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Doctor Who “stained glass” prints by Mandie Manzano
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“I call it the niggerization of a people, not just black people, because America been niggerized since 9/11. When you’re niggerized, you’re unsafe,...”
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Who’s this?!
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Mint & Lime juice cubes. How cool is this. Great idea from Whole Foods.
Can you say mojito? Oh yeah
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“Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you...”
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How a two-party political system works, in one gif.
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If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder,...
Lauryn Hill Ordered by the Court to Undergo “Counseling” Due to her “Conspiracy Theories”
The name of Lauryn Hill’s breakout album was The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill but it now appears that the powers that be would like her to record a new album called The Re-Education of Lauryn Hill. After appearing in court for tax evasion, Hill was sentenced to three months in jail PLUS she must attend “counseling” due to her “conspiracy theories”.
According to the IBTimes, Hill told the court: “I am a child of former slaves who had a system imposed on them. I had an economic system imposed on me.” Furthermore, Hill also believes that artists are being oppressed by (what the article calls) “a plot involving the military and media”. Because of these statements, Hill was ordered to undergo “counseling”, which is a way of saying that she is mentally ill and that she needs some sort of re-programming session regain “sanity”.
In 2012, Hill published a thoughtful letter describing the corruption, the oppression and the control of the music industry and her desire to escape it. In one part of the letter, Lauryn states
“It was this schism and the hypocrisy, violence and social cannibalism it enabled, that I wanted and needed to be freed from, not from art or music, but the suppression/repression and reduction of that art and music to a bottom line alone, without regard for anything else. Over-commercialization and its resulting restrictions and limitations can be very damaging and distorting to the inherent nature of the individual. I Love making art, I Love making music, these are as natural and necessary for me almost as breathing or talking. To be denied the right to pursue it according to my ability, as well as be properly acknowledged and compensated for it, in an attempt to control, is manipulation directed at my most basic rights! These forms of expression, along with others, effectively comprise my free speech! Defending, preserving, and protecting these rights are critically important, especially in a paradigm where veiled racism, sexism, ageism, nepotism, and deliberate economic control are still blatant realities!!!”
(See my article entitled Lauryn Hill’s Tumblr Letter on the Music Business for the full letter).
wow, way to fucking delegitimize and pathologize the experiences of a Black woman by abusing mental health resources and language to avoid the real shit she brings up.
Conspiracy theories because oppression is not real.
so much b/s. the state is an ugly piece of work
(via freshmouthgoddess)
A letter from Banksy - Imgur
After the second world war, a few privileged Americans developed a brilliant formula for building an unimaginably huge economy:
[Our economy] demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns […] We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption.
~American retail analyst Victor Lebow (hat tip to reader Anna for this)
This is very-high-level marketing, and it has formed most of the developed world around you.
Using the television as their primary tool, very-high-level marketers have managed to create a nation of people who typically:
- work almost all the time
- absorb several hours of advertising every night, in their own homes
- are tired and unhealthy and vaguely dissatisfied with their lives
- respond to boredom, dissatisfaction, or anxiety only by buying and consuming things
- have disposable income but can’t find a more fulfilling line of work without losing their health insurance
- create health problems for themselves, which can be treated with drugs they can “ask their doctor about”
- own far more items than they use, and believe they don’t have enough
- are easily distracted from the unhealthy state of their lives and their culture by breaking news and celebrity gossip
- perpetually convince themselves it is not the right time to make major lifestyle changes
- happily buy stuff that breaks within a year, and which nobody knows how to fix
- have learned, through the media’s culture of blame-mongering, that the key to solving public and private issues is to find the right people to hate
http://www.raptitude.com/2011/01/how-to-make-trillions-of-dollars/
Jeffrey Wright speaks his thoughts on Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (by SwaysUniverse)
Wright’s comments about Django start at 3:20
He’s right too.
“That’s not to say I don’t think you’re a talented actress. You most certainly are. In fact, I think you could surprise us with your performance in the film. That doesn’t change the fact that you are contributing to the ongoing invisibility of women who cannot remove their deep brown complexions, broad noses, and kinky hair every day after work. This project is a testament to the unconscionable arrogance of white supremacy. By taking part, you’ve condoned that arrogance.”
Why are Women Devouring Fifty Shades of Grey? - Gail Dines, professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston. (via mehreenkasana)
Having not read it that helps me to understand this craze a lot better
nice blend/picture of gender, power (wealth, violence, structure), patriarchy and popular culture
(via brasssnuggles)
The Science News Cycle
The current model of “class-mobility” reinforces separatism and a class-hierarchy because it posits that in order to escape oppression, one must become an oppressor – and universities do not merely mediate the boundary between professional and laborer, they teach the body of knowledge, the worldview, the values that mark a person as professional, as “belonging” to the middle- or upper-class.
Universities teach us to renounce our sense of identification with the poor; they teach us this by mainly ignoring the existence of poor people and by treating us as “other” when we do become the subject of discussion. Universities teach us not to care too much, because it will undermine our professional role. Universities teach that we are separate from where we came from, that we are “qualified” (which suggests our families and peers are not), that we are justified in having power over people, in speaking for the subjects of our study. Universities teach us that we are “too good” to wait tables and clean houses, with the implication that those who do those jobs are “not good enough” to deserve better.
Poor people tend to see university as a way out for their kids, but university is also a way in to the class of people whose success is premised on the oppression of the poor…For a kid to become educated meant that he or she would live an easier life that was premised on the oppression and invisibility of the very communities s/he came from.
-Megan Lee: “Maybe I’m Not Class-Mobile; Maybe I’m Class-Queer”, from the anthology Feminism For Real: Deconstructing The Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism. Quoted at Racialicious, March 8, 2011.
This spoke to me deeply. I’m not sure if I agree with every bit of it- and I certainly want to read the full essay- but it’s definitely opening up my mind.
(via classragespeaks)
“[Attorney general Anand] Ramlogan said citizens’ rights are not suspended during a State of Emergency, but rather the police’s powers are bolstered.
“‘It is not that your Constitutional rights are suspended,’ he said.”
— “Cops can arrest without charge”, by Andre Bagoo;
Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, 23 August, 2011
“Ramlogan said the public’s constitutional rights have not been suspended in the situation.”
— “The war is on …”, by Gail Alexander;
Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 23 August, 2011
Trinidad and Tobago is in a state of emergency, a constitutionally defined legal situation in which basic civil rights may be temporarily curtailed or suspended in the interest of public order and safety. The government says this “very decisive action” is necessary to deal with violent crime and gang activity, which have proliferated alarmingly over the past decade.
This is a strategy some prominent citizens have recommended in the past, and many now agree that drastic action is justified, with two recent murder sprees adduced as evidence that gang-related killings are out of control. The government says the police need additional powers of search, arrest, and detention, and the state of emergency also makes it possible for the Defence Force to exercise police powers. It has also made it possible to declare a nighttime curfew in “hotspot” areas, which include Port of Spain, its closest suburbs, San Fernando, Arima, and Chaguanas.
Ordinary Trinidadians have been most immediately affected by the curfew, which disrupts our daily activities and economic productivity. And the authorities maintain that, the curfew aside (a major aside), “law-abiding” citizens will not be affected by the state of emergency. But this is a deliberate obfuscation of the scope of the Emergency Powers Regulations now in force, which suspend or curtail habeas corpus and our rights to free movement, expression, assembly, association, and privacy — for all citizens, not only “criminal elements”.
“Ramlogan said in the last nine years the country was in an ‘undeclared state of emergency’ and people have used self-imposed curfews to stay safe.”
— “AG vows to make country safe again”, by Renuka Singh;
Trinidad Express, 22 August, 2011
I have no legal training whatsoever, but I understand this: democracy requires negotiating a balance between individual rights and needs and a community’s common good. Every society grapples with this negotiation in its own way, according to its circumstances, and the process is continuous (because history is restless). This balance is expressed in written laws and unwritten conventions, in which every citizen has a vital interest. In a healthy democracy, citizens recognise and assert this interest, and any change in that balance between individual rights and the common good should be accompanied by vigorous and informed debate. A healthy democracy requires dissent.
It also requires that citizens ask questions. So here are some of mine.
Why is the attorney general — a very smart man and clearly also a smartman, as all lawyers perhaps must be — actively misleading the public about the extent to which the “fundamental rights and freedoms” recognised in section 4 of the constitution have been derogated by the Emergency Powers Regulations? It is simply not true that “the public’s constitutional rights have not been suspended”. Temporarily suspending or limiting constitutional rights — shifting the balance between citizens and authorities — is the whole point of the regulations.
Why did the government declare the state of emergency in the absence of the commissioner of police and his deputy, considering that the Emergency Regulations give the commissioner significant and augmented powers of discretion over citizens’ rights? Whether or not you agree that a foreign citizen should have been appointed commissioner, whether you think he has done a good or bad job, it ought to concern us that the government did not request the commissioner’s immediate return under these extraordinary circumstances.
Why — if the objective of the state of the emergency is to give the police temporary special powers to round up illegal arms and disrupt gang activity — were the Emergency Powers Regulations not drafted more narrowly so as to impinge on as few basic rights as possible? What does a ban on public meetings “held for the purpose of the transaction of matters of public interest or for the discussion of such matters” have to do with rooting out crime? Or a ban on “any document … likely … to cause disaffection or discontent among persons”? Many works of literature make me feel disaffected or discontented. Are novels to be confiscated? The regulations are drafted with sufficient breadth that the authorities may forbid almost all forms of expression. Do circumstances really justify such broad powers?
The authorities assure us that the police and Defence Force will operate within strict guidelines and with respect for citizens, and that the state of emergency will last no longer than absolutely necessary. Maybe — I hope — these assurances are reliable. They also say these extreme steps are in the interest of public safety. But I feel dreadfully and profoundly unsafe knowing that so many of my basic civil rights have been derogated, with no certainty about when they will be restored.
These rights only exist because of a hard-won consensus on human nature and our moral obligations to each other that has taken centuries to thrash out — in philosophical treatises, political tracts, and theological texts, in legislation and judicial rulings from many jurisdictions, in confrontations between citizens and their rulers, and in the everyday actions of ordinary people. They can continue to exist only if citizens are vigilant, informed, and unafraid to exercise their duty to ask questions and express dissent to the governments they elect to serve them.
