September 2010
1 post
WatchSo John Stewart has announced his ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’, as a counter-rally to Glenn Beck’s recent ‘Rally to Restore Honor’.
I find John Stewart’s call for this rally to be reactionary and misleading (though clever). Why? First, because it seeks to discredit all forms of protest as meaningless wastes of time that ‘real’ people don’t have...
March 2010
2 posts
Education cuts are connected to the needs of labor →
Evidence of this can be seen in the quote found at the link above:
Potential Republican California governor nominee, Steve Pozner was quoted saying:
“Not everyone is destined for UC Berkeley,” he said, citing gang members at the San Jose school where he taught. “What happened to vocational education? Not everyone is going to end up in or even needs to go to college.”
...
Can Delhi take back 40% of ‘India’ from the...
*This is a dope article about the Maoist/Naxalite movement sweeping India. Super inspiring and interesting. I found it here:
Roiling with contained anger at the revisiting of colonial history with a new face, the deep hinterlands of the Indian sub-continent is once again witnessing the explosion and implosion not seen since late Sixties when the peasants and tribal uprising shook the entire...
February 2010
24 posts
“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the...”
– Howard Zinn (via fuckyeahradicalquotes)
“If you want to make changes in the world, you’re going to have to be there day...”
– Noam Chomsky
http://www.againstthegrain.org/node?page=1 →
This is such a great podcast. I have been listening to this guy on Itunes-U for a while (Dacher Keltner). If you want to find more, look for UC Berkeley evolutionary psychology on Itunes.
Here’s the description:
“Survival of the fittest, or survival of the kindest? Where does the human capacity for goodness come from? And are human emotions social constructions, or are they wired...
“But today, they tell us, the nation is once again in trouble. To that shameless...”
– http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/02/12/horrid-scenario-for-us-to-be-saved/
Fear of the Inexplicable by Rainer Maria Rilke
One of my favorite poets ever.
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But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been...
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Budget Cuts are Raced & Gendered
Here is a paper I wrote last semester about the budget cuts where I argue that the budget cuts are inherently racist and gendered because the modern liberal nation-state is inherently gendered due to its private-public split and the way gender has been mapped onto that split.
Also, I argue that the budget cuts are raced because the state is inherently raced, but I don’t really elaborate too...
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California & Greece Pt. 2: The vicious cycle of...
Greece and California: Pt 2.
Okay so I want to continue writing about the parallels between Greece and California. This post is going to be me trying to explain the current crisis as best as I can, and I am not sure that I am 100% correct.
What do Greece and California have in common? Both governments have tremendous deficits and both rely on large loans (in the form of bonds) for revenue.
Now...
“The EU isn’t attacking Greece, or neglecting Greece, as Stiglitz claims. Greek...”
– LENIN’S TOMB: The speculators attack (via jhnbrssndn)
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Greek Public Sector on Strike!
Hell yes! In the face of the immense pressure from the European Union, Greek public sector workers go on strike AGAIN!
Its interesting that early into the article on this strike, the NYTIMES quickly reiterates the slimy attack on public workers that is often used here in the U.S. against public sector workers. The charge? They accuse the public sector workers of being...
Hiram Monserrate is finally expelled, but is that...
State senator Hiram Monserrate has finally been expelled from the senate. More than A YEAR after was arrested for STABBING HIS GIRLFRIEND IN THE FACE.
It all started after Monserrate was arrested in 2008. When it first happened Monserrate’s partner told police it was an intentional attack (obviously). But soon after the story broke, Karla Giraldo (his partner) recanted, claiming it was an...
Towards a Feminist Marxist Approach to Love and...
Okay so this is day three of my Facebook strike.
On this day I think I will attempt to sketch out the contours of my Feminist Marxist Philosophy of Love. This is my *big* project, so please be kind.
Now, this is going to be a very roughly drawn out skeleton of more detailed writing I’ve done. The scope and breadth of my theorizing on this subject has dramatically expanded over the past few...
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Parallels between Greece and California:...
Over the past few weeks the financial pages have been filled with panic over the declining value of the Euro, which is being dragged down by a few European countries struggling from huge budget deficits. The budget woes of Greece have attracted the most attention, as Greece is in the worst financial shape of any country in Europe.
Many of us remember the way that Greece was rocked by massive...
Lobbying Imperils Overhaul of Student Loans →
This article reports that one of Obama’s central promises, to overhaul the student loan business has met a fatal challenge—coming in the form of payoffs from loan companies persuading congress to kill the reform bill.
Oh and don’t expect the Democrats to do anything to stop it.
“Political action committees for the lenders and company employees made $2.1 million in...
A Facebook Strike? A Facebook strike!
I’ve decided to go on Facebook strike.
Why? Here are my reasons:
1) Because I don’t write as much or as well as I used to, and I need to start again. However, facebook takes up a lot of time.
2) Because when I think about the time I do spend on facebook, I am struck by how much of my life I spend interacting with people in ways that are meaningless and antisocial. Too much of my...
January 2010
6 posts
what do i believe in? strongly?
posted january 22nd
written in journal august 23, 2009
1. I believe that unconditional self love is developed in individuals through the unconditional love of parents.
2. That love can heal almost anything, if applied deeply and consistently.
3. That there is no such thing as evil people or good people. Our species is flawed and full of potential, simultaneously. We have the capacity to be...
Notes/Quotes Taken From bell hooks' Book: All...
Love
A combination of care, commitment, trust, knowledge responsibility, respect.
Requires the courage to take risks
Is an action not a feeling
cannot exist without justice
abuse and neglect cannot exist with love
requires a willingness to accept criticism & a capacity to reflect on behavior and change without losing dignity and authority
truth, not lies, justice requires honesty.
...
“You’ve got your whole life to do something,
And that’s not very...”
– Ani DiFranco
aliens
The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien. - Karl Marx
[taken from a passage from...
Freewritten Thoughts on Haiti and U.S. “Aid” ...
Okay I haven’t done one of these in a while. Freewritten Thoughts on Haiti and U.S. “Aid” (unedited) Two hundred thousand people have been killed in Haiti. That number is inconceivable to you. Not because you’re a bad person, or one incapable of empathy, but because its close to impossible for you to understand. You, who has never known what it is like to have everyone you have ever met either...
consciousness & necessity
We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to. - Karl Marx
My name is Sycorax, and this is my blog. I aim to be an...