Jun
19
blog title
im another privileged white male 1st world socialist and a grump
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Jun
18
“The Arabian peninsula was the focus of conflict between leftist and conservative groups and governments during the 1960s and 1970s. In September 1962 the royal government of Imam al-Badr in Yemen was overthrown in a coup. A republic was declared and five years of war followed between republicans, supported by Egypt and the USSR, and royalist forces supported by the UK and Saudi Arabia. In 1964 a separatist revolt began in the Dhofar province of Oman. The Dhofari rebels were aided by former South Yemen, a Marxist state closely aligned with the USSR: the Dhofar Liberation Front eventually merged with the Marxist-dominated Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arab Gulf (PFLOAG). With the help of military support from the UK, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the Sultan of Oman defeated the guerrillas in 1975. In 1981 and 1982 there was extensive fighting between the North Yemen government and a guerrilla group called the National Democratic Front (NDF) that had formed in opposition to the government in 1979. South Yemen provided money, arms, training and sanctuary to the group; North Yemen received Saudi backing, as well as weapons from the USA.
Despite these movements, the states of the Arabian Peninsula were generally able to avoid problems of labor militancy by importing a foreign labor force. Foreigners make up 82% of Kuwait’s labor force, nearly 90% of the UAE’s (87% of them from Asia), and 60% of Bahrain’s. Saudi Arabia has between six and seven million foreign workers out of a population of 24 million. In Oman foreigners account for 68% of the workforce in non-oil-producing companies. Workers are not permitted to strike or engage in collective bargaining; neither trade unions nor any other form of workers’ organisation is allowed to exist.” Sandra Halperlin, The Post-Cold War Political Topography of the Middle East (via thestolencaryatid)
Despite these movements, the states of the Arabian Peninsula were generally able to avoid problems of labor militancy by importing a foreign labor force. Foreigners make up 82% of Kuwait’s labor force, nearly 90% of the UAE’s (87% of them from Asia), and 60% of Bahrain’s. Saudi Arabia has between six and seven million foreign workers out of a population of 24 million. In Oman foreigners account for 68% of the workforce in non-oil-producing companies. Workers are not permitted to strike or engage in collective bargaining; neither trade unions nor any other form of workers’ organisation is allowed to exist.” Sandra Halperlin, The Post-Cold War Political Topography of the Middle East (via thestolencaryatid)
“The Orientalist or Balkanist element, however, haunts from the beginning the discourse of European Philhellenism, introducing in the modern concept of Greece an excess irreducible to the rationalist logic of identification. Therefore, a certain uncanniness pervades already the rediscovery of Greekness by Westerners, who, in the period when vampires irrupt, come upon a story of revenance by means of which, indeed, they aim to explain their own origin as modern civilization. The attempt to resuscitate Classical antiquity (in contrast to the previous belief in continuity and constant reactualization of the Ancient as the essence of a time without gaps), that unleashes at the same time modernity and the ideal of the need of a new Greece in the contemporary age, allegorizes its own uncanniness, inasmuch as familiarity and strangeness, presence and absence, the Occidental and the Oriental, undermine each other by relentlessly (re)appearing at its core and thus preventing its historical or ontological meaning from closure. A haunting is always, already, at work here.”
Álvaro García Marín, Haunted Communities: The Greek Vampire, or the Uncanny at the Core of Nation Construction (via thestolencaryatid)
Jun
15
Spirited Away (2001)
“Once you’ve met someone, you never really forget them.”
(via joffreylebowski)
Jun
14
So let me get this straight:
In a conflict that has killed 100,000 people by conventional means, the fact that it is presumed 150 have died by chemical weapons is the imaginary line of decency that has been crossed, and it is now ‘morally right’ to heavily arm one side with, erm, conventional weapons……
Western logic
Jun
13
african goon: Liberalism is openly demonizing Sarah Palin for crude comments about...
Liberalism is openly demonizing Sarah Palin for crude comments about poor people, but lauding Hillary Clinton as a feminist icon, despite her polices calling for the decimation and unlawful occupation of various Global Southern societies, which includes women.
Liberalism pays more attention to…
it’s as if some marxists think capitalism is a monolith, a unity. we should start using the -s ending. it’s capitalisms.
It also, in my opinion, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how class is produced, of class struggle.
It seems like they operate from the assumption that the bourgeoisie is a historical a priori category, rather than something formed by class struggle within the context of capitalism(s).
Jun
12
“In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against the US constitution. Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the U.S. constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.”
Daniel Ellsberg (via azspot)
As Ellsberg said at a talk we went to yesterday, we don’t yet live under a complete police-state tyranny, but we are now merely a turn key away from it. All of the legal & constitutional protections that have served as a buffer between our military industrial complex & our populous have been systematically eliminated under the last two administrations. Obama & Bush have tag teamed this process - and using the ‘good cop, bad cop’ nonsense of our two party system, they have done it with majority support from their political followers consecutively. First the neo-cons defended Bush, then the neo-liberal Democrats defended Obama. Both are sickening. Both are evil. Blind support for Obama is so painfully destructive & SHAMEFUL!!!
(via thepeoplesrecord)
(via thepeoplesrecord)
Jun
11
Athens tonight
Burning the flag of the European Union outside the occupied building of the National Station (ERT) that was illegally shut down by the pro-IMF government. Riot police are surrounding the building and are threatening to tear gas the reporters who are currently protesting these measures and occupying the building, livestreaming from the news room.
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