Blessings to Those Who Rushed Out on Black Friday to Spend Money While They Still Can

The news reports indicate that the shopping malls were fuller than expected for this Black Friday, higher than last year.  How could this be when the economy is crashing?  My only answer is that maybe people are rushing to spend money while they still can.  And let’s not forget that many people rush to join in on Black Friday to find the much-advertised sales.  With the high-anxiety-producing convulsions of the stock market and the sinking of most economic indicators, those seem to be pretty good motives for joining the post-Thanksgiving shopping rush.

Personally, I can’t stand crowded malls and big shopping days.  But this Friday, the issue was a moot point for me anyway, because I was pretty much house bound with a generally run-down body and some kind of recurring one-eyed conjunctivitis, wishing that I could go out right now and buy health insurance.  (And if I could buy such insurance in one lump sum, now would probably be the time for me to do so, since a forecast cutback in my work hours might mean reduced wages pretty soon, once again.)  But even though I did stay at home. egaging in far more constructive activities like starting on future blog posts (and watching lots of music videos and hot dancing clips on YouTube - with one good eye), I’m not going to blame or criticize anyone for running out to buy that one last batch of consumer items and search for much-needed bargains - while they still can.  In fact, if I believed in God, I would even say, bless them! 

And those who piled up purchases on their credit cards, bless you too.  Be thankful that you were able to get a few more things on those credit cards before you default and declare bankruptcy. 

And to anyone who got into fist fights and wrestling matches  to grab that last sale item,  good for you.  This might be good training for grabbing the last slice on the bread line sometime down the road.  It also might be good training to keep yourself in the game if and when the looting starts. 

And one reason I quoted the information that I did in the prior post…

…Here on this blog…is that I am so tired of hearing this ugly generalization that all Muslim men are misogynistic, oppress women, etc.  This is just a stereotype that enables a lot of people, including supposed “progressives”/liberals as well as conservatives, to indulge in a kind of racism that they can completely get away with in the present society, in the present day.

I am sick to death of the Muslim bashing that I see on every other Internet site, a narrow and thoroughly irrational kind of thinking that is indulged in by supposedly otherwise enlightened people.

If you want to talk about misogyny in the name of religion, Islam certainly has no monopoly on that.  (Try looking a little bit into the history of Christianity, for instance.)  If you want to, as so many people are doing, claim that there are more Muslims who would commit murder in the name of their religion, a brief look at human history will reveal that mass murders have been committed by people of all the major religions, in the name of either those religions or the collective followers of same:  Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, they’ve all committed atrocities, have all committed massacres, in the name of their respective sects.

Now, I got into Suzana Ansar (basically within the past week) because I thought her music was really nice, and I liked how she could split her time between working with very traditional music and working with very futuristic electronic stuff such as some of the work being produced by State of Bengal, and also do some very good rocking somewhere in between.   (Oh, yeah, and I did get into researching bangla music for my music blog not only because I’ve been so hooked on all kinds of South Asian music (again) lately, but also because I thought this would be a nice thing to do, a little show of sympathy and solidarity with a community of people who’ve suffered once again from a “natural” disaster that wreaked havoc upon their land.  And if you’re wondering why I put “natural” in quotes…well, that will take another post, sometime.)  Meanwhile,  from what I ended up reading about this revolutionary named Kazi Nazrul Islam, he does seem to have had a lot of great qualities.  I don’t really know that much more about him, nor do I claim to be some devoted follower of his legacy.  Nor do I intend to become a Muslim.  Nor, for that matter, am I suddenly the kind of Marxist who puts all his energies into supporting third world liberation struggles.  (Although I am discovering that I am becoming much more third worldist in terms of musical and cultural tastes/interests.  So maybe I’ll get into thrid-worldism through the side door, without having to deal with so much Marxist-Leninist-Maoism that I can’t stand.  You never know…)   

But, to put it simply, I just found it very interesting to read about this stuff.

And also, I am not one, especially these days, to condemn a movement and/or revolutionary individual because of their allegiance to any religion.  Some might find that surprising, but I really am less and less inclined nowadays to make judgments of that kind.  (Maybe part of the reason is that people can do a lot crappy stuff in the name of atheism as well.  I think that John Madziarczyk has a few interesting things to say about that.)

I admit that I may have sometimes given intolerant responses personally to some people upon hearing them talk about about their religious leanings or their tendencies toward magical thinking, but that’s mainly been a critique of such thinking, not a condemnation of them as people.  Because, I simply cannot, at the moment, understand how anyone could fully believe in a religion given all the things that we have learned in the past few centuries (at least).

But, really, it is such a complicated issue…  Yes, lots of atrocities have been committed in the name of religion, but many people who’ve done very good things were inspired by relgion too.  (And I personally think that a lot of people use a religion to sort of map a system of ethics and set of values that they would have anyway,  just from living and thinking as social beings.  That’s something else that I might write about extensively sometime.)

While I may have the same metaphysical (non-)belief system as so many anarchist or Marxist atheists, I feel sometimes that I am no longer as eager to consider this whole issue in the simple, black-and-white terms by which at least some of them tend to see it.

At the Music Blog: Suzana Ansar Singing Revolutionary Poetry from Bangladesh

Over at the music blog, I’ve gotten into the work of the Bengali singer Susana Ansar, and I found some particularly interesting information regarding a poet whose works she covers, Kazi Nazrul Islam.  You’ll have to go to the music blog if you want to see a YouTube of Suzana singing, but I thought I’d copy the text over here: 

——————

More Suzana Ansar for you…  This apparently is a Nazrul song.  “Nazrul” refers to the work of the revolutionary poet Kazi Nazrul Islam, who is also known as the national poet of Bangladesh.

Wikipedia has some very interesting info about Kazi Nazrul Islam: 

Kazi Nazrul Islam (Bengali: কাজী নজরুল ইসলাম) (25 May 1899-29 August 1976) was a Bengali poet, musician, revolutionary, and philosopher who pioneered poetic works espousing intense spiritual rebellion against orthodoxy and oppression.  His poetry and nationalist activism earned him the popular title of Bidrohi Kobi (Rebel Poet)…

Nazrul’s writings explore themes such as love, freedom, and revolution; he opposed all bigotry, including religious and gender…

While explicitly avowing his affinity to Islam, and calling for upholding Islam for its universalistic essence, values and spirit, he believed that medieval Islamic practices and religious conservatism were hurting Indian Muslims as well as the Muslim world, and keeping them backward, intensifying social and sectarian challenges…

Nazrul is hailed for his sincere conviction in the liberation of women.  His poems explored the independence of a woman’s mind and the ability to perform diverse roles in society. 

Pessimism of the Intellect, Pessimism of the Will

Well, after a once unthinkable gap of eight days, I’ve finally managed to crank out a full post.  But the resistance to doing this sort of thing on this blog has gotten much greater of late.  Some people talk about blog writing blocks…  However, I wouldn’t say that’s exactly what I have, because I’ve been working very extensively on my music blog, which I’ve been finding to be very enjoyable.  I’m still not getting as many readers on that blog, but I’ve just got much more creative momentum going there.  So, what’s the problem here?  I think it’s because this is the political blog, something I once perceived of as a sort of vehicle for activism, and something that reflects my attitudes about the situation in the present society, in the U.S., and my realtionship to it as someone who is politically concerned (or obsessed) and (painfully) aware.

And right now, I guess the problem can be summed up on one phrase, which I just typed in as the title of this post.

Excellent Conversation: Ageism as a Direct Result of Capitalism

Thanks to a young guy by the name of William Gillis for leading me to an excellent little conversation (very short and very direct) at Amor Mundi under the heading Longevity is Class Struggle.  My favorite part of the exchange occurs at the end (so far):

D:  It makes plenty of sense that a lot of what manifests as “ageism” is actually a kind of economic phobia — non-wealthy older people are considered (like disabled people, regardless of whether or not they would classify themselves as “disabled”) to be “bad investments” with regard to employment, medical care, other forms of support, etc.

G:  Much of what goes on in the work world under the name “age discrimination” is more like discrimination against anyone perceived as being not cheap, expendable, easily bullied into overwork and being mature enough to see through the bullshit produced by the 25 year old MBAs who run the place…

Another good line, also by above-referenced G (Greg):

I have to say that the “warehousing” of aging people seems to me to largely result from the intense propaganda coming out of corporate America in favor of the isolated nuclear family as the basic unit of society. 

Greg goes on to talk about how people are ridiculed for living with parents when they actually might be taking care of said parents.

I would add that there is also a huge amount of prejudice against people building different kinds of households outside of the prescribed nuclear family unit, whether for economic or social needs, especially when they get past a certain age.  That becomes quite apparent to anyone who has needed to find a roommate or multiply shared housing situation but who also happens to be middle-aged (a predicament that I personally am all too familiar with).  

And in the present society, the demands for time that are created by the need to work for a living, combined with the lack of anything resembling public community, help to encourage an atmosphere in which trying to find mutually supportive connections outside of the prescribed nuclear family is not only discouraged but nearly impossible.  This becomes especially clear as people get older.

How many people have lost friends because said friends ultimately felt that they had no time to maintain social connections outside of their nuclear family units and the demands of work and/or adult education, etc.?  I know I’ve gone through that.

Some people might just become comfortable, given the present conditions, living as relative recluses.  You can often count me in that group.  However, once again, this becomes very difficult due to outside pressures - the above problem re. needing a roommate is one example, as are other problems that come with trying to live paycheck-to-paychek as an individual without any spousal backup (or going through long periods of unemployment and being single as well - not to mention living without health insurance, whether or not you have a job). 

We hear a lot, especially from liberals and “progressives,” about the importance of supporting the “working family,” but there’s not much concern for the struggling single.  This could be in part because children can cost a lot of money, but I think there’s more to it than that.  Among both conservatives and liberals (but especially among liberals who want to appeal in some way to conservative voters), being single is simply looked down upon…

Especially as we get older…

At which point, if we still are single, in the present age, we should pay serious attention to the personal ads, i.e., advertisements, where people blatantly enter into a relationship market, looking for a good investment with profitable returns.  (And, I’m sorry to say, if you’ve ever looked at a bunch of personal  ads by women, it seems that most of them are blatantly looking to enhance or supplement their own financial condition and their ability to consume.)

But maybe I am digressing a bit here.

In any case, in many situations, it becomes clear that the actual physical changes are the least of our problems as we get older (though they do admittedly become bigger problems if we don’t have health insurance).  The much bigger problem is dealing with all the ideas and attitudes about aging that are so much part of our society.  And the above conversation helps to point out how most of that problem is a direct result of the demands made by capitalism. 

————-

P.S.  Maybe it would be appropriate to add one final thought here - because it’s another aspect of the same problem that can’t be ignored:  For women especially - and men increasingly - there is also a huge industry built around encouraging older people to hide their age - it’s called beauty, cosmetics, etc…

Thus, many aging people who can at all afford to do so will invest a lot of their  own money into an effort make sure that they are not perceived of as poor investments themselves.  

Over At My Music Blog: Anti-War Video with M.I.A. Soundtrack

Over at my music blog, I recently posted an interesting anti-war video that I stumbled upon at YouTube…  The footage is of a breaking-the-barricades event (and typical police overkill event) at the September 15 march in Washington, DC.  The soundtrack is the song ”Paper Planes” by M.I.A.  The words printed on the screen talk about how “voting is not enough” and “marching is not enough” and how we need direct action.  There are some contradictions involved, such as the list of groups to contact near the end (such as ANSWER, who, at least as I see it, do anything but support real direct action).  But overall, the message is good.  And, of course, I love the use of that M.I.A. song - not only because it’s a great M.I.A. song, but because it’s nice to see an activist video using good contemporary electronic dance music (even though - or maybe especially because - it morphs an old Clash riff), along with some very good and smart satirical lyrics, versus the stuff that I’ve often seen in activist videos:  old folk or punk (but usually not anything as interesting as a good Clash song) or pretty boring rock, with lyrics that are just too obvious and non-poetic in the way that they deliver the message.  But maybe that’s just my impression, given my experiences…  M.I.A. is not always a poetic genius (even I’ll admit that), but “Paper Planes” is quite brilliantly satirical, with a quick critique of capitalist brutality that could be applied equally to music business hustling, international drug dealing, and imperialist war.  So, it was a very smart and refreshing choice for this kind of video.

But, of course, this is more commentary that belongs on my music blog…

If I Don’t Want the FBI to Follow Me, I Better Stop Buying Those Middle Eastern Yogurt Drinks!

I better stop buying Middle Eastern yogurt drinks and frozen kofta kebabs at that supermarket in Jackson Hieghts - that is, if I don’t want to be followed by government agents (again)…  According to a recent report in  Congressional Quarterly (found via Hawgblawg):

Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

Yes, Pakistan’s In A Mess - And How Bush Would Love to Emulate Musharraf

A little while back, I wrote a post talking about how Pakistan’s dictator Musharraf was emulating George W. Bush.  I deleted it because it wasn’t very well written, etc., but I’ve discovered that other people have gotten the same impression, except that it is George W. Bush who would like to emulate Musharraf.  Most notably, I like the comments from BartBlog (which is a sort of liberal blog if I’m not mistaken):

Can’t you just see George W. Bush fantasizing about doing to America what Musharraf has done to Pakistan.  Remove the Congress and the Courts, something the neocons behind Bush salivate about, and you have absolute control.  One can laugh all one wants but if the US were to suffer a catastrophic terrorist attack our mindless leader could see his chance to join his buddy Musharraf as dictator.  Combine that with a national media and general public that behave like sheep you can actually see this happen.

Personally, I don’t see that happening (though I might regret those words someday), but I don’t doubt that Bush and the rest of the right wing of our ruling oligarchy (and then some) would love to have such a chance.  Meanwhile, of course, Pakistan has had plenty of political messes before (thanks a great deal to the efforts of at least a couple of English-speaking western governments), but maybe not, at least to this degree, at the same time that they’ve had surge of fundamentalism and had nukes.  

I saw someone say in some right-libertarian blog that if the U.S. government were not so hypocritcal, it would talk about attacking Pakistan next.  The logic makes some sense, but that kind of talk is not welcome - even if meant as a joke, for so many reasons, that is not funny at all.

But we can and should laugh at Musharraf, who might indeed remind us of our own president in the worst ways.

I like this rather amusing take from THE desi blog, Sepia Mutiny:

Although Musharraf says he declared martial law to protect the country and not his political future, there is a curious preoccupation with dignity and name calling in his words and actions.  Although this is a very serious situation, I can’t help but see him as a child who threatens to stop everybody from playing unless they stop making fun of him.    

In the comments to that post, someone also pointed out a very informed article, from The  Guardian.  This piece points out the complexity of the situation - because, while Musharraf is acting a bit arbitrarily, to say the least (apparently, his “emergency” isn’t even an acceptable kind of martial law, because he only suspended the branch of government that offended him), there isn’t really a full democratic movement opposing him, because of the complex (and often less desirable) likely alternatives (at this stage anyway).  This article goes on to describe how some people in Pakistan will support his dictatorial control if it promises stability.  However, I don’t see that as being so exceptional, either.  When the article’s author, Ali Eteraz, describes how the attitude of those Pakistanis might presumably seem foreign to westerners, I can’t help seeing yet more parallels to the situation in the U.S.:   

Disengaged western audiences, pumped full of the current pro-democracy intoxicants, will almost universally decry Musharraf’s behaviour.  I decry it too, precisely because I am a disengaged westerner and I have that luxury.  However, the story in Pakistan is not so straightforward.

What I am being told by bazari merchants, some young professionals, and some industrialists in Karachi and Lahore is that they merely care for stability, whether it comes in the form of the military, or in the form of democracy.  Incidentally, many of them believe that it is Musharraf who is more likely to assure that stability.   A couple of people, with middle class businesses, suggested to me that Musharraf should behave more like a dictator; a secular version of the previous Islamist dictator, Zia ul Haq, in order to assure stability for business and economic growth…

(Emphasis added.)

The parallels seem to become even closer when Eteraz points out how Pakistan, much like the U.S., Britain, etc., seems to have pretty free culture, with art, music, and even satire thriving in many ways:

Cinema, music, the arts and freedom of press are thriving in Pakistan.  The popular satire programme - “We are Expecting” - has a regular character mocking Musharraf, which does nothing more than grunt and proclaim “Yes!” in a loud voice.

(And by the way, from the little I’ve seen and heard, I might even argue that much of their popular music and dance and even cinema is better than much of ours these days, as with India’s.)

…Which is all the more reason to hope that that country does not come under full attack from religious right-wing nuts, either the ones over there or the ones in the government  here who might want to do something if that country ever were to be taken over fully by the fundamentalists.  (Which seems logically to me like more of a possibility, not less, if Musharraf continues with these ugly illegal power grabs, stability-cravers notwithstanding - but what do I know?)

But if we want to think about what the U.S. should really do, I think the best advice in this Guardian post came from the comments section, written in regard to Britain, by someone named “MrDismal”:

…And the best way we in Britain could help Pakistan at the present time is to start rocking the boat here in Britain with a view to getting more democracy working for us Brits.  Then we could get our stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan stopped.