Usée Par La Vie

PYT | ♊| MTL

[fatehbaz]

Slow death is, quite simply, “a condition of being worn out [...].” If debility is endemic to disenfranchised communities, it is doubly so because the forms of financialization that accompany [...] the privatization of services also produce debt as debility. [...] Debt peonage [...]. Debt as enclosure, as immobility, is what Gilles Deleuze writes of [...]: “Man is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt.” This is especially true [...] in the United States, where health care expenses are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy, a capacitation of slow death through debt undertaken to support one’s health. [...] [O]ne is, as Geeta Patel points out, paying for one’s own slow death, through insurial and debt structures predicated on risk and insecurity, and essentially forced into agreeing to one’s own debilitation. [...] More perniciously, one could suggest [...] that finance capital enforces repeated mandatory investments in our own slow deaths [...].

Text by: Jasbir K. Puar. “Introduction: The Cost of Getting Better.” The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. 2017.

---

[A]nd their [...] local government [weaponizes] [...] an array of fees and fines ["extortions of the poor" as governments "turn to such predatory practices facilitated by growing armies of police and preexisting legal mechanisms for debt collection, surveillance, and incarceration"]. Many of those who live within these neighborhoods thereby experience class exploitation in the form of direct violence - by police, racist vigilantes, Immigration [border policing agencies] [...] - and onerous rents extracted by anyone with a modicum of power. [...] A final type of [place] is the Logistics City [near shipping corridors and freight nodes, like Twin Cities, SeaTac, Chicago, and Cancer Alley in Louisiana], a concentration of industrial activity in the form of factories, fulfillment centers, ports, warehouses, rail yards, and massive facilities for waste management and food processing. Here, many of the above forms of exploitation are experienced alongside the barefaced misery of doing too much work for too little money.

Text by: Phil A Neel. "The New Geography of Suburbia: An Anatomy of America's Hinterland". New Labor Forum. 2018. [Quotations within brackets come from elsewhere: Neel's book Hinterland, also 2018.]

---

[D]ebilitating infrastructures turn able bodies into a range of disabled bodies. […] [C]heckpoints […]; administrative bureaucratic apparatuses that stall and foreclose travel, mobility for work, […] the capacity to move and change residences - baroque processes to apply for permits to travel […], absence of public services […]; and finally […] denial of resolution, suspension in the space of the indefinite […]. In fact, slow death itself is literalized as the slowing down of life […]. [Land] itself becomes simultaneously bigger - because it takes so long to get anywhere - and smaller, as transit becomes arduous […] where it is so difficult to travel between areas without permits [...]. Movement is suffocated. Distance is stretched and manipulated [...]. Time itself is held hostage. This is the slow aspect of slow death: slow death can entail a really slow life, too, a life that demands constant calibration of different speeds and the relation of speed to space. [...] The suspended state of the indefinite, of waiting and waiting (it) out, wreaks multigenerational psychological and physical havoc. […] Time thus is the meter of power; it is one form that physical enclosure takes on. The cordoning of time through space contributes to an overall “lack of jurisdiction over the function of one’s own senses” (Schuller 2018: 74) endemic to the operation of colonial rule […]. [T]his process entails several modes of temporal differentiation: withholding futurity, making impossible anything but a slowed (down) life, and immobilizing the body […]. [T]he extraction of time […] produce[s] a depleted and therefore compliant population so beholden to the logistics of the everyday that forms of connectivity, communing, and collective resistance are thwarted. The extraction of time functions as the transfer of “vital energy” […], an extraction that recapitulates a long colonial history of mining bodies for their potentiality. […] Fear of not getting to work [on time] then adds to the labor of getting to work; the checkpoints affectively expand labor time […]. Bodies in line at checkpoints […] [experience] the fractalizing of the emotive, cognitive, physiological capacities of bodies […]. It’s not just that bodies are too tired to resist but that the experience of the “constant state of uncertainty” becomes the condition of being.

Text by: Jasbir K. Puar. "Spatial Debilities: Slow Life and Carceral Capitalism in Palestine". South Atlantic Quarterly (2021) 120 (2), pages 393-414. Published April 2021.

[anarchistmemedistro]

[junkfoodcinemas]

Enemy (2013) dir. Denis Villeneuve

[elminx]

I’ve noticed some posts around about how you can’t romanticize your life during a fascist regime and while I deeply sympathize with this sentiment, I want you to try to understand that’s what they want you to believe.

Fascism thrives best in the cesspool of hopelessness. They want us so confused and hopeless that we give in. When you give in, you don’t fight back.

If you wait for life to look good to do the things that bring you joy; life will still be bad - you will just have less joy.

As someone who has struggled with my mental health a lot for the last thirty years, I know this struggle firsthand. And changing this belief system - the one where you spend all of your time expecting bad things so you won’t be surprised when they happen - it’s the hardest work that I have ever done. And I’m not perfect; I still have setbacks. I still experience really real fears about the state of the world and the US, in particular, because that’s where I live.

But I made a vow to myself that I will not let the choices of others ruin my life. When I made that vow, I was thinking of my parents - but it applies to the state of the government right now, too.

There are still flowers in my garden, and ripe tomatoes, and it’s almost pick-your-own apples season, and I have plans with my friends to go to as many cemetery ghost walks as we can find this October.

I still deserve to live. I still deserve to laugh. I still deserve to love. I still deserve to be as happy as I can be.

And you do, too.

[yeahawvampire]

Dan Savage.

[cavegirlpoems]

[tye-wig-music]

Chemical castration for sex offenders to be trialled in 20 prisons - BBC News

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is also exploring whether chemical castration could be made mandatory.

[lowercasenospaces]

This is about the UK specifically.

[cavegirlpoems]

See this? This is the trap. This is how they get you. You appeal to outrage and emotion, you make a bold statement like "sex offenders don't have rights" and whip up that righteous anger, get people all thirsty for blood and punishment, right? And that's their foot in the door. Once you've decided that there's a class of people it's okay to do this to, there's no clean line in the sand anymore, is there? Now chemical castration (or whatever fucked up shit you wanna bring into it) is an option on the table. This is how fascists talk, this is how fascists think, and this is how fascists appeal to you to get what they want. Because once you've given them that inch, they can use it to take a mile.

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

Alan Turing (as in the Turing test) was chemically castrated following a conviction for “homosexual acts” in 1952. He committed suicide as a result.

[scots-dragon]

They're introducing chemical castration for sex offenders while right wing interest groups are trying to redefine all queer people as sex offenders. Starting with trans women.

[fuck-usag]

See they got suckered into using their own definition of what a sex offender is. ‘Sex offenders’ in the legal sense means ‘whatever the fuck the law defines as a sex offence at the time’. And they can change that definition to include whoever and do whatever they like under the pretence of ‘justice’. And that’s wrong.

[lipfilllers]

[depsidase]

[deepseasmetro]

its not just "but slower", they are active collaborators. the ruling class is the ruling class. they are different parts of the same structure who are working together, intentionally, for the same end outcomes. being outwardly not as terrible is completely intentional

[mycological-mariner-deactivated]

Breaking my hiatus to bring everyone’s attention to the fact that Cornwall is now attempting to be officially recognised as a nation within the United Kingdom.

Kernow has its own language, culture, history and identity. The language was forcibly removed by the English until the last monolingual speaker died in 1777–her name was Dolly Pentreath. It has existed as a kingdom before England had ever existed. Historically, Cornwall has been a place exploited for minerals and resources and labour. Currently, it still is. There are now ghost towns where once thriving fishing villages stood (Mousehole, Pentreath’s home, was one of these). Cornwall is now a playground for second home owners who drive up house and rent prices and drive out permanent residents and workers. Local businesses go out of business and struggle to stay afloat when the influx of tourists come who only purchase from supermarkets, putting nothing into the local economy. There is a long, long and often very gruesome and bloody history behind this—leaders of rebellions executed all the way into 1715.

If you are in the UK, and sign the petition to get this to a debate in Parliament.

Can you spare 60 seconds to sign

[mycological-mariner-deactivated]

Someone brought up water for damn good reason. I don’t think anyone really understands. Cornwall literally has no choice other than SouthWest Water for water supply, a basic human right which should be nationalised anyways. But how many people are aware that SW Water use Cornwall to dump massive amounts of sewage into the sea?

Data shows South West Water discharges sewage 1,000 times in three days

A number of popular tourist beaches in Cornwall are deemed to have poor water quality

And we’re all aware that when the government announced its budget, it conveniently didn’t mention Cornwall once. It in fact avoided the South West. But absolutely no funding gets to Kernow.

Cornwall is 'worse off' under the Labour government

Cornwall Council's deputy leader slammed the Chancellor as the authority sets its budget and 4.99 per cent council tax increase for the year

And we all also know that Cornwall is the 2nd poorest region in Northern Europe, correct?

And it has remained this way for a very long time.

Between the lack of British government funding, celebrities buying multi million pound mansions in Cornwall and leaving them empty 3/4 of the year, all the seasonal workers who companies hire from other counties to work during the tourist season, it should be obvious why Kernow should want some self-governance. It’s been fucked for centuries, a play pen for rich people, a novelty with their silly little language and silly little traditions, just look how quaint. Meanwhile the actual Cornish people swim in their shit and pay for their second homes while being driven out of theirs.

Fuck that. Fuck Reform UK. Fuck Labour. KERNOW BYS VYKEN

[useless-catalanfacts]

Those of us not in the UK, we can reblog to make this reach UK residents who can sign.

Tot el nostre suport als germans de Cornualla. All our support to our siblings from Kernow.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Fun facts! Cornish is the closest living relative to Welsh, linguistically speaking - the revival has a fascinating history, and at the start they used Welsh and Breton to help 'fill in the gaps' to work out what orthography and pronunciations they'd lost (though by now a new and fully Cornish orthography has been developed). I know a few Cornish speakers now, and although the two languages aren't quite mutually intelligible, they come very close. Reading and hearing it always makes me feel like I'm having a stroke lol, so similar and yet not quite close enough...

Crucially, no Cornish person I've ever met considers themselves English. And, every time I have ever been to Cornwall, I've been met with delight when I've said I'm Welsh. One pub we went in even had Welsh rugby memorabilia on the walls, because they support Wales over England. There's a real cousins vibe, and a definite Celtic-not-English identity

Anyway, good for them. Please sign if you can, share if you can't

[closet-keys]

every time any feminist on here articulates the sentiment

any man who expects to have his masculinity flattered and to receive "rewards" of reproductive and/or sexual labor in "exchange" for superficially "agreeing with" feminist talking points is a committed misogynist and you should not trust him. and yes this is most men who think they're feminists.

men crawl out of the woodwork to say some variation of

"why would a man do anything you say if there is no incentive? this is why men are becoming open misogynists"

that's literally the point. that's the point we're making. you are misogynists.

it is actually safer for us when we can identify you as such.

[depsidase]

[anarchistmemedistro]

[gatheringbones]

[“The capital of Bahia, the state most famously associated with Afro-Brazilian culture, raised the price of a ride on the bus. A small number of students protested in response. But then more and more young people joined, until thousands of them were blocking the streets, occupying public vehicles, and apparently getting the support of the public while doing so. Commuters would honk in solidarity, give the kids a thumbs-up, or tell the media that the disruption was all worth it.

In Salvador, like the rest of Brazil, working-class people put a big chunk of their income toward getting to their jobs and back. And in Bahia—like the rest of the world—the daily grind of braving traffic and cramming into uncomfortable spaces, only to go work all day and then come home again, was one of the worst parts of contemporary urban life. Indymedia Brasil paid close attention to the little uprising and covered it for the rest of the country. The student union in Salvador—strongly linked to the Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCdoB)—had played a role in starting the wave of protests, but it grew far too large for them to control. In some cases, protesters insisted on keeping party political flags out of the demonstrations, declaring that the movement should be apartidário—or without a party, nonpartisan. But the mayor, who now understood that he had to solve this problem, could hardly negotiate with the sudden, leaderless explosion—so he called in the student leaders. After negotiations, they got nine out of the ten things they asked for—but they didn’t stop the bus rate hike.

This opened a split on the young left in Brazil. For the student leaders and the PCdoB, the movement had used their leverage to get as much as they could, and this was a victory. For the autonomist left, the more anarchist and anti-bureaucratic youth, the Communists had done what Stalinists and hierarchical political parties always do—they had spoken for people they had no right to speak for, and they had sold out the street movement in service of maintaining a cozy relationship with politicians. The PCdoB was a Marxist-Leninist party, practicing democratic centralism and tracing its roots back to the Communist Party founded in 1922. And they were loyal members of Lula’s ruling coalition, believing their job was to defend this new government, so it is probably true that they were never going to bet on a general insurrection in the first year of left-of-center rule since the 1960s.

The local man with a camera who always showed up at these sort of things, Carlos Pronzato, made a wobbly little documentary about the Salvador protests called A Revolta do Buzu. After it was shown in the glitzy beach city of Florianópolis, local youth got excited and formed the Campanha Pelo Passe Livre—the Free Fare Campaign. Except when these kids took to the streets, they actually pulled it off. After intense street contention starting in 2004, they got the city government to give up on raising the bus fare. Across the country, the alter-globalization generation was inspired. In January 2005, at the meeting of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, a group of activists created the Movimento Passe Livre—The Free Fare Movement—or MPL. Many of its founders came from Indymedia. Their goal, the crusade that gave the group its name, was for a Brazil in which no one would ever have to pay for transportation at all. And of course, their method was direct action.”]

vincent bevins, from if we burn: the mass protest decade and the missing revolution, 2023

[closet-keys]

"Connecting health with identities and then allowing society to abuse or dispose of people deemed unhealthy or undesirable is a slippery slope. What's waiting for you at the bottom?" -Shanspeare

"Invoking preexisting conditions or comorbidities in this way suggests that a person's death is somehow 'natural' or 'unavoidable' or the product of a mixture of 'destiny' meets 'biology,' rather than the explicit policy of siege and famine being imposed as a condition of genocide. When you see the death of a starving Palestinian being reframed in terms of 'preexisting health issues' ... the crucial question to ask someone trying to make that contextual reframe is: if food, medicine, and adequate care had been available, would this person almost certainly be alive, and would another person under these conditions be facing the same fate?" -Beatrice Adler-Bolton, "Can the Subaltern Starve?" Death Panel Podcast

"Health, then, for Palestinians, is inextricable from the ongoing Israeli settler-colonial project of dispossession and erasure and from the capitalist policies and practices that undergird that project in Palestine, in refugee camps, and in diaspora communities. This includes the complicity of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in political repression and security coordination with the State of Israel. This is not to say that settler colonialism is a social or political determinant of health. Rather, it is to say that settler colonialism precedes and is fundamental to all other determinants of health—be they clinical, economic, social, or political. Settler colonialism is woven, in ways both known and unknown, into these determinants. In its direct attacks on us and on the environments in which we live and seek care, settler colonialism distorts our relationships with our bodies." - Danya Qato, "Introduction: Public Health and the Promise of Palestine" Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. 49 No. 4-Summer 2020

[closet-keys]

The Israeli occupation intends to displace my friends in the Gaza Strip to Rafah. They are living under threat of bombing, destruction and starvation, but displacement is an expensive process.

My friend Ahmed informed me that the advancing occupation and closures of crossings are leading markets to price-gouge once again, making food increasingly expensive. He said that medicine is no longer available and his family doesn't know how to treat his brother's injuries without it.

Even if they can raise enough for transportation there, Rafah is not fit to live in because Israelis already completely destroyed the area. There is no water, sewage, hospitals, or food. It is empty of all the necessities of life.

Ahmed's family has been living under dire conditions for too long. Everyone in the Gaza Strip is starving, some relying on only one meal a day or every couple days. Ahmed's family has so few funds at this time that they have not eaten bread in a week! Israeli occupiers bombed a sewage line near him and destroyed his family's access to clean water along with their tent.

Ahmed's fundraiser is number 198 on gazavetters, and so far his campaign has been under-shared and neglected. He has raised €14,490 so far at time of writing.

If you can donate anything, time is of the essence. His family needs urgent support for their survival.

He needs enough for food, any supplies to make it possible for his injured brother to survive getting to Rafah, and the expenses of displacement (tent, transportation, bathroom, rent for land for the tent).

[ahmeddani3]

Life here is getting harder, guys, because the occupation intends to displace us to Rafah in tents where there are no necessities of life and threatened us with starvation and intensified bombing if we do not leave. We are now afraid because the bombing is intense tonight. We need your help as soon as possible before it is too late. Please help us by donating and do not leave us alone. Please donate.❤️🥺

[closet-keys]

Please help my friend Ahmed. His family needs funds for immediate transport away from the bombings.

[plumpydoll]

Now that zionist occupation announced they are going to occupy all of Gaza, their genocidal intent is clear. This was always about ethnic cleansing. That's why they systematically destroyed Gaza and murdered so many civilians. If you still support Israel, you are openly in favor of genocide.

[plumpydoll]

Israel declares Gaza’s largest city a combat zone as death toll surpasses 63,000

The Gaza Health Ministry says the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 63,000 as Palestinians face the start of Israel’s expanded offensive in G

They will occupy their land. Do you still support Israel?!

[plumpydoll]

We have failed the people of Gaza. In every possible way. And history will not forgive us.

Gaza broke me. I no longer care about anything. We let the worst thing in the world happen, and I feel like we are all doomed now.

What comes after their homes were destroyed and they were forcibly displaced from their homes? Now they are suffering from famine, siege, killing, bombing, and starvation. They no longer have money to buy the bare necessities of life, and now they have no land to return to. Save Zeina and her family before it is too late. They no longer have a home to return to, and they have no one but us to help them and stand by them in these difficult times. Donate to them now through the link to their verified campaign from Gazavetters number 213.

Tag for share

@charl0ttan @omegaversereloaded @ot3 @wolfertinger666 @paper-mario-wiki @3000s @valtsv @sporesgalaxy @yekkes @anarchblr @homunculus-argument @anarchistmemecollective @isuggestforcefem @wayneradiotv @idolomantises @txttletale @rennybu @beybuniki @transgendz @beardedmrbean @batmanisagatewaydrug @afro-elf @redbuddi @beetledrink @grox @hiveswap @mavigator @theinconvenientlifestyle @sacred-portal @punkitt-is-here @strangeauthor @amygdalae @papasmoke @certifiedsexed @sexygaywizard @snowflakeeel @joshpeck @dirhwangdaseul @prisonhannibal @bevsi @idontmindifuforgetme @saberghatz @rickybabyboy @trainwreckgenerator @socalgal @storyweavingspider @northerlyfilms @90-ghost @boycritter

[zinaanqar16]

We are being subjected to the most horrific massacres and killings with missiles, quadcopters and explosive robots. What is our fault? We are children who are being killed like this and expelled from our land. Please save us.

[zinaanqar16]

Please guys help us, donate and share

[zinaanqar16]

Please Please don't leave us, we are suffering and need your support and prayers, share and donate if you can

[zinaanqar16]

Guys please donate if you can, we need your help, whether through donations and sharing

[zinaanqar16]

[zinaanqar16]

A bloody day, massacres, missiles, artillery shelling and warplanes. Stop these massacres, we are being exterminated, please.

@charl0ttan @omegaversereloaded @ot3 @wolfertinger666 @paper-mario-wiki @3000s @valtsv @sporesgalaxy @yekkes @anarchblr @homunculus-argument @anarchistmemecollective @isuggestforcefem @wayneradiotv @idolomantises @txttletale @rennybu @beybuniki @transgendz @beardedmrbean @batmanisagatewaydrug @afro-elf @redbuddi @beetledrink @grox @hiveswap @mavigator @theinconvenientlifestyle @sacred-portal @punkitt-is-here @strangeauthor @amygdalae @papasmoke @certifiedsexed @sexygaywizard @snowflakeeel @joshpeck @dirhwangdaseul @prisonhannibal @bevsi @idontmindifuforgetme @saberghatz @rickybabyboy @trainwreckgenerator @socalgal @storyweavingspider @northerlyfilms @90-ghost @boycritter

[that-vexaholic-cryptid]

[grumfy]

yeah actually we removed the big bad wolf from the little red riding hood story because portraying violence against minors is really messed up. yeah. yeah also the wolf narrative was really predatory and had had some icky grooming vibes and a fable meant for literal children shouldn’t have implied p*do shit and grape so now little red riding hood goes into the woods and nothing happens and she goes to grandma’s house. don’t worry our kids will still stick to the path and know not to follow to wolves implicitly because we told them to and children should always do as their told. just like little red riding hood does now.

[thetursithan]

In the 2000s, phones had quirks and class....

[alexaloraetheris]

In the ye olde days, when technology allowed phones to become small but there was no general concensus on what a phone should/ought to look like, it was like the wild west of phone design. The crazier it was, the higher the prestige. Phones back then did two things and they did them with flamboyance.

And then Steve Jobs ruined everything.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Forever Wars, Forever Forgotten

As the war on terror expanded abroad, paradoxically, it faded further into the American background.

In 2018, for example, 42% of Americans weren’t even aware that their country was still at war in Afghanistan, a place that the US military wouldn’t vacate for another three years.

[...]

As the war on terror expanded abroad, paradoxically, it faded further into the American background. It was Obama’s approach to the war on terror that sustained this paradox, as Samuel Moyn writes in his 2021 book, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Months into office in 2009, the Obama administration launched the concept of a “global battlefield,” which removed any constraints on where the United States could project force. But, at the same, it cleaned up some of the less seemly elements of the war—forbidding torture, exiting Iraq—and also turned to remote-controlled drones, piloted by Americans in air-conditioned trailers in New Mexico, to do more of the fighting. The pilots were so distant, in fact, that the early drones were afflicted with latency, as the video signal had to travel from the skies of Africa, the Middle East, or Central Asia to a satellite and then back to the United States. The end result: fewer coffins sent back home, less bad press, and waning opposition to the war on terror. (Though the number of non-Americans killed by drones surged under Obama’s reign).

[...]

But the war on terror does continue. Many of the tools that the Bush administration introduced are still on the books, finding new uses, more than two decades later. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)—the broadly written and even more broadly interpreted piece of legislation that empowered George Bush to pursue the 9/11 attackers—has since been invoked in military operations in at least 22 countries, most recently by Joe Biden in a bombing campaign against Iran-aligned militia in Iraq. It’s not just the 2001 AUMF. In that same operation last year, Biden also cited the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, the 2002 resolution that enabled the Bush administration to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Let that sink in: More than a decade after “ending” the Iraq War, the US president still retains the right to bomb the country, without congressional debate, whenever he wants. What is that, if not a forever war? The war on terror also continues to haunt American society. National security reigns supreme. Democrats and Republicans have stretched the category “terrorist” to include more and more people. Last year, Manhattan’s District Attorney charged Luigi Mangione, who stands accused of killing a health insurance CEO, with an act of terrorism. Trump and his allies, once again in power, apply the category with abandon. Dealing drugs? Terrorism. Opposing deportation efforts? Terrorism.  Vandalizing Tesla cars and infrastructure? Terrorism. Protesting genocide? Terrorism (or, rather, “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” an entirely novel and seemingly infinite charge). And regime change, this time in Iran, has re-entered the political mainstream.