Sunday, 9 December 2018

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 39

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Finance will attack, it will silently undermine all intellectual movements that could cause superior values to prevail over mercantile values. It will corrode Catholicism through modernism, which is essentially a transaction between Christian faith and the modern world; philosophy through pragmatism, which is a philosophical modernism; socialism and nationalism through parliamentarianism; ultimately everywhere where it smells a warlike spirit of intransigence capable of raising up and sustaining something absolute and supernatural against it within this universal naturalist relativism of the modern world so favorable to its reign, it immediately tries to tame it, encircle it, “pacify” it.
Cahiers du Cercle Proudhon

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"Revolutionary is the new humanity which appears as typus; revolutionary is the steady growth of means which none of the traditional social and national orders can assimilate without contradictions. These means are changing entirely and reveal their hidden meaning the moment they are subjected to a real, incontestable dominion. From this moment, revolutionary become legitimate." - Ernst Junger, The Worker, pg. 124

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"I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence."



Eugene V. Debs
"Statement to the Court Upon Being Convicted of Violating the Sedition Act" (18 September 1918)

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Wednesday, 5 December 2018

Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 21/46



Health and Illness as Life Processes


The different ways in which it is possible to interpret and respond to discomforting alterations in our bodily sense of self – in particular that bodily sense of ‘not feeling ourselves’ that accompanies even the most minor of symptoms such as feeling a cold or flu coming on – take us to the very heart of the contrast between Biomedicine and Life Medicine. They also enable us to understand both health and illness as self-states and life processes rather than merely as bodily states or biological processes.

A key aspect of both health and illness as life processes is how we interpret and respond to the essential ‘dis-ease’ of ‘not feeling ourselves’ – a dis-ease that may either precede or accompany discomforting symptoms of illness. One option is to feel this dis-ease and its symptoms merely as a sign of some biological disease or disorder – leading to what I call ‘the illness process’. An alternative is to feel our dis-ease as a state or pregnancy and our bodily state as the womb of a new and different sense of self gestating within us – a self we do not need to ‘defend’ against or ‘fight’ with our body’s immune system. This is what I call ‘the health process’ in contrast to ‘the illness process’, the stages of both of which are described below:


The Health Process


  1. ‘Feeling ourselves’ in a familiar and ‘normal’ way that we identify with feeling ‘healthy’.
  2. ‘Not feeling ourselves’ – feeling a change in our bodily sense of self or body identity.
  3. Choosing to actively affirm and identify with our altered bodily sense of self or ‘body identity’.
  4. Giving ourselves time to meditate our felt-disease in the context of our current lives.
  5. Passing from ‘not feeling ourselves’ to ‘feeling another self’ – to experiencing the change in our bodily sense of self not as something that is ‘not me’ or ‘other than self’ but as a distinct self in its own right.
  6. Seeking to actively embody and in this way give birth to the new sense of self that is pregnant in our dis-ease through new ways of being and relating to others and our life world.

The Illness Process


  1. ‘Feeling ourselves’ in a familiar and ‘normal’ way that we identify with feeling ‘healthy’.
  2. ‘Not feeling ourselves’ – and experiencing this both as a felt sense of dis-ease and as the result of some ‘thing’ that is ‘not self’ or ‘other than self’.
  3. Identifying our felt dis-ease solely with some purely bodily state or illness symptom.
  4. Seeing this symptom only as a sign of some ‘thing’ that is ‘wrong’ with us – such as a medically recognised ‘disease’.
  5. Seeking a medical diagnosis or ‘cause’ for our symptoms in some ‘foreign body’ such as a virus.
  6. Seeking a ‘cure’ for our symptoms by some means of medically counteracting or cutting out that ‘foreign body’.
The illness process is always culturally and linguistically shaped. Thus, whilst modern medicine might seek the cause of dis-ease in a foreign body such as a ‘malignant’ tumour or ‘pathogenic’ virus or bacterium, a witch-doctor or shaman might blame it on a malign spirit just as earliest Greek physicians blamed illnesses on ‘ill-winds’ or pneuma. Yet what all historical forms of medicine have tended to share in common is that any sense of ‘not feeling ourselves’ – rather than being taken as an opportunity to begin ‘feeling another self’ – is instead identified with feeling something wholly ‘other than self’ such as a foreign body or spirit, or a ‘non-self’ cell or organism. In this way however, the health process – passing from ‘not feeling ourselves’ to ‘feeling another self’ is foreclosed and gives way instead to the ‘illness process’.

Sunday, 2 December 2018

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 38

"Until now, the ties of nationality have been based upon coercion from above. The new system will organize the nations from below. And it is precisely due to this fact that the new system will obtain the security which will allow it to prevail over the old, which no foreign forces will be able to prevent or oppress, and which will bring in its wake, in all regions and throughout the world, with the guarantee of domestic invincibility, the possibility of the unlimited expansion of the world socialist order."
- Heinrich Laufenberg

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"On the basis of this knowledge, after thousands of man-hours spent with warrior people, a firm conviction had developed in me, that war is not the sin of human kind, not a vestige of the past, not a shameful instinct, but a legitimate powerful instinct of aggression, the instinct of heroism."
- Eduard Liminov

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“Workers don’t have a country”, said The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels. On the contrary, workers have a country more than the bourgeois, who we could consider as the real “fatherlandless”; as the rich man finds himself at ease everywhere in the world, wherever he finds himself, precisely because of his wealth; while the man of the people, the poor man, stripped of his country, uprooted, transplanted, delivered to capitalist and foreign double domination, is doubly enslaved and wretched. In fact, most often in history, it has been the rich who have sold their country at premium price for an ignoble class interest, [...] while the popular classes defended it with the most magnificent tenacity.

J. Darville, pseudonym of Edouard BERTH, Satellites de la ploutocratie in Cahiers du Cercle Proudhon, volume V-VI, Paris, 1912.

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"Something that nationalists need to learn once and for all:

Class struggle is not ideology. Class struggle is a description of reality. The class struggle exists. There is no controversy about that. What can be discussed is whether or not it is the engine of history and whether or not it is the main political contradiction.

Whether it exists or is not an indisputable, undeniable, ever-present fact.

There is a class that is at war against the workers. No conciliation is possible with that class.

*All historical attempts to achieve conciliation with this class have failed.*

There's a class that's at war with us. Close your eyes to it, ignore it, pretend that this is not happening - this will not change a basic, obvious, given aspect of reality.

Class struggle exists. There is a war being fought. And we're the target.

And what happens in a war when only one side is aware that there is a war being fought?"

- Raphael Machado - New Resistance, Brazil

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From an interview with Alain de Benoist on the Gilets jaunes protest movement in France:

What strikes you the most, in this movement?

Two things. The first, the most important, is the spontaneous character of the movement, as it's what frightens the public powers the most, which finds itself without spokesmen, but also the parties and the unions, who discover with stupor that nearly a million men and women can mobilize and spark a movement of solidarity we've rarely seen (70 to 80% support in opinion polls) without even thinking to appeal to them. The yellow vests, a consummate example of popular self-organization. No leaders big or small, nor Caesars nor tribunes, solely the people. Populism in the pure state. Not the populism of parties or movements that claim this label, but what Vincent Coussedière called the “populism of the people.” Frondeurs3, sans-culottes, communards, whatever label they want to place on them doesn't matter. The people of the yellow vests didn't entrust anyone the duty to speak in its place, it has imposed itself as a historical subject, and for that too, it must be endorsed and supported.

The other point that strikes me is the incredible discourse of hate directed against the yellow vests by the carriers of the dominant ideology, the sad alliance of little marquises in power, ridiculous pretentious people, and financial markets. “Beaufs4”, “morons”, “old fashioned” are the words that recur the most often (to say nothing of “brown shirts!”). Read the letters to the editor in Le Monde, listen to the moral left – the kerosene left – and the well bred right. Until now, they've held the reins, but not anymore. They lash out in the most obscene manner to express their haughtiness and class contempt, but also their panicked fear of seeing themselves dismissed by beggars soon. Since the tremendous demonstration in Paris, they no longer have the heart to reply to those who complain about the price of gas because they haven't bought an electric car (the modern version of “let them eat cake!”). When the people spills into the streets of the capital, they raise the drawbridges! If they openly express their hate of this popular France – the France of Johnny5, the France that “smokes cigarettes and drives diesels”, - of this France that is not mixed enough, and too French anyhow, of the people that Macron has described in turn as illiterates and slackers who want “to make trouble”, in short, as insignificant people, they know that their days are numbered.

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"Dress suitably in short skirts and sitting boots, leave your jewels and gold in the bank, and buy a revolver.”

- Constance Markievicz, Irish Revolutionary Nationalist and Socialist, founding member of Fianna Éireann, Cumann na mBan, and the Irish Citizen Army, 1916.

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Wednesday, 28 November 2018

Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 20/46


Illness as an Altered State of Consciousness

From the point of view of Life Medicine there is no need to scientifically find or prove causal links or relations between ‘body and mind ’, ‘body and brain ’. Instead it is a matter of recognising that every bodily state is a ‘mental’ state, but in a much broader sense than usually understood – being a state of consciousness that is experienced just as much in a bodily way as in our ‘minds’.

No ‘subjective’ state or ‘state of consciousness’ is merely something enclosed or encapsulated in our heads, brains or minds. Conversely the body as such is not something we merely perceive or are merely aware of ‘mentally’ – as if it were some object we carry around with us. Instead the body itself is but a particular shape and dimension of subjective experiencing – one that completely transcends the whole body-mind, body-brain division. This is why the notion of the ‘felt body ’, ‘lived body‘ or ‘subjective body‘ is so central to Life Medicine – and to the new understanding of illness it brings. For this new understanding makes it impossible, in principle, to separate our lived experience of illness into two separate categories that we call ‘mental’ and ‘physical’.

A basic principle of Life Medicine is that every bodily state is also a state of consciousness and vice versa. That is why the experience of any bodily state or condition, even a minor ailment such as a flu or cold goes together with a new and different state of consciousness – a state of consciousness that is not limited to one's head or mind but pervades one’s entire body.

Conversely, different types of ‘mental’ or ‘emotional’ states are also states of consciousness not confined to the head or mind – but felt and experienced in a bodily way, for example as a particular sensation arising from a state of muscular tension in one’s chest, stomach or guts.

“Every feeling is… a mood that embodies in this or that way.”
Martin Heidegger

What we call a ‘mood’ however, is nothing we are simply mentally aware of in our heads, but is rather a particular tone and quality of embodied, feeling awareness – one which is always in one way embodied as different degrees and qualities of muscle tone and tension – which is why no state of ‘mental’ stress or tension is not at the same time a state of muscular tension.

“A mood makes manifest how one is…” Martin Heidegger

In other words, a mood is not just something purely mental but is a bodily way of feeling ourselves. This is reflected in the fact that the question 'How do you feel?' is synonymous with the question 'How are you?’ For the way we ‘feel’ is the way we ‘are’ – and vice versa.

For this reason however, any alteration or change in how we feel or are is at the same time a change in our sense of who we are or feel ourselves to be – a change in our identity or sense of self that is felt in an immediate bodily way. For in a most literal sense the ‘you’ that feels sick or tired is not the same ‘you’ that feels healthy, bright and alert.

Thus, not only is every bodily state also a state of consciousness – it could also be described as a ‘self-state’ or ‘body identity’. For the way we feel our bodies cannot be separated from the way we feel ourselves. How we feel in our body affects not just our mind but who we feel ourselves to be – our ‘bodily sense of self’ or ‘body identity ’. That is why, when people begin to feel ill they might speak of ‘not feeling themselves’. This basic ‘dis-ease’ of ‘not feeling ourselves’ is both the essence and first sign of illness – being not only an altered state of consciousness (how we feel) but also an alteration of our bodily sense of self or body identity – of who we feel ourselves to be.

The Immune System and Body Identity

In the framework of biomedicine ‘body identity‘ is reduced to our genetic or biological identity and associated in particular with the immune system – which is seen as ‘defending’ our biological identity against threats and attacks from ‘foreign bodies’ in the form of pathogenic bacteria, viruses or mutant and cancerous cells, or any type of genetic material such as organ transplants that consist of ‘non-self’ cells (a term actually used in immunology).

Today more than ever, much fuss is made about ‘health’ being dependent on maintaining or restoring a strong ‘immune system’ or with strengthening the body’s immune ‘defences’, which is why countless food products and supplements are advertised that claim to do so. On the other hand even biomedicine acknowledges that most discomforting or painful symptoms of illness (such as a runny nose or swelling and painful joints ) arise from the activity of the body’s immune system. Indeed many illnesses are recognised as resulting from an immune system that is too strongly defensive and as a result is overactive – leading to so-called ‘autoimmune’ diseases such as arthritis in which the body’s immune ‘defences’ are used to attack its own cells. Alternatively, the body’s immune system may be at such a high alert and so overactive and ‘strong’ for long periods that it ultimately weakens or collapses. Its very strength and activity therefore may ultimately result in precisely the sort of weakness that makes the body susceptible to infection and other types of illness.

In contrast to biomedicine, Life Medicine understands the strength of our immune system – the degree of immunity of our bodies – as an embodiment of the degree of immunity of our self or identity. Thus a too rigid or strongly defended identity or sense of self – one completely ‘immune’ to natural and healthy processes of change and adaptation to life – may find biological expression through an over-defensive and over-active immune system, which then actively seeks out threats to our biological identity that would otherwise be ignored or are ignored by the immune systems of other people. An over-rigid or immune self – or one that experiences deep identity conflicts – would explain many so-called ‘auto-immune’ disorders. A more healthily and naturally ‘strong’ identity or sense of self on the other hand would also explain what biomedical immunology can’t explain – why some people ‘catch’ diseases which are supposed to be highly infectious whilst others don’t – even from spouses or children they live with or during widespread epidemics. Nor can biomedical immunology explain why most of the bacteria, viruses and even damaged, mutated and ‘cancerous’ cells that biological medicine regards as ‘causes’ of diseases are all in fact constantly present in most healthy bodies.

Biomedicine simply takes it for granted that ‘health’ is the protection of a fixed biological and genetic identity – one ‘immune’ from all change. The problem with this theory is that it prevents biomedicine from coming up with any explanation of why it is that the immune system, though it may launch attacks on transplanted cells and tumours, does not launch attacks on a no less alien or foreign body that can grow within the human body – namely the baby growing in a pregnant mother’s womb? And whilst biomedicine has effectively come to treat pregnancy and birth as something fraught with as many dangers as an illness, therefore requiring hospitalisation and the use of hi-tech medical equipment, the body itself clearly does not regard pregnancy as a disease or the baby as an alien or foreign body growing inside it – despite the differences in its DNA to that of the mother. Life Medicine, on the other hand, understands ‘health’ itself as a capacity to allow our body identity or sense of self to be altered and transformed in response to our life world and life experiences. That is why, instead of treating pregnancy as if it were a type of illness, Life Medicine understands illness itself as a type of pregnancy – the meaning and purpose of which is precisely to allow us to gestate and give birth to a new ‘bodily sense of self’ or ‘body identity’. A key aspect of health, not as a mere state but as an on-going life process is therefore the capacity to pass from a state of ‘not feeling ourselves’ to one of ‘feeling another self’ – and of learning to embody or ‘give birth’ to that self through new and different ways of relating to our lives and life world.

Sunday, 25 November 2018

Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection pt 37

Douglas on the financial control of "democracy":

“As no government can carry on for a month without money, it is not necessary to labour the point that the visible government of a country is obliged to take its orders and to shape its policy, and particularly its financial policy, in accordance with the dealers in this indispensable implement, so long as they hold a practical monopoly of it.”

C.H. Douglas, Social Credit

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''A decadent material life, a poor mental and cultural life and a reactionary political life—these can be said to be the main characteristics of capitalist society, and they show the anti-popular nature and corruption of modern imperialism.''

Kim Jong Il

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From Tucker Carlson's new book :

"The marriage of market capitalism to progressive social values may be the most destructive combination in American economic history. Someone needs to protect workers from the terrifying power of market forces, which tend to accelerate change to intolerable levels and crush the weak.

For generations, labor unions filled that role. That’s over. Left and right now agree that a corporation’s only real responsibility is to its shareholders. Corporations can openly mistreat their employees (or “contractors”), but for the price of installing transgender bathrooms they buy a pass. Shareholders win, workers lose. Bowing to the diversity agenda is a lot cheaper than raising wages."

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Friday, 23 November 2018

Round up 23:11:18: anti-imperialism, Brexit Betrayal, 100 years since the Great War Armistice, Unity on the Left, Join the forum

Time to ditch the Roman Ruling Class

The Socialist Motherland Party of the British Isles rejects Imperialism as inherently toxic to both the rulers and the ruled.  We have a yearning - 'hiraeth' - for freedom, which transcends the concepts of past, present and future. Our anti-imperialism includes a rejection of the imperialism of Rome which still ripples into the present with matters such as the months of the years.  We stand with our brothers and sisters in Italy as with our brothers and sisters everywhere in the class struggle - our opposition to the left-overs of Roman imperialism are part of the objective of doing away with the power of the ruling class of all periods (Windsor, Stuart, Tudor, Norman, Roman, all of them), not an attack on the decent working class people who have been categorised alongside the despots due to coincidence of geography.

With regards to the present 12 month system which was imposed by Rome, we would restore our traditional system of measuring time, using fortnights rather than weeks, and lunar months rather than the deification of Roman tyrants.  This round up comes at the time of the full moon, and the changing of one natural month into another, to emphasise our rejection of the imperially-ordered calendar we still live under .  Our old ways have been trampled upon, and restoring them will not be easy, but as revolutionaries, we do not limit ourselves into the pursuit of easy tinkering reformism.

100 years since the end of the 'great war' - 100 years of lies

On 11:11:18 at 11am, the hypocrites put on their poppies and spoke about remembering the working class men butchered in the First World War.  The liars clapped happily as the Rothschild 'president', Macron, libelled the dead, infamously stating that:

"Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is its betrayal," 

This drivel from the mouth of the bankers' puppet, was spoken at an event to mark the deaths of soldiers killed fighting for their nations.  Macron, like the treacherous Theresa May, is an enemy of the people he was elected by.

The Great War was referred to as 'the war to end all wars'.  The truth as we know all too well, was very different.  The Great War saw the greatest European blood-letting ever.  At no time before, or since, have so many people died due to the machinations of politicians.  Commenced as an exercise in population reduction, the Great war was contrived from the outset.  The politicians of every nation, took the opportunity of the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to launch a war of unprecedented horror onto European soil.  The Archduke had proposed the reorganisation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a federation of 16 equal states, with emphasis on the emancipation of the Slavic peoples.  For this courageous policy of decentralising power and replacing the two-headed regime with an Empire of 16 Flags, the Establishment had him murdered.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was a classic 'False Flag' operation, which allowed for the Austro-Hungarian elite to crush the spirit of freedom initiated by the Archduke.  In a now typical act of hypocrisy, the forces which stood to gain from the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary, declared war, under the lie that they were fighting for the freedom of Europe.  They were fighting for financial gain for the armaments industries, and for the crushing of the natural progress to freedom which the Archduke encouraged.

The Great War was a catastrophe for Europe.  The blood of a generation was spilt.  The War gave Turkey the opportunity to commit genocide against the Armenians; murdering 1.5 million European people.  This very real holocaust has been buried in history, which is an insult to the memory of the Armenians slaughtered by the soldiers of the Turkish Establishment.

In 1916, the British Prime Minister, Asquith, was ousted by the enemies of the British people, and replaced by the fanatical Zionist, Lloyd George.  The monster in London betrayed the men fighting in France, by diverting forces to Palestine, to seize that land for the incoming occupiers; this is in spite of opposition from the Jews in the UK, and from the Jews in Palestine who had reacted favourably to the possibility of being relocated to Uganda, and forever leaving the land of the Arabs.  An ardent opponent of the planned seizure of Palestinian, Lord Kitchener was murdered whilst travelling to Russia to bolster the war effort there.

In 1917, the forces of Austria-Hungary and Germany were winning the war.  The winning side proposed to end the war there and then, and return Europe to pre-war conditions.  Had this proposal been accepted, the borders of Europe would have returned to their traditional ones, and there would have been no crippling reparations to pay.  Rather than accept this noble and decent proposal, the London criminals used every means at their disposal to ensure that the war continued.  As a result, the death-toll increased phenomenally, leaving no family untouched by the loss of a loved one.  The reason for this refusal to do what was best for the British people, was an obsession with securing Palestine as a centre for global capitalism, using the mythology of the Zionist Jews as justification.  Interestingly, a lone voice of dissent in the London government came from the (Jewish) Minister, Montagu, who foresaw in the Palestinian campaign, the end of assimilation and the restoration of the tyranny of the fanatical racist supremacist zionist ruling class over the Jewish people.

At the end of the Great War, the London vipers promised to make the UK a 'land fit for heroes'.  The word of politicians in 1918 proved to be as worthy as those of the modern day vermin; the maimed survivors of the slaughter were abandoned once they were no longer useful.  The Armistice of 11.11.18 imposed horrendous conditions on the defeated European nations, including the dismemberment of their nations, and the transfer of entire swathes of territory to the rule of others who had no commonality of culture, language or tradition.  In addition, harsh reparations were imposed, such as would make the parasites of the modern IMF blush.  The London regime ensured that not only an entire generation of European men would be slaughtered, but that the seeds of an inevitable future conflict would be sown.  The policies of London condemned the people of Europe to economic deprivation, to rule by those hostile to our people, and to the loss of everything that we held dear.  The Great War should be called the Great Betrayal, for under the London Establishment, that is what is became.


The hypocrites in government and the 'royal' family have taken great care to appear solemn while laying wreaths and making speeches about sacrifice.  These people are of the same ilk as those who ruined our lands in 1918, again in 1945, and ever since.  They and their predecessors are the ones responsible for the creation of the criminal state of Israel; for the ceaseless wars of financial conquest which have been under way non-stop since 1948; for the end of national sovereignty and personal liberty; for the rise of individualism and ideological extremism; indeed for every woe besetting our troubled planet.

The EU brazenly claims responsibility for peace in our time

The EU has claimed that its existence has stopped wars in Europe!

It hasn't!

  • Turkish invasion of Greece (Cyprus)
  • EU-sponsored 'revolution' in Ukraine and ongoing war against the Russian part in the east
  • Destruction of Yugoslavia, including farce of Bosnia with near-identical flag to EU
  • Imposition of criminal state of Kosovo by EU on Serbian land

The foul Macron has spouted the most obscene drivel that Nationalism is Treason to Patriotism - libelling the war dead of France

The EU is gearing up to install an EU military to police Europe and fight dissenters to the EU project (Theresa/Treason May is backing it, so a so-called free UK will be part of the EU Occupation Army

The UK has made the army into a laughing stock.  No-one wants to join a military which acts as a nanny to 'refugees' (surplus labour for the capitalist mill, who have been invited to lower wages, crash working conditions and globalise the population so that the UK ceases to exist in any real terms); which bombs civilians for corporate profits (Syria, Iraq, Libya etc); which does nothing to protect our borders.  The solution from the enemies in Westminster?  To get foreigners to join and make it a truly global army!

Treachery upon treachery.

SMPBI solution is to quit NATO, quit the UN, quit any EU army, and bring our soldiers home. Bring in conscription so every able-bodied man is trained to fight for his country, and every able-bodied woman equally trained (but separately) and of course no trans-reality types allowed anywhere near it, (we'll stop that nonsense straight away). Make the British Army something for all of us to be proud of, and for all of us who are able, to be a part of.  Disabled people can have a role, but not a combat one - we don't do the political correctness rubbish, and certainly won't endanger anyone by putting people into unsuitable roles.


The EU independence betrayal

The despicable Theresa May has boasted that she has a 'deal' for the UK which will make the EU, banks, finance sector and big business happy!  The 17.4 million mostly working class voters who brought about the historic freedom victory, are being stabbed in the back - although in such a way that we are being insulted at the same time.

We voted to regain our fishing grounds - these have been handed over as part of the appeasement deal.

We voted to stop the free movement of goods and surplus labour, so that we could manufacture our own goods, and ensure our own workers were protected from mass unemployment, job insecurity and reduced working conditions.  There was nothing racist about any of this.  The UK regime has made a 'deal' which will make it more difficult on paper for people from the EU to come here, but effectively open the borders to the entire world, permanently destroying any defences against global capitalist exploitation which we of the working class have fought so hard to achieve.  Joining the UN Global Compact for Migration, further erodes any vestiges of sovereignty, further mocking the democratic will of the people, who would never accept this globalising despotism.

May has stated a desire to sign the UK up to the EU Army, further ensnaring us in the globalist trap. This is on top of opening up the British Army to the entire world, to ensure beat us into submission for resisting the despotism in Whitehall.

The CPB-ML statement on the Brexit Betrayal (reposted in full, with 100% agreement)

The Cabinet’s surrender to the European Union has been a betrayal in slow motion. Over the months before and since the infamous Chequers statement the white flag has been dusted down, waved about and replaced with an even larger square of white.

This is a betrayal unprecedented in British history: a government of Britain complicit in an agreement that grants a veto over the country’s future to a third party. Even Irish TV was told before the British people.

Parliament must vote to reject it. And this traitor Cabinet must be ejected and be replaced by one willing to obey the people’s instruction to leave the EU.

The forces for Leave must now deal with the reality of utter, unvarnished betrayal, long suspected but now detailed in more than 500 pages. Too many people thought that a majority in the referendum would be enough. That there was no need to take to the streets, that the job was effectively done.

Now everyone must realise that if we want to leave the EU, we are going to have to work at it, in whatever way we can.

Colony

The deal agreed by May’s Cabinet is not what 17.4 million people voted for when they ticked the box for Leave. Nor is this proposal to relegate Britain to a colony of the EU – subject to its laws but without even a voice in the making of them – what 16 million thought they were voting for when they voted to Remain.

A Cabinet of Remainers, led by one, should never have been trusted to honour the result. “Brexit means Brexit,” Theresa May said when she became leader of the Conservative Party. It is now apparent that for her Brexit means Remain. What she has delivered is not a failure of negotiation: it is the end point of a devious, dishonest strategy designed to keep Britain in the customs union and single market.

EU’s weakness

One of the great ironies about the Cabinet’s cowardly capitulation, their lack of confidence in the country they claim to lead, is that the real weakness is on the EU’s side. One day before their meeting, Italy openly defied the Commission over its budget. One day after, Germany announced its economy had shrunk over the previous quarter.

The deal that the EU has always wanted is a deal that seals us back into the EU, staying in the EU with the certainty of being a subservient state, paying the full amount they want, with no rebate, no say, no control, no chance of ever having a choice to leave in the future.

This deal would give us even less control, even less sovereignty than we had before. And this is what May wants us to accept.

Despite all the panic-mongering, no deal is the only viable option. And the sooner the better. If May’s humiliating surrender is the deal on offer, Britain should simply walk away and start to make our own decisions about the future for our country.

Rare Unity across the pro-freedom, anti-EU parties

SMPBI endorses the CPB-ML, CPGB-ML and SLP responses to the great betrayal by the bourgeois imperialist forces in Westminster of all parties:
https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2018/11/09/news/brexit-or-bust-down-with-the-imperialist-eu-bloc/
http://www.cpbml.org.uk/news/what-next-after-brexit-betrayal
http://www.socialist-labour-party.org.uk/Scargill%20Customs%20Union.pdf

The EU is a capitalist entity which exists to further the aims of big business, and for all its talk of "workers' rights", is an enemy to the working class.  The UK voted to leave, and leave we must.  This is an issue above party politics, and so we stand shoulder to shoulder with other organisations who cherish freedom.

The EU is an empire in the making.  Just like the Roman one before it, we want no part of it, and demand the UK leave it immediately, with the aim to help those trapped inside to fight for its total collapse.

Join the Forum

In the interest of building unity, the new forum has been opened up so anyone can join.  The forum will be policed to keep trouble-makers (so-called trolls) out.  The forum is new, so now is a good time to get on board and build it from within.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/smpbiforum/index.php

Wednesday, 21 November 2018

Wilberg on Wednesday - The Illness Is The Cure pt 19/46



Illness as an Awareness

Every feeling, symptom, mental or physical state, together with our overall sense of self or ‘self-state’ is not just something we are aware of. Its meaning lies in the fact that it is itself an awareness of something. Thus a muscular tension, for example in the form of a tension headache, though we only be aware of it as a bodily tension, may itself embody an awareness of a particular tension in our lives, relationships or place of work.

Just as a person whose family has been made homeless or wiped out in a war has good reasons for feeling ‘sick’ or ‘depressed’, so do all feelings and symptoms have good reasons. They are not just programmed or mechanical physiological reactions to or ‘effects’ of external or internal ‘causes’. Simply to label feelings as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, to describe ourselves as ‘well’ or ‘unwell’, or to call the way we feel as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, is to deny the inherent meaning of all feelings – as an awareness of something beyond themselves. Symptoms of illness, like dream symbols, are a form of condensed awareness. Their inherently positive value and meaning lies in helping us to become more directly aware of what it is that they themselves are a condensed or embodied awareness of. Thus digestive problems are a condensed embodied awareness of an aspect of our lives or lived experience of the world we find difficult to ‘stomach’ or ‘digest’.

Even though illness is often or mainly experienced through localised bodily symptoms (including ‘mental’ states such as a sense of confusion localised in our heads), every such symptom is also and always accompanied by a state of consciousness or ‘mood’ that pervades our entire body and in this way also affects our entire bodily sense of self. This bodily sense of self or ‘self-state’ is itself an undifferentiated awareness of what may be many different aspects of our overall life world that are difficult or uncomfortable, distressing or disturbing for us – thus giving rise to a general sense of ‘dis-ease ’. That is why, in order to find meaning in the overall bodily sense of ‘unwellness’ or ‘dis-ease’ that accompanies a specific illness, it is necessary first to experience it as a self-state. This means giving awareness to how any state of discomfort or dis-ease, however localised, imparts a specific overall tone, texture and colour to our subjectively felt body or ‘lived body‘ as a whole – in this way lending also a specific tone and colour to our bodily sense of self or ‘body identity‘ and to our experienced or lived world as a whole.

To pass from an experience of illness as ‘not feeling ourselves’ to one of ‘feeling another self’ – a distinct self or ‘self-state’ – means experiencing this distinct bodily sense of self. The ‘other self’ we experience through illness however is, by definition, an experienced self – a self we are aware of. Our self as a whole or ‘soul’ on the other hand, is not essentially any experienced self, symptom, state of consciousness or ‘self-state’, but rather the very awareness of experiencing it. To avoid becoming unconsciously identified with the self-states and symptoms of dis-ease, it is necessary to identify with that ‘whole self’ which is nothing but this awareness – the experiencing self rather than any experienced self. Only within the awareness that is this self – our ‘awareness self’ – can we in turn feel and affirm every particular feeling and self we experience or are aware of. We are as much aware of our self as a whole – our soul – as we are aware of our body as a whole. Yet the ‘body’ of our whole self or soul – our awareness self – is not just our physical body but our entire life world. For it is an awareness that embraces everything and ‘every-body’ in our world, from our immediate present reality and relationships to our past and future – and ultimately the entire universe.

The second step in healing ourselves through awareness is therefore to experience each and every localised bodily sensation or symptom, no matter how subtle, as an awareness of some specific aspect of our larger body – of our life world. Thus by giving more awareness to a localised muscular tension we can experience it as an awareness of a specific tension in our life world. Through a meditational process of giving awareness to each and every localised bodily feeling or sensation of dis-ease – no matter how subtle, and by making sure we attend to each and every region of our body in the process – we can come to experience each of these feelings and sensations as an awareness of some aspect of our larger body or life world. Through this process we are literally putting ourselves together – ‘re-membering’ and making whole that larger body that is our life world as a whole. By simply granting awareness to each region of our bodies and each sensation or feeling of dis-ease or discomfort we experience within it, our overall sense of dis-ease and overall ‘self-state’ will automatically begin to alter. For we will feel ever-more pervaded, lightened and healed by that very self which is the awareness we grant to our overall self-state – our body, self and our life world as a whole.

Case Example 2

Two Ways of Responding to Symptoms


1. A personal secretary finds herself stuck in a job with a bullying and abusive boss. Fearing to express her feelings of irritation, anger and humiliation ‘face to face’ and ‘face up to’ her boss, feeling vulnerable in the face of the unpredictable rage this might unleash in her boss, and afraid with good reason that it might be ‘rash’ to risk her job by doing so, she keeps ‘a straight face’ in the face of all the bullying. Over time her feelings come to the surface in her body itself – in the form of an ‘irritating’ and ‘angry’ red skin rash. Lacking a way to ‘face up to’ her boss, let alone ‘whack him one’ – even though she is itching to do so – the rash appears on her face, arms and hands. Plagued by itching, she scratches and irritates her own skin until it blisters and bleeds – an activity that provides, unaware to herself, some satisfaction in releasing her ‘bad blood’ towards her boss. But her feelings of embarrassment and shame about not being able to face up to her boss become displaced by shame and embarrassment about the rash itself. So she goes to her doctor. Not even thinking that asking her questions about her life world might have any diagnostic significance, the doctor is therefore completely blind to the metaphorical meaning of her ‘angry rash’. Adopting a conventional medical approach, the doctor’s sole interest is in diagnosing the rash as some form of skin disorder and treating it – and prescribes a cortisone cream. The problem is that she then becomes dependent on the cream, which far from helping her to become tougher and more ‘thick-skinned’ emotionally, has the side-effect of thinning her actual skin surface itself, making it more vulnerable to embarrassing sores and bleeding. Eventually she feels forced to either lash out at her boss and risk being fired or else to leave her job voluntarily and seek another boss.

2. The same secretary allows herself to fully feel the emotions of anger, vulnerability, shame and humiliation she experiences. This means allowing herself to feel them fully in her body as a whole, neither repressing them nor being provoked to rashly reacting from them. She allows herself to be angry rather than ‘getting angry’. She also reminds herself that the pure awareness of an emotion, however intense, is not itself an emotion or impulse but something innately emotion- and impulse-free. Letting herself feel and be angry makes her feel less vulnerable to her boss’s bullying. Instead the anger transforms itself into an awareness of the bullying that allows her to see it for what it really is – as the expression of a deep insecurity and vulnerability in her boss himself. At the same time, by bearing her anger and feeling it fully in her body, it transforms into a sense of a different self within her, a self strong enough to face up to her boss – or to anyone – in a calm, non-hostile but nevertheless firm and resolute way. By bodying this new self through her body language and tone of voice she feels ever less vulnerable to her boss and instead becomes aware of the vulnerability behind his bullying. Sensing this, he finds it strangely more difficult to be as bullying towards her as before. For now it is he who is aware of feeling an insecure, vulnerable self behind his anger. Initially fearing this self, he first intensifies his abusive bullying, only to find it met by a calm, resolute and firmly toned response from the secretary. Not being able to provoke her into ‘getting angry’ the secretary is not fired. And being now capable of bodying her anger through a new inner bearing she no longer needs to ‘somatise’ it through an angry red facial rash, or fear being fired.

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