Gimme Culture

Rich Miller published this chart of the economics department of...

Wed, 30 May 2012 14:31:12 -0400

Rich Miller published this chart of the economics department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which in his view “provides much of the brainpower used to combat the global financial crisis.”

To what extent are they also responsible for creating the global financial crisis in the first place?

seen here

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Fri, 25 May 2012 20:58:33 -0400

“Dissent is what will save us.”

Wed, 23 May 2012 17:51:21 -0400

“Dissent is what will save us.”

In or out of the eurozone, we must ditch this failed model

Tue, 22 May 2012 21:53:13 -0400

In or out of the eurozone, we must ditch this failed model:

Great article. Please realise why the Camerons and others are trying to frighten the Greeks into accepting the Euro-establishment parties. It is because a Greek refusal to accept the austerity measures will lead to a global implosion of the world’s banking system!

It goes like this. Greeks don’t accept austerity, French and German banks need to write off big amounts of debt to Greeks. Spanish debt and Irish debt follows and the EU banks start to require massive recapitalisation. This puts huge pressure on the Euro and makes it almost impossible to finance budget deficits in the Eurozone. The Euro falls, the Pound falls and US banks exposed to either or both need to write-down their debts and in turn need to be recapitalised. The amounts we are talking will push Government borrowing over the edge and force Governments to choose between continuing to back their friends the bankers or at last back the people. They will eventually back the people and the banks will be allowed to fail (something that shoud have happened in 2008).

- comment from wazzally

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Fri, 18 May 2012 17:56:40 -0400

washingandbleach: Gathering things for Trinidad. So excited.

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:49:36 -0400

washingandbleach:

Gathering things for Trinidad.

So excited.

Bertrand Russell's 10 Commandments of Teaching

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:27:53 -0400

Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/02/a-liberal-decalogue-bertrand-russell/

Trying to understand SYRIZA

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:29:25 -0400

Trying to understand SYRIZA:

paulmasonnews:

This is less of a blog more of a series of notes to try and enhance understanding of who SYRIZA and its leader Alexis Tsipras actually are, and how they might behave if, as polls suggest, they become the winning party in a second Greek general election. I’ve been troubled by the lack of historical depth in most of the profiles published in newspapers; and of course my own knowledge is limited to English sources. I’ve checked this with two authoritative Greek sources. It should go up on my BBC blog soon. Get ready to hear about parties and political currents that most commentators believed were insignificant just a few years ago:

"Contemporary forms of oppression do not routinely force people to submit. Instead, they manufacture..."

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:53:01 -0400

“Contemporary forms of oppression do not routinely force people to submit. Instead, they manufacture consent for domination so that we lose our ability to question and thus collude in our own subordination.”

- Patricia Hill-Collins

I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how...

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:25:28 -0400

I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.

(via Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is)

“When your life is half over,” Carlos Fuentes said in his...

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:14:26 -0400

“When your life is half over,” Carlos Fuentes said in his 1981 Paris Review interview, “I think you have to see the face of death in order to start writing seriously. There are people who see the end quickly, like Rimbaud. When you start seeing it, you feel you have to rescue these things. Death is the great Maecenas, Death is the great angel of writing. You must write because you are not going to live any more.”

Did the White House Direct the Police Crackdown on Occupy?

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:32:55 -0400

Did the White House Direct the Police Crackdown on Occupy?:

A new trove of heavily redacted documents provided by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) on behalf of filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild makes it increasingly evident that there was and is a nationally coordinated campaign to disrupt and crush the Occupy Movement.

The new documents, which PCJF National Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard insists “are likely only a subset of responsive materials,” in the possession of federal law enforcement agencies, only “scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with ‘anti-terrorism’ funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement.”

theyoungradical: so true

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:59:35 -0400

theyoungradical:

so true

"Young people are more affected by the outcomes of the democratic process than other cohorts; their..."

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:56:45 -0400

“Young people are more affected by the outcomes of the democratic process than other cohorts; their youth means that by and large they will live with the consequences of political decisions for longer. Furthermore, young people are at a crucial life-stage – undertaking education and training, embarking on careers, forming families – where the impact of political decisions will have a decisive and cumulative effect on their socio-economic circumstances and life chances across their lifecourses. The growing power of ‘the grey vote’ appears to have had real consequences for the ability of young people to make themselves heard within the democratic process, but more worryingly, may begin to undermine the legitimacy of democracy itself.”

- Cohort size matters: democracy is in danger as young people’s disenfranchisement accelerates

Marijuana Arrests

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:08:37 -0400

Marijuana Arrests:

U.S. government studies consistently find that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than young blacks or Latinos. Yet, in large cities and counties throughout the United States, young blacks and Latinos are arrested and jailed for marijuana possession at much higher rates than young whites.

In New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, police arrest blacks for marijuana possession at seven times the rate of whites. Usually, the people arrested were not smoking in public. Police typically found the small amount of marijuana when they stopped, frisked, and searched the young people, often in their own neighborhoods.

Marijuana-Arrests.com is an on line library of materials about the huge numbers of racially-biased marijuana possession arrests, their consequences, and the law enforcement policies and operations which produce them.

T&T Carnival 2012 through the eyes of Scorch Magazine…

Sat, 12 May 2012 14:06:00 -0400

T&T Carnival 2012 through the eyes of Scorch Magazine…

"Critical thinking is about acquiring heuristics regarding challenging the status quo or myths of..."

Sat, 12 May 2012 11:33:53 -0400

“Critical thinking is about acquiring heuristics regarding challenging the status quo or myths of research. But more importantly, critical thinking is about widening one’s horizon, based on the assumption that a wider horizon is a better horizon because it allows for a better understanding and a drawing on more sources for decisions than a narrow horizon.”

- Radical Philosophical Critique and Critical Thinking in Psychology (2011) by Thomas Teo

(via scipsy)

worldedness: Gas Mask Man (from the protests in Greece)

Sat, 12 May 2012 11:28:39 -0400

worldedness:

Gas Mask Man (from the protests in Greece)

"SALLYBURGER, If you took THE NUMBER OF SUB-ATOMIC PARTICLES IN THE UNIVERSE and multiplied that..."

Sat, 12 May 2012 10:22:59 -0400

“

SALLYBURGER,

If you took THE NUMBER OF SUB-ATOMIC PARTICLES IN THE UNIVERSE and multiplied that number times itself THAT MANY TIMES; and then added the total number of MICRO-SECONDS since the beginning of time, times itself; and then added 803—you would STILL have only the tiniest fraction of A BILLION-BILLIONTH PER CENT of the amount of love I HAVE FOR YOU.

Love,

your candle partner,
the romantic Mr Carlin,
your eternal flame.

”

- The George Carlin Letters: The Permanent Courtship of Sally Wade

Opinion: Playing politics with the English language in Puerto Rico

Sat, 12 May 2012 10:18:15 -0400

univisionnews:

For the island’s residents, language has status and identity repercussions.

By Mónica Gutiérrez

There is something fierce and delicious, almost edible, in the alchemic ways of Puerto Rican Spanish. Boricuas don’t merely speak their very own brand of the language of Cervantes with an aspired “s,” a nasal “n” and a guttural “r.” They seem to channel Al-Andaluz and Africa with every inflection and sound. They dance with words that melt into each other, producing a beautiful melody of elliptical patterns.

Every exchange, transcendent or mundane, is capable of unleashing the full potency of their spirit like a tropical hurricane. The sons and daughters of the Enchanted Island speak with their entire bodies, loud, passionate and unapologetic. Rhythm and attitude are part of the message. Laugh, gesture, slang and humor are all ingredients of a good quotidian interaction if you are in Puerto Rico.

This week, Republican Gov. Luis Fortuño — who has been mentioned as a potential vice president candidate — announced a plan to require public schools to teach all courses in English in the unincorporated territory, limiting the education of Spanish to merely two courses: grammar and literature.

According to a report by the Associated Press, the pilot project starts immediately, with an investment of $15 million. Thirty-one schools will kick off in August and another 35 will reinforce a bilingual curriculum already in place. The full plan to include the island’s 1,472 schools is unclear, but the governor says he envisions all the students in the public system to be bilingual within a decade.

“Bilingualism opens doors and provides opportunity to our children so they can shine and become successful in a labor market that is increasingly competitive and globalized,” Fortuño said in Spanish. He said his motivation is economical, not political, but the fact is everybody knows it is. Of course English is political in Puerto Rico!

The announcement was received with skepticism for three reasons. First, the AP report stated the undeniable fact that the governor wants to do in a decade “what more than a century of American citizenship has failed to accomplish: make Puerto Ricans fluent in English”. Second, Fortuño has a steep electoral run ahead, so the possibility of implementation has yet to be determined by the electorate in November.

Third, he will have a hard time changing the tune in his own pro-statehood party, for decades, deceased leader, Republican Gov. Luis A. Ferré, assured that Puerto Rico could obtain “jíbaro statehood”. That is, integration with the U.S., but in their own terms, in Spanish and with full preservation of the culture.

But, wait a minute. What is wrong with speaking English in American territory? In recent years officials have made very clear to Puerto Ricans that English is the official language of the union and an unavoidable pre-requisite for statehood. The requirement only seems natural and very logical. The problem for Gov. Fortuño and the pro-statehood movement is that only half of the islanders want to be a state of the union, and that is a “jíbaro state” for the most part. Knowing they just can’t have it both ways anymore, they are pushing for full integration.

Isn’t it great if the kids can speak English to improve their chances in the global economy? Sure, also if they learned Mandarin too! But, it is just too obvious that the big picture is much more complicated than that. Puerto Rico has centuries of history and a rich culture that is older than the United States. Puerto Rican pride is legendary, even among those who dream of integration. You just cannot change that in a decade.

Imagine if in the U.S., starting in August, your kids would have to adapt to a Spanish curriculum, and English was relegated to merely two courses a year. I do not have to tell you that would start a revolution.

Is Fortuño playing politics for reelection, or trying to earn visibility and recognition in the Republican Party? All the political theater occurs while allegations of fraud in the local Republican primaries are making news on a daily basis. Imposing the English language has proven a failed tactic in Puerto Rico, so he is playing to look good on the national stage while justifying the announcement as an economic measure at the local level.

Today, Fortuño is bashing gay marriage, wait a bit and you will see him playing every trick in the conservative book soon enough. So let’s not focus on the obvious, because he is acting out his role with astonishing fidelity for what’s expected of his character.

The big elephant in the room is that boricuas will need to make up their minds sooner than later. With the economy on the ropes and their identity on the line, there aren’t three options anymore. Either they become fully acculturated to request access as the 51st state of the union, or they finally become a sovereign nation preserving language and culture.

The United States has an unavoidable elephant in the room too. The majority of Puerto Ricans now live on the mainland and are all U.S. citizens in their own right. Both Democrats and Republicans have dismissed the problem with hypocritical rhetoric, adducing the solution is in the hands of the islanders — as if they weren’t talking about their colonial subordinates. More than a century of intervention of their land and people comes with a huge responsibility, and that is a pachyderm way too real to ignore.

So what do we do with the elephants? A three-ring circus is not an option anymore.

Monica Gutierrez (born in Colombia in 1970) is a journalist, content strategist, experiential and digital creative director. She has lived and worked in various Latin American countries, including Puerto Rico, and Spain. Her interests are travel, literature, human rights, sustainable development and new media arts. She lives with her husband and child in Brooklyn, New York.