a new tactic for the left: floating banners!

maybe this’ll work better than spoofing web sites + corporations to force them to admit things they’re not embarrassed to admit

(thx greenpeace)

wow, i love the sexy noam sequence in this video. !!so hott!! (from pttv)

well, here’s some cool stuff set to that cool Fuck Buttons song

this is fascinating!! i need to learn + read more!

DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL: PHALLOCENTRIC ECONOMICS, TRIANGULAR TRADE & OTHER SHADY BUSINESS

by Mishana Hosseinioun

“All economic organization is homosexual.” — Luce Irigaray

Paul Schrader’s erotic thriller, American Gigolo (1980) does much more than simply explore the roving life of male prostitute, Julian Kaye, played by quintessential Hollywood sex-symbol Richard Gere (idolized by men and women alike); it supplies viewers with first-hand evidence supporting Belgian feminist Luce Irigaray’s phallo-critical theory that “all economic organization is homosexual”, or “hom(m)osexual” (between males), as she would specify. What is more, the film adds layers of complexity of its own to Irigaray’s argument.

from as it ought to be via idon’trememberwho

here’s, well, not a review as much as an answer to McChesney & Nichols’ new book/progressive media event about the crisis of journalism and the steps to save it, posted on truthdig. am i drawn to this because i agree or because i like the strong words?

Certainly, as the authors point out, the faux objectivity and neutrality of the traditional news industry hastened the cultural irrelevance of traditional news gathering. The narrowing of debates within the press to the minor differences among the power elite had a debilitating effect on news. The structure of “objectivity” works far better when there are powerful social movements, such as the civil rights movement, that provide an actual alternative and demand a voice. But without these movements the press functions as courtiers in the corridors of power. It dutifully reports the Democratic and Republic positions, a condition that imposes a bland uniformity of opinion. The two parties are in fundamental agreement about the underlying economic, political and military structures which are largely responsible for our decline. The power elites do not question the permanent war economy, unfettered capitalism and the rise of the security state, and voices that do are, in effect, censored out of the commercial press because they have no power base. This has left most traditional reporters without a moral core and trapped in a ridiculous court pantomime that has damaged their content as much as the loss of advertising and the rise of the Internet. The lie told by newspapers and traditional news is the lie of omission, which is not as bad as the outright lies told on Fox News, but in the end it is still a lie. Our power elite are bankrupt, and the press, tethered to the elite, is as bankrupt as those it covers.

(here again is that link to the original article on truthdig)

[W]e also believe that an American is by definition always and forever innocent. The Puritans arriving in Massachusetts Bay thought they had regained the states of innocence lost to Satan by generations of corrupt and inattentive Europeans. Their heirs and assigns still hold to that presumption. Foreigners commit crimes against humanity. Americans make well-intentioned mistakes. Foreigners incite wars, manufacture cocaine, sponsor terrorists and welcome Communism. Americans cleanse the world of its impurities.

(as almost always, my emphases. from Money and Class in America, p. 112)

“We believe it is not enough for a socialist cultural practice to be a crude mirror image of its capitalist counterparts, a kind of left advertising agency, using easy slogans that gloss over the complexity of issues.”

— Peter Dunn in Printing is Easy…?, p.56.

a great image, and a great quote, from this incredible slideshow of alternative and radical printmaking in the UK’s recent past. click here or on the image to jump to the slideshow at afterall.org

From the photo-murals series ‘The Changing Picture of Docklands’, which was put up in the London Docklands area and explored issues surrounding its redevelopment from the viewpoint of local communities.

© Peter Dunn and Loraine Leeson, Docklands Community Poster Project, London (1982–85)

found via the always-interesting justseeds blog

(follow-up to the video posted below, #3)

(follow-up to the video below, #2)

(follow-up to the video below, #1)

“the largest street gang in america”

almost 60 minutes of unrelenting audiovisual assault; it’s basically just an amateur-ish compilation/re-edit of footage of police brutality.

propaganda of the most potent brand, and it works. i am so fucking worked up over this.

more info on the filmmaker(s) here: http://www.myspace.com/boilingfrogs101

from Fluxview (follow this link if the video doesn’t load here), but embedded here via myspace.

Access to money and the media is not the only, or even the main reason, for the success of the climate deniers, though. They’re not actually spending all that much cash and they’ve got legions of eager volunteers doing much of the internet lobbying entirely for free. Their success can be credited significantly to the way they tap into the main currents of our politics of the moment with far more savvy and power than most environmentalists can muster. They’ve understood the popular rage at elites. They’ve grasped the widespread feelings of powerlessness in the U.S., and the widespread suspicion that we’re being ripped off by mysterious forces beyond our control.

…

By the way, if you think there’s a scam underway, you’re right — and to figure it out just track the money going in campaign contributions to the politicians doing the bidding of the energy companies. [VERY EVIL Senator James] Inhofe, the igloo guy? Over a million dollars from energy and utility companies and executives in the last two election cycles. You think Al Gore is going to make money from green energy? Check out what you get for running an oil company.

bold emphasis added; from tomdispatch

fyeahsocialism:

There’s no such thing as a good cop.

remember the fun summer of 2007 in providence when you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing this photo taped to a telephone pole or bulletin board?

it’s unlike any other photo i’ve seen; it compels a really fucking visceral reaction, a disgust, one that doesn’t seem to go away quickly. is it because i know the context, or does everyone feel this way? (i actually have to shrink my web browser so i can scroll down far enough to get it out of the way while i’m writing.)

it was an exciting time; we were energized; suddenly the SDS kids and the IWW 20-somethings seemed important, as did everything they had to say; even us too-cynical-to-be-activists started caring. it was one of those strange moments in time when people (like me, i guess) were woken up, shocked into recognizing that at least some of the time, some of the cops could be terribly brutal; that something basic was wrong with the structure and distribution of power in society.

so a few hundred of us gathered in a parking lot in north providence near where the previous march had been, i think; people spoke, sharing personal stories and broader calls for expanded unionizing rights and the like; we were all there, and we weren’t a small group! i remember that as we left i noticed perhaps a dozen cop cars waiting around the parking lot, ready to beat us up when we turned into an angry anarchist mob.

but, of course, we didn’t start an insurrection, right then and there. we went home and waited. not long afterward, i left the country, and when i came back i was too busy with school, too politically cynical and intellectually withdrawn to follow up.

so now i’m wondering, did anything happen?

did we radicalize, educate, or even just wake up some of the general populace from their soma comas? were the cops persecuted prosecuted? did the cops at least admit wrongdoing? did Providence SDS get taken a bit more seriously? did Prov. IWW? and certainly not least, what happened to alex?

[CONTEXT:] investment banks and securities firms paid employees in New York City an estimated $20.3 billion in annual bonuses … up from $17.4 billion for 2008 …

The comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, acknowledged the divide between the financial industry and other professions, but said that the financial industry’s new prosperity would ultimately trickle down to the rest of the New York economy. His office estimated that the industry could exceed $55 billion in profits last year.

“The key thing now is, do we all benefit?” Mr. DiNapoli said at a news conference.

from this NYT article

p.s. we’re all fucked if we expect to survive without being greedy in this system that only rewards greed

a thoughtful article on infoshop.news gets into the dirty details about Joseph Stack, the man who flew his plane into an IRS building in Austin TX. his final act wasn’t knee-jerk libertarianism (infuriated, perhaps, at their co-optation by the tea party “movement”); it wasn’t radical smash-the-system anarchism — what was it?

the possibility of coherence in his final written note looms large over the establishment. is there some understandable reason for his act — that is to say, is he not easily dismissed as a lunatic?

please READ THE WHOLE THING over there if you’re into it.

(emphasis in original.)

As the letter draws to close, he alludes to the impending suicide bombing. And, as if all the above weren’t enough, then comes the coup de grace—“The communist creed: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: from each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.” These are Stack’s last words: to us, warning us to wake up, to our leaders and the world that they represent—the very one he came to detest against all odds and under which he no longer desired to live.

We may never know whether Stack’s invocation of the well-known communist motto was employed only for the sake of irony, or, as the letter suggests, from nascent convictions of the libertarian communist variety.

In any case, this much is clear. Joseph Andrew Stack—53, husband, stepfather, disgruntled engineer, privileged heir to the American Dream, suicide bomber—saw through the lie of capitalism. Falling from grace—faith in the beneficence of the “invisible hand” and its cohort, liberal democracy—he could not restrict his critique to the greed of elites. Why single out our leaders, who, he learned at the price of his own life and that of a few others, have no ears for the injustices suffered by commoners? That would have been only one half the equation. The other? The gullible complicity of the American people themselves, who have sufficient reasons to revolt but soldier onward, precariously, and with callous indifference to their own domination. Surveying the spineless present and thereby anticipating a bleak future, a man could not handle it all any longer, the contradictions were too staggering.