Posts elsewhere, Carnival, Trombone playing

[infrogmation]

Just posted a buncha stuff over in the antiwar community. (Much mirrored in the moderated nonviolent community-- though since the obnoxious flame-bait troll with multiple accounts was finally booted out of "antiwar", discussion seems to be flowing back to there.) Also posted on the interesting infojunkies community.

It's Carnival time again in New Orleans. Went to a good costume & kingcake party. First parade (Krewe du Vieux Carre) will be the 19th.

I am looking around at for pay sites to move & expand my Mardi Gras webpages to. I hope to have something new up within the next few weeks.

My trombone playing has undergone a surprising rapid improvement this month. For years I've thought of myself as a player of no particular ability, whose playing would get perhaps a little better with increased practice, but not a whole lot. Somehow I experienced a sudden jump in ability, almost all at once being able to easily do a number of things I couldn't before. Has anyone had a similar experience?

Comments

The Reality of War

[ex-karamazov744.livejournal.com]

Whilst the words of MLK Jr. sound pleasant, the reality is that he had little if anything to do with the bringing forth of civil rights legislation. We won civil rights legislation in the United States because the blacks were burning down inner cities, not because a preacher was singing "We shall overcome." We saved the Liberal-Democracy in Western Europe because men fought and died across the continent. Neville Chamberline was a peaceful man, but peace has never curbed tyranny. Regimes rise by either words or swords, but fall by both together only. Imagine if pacifists had been in power when Hitler's armies marched across Europe. Pacifism is great in a liberal-idealist setting, but liberal-idealism is not the reality of the world.

It is time that we come to view peace as more than a lack of war. We must view peace as a lack of injustice and unfairness. And if we view peace as such, then in the words of Haile Selassie, all I see is war.

Re: The Reality of War

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

"We won civil rights legislation in the United States because the blacks were burning down inner cities, not because a preacher was singing "We shall overcome.""

Uh, no. I disagree. And IMO it's a massive mischaracterization of the civil-rights movement to call it "a preacher singing". It was a massive well co-ordinated and media-savvy program of protest, public education, and civil-disobedience.

" Imagine if pacifists had been in power when Hitler's armies marched across Europe. "

If pacifists had been "in power" Hitler wouldn't have had any army, would he?
Or are you trying to present some purely hypothetical arguement where everyone in country A is a pacifist and nobody in country B is?

"Pacifism is great in a liberal-idealist setting, but liberal-idealism is not the reality of the world. "

Again, Pacifisim does not equal being passive, nor aquiessing to evil.

Re: The Reality of War

[ex-karamazov744.livejournal.com]

The world will never be entirely pacifist. If it were, great, but it won't be. And it's because of the fact that there have always been tyranical and charismatic leaders that when the tryany of evil begins to spread, it must be fought with a militaristic force of justice. The one sin worse than war is the sin of oppression.