love and rage

Photo

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:19:29 -0400

(801): I'm a hopeless romantic that likes rough sex. Judge me

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:42:56 -0400

(801): I'm a hopeless romantic that likes rough sex. Judge me

alexanderraban: sirmitchell: rubthatnub: McRib is Back by...

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:20:41 -0400

sirmitchell:

rubthatnub:

McRib is Back by Jonathan Devis

His teacher told him to take art more seriously… and here is his rebuttal on his final project.

Brilliance. Don’t ever let an art teacher tell you what you need to do to be an “artist”. That’s up to you. This kid fucking rules.

This does everything right

Photo

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:15:17 -0400

katara: This might be my favorite tweet of all time

Sun, 12 May 2013 02:14:09 -0400

katara:

This might be my favorite tweet of all time

"The feminist movement is generally periodized into the so-called first, second and third waves of..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 15:50:53 -0400

“

The feminist movement is generally periodized into the so-called first, second and third waves of feminism. In the United States, the first wave is characterized by the suffragette movement; the second wave is characterized by the formation of the National Organization for Women, abortion rights politics, and the fight for the Equal Rights Amendments. Suddenly, during the third wave of feminism, women of colour make an appearance to transform feminism into a multicultural movement.

This periodization situates white middle-class women as the central historical agents to which women of colour attach themselves. However, if we were to recognize the agency of indigenous women in an account of feminist history, we might begin with 1492 when Native women collectively resisted colonization. This would allow us to see that there are multiple feminist histories emerging from multiple communities of colour which intersect at points and diverge in others. This would not negate the contributions made by white feminists, but would de-center them from our historicizing and analysis.

Indigenous feminism thus centers anti-colonial practice within its organizing. This is critical today when you have mainstream feminist groups supporting, for example, the US bombing of Afghanistan with the claim that this bombing will free women from the Taliban (apparently bombing women somehow liberates them).

”

- Indigenous Feminism Without Apology - Andrea Smith (via ellesugars)

Rappers who publicly support gay marriage

Sat, 11 May 2013 15:26:55 -0400

ibetmittromney:

Kanye West

Jay-Z

Nicki Minaj

50 Cent

Lil B

A$AP Rocky

Fat Joe

Queen Latifah

Please stop fucking acting like Macklemore is this special snowflake for being a rapper who supports gay marriage. I know yall love to pretend that black people are homophobes, so obviously the music we make must be homophobic, but that is bullshit and Wacklemore is not the first rapper to publicly support gay marriage.

"The future was going to be like a suburb of Dusseldorf, that is, one of those ultra-modern suburbs..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 11:58:15 -0400

“

The future was going to be like a suburb of Dusseldorf, that is, one of those ultra-modern suburbs with the BMW and the boat in every drive, and the ideal sort of middle-management house and garden…Very strange and chilling, superﬁcially what everybody is aspiring to all over the world: the suburbs of Nairobi or Kyoto or probably Bangkok now.

At this time, the Baader-Meinho fyou know, that armed gang that came out very left politically, robbed banks, killed some American servicemen in a raid, and all the restwas at its height. Nobody could understand these people. They were all sort of well-to-do, middle-class, well-educated kids from, comparatively speaking, rich families, who took to all this ‘absurd violence’. Nobody could understand them. But suddenly I realised, ‘My God, of course I can understand them.’ If you’re brought up in one of these suburbs around a German city, where nothing is ever allowed out of place, where because they were so terriﬁed by the experiences of World War II and the Nazi epoch, they’d gone to any length to make certain that everybody is happy…If you have a world like that, without any kind of real freedom of the spirit, the only freedom to be found is in madness. I mean, in a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom!

That’s what’s coming. That’s why the suburbs interest me because you see that coming. Where one’s almost got to get up in the morning and make a resolution to perform some sort of deviant or antisocial act, some perverse act, even if it’s just sort of kicking the dog, in order to establish one’s own freedom.

”

- -JG Ballard, 1981 (via todgeweiht)

Along with Haneke and Houellebec I think Ballard gets the current conditions

(via actuallyexistingbarbarism)

"As Americans, we have this naïve assumption that people all over the world are struggling and way..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 22:29:06 -0400

“As Americans, we have this naïve assumption that people all over the world are struggling and way behind us. They’re not. Sweden and South Korea have more advanced high speed internet networks. Japan has the most advanced trains and transportation systems. Norwegians make more money. The biggest and most advanced plane in the world is flown out of Singapore. The tallest buildings in the world are now in Dubai and Shanghai. Meanwhile, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world.”

- 10 Things Most Americans Don’t Know About America http://bananenplanet.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/10-things-most-americans-dont-know-about-america/ (via curlycherie)

There are two areas where the USA is way out in front of the rest of the world: war and prison. The technology of killing is the main investment of US national energy, and of course the semi-public semi-private incarceration economy is flourishing while schools and roads crumble. In many other quality-of-life terms — housing, healthcare, public transportation, public access to technology, mental health support, support for people with disabilities, childcare, primary education, maternity support, social safety net — I think a lot of US Americans personally know that things are not exactly rosy but see no options for fixing it.

(via zuky)

swatoverlaps: Greek Life Referendum posters in Alice Paul Photo...

Tue, 07 May 2013 22:26:00 -0400

swatoverlaps:

Greek Life Referendum posters in Alice Paul

Photo by Holly Smith

“What Swarthmore Really Stands For” or, Fuck Your Constructive Dialogue

Tue, 07 May 2013 22:24:22 -0400

swatoverlaps:

By Kate Aronoff

This piece was drafted somewhere around mid-April, and the references within it to various campus controversies reflect that.

New York Times Columnist and Princeton graduate Ross Douthat wrote recently of “the importance, in the modern meritocratic culture, of the unacknowledged mechanisms that preserve privilege, reward the inside game, and ensure that the advantages enjoyed in one generation can be passed safely onward to the next.” As much as generous financial aid, a relatively racially diverse student body and a prevailing myth of equality might try to convince the campus community that Swarthmore is a classless and colorblind utopia, we cannot escape the fact that the college was originally set up in direct service of a white, upper class elite. Swarthmore, in this sense, is not so far removed from what we would like to think of as our more problematic and uncritical cousins: the Ivy League.

Unlike Douthat’s Princeton, Swarthmore—with the exception of an ostracized few conservatives—is a campus of liberals. Even conservatives here might consider themselves classical liberals in the intellectual tradition of Edmund Burke and Adam Smith rather than Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. Liberalism at Swarthmore is as much form as content: it is the ability to compose oneself in the debate ring, a cool command of facts and the belief that if we argue well enough, things will get better. Reacting to the Greek life and commencement speaker controversies, liberals and conservatives have found themselves suddenly united, deploying identical arguments in defense of tolerant civil discourse and either administrative decision or inaction. In fact, the two sides have become almost indistinguishable, the details of their difference rendered irrelevant behind a re-emergent mainstream. In the wake of election season, Romney and Obama supporters alike have joined forces against an even more ill-defined radical strain on-campus. That is, those who break the liberal script.

To disavow either Zoellick or Greek life is to also disavow the self-perpetuating nature of elitism and Swarthmore’s role in that process. To be radical is to disavow both. Even as fraternities, sororities and Zoellick represent the most blush-worthy tenants of Swarthmore’s legacy, indicting them remains more threatening to the “average Swattie” than questioning their alignment to the college’s stated values. Both fall comfortably in line, however, with Swarthmore’s actual values; namely, the proliferation of well-educated elites into the highest realms of government, industry and education. In times of crisis not unlike the last few weeks, elites of all ideological stripes tend to drift towards the same side, or, more accurately, against a more radical one. Such was the case in early Cold War McCarthyism, when Black radicalism in the US and liberation movements in soon-to-be post-colonial states seriously threatened white power structures, and white liberals rushed to the defense of their own sanitized, stand-alone visions of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Even this could only happen when the mass movements they tried to pretend didn’t exist made de jure racism unfashionable among the elite, forcing white liberals to support the path of least resistance to the dominant order.

As they have before, reactionary forces continue to come to the defense of civilized debate, what has in recent days been portrayed as “constructive dialogue.” They argue that hyperbole and emotion, as opposed to facts and reason, move our community farther away from a speedy resolution of conflict. Conflict itself, of course, is fundamentally uncomfortable for those whom more traditional avenues of change have benefited. At Swarthmore, those avenues are “open and robust dialogue”, not structural change or the breaking of convention. Constructive dialogue as social change is a much easier strategy for people whose contribution to those discussions—personal, professional, academic and otherwise—are most often validated in forums of debate privileged within elite institutions.

Underlying this call for reasoned discussion has been a re-assertion of rights for certain groups within a broadly defined campus community who already have them. Liberals leap to the defense of sectorsas specific as Robert Zoellick, and broaden out to include frat brothers and students hoping to pursue careers in the international relations, up to and including men writ large and students seeking a “mainstream” party culture at Swarthmore. When the terms of the debate shift, so to do those most likely to come out on top. Where these groups enjoy the benefit of society’s doubt, radical fringes within Swarthmore are questioning the basis of that assumption and provoking a reaction common to crises of the elites: witch hunts premised on their opponents’ irrationality and asking for too much too fast.

In a piece dedicated to his students at Brandeis in 1968, Herbert Marcuse writes that, “Tolerance cannot be indiscriminate with respect to the contents of expression, neither in word nor in deed: it cannot protect false words and wrong deeds which demonstrate that they contradict and counteract the possibilities of liberation.” To ask for tolerance is to assume equal circumstances, not to demand the destruction of the inequality and elitism that keeps “tolerance” as we know it so disingenuous. We are all Swarthmore students, but we are not all the same, and—good liberals as we may be—not all of us are interested in the project of liberation. Free speech cannot exist where freedom, or even the desire for freedom, does not exist. Tolerance at Swarthmore can only be reactionary, a shield to hide behind when the terms of debate become too threatening.

Calls to tolerate our classmates going on to work for Goldman Sachs and other big banks, those members of our community who will go on to make six figures engineering wars and free trade agreements truly are calls in service to Swarthmore and its liberal values. Unlike Aristotle, quoted by President Chopp in a now-infamous email, not all of us enjoy the privilege of “[navigating] all of the many complexities of life with grace and fidelity.” Grace, by President Chopp’s definition, would mean supporting survivor and rapist equally, supporting the oppressor as we do the oppressed. While this may be what Swarthmore stands for, Swarthmore as we know it stands on the wrong side of history without its most socially responsible members guiding paths forward; radically, defiantly against rapist in support of survivor, against oppressor in support of oppressed, against the liberal project in support of liberation.

zenpencils: SOPHIE SCHOLL ‘The fire within’

Sun, 05 May 2013 15:14:24 -0400

zenpencils:

SOPHIE SCHOLL ‘The fire within’

"“Don’t you know that slavery was outlawed?” “No,” the guard said, “you’re wrong. Slavery was..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:36:30 -0400

“

“Don’t you know that slavery was outlawed?”
“No,” the guard said, “you’re wrong. Slavery was outlawed with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons.”
I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution says:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so many Black people can’t find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know how. Once you’re in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don’t want to work, they beat you up and throw you in a hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions… Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren’t planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third World people.

”

- Assata (via michellehuxtable)

I tell my students this every single semester.

(via notesofanativesister)

FBI’s most wanted for terrorism, everyone.

(via so-treu)

Photo

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:57:32 -0400

brainstatic: nudityandnerdery: Remember that time Gandalf...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:14:41 -0400

brainstatic:

nudityandnerdery:

Remember that time Gandalf convinced the whole party to flee so that he could take out the Balrog and not have to share any of the XP? Shows up the next session with fancy new robes and everything. What a jerk.

Best literary analysis ever.

Photo

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:09:09 -0400

"In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country’s..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 22:01:00 -0400

“In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country’s interpretation of the Constitution will ‘have to change’ to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks. ‘The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,’ Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. ‘But we live in a complex word where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.’”

- Bloomberg Says Interpretation of Constitution Will ‘Have to Change’ After Boston Bombing

Here we go.

A reminder:

Most immediately, this incident will greatly strengthen the military-security apparat in the United States and Russia, helping further demonize Muslims in general for the American apparatchiks and Chechens in particular for the Russians — especially all those opposed to the brutal rule of the Kremlin and its satrap in Chechnya. But every political power structure that feeds on fear — and which ones do not? — will benefit from the crime spree in Boston, whatever its origins.

And

For over a decade, Americans have been told that terrorism poses a threat that cannot be addressed by the existing legal system; that a new domain of law must be constructed to handle this new threat. What has actually been created is a new domain of pseudo-law where the roles of law making, law enforcement, and judiciary, are rolled into a single political authority. Even if there has been no coup d’etat, nor extended imposition of martial law, this is nonetheless the dawning of an insidious and piecemeal form of fascism. It does not impose itself with an iron fist but grows upon us slowly, so that painlessly freedom can be lost as it is gradually forgotten.

Nothing - nothing - that was done domestically after 9/11 to expand the national security state and chip away at once sacred civil liberties prevented this attack, nor will a further expansion of state power prevent a possible future attack. Terrorism, if that’s what this was, is a tactic, and, unmentionable in our present discourse, our aggressive militarism abroad - invasions, wars of choice, murder, displacement, drone strikes, bombings, civilian casualties and “collateral damage”, death squads, torture, terror tuesdays, kill lists, renditions and indefinite detention as but a few examples, and all done with impunity and focused primarily on Muslim populations - practically guaranteed that tactic would be used again.

As if to prove my point, while I was writing this, the Washington Post reported that U.S. aggression overseas was a motivating factor for the Tsarnaevs:

The 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told interrogators that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated him and his brother to carry out the attack, according to U.S. officials familiar with the interviews.

… the officials said, the evidence so far suggests they were “self-radicalized” through Internet sites and U.S. actions in the Muslim world. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has specifically cited the U.S. war in Iraq, which “ended” in December 2011 … and the war in Afghanistan … .

What Bloomberg and others are suggesting is that we ignore the root cause of terrorism against the United States, namely our participation in it, and instead go all in with more wiretapping, more gps tracking, more cameras, more email snooping, more patdowns, more social media monitoring, more databases, more drone surveillance, more militarized police forces, more informants, more mosque crawling, more border security, more security lines, more TIPS, more “see something say something”, more fusion centers, more “non lethal” weapons, more entrapment, more people on “no-fly” lists plus a change in how we “interpret”, what? The 4th amendment? It’s already been trampled. What is he suggesting? Home searches with no warrant? Disappearances? How far does he want to go to keep us “safe”?

What I see in that list is a massive expansion of power. An end in itself to a man like Michael Bloomberg who has already created a Muslim-monitoring Stasi is his own city and unleashed the full power of the National Security State not on “terrorists”, but on Occupy. On dissenters, activists, and others challenging his power and the power of his friends. No doubt a further loosening of the rules would stifle even more dissent.

I bring up this quote all the time, but it still applies. This is Senator Russ Feingold (WI) in 2001. He cast the only “no” vote when the Senate passed the PATRIOT Act (96-1):

There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live.

But we do. We have for almost 12 years.

I’d rather we put an end to our post-9/11 temper tantrum than give our dear leaders any more power.

(via theamericanbear)

definitelydope: By Jochen Pach

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:25:46 -0400

definitelydope:

By Jochen Pach

buzzkillscg: rainwood: Indigenous people of Brazil trying to...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 23:50:12 -0400

buzzkillscg:

rainwood:

Indigenous people of Brazil trying to prevent their eviction from an old indigenous museum which they have been living in for the past 7 years.

On March 22nd all of the inhabitants and their supporters were forcibly removed or arrested.

The building is being destroyed to make a parking lot :(

“Preserve a rich cultural heritage living in our modern world? Nah, bro, we totally need somewhere to put our cars.”

…dicks.

SIGNAL LOST: anneboyer: “They speak together of the threat they have constituted...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:11:58 -0400

SIGNAL LOST: anneboyer: “They speak together of the threat they have constituted...:

anneboyer:

“They speak together of the threat they have constituted toward authority, they tell how they were burned on pyres to prevent them from assembling in future. They were able to command tempests, to sink fleets, to destroy armies. They have been mistresses of poisons, of the winds,…