Just Like Saint Augustine
{ wear }
Why aren’t more people freaking out about the new Venezuelan labor law?
You know, the one that gives housewives/full-time mothers a pension— wages for housework?
It’s ONLY A HUGE VICTORY FOR FEMINISM, SOCIALISM, AND WOMEN OF COLOR. Not a big deal or anything. Tumblr is mysteriously silent about this.
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2013/05/venezuelas-new-labour-law-best-mothers-day-gift
(via commie-femme)
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (via howtotalktogirlsdialectically)
(via fuckyeahdialectics)
It is impossible at the present time to write history without using a whole range of concepts directly or indirectly linked to Marx’s thought and situating oneself within a horizon of thought which has been defined and described by Marx. One might even wonder what difference there could ultimately be between being a historian and being a Marxist.
The ‘Humanitarian’ Pretext: Why Applying Moral Purpose to the Warfare State is Absurd
(via jayaprada)This could hardly have been clearer back when the Clinton administration bombed Serbia under the pretext of stopping a humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. Up until that point, the number of Kosovar Albanians that had been killed probably didn’t surpass 2,000. Compare that with the tens of thousands of Kurdish separatists in Turkey who were being slaughtered as Washington sent unprecedented amounts of money and weapons to Ankara. The same goes for Indonesia, as it was carrying out much larger atrocities against the people of East Timor.
Another giveaway is that one of the requirements for “humanitarian intervention” is that it is something only the United States may do. So, as the United States was rampaging into Iraq in a war based entirely on false pretenses, it was a criminal act for Iran to lend support to Iraqi insurgents trying to oust the occupier which had literally just caused a humanitarian crisis by invading. Meanwhile, the U.S. can aid and abet the Syrian rebels and claim it is legitimate because they aim to mitigate the humanitarian crisis (the policy has prolonged the suffering, by the way).
Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Chapter 17 (via anarcheluxemburg)
(via englishmajorandcoffee)
In capitalist society, free time is produced for one class by the conversion of the whole lifetime of the masses into labour time
Spanish final tomorrow? Yes.
Do I have anymore mental fortitude or self-discipline to study than I had a month ago? Nope.
“F as in Fidelity”
Gilles Deleuze: From A to Z with Claire Parnet Semiotext(e) and MIT Press
(via englishmajorandcoffee)
(Unpacking the Snowflake - Kevin M. Hemer)
In 1962— before Civil Rights legislation, when Black people were literally having their houses bombed for moving into white neighborhoods, and Black neighborhoods were being bombed in entirety for having nice houses, white people were literally releasing dogs on Black children (my parents) for walking to school, Black children and teenagers were literally leaving school to protest and then being arrested for demanding to be treated equally, police commissioners were driving through Black neighborhoods in tanks to instill fear in them for wanting to be treated equally, everything was separate with Black people getting the shittier end, they literally had lower education standards for Black schools and Black people were still getting lynched and the KKK was strong—
White people when surveyed said “there is equal opportunity“… So don’t think it’s weird that 93% or so of white people still think “there is equal opportunity” today. They’ve literally always been wrong and still are.
(via fuckyeahcracker)
This post isn’t about welfare, but it beautifully illustrates a point I’ve been making (or trying to make) since I started this blog:
Privileged people do not understand the realities of people who lack their privilege.
White people assume PoC have the same education and job opportunities.
People with permanent addresses assume homeless people can just fill out an application for McDonalds or Burger King, be hired, and immediately use their paychecks to secure housing.
People who don’t receive welfare assume people on welfare are lazy and intentionally having multiple children and not looking for jobs.
This is why I am always, always asking people if they’ve ever considered that maybe, JUST MAYBE, they don’t have the whole story about their cousin/neighbor/friend’s sister. Because people in privilege tend to ascribe their own circumstances to everyone, even when that’s the exact opposite of reality.
(via getoutofthewelfaretag)
(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)
In one 1962 survey roughly 90 percent of White people believed Black children had an equally fair opportunity to get a quality education as White children. Wise recognizes that White Americans’ lack of awareness—and denial about the extent of racial inequality in America—is dated, calling it “borderline delusional”.
Robert Reich (via azspot)
(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)
The real scandal is that: The IRS has interpreted our tax laws to allow big corporations and wealthy individuals to make unlimited secret campaign donations through sham political fronts called “social welfare organizations,” like Karl Rove’s “Crossroads,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and “Priorites USA.” This campaign money has been used to bribe Congress to keep in place tax loopholes like the “carried interest” rule that allows the managers of hedge funds and private equity funds to treat their income as capital gains, subject only to low capital gains taxes rather than ordinary income taxes, and other loopholes that allow CEOs to get special tax treatment on giant compensation packages that now average $10 million a year.
You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals so let’s have no choice but to eat the weakest of our young during the harsh winter months
Tunisia: Labour and the capital
(via jayaprada)
Building on their experiences leading precursor protest movements in 2008 and 2010, the unions provided an organisational structure that helped make the scale and persistence of the demonstrations possible.
“Since Tunisia’s independence, the labour movement served as a rare legal conduit for expressing dissent… It played a key role in sustaining the 2011 protest movement, which it framed as rooted in economic grievances,” according to congressional researcher and Africa analyst Alexis Arieff.
This history of dissent in Tunisia, from independence in 1956 to Ben Ali’s departure in 2011, is well-known across the North African country.
But the labour movement is by no means universally popular. For all its influence, the unions failed to win significant parliamentary representation in the 2012 constitutional elections.
Tunisia’s religious right have long opposed its programmes, in some cases by violence. In February 2012, the International Trade Union Congress reported that UGTT regional offices in Bou Salem, Ben Gardane, and Jendouba were burned down by Salafi groups, which labelled the organisation an “enemy of God”.
Fedayeen from Fatah at a rally in Beirut, Lebanon ca. 1979
Palestinian fedayeen are militants or guerrillas of a nationalist orientation from among the Palestinian people. Fedayeen emerged from the Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their villages as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
The Palestinian movement relocated most of its fighting strength to Lebanon at the end of 1970 after being expelled from Jordan in the events known as Black September. Due to the relocation, a series of Israeli raids on Lebanon took place, causing the Lebanese government to grant the PLO the right to defend Palestinian refugee camps there and to possess heavy weaponry.
This played a central role in the Lebanese Civil War that began in 1975, and then the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s. Israeli armored artillery and infantry forces, supported by air force and naval units again entered Lebanon on 6 June 1982 in an operation code-named “Peace for Galilee”, encountering fierce resistance from the Palestinian fedayeen there.
Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon and its siege and constant shelling of the capital Beirut in the 1982 Lebanon War, eventually forced the Palestinian fedayeen to accept an internationally brokered agreement that moved them out of Lebanon to different places in the Arab world.
(via konkretpolitik)
