by ThaddeusFor about three months now, I've been baffled as to where certain comments have gotten to. Stuff that I and other commentators have written has simply vanished into the ether and I've been accused of censoring it.
Needless to say, this is frustrating to me as I'm not at all in favor of censorship.
Well, Blogspot finally solved my issue. Apparently, the missing posts were going directly into Blogspot's newly created spam filter.
Basically, here are the three things that seems to have turned the spam filter on:
1) Multiple postings in a short period of time. Both Mira and I got caught with this one. If you post TOO much during a given day, Spam Filter thinks that you're a bot.
2) Long blocks of text with no punctuation or capitalization and little if any formatting. Spam Filter thinks this is random spam on the order of dick-enhancement ads. Several of the less-literate Anonymi got caught with this one. You know the type: folks who spew on and one for lines at a time with no regards to capitalization or what not.
3) Large blocks of swearing. Again, certain Anonymi got caught here, particularly the guys who spew "motherfucker" and "shit" in every other sentence.
In order to avoid the Spam Filter in the future, I've now turned on the blog moderating option. This means that your comments will not immediately appear when you send them in, but hopefully if they disappear, you will now know why.
Over the following days, we'll be combing through the spam bin in order to see if anything there deserves to be saved. Please note that not everything appears to be IN the spam bin, so your comment may have been lost for good. Also note that if your comment is basically an illiterate rant, we may choose to not publish it in any case. We'll just have to see.
O Mangue's comment editting policy is as follows:
In general, we support anyone's right to write anything as long as our commentators avoid gratuitous dumb-fuckery. "Gratuitous dumb-fuckery" is a state of affairs that will be determined by Ana and I on a case-by-case basis and we'll let you know why your comments have been classified as such if we choose to use our soverign power as censors. If you think you've been unfairly classified as a gratuitous dumbfuck, please give us a rational reason as to why we should rethink our classification and we'll review your arguments.
Posts
After sifting through the spam files and ISPs of the commentators and taking a good, hard, long look at spelling and grammatical similarities, I've come to the conclusion that I'm being trolled by an old Abagond commentator named "B.R." who is very probably has-been jazz drummer Andrew Scott Potter in real life.
ReplyDeleteGiven ASP and Andrew "Mr. Laurelton Queens" from Florida, this seems to be my month for attracting Andrews with issues.
B.R./ASP was banned from Abagond for being an explosive and abusive commentator and, although I think he got a bad rap there, I'm really not in the mood to be harrassed by him, especially under the rubric "Anonymous".
So here's the deal, Mr. Jazz Drummer: you stand accused of gratuitous dumb-fuckery. Either start posting under a regular, verifiable handle or expect to get your posts censored - unless they are particularly brilliant and/or entertaining.
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's someone who doesn't have the balls to actually put their name behind controversial and/or insulting comments. It's particularly annoying when it's a menopausal man of 61 years of age who's acting like a thirteen-year old from 4Chan.
For christsake, B.R./ASP take your own advice and man up: either put your comments under your own name or piss off.
Love the cartoon!
ReplyDeleteHere's an example of the kind of thing that's probably going to get cut from now on.
ReplyDeleteThis post is from "Anonymous" in response to a post by Desiree on the Menelik Charles thread. Desiree, it should be noted, apparently read my comment here, because she linked her name to a photo of Andrew Scott Potter. Note that "Anonymous" basically admits that he is indeed Andrew Scott Potter...
"Anonymous said...
i mean really, desiree, what the fuck are you talking about ?
you come in with your little anti american bullshit, watch your fucking ass, because i will roll over you if keep that shit up
ive said what i needed to say, if punk bitches want to keep it up, im more than happy to slop them around in the mud
half the shit gets erased on here anyway
aint nobody trying to hide on here, you know who i am , fuck you."
Appologies to Desiree for posting this, but I thought it would be interesting to show people just what kind of an nutcase we're dealing with here.
This man's posts have no content, are full of personal insults (and not even funny or creative ones at that) and he demonstrates a basic inability to wrtie clear and concise English.
These are the words of a 61 year old man, folks! One who apparently considers himself to be one hell of a creative personality to boot.
I guess we now know why Andrew Scott Potter has been reduced to playing second-string venues and publically financed gimme shows for the last several years: the man's gone bat-shit insane. And here I always thought the stereotypes about drummers were exagerated...
A pity Paulo Russo has to put up with guys like this.
Andrew, if you want to spew on this blog, you're welcome to spew away, as long as you (as you put it) "man up" and show the common courtesy and simple courage to post under your own name.
You're also welcome to continue to post as "Anonymous", provided that you can avoid acting like a 13 year old on the playground and actually post some reasonable content that doesn't look like it's come out of the mouth of a semi-literate Tourette's victim with a wannabe thug complex.
Otherwise, you can kindly piss off and go find another blog to troll.
No worries, mate! If I were you, I'd be pleased that you've attracted a troll of renown. Though why Mr. Potter feels that he needs to act like a child in his golden years is anyone's guess.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Scott Potter sais (the URL wont work)
ReplyDeleteI mean who cares
Ill let Paulo Russo know exactly what you said, and mention you think he isnt as important as Brazilian rock groups.He is playing the same venues I am so Ill let him know how you feel about that also.I played Manhattan this year, was interviewed on WKCR radio in Manhattan, and, Rio twice and Recife,Sao Paulo last year and am received very well by the top musicians of these cities and with great audience reactions and am paid very well where I live to play high society gigs....Check my other erased comments, I fully stated, on erased comments, I played in Lapa recently, fully revealing who I was twice by tying my comments in with what B.R. comments said about Hardrock Cafe (which you bashed on here) , and as B.R. on Abagond, I fully linked people to who I was...Im not trying to hide anything
The dynamic is simple here, Blanchette, you talk a lot of crap , the crap you talk only can be met with more crap, and I have the perfect style to respond to crap dished out by a self inflated academic who thinks he is more than that.
You lie, you distort, you are full of yourself and come off as a bafoon . If i wanted to harrass or stalk you, I would have come in here a long time ago. You just printed two threads that are the perfect example of your crud , its my pleasure to knock you down a peg , and, remind you that your insults of the past , mixed with your cultural ignorance, wont be forgotten, and, you have always started and been the lead in of insults, and you deserve to be insulted right back, and not the style you would feel comfortable with.
Desiree , I can only say to you, that , without really asking me questions about my background, where I live, or anything, you came at me with an anti American put down. And, I really dont have any patience with anti Americanism directed at me, even more so if its outside of Brazil.There is only one responce from me that is apropriate when people put me in a trick bag like that, and it is a rude one.
You may be a very nice person , but, you jumped the gun on commenting to me, twice, without really getting to know more about why I said the things I did .
I could care less, Blancette, ban me, censor me, what ever, its just nice to know I can see through you...humble up a little..and spare me the "Im mister Brazil"...
ha, its your blog , buddy boy, you can manipulate it and erase any statements you dont like and put up the ones you want
ReplyDeletego ahead, its ridiculas to think its a real conversation in real life, because , if you insult like you do, you would get insulted right back.
but, besides your disgusting insult technique , that you have always started, and im happy to finish, you actualy have views that i dont agree with and are extremly misleading people about brazil and about afro brazilian culture.mix that with a more than willing to drink the koolaid of anti americanism to "fit in" with your academic collegues in rio's university atmosphere, and you come up as short as moan chumpksi, you become people who i cant trust .
some of your idiocy :
white women in colonial times were about the same degree of suffering as african women brought over for slavery
there isnt a crack cocaine problem in brazil and farc is unimportant in this dynamic
in your eagerness to use biological studies to show there are no races, you deny there is black african culture, an african drumming dancing culture that has developed over several thousand years that is unique to itself, has dominated any other cultures that came in contact with it (like the migrations that came back into africa), in africa and the americas, inspite of a huge variety of tribes and customs throughout africa.
you wont give african drum/dancing culture the same respect as european classical music, which comes out of many differant tribes and nations and languages but unifies on concepts of harmonies and compositional content thoughout varius countries of europe and is respected around the world.
you try to portray brazil as one way, without the racial problems as the usa, like you cant really tell who is black or white . the black white division in brazil is blatent. your position just mirrors the uptight white brazilians who dont want quotas
your take on what is important about brazilian music is bracingly ignorant and you are more than willing to put the importance brazilian rockers over incredible instrumentalists like luizao maia or paulo russo....because they were more popular
and you dont recognise the african contribution to brazilian music, come on , ignoramos, the bell pattern i brought in by several sub sahara african tribes from differant parts of africa , is blatently the root of some variations in candomble dances and drumming
so really, i dont give a flying fuck if you dont print what im writing , i only came in here because of these two threads that suck , and you deserve to be called on your shit
and spare me the "im mister brazil, what i say about brazil and the people is the way it is.." that is asinine, bafoonish and tired, you are just one person with one opinion, that is at odds with the reality more often as not
make no mistake, i have no personal desire to see you or your wife fail or encounter hardships in life
im sure you both are excellent professors,i just think you are an asshole and both of your takes on black brazilian culture is weak
since you are totaly manipulating my statements now and censoring them, im out, unless some idiot makes some stupid statement about me
Dear Andrew Scott Potter,
ReplyDeleteI noticed that in your immediately preceding post, you've done us the favor of responding by using your real name. Please continue to do so: if you do, you won't be caensored.
I'm making an exception this time because you're such a sorry old man, caught in your own rage and hysterics, that you have apparently warped everything I've ever said into a little Thad-hating ball, which you carry around inside you. Why you've chosen to do this, I don't know. My suspicion is that it has to do with a series of things, but mostly because you feel that I've contradicted you on your pet hobby-horse, African and African-based rythyms. So in an attempt to clear the air between us, let me try, once again, to address your points regarding what you THINK I've said.
I've done this before on Abagond, only to have you blithely ignore every single word I say. I'm really hoping against hope that you choose to actually listen now, but I doubt that will be the case, given the fact that you seem to feel the need to scream, rant and rave on the internet (this being hardly the only site where you come to spew).. [Continued below]
1) Our original tiff had nothing to do with me denying an African contribution to Brazilian music. My original point - which you've taken hugely out of context and which you exagerate with each iteration - is that what is considered "roots" music and what is considered "trash" music in Brazil has nothing to do with real cultural roots or musical quality and everything to do with the musical projects of an authenticity-seeking Brazilian elite who try to express their national identity through the successive "discovery" of "real, roots" Brazilian musical forms. Sometimes these forms are indeed old and traditional. Sometimes, as Vianna has pointed out in the case of samba, they are neither. In any case, what drives this little musical safaria is a very bourgeois concern with "authenticity" and the need to simulate it, not a concern with "roots" musical forms as such. This means that even such puerile forms of Brazilian music as certain Brazilian rock bands - or even Calypso - become grist for the mill and will probably one day be considered "roots Brazilian music" by the same sort of arbiters of musical taste who you currently venerate.
ReplyDeleteThis does not mean that this music is good, bad, or indifferent, or that I like it.
All I am saying is that your obsession with "roots" Brazilian music has nothing necessarily to do with the preservation or veneration of certain cultural forms, despite what you may think.
Period.
As to whether or not Africa influences Brazilian music, the true question is "what parts of Africa and how"? During most of our prior discussions, you've used Africa as if it were a generic continent in your arguments and, on many occasions, you've seemed to claim that there's a wholistic and ontologically given "African musical culture". It is THAT sort of belief that I object to, and not the belief - as you've put it above - that Africa has influenced Brazilian music.
2) With regards to your view that I believe that "white women in colonial times suffered to the same degree as African slave women", this is a simple lie, based on a gross misunderstanding of what I actually said.
ReplyDeleteIn the original argument, several women were making the point that any coerced sex is rape and thus all sex between masters and slaves under slavery conditions is akin to rape. And they defined "coercion" as social structural coercion.
My point was that if we take this definition as our starting point, most sex prior to the 19th century was indeed coerced because men were the legal owners of women's sexuality and women did not control their own sexuality. Thus, IN ORDER TO DISTINGUISH slave from free experience in this matter, we need to understand the sexual order that was operative back then.
The real dichotomy in early 19th century Brazil and the U.S. wasn't "sexual coercion of slave women" versus "sexual freedom of non-slave women": it was that slave women did not have access to legally recognized families, which were the only, partial, protection a woman had from being treated as a freely usable sexual object.
Married free women still operated under coercion: their hsubands "owned" their sexuality and they couldn't legally refuse it. But marriage meant that, although a free woman's husband could rape her, he couldn't freely dispose of their sexuality to anyone he chose. Slave women's masters could freely dispose of their sexuality to anyone.
THIS is the true dichotomy between slave anbd free sexuality in the early 19th century, and not "rape" versus "free choice of sexual partner", as the women I was arguing with when you parachuted in out of the blue were arguing.
Note that it also means that a lot - if not most - of this coercion involved masters forcing other men (usually slave men) on slave women in an effort to "improve the breed".
3) Crack cocaine "epidemic", huh?
ReplyDeleteEpidemic is a loaded word. What do you actually mean to say, Andrew? that crack use is increasing in Brazil? It almost certainly is, but we don't have decent, non-politicized stats to prove it one way or another: all we have are talking heads on the T.V. screaming about "epidemics" in order to scare the pants off of senior citizens like yourself.
But let's put this oh-so-threatening epidemic into mperspective, Andrew: how many people died from crack in Brazil last year as opposed to how many died from dengue, an easily-prevented and treatable disease which is, indeed, legitimately epidemic in certain parts of Brazil?
I leave the actual research of the numbers as an excercize for students.
This is why I'm skeptical of people who use emotionally loaded biological terms to describe social phenomena.
And as for FARC... Andrew, as I've pointed out before, FARC isn't even much of a threat to Columbia anymore, let alone Brazil. Sorry. This is just flat-out conspiracy-theory bullshit your spouting here.
4) As for my portrayal of Brazil's racial problems, you obviously haven't bothered to read a word that I wrote about these, have you?
ReplyDeleteMy point - and Ana's too, for that matter - is that racism is predicated upon a DIFFERENT history in Brazil and needs to be understood in the light of that history, not in the light of a generic "pan African" history or "people of color" history and certainly not in the light of the American historical experience of race.
To say this is not to deny that racim exists in Brazil: it is to say that it's postulates have been laid down according to a series of different pressures and events. Go read my article on "Whitening Theory", for example (in sidebar at right). This isn't an explanation of why Brazil isn't racist: it's an explanation of how miscegenation became a key to white supremacist thought in Brazil, while it was violently rejected in the U.S.
And when you accuse me of being racist because I am against university quotas, you conveniently forget to mention that I SUPPORT American-style affirmative action in Brazilian universities. U.S. affirmative action - which has had demonstratable positive effects - is not based on quotas.
In conclusion, Andrew, I have made all of these points over and over again in conversations in which you'ver taken part and you've willfully and repeatedly ignored these points, taking my arguments out of context, rabidly warping them and re-presenting them as something entirely different.
ReplyDeleteNow, to a certain extent, everyone does this in discussions of this sort. When I kisunderstand a person's point, however, I let them explain it again and try to grapple with what they are actually saying, instead of simply, dogmatically, repeating my initial views of what they are saying.
That is called "dialogue" Andrew, and both here and on Abagond, you've shown a marked incapacity to engage in it.
I am at a loss as to why a sixty year old musician at the end of his career feels the need to build strawmen in this fashion. My personal feeling is that it has to do with the fact that YOU probably see yourself as "Mr. Brazil" in your own little social circle. You have even been called that in the press, if I recall correctly. You thus feel that your beliefs about this country and your "right" to represent them in English are sacrosanct and how DARE a young whipper-snapper like me contradict you, in public no less!
In short, Andrew, the fact that you sneer at me for supposedly presenting myself as "Mr. Brazil" (something which I've repeatedly said I have no intention of doing) is quite relevant when one stops to consider the fact that you've built your entire career around BEING the by-god "Mr. Brazil". In fact, I'm surprised that you haven't trade-marked the term already.
:D
One thing I'll say for you Andrew: you've at least assimilated enough Brazilian culture that you believe that the proper response to any challenge of authority is immediate recourse to the "Do you know whom you're speaking with?" ritual.
Your problem - like that of all failed Brazilian would-be nobility - is that yes, I do know who I'm speaking with and it doesn't particularly impress me.
Prezado Andrew Potter,
ReplyDeleteSe o intuito é fazer os outros acreditarem que Thaddeus é um enorme fdp e uma personalidade autoritária, não é mandando os outros para pqp que você vai alcançar seu objetivo, muito menos ameacando-os com violência.
Você não sabe quem eu sou, mas eu te conheço e conheço seu trabalho. Ouvi algumas de suas músicas no YouTube e tenho que admitir que fiquei chocada quando li que você presuma que sou "anti-americana" e ache que devo "cuidar da porra de meu rabo", pois caso contrário você vai "rolar por cima" de mim.
Tais comentários não são dignos de um senhor de 60 e tantos anos que mora no Brasil faz 20. Parece papo de filme de Quentin Tarantino - ou pior ainda, papo de moleque classe média que se considera um grande malandro pq vai para as bailes funk na periferia.
As vezes acho Thaddeus arrogante e metido (desculpe Ta, mas você já sabia disto!) Todavia e ao contrário de você, ele não sai por aí, ameaça as pessoas que discordam com ele.
Se você não pode discutir civilizadamente os assuntos em pauta nesse blog, então me pergunto pq você sente a necessidade de participar de nossas discussões. Afinal das contas, a cordialidade é um dos maiores valores da civilização brasileira.
Respeito é bom e eu gosto.
Andrew Scott Potter sais
ReplyDeleteI never said you were a racist, I said you sound like those Brazilian whites who dont want quotas.I give you a certain benifit of the doubt, married to your wife (which doesnt mean a person cant be racist, I just dont think you are a blatent racist), but, that is why I dont get your take totaly yet on black Brazilian culture .
Its a given that the Bantu influence is the major influence, and, I have painstakingly over and over tried to get across that Im not saying its all one culture in Africa, a continent with many countries and tribes.
But, after I brought in youtube after youtube of a similar type of pollyrhythmic aproach to drumming and dance , that you wont find in Europe, China, or any place else that didnt bring slaves from Africa, youtubes that were from West Africa, East Africa, South Africa , it at the very least demonstrates that certain concepts of pollyrhythm and dance, were crystalised the way Europe crysalised the concept of harmony. Again, im not saying all African music sounds this way , Im saying there is a concept that has emerged from sub Sahara Africa that has affected the world, and is definable and recognisable.And, music experts agree with this , in the world and here in Brazil.
You tried to tell me that a 6/8 bell pattern in candomble that is distinctivly from sub Sahara Africa , that it could have come from anywhere. Where? Its not indian...its not Portuguese
Its very hard to beleive that you would deny that crack cocaine is taking a serious toll on Brazilian society. If you want to get hung up on a semantic, that is your problem. I guess since there hasnt been a book written about it, the media just doesnt count for you. But, ive seen shocking reports in Rio of unbeleivable numbers of crack adicts waiting next to the train tracks. Where I live, we used to never have a big crack problem. In the last 8 years it has shyrocketed unbeleivably. There are reports of crack cocaine busts almost daily...are they making this up ?Ive also seen detailed reports in Alagoas, Salvador, Mato Grosso de Sul, Vitoria about crack cocaine busts, problems with addicts and rehabilitation efforts. Its mind boggling you dont acknowledge this.I dont get the media is going over board on this at all, not where I live, its seriously for real.
Yeah, Farc isnt a revolutionary group anymore, they are just plain thug drug kidnapping dealers, with their handprints all in Brazil and carrying around 700 hostages in the most disgusting brutal way. The militias in Columbia dealt north. Farc handles Brazil. They arnt the only ones by any means, what I find hypocritical here , in Brazil, is people scream about American military in Colombian bases , but, Farc is raping them here in Brazil. That is the type of anti Americanism I wont take at all.
"Mr Brazil", written about me ? Never.I have always presented American jazz, Brazilian Samba and Bossa , Mangue beat from Recife,culture from Bahia, hip hop funk with break and Cuban Clave. And I have never referred to "we" when talking about Brazilian trends, or "you yanks", all that is so condescending .
Lets get one thing straight, if I had some over riding ball of hate, I would have been coming in here harrasing you a long time ago. Your article about why you got banned was slanted and didnt tell the plain truth that you hit below the belt on a lot , and i do mean a lot of people there (the list is long, cat), Abagond liked you, he wasnt offended by what you said about him, he did it because you just crossed the line way too often.And the only person I had a problem with was you on there. You admitted you didnt come in there to be polite and your excuse of smashing peoples dogmas doesnt hold up since you have plenty of dogmas of your own.
The problem I have with you is, I just dont trust you.
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteDiseree
Me desculpe
Morando aqui 24 anos, eu sou muinto sensivel a acusacoes anti americano
Quando eu falei "ill roll over you", so significa com palavras.
Eu tamben morei 8 anos em New York,e, os vezes, algums palavras saos muinto adequadas para pessoas tentando me diminui.
Mas, me desculpe
Prezado Andrew,
ReplyDeleteSendo que ninguém que tem comentado aqui – nem Thaddeus e muito menos eu – tem atacado os EUA, ou sequer tem mencionado os EUA num tom de voz depreciativo, minha pergunta seria de onde vem toda essa "sensibilidade" sua?
Quero dizer, você está acusando Tadeu de deturpar seus argumentos, certo? Mas você o acusa de uma série de coisas que não constam em seus artigos ou comentários. Por exemplo, você afirma que você não queria dizer que Tadeu é racista, “só estava dizendo que ele parece que nem aqueles brancos que não querem cotas”. Mas você está claramente racializando a questão não é? E nisto num contexto nacional onde você há de saber que tal afirmação é código para “racista”, pelo menos entre os integrantes dos movimentos negros, dos quais muitos devem ser seus amigos, dado os círcuitos musicais pelo qual você transita. O fato, porém, é que vários brasileiros - brancos, negros e morenos - não querem cotas universitárias no Brasil. Sou negra e eu não quero! Então quem são "aqueles brancos" e pq você sente a necessidade de racializar essa questão se for verdadeiro sua afirmação que você "não queria acusar ninguém de racismo"?
Pelo que o Tadeu escreve acima, ele tem explicado sua posição sobre as cotas no passado. Não duvido disto, pois já tenho ouvido ele discutir a mesma em vários momentos, inclusive na sala de aula. No entanto, você o ataque como ignorante e claramente indica (embora de forma velada) que a posição dele é racista. Pq? Você não explica, só afirma.
Além disto, você fala tais coisas como “a influência Bantu é dominante” e depois afirma que não acredita que existe uma cultura só na África. Conheço, um pouco, a linha teórica com qual Tadeu trabalha e posso afirmar (e ele pode me corrigir se estou falando besteira) que dentro dela, a idéia da “cultura Bantu” como uma coisa singular é considerada uma grande bobagem. Os Bantu são uma coleção de povos com uma diversidade enorme de culturas – tão grande quanto, vamos dizer, a diversidade dos eslavos ou celtas. Afirmar que existe uma cultura só nesse grupo e que é dominante me parece ser coisa do século XIX – uma afirmação que a cultura é um objeto possuido por algum povo em particular. Essa idéia, há muito, tem sido descartada pela antropologia.
Acho, então, que Tadeu não está dizendo que não existem influências africanas na cultura do Brasil, mas que essas influências não têm como serem rotuladas como oriundas dum povo ou cultura qualquer.
Minha pergunta é pq você se aproxime à essas discussões com tanta amargura, raiva e veemência? Você acuse Tadeu de querer ser “Mister Brasil”: no entanto, o gringo que está fazendo categorizações absolutas aqui não é ele, neh?
Ahn, e mais uma...
ReplyDeleteAndrew, a violência pode ser verbal e simbólica. Você me xingar e depois dizer que vai "rolar por cima" de mim é uma ofensa, sim, e dizer que isto "é só´palavras" não muda, nem um pouco, o fato que é um grande desrespeito e uma forma de violência simbólica.
Andrew Scott Potter sais
ReplyDeleteDesiree, im going to answer you in English, you can keep writing in Portuguese.
This is what you said to me
"This is further proof, if more was needed, that politically correct American so-called anti-racists love to fiddle away while Rome burns"
This is a pretty snide comment by you, a blind side hit with no asking me about anything directed at me to put me down.
you said : " Afinal das contas, a cordialidade é um dos maiores valores da civilização brasileira."
Why are you speaking falsly here? Go over to terra dot com and read the comment sections. Its much more viscious than anything I said.Are you just giving me the"for english eyes only" psyche ?
I did apologise to you, but, i still will back you off fast if you make stupid anti american statements about me...that is what I said...ABOUT ME... and you did.
If I have to break down every tribe and variation of culture in Africa and everytime type in "Sub sahara Africa with the bantu tribal breakdown as such and such"...its going to be excruciatingly long typing.
What I can tell you is that I have listened to more tribal African drumming than both you combined. And Thadeus tried to argue that a definitive 6/8 bell pattern in candomble could have come from anywhere. That is plain ignorance, Desiree.I brought in many examples of African culture, from East , West , and South, all with a similar context of drumming and dancing.
You see, if people in academia are going to put out their theories and studies, they better not step on another culture art form . If music drumming and dance are saying there is a context of similar style of drumming dancing coming out of sub Sahara Africa, from West to East to South,along with OTHER SEPERATE CULTURES (how many damn times do I have to say this) unique to each tribe, then they better go back and tweak their theories to coincide with information that experts in music and drumming and dance recognise.
Im not saying there werent differant migrations and cultures going on in Africa, Im saying, and many other music experts are saying there is a high leval of drumming and dancing that exhibits pollyrhythmic traits and sycopation that is unique and definable and has influenced all of the Americas where slaves were brought. And these traits can be found West, East and South in Africa , in various tribes. The anthropologist and arceaologists have to deal with that.Arceology sais the first drums were discovered in Mesopotania 4000 years ago....they were clay pot drums. Intellegent thinkers in music know African drums were made out of wood and skin and went way back farther than that and the material just decayed over time.
Again , Europe is many countries, many languages, many cultures, but, there is classical music that has Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Hungry , Spain etc all contributing symphonies, operas , chamber musics etc under classical music. Are you saying this couldnt have happened in sub Sahara Africa with a drumming dancing concept?
I just saw a documentry on Uganda showing how they taught kids from war torn areas the tribal histories of their drumming and dancing. It was incredible and , while unique to their area, the similar concepts of complex pollyrhythms, pelvic and head thrusts and shuffle steps , passed down through oral teaching, not written down, were all in there.If you and Thad cant recognise these things, its because you just dont know about them, because they are out there and high leval musicians and dancers speak eloquently about it. As well as aritsts here in Brazil speak eloquently of Cultura Afro Brasileiro, like Antonio Nobrega
ill answer your other statements below.
Is out and out cussin, permitted? I love cussin!
ReplyDeleteDear Andrew Potter,
ReplyDeleteSince it is apparently difficult for you to write in portugese, in spite of 26 years of residence here and your knowledge of brazilian culture, let me write in english.
No one attacked you: I claimd that your comment regarding Thaddeus and Ana not writing about black history month during the military invasion of the complexo do alemão, as if black history month was so much more important, was silly and arrogant. Again, how does this qualify as "anti-american"? Your view struck me as typical of a certain kind of american anti-racism that focuses on form more than content. It was not a statement that "americans are stupid and thus shouldn't be heard".
That was a criticism of your views, understood to be american, and not of your person or of your views *because* they are american. Also, I didn't feel the need to spew a river of filthy insults similar to the ones that you feel authorized to unleash when you disagree with someone. So for you to feel so sensitive about a minor critique such as mine is very droll, Mr. Potter.
Second, reviewing your comments, I recall that part of my anger had to do with the immense arrogance of you - a white male gringo - classifying Ana Paula as a "black woman who doesn't know her culture" because she does not share your musical tastes, as if there were only one true music for black people to enjoy. Something rather odd for you to claim, given that you are a white gringo and have no problems appreciating african music, nor do you seem to think that you "don't know your culture" because you do enjoy african music.
As for music, I am not an expert and neither is Thaddeus. From what I can see of your views here, however, and from what I know of his, Thaddeus' point is probably that he disagrees with your assumption that "african culture" and "european culture" are ontological objects.
I need to point out, however, that the concept of a 6/8 beat is european in origin, not african, and if they could conceive of such a thing, how could such a beat be purely and exclusively african? I note wikipedia lists, as 6/8 time, such musical forms as including double jigs, polkas, fast obscure waltzes, tarantella, marches, barcarolles, loures, and some rock music.
Apparently, then, not only africans use this time.
It also seems to me that you are taking classical music as the epitome of european musical culture, when even a musically uneducated person such as myself knows that it was constructed in historical times in opposition to previously existing folk cultures, many of which also used polyrhythms. European classical music is not some sort of longterm, authentic expression of the european cultural soul, as you seem to indicate.
In closing, cordialidade is indeed a virtue in Brazilian society. I do not measure my behavior by that of adolescents or of rude, semi-illiterate people. You are a sixty year old man. It would seem to me that you should feel the same and yet you point to Terra as an appropriate model for Brazilian behavior.
Why?
Andrew Scott Potter sais
ReplyDeleteDesiree
There is an ilusion of anger here as a carry over from many discusions on these issues at the Abagond thread.Feel free to look them up. He is writing a thread on him being banned from Abagond, making it seem like it was just with Charles and what Thad said to Abagond.Well, this is false. Thad alianated many people, on purpose by his own admision ("i dont come in here to be polite, I do that for my students"), and, the only person I battled with was Thad, and, not because I went berserk, as he puts it, but, because I just came down to his leval of insults, my pleasure, and Abagond cut him a break and banned me.So I have every right to come in here and call him on it, if you think its anger, like i said, go check out comments on terra dot com and tell me how people are interacting over there.
Look, Desiree, if you are against quotas, I am not here to tell you you should or shoudnt be, but , I know many people who are for quotas. And Ive seen many people discussing it on the government channals , on both sides of the fence, and , Thad sounds like the white guys against quotas.If you are black and are against it, that is your right, you can define yourself anyway you want.
If you want to embrace Cultura Afro Brasileiro or not, that is your right, but , I know many people who do, including a recent visit to Patio de Sao Pedro in Recife on Terca Negra night.
The racial dynamic exists in a much bigger world than just the academic one, and I just know my instincts are at odds with many things Thad sais about Brazil, race, and the history of the cold war in Brazil.And, people need to hear oposing veiws, or they will start thinking when he sais "we down here in Brazil, feel this way...", that he represents Brazil and how people think. You dont even represent Brazil and how people think down here, anymore than I represent an American point of veiw, even though you really tried to put me in a trick bag about it. You all are individuals with your opinions, no more no less.
I think you are trying to play some kind of psyche game with your catagories as the rules, sorry , Desiree, you dont make the rules with me about how we define where I am coming from.
Andrew Scott Potte
ReplyDeleteMy god Desiree, 6/8 is simply the discription I am using , of course it is not described that way based on how each tribe uses it in Africa.
That is petty and nitpicking on your part. You want me to really get technical on how to break down these rhythms ? You couldnt handle it.
If you really think the beats and rhythms of Europe are in any way equal to the complexity and depth of pollyrhythms of sub Sahara Africa, you really have the same problem as Thad.You just cant hear it.Its very hard trying to talk with academics about music properties that music experts recognise and ackowledge, but, academics from another feild just dont get it. You are in first grade as far as understanding music if you think there is any thing similar to an Irish jig with a tribe from Senagal playing their drums.
As far as my comment on Ana Paula, its based on her article. I can tell you, she doesnt know Afro Brazilian dance as well as the people I work with. I mean , can you handle that? Or are you actualy going to say that Ana, a self admitted meteleiro is as deep into dancing samba as the profesional dancers I have worked with.
Am I saying she should be doing that? Heck no!! She can do what she wants and you and her can listen to anything you want. But, I work with people who live and breathe samba and Afro Brazilian dances (among other artist, like Brazilian artists that can rip be bop). You are trying to tell me she knows more about it than them? Mygod that doesnt diminish her expertese, but , I didnt agree with her article..
Listen, if you want to duck and feint around about whether you made a petty anti american statement about me, that doesnt change the fact that it was and that I referenced that incident on a statement that was erased, and it really wasnt relative that I am suposed to bring that up in the first place, it was just a low class dig on your part, dont lie about it
Hi Herneith
Andrew Scott Potter sais
ReplyDeleteWell, im seeing statements by Desiree enter and disapear so, if a statement comes on from me sounding like Im talking to Desiree out of nowhere, its based on something she said that is no longer on here
Fuck yeah, you can cuss, Herneith! Just try to do it for humor or emphasis' sake and not because you think that doing so will mortally insult someone.
ReplyDelete(Not because I'm worried about hurting peoples' feelings: it just looks stupid.)
Andrew, do you even REMEMBER in what context our discussion of 6/8 bell patterns came up?
ReplyDeleteI mean do you remember at all?
Because that was a very small nit in the whole thrust of what we were talking about which you are clutching to your chest now like a drowning man clutching at his last straw.
Andrew, I think the whole notion of "roots" culture is ridiculous and slightly racist. THAT was the context in which this whole bell thing came up. You were trying to convince me that your take on "roots" African culture was pure and wholly holy. I raspberried you. Thus your butt-hurt. IIRC, you then brought up a video showing dancing Zulus and claiming that this proved that samba was an African root musical form - instead of the syncretic musical form it most certainly is.
Zulus! A people I might add, who were never transported to Brazil and whose cultural roots split from those who WERE transported several thousand years before the transatlantic trade began.
Also Andrew, let me explain why things "appear and dissappear here", yet again, because you obviously didn't get it the first time.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, we have a spam filter that has been installed by blogspot without my asking for it.
It sees strings of poorly punctuated and non-capitalized words, such as you write, as 'bot-generated. It dumps them into the spam filter. It does not tell me when it does this, so I need to periodically check.
Also, it sometimes seems to do this AFTER posts have come up on the screen, for some reason. I have posted things, seen them up, and then come back later to find that they've gone into the spam filter.
Desiree asked for editor's rights here and I gave them to her because I've known her for a long time. Her posts apparently fall into the filter occasionally because she puts them up and takes them down alot - probably to fix her grammatical errors because she's picky that way. The filter apparently reads this as some sort of weird cyber attack and shit-cans them.
If you are patient, posts will be released from the filters. If you are impatient, please pay more attention to punctuation and capitalization and the filter won't think that you are a 'bot.
Andrew Scott Potter sais
ReplyDeleteI was only explaining that if a post comes up of me saying something to Desiree, as though it came out of nowhere, it was because there was a post by her that disapeared. I understand exactly what you said, and there is my post like out of nowhere, answering a post Desiree made that then disapeared.I only wanted to clarify that, not make like I didnt understand what you said
Again, you have the sequence wrong about the Zulu thing. I never brought in a clip of Zulus dancing the step that resembles samba. I saw it on a documentary, its not on youtube, its not representative of most Zulu dancing, and , I never said it was origins of Brazilian samba, I said it just shows there is a dance and drumming concept that you can find througout sub Sahara Africa that shows a powerful concept of pollyrhythmnic , call responce ,shuffle steps with pelvic thrusts , that is in some way connected throughout sub Sahara Africa , and,the seeds of that concept can be found in the popular dances and beats that dominate any popular dance and music that brought African slaves to the Americas.
"roots culture" is your definition, I dont know what that means. Im telling you , and, I proved it emphaticly by bringing in various youtubes of West, East and South Africa, all with similar drum concepts, that there is a definable sub Sahara African drumming dancing concept, that of course is differant with each tribe , but , is unique to itself and does not sound like rhythm concepts from Europe, China, native American , or middle eastarn drum concepts etc.As a matter of fact, south India is the closest place to find similar aproaches , but, there are great differances also . You dont see the kind of dancing in south India you do in sub Sahara Africa.
You are the one who got out of joint about it and started making strange statements about music that experts I am familiar with would disagree with.
The importance of the bell pattern I mentioned in candomble , that I showed was the same pattern by a pymy tribe I brought in on youtube (no Im not saying candomble comes from the pygmies, you do understand that right?) , is that you tried to debunk that it came from Africa and suggested it could have come from anywhere. Thad, if you dont hear the direct link to Angolan drumming concepts and various other tribes who use that, its a key factor in showing that your logic in these discusions about Afro Brazilian culture , is skewed and flawed.
I highly suggest anyone go over to Abagond and go to the article that Ana wrote and way down in the comments we pick up this discusion and anyone can see that , near the bottom, I brought in many youtubes that exactly prove my point beyond a shadow of a doubt.
And that is why I am seriously arguing these things with you. Because you are passing out some information that is not true. How can I trust you intellectualy if you just skew the truth , super imposing your theories over truth.
I never would question the depth of your anthrological information of migrations in Africa compared to mine, I can look at your information and show how my information on druming fits into that. But, you are so invested in your theories that if I state truth about drumming and dancing in sub Sahara Africa, you cant handle it and start ripping on me with ad hominems and put downs.
What I suggest is , you need to take some of your theories back to the drawing board and tweak them a little, so they can account for the drumming dancing elements of Africa and what they represent , and how the migrations affected that. Im saying that with all the differances with tribes in Angola and Zulu tribes, there are some blatent similarities in some drumming dancing concepts. And those similarities can be found in the Congo, Senagal, Uganda, Kenya, Gana, Angola, Mozambique, Ruanda, Nigeria et
Andrew Scott Potter sais
ReplyDeleteYou know,Thad, im not as wrapped up in the ball of hate for you that you depicted.
There are vast areas where I agree with things you say, and vast areas that I disagree with , like our takes on the cold war.
As much as I rail against some academic dogma, I respect you are well read, as long as we agree there are various areas where books can only go so far.
I dont negate your Brazilian experiance saying mine is the only right one or better than yours, as a matter of fact, im fascinated by your Brazilian experiance. For sure I dont negate Ana's or Desiree's. But, its just opinions by individuals, and I know lots of Brazilian individuals also.
You just have a way of attacking people that begs to be attacked back.
When somebody leans on me, my tendancy is to lean back on them
You know what I find amusing, Andrew?
ReplyDeleteYour entire invective against me is that you seem to feel that by holding an opinion that's contrary to yours about music, I am stepping on your toes. You're a by-God musician! You've studied, lived and breathed music and YOU SHOULD KNOW, GODDAMIT! How dare any social scientist contradict your personal views on something? Why, that's cause to scream "motherfucker" and "shithead" at a man and to threaten him with physical mayhem!!!
Now this is a bit of a laugh, because you're trying to portray me as some sort of know-it-all who can't handle other peoples' opinions and yet I have never, I mean NEVER, flew off the handle to anything like the degree you do when your "professional opinion" is challenged.
And yet here you say that there are vast areas that I disagree with, like our takes on the cold war.
Shit, Andrew, I didn't realize that you had a degree in history! And yet when I point out a few things that are wobbly re: your concept of the Cold War, purely from the perspective of the professional historian (to wit, your view that a commie is a commie is a commie and thus one can classify a woman who died in 1943 as "an agent of the KGB", an organization founded in the 1950s), you start spewing invective once again. Because a professionally trained historian doesn't agree with your take on history, he's a brain-washed leftist and communist, and deserves to be called a "motherfucker" and what not.
So apparently the rule here is "Don't contradict Andrew Scott Potter or he'll fly off the handle. Not only is he an expert in muusic, but he's the final authority in fields he's never even studied."
Pretty odd position for you to be in, Andrew, given your repeated baaaaaawings that 1) I'm not qualified to judge music because I have no training in it, and 2) that I'm a know-it-all who can't handle contradiction.
Though I agree that there are "areas where books can only go so far", getting one's primary view of history from the pop media, as you seem to have done, is far worse than simply reading books.
Also, as far as I can see, "academic dogma" in Andrewland means "any position, espoused by an academic, that Andrew personally disagrees with". I'm not aware of any "academic dogma" that's ever come up in our conversations, just my personal opinions. Nothing I've said has anything like the blind acceptance in academia which would qualify it as "dogma".
For a man who's never set foot in a Brazilian university classroom, as teacher or as student, you seem to also feel that you know all about everything that my colleagues teach and believe - another odd position for you to be in, given your repeated opinion that "only professionals can truly understand a field". Or does this opinion of yours only have to do with music, Andrew?
As for it all just being "opinions by individuals", the only person here whose so far shown a violent disrespect for others' opinions has been YOU, Andrew. As Desiree remarks above, you've even gone so far as to classify Ana as "ignorant of her culture" because she listened to (gasp!) heavy metal in her youth.
As for me "attacking things"... It's called "critique", Andrew. And I postulate, once again, that your nose is bent out of shape regarding my views NOT because I think that my views are sacrosant, but precisely because you believe that your views cannot be critiqued without this qualifyting as an attack on your person.
Regarding the whole thing re: Africa and Brazil, this is a diffusionist versus cultural history argument that goes back to the 1920s, at least, with the first gringo anthros and historians who looked at "black culture" in Brazil.
ReplyDeleteLet me reatate my views on this very simply and clearly, Andrew...
One can ALWAYS find similar things in the human archive of culture, if one squints hard enough and ignores outstanding differences. Regarding cultural similarities in parts of Africa, these get claffied as "essentially and characteristically African" through a process of cherry-picking whereby similarities are noticed and differences discarded.
You are a guy who is quite obviously HEAVILY emotionally and professionally invested in the notion of an "African culture". It is thus logical to me why you would choose to emphasize similarities instead of difference. Now, I'm not a musician, so there is a degree of expertise here that I'm lacking. However, I've seen THE EXACT SAME sort of arguments used to "essentialize" Africa in many other cultural fields in which I do have some degree of expertise - such as kinship and family structure, for example. It's a common and threadworn diffusionist arguement to claim that "the peoples of area A are united by their common use of cultural artefact B" and, in almost every instance when one goes and REALLY looks at the "peoples of area A", one finds that there are more exceptions than adhesions to the rule.
YouTube clips of everyone from Zulus to Pygmies dancing in 6/8 time do not prove the existence of a cohesive and characteristic "African" musical culture, Andrew.
And let me says this once again, because you've taken this statement to mean "Africa doesn't have a culture" on several occasions: there ARE no continent-wide cultural groups that can be labled as such.
I mean, listen to this crap...
ReplyDeleteIts very hard trying to talk with academics about music properties that music experts recognise and ackowledge, but, academics from another feild just dont get it. You are in first grade as far as understanding music if you think there is any thing similar to an Irish jig with a tribe from Senagal playing their drums.
...or...
I can tell you, she doesnt know Afro Brazilian dance as well as the people I work with. I mean , can you handle that?
(And I should point out that he's making this qualifiaction about a woman he's never met.)
But, I work with people who live and breathe samba and Afro Brazilian dances (among other artist, like Brazilian artists that can rip be bop). You are trying to tell me she knows more about it than them?
...and...
Thad, if you dont hear the direct link to Angolan drumming concepts and various other tribes who use that, its a key factor in showing that your logic in these discusions about Afro Brazilian culture , is skewed and flawed.
I mean, for a guy who's so allergic to other peoples' claims of expertise, you nseem to have no problem as putting yourself forward as the final and absolute authority on all things musical, Andrew.
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteNow there is the deceiving , lying , mischaractorising Thad I know and love !!!
I flew off the handle when you let me know the KGB was invented in the 50's? oh ha ha ha , I fully ackowledged I was wrong, as though that one little detail makes me ignorant of what happened in Brazil during the cold war...oh man, way to go!!
Let me nutshell my position once again, all four sides , the USA, Soviet Union, and the two oposing sides who eagerly invited in their financial support and training and spies ,with open arms, are to blame.
Kinship and family structure ? That is your feild of expertise.I have pains takingly defined what I meant and I never said the whole continent of Africa...way to twist my meaning.
You can deny the proof Ive brought in all you want, but , its blatently on display for anyone to see and judge for themselves. For someone who thinks a bell pattern in candomble could come from anywhere,Id say your credibility on 6/8 is shot.
Way to bring in something I said about Ana, anwering an acuasation made to me by Desiree, and her statement never came up....I certainly dont mean Ana doesnt know about black racism or social problems related to that, I specificly said dancing, and , again, answering an acuasation by Diseree that got erased after I saw it....
Me the angry one ? Oh boy, lets just remember what did happen over at Abagond . How many people did you insult ? Alianate ? Totaly turn off ? Have made enemies of ?
As usual, you totaly are distorting the whole thing... that is my main man , over here , folks !!!!
Andrew Scott Potter sais :
ReplyDelete"there are no continent wide groups that can be labled as such..."
Its really funny and strange that I keep using Europe as an example of various countries, languages,customs with no continent wide groups that can be labled as such..
And, we have European classical music that has composers and symphanies and operas written from various countries in various languages, using common threads of harmony and song stucture and execution, and every body recognises it and respects it.
But, when I suggest that in Africa, a continent with many countries and languages and customs with no continent wide groups that can be labled as such, that there are common threads of pollyrhythmic call responce drumming and dancing, it is met with scorn, indignation and ridicule.
This is exactly the kind of academic dogma that I am talking about
And, its great you have me under control now, with rules and regulations and for sure that is not how reality on the street is.
I love New York, I love what I learned there about human charactor and how to see through people , and see through their bs, and how to get them off your back , with no censors to tell you what words you can use and cant use...
I love New York
"Fuck yeah, you can cuss, Herneith! Just try to do it for humor or emphasis' sake and not because you think that doing so will mortally insult someone."
ReplyDeleteWell fuck me gently with a wire brush, thanks!
Again, Andrew, I think that your reification of culture as an ontological object instead of a pluralistic and multi-vocal process is wrong whether you use it to talk about "European" music or "African" music.
ReplyDeleteI'm certainly not suggesting that Europe "has a culture" while Africa doesn't and I've made that point abundantly clear.
Now let's talk about your expertise in Cold War history, shall we? After all, you claim that no one can have an opinion about music unless they've studied it deeply, and yet your opinion about the Cold War comes from what, if not pop culture and things your junior high teacher told you in civics class?
Finally, regarding your comments on "black culture", African culture" and cultures in general...
Dude, you're like a guy who claims he's not a drunk as he knocks back his 8th shot of cahcaça. You say that you believe that a plurality of cultures exist in Africa, but every time you talk about anything from there, you use the singular form: "African culture". You also use the singular form when talking about African influences in Brazil: "African Brazilian culture". And it's DAMNED obvious that you believe that there's a singular, "true" black culture when you make assinine comments to the effect that my wife "doesn't know her culture" because she had the audacity to listen to rock as a kid.
Here's a quote from anthropologist Joana Rappaport which illustrates where I disagree with your view of "culture"...
I think a major reason many find Brazil intriguing is that her "culture" does seem so "pluralistic and multi-vocal."
ReplyDeleteFG
A powerful primitivism has been created through modernist classification that freezes most of the peoples of the world within a time and space categorically removed from our own... [C]ultural meanings are in a state of constanmt flux and recreation. What we do NOT find in the world are neatly bounded and mutually exclusive bodies of thought and custom, perfectly shared by all who subscribe to them and in which their lives and works are fully inscribed.
ReplyDeleteIn this sense, there is no such thing as "culture", or rather that culture should be a verb, not a noun: "to culture", or "culturing". People live culturally rather than live in cultures.
Thus the seemingly liberal notion of cultural pluralism [i.e. everyone has "their" unique culture and all are equally good] within modernist constructions is now being strongly contested. What was once considered to be "healthy" cultural recognition is now reinterpreted as a suspect exoticism. This process of of exoticizing other cultures has been intensified through this tendency of characterizing their salient features in contrast to our own.
Now, to give you your due, Andrew, in contrast to most modernists who are also exoticists, you flip the general dichotomy: exotic Africa, instead of "bad" or "undeveloped" is to you the source of most that is good in your chosen field.
The problem is that you still maintain an objectivist and dichoticized view of culture which splits "African" from "European" culture in such a way that the two are supposedly ontological objects: simple givens with no prior history of interaction. This is the "pure" and "roots" version of culture which you seek to enoble with your search for authenticity. In this view of things, an ontological "African" culture comes to Brazil and "influences" or is "preserved" or is "lost" or what have you. Culture, however, isn't an object that is independent from what people actually DO. If a black Brazilian plays heavy metal music, then heavy metal music is there and then become part of black Brazilian cultural performance. You may not like it, but absolutely NOTHING authorizes you to classify it as "less authentic" or its performers as "less black" or "ignorant of their true culture".
There IS NO TRUE CULTURE, Andrew. There is only cultural perfomance: cultur as verb, not noun.
In this view of culture, the nice little categorization systems you use - African, European, or whatever - really have no meaning at all outside of the political project in which you employ them.
And to me, that project - the search for Brazilian authenticity (with whatever additional adjectives you want to slap upon it) is deeply suspect because it seeks to freeze and normatize certain cultural performances at the expense of others.
Andrew Scott Potter sais :
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, my knowledge of music doesnt come from a university. It comes from hard core immersion in the real world bandstand. Not theories and academic studies.Most college trained musicians get out in the profesional world and dont know how to deal with the bandstand . I encounter these people and they are a pain, all wrapped up in their college trained knowledge but dont know the first thing about how to groove with their band mates.
With all your university training, your vast knowledge of books , and history , your time living in Brazil, your take on the cold war in Brazil has huge holes like Swiss cheese, and is either naive or has an agenda.
Which gets down to the bell pattern in candomble. If you cant simply acknowledge the origins of a bell pattern that any high level drummer can recognise and understand where it came from, all your university trained knowledge is for nothing. If all you can do is turn it into semantical balderdash, you have lost your way.
Your explanation and referance to another academic who probably doesnt know the origins of these bell patterns is weak and in no way addresses the valid point I made using your very words.You just hide it in academic semantical double speak, if you cant address the basics I have laid out, you are just filibustering.
ill address more in the next post:
Andrew Scott Potter sais :
ReplyDeleteYou know, I have painstakingly over and over stated that there are many tribes and countries and different people in sub Sahara Africa.
What I havent said but will say now, Im reffering to folklorico drumming and dancing that is preserving their heritage in Africa, like quite a few counties have national drum and dance troups preserving their heritages.Modern sub Sahara Africa has huge amounts of new music with influences of electric guitars and basses and drum sets.
Origins..origins and understanding them are important. From studying folkorico African drumming and dancing , if you know it, you can recognise it in modern popular rhythms and dance steps in countries in the Americas , like the dance steps of the cha cha or mambo and their clave, like certain black American dances and beats in the USA,like samba in Brazil. The same as if you hear certain harmonies in these musics, you can recognise the origins from European classical music. Like if I hear Mccoy Tyner using chords with fourths, his pentatonic scales are a referance to African melodies, but, chords with fourths were used by Bartok in his European classical music compositions before the Coltrane quartet incorporated them , and African music doesnt have those chords using four note harmony.
I never said that there werent vast mixtures and on going innovations that developed new directions, that actualy created the specific musics that can identivy Brazilian or Cuban or American musics.But, African slaves brought their heritage with them in the 16 and 17th centuries and this heritage went on to dominate the rhythms and dances of almost all the popular musics of these countries in the 20th century.
If a black singer in Sepultura wants to sing heavy metal, great for him, he can do what ever he wants and it is valid. Hey, rock and roll came from black Americans, but ,I can listen to his style and aproach and identify the origins of where he got it from . If Brazilians want to throw a backbeat on most of their pop productions, fantastic, but, to not acknowldedge that they got that concept from the USA , and black Americans, they are just fooling themselves.
I have no problem with Ana liking heavy metal, I have a big problem with her pointing fingers and putting down people who embrace their musical heritage and people coming from another country who apreciete it. If they are saying she is suposed to apreciete it and not listen to heavy metal, I dont agree with that.
The problem with not identifying origins is that you can have what happened in jazz, invented by black Americans, but, they got left in the bottom of the barrel of recognition and profiting from their innovation , by white people claiming they invented it, or claiming everyone invented it. Sure, all people can play jazz, but it has definite origins and innovators.
Your logic and the academics are getting hung up in semantical definitions and cant even identify origins of beats. And in Brazil, the origins are being suffocated in the media and totaly whited out.Oh yeah, they show it for 5 days in carnival and then it is blocked out the rest of the year by mostly mediocre crap.As well as being smothered over by academic semantical double talk that you are spewing.
Learn the origins
Andrew Scott Potter sais :
ReplyDeleteAnd , just to add to what Ive said, Ana's valuable expertise and what she can contribute about knowledge of Brazil and black Brazilians , comes in the form of knowing who Cruz de Souza is and many things like that. She never was paid to dance Afro Brazilian dances, and , yes, I will use that descriptions because people who deal in music and dance , like Antonio Nobrega , use those terms freely and I respect what he has to say about Brazilian music and dance much more than I do what you or Ana have to say about music and dance.
I work with people who devote their lives to working on these dance steps and beats and get paid to do it from Rio, to New York, to Recife to Los Angeles to Sao Paulo etc They are not academic scholars or lecturers, they are extremly valuable experts at demonstrating these arts.And they know the origins.
That is the thing, you all have your feilds of expertise, and, I have mine.When your feild of expertise starts to make your grandiose statements about music and dance, you are stepping on the toes of my , and other artists feild of expertise , and , we are going to clash hard.If you all want to debate semantics inside your circles of studies and expertise , and come up with theories and counter theories within the paramaters of your feilds, fine, but you better be darn careful about thinking your feilds are the end all be all of the story of mankind , its origins and history of arts and music.It is just one part of the story.
Lets get one thing clear, the feilds of anthropology, biology , arceology are constantly changing what they say. If you hedge all your bets on the latest biological studies , you may have to change them radicly in 20 years, we have just seen the latest biological studies that now say life doesnt need phospheros. How long before the studies you keep referring to are going to be changed ?
Great if you want to use the latest biological studies to argue with Steve Sailor to prove his notions of who is superiour are bunk, but, when you use that to superimpose it over what art and music and dance are and their origins, you are losing your way.If you cant identify , or are not willing to identify the origins of a bell pattern (which is one small aspect , imagine the big picture and what you might be stepping on with those theories) in candomble , you need to go back to the drawing board.
Andrew Scott Potter sais
ReplyDeleteI made two other detailed responces to your statements , under your rules.
Given what you said about how the machine can hold them, you seem to be able to retreive them also , if you want, as you demonstrated quite ably showing one statement I made out of many I made that never got on. I think those detailed responces to your statements ought to be demonstrated also....
But, its your blog and you can manipulate it anyway you want
Man, I would hate to be your maid, Andrew.
ReplyDeleteWhat a cranky old geezer! I can just picture the breakfast scene:
"Edicléia! Where's my coffee? It's 15 minutes late, gawdammit!!!!"
:D
First of all, my knowledge of music doesnt come from a university. It comes from hard core immersion in the real world bandstand. Not theories and academic studies.
ReplyDeleteAnd let me guess: you think getting a PhD in anthropology, one of the most "hands-on" professions there is, whose key methodology is observer-participation through long-term insertion in social scenes, is a matter of sitting in a library, picking one's nose, right?
No practice to it at all, right?
And you know this because you've actually tried to get an advanced degree in... well in anything at all, actually?
[roll eyes]
I have no problem with Ana liking heavy metal, I have a big problem with her pointing fingers and putting down people who embrace their musical heritage and people coming from another country who apreciete it.
Well, I have a big problem with Ana axe-murdering little kids. I'm surprised you don't mention that, 'Drew. I mean, seeing as how you're making up the wholly ficticious claim that Ana "points fingers and puts down" people for their musical tastes, why don't you just rare back on your hindlegs and make up even more ridiculous shit? Quero dizer, o que é um peido p'ra quem já 'tá coberto em merda?
And there you go with that stupid-ass "heritage" shit again, 'Drew.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, culture isn't an object. It can't be owned. It can't be possessed. It can't even be transmitted in unmodified form.
A watch can be part pf one's heritage. So can a piece of land or any other object. But culture - tha human capacity to perform and manipulate symbols - simply isn't an object.
Ana never was paid to dance Afro Brazilian dances...
Actually, you're wrong there. Please don't make absolutist statements about someone you've never met.
I work with people who devote their lives to working on these dance steps and beats and get paid to do it from Rio, to New York, to Recife to Los Angeles to Sao Paulo etc They are not academic scholars or lecturers, they are extremly valuable experts at demonstrating these arts.And they know the origins.
Myths and origins are two different things, Andrew. Most of those people probably know origin MYTHS. Some few probably have some fragments of historical knowledge. But we simply don't "know the origins" of most cultural phenomena, we just pretend that we do.
Lets get one thing clear, the feilds of anthropology, biology , arceology are constantly changing what they say.
And you know this because you've studied these things?
Andrew, please...
Science changes what it says as new and better data comes in, building off what it knows in the past. It is a CUMULATIVE project, not a sort of random, Russian roulette endeavor of the sort you imply.
Great if you want to use the latest biological studies to argue with Steve Sailor to prove his notions of who is superiour are bunk, but, when you use that to superimpose it over what art and music and dance are and their origins, you are losing your way.
LOL!
Let me translate that: "Great if you use science to disprove a theory I dislike but if you use it to question my theories and myths, then science is bunk."
Love your logic, Andrew. And let me remind you once again, you're the guy who's claiming that I'm the "know it all", correct? And yet here you go again, claiming to be an expert regarding history, biology, archeology and anthropology, all fields about which you know precisely doodly/squat.
Hell, Andrew, all you can do is piss and moan that I disagree with you about your views on musical culture, clearly explaing why I do so. You, meanwhile, are fully prepared to dump have the human and a good part of the natural sciences into the trash can because they occasionally come up with stuff you don't like.
And I'm the intellectually arrogant twat here...?
Come down out of your tree, Mr. Brazil. By your own rules you should stick to music and leave the socio-cultural, biological and historical stuff to folks who've actually had some training and experience in dealing with it.
:D :D :D :D
Andrew Scott Potter sais :
ReplyDeleteThady, Thady, Thady, first of all, you badgered me about what I said about the cold war and how I have no educational background other than pop culture.All I did was defend the fact that I dont have educational background in music, I learned it on the bandstand. And living in Brazil would give me more insight into what happened in the cold war in Brazil than most American universities could give a student there. I even read the Comunist Manifesto after hearing some of the junk I heard.
Great if your anthropological studies give you hands on , buddy boy, but, I wasnt questioning your hands on , I was defending your low blow , way to go and try to make it like I was talking about you, that is the kind of petty games you play to avoid answering where a candomble bell pattern came from.
Well gee wilikers, please enlighten me on Ana's Afro Brazilian profesional dance experiance. Id love to know. And, do you really think it compares with the profesionals Ive worked with? And, Ill let people decide for themselves what they think Ana was trying to say.And , I dont agree with all her points at all in that article.
"Culture", "heritage"...I dont care what semantics game you want to play, if you cant admit a bell pattern in candomble came from West Africa, you missed the boat and all your definitions and semantics games dont mean squat. You just dont get it. You said it could come from anywhere...
Ok, where? The Portuguese? The indians ? You talk all the semantics definitions but you come up short on this one, real short.. all your huffing and puffing isnt helping you, and, you really look bad not being able to just admit it.Your explanations fall pitifly short . This is some real basic stuff, that bell pattern came from West Africa, a huge amount of high leval musicans would verify that, not just me , do you anthropologist really think you know more about music than profesionals?.
I never said I was an expert on those sciences, I said they dont have a lock on all the truth , and , especialy if anthropoligists like you cant acknoledge a simple thing like that bell pattern came from West Africa , then you really have the bats in the belfry.
I mean all the scholars thought the world was flat at one point and debated how many angels could you fit on the head of a pin..
continued below
'Drew, you moved to Brazil in 1986. You first came here the same year I did: 1984. There was no revolutionary communist movement working in Brazil at that time, so unless you think it's simply eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil for people to be socialists, you really have no leg to stand on when you claim that your "practical life experience" in Brazil gives you some sort of deep insight into the cold war.
ReplyDeletePlease quit with the bullshit, 'kay? You know sweet fuck all about the history of the cold war.
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDelete"Andrew , culture cant be owned, it isnt an object, it cant be possesed, it cant even be transmitted..."
Look , these petty semantical definitions fly in the face of certain realities.
As a non musician who doesnt study rhythms or dance steps from various parts of the world, you have little insight in how people who have, can hear a beat and understand how it got to the present state it is in and what its origins are.You have little insight into how a musician can hear a chord sequence and know he has heard it from another place from before.
If I hear a 32 bar jazz song played using AABA form with improvisation on the form after the theme has been stated , in a swing style rhythm , with D minor in the A section and E flat minor in the B , I can deduct many things about it.
The song structure comes from European classical music, that is its origins, theme variation back to the theme. The chords come from European classical music but the nature of the minor keys, gives it room to use melodies and scales that are blues and pentatonic. Depending on the theme and improvisation, the improvisor could use various referances from West African to jewish to Russion to Chinese , depending on his inclination and the author of the theme.
The swing rhythm comes fromm black Americans ,playing jazz on the drum kit invented for jazz, with actualy Papa Jo Jones was the one who took the drum kit to where we know it in jazz today playing a swing rhythm.Max Roach sais any jazz drummer playing splang a lang , is 3/4 Papa Jo Jones
And the origins of this swing rhythm come from West Africa, since you could super impose it on top of various tribes in Africas expresions on their drum interpretations.As well as the jazz improvisation is directly related to West Afriacn ( and East and South as I have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt)where the drum ensembles hold a call responce rhythm in duple or triple meter or both combined, and the soloist improvises over it. There is improvisation in other parts of the world (North Indian classical music is a great example), but not how they do it in these drum ensembles...if you think there is...proove it.. proove if you think jazz improvisation came from anywhere else but concepts that were develpoed in sub Sahara Africa , in terms of how the soloist relates to the foundation rhythm players holding their parts (meaning in the jazz cannon, not a loose nut who defined his own methods that didnt become the jazz cannon), just like a jazz rhythm section holds their parts while the soloists plays over the top...of course, using note and harmony concepts developed in European classical music.
You can take these musics and define where they came from, what were the origins of their harmonies, rhythms, melodies.
So what ever your gobbily gook semantical "cultural" dos and donts, people who have really studied music and dance can hear or see it and be able to deduct various things about what were the origins of where the expresion came from.
....avoid answering where a candomble bell pattern came from.
ReplyDeleteAccording to you, it came from the Zulus and the San peoples, right? :D
But here's a question for you, friend: who has ever denied that a candomblé bell pattern could indeed come from Western Africa? What I'm saying is that bell pattern is not somer ineffable "African" cultural artefact.
Do you just make this shit up as you go along, 'Drew, or what?
I never said I was an expert on those sciences, I said they dont have a lock on all the truth...
Unlike you, a man who seems to have a lock-down on all truths, even those you've never studied.
Let's put it this way, 'Drew: the fact that you can barely write coherent Portuguese after living here for a quarter century does not auger well for your ability to manipulate the language with any degree of precision. And given that 95% of what you call "Brazilian culture" is transmitted in Portuguese, I think it's pretty safe to say that a lot goes on here which flies completely over your head.
This, of course, is why you have these sophmoric theories on how Olga Benario was a KGB agent or how the revolutionary left in 1960-70s Brazil was as violent as the Government and torturers or how the drug trade in the favelas of Rio is secretly controlled by the evil masterminds of FARC: if it isn't explained to you in simple soundbites on the boob-tube, you just don't get it, do you?
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeletecommon Thad, dont be so dense, you know what happened in Brazil in the cold war is dissected in Brazil a million differant ways and you cant help but be confronted with what happened in the cold war here. I know people who had their finger nails pulled out, you dont think I cant get insight from them of the huge amount of material out there discussing it constatnly , including the dopy professors who taught my kid the anti American version?....where in God's name are you coming from?
I mean all the scholars thought the world was flat at one point and debated how many angels could you fit on the head of a pin...
ReplyDeleteYes, and that point was about 1200 years ago, 'Drew. The point being that science BUILT from there and tossed out unsustainable theories. If we all went at the world like you do - thinking one's personal practical experience allows one to know pretty much everything, you wouldn't be in Brazil banging drums for pay right now: you'd probably be back in Europe hoeing some dirtpatch for a Lord or a Bishop.
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteHey I understood what Desiree wrote, Im not here to pass your chumpy litte test.You seem to be an expert on Portuguese but have the naive veiw of the cold war in Brazil, what is your problem?
Who said I said the revolutionary left was more brutal than the military dictators?
Who said Farc runs and masterminds the Rio drug trade? I said they have a hand in it. Which you deny and makes you look like a really uninformed fool
I already said I was wrong about Olga and the KGB, its not like you are right about everything you have said..or do you think you are mr know it all? I find you to be naive and bafoonish
This is a serious problem you have, Thad,and it makes you look foolish and lack credibility. Lying and mischaractorising what people say is diarea of the mouth
The bell pattern came from West Africa , period, all your other words are bs
Dear Andrew,
ReplyDelete...you know what happened in Brazil in the cold war is dissected in Brazil a million differant ways...
OK, Drew, so name us ONE of those dissections, who did it and what their proof for it is. All you've done so far is repeat the kind of bullshit blather one hears on far-right blogs.
I know people who had their finger nails pulled out...
Well, how about you tell them that they deserved it because they were communists, then? I mean, that's your point, isn't it? That the left/right violence just canclled each other out? What do you think those acquaintences of yours would have to say to that?
And Drew, can you give me one example - JUST ONE - of a case where those Brazilian leftist revolutionaries you so despise as "violent" pulled peoples' fingernails out? I mean, given the fact that you think it was all so same-o, same-o down here during the Leaden Years.
As for "dopey professors", those would once again be the people whose names you don't know, whose theories you can't even articulate, correct? The guys who supposedly lied to your kid... about what, exactly? That the U.S. supported the military regime from the get go?
What "anti-American" version is this that you're on about. 'Drew? Or is that just Potterspeak for "things that are too complicated for me to understand but which I don't like"?
And here's one final question, Drew: do you even knowwhat communism is? Can you tell us what its proponents preach? Or is it just a generic evil dictatorship in your mind - as opposed to the "good" dictatorships which the U.S. has routinely supported over the years?
OK, 'Drew: what's your proof that FARC plays a significant role in the carioca drug trade?
ReplyDeleteSources, please.
Who said I said the revolutionary left was more brutal than the military dictators?
You quite clearly indicated that you believe it was basically a "six of one, half a dozen of the other" kind of thing.
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteLet me give you your version..
After the military dictatorship rose up and brutaly cracked down on all the Brazilian people with the USA calling all the shots, a group of altruistic people banned together and never trained how to make bombs in Cuba, China or the Soviet Union, and defeated the military dictatorship
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteFarc ? Just go google "Farc Fernando Beiramar"
Google "Farc PCC" for more information on how they deal with Sao Paulo's biggest drug gang
That is just a part of it. Notice there is page after page of information about Farc connected to the Rio drug trade through Fernando Beiramar
you are really naive to not know this, I mean really naive
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDelete"six and one, half a dozen", what in the heck??!!
Im the one who said less than 700 military were killed by them and less than 1000 were killed by the military with more than 30,000 tortured.
They didnt have a chance, even though they actualy thought they were going to have a Cuban style revolution...the people just didnt join them in a bloody revolution
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteI said the military dictatorship crushed them.
Does that sound like six of one half a dozen of the other?
Man, you are loony
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteSetting up links on here is really hard because you cant touch the link and it goes there, you have to type it out, but, check this out:
http://penasetinteiros.blogspot.com/2010/11/ataques-no-rio-tem-digitais-da-farc.html
for a recent article. I mean really, you take the cake trying to say farc isnt involved with the Rio coke and crack and arms traficing
For Gods sake, I always said the military dictatorshop crushed the people trying to have a cuba style violent revolution
Mischaractorisation of what people say is your forte , isnt it?
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteThe commuist manifesto...how about telling me how many time Marx uses the word "borgeosiose"
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralization of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the state.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeletemore drek:
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working men of all countries, unite!
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteeven more drek:
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
That in their own words is their aim
Farc ? Just go google "Farc Fernando Beiramar"
ReplyDeleteOh, it's on a blog on the internet. That means it's gotta be true!!! :D :D :D :D
REAL sources please, Andrew. Someone who has a fairly unimpeachable rep and who cites real proof, not opinion. Not some reporter talking head or an anonymous blogger.
Source or admit that you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
Im the one who said less than 700 military were killed by them and less than 1000 were killed by the military with more than 30,000 tortured.
This is the very first time you've acknowledged that 30.000+ people were tortured by the military, so no, you haven't said that.
I said the military dictatorship crushed them.
You also said that both sides got amnesty so that should set everyone at ease as having resolved the question. If one side tortured 30.000 people and the other side tortured - let's see... ZERO - then amnesty has worked to clear the criminals more than the victims and this is NOT a closed issue which we no longer need to worry about, as you implied Andrew.
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
And you just LOVE the existing social and political order, correct, Andrew? I mean, that's why you favor univeristy quotas, right?
The commuist manifesto...how about telling me how many time Marx uses the word "borgeosiose"
I know that you can't spell the word, but do you even know what Marx MEANT by it?
I know that any fool can cut 'n paste from the communist manifesto, Drew. I'm sure that even YOU can. But what is the OVERALL GOAL of communism, in general?
Do you know? What was Marx preaching, bottom line?
Or are you only able to cut'n paste without really grasping what the main point of the argument is?
Given the fact that you seem to think that an opinion piece written on a blog is "proof" that FARC was behind the attacks in Rio, I'm not quite sure if you even CAN analyze what you read or if you just accept or reject everything based on the shallow emotional response a given text evokes in you. But perhaps your problem is (as I increasingly suspect) that you just can't read Portugese that well and that's why you can't parse fact from hearsay.
But come on! Prove me wrong! Explain to us in your own words what the driving goal of communism - and socialism - for that matter was. The ONE THING all forms of sincere socialists could absolutely agree on.
What was it Drew?
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
ReplyDeleteNo, that Manifesto does not say "abolish private property". In fact, if they were going to abolish private property, there would have been no need to have a "A heavy progressive or graduated income tax", would there of?
In short, 'Drew, the Communists did not want your drums, my computer, or Ana's jacket. Most of them didn't even want your house or your car.
It was a very specific FORM of property that they were looking at and they were trying to DO something with it, not abolish it.
Now you're the guy who says he knows all about the Cold War and what not simply based on your life experiences, but you can't tell me the ONE goal all socialists and communists agreed on. The ONE THING you were sure to hear come out the mouth of any communist or socialist in a political debate.
Hell, MArx even wrote a door-stopper about this topic and you STILL don't know what it is.
Instead, you seem to believe your 7th grade civics teacher that the commies are evil because they want to take your toys away.
C'mon, man: it's not that hard!
What did the commies REALLY want?
I think you seriously need to put up or shut up, Drew. :D
Andrew Scott Potter sais;
ReplyDeleteual.com.br :
Tida como a maior e mais antiga guerrilha das Américas, as Farc – Forças Armadas Revolucionárias da Colômbia – chegaram a ter 35 mil homens. Fundada em 27 de Maio de 1964, durante uma guerra interna na Colômbia, a organização, que vive nas selvas e montanhas, passou a sobreviver, especialmente, da produção e venda de cocaína e papoula. As Farc produzem 39% da droga colombiana. Outra parte de sua “receita” o grupo obtém com as centenas de seqüestros que realiza no país. Calcula-se em 250 milhões de dólares o montante que a organização chegou a conseguir com resgates.
Provavelmente desde 1980, as Farc montaram na Amazônia bases para o tráfico de drogas e de armas. Em 2004, o juiz federal Odilon de Oliveira, de Ponta Porã, na fronteira de Mato Grosso do Sul com o Paraguai, revelou que as Farc se instalaram no Paraguai, na fronteira com o Brasil e passaram a treinar traficantes de São Paulo e do Rio de Janeiro. Deram cursos de guerrilha e também de seqüestros aos bandidos das duas maiores facções criminosas do Brasil: O PCC e o Comando Vermelho. “Eles treinam brasileiros lá para agir aqui” disse o juiz. Segundo ele, as quadrilhas de narcotraficantes brasileiros são os principais “clientes” na compra da cocaína produzida pelas Farc. Antes de chegar ao Brasil, a cocaína é levada para o Paraguai. O pagamento é feito em dólares ou armas. Ponta Porã é a segunda cidade do país em lavagem de dinheiro, perdendo só para Foz do Iguaçu (Paraná).
but , what is the use. I just brought in the other link because it did have relevant facts
there is page after page if you google up various combinations of words, about farc and brazil drug traficing:
fernando beira-mar farc
rio de janeiro drogas farc
brasil farc
google any of these, there are reams and reams of pages and you only classify it all as pop pulp
you are seriously in denial and not qualified to talk to anyone about what is really happening in brazil and the drug trade
you lose credibility with each opening of your mouth
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteYou are ridiculas , this isnt your class , your questions are stupid.
What I say to anyone out here reading this, just check out the passages I brought in directly from the communist manifesto and come to your own conclusions. That is all there is to do., It is just blatently transparent how flawed and disgusting this line of dogma and idieaology is .
Why people would actualy buy into this and want to start a Cuban style revolution to bring in this type of ideaology is mind boggling.
And it totaly explains why the military decided to make sure it wasnt going to happen.
Yes, they cracked down brutaly, too brutaly. I never said I thought that was ok, it just was the way it was, and , it was the cold war.
And these people that thought this ideaology was just hunky dory and that a violent revolution was nescasary are just as much to blame for what happened in Brazil as the military dictatorship.
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteId like to address you Desiree. I hope you didnt stop posting because you felt bad about your english, its better than mine or you can post in Portuguese, I can understand.
You ought to take everything you hear from your professor here with a deep grain of salt.
In the face of overwelming evidence on varous subjects, he blows ahead like a baloon of hot air with no proof on his part but his running off at the mouth with a self importance that is bafoonish.
After bringing in youtube after youtube of sub Sahara African drumming and dancing showing concepts of pollyrhythms and call responce that indicate a definite connection, as connected as European classical music , he is in denial. And cant prove other wise.He will try to tell you, who have stated you are black, that you dont have a culture or origin or heritage . I would seriously distrust his semantical pshyce double speak in addressing these issues, the proof is in the pudding, again I urge you to go to his wifes article on Agagond , scroll down to our discusion and please check out those youtubes I brought in and decide for yourself if he is in serious denial.
After bringing in referances to reams of pages on google that discuss the definite connections with farc and Fernando Beira-mar, the PCC etc, he is in denial.I mean really , Desiree, do you think farc isnt dealing with the commando vermelho ?
He cant even face the fundimentals directly from the communist manifesto that show what a flawed ideaology it is.
I would take anything he sais with a grain of salt
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteHey , Chetti, you obvously have your own answer for your trick question, why dont you go ahead and anwser.
All I can say is that this flawed ideaology that promotes such things "establishment of industrial armies , especialy for agriculture", failed miserably and killed millions , and millions of people . Look what happened in China with their industrial armies for agriculture or in Cambodia. Or even Cuba with its forced labor camps to the feilds...utter failure.
Why dont you cut your crap.
Its absolutly amazing and mind boggling that someone so well read , so well educated and a University professor can sound so foolish...mind boggling
Hey , Chetti, you obvously have your own answer for your trick question, why dont you go ahead and anwser.
ReplyDeleteGiven that I'm a social scientists with a PhD, I think we can comfortably say that I do indeed know, Andrew.
The question, however, is do YOU know?
I mean, this issue was at the bottom of the Cold War, which you claim to totally understand.
And this isn't a trick question, by the way: it's basic knowledge to anyone who's actually, really looked into communism or socialism and what they meant.
This is late high-school level stuff, here Andrew.
So you're really admitting that you don't have the slightest clue as to what the ultimate goal of the communists was? The one simple thing you should indeed know, were it true that you were actually paying attention during the "real life" experiences you had in Brazil in the 1980s?
Let's give it another shot, Andrew:
Communism did indeed revolve around a proposal to do something with a certain form of property. Aside from a few vulgar communists and radicals, the "something" was not "abolish private property" (you'll notice that they didn't do that even in Stalin's Russia or Mao's China).
So WHAT did all communists agree on, Andrew? What did they think needed to be done?
I'll remind you once again that the only reason I'm asking this is because you claim to be a great understander of communism and the Cold War and because you whine that there's a "huge hole" in my understanding of the same.
If you can't even tell us what the communists were fighting for, then I think it's damned obvious that you don't know very much about communism and the cold war.
And, fool, rhetoric such as "establish industrial armies, especially for agriculture" has been used by pretty much every modern State out there at one time or another. It's not specific to communism, but to a social form known as modernity.
ReplyDeleteYou're right: it HAS killed millions of people, but that's not communism's fault.
Amdrew Scott Potter sais :
ReplyDeleteOh boy , the trick question psyche, what did the communists really want ?..wow...
Im going to answer you by responding to a sarcastic comment you tried to make to me . The gist of is this :You implied how could I condemn the communist goal of turning everything over to the state to control , and be for government regulated quotas ?
Do you think Im one of those people who anything that has government regulation is socialism ? Do you think that I call Obama a socialist because of his health care plan ?
Nothing could be further from the truth about me. I want capatilism, capitilism with a concience, a social concience with social programs and regulation when needed. I hate hyper capatilism, consertive religious right republicans as much as left leaning idiots that regurgitate with anti Americanism and rant against imperialism and capatilism.Throw in fundimental islamic terrorists and there are the people that are my enemies .
So to answer your trick question, which I could care less if it meets your high school class testing leval, because, most high schoolers in the states have no idea what is going on in Brazil and most hish schoolers in Brazil have gotten the brain washed version, but :
Communisms goal is that the state be in control of most everything.They tell you what doctor you have to see, they tell you what you can buy from the store. They basicly tell you how to run your life, what to do, and what your familiy can do. Open your own business ? Not under the real communism.
One of the few little powers even the smallest person who earns the smallest wage , under capatilism has, is to take their business, no matter how small, somewhere else if they dont like how they are treated or if the owner is price gauging. You dont like the way the doctor touched you when he examined you? In capatilism, you take your business somewhere else.Not a communist state, they tell you what doctor you will be examined by.Everyone suffers equaly under communism.
I want to make something clear to you. As long as high level artists and musicians ,like Antonio Nobrega , use terms like "Cultura Afro Brasileira", I dont care what all you antropologists say. You all are off in your world with your semanticle definitions and opinions, but, they are in serious conflict with some of the musician and artists I respect a lot more than you all.
I guess my post to Desiree didnt make the cut , huh?
So you hate commies but you don't have even the slightest clue what they were fighting for. Why am I not surprised?
ReplyDeleteHere's a small measure of your ignorance regarding communism, which you have incredibly strong opinions about and yet know next to nothing of. You say...
Communisms goal is that the state be in control of most everything.
...and here's what Freddy Engels had to say about the State and communism:
State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished". It dies out... In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master — free."
SOCIALISM'S goal was to put the state in control of a key element of human social life (if not everything). COMMUNISM sought to do away with the state.
Y'know, Andrew, on that same Wikipedia you cut'n'pasted to give us those list of "Communism's goals" which you posted up there, there's this little interesting bit, too:
Anarchists and Marxists both agree on the long-term desirability of a stateless society.
So basically, you use Wiki as a source on communism but are either too stupid or too lazy to even READ the damned source you're using.
I suspect that this has been your pattern in dealing with information your entire life: accept at face value those things that ring emotionally true to you and never question them. With regards to communism, that means when some authority figure (a parent or a grade school teacher) told you that the commies were gonna steal your teddy bear, you believed them and have been repeating that line ever since.
You've never once bothered to ask yourself "Is it really true?" because you're simply too intellectually prejudiced and lazy.
Even today, when a quick, snappy comeback showing that you know what communists' main goal was would make me look like an utter fool, you can't muster up the intellectual wattage to read from the very source you cut 'n paste your "proofs" from.
It's sad, man.
Andrew, the bottom line to you seems to be this: you have strong opinions about everything, even stuff you know little to nothing about - perhaps especially stuff you know little to nothing about. There's simply no line in your mind as to what constitutes and informed opinion on your part and what is simple hogwash. And, sadly, you react with screaming fits if anyone contradicts you.
(Oh, and by the way, the commies' main goal wasn't getting rid of the state: that's anarchists' main goal. The commies wanted to do something ELSE which would have as a necessary effect the elimination of the state. But because I'm amused at you flopping about decrying a political philosophy you don't even understand, I'm certainly not going to tell you what the main goal of communism was. Ask Desiree. She has a soft spot for people who make fools of themselves.)
One of the few little powers even the smallest person who earns the smallest wage , under capatilism has, is to take their business, no matter how small, somewhere else if they dont like how they are treated or if the owner is price gauging. You dont like the way the doctor touched you when he examined you? In capatilism, you take your business somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteSo you also missed out on the history of capitalism too, huh?
I have one word for you to wiki up, Andrew: "monopoly".
This is what capitalism inevitably generates if not tempered by at least some socialism.
@ Thad
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to ask you to spill the beans to Andrew, but I am actually curious as to what the Communists actually sought to accomplish, because I haven't actually studied Communism much.
Andrew Scott Potter sais :
ReplyDeleteOh boy, I thought their real goal was to get rid of their constipation.
As usual, you come up way short. First of all, wiki wasnt my source , so one third of your insults are null and void.
Second , oh wow, you bring in what Engle said, but, that is not what real communism DID , and I base my opinion on what real communism did. Can your intellectual brain wrap around that?. So , I guess you are lost in the dogma and what the academics and intellectuals of communism said and not the real life of what communisim did.
I mean across the board, the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korrea,the Khemer Rouge in Cambodia China (before it became authoritarion capatalistic) etc, they all were run by the state.They were totalitarian dictatoships. They tell the people what they have to do, what they cant see on information outlits, what line to get into for food rations , what doctor to see, and they eliminated their oposition relentlessly, they were the best at that.Cuba executed more people than all the military dictatorships of South America in the cold war.And they still are a dictatorship.
In the real world, it never reached this "lofty nebulus goal" that you have held up as some kind of stupid test.
Please, Please PLEASE !!! come down to reality
No , I really came to understand about communism when I came down here. No professor ever told me the truth about it.
And that is your problem in all these things here, buddy boy, you are in your lofty academic semantical double speak tower and cant really face reality...about communism, about farc and the brazil cocaine and arms drug trade and "cultura Afro Brasileira"...you come up short...
This is why I cant trust people like you to really enlighten me. You are too much disconnected from reality. You look to the intellectual sky but miss the dog shit on the ground you keep stepping in. With all due respect, I pity you.
Its funny, you can think I missed about capatalism, but, everything I said is a daily reality in my life. Everday , I can make a choice to take my business where I will get a better deal, get better service, better product, better attention, and take my business away from people who treat me bad. You dont think I dont know that capatalism creates sharks at the top ? It can lead to hyper capatalism which I hate. But, my daily life , capatalism plays out much more to my advantage than if I were in Cuba, or , North Korrea. And I have been up and down financialy and the same principles aply, even more when I am down and need to be very careful how I spend my money.
I mean , when are you going to learn that inside your lofty academic walls, those intellectual semantical analysis and theories just dont play out in reality, and , I like to be in reality.
It really doesnt mean anything what Engles said, anyone reading this can just look at parts of the communist manifesto I brought in and see the drek and disgusting ideaology it is putting forth and be absolutly discusted by it. That is what is important...not what the intellecutals theorised would happen , but didnt. Something much worse really happened....
I base my opinion on what real communism did. Can your intellectual brain wrap around that?
ReplyDeleteThen you're being an ass, yet again.
"Communism" is a philosophy. It is interpreted in any number of ways by any number of different people. It, in and of itself, cannot "do" anything. There's nothing any more noxious about communism (or any less) than there is about any other philosophy.
And if we're going to judge philosophies on what people actually DO in their name, then I would suggest to you that every single philosophy on the planet is morally bankrupt, along with all the religions.
In the name of capitalism, millions of those Africans you claim to so venerate were kidnapped, enslaved and murdered.
In the name of democracy and capitalism, the U.S. stole a good half of the Americas from its original inhabitants.
In the name of Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité, Napoleon launched a war which killed hundreds of thosuands and lasted decades.
In the name of "freedom", the U.S. bombed the fuck out of Vietnam and supported military dictatorships and torture across the face of the planet.
So if we're going to go on what was actually DONE in the name of nig ideas, none of them come up smelling like roses.
But what I'm talking about is what people BELIEVED communism COULD do. What is it about communism that motivated millions to die in its defence? It wasn't, like fascism, a philosophy that believed in the "natural" link between a people and land, between blood, race and civilization.
So what was the one thing all communists and socialists agreed that they were trying to do, Andrew?
Tell us. C'mon. You say you know everything there is to know about the cold war, right? :D
Andrew Scott Potter sais :
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dlSVHZtQ_A&feature=related
at about 2:50 you can hear a tremendous similaritie to about 3:30 of the clip below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9btCyYdsVSE
and , about bell patterns : check this out, and know that is the more advanced complex version of the bell patterns in the previous examples
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVwJTXz7j98
its time to slam dunk this whether you can use terms like "cultura Afro Brazileiro"
It makes me indignant to hear anthropologists putting out semantical theories that you cant use terms like "Afro" . I defy them to tell me what is going on here.This is more absulute proof that there is "cultura Afro Brasileiro".
Antonio Nobrega is the real expert, not anthropologists who really know nothing about music and dance.
Desiree , please take every word by your professors with a grain of salt
Oh, and by the way, a good portion of today's economic theory and policy is at least partially in fact based upon Marxist analysis of capitalism.
ReplyDeleteSo if Marx is a "communist" and all communists are equally bad, then you're forced to conclude - like the Tea Party loons whom you say you dislike - that all of modern society is in fact "communist".
And here's some other "horrible" communist ideas that are now incorporated in the socio-economic policies of most civilized nations:
Minimum wage.
State-guaranteed retirement benefits.
40 hour work weeks.
Anti-child labor laws.
All of these things and many more were fought for and defended by communists, so their only legacy is far from "Russia, China, etc."
Furthermore, the vast majority of so-called "democracies" out there in the world are not free and happy places. So going on your "real life is what counts" view of things, we should either ignore philosophies entirely when judging whether or not a country is "good" or "bad", or equally condemn all philosophies as murderous.
Your particular hatred for communism is what I find amusing. As if capitalism has a better track record.
Finally, it seems to me that your REAL problem - judging by what you're complaining about - isn't "communism" but a sort of muscular form of modernism, combined with totalitarian authoritarianism.
Now, one could argue that communism has a particular bent for trying to combine those two things, but I'll note that in most cases where one can really point to hecatombs created by people who called themselves "communists", one of two things were true:
1) The place had a loooooooooooooong previous history of authoritarian rule (and I notice you don't seem to be losing any sleep over the millions who died when the USSR went down. Apparently now that Russia says it's democratic, you think all is peaches and cream over there.)
2) The place was a tiny third world nation which wanted to "develop five years in fifty".
Both of these traits, far more than communism, are what kill. And where they occurred in "non-communist" states - like Sukarno's Indonesia, for instance, they killed just as often and just as brutally.
So no, mass murder is not a specific or necessary characteristic of communist regimes.
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing in the USA history that comes anywhere near to the elimination of millions by the Soviet Union.
(listen buddy boy, the communists killed their share of people in Vietnam, and they did it when the French were there too, Why do people like you make stupid comments like that, implying the USA killed all the people in Vietnam ?That is part of the problem with your logic, and people like you, you start building ridiculas scenarios blaming the USA for all the deaths in Vietnam or Iraq, those are ridiculas lies and part of your skewed agenda)
There is nothing in USA history that comes any where near to the millions eliminated by China.
All in a 65 or so year period in the past century .
The main point Im making is most all, most ALL attempts at communism had these failed results.
Because it is seriously flawed, which any idoit can see just reading the manifesto.
What good is it to have lofty ideals and goals that are just flawed from the get go. That is what is important, not your trick question about what were their lofty goals were.
And these actions is why the military dictatorship decided Brazil wasnt going to have a Cuban style revolution or become a Soviet satalite.
I mean you nit pic and say there were such differances in the various communist factions that tried to woo the students in Brazil to join them, the Castroists,Maoists, Trotskyites, the Brazilian communist party etc, but they were all preaching Marxist doctrine, and , it was the people who decided to take it to the violent revolution , that brought down such a heavy brutal reaction by the military dictatorship.
What if these idiots never got violent ? How long would the dictatroship have held on?
What if they actualy won and Brazil became like Cuba ?
Im not playing your little trick question game,its so irrelavant to the reality of what happened in real life.
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteMy god , by your logic, the USA eliminating slavery fought capatalism..
Skewed logic, again, the proof is in the pudding , that under those brutal regimes that followed Marxist doctrine, far more millions of people died. The numbers just dont lie.
Even the most horrible Atlantic slave trade had less people die than the Soviet Union eliminatied.
And we are talking about the forces in that century that led to the desicians to make sure there wasnt going to be a Marxist revolution in Brazil.. I mean that is what we are talking about, professor...I mean you have to come down to reality here, again you are looking in the sky, using academic theories and semantical twists and stepping in dog poo
Andrew Scott Potter sais:
ReplyDeleteI mean you have to be kidding, would you like to trade your life for life in Cuba, i love the culture but cmon buddy boy
Would you trade your life to live in North Korrea?
These really are the typical arguments coming from people in the academic circles where you run around in.And they are pathetic, so un in touch with reality
I really pity your logic
Would you trade your life to live in North Korrea?
ReplyDeleteWould you trade your life to live in Zimbabwe?
I mean, it's a capitalist democracy, right? They have free market, elections, everything.
Or how about Bulgaria? It's another good capitalist democracy.
Say! I know! How about Iraq? Can there BE a more capitalist democracy than that? I mean, it's vouchsafed by the U.S...
The point being, Andrew, why is North Korea - a country which is an authoritarian totalitarian dictatorship and which is only "communist" in the mind of its leader and the American Tea Part - why is North Korea the best example of "communism" while all the countries listed above aren't great examples of capitalist democracies?
And given a choice between the "capitalist democratic" USA or socialist Finland or Sweden, I'd take Sweden in a shot.
And regarding Cuba... How much of their trouble is communism and how much is the fact that the world's only remaining superpower - their neighbor - hates them and has cuit them off from the world's economic system?
Andrew Scott Potter sais, while waiting for other posts he made to come up also:
ReplyDeleteOh please, professor , Cuba can get anything it wants in the world, and, the prostitution everyone states as its legacy of eliminating is alive and well on its tourist coast that the rest of the world is flocking to.And, looks like one tenth of the population has fled and a lot of others would like to. oh yeah, Cuba is just hunky dory . People do flee communist states in huge numbers.
I didnt think Sweden was communist.How about compare North Korrea to South Korrea
and you give traits like minimum wage to communinsm? My god, they say the communist state rations food to every one, is communism responsible for lunch breaks also ?
I mean you are really waffling around , professor, with lofty goals,semantic definitions, going back centuries to implicate capatilism, should we include what Gengis Khan did ? What is relevant to Brazil and the marxist revolutionaries, was their models , and that was relevant to the military dictators in Brazil. And, the thing is, the Soviet Union eliminated 20 million of its own people. China killed 20million of its own people doing its "armies of agricutlrural workiers " thing.The Khermer Rouge followed China with 6 million of its people...the numbers dont lie, only you do
Again , you are the one with trick questions, lofty goals, what are the theories, when you keep escaping reality.
These revolutionaries who wanted a violent revolution in Brazil were using Cuba, the Soviet Union and China as their models. And history shows us the Soviet Union colapsed, China went authoritarian capatalism, and Cuba...oh man, you really are a sucker to think they are so fine, black thinkers around the world just implicated them as being racist also, busting another myth about Cuba, that everyone is equal under the state.
So these people were just like you, with their lofty theories and semantical definitions and skewed logic, and , when they decided to try to go into revolutionary reality, they got their heads handed to them on a silver platter because they couldnt see the dog poo right in front of them.
Its great to be selective which posts of mine you want to show ,
Andrew Scott Potter sais :
ReplyDeleteYou know, I already said Im not against Socialism.
Even though they both think goods and services in an economy should be owned publicly and controlled and planned by a centralized organisation.
Its that the communists think that capatalism should be done away with and socialism can accept capatalism.
That is a big differance. I mean its right there in the manifesto, they are ready to support any communist revolution anywhere. They just have to have that revolutions..that is really why there was a cold war, that is really why the Brazilian dictatorship cracked down so hard and those people who thought it was so hunky , idealisticly hunky dorey, just ended up stepping in dog poo
Andrew, you can't even spell "capitalism", let alone understand it.
ReplyDeleteAnd here are some other misunderstandings of yours:
Its that the communists think that capatalism should be done away with and socialism can accept capatalism.
No, both of them think capitalism should be done away with. The communists think that the STATE should ALSO eventually be done away with.
Even though they both think goods and services in an economy should be owned publicly and controlled and planned by a centralized organisation.
Not necessarily. This is a bit like saying "Capitalists think children should starve to death", because in every country where capitalism has reigned supreme, that's precisely what happens, isn't? I mean if we're talking about the real world, that is...
If we're talking about what people WANT, communists did not believe in state ownership of goods and services as an ultimate goal. As I said before, Andrew, the commies don't want your drumset, teddybear, or vinyl collection of jazz hits.
Furthermore, the Communist Manifesto was written in - what - 1845? Somewhere around there, in any case. Believing that it is the driving document of every commmunist movement in the world is a bit like believing the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man if what every capitalist democracy is following as its play book.
You're right: communism is all about revolutions, AS IS CAPITALISM. Both systems feel authorized to declare revolutionary war on political and economic systems which they feel stand in there way. There is exactly ZERO difference between communists and capitalists on this point.
Dear Random Guy,
ReplyDeleteGiven Andrew's apparent mental laziness, I'll answer my question for him. Then I'm cutting out of this conversation with Mr. Potter.
Really, trying to discuss history and politics with Andrew is a bit like Andrew discussing music with a KISS fan: he thinks his ignorance is a wealth of information, he likes what he likes and he's not going to change his opinion simply becaue someone else has gone to the trouble to actually learn more about the topic than he has.
So why bother discussing things with a man who thinks ignorance is the same as an informed opinion? It's like trying to talk about evolution with a creationist.
What both the socialist and communists wanted to do was socialize the means of production. This meant putting the productive forces of society (i.e factories and the like) under social control in much the same way that democracy put the political forces of society under social control.
(And if Andrew had been born in England in 1812, he'd probably think that democracy was eeeeeeeeevil too, but that's by the by).
Communists believed that once this was done, the state would inevitable wither away because a) the private ownership of societies' productive forces was the basis of classes and b) the state only existed to support the dominat class. Thus once the basis of class warfare was eliminated, this would eliminate the need for a state. Socialists believed that the State would always have a continuing role to play in moderating other human disputes.
Note that socializing the means of production would not make all men equal, in communism's view. It would simply remove the main block to most human beings' ability to make the most of their lives. In Marx's view, it would give us a world where each was provided according to their needs and each contributed according to their abilities, making humanity self-actualized for the first time in its history.
What did and did not constitute "the means of production" was an endless debate among commies. Only the most radical of communists, however, believed that all property needs must be socially controlled. Lenin didn't believe this. Stalin certainly didn't. Stalin believed that the state was his PERSONAL property and so is best classified as tyrant in the classic Russian mold and not a communist.
Many poor and miserable nations were attracted to communism because it promised a means of quickly developing the nation and that it did. Unfortunately, in most cases it did by putting power into the hands of a managerial class who became, ipso-facto, the new dominant class. Although they didn't personally "own" the means of production, they certainly controlled it and not the workers or society at large, as MArx wanted.
So nowhere on Earth has communism actually been implemented. It is a utopian philosophy in this sense. But judging the philosophy based on Stalin and Mao's hash of it is a bit like judging modernity or nationalism based on Idi Amin's Uganda.
There are plenty of good critiques to be made about communism, by the way, but "the commies want to take all our property and force men to be equal and poor" is not one of them.
ReplyDeleteAs an old and somewhat threadbare anarchist, one of my critiques would be that communism completely misreads the power of the state as a tool of domination. It is not a class-specific tool which will disappear when class is done away with. Rather, it is a power construct that will automatically embue whatever group that controls or dominates it with class-like properties.
In other words, one cant' get rid of class and the state a step at a time: they must be done away with simultaneously because one has the power to call the other back into play.
Furthermore, the power of abrupt revolution itself is highly suspect to my mind. There are very few instances in history where violent military revolution has actually managed to produce lasting change UNLESS there was an underlying social basis ready to support it. So I would say that today's socialist/communist/anarchists and their deriviatives are better off engaging in social engineering rather than trying to construct a perfect, overnight revolution. They should take a page from the far right's play book in this sense.
The development of the internet has probably done more to change the basis of our society than all the acts of all the communists from at least WWII on. So if you're a revolutionary today, the goal is to create OTHER forms of revolution than the "Comrades! To the barricades!" sort.
Wikileaks is more revolutionary in this sense than mass direct action (though I think that has its place, too). And the Brazilian government's "bolsa família" has probably done more to revolutionize social relations among the Brazilian poor than any ammount of communist chest-thumping.
But it is worthwhile pointing out that it was the communists and socialists of yesteryear who came up with the bolsa família. :D
(And now let's hear Potter over there rage about how the bolsa família is a horrible, invention that's ruining Brazil by making those poor black people he claims to love so much prosperous enough to buy MP3s instead of produce their own music, like good poor people should.)
:D :D :D :D
And that's it. I'm outtie on this thread unless someone other than Mr. Andrew Scott Potter wants to say something.
Life's too short to spend it in endless debate with hotheads. Or, at least, the same old hothead.
(By the way Drew, I don't expect to do much moderating here until after the 18th. I'll make an effort to post any stuff other folks have to say, but I'm not going to be able screen all your rants.
ReplyDeleteSo you might want to take a powder and go haunt someone else's blog for awhile. Or snort some coke and drink tequila or do whatever it is you do when you aren't spewing.)
Andrew Scott Potter sais :
ReplyDeleteAll right ,professor , our discusion is here for what ever readers there are , to make their own desicians about what we have said.
And , professor, just to show you I dont hate you, Im going to throw you a bone, dog...
You are a big book boy, and , you know that if you like books, the real beef is in used book stores.
If you need a tip for one of the top used book stores anywhere , that might be able to help you get a hold of a book you want, look up my brothers fantastic used book store in Santa Fe , New Mexico:
Nicholas Potter Bookseller
211 East Palace Ave
Santa Fe , New Mexico
0021-1 505 983 5434
highpro@earthlink.net
Satan's tits man, I see you have a ton of marking to do. My condolences. Keep in mind that those papers which are not intentionally funny, are usually the most funny. In thew words of Cthulu:"@##!!$%^)(*&!!!LOL!
ReplyDeleteThad,
ReplyDeleteLong time no see! I don't want to interrupt your current exchange, I just want to say I'm glad you've figured out what's going on with the comments. That should make commenting much easier.
In my case, my blog disappeared completely! But it turned out that there was just some temporary glitch in Blogger's system. Perhaps we have the same case? Read my story about what happened to my blog, and you might figure out what went wrong in yours. Thanks!
ReplyDelete