Star-forming region S106 in the constellation Cygnus
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Project (STScI/AURA)
Monthly Archives: April 2014
I think I’m going to volunteer for the Marxists Internet Archive when I have time, so that I could create the Mahdi Amel Archive, in Arabic at first, and then when someone can help me translate (this will probably be my post-retirement project) we will make an English archive and make Mahdi Amel international like he should be. I don’t want to die without having tried to give the world access to Mahdi Amel.
A section of the Carina Nebula in the constellation Carina
Image credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Juventus FC shows support to Dani Alves after a racist fan threw a banana at him during last Sunday’s game against Villarreal.
A section of the Tarantula Nebula in the constellation Dorado
Image credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
Workers and farmers unite
You have nothing to lose
But your chains
The world is to win
This is May Day! May!
Your armies are veining the earth!Railways and highways have tied
Blood of farmland and town
And the chains
Speed wheat to machine
This is May Day! May!
The poor’s armies veining the earth!Hirers once fed by the harried
Cannot feed them their hire
Nor can chains
Hold the hungry in
This is May Day! May!
The poor are veining the earth!Light lights in air blossoms red
Like nothing on earth
Now the chains
Drag graves to lie in
This is May Day! May!
The poor’s armies are veining the earth!March comrades in revolution
From hirer unchained
Till your gain
Be the freedom of all
The World’s May Day! May!
May of the Freed of All the Earth!
Louis Zukofsky | March Comrades (1938)
When I was a child and people used to ask me my name, they used to jokingly follow up my answer with “so you’re a communist?” as my family is known for being a family of communists. We got this reputation because of one famous communist intellectual and martyr of the Communist Party who belonged to our family but really we don’t deserve it. No one in my family is a communist, with the exception of my aunt and her husband – hardline Marxist-Leninists for decades may God protect them. Sometimes I think the number of times I was jokingly asked if I were a communist, back when I was a five year old boy, has something to do with where I am today.
Into the streets May First!
Into the roaring Square!
Shake the midtown towers!
Shatter the downtown air!
Come with a storm of banners,
Come with an earthquake tread,
Bells, hurl out of your belfries,
Red flag, leap out your red!
Out of the shops and factories,
Up with the sickle and hammer,
Comrades, these are our tools,
A song and a banner!
Roll song, from the sea of our hearts,
Banner, leap and be free;
Song and banner together,
Down with the bourgeoisie!
Sweep the big city, march forward,
The day is a barricade;
We hurl the bright bomb of the sun,
The moon like a hand grenade.
Pour forth like a second flood!
Thunder the alps of the air!
Subways are roaring our milllons—
Comrades, into the square!
Alfred Hayes | Into the Streets May First (1934)
For the first time in the history of thought, revolutionary theory was welded to revolutionary praxis. The revolution no longer lacked its thought, and thought was no longer the prisoner of its rumination. What was possible became imminent, for what is necessary in the movement of materialist history can only be achieved by revolutionary struggle. This struggle is the promise of the working class: reactionary and despotic regimes will meet their end.
https://www.tumblr.com/audio_file/levantine-viper/84338072663/tumblr_n4uuwki6h11s5ibd1?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
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Listen to this beautiful eulogy, written and sung by Marcel Khalife to his personal friend Lebanese Marxist theoretician Mahdi Amel (see this post I made about him here), who was assassinated under his house in Beirut in 1987.
http://www.divshare.com/direct/25478286-715.mp3?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
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Marcel Khalife—“Taqasim: Part Three”
Taqasim (Nagam Records 2006).
Theory is essentially the intellectual expression of the revolutionary process itself. In it every stage of the process becomes fixed so that it may be generalised, communicated, utilised and developed. Because the theory does nothing but arrest and make conscious each necessary step, it becomes at the same time the necessary premise of the following one. — György Lukács
I’ve updated my Marxism reader. I’ve added a few works but most notably I’ve added the Marx-Engels Collected Works – 32,000+ pages of works by Marx and Engels which will be removed from MIA tomorrow (the PDFs I’ve added are not hosted on MIA). Also from now on I will probably only update the version of this reader that is found on my WordPress, and not the one here on Tumblr. So for all those interested, this will be the place to check.
A section of the Carina Nebula in the constellation Carina
Image credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Arabic versions of The Internationale (نشيد الأممية)
- Wael Al-Maskani (Tunisia)
- Rim Banna (Palestine)
- Lebanese Communist Party (Lebanon)
- Unknown artist/country
- Unknown artist/country
Ant Farm (Doug Michels and Chip Lord with Richard Jost)
House of the Century
Mojo Lake, Angleton, TX, 1972
(flooded and destroyed in the mid 1980s)
Warning you in advance, I’m going to post a few dozen May Day posters before this day is over.
We will resist..
Poster of the Lebanese National Resistance Front, an alliance of left-wing militant groups that operated during the Lebanese Civil War.
Caught this over @yardbarker. Write up by Heather Zeller.
“The 2014 FIFA World Cup is quickly approaching and @HugoBoss has tapped top footballers to appear in a campaign for its BOSS Bottled fragrance. The fashion house is no stranger to the sport. In 2013, Hugo Boss became the official outfitter of Germany’s national soccer teams.
Ten players serve as the featured faces of the campaign, which boasts the tagline, ”Success Beyond the Game.” The athletes who are representing the fragrance in their countries include: Joe Hart, Thiago Silva, Sergio Ramos, Claudio Marchisio, Fernando Gago, Marco Reus, Mario Gomez, Olivier Giroud, Robin Van Persie, and Aldo de Nigris.
Check out Marchisio, Hart, Giroud, Gomez, and Ramos for BOSS Bottled. Each player is sharply dressed in a dark, three-piece suit, with a crisp white shirt and pocket square.”
Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation. Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognise others as persons – not by those who are oppressed, exploited and unrecognised.
Paulo Freire | Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)
Artist Diego Rivera (known for his famous work Man, Controller of the Universe) giving a speech to members of the Mexican Communist Party in 1956.
There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found
While journeying east and west –
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Amal Alameddine’s grandmother’s reaction to the news of Amal’s engagement to George Clooney:
Her grandmother Safa’ was pleased with the news, and asked: “George Clooney is Druze my granddaughter?”, and her happiness was cut short when she learned who George Clooney was! She replied, surprised: “Is there a shortage of Druze men?! Oh well..may God be with her and send the rest of you better fortunes!”
Number of MPs present in parliament today was less than that necessitated by the Lebanese constitution to meet quorum for the election of a new president. The second parliamentary session to elect a new president has been postponed to May 7th by Berri after March 8 MPs boycott this session in protest over Samir Geagea’s candidacy.
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