After 40 years in hiding, Tupac's godmother finds herself on the Most Wanted list.
America "befriending" Cuba once more is a terrible idea -- for Cuban society, for Assata Shakur, and for the culture of civil revolt and Black liberation in which she's played such an essential role.
Earlier this year, John Waters — whose last movie, A Dirty Shame, was released a full decade ago — finally got the offer he’d been waiting for all this time. According to his hitchhiking chronicle ...
"'There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even half a dozen of these mega-budgeted movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm again.'”
- words of hope, Steven Spielberg
"'I don’t have any needlepoint pillows with slogans on them, but if I did, it would be "Don’t Go Backward."’”
- life advice, John Waters
Also I didn't miss their omission of Jane Campion, who, if asked, probably said something dignified but unpublishable.
There are some concessions those in power will never make. Passive protest negotiates by raising costs to the point where certain trade-offs become acceptable, but it can only succeed on issues where those in power are left room to retreat and regroup. On issues like abolishing borders, prisons, or the police, our demands will never be met because they pose an existential threat to the very premise of the state itself. No matter how limited a sociopath’s options become the total abolition of all positions of power is always going to be dead last on their list of preferences. At some point those in power will have to be physically dragged kicking and screaming out. Part of building a movement should be building the capacity to do precisely that. And that kind of strength doesn’t just spring into existence the moment our leaders cross a line, it must be nurtured and developed as our ranks grow."
Maybe this is what white people can do. However, as the state enforcers will automatically blame any protesters who are not white, any protesters who do wish to begin an armed revolt should make it clear that they're independent actors. It's a tricky situation, and everyone must remember to evaluate carefully before taking the risk that someone will be killed.
My bus is all but parked, its frame quivering and growling as the engine idles. I look up from my book at the packed seats around me: an array of glowing white faces in the dark of night. Two white...
"... Ferguson (and the events surrounding it) have never been about police. Every officer in the USA could behave with complete racial sensitivity and it wouldn’t have stopped George Zimmerman (a civilian) from shooting Trayvon Martin to death. In fact, it was an emergency dispatcher who told George Zimmerman not to follow Trayvon Martin, acting with common sense and restraint.
Yes, police happen to be among the best armed and most legally protected people in America, making police killings of black men the most newsworthy, but it is not the police we should be condemning, but the widespread racist fear of black men, allowing their murderers to claim 'self-defense' even in cases when it is [the killers] who are armed, or even the instigators."
Takeaway lesson: white people can join the protests, but they shouldn't take them over. Showing up and talking over the people whose lives are most vulnerable is missing the entire point of why anyone is protesting.
A Texas police officer was placed on administrative leave on Friday after he reportedly used a Taser on a 76-year-old man after the suspect had already been forced to the ground.
In America, it's okay for cops to use any type of force they wish to use on anyone, including the elderly. This has been true for a long time, definitely since the Pinkertons were our national policing force, but the media is finally taking notice. We are headed either for some sort change, or for a nationwide Tienanmen Square-style citizen's repression. At this point, I honestly do not know which it will be.
Manual labor is a real fucking trip. I know these days, most young white people don't get any closer to hand-work than a DIY class or two, so the trades offer incredible cultural fascination to everyone who doesn't have to roll up their sleeves and wear gloves or masks at work. But that really shouldn't be. Praise manual laborers for the quality of their work, sure, or the amount of sheer effort they put into getting a task done, but don't romanticize this shit. It's not easy, and I'm not just talking about the physical exertion or problem-solving.
A Facebook friend recently wrote that her mind is consumed by the thought that glasses remain unfilled, tables sit unbused. These thoughts chase her even in her down time, even when she's off shift or out of work. Over the summer I met a professional cook, a lifetimer, who candidly told us over beers on a midnight porch that decades of constant high stress work had destroyed his "Off" switch and he had to medicate himself in order to sleep at all. He'd grown used to it, but could distinctly remember a past when this was not the case. Although I don't have citations to professional studies for you, word-of-mouth does strongly suggest these reactions are not uncommon in the working class.
After all, we are intelligent human beings; we think and feel and understand our environments as much as anyone else does, we're just not wealthy. We know that we live in an economic system that demands its pounds of our flesh, and implicitly or explicitly we know what the public thinks about people who do physical tasks for wages.
If we've read Ayn Rand, help us please, we know that we are the Workers -- interchangeable drones who serve the interests of the Producers, the real people whose lives count, until we are no longer useful any more and can be destroyed. If we have never touched a work of stone-cold Objectivist theory, it doesn't matter; Rand's Libertarian disciples are the upstart policymakers in American government, so we're stuck with their baggage one way or another. Think of it: if people can still seriously debate whether or not those who can physically no longer work (including disabled veterans, because Objectivism) even deserve to live anymore, then the threat hanging over everyone's head is not exactly a petty concern.
In order to survive in a kill-or-die workplace, especially as a woman, I've adapted: internalized the idea that, as a worker, my body is nothing but a machine, and when I cannot complete a task perfectly that means the machine is faulty. As everyone knows, faulty machines are destroyed and replaced with quality ones. I cannot make a mistake, which is impossible, but any mistake might be my last in this job I cannot afford to lose. I am disposable, and in my mind the voice of The Boss reminds me after every fuck-up that I deserve to be destroyed. As evidenced by my language in this post, that I do not count myself as a manual laborer, I think even my best work is useless. That knowledge haunts my every waking thought.
The funny thing is, I get the job done just fine and my actual boss is pretty copacetic. His pals, the guys at the shop next door, get on my case in true Old School Republican style for being a subpar human being every time they see me and mock him behind his back for employing such a worthless [unflattering term for a woman], but he's pretty happy with my labor. He notices my misery, though doesn't understand it at all, and routinely asks why I don't just get a better job. He thinks even retail jobs are beneath me (LOL), that I could easily handle someone's books and be a great secretary. Maybe one of these days I can convince him that it isn't so easy, that we all would have done that if it were, that I've been trying for my entire adult life. The fact is, no one is hiring, and that's not only true for me.
The revelations from the Senate’s long-delayed report on CIA torture are every bit as horrifying as advertised.
I need to talk about our government for a second.
I want to talk about violence. I want to talk about torture.
I want to talk about the fact that you and I are paying money that is being used to fund individuals who torture and maim other human beings. In your name. For the good old USA.
I want to talk about the fact that we are implicated, and that this is on us, and that there are families and children and brothers and sisters and mothers who are mourning corpses that will never come back to them. Who are nursing their returned child who is scarred and broken from violence.
I want to talk about the fact that these people who did these things, who worked in these places, who performed these acts BELONG TO SOMEONE. That they are also someone’s brother or nephew or father or uncle (yup, all dudes at the detention sites from what I can tell from the government release) and that someone belongs to them.
They are going to sit at someone’s table and sip egg nog and talk about football and the niggers in ferguson and the fucking queers and a-rabs and how they watched some crazy ass porn last night and how they can’t wait to come in their girlfriend’s nose.
Or maybe they will just talk to you about you year in school, and why they thought that e.e. cummings last work was his best, or how the sunset is always more beautiful in winter, and how their dog is their best buddy in the world, or how they missed snow in the desert.
THESE PEOPLE BELONG TO SOMEONE. MAYBE YOU.
and while we are posting fucking sailor moon or some cat or some shit these people are around the world, they are in Ohio, they are in Illinois, and Massachusettes and Louisiana and all over the fucking place spreading their sick, poisonous shit and collecting pensions and voting and they are doing it all in our name.
We are just as sick by these motherfuckers because their vomit is splashing on us. We are sick. This country is sick. And I am sick of it.
—————
4) Many of the CIA’s interrogators were known sadists.
"This group of officers included individuals who, among other issues, had engaged in inappropriate detainee interrogations, had workplace anger management issues, and had reportedly admitted to sexual assault.” [Executive Summary: Page 50]
5) CIA interrogators threatened to rape or kill the detainees’ mothers and to harm their children.
"CIA officers also threatened at least three detainees with harm to their families – to include threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee, and a threat to ‘cut [a detainee’s] mother’s throat.’" [Findings and Conclusions: Page 4]
6) The CIA intended to permanently disappear a detainee named Abu Zubaydah.
"The CIA lacked a plan for the eventual disposition of its detainees. After taking custody of Abu Zubaydah, CIA officers concluded that he ‘should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life.’" [Findings and Conclusions: Page 9]
7) Zubaydah was nearly drowned on the waterboard, revived only with the Heimlich maneuver.
"During a waterboard session, Abu Zubaydah "became completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth." He remained unresponsive after the waterboard was rotated upwards and only regained consciousness after receiving a "xyphoid thrust." [Executive Summary: Page 495]
8) The CIA sexually assaulted detainees with brutal “rectal exams.”
"CIA leadership… was also alerted to allegations that rectal exams were conducted with "excessive force" on two detainees at DETENTION SITE COBALT…. CIA records indicate that one of the detainees, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, was later diagnosed with chronic hemorrhoids, an anal fissure, and symptomaticrectal prolapse.” [Executive Summary: Page 100]
Let this sink in for a minute. Truly, lay back in this and let it soak into your pores. British officials have declared a global moral imperative that an international tribunal try GWII, Cheney, CIA toughnuts, and their assorted goonies for war crimes. Also, that any foreign country any of these fools sets foot in has the right to detain and try them at will. The chances of this actually happening seem slim, but isn't it incredible that we're actually hearing it?
This isn't the first time, of course. Let's see how many times it takes. Because this is so awful. Read on if you can stomach some truly bad shit.
Hey, so I know I've promised to publish numerous things
... and then that did not actually happen. I'm sorry. Life became exhausting. More exhausting. I've been really confused by life, but now more people are talking about our obviously escalating economic and social fuckups, and it's comforting to no longer feel so alone. Tl;dr, it turns out the realizations I made as an hilarious anarchist were relevant, so I'm either a hip-stoner Cassandra or proof that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Regardless, some projects are done, others are half-done, others are taking shape right now, but in the meantime you can expect some time's worth of periodic musings on the theme of witnessing a collapse of empire.
Yoga-Whoring, MacMindfulness & the Spiritual Industrial Complex
by Sub-Meditator Marcos
“Be the change AND use it to kick some arse” - Mahatma Guevara
Wisdom traditions and bodymind practices such as yoga, embodied approaches to leadership and meditation have been co-opted in service of the ruling corporate class. A radical alternative is now needed to what has become a Spiritual Industrial Complex (SIC). This article is a battle cry for guerrilla teachers in the awareness industry who no longer wish to prostitute themselves to the 1%.
The functions of the Spiritual Industrial Complex (SIC)
Warped wisdom traditions and body awareness practices are now serving a number of harmful functions. This may be hard reading if like me you’ve dedicated much of your life to this field, please stick with it, the second half of the article is about how we can become spiritual warriors in a meaningful way. In brief, the SIC can and often does:
izzy806
germansingergirl
jacobvanloon
