A Space-hijacker answer

"So, the question is, what can we plan and later build, and keep building upon, to shed ourselves of these bee skins?" Well, the correct answer is most certainly tanks, blue-colored, happy-hippies tanks with pirate flags on top. Although it didn't go all that smooth after all...

PS: It was definitely either Stalin or Zizek who asked: "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" It was the Space Hijackers who turned the question back on his feet: Bees, how many divisions have we got?

Bee-gin the Revolution?

"what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax." - Marx, Capital I, p284

I couldn't help but notice this creature at Climate Camp during the G20 protest this week. It is unlikely that this architect of change was much bothered about Marx's interest in the difference between the species-being and the bee but the idea of it amused me enough.

The protest did get me thinking though, and I wonder if that little bee symbolises the fact that even at that protest, the swarms of angry anarchists and drum-beating hippes were still yet reduced to the status of bee.

The plans were made for them, as every building was boarded up and the glass-walled RBS shimmering in the sunshine was beckoning for a hit. They were caught like sardines and thrown into the Bank of England keep-net. I can't help but sort of agree conspiracy theorists on this one...a little bit.

It seems to me that although we have the ability to plan and mobilise, we're still beaten up for obstructing the streets. We can't be violent because we are disciplined and can't beat the law, and we can't be peaceful because the foundation of revolution is in violence. Ultimately, it appears as though we are to remain perpetually cordoned off in the bank of England, dressed like bees, constructing our cells in wax with neither a plan nor a purpose.

So, the question is, what can we plan and later build, and keep building upon, to shed ourselves of these bee skins? I can't help but think one-off street parties aren't quite the answer; they make some noise, and that noise needs to be made but, what now?

Worker Bees

I thought this might be of interest to some, given Marx's bee-ing fun.

It was originally posted by N Pepperell 29/01/2009 on
http://www.roughtheory.org/content/worker-bees/

"I have to admit, I’ve never particularly thought about the industrial organisation of crop pollination, until I read this column from the New York Times discussing possible responses to Colony Collapse Disorder - the mysterious plague that causes adult bees to desert their hives, leaving honey and larvae behind. I found this image particularly striking":

…it is important to add that, here in the United States, the majority of our crops are pollinated not by wild bees, or even by honeybees like mine, which live in one location throughout the year, but by a vast mobile fleet of honeybees-for-rent.

From the almond trees of California to the blueberry bushes of Maine, hundreds of thousands of domestic honeybee hives travel the interstate highways on tractor-trailers. The trucks pull into a field or orchard just in time for the bloom; the hives are unloaded; and the bees are released. Then, when the work of pollination is done, the bees are loaded up, and the trucks pull out, heading for the next crop due to bloom.