Sunday Reading
by zunguzungu
- Political Movements in Bahrain, Past, Present, and Future
- What We Owe to Each Other: An Interview with David Graeber, Part 1 and Part 2.
- The Moscow Protests, part one, two, three, and four
- When Oakland Is Under Attack, What Do We Do?
- Barack Obama Can’t Stop Making Stupid Sexist Jokes About His Daughters’ Dating Lives
- I’m Every Woman: Whitney Houston, the Voice of the Post-Civil Rights Era
- The Scandal of Michigan’s Emergency Managers
- Geneologies of Neoliberalism
- New Law Requires Women To Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion
- Unified (Gar)Field Theory
- From Greece: Declaration for the Defense of Society and Democracy
- Predictive analytics and information camouflage
- What is the Liquidity Trap?
- A Cold War Kafka: Orson Welles’ The Trial
- Dubai as it used to be.
- “We Have Chosen To Be Gay”
- America’s Gulag: The Money (in Politics) Behind Prison Privatization
- Private Prison Corporation Offers Cash In Exchange For State Prisons
- Africa’s eternal spring
The Top 1% Must Stop Insisting They’re Not Rich Right This Instant:
“Sure, it’s an objectively large sum of money,” they say. “But it is far smaller after I spend it.”
No shit.
Money pays for the costs of life. That is what money does. You can’t fucking argue that, hey, your money doesn’t go that far after you’ve already spent it. You used it! Paying taxes and paying bills and paying the mortgage and putting money in a retirement fund and going out to dinner are the things that money gets you. You asshole. Just because you didn’t blow it all on jewelry, caviar, and cocaine doesn’t mean you didn’t get anything out of it. This argument is like a man eating a hearty meal, licking his plate clean, then turning to a starving person and saying, “Look, we’re in the same boat. My plate is empty too!”
Podcasts from UCLA’s Near Eastern Studies Department:
- Hazem Kandil: Egypt: Whither the Revolution?
- Joel Beinin, Stanford University: Egypt: Whither the Revolution?
Inequality in Asia: The Local Effects of Global Capitalism:
- Prison Rape and the Government
- Twilight of the Lecture
- “Downton Abbey” anachronisms: beyond nitpickery
- Things Come Together: A Journey through Literary Lagos
- Can They Do That? Retaking Our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace
- America’s Failed Promise of Equal Opportunity
- Pity the Landlord
A lack of a culture war truce in one graph:
- 10 Thoughts About the House’s All-Male Panel Convened to Discuss My Vagina
- The Testimony Chairman Issa Doesn’t Want You to Hear
- Anonymous to shut down the net on March 31
- A.C.A.K.K.: All Cops Are Keystone Kops
- What Is the Question “What Are Women For?” For?
- Operation Virtual Shield (aka Persistent Video Surveillance Coming Soon)
- ‘Occupy Our Homes’ Looks To Save Fifth Detroit Resident From Foreclosure
- So what would your plan for Greece be?
- Passports for a Price
- Even kitchenmaids get the blues: compulsory heterosexuality on Downton Abbey
Telling the Story of the Congo, “on the partial and often inaccurate narrative about the conflict in eastern Congo which has gained currency among policymakers in the West”:
“One of the first speakers opened with a striking exercise: he pulled a map of the DRC up on the overhead and pointed to a variety of cities throughout the country, asking the audience how many people had visited each. A healthy number had visited Kinshasa, and nearly as many had been to Goma or Bukavu, but very few had been to Lubumbashi or Kisangani, let alone Mbuji-Mayi or Mbandaka. This is a very real result of the way in which our collective imagined geography of the DRC has shrunk to the extreme west (Kinshasa) and extreme east of the country, rendering the rest of the country not as no-man’s land, but as non-existent land.”
Ask someone who recently went to Iceland:
If you go to Iceland and someone asks you to bring them home a pack of Icelandic cigarettes, and you go into a store to ask what kind of “local Icelandic cigarettes” they have, and the very sweet young man working in the store explains, without a glint of cruelty, that there are no local Icelandic cigarettes, only imported ones, because Iceland doesn’t grow too tremendously much tobacco, it being Iceland and all, and you feel like an idiot, WELL let me spare you that experience, because that is what happens.
M.I.A. and the Impossibility of Selling Out:
[F]or anyone invested in M.I.A., even on just a superficial level, it’s hard to reconcile the new video with where she ended her week: onstage at the Super Bowl halftime show. She performed alongside Madonna, Nicki Minaj, and a cast of hundreds. Rarely has playing the Super Bowl seemed like a brazen, risky move, but there is no going back once you appear on network television’s highest-profile night, on a stage that’s been graced in recent years by a murderer’s row of people you weren’t sure were still alive. Is there a greater sign of having accepted one’s place in the mainstream? Her appearance, which was neither an invasion nor an occupation, neither radical nor chic, forces us to ask: Is it still possible to “sell out?”
[I]t’s for reasons completely disconnected from statistics where the differences blare like a siren. Tim Tebow’s commercials and personal branding speak about how everyone has always doubted him, but in reality, he’s has every privilege and advantage. He was home schooled but was still allowed to play Florida high school sports. He was allowed to play in a college spread offense built around his rather unique skill-set. He was drafted in the 1st round even though many scouts saw him as a mid to high round project. He is treated like an All-American superstar even without the game to back it up. His clean cut, Evangelical whiteness has caused Republican politicians sportswriters and a whole sector of sportswriters to simply swoon…Tim Tebow had the benefit of the doubt. Jeremy Lin was just doubted.
Pinterest: Delightful, Addictive, Theft:
One of the problems with this innovative and cool approach by the Wall Street Journal to writing about Pinterest by writing about Pinterest on Pinterest (and it is!) is that there you can’t address that, more than early Napster, more than Megaupload, more than any government-seized hip-hop blog, Pinterest is entirely copyright-infringement. It’s just that, unlike with music and movies, there’s no dumb and hostile industry lobby that represents, say, “every photographer everywhere.” If there was ever a place on the Internet that made you think SOPA was a good idea, it’d be right here! But there is, in the Journal itself, a spiffy little paragraph that saysthat Pinterest has found that being a website based on publishing other people’s photographs hasn’t “been a significant issue so far.”
- The Trials of Greg Mortenson
- Make, DARPA and the line in the sand and Make, DARPA and the line in the sand, #2
- ‘Personal Time in Alternative and Time-Travel Narrative: The Cases of Groundhog Day, Twelve Monkeys and 2001: A Space Odyssey‘
- Highly Irregular
- ‘A level of racist violence I have never seen’: UCLA professor Robin D. G. Kelley on Palestine and the BDS movement
moscow lynx dint wok sum raisin.
http://www.vqronline.org/blog/
[…] — a better solution — in a recent interview with David V. Johnson of The Boston Review (via zunguzungu). Graeber even uses the J-word:Boston Consulting Group, I believe, ran a model recently and came to […]
Expert discussion on Iceland in Volkskrant (Holland), and yes, they are angry:Again Google triotlasann, (sorry):*A deal is a deal, even for Iceland*By Frans Weekers, Han ten Broeke and Hans van BaalenThe European Commission, Iceland this week nominated for a fast approval process. Because it is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), the EU membership in 2013 already a fact. We believe that the Netherlands there is a stop stabbing. For this step, currently, is as foolish and wrong.Iceland has so far not excelled as reliable State of the EEA. In Ice-save the file sin the country 3 times against European norms. As a member of the Icelandic banks were in other EEA States banking. Thus, in a short time in the Netherlands nearly 2 billion Euro savings obtained. Condition for this was that Iceland was to ensure sound financial control. But the parliamentary inquiry into the credit crisis has been reported that the Icelanders have lied to the Dutch authorities and their control has failed. Iceland did not therefore comply with the agreements.Iceland pledged to continue its European deposit guarantee scheme, an important guarantee for confidence in the financial sector and vital for the stability of the system. Since then, however Landesbankii Iceland went bankrupt, the warranty costs could not bear the Netherlands with the Netherlands agreed to take over Iceland’s debt amounting to over 1.3 billion Euro (coughed up by the Dutch banking and Dutch taxpayers). This event is on October 11, 2008 in an agreement. Iceland’s share would pay back with interest and costs. We are already half years on the line, and now comes to the crunch, Iceland does not belong. Iceland did this week even in the Netherlands on alternative proposals to form a new 0.5 billion euro extra leniency offered. Iceland does not therefore comply with the agreements.And third, Iceland has sinned against the European equality. When Landesbankii toppled, the Icelandic deposits were secured in a new Landesbankii, while non-Icelandic deposits in the bankrupt estate of Landesbankii remained. The Icelanders were so favored as other Europeans for their money could whistle. Iceland is actively trying to get under the agreements.A country that wants to do the lusts of the European market, but not the disadvantages, it is not allowed to be quick. But first let Iceland come clean once and the old debts. And let the European Commission to that time but the red carpet they had rolled out again because she only has one flavor, as quickly and as much as possible, expand possible quickly as store. The welcoming reception is totally inappropriate. Just as the lenient attitude of the Dutch Minister of Finance is wholly inappropriate. And sit back and looking away from the Minister of Foreign Affairs is totally inappropriate. It left in the summer of 2009 when running the application to block any move to make now still to Dutch interests and the credibility of Europe to come. The Minister is not even trying to Iceland to keep its agreements.The VVD disagrees with the arguments to the billion loan, provided that the Netherlands to Iceland, to forgive. It is unwise for the Dutch taxpayer, but eventually arrested for Iceland wrong. Iceland is indeed in trouble, but is certainly not a poor country. Although the debt of Iceland has risen to more than three times the personal income, the country is technically bankrupt and the value of the Krona has been halved compared to the euro, Iceland will continue in the coming years wealthier than France or Germany for example. For pity is no place. Moreover, it is expected that 75% of the damage of Landesbanki can be recovered. The financial isolation that now threatens Iceland, can only be evaded by showing confidence and cooperate, which occur on recovery prospects, and a possible European membership.But this is as yet no idea. On the contrary, the current irresponsible behavior of the Icelandic politicians, only equals the irresponsible bankers to show that their spread. And that is to put it mildly, unwise. Because the only way out of this swamp that Iceland leads by good agreements with its creditors and the IMF. The will to those agreements to meet the present and confidence of a recovery plan will then pave the path. But while the Dutch and British only a small proportion of the total Icelandic debt recovered, we are by the Icelandic politics presented as the great bogeymen. Our generosity and gullibility are punished and that allows new creditors rightly kopschuw (apprehensive, Troy). Not that we require repayment, but the refusal of the Icelandic president to sign agreements and then to provoke a referendum triggered a financial junk status in Iceland! We do not want the Dutch taxpayer longer pays for this Icelandic collision course.If no appointment is agreement, there is no basis for the European Union. Therefore the VVD took all last summer that the application of Iceland to join the EU not in treatment should have been taken. The EU needs a candidate can trust and it is no more evident with Iceland. We therefore call on Minister Verhagen to repent now and still put a spanner in the foot when it comes to membership of Iceland. And we call on the Minister for the Hunter to Dutch injury by all legal means to Iceland to recover.Our patience with Iceland is over!Frans Weekers en Han ten Broeke are resp. the spokesmen Financial affairs and European matters of the Liberal Party (VVD). Hans van Baalen leads the Liberals in the European Parliament and reports on Icelandic affairs for the liberal ALDE fraction.
[…] From the Boston Review, via zunguzungu: […]
I wanted to crush her to be heonst. Kind of how you feel when a puppy snips at you. I am going to avoid blogs that don’t intersect with me from now on. Too much garbage out there. Thanks for responding, I liked your Kindle piece.
[…] — with the help of the Occupy movement — had not defied the law, EGT would have succeeded. Human Rights Contested – Part I Human Rights Contested – Part […]
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Very valid, pithy, succinct, and on point. WD.