Quotes – Jerry Rubin – The other Radical Sixties Revolutionary!

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Jerry was the Yippie revolutionary who loved attention, used theatre and took on the whole capitalist war-machine that is still gobbling up the planet – then he sold out and opted in!
It was fun while it lasted and it pointed out some truths about the greed and stupidity that is running this planet!
Don’t trust anyone over thirty.
That’s a worry! I’m over thirty! But I never did trust myself too much!
Most men act so tough and strong on the outside because on the inside, we are scared, weak, and fragile. Men, not women, are the weaker sex.
That’s why men buy guns, play with fast cars and motorbikes and have to show off so much!
By the end, everybody had a label — pig, liberal, radical, revolutionary … If you had everything but a gun, you were a radical but not a revolutionary.
We love to put people in pigeon-holes!
Politics is how you live your life, not whom you vote for.
Exactly!! Your life is a statement of your philosophy! Be positive and change the world.
We create revolution by living it.
My life is a revolution.
I would be copping out if I stayed in the myth of the ’60s.
But the sixties gave me the fuel!

Quotes – Abbie Hoffman – A sixties Revolutionary

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Abbie was quite a character. Back in the sixties revolution the Yippies set a tone of theatre, lunacy and revolution.
We thought we were establishing a new attitude and rejecting the warmongering, profit-driven society and replacing it with something kinder, more caring and compassionate – based on sharing and camaraderie. It was an ideal that did not last but there were some good friends made and good times. It was a time of peace, laughter, fun, thought, discovery and madness. Quite an adventure. I loved it.
The music was great, the friends brilliant and optimism ruled. What more could you want?
Another sixties would be a great idea but I fear the world has become far too cynical.
Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.
Adventure and change – a wish for something better!
You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.
How true in this age of greed, selfishness and hatred.
Free speech means the right to shout ‘theatre’ in a crowded fire.
I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.
Avoid all needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.
I can think of a few more! (But I’m not advocating shooting anyone!)
Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.
There is something evil about the greed and vandalism of the global corporations who would sell the future for a quick buck – and are!
The ’60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great.
The only way to support a revolution is to make your own.
How true!! Let’s all make our own revolutions!

Russell Brand – Revolution – A few things that struck me.

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Photo credit: David Gilbert.

I am not a fan of Russell Brand. I find him a bit of a twat. But I was intrigued enough by what he was saying about the establishment and the need for revolution that I bought his book.

It is very readable and interesting (though good old Russ can get on your nerves a bit).

these are some of the things I picked out when I was reading a section today. They really make you think.

In the USA – 95% of all the gains in income since the recession has gone to the top 0.01%. I bet that’s the same in Britain. The top are doing very nicely out of austerity. They’ve never had it so good.

Makes a bit of a mockery of Cameron’s – ‘We’re all in it together’, doesn’t it?

In the USA the 400 richest people have as much wealth as 185,000,000 of their fellow countypeople (185 million) – 185 million make up 60% of the American population.

I don’t know about you but I find that obscene. That is capitalistic greed verging on madness.

 

Rock Music – Rock rebellion? Where is it?

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537 Essential Rock Albums cover IMG_0727Opher's World tributes cover

I have repeatedly said that I find most of what is going on in the Rock scene bland and overproduced. It doesn’t say anything, stand for anything or inspire anything.

Rock Music was rebellion. Now it has become establishment. The rebellion has been consumed and regurgitated. It’s become a spectacle. Rock musicians appear on Test Match Special. They are there at the Queen’s bash and Olympic Games. They are recognised with OBEs and Knighthoods. They’ll be getting Victoria Crosses soon!

There were, in my book, three main periods of Rock rebellion.

The 1950s was a visceral rebellion where sex was let loose and threatened to shake the stolid conformity of society like a fifty on the Richter scale. The establishment were shocked into reflex prohibition.

The 1960s exploded with the Beatles. They blew strictures imposed by the Payola scandal out of the water and heralded the greatest period of youth rebellion ever seen. The values of society were challenged and found wanting. This was a philosophical rebellion combined with that basic sexuality and once again the establishment were shaken. There were marches, sit-ins, and anti-establishment rhetoric. In France the students and workers had barricades in the streets. There was talk of revolution.

The establishment were canny. They absorbed the protest, handed out their awards, and assimilated it into the commercial enterprise. The rebellious stars of the sixties Underground, who sang of street-fighting, were rubbing shoulders with the hoi-polloi.

In the later seventies it was the turn of the snarling nihilistic Punks. They weren’t likely to be lauded or to play at any banquets. Sid Vicious was never offered an OBE for contributions to the British economy. They were seen as vulgar, crude and offensive and that’s just how they wanted it. Their attitude to the establishment was to annoy them.

So where’s the next rebellion coming from? Is Rock Music dead? Has it been successfully incorporated into the establishment and castrated?

Who’s saying anything?

 

Tracy Chapman – Talkin’ Bout a Revolution – Lyrics about the underclass rising up and forcefully taking what is rightfully theirs.

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Tracy_Chapman

This song could have been written about austerity and the unfairness of how it works. The rich get richer and the poor get squashed. Public services get smashed and the rich use their private services to gain even more advantage.

Austerity favours the establishment.

When people are abused so much, when inequality reaches a peak, they spontaneously rise up and smash the system. We nearly saw it with the riots of a few years back.

The Tories and the bankers run a pretty shady business of looking after their rich buddies and toffs. Austerity was a great excuse.

However, this song was about the racial divide in America which has created an underclass of black Americans.

They are beginning to assert themselves but they have a long way to go.

We are all one species. Nobody should have any greater right than anybody else!

A revolution will happen one way or another. I hope for slow gradual change towards greater fairness. Violence is always a loser for everyone!

If austerity and the racial divide continues , if the global poverty levels are allowed to go on, there will be a reckoning

We need to listen to the whispers.

“Talkin’ Bout A Revolution”

Don’t you know
They’re talkin’ bout a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
Don’t you know
They’re talkin’ about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper

While they’re standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what’s theirs

Don’t you know
You better run, run, run…
Oh I said you better Run, run, run…
Finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin’ bout a revolution

Freedom, justice, equality, liberty, environmentalism and a better world – That’s why I write books and write my blog!

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Fun darwin-new-revolution fun revolut

As an educator, writer, dissident, free-thinker and outspoken critic I have always sought to build a better world.

I am an unashamed idealist.

I do not write books for profit. I write books purely because I believe in what I am saying and want to make a difference. I try to do that as eloquently and entertainingly as I can. I want people to enjoy and love my books as much as I do. I do not want to produce heavy tomes of despair.

My books reflect my passions. They are light and fun but weighty on desire.

I like laughter, love and fulfilment.

I want to build a new zeitgeist that kicks selfishness, greed, cruelty and intolerance into the dust-bin where they belong!

Long live freedom, respect, compassion and care!!freedom