aballah

Lens Blog

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:16:00 -0400

Lens Blog:

…a nation born of a slave revolt was “using its own children as slaves was ridiculous…”

More here.

"The greatest mystery of all is reality."

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:57:18 -0400

“The greatest mystery of all is reality.”

- Beckmann (via showslow)

David?

theatlantic: “When the liberal says “race is a social construct,” he is not being a soft-headed...

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:26:32 -0400

theatlantic:

“When the liberal says “race is a social construct,” he is not being a soft-headed dolt; he is speaking an historical truth. We do not go around testing the “Irish race” for intelligence or the “Southern race” for “hot-headedness.” These reasons are social. It is no more legitimate to ask “Is the black race dumber than then white race?” than it is to ask “Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?””

— Ta-Nehisi Coates, on the idea of race.

Ogilvy and Mather Guinness advert, “Men and women...

Sat, 11 May 2013 10:46:06 -0400

Ogilvy and Mather Guinness advert, “Men and women shouldn’t live together,” from 1995, featuring a same-sex couple.

BOSTON REVIEW: This video of a Texas high school student taking his teacher to task...

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:22:26 -0400

BOSTON REVIEW: This video of a Texas high school student taking his teacher to task...:

bostonreview:

This video of a Texas high school student taking his teacher to task has become a viral hit. You may be asking, “What about the Texas miracle?”

The New York Times reports on the dismal finances of the state’s education system (and before you get there, the unionization rate of…

From the New Yorker regarding the recent factory fire in Bangladesh: Deaths in modern garment...

Thu, 09 May 2013 20:35:06 -0400

From the New Yorker regarding the recent factory fire in Bangladesh:

Deaths in modern garment factories tend to be different from plane crashes or many other catastrophic traumas in the slow-motion extravagance of their pain. For minutes, or even hours, workers’ lungs fill up with smoke. For days, even a week, workers struggle to survive under rubble until someone digs them out. Akter told me about a mother in a rural village who came to her for help after Tazreen. During that fire, the woman had gotten a call from her twenty-four-year-old son, a garment worker. “Mom,” he’d said, “there is a fire in the factory. I’m trying my best to escape, but smoke is filling my lungs.”

“Run to the stairs!” his mother told him, according to Akter. “Run to the window, and I’ll hop on a bus to come and get you.”

Ten minutes later, he called again. The stairs were jammed by a stampede. “Mom, I’m trying my best. There is no way I can get out.”

“Go to the toilet,” his mother told him, “and run the water so that it clears the smoke and you can breathe.” The son said, “O.K., I’m doing that.” He tried this, without luck, then returned to the factory floor, where his colleagues’ bodies were piling up in the dark.

Finally, he called home once more. This time, he rang with an apology. “Mom,” he cried, “it will be my last call—I’m dying for sure. I am sorry. I tried my best. I cannot breathe.” He wanted to convey a message. “I’m removing my shirt from my body, and I will tie it to my waist, so you can find me.” So he ripped off his shirt, made a knot around his torso, and collapsed so as to be found the next day by his mother.

WTF world, how can we still allow this to happen?

More here.

Colorlines has a great piece on the FBI’s placing of Assata Shakur on the “Most...

Wed, 08 May 2013 09:06:54 -0400

Colorlines has a great piece on the FBI’s placing of Assata Shakur on the “Most Wanted List.”

The article quotes FBI special agent Aaron Ford, who says, “No person, no matter what his or her political or moral convictions are, is above the law.” What about bankers and presidents though, people we know have blood and misery on their hands?

nrdc: The EPA will consider new rules that will impact the air...

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:56:43 -0400

nrdc:

The EPA will consider new rules that will impact the air we breathe. Sign on now to tell the EPA that Americans deserve to breathe cleaner air: http://bit.ly/15bVEeB

Every stationary source of emissions should be required to purchase and connect something similar to this: Air Quality Egg

bostonreview: Via Michael Greaney

Wed, 01 May 2013 13:54:49 -0400

bostonreview:

Via Michael Greaney

“Hate is increased by being returned, but can be destroyed by love.” Spinoza,...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:31:56 -0400

“Hate is increased by being returned, but can be destroyed by love.”

Spinoza, Ethics III P43

sonjabarbaric: The Night Watch (Detail) - Rembrandt, 1642

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:21:15 -0400

sonjabarbaric:

The Night Watch (Detail) - Rembrandt, 1642

Was There Even a BB Gun?

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:30:40 -0400

Was There Even a BB Gun?:

to what extent are we running from ghosts the terror industry has created over the last 10 years?

Watching the overwhelming response by police and security personel, I couldn’t help thinking this is what’s come of the war on terror—the militarization of our communities and home. And in the atmosphere of more terror and more fear we seem to have lost a sense of measure in our response to the other, which includes a degree of compassion even for those who’ve inflicted harm.

azspot: “Every War on Terror hawk mentioned in this column has a long list of predictions they’ve...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:20:49 -0400

azspot:

“Every War on Terror hawk mentioned in this column has a long list of predictions they’ve made about foreign policy and geopolitics, only to see them proved definitely wrong by subsequent events. None of them is among the pundits who grappled with their past errors in any meaningful way. Their pronouncements today are as untempered by self doubt as they ever were. If past performance meant anything in the pundit’s game, their past punditry (and Yoo’s discredited Bush-era legal analysis) would’ve long since stripped them of “War on Terror expert” status. They’re nevertheless regarded as experts on the right, despite the fact that they treat disagreement with their ideas as if it proves that their interlocutor is unaware that terrorism is a threat. Their most frequent targets are pretend. They can’t conceive of the fact that other people who take terrorism as seriously as they do reach dramatically different conclusions about the best way to respond to it.”

— After Boston: Don’t Get Fooled Again by the ‘War on Terror’ Hawks

kateoplis: “More girls have been killed in the last FIFTY years, precisely because they were...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:55:22 -0400

kateoplis:

“More girls have been killed in the last FIFTY years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in ALL the battles of the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any ONE decade, than people were slaughtered in ALL the genocides of the 20th century.”

—

Nicholas Kristof, Half the Sky

Read that AGAIN.

azspot: “What the 1% are is, effectively, a ruling class, they represent the point where...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:02:45 -0400

azspot:

“What the 1% are is, effectively, a ruling class, they represent the point where concentrated wealth can be turned into political power. National politics in the US has been reduced to battles between different factions of that 1%. This is not just a traditional Marxist bourgeoisie though—and this is where I think it dovetails with the argument in debt—it represents the effects of financialization whereby more and more, economic value is not extracted indirectly, through the wage, but directly, through rents and more generally by what they used to call “political-jural extraction,” which I think was Perry Anderson’s term for feudalism. I’m not saying we’re reverting to feudalism quite, but something else in some ways analogous. Whenever a surplus is extracted directly rather than indirectly, ideology also changes, since it’s much harder to disguise what’s really going on. Hence the neoliberal obsession, noted in the book, in preemptive attacks on anything that even looks like it’s an alternative. They’re barely even trying to convince anyone capitalism is a good system any more; just arguing that no other system is conceivable.”

— David Graeber

parabola-magazine: Everything in existence is crying out for a...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:54:27 -0400

parabola-magazine:

Everything in existence is crying out for a particular quality of consciousness that only humans can give. This doesn’t mean we are superior to nature, only that there’s an incredible need for a certain cooperation. The famous mystic Rudolph Steiner has said that for the agricultural process to happen, for seeds and plants, and trees to grow, birdsong is absolutely essential. This is a beautiful truth that very few people know. But we also need to take what he said one stage further, because birds call and sing not only to quicken plants: they also call to awaken the human seed that we are. They are actually singing for our sake as well. If we can start to listen to them, really listen, they will draw us into this greater consciousness I have been talking about. They will be our teachers, because nature is able to point us to our inner nature. …We are called to be there. When we can listen to what the birds have to say, to what nature has to say, and when we perceive the beauty of nature, then we are completing the circle and returning this physical world to its source through our own consciousness.

–Peter Kingsley in an interview with PARABOLA, Spring 2006 from the issue “Coming To Our Senses.”

Photograph: Edward Steichen, Blue Sky, 1923

azspot: Taxes for me but not for thee

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 11:55:30 -0400

azspot:

Taxes for me but not for thee

azspot: “Americans have been trained to resent taxes even though we are trying to run an advanced...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:17:56 -0400

azspot:

“Americans have been trained to resent taxes even though we are trying to run an advanced economy Walmart-style. My impression is that the citizens of many other countries are far less exercised about higher tax levels because they perceive they are getting value for money (medical services, good public transportation, etc). By contrast, we’ve had a 30 year campaign to make government incompetent by running it on the cheap and demonizing people who work in government jobs, and the result is less service and more corruption. This experiment is working just fine for those wealthy enough to be effectively stateless or to otherwise isolate themselves. And it will probably take at least a generation for the costs (such as public health problems) to afflict even them. Nicely played.”

— naked capitalism

humanrightswatch: Ban solitary confinement for youth in care of...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:15:45 -0400

humanrightswatch:

Ban solitary confinement for youth in care of the federal government

The United States leads the developed world in the number and percentage of children it locks up. A large number – more than 90,000 in each of the past five years, and some as young as at age 13 – are held in adult jails and prisons, where they are often isolated from the other prisoners for their own protection. They don’t fare much better in many state juvenile facilities, where isolation practices, some deemed excessive by the Department of Justice, are widely reported.

Solitary confinement – being held in isolation for 22-24 hours a day, day in and day out – can be harmful even for adults. But the potential damage to children, who do not have the maturity and resilience of an adult and are at a particularly vulnerable, formative stage of life, is much greater.

“Kids who had been in solitary told me how they lost control. They described fits of rage, anxiety attacks, depression. They told me about being denied adequate exercise, books and education, family visits. “The only thing left to do is go crazy – just sit and talk to the walls,” a youth confined in Florida told me. “Screaming, throwing stuff around – I feel like I am alone, like no one cares about me. Sometimes I feel like, why am I even living?” More than a few spoke in candid detail about trying to kill themselves. In fact, more than half of all suicides in juvenile facilities occurred when children were in isolation.”

- Ian Kysel, Human Rights Watch fellow. Read more here.

Photo: A cell at the Pinellas County jail, an adult facility where young people are held in solitary confinement. One girl interviewed for the report said she spent four months in isolation there. © 2008 AP Photo/Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office

Keven Page in The Toronto Star: The PBO is under threat. Interviews to find the next...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:47:14 -0400

Keven Page in The Toronto Star:

The PBO is under threat. Interviews to find the next parliamentary budget officer have not started, despite the fact that my term has ended. The prime minister has appointed the parliamentary librarian as the interim parliamentary budget officer. The librarian is a nice person, but someone with no budget analysis experience. The weak legislation underpinning the PBO will not sustain the office. In a healthy democracy, analytical dissonance needs to be cherished and protected.

What’s in it for the government to have a strong legislative budget office? Not much. What’s in it for Parliament and Canadians to have a strong budget office? Maybe a great deal. If it matters to you, please tell your elected representatives.

More here.