce A. Dixon, to whom my most sincere thanks.                           

Looking Down That Deep Hole: Parasitic Intersectionality and Toxic Afro-Pessimism, Part 2

By Bruce A. Dixon

WHEN I TOOK A swipe at intersectionality last week, declaring that it was a hole, that afro-pessimism was a shovel and it was high time to stop digging, some friends and comrades were displeased. As far as they were concerned, questioning intersectionality amounted to a frontal attack on the place of women in the struggle against capital, patriarchy, white supremacy and empire, utterly inconsistent with my own politics and that of Black Agenda Report. I also threw some rocks at afro-pessimism, which I labeled the nappy headed step child of intersectionality, to the disappointment of its defenders, some of them friends and comrades too. Additionally neither group admits to understanding why I lumped them together, so I’m taking this opportunity to clarify both critiques and what joins them.


(To read the rest, go here or here)

Word Processing System Failure Shuts Down Dispatches

 Regardless of the fate of Dispatches,  we must fight on until Capitalism is no more and we the united people of the Working Class are everywhere in this world triumphant.  (Photograph by Loren Bliss © 2016.)

 

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 TWO NIGHTS AGO the Open Office 4.1.1 word processing system on my Windows 10 computer went stone dead. I cannot write any new documents, cannot open any existing text documents, cannot even download material from flash drives. I don't know if I have been hacked or if something else has happened -- though given a new agreement with another genuinely revolution-minded Leftist domestic source, the timing is surely suspicious. Moreover I am too abysmally ignorant of computers to troubleshoot a failure of this magnitude. (In truth I despise computers -- the only inanimate objects that have ever roused me to genuine hatred -- because I recognize what they are: genocidal weapons modified by our Capitalist overlords to function as the ultimate scabs, exemplified by the fact that in my lifetime field of print journalism, computers destroyed about five of every seven jobs and enabled our masters to force the rest of us to labor about three times harder at less than half the pay.) In any case, Dispatches is down, and I have no idea for how long. (Yes, a nurdly comrade is coming to attempt rescue, but probably not until Sunday at the earliest.) Best-case scenario is I will be back online next week; worst case scenario is this computer is dead. Given that I lack the financial means to replace it, this would mean Dispatches too is dead. Goddess grant the problem is repairable, though in either case, sighs of relief or lamentations, I'll post the appropriate notice. My apologies.

Meanwhile let us never forget Earth is our True Motherland, and that as we free ourselves of the genocidal shackles of Capitalism, we free our Mother from the apocalyptic bondage of patriarchy. Hence an audiovisual meditation I recommend for us all, especially when the encroaching darkness threatens to weaken our determination.  
LB/8 February 2018

USian Empire's Capitalist Healthcare Horror Turns Personal

AS REGULAR READERS KNOW, I was badly injured in a household accident on 7 January 2018. Since then, the effort to get adequate care for the injuries inflicted by that accident has thrust me into an eye-opening struggle with Kaiser-Permanente, which took over Washington state's Group Health Cooperative last year. 

This fight is significant to Dispatches because it exemplifies the deadly obstacles that confront us all in a realm wherein healthcare is permanently defined as a privilege of wealth rather than a human right.

Significantly, though I joined GHC as a voting member nearly 45 years ago, I never once found it necessary to challenge its policies or personnel to obtain needed care. Indeed – in perfect health at the time I joined – my membership was more than anything a political statement, endorsement of the co-op as the closest approximation to socialized medicine USian Capitalism will ever allow. For that reason – never mind the pathetic self-deception that proclaims healthcare-as-a-human-right to be achievable without full-fledged revolution –  I voted against the KP takeover and will lament the death of GHC and its former, implicitly socialist idealism for as long as I remain alive.

Though KP is allegedly a non-profit organization, its unwritten but nevertheless obvious policy – that health care is indeed a privilege of wealth rather than a human right – is no different from the policy of the Empire itself and the policies of the Empire's more brazenly murderous for-profit medical monopolies. 

Indeed KP has often been accused of concealing for-profit operations behind a non-profit disguise. Quoth Wikipedia:

“Kaiser has had disputes with its employees' unions, repeatedly faced civil and criminal charges for falsification of records and patient dumping, faced action by regulators over the quality of care it provided, especially to patients with mental health issues, and has faced criticism from activists and action from regulators over the size of its cash reserves.”

(To read the rest, go here or here.) 

Even After a Year of Nightmares Come True, It Seems None Dare Admit the Ultimate Horror of the Trump/Pence Regime: That Its Seizure of Our Species' Most Malevolently Apocalyptic Empire Is Tantamount to Nazi Conquest of the Entire World

FACE IT, PEOPLE: the Empire's global thermonuclear omnipotence and its better-dead-than-Red moral imbecility means that 72 years after the presumably victorious end of World War II, the Nazis have in fact conquered our entire planet.

And until we acknowledge this as-yet unspeakable fact, our efforts to build an effective resistance movement will forever be undone by our craven refusal to confront the admittedly horrific truth of our circumstances.

The pivotal question of our time – by far the most potentially apocalyptic of all human eras – is whether we will remain lost in our present fog of self-deluding euphemisms and/or inescapably trapped by our Big Lies of outright denial and thus in either case paralyzed by the deliberately suppressed, none-dare-say-it-aloud JesuNazi reality of the Trump/Pence Regime and the viciously white-supremacist, fanatically Christian tyranny by which it has already captured 24 of the 50 U.S. state governments. 

We should never allow ourselves to be deceived by the fact China, Russia, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and a few other nations continue to courageously defy the USian global Fourth Reich. Here again the awful truth is that all these allegedly independent nations combined possess nothing approaching the thermonuclear might of the United States and its imperial subject-nations in Europe and the Middle East. Nor have Russia, China et al developed effective countermeasures to neutralize the JesuNazi fanaticism we know will prompt the Donald or his successors to nuke Earth to a bug planet were defeat ever to threaten the One Empire Under God.

 
In which context Hitler's final remarks... 

(To read the rest, go here or here.)

The Most Revolutionary News the US Press Ever Published?

Yes, I'm still profoundly disabled -- the pain of my torn hip and thigh ligaments and the associated buttocks-to-ankle hematoma far surpasses the anesthetic ability of my (begrudgingly*) prescribed painkillers  -- but the material accessed by this  Columbia Journalism Review link is by far the most newsworthy material I have yet handled, "yet handled" covering a journalism career that began in late 1956 and continues sporadically even now.  It is also the most potentially revolution-inspiring story I have ever covered, and I post this link with full knowledge of its implications.
Quoth CJR:

Meeting with lawmakers Thursday in the Oval Office, President Trump expressed his displeasure with the bipartisan immigration deal being discussed. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump asked, referencing immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations. The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey broke the story, reporting that Trump next suggested the US should instead prioritize people from countries such as Norway.

Trump’s words may have been shocking, but they can’t be seen as surprising. His history of racist comments stretches back decades, and it was only weeks ago that The New York Times reported that the president, again in an Oval Office meeting, said Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS” and Nigerians who visit the US would never “go back to their huts.” Yesterday’s comments were nothing new for a man who launched his political profile on the lie that Barack Obama wasn’t a true American.

There is little I can add to the legitimate outrage (finally) expressed by CJR's courageously truthful reporting on the JesuNazi who has ridden the USian Empire's potentially apocalyptic political sickness to the most dangerously powerful throne in our species' history. Hence I urge you all not only to read the full text (the material quoted above is merely its introduction), but to circulate it as widely -- and as repetitiously -- as you can. Please please please do so, for the fate of our nation and indeed of our entire species literally hangs in the balance, with the outcome to be determined -- as never before -- by our news media's ongoing courageousness or lack thereof. 
__________________   

*I would be derelict in my reportorial duty were I not to report that the excruciating inadequacy of my prescription pain medications is a product of two uniquely USian conditions. The first of these is the fanatical Christian belief that all suffering is approved by their notably sadistic god -- that adequate pain medication is therefore defiance of the Divine Sadist's will. The second of these is the nationwide, seemingly "health"-oriented but ultimately fanatical Christian panic over the abuse of opiates, which in hideous truth is spawned by the fanatical Christians' terror over the allegedly "heretical" insights all mood-altering drugs are alleged to provide. 

Hence the spectrum of associated taboos, including the Trump/Pence Regime's ever-more-obvious intent to impose zero-tolerance, mass-arrest enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states that have legalized its medical and recreational consumption. Thus my prediction...

(To read the rest, go here or here.)

Much Longer Delay Due to Agonizing Groin Sprain: Must Be My Week in the Abrahamic God's Cosmic Torture Chamber

I DON'T KNOW how soon I will be posting here again as I am temporarily disabled by a groin sprain, the diverse agonies of which include moments of the most intense pain I have ever experienced --  my "ever" including a simultaneously impacted and abscessed wisdom tooth the sudden onset of which, on Labor Day Sunday of 1969,  was so devastating I passed out in the emergency room of New York City's Beth Israel Hospital.

But the only metaphor I can conjure up that even approaches accurate description of the peak magnitude of this 2018 pain is the ultimately inconceivable agony of some sadist digging with the point of a rusty 12-penny nail in the naked nerve tissue at the core of an untreated cavity in an abscessed and impacted tooth -- and then multiply the hurt times itself to maybe the 20th power. 

Fortunately, unlike the constant and seemingly relentless agony inflicted by the 1969 wisdom tooth emergency until it was blessedly relieved by BI-provided codeine, the most intense moments of today's groin-sprain pain  afflict me only when I sit on or try to rise from the way-too-low toilet-seats Puyallup's mercilessly profiteering Independent Living Incorporated imposed on Washington State's nonprofit Senior Housing Assistance Group when the appropriately acronymed ILI -- revealingly pronounced "eye lie" as if to tauntingly admit Capitalism's ultimate truth -- "renovated" these apartments. 

That project began in 2014,  continued through last year and included wrenching disruptions of our lives by temporary evictions which -- as if we had any doubts -- showed us the utter contempt with which the capitalists view lower-income elders. Though the evictions were of only one to three days' duration, they mandated exactly the same preparations as a permanent change of address. Nor were we reimbursed for our momentary homelessness.  

Moreover the renovation work the evictions were to enable was delayed without explanation at least three times. Hence because of the repeated packing and unpacking so necessitated, the evictions were at least thrice as disruptive as a permanent move --  often even more so for any number of reasons including the discomfort ILI's hurry-up-and-wait demands knowingly inflicted on physically disabled tenants. Such is the morally imbecilic savagery of USian Biblical Capitalism. 
 
As to my present-day circumstances, their negative aspects are but additional reminders of the same Christian Capitalist moral imbecility.  Capitalist governance -- its tax revenues and managerial skills exclusively dedicated to expanding Capitalism and boosting its obscene profiteering -- is utterly indifferent to the misery so inflicted. 

Indeed  I survive only because of the blessed volunteer helpfulness of my Communist Labor Party comrades, two additional local friends and three fellow SHAG tenants, to all of whom my deepest gratitude and most profound thanks. Unless my heart quits unexpectedly from the literally breath-stealing stress of fighting the groin-sprain pain, I will most likely outlive the hardships inflicted by our nation's implicitly genocidal limits on medical and dental care, which means I will return to posting Dispatches as soon as possible. Meanwhile my most profuse apologies for the interruption of these news briefings, analyses and commentaries. Updates will follow as events unfold.

LB/9 January 2018

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Dispatches Late Due to Illness; Should Be Up by Friday 5/1

Had a severe flare-up of the weeping leg ulcers that are one of the more grotesque side-affects of Congestive Heart Failure, and after nearly eight hours at Kaiser-Permanente's superb Tacoma Urgent Care facility (formerly Group Health's), have discovered I will be mostly homebound for the next several weeks, which should at least enable me to get Dispatches back on schedule. (Goddess willing and the creek don't rise.) 
LB/4 January 2018

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