June 2010
74 posts
“While I think it is important to highlight the inhumanity and violence of our...”
– Harsha Walia (via poopytoothpaste)
yes!
(via shakepaper)
Watchendlessforms:
chrbutler:
Wonderful. Via The Long Now Foundation:
It’s a reverse time lapse put together by Greg Mercer and Emily Ward (editing), and David Quednau (animation). Unwinding 20,000 years of a modern American city and frontier outposts, Native American settlements and the last ice age, we arrive in their world and resurrect them in film.
Debunking veteran activist Judy Rebick's G20... →
suburbananarchist:
Since I posted Judy Rebick’s take on the G20 protests, black block and the cops, it’s only fair to post Toronto Media Co-op’s response. Again, make up your own mind.
“[I]t appears that the reality of many people, black bloc and otherwise, finding joy in the trashing, burning and mocking of police vehicles is an inconvenient truth for her…Cops harass, hurt and...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-6-27) →
Charley Patton (27)
Gucci Mane (16)
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti (11)
Holly Miranda (10)
The Velvet Underground (9)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
sasquatchmedia asked: Thanks for the Duggan cite. I'll definitely check it out. Wasn't even aware of the politics behind the Sokal incident until Rosen brought it up. I'm definitely against pompous language, though, in any field.
Academics, Writing and the Real World
skirtonfire:
sasquatchmedia:
I just read about a phony 1996 study an NYU physics professor submitted to a journal for publication as part of an experiment. Alan Sokal’s study, titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” was riddled with academic jargon and intentionally made absolutely no sense.
…
The hoax ticked off a lot of people, not...
The Toronto G20 Riot Fraud: Undercover Police... →
Toronto is right now in the midst of a massive government / media propaganda fraud. As events unfold, it is becoming increasingly clear that the ‘Black Bloc’ are undercover police operatives engaged in purposeful provocations to eclipse and invalidate legitimate G20 citizen protest by starting a riot.
So, just to recap: For this guy (and folks like him — I’ve actually...
Interface Journal ‘Debating David Harvey’ →
newleft:
The latest issue of Interface: a journal for and about social movements features a special section called “Debating David Harvey”, devoted to the discussion of Professor Harvey’s recent essay “Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition“. That essay was delivered as a talk by Professor Harvey at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2010, and draws heavily from his latest...
The Triumphant Decline of the WASP
Unlike almost every other dominant ethnic, racial or religious group in world history, white Protestants have ceded their socioeconomic power by hewing voluntarily to the values of merit and inclusion, values now shared broadly by Americans of different backgrounds. The decline of the Protestant elite is actually its greatest triumph.
Ha! Another great piece from the Onion. They’ve...
“Well, I’m hoping they will learn, and I spoke to two young groups today, one of...”
– “The Answers Are Coming from the Bottom”: Legendary Detroit Activist Grace Lee Boggs on the US Social Forum” (via lazz) (via curate)
“One must remember that power is not an emsemble of mechanisms of nagation,...”
– Michel Foucault, Entretiens avec Roger-Pol Droit (via a4rizm)
“Third, the rule of Empire operates on all registers of the social order...”
– Empire (via xjustsmokemycigaretteandhush) (via jhnbrssndn)
Food stamp usage drastically rises in Gulf region... →
abbyjean:
Applications for food stamps in Panhandle counties have soared since oil began gushing from the broken BP pipe leak. Since May 1st application are up 15 percent. The Department of Children and Families is keeping separate data to track people who qualify for food stamps because the oil has destroyed their careers. Don Winstead is the Welfare Advisor for DCF. He says along with the...
William Gibson on research
Q: You write from 10AM til whenever. Is research a separate activity?
A: I don't regard research as a separate activity. From anything. Everything is research. Relatively little great stuff turns up for me as a result of deliberately looking. Life is crowd-sourcing. In a good way.
Q: The reason I ask is that research tends to wander off into the weeds so easily, especially on the internets.
A: But they hide the good stuff *in the weeds*!
"This nation has never known democracy in the...
According to the BJS report released today, the number of people locked up in state prisons decreased last year (by .2%, or 2,941 prisoners — 1,069 here in MD), while the overall number of people imprisoned in US has increased (up 3.4% at the federal level). All told, there were 3,897 more people incarcerated on January 1, 2010 than there were a year earlier. Of course, these numbers...
On the Moral Depravity of Capitalism in 21 Tweets. →
Cynthia Boaz demonstrating that, in some ways, capitalism isn’t really complicated at all.
“Butler put her celebrity-theorist status to good use. But let’s also celebrate...”
– Jasbir Puar, “Celebrating Refusal: The Complexities of Saying No”
Puar’s work, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times is, to my knowledge, still the most thorough treatment of “homonationalism” as a concept, and seems to be the theoretical foundation...
dropouthangoutspaceout:
The other things I rejected, as I rejected also their third point, that since culture and production are related, the advocacy of a different system of production is in some way a cultural directive, indicating not only a way of life but new arts and learning … I saw the future, and it didn’t work. The Marxist interpretation of culture can never be accepted while it...
“The monstrously complex task of drilling for oil a mile beneath the surface of...”
– Tim Dickinson, “The Spill, The Scandal and the President” Rolling Stone
Great piece on the regulatory failure that precipitated the BP disaster — a failure that continues today. I appreciate that it gets beyond the simple BP-bashing in order to initiate a larger conversation about...
“Neither writer comprehends large-scale economic processes. For instance, in...”
– “Gentrification and Its Discontents: Manhattan Never Was What We Think it Was,” The Atlantic
Benjamin Schwarz on the ways in which contemporary urban scholars like Michael Sorkin (Twenty Minutes in Manhattan) and Sharon Zukin (Naked City) fall into some of the same ahistorical traps as...
Judith Butler refuses PRIDE award in Berlin →
lowendtheory:
“I must distance myself from this racist complicity.”
Awesome.
“While liberal-progressives remain embedded in ‘neo-keynsian’ statest ideology,...”
– James Petras, “Twenty-Two Reasons Why American Working People Hate the State”
lowendtheory:
So let me get this straight. African football players come to Europe and are expected to tolerate throes of European fans constantly calling them monkeys (if not worse), and throwing bananas on the field when they play.
But now, when European players come to Africa, they expect to be catered to because they can’t handle a couple fucking horns?
forgot she lived here →
Edit: Here’s the article. Funniest part: “In March 2009, city transportation officials towed a van connected with the couple’s security detail. The van had been parked near the Charles Street rowhouse and accumulated six parking tickets. The agent in charge of the regional Secret Service office paid the fines and retrieved the van from the impound lot on Pulaski Highway.” I...
Food Stamps Now Usable At Some Baltimore Farmer's... →
“All the actions and few tid bits of information all lead to one inescapable...”
– “Is the BP Gusher Unstoppable?”
'Baraka' star among 22 indicted in W. Baltimore... →
One of the kids featured in the film Boys of Baraka — a documentary about impoverished Baltimore kids given scholarships to study at a boarding school in Kenya — was indicted in yesterday’s huge round-up of folks allegedly tied to a drug ring in the Gilmor Homes, a public housing site on the west side. These things always seem that much more tragic when there is some emotional...
“Afrikaners are a funny lot. Prejudice has grafted itself on to their genome. The...”
– Luke O’Brien, “If They Decide To Start Killing Us,” The Young Afrikaner Said, “We Are Ready” Dead Spin
“Over at The Atlantic, business editor Megan McArdle lit up the Beltway...”
– Marc Bousquet, “The Worst-Paid High-School Graduates in the Country”
“You’re not supposed to just point and laugh at the guy’s glass jaw....”
– Rachel Maddow
newleft:
thepublics:
Football: a dear friend to capitalism
Modern societies deny men and women the experience of solidarity, which football provides to the point of collective delirium. Most car mechanics and shop assistants feel shut out by high culture; but once a week they bear witness to displays of sublime artistry by men for whom the word genius is sometimes no mere hype. Like a...
“Get used to it. The future is urban and in 50 years’ it may be weird to find...”
– The Endless City (via azspot) 