❝ I have a daughter who’s 10 and we walked past a billboard the other day advertising a TV programme. There was a row of men in suits and a woman in a thong. My daughter said, “Why is it like that? It’s to sell it, isn’t it?” She knows that already. I said, “Yes, it’s a shame a young woman would want to be portrayed in that way,” and she said, “But it’s her choice, isn’t it? Nobody made her do that.” So how do you explain the Gramscian concept of hegemony to a 10 year old? If the culture is so all pervasive that you can’t think outside of it, how are you making genuine choices?

Why supporting Ron Paul is backwards:

alexandraerin:

gop-circus:

Ron Paul is racist, or at the very least, allowed racist literature to be published under his name. But to me, this isn’t the worst part about Paul as a candidate - His stances on civil liberties and economic issues when it comes to state’s rights are scary. And his supporters who type in all caps and hail him as christ reborn are even worse because they believe that his ‘policy ideas’ could actually help our country.

Anyone considering Paul as a candidate should certainly take into account his views on race, gender and the LGBT community (which are all awful) but they should also take into account the large amount of other issues in which he is not only incredibly wrong, but where his policy prescriptions would make things worse. Some Occupy Wall Street supporters are Paul supporters, but Paul is associated with the 1 percent, despite what his supporters yell about all over the internet.  He says some things that sound good, but his voting record on issues related to corporations and the rest of us is not so good—-

Aid to Less Advantaged People, at Home & Abroad is 13.40 percent progressive

Corporate Subsidies 31.18 percent

Education, Humanities, & the Arts 13.19 percent

Environment 11.35 percent

Fair Taxation 9.01 percent

Government Checks on Corporate Power 15.16 percent

Health Care 12.62 percent

Housing 6.10 percent

Labor Rights 13.51 percent

Making Government Work for Everyone, Not Just the Rich or Powerful 15.88 percent

Even on the issues he’s supposed to be good on, his record is lackluster:

Human Rights & Civil Liberties 33.66 percent progressive

Justice for All: Civil and Criminal 30.71 percent

War & Peace 47.92 percent

Even when it comes to foreign policy, Paul still votes the wrong way more than half the time. He does have a better record than most Republicans on these issues, but even the most conservative of Democrats do better than Paul on almost every issue.

To get a full handle on how bad Paul’s record and positions are, here is a quick rundown of his most offensive positions, those that would be the most damaging to the country.

Would abolish the income tax

Would place the U.S. on the gold standard

Would allow citizens to engage in trade using gold and silver instead of currency

Would arbitrarily cut government regulations and believes that regulations only hurt businesses

Would eliminate the taxation of foreign income

Is a global warming denier

Says that Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are unconstitutional

Would eliminate antitrust laws

Would eliminate the federal minimum wage

Would eliminate the Davis-Bacon Act and the Copeland Act

Would eliminate the estate and gift taxes

Would tax all earners at a 10 percent rate

Would eliminate tax credits to individuals who are not corporations

Would eliminate the elderly tax credit, child care credit and earned income credit

Voted to make it easier to decertify unions

Opposes Federal Deposit Insurance

Would revert government spending to 2004 levels and freeze it there

Opposes raising the debt ceiling for any reason

Would allow people to opt out of Social Security

Says that widespread bankruptcy is the stimulus the country needs

Opposed the auto industry bailouts

Opposes tort reform

Opposes the regulation of tobacco

Would protect the ‘privacy’ of online sexual predators and child pornographers on public wi-fi networks

Would prevent federal courts from protecting citizens who have their rights denied

Opposed the Motor Voter law

Would allow states to ban gay marriage

Sponsored the Marriage Protection Act

Would repeal affirmative action

Would limit the scope of Brown v. Board of Education

Says that emergency rooms should be able to turn away undocumented immigrants

Opposes the Americans With Disabilities Act

Voted anti-choice more than 90 times as a member of Congress

Voted to eliminate all international family planning funds

Voted for the Stupak amendment banning abortion coverage by private health insurance companies

Voted in favor of fetal personhood laws

Would eliminate all funding for Planned Parenthood

Would ban flag burning

Would weaken regulation of dietary supplements

Supports a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research

Opposes subsidies for prescription drugs for seniors

Opposes mandatory vaccinations

Would expand offshore oil drilling

Would increase mining on federal lands

Would weaken the Clean Air Act

Would repeal the Soil and Water Conservation Act

Would weaken the Federal Water Pollution Control Act

Would eliminate departments of Energy, Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Labor

Would eliminate the Environmental Protection agency

Would eliminate FEMA

Would eliminate the Federal Reserve

Would eliminate the Occupational Health and Safety Administration

Would eliminate AmeriCorps

Would eliminate spending to combat AIDS overseas

Would eliminate gas taxes

Opposes the census gathering demographic data on Americans

Opposed the dismantling of U.S. nuclear missile silos

Wanted to withdraw the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

Wants to claim the Panama Canal as sovereign U.S. territory

Opposes the International Criminal Court

Would withdraw the U.S. from the U.N.

Supports the electoral college and believes that the U.S. is not a democracy

Believes that we have no right to health care

Would eliminate birthright citizenship

Believes that law enforcement can’t help people, only armed citizens can prevent violence

Would allow the legal sale of unpasteurized milk

Believes that groups of people don’t have rights, only individuals do

Believes that government cannot redistribute wealth in any way

Believes in the concept of ‘jury nullification’, the idea that a jury can judge not only the facts in a case but the justness of the law itself

Believes that social welfare should be in the hands of individuals only, not government

Anyone that still thinks that a progressive vote for Paul is a legitimate vote has their head on sideways. Anyone that thinks that Paul “understands the Constitution” and is trying so hard to preserve it probably hasn’t even read the Constitution, or they are just plain confused.

You know, I come very close to supporting this message but the problem I have with it is that you can’t divorce his racism from his policies. Doing so validates the cover he gives to his racism (and his homophobia, for that matter), which is that it doesn’t matter what he or anyone else thinks because liberty. It really needs to be emphasized that his vision of liberty is one in which those who have the capital and social leverage to control society in the absence of laws are free to exclude and oppress and take advantage of the minority.

Now, Ron Paul is a man who (according to a guy who thought he was explaining how Ron Paul isn’t homophobic) was happy to take logistical support from a gay man but wouldn’t go to the bathroom in his house. He’s happy to employ people of color but even happier to use them as bogeymen to keep the base riled.

So when he and his son talk about how the free market will solve everything if we get the government to quit trying to regulate discrimination, I can only conclude that the inevitable and horrible end result of such sweeping liberty wouldn’t be an unintended or unforeseen side effect.

It’s the goal.

In Ron Paul’s mind, the only problem with segregation was that the government got involved with it… because if Jim Crow had never been law, it couldn’t have been repealed. 

Ron Paul the Horrible Human Being and Ron Paul the Horrible Executive-In-Chief aren’t two different people. They’re not even two halves of the same person. It’s a unified whole.

(via karnythia)

❝

I got into radical politics when I was 15 years old, shortly after discovering punk music. At first I thought punk was just nihilism, misanthropy, self destruction, Sid Vicious. Then when I was 15 I got beat up by the cops; the experience changed my life. It was the 4th of July, Naples, Florida. Every year there’s a fireworks celebration down on the beach by the pier, at least there used to be. Small boardwalks connect the street to the sand. I had gone down early to meet up with a couple friends and I as I stood there on the boardwalk looking out into the sea of people trying to spot my friends, two police officers approached me. I was asked to get off the boardwalk, they said I was blocking the flow of traffic. So I did, I turned around and walked off the boardwalk back down onto the street.

Then the two officers approached me again telling me to get off the boardwalk. I told them I was off the boardwalk. Next thing I knew one of the cops had grabbed me by the neck, twisted my arm behind my back and started dragging me over towards their parked cruiser. They slammed my face down onto the sun-baked trunk of the car., kicked my legs apart and started going through my pockets. Every time I tried to get my head up off the burning trunk it was slammed back down harder. After a long and immature verbal exchange, most of the immaturity being on my part (I think the words “fucking” and “pig” were used quite a lot if I remember correctly) they cuffed me and threw me into the back of the cruiser. The one cop stood there taunting me through the window until more officers showed up on the scene, at which point they pulled me out of the cruiser. My body went limp and I fell to my knees. Two officers pulled me up, one on each elbow, putting all my weight onto my cuffed wrists, my legs kicked out involuntarily, two other cops grabbed one each. They brought me around to the other side of the cruiser and dropped me face first into the middle of the street. One officer put a boot to my head, another put a knee in my back and then they proceeded to hog-tie me. I was then lifted up like a suitcase, held by an elbow and a leg and thrown into the back of a different cruiser.

When I got down to the station I remember the main officer who instigated the whole thing opening the car door and telling me he was going to cut my legs free, that if I kicked him he would put a bullet in my head. I was charged with Battery On An Officer and Resisting Arrest With Violence, two felony charges that I was convicted of despite my mother hiring an attorney that she couldn’t really afford. I know now it was a small injustice compared to other instances of police violence I’ve heard of over the years, I was just a dirty punk kid who walked past the wrong cops, but at the time I was more than outraged.

The experience politicized me. I dropped out of high school. I started doing a zine. I started a distro of political pamphlets and Anarcho-punk records. I started a Food Not Bombs chapter with a group of friends. We met other like minded people across Florida and started a radical activist network. We organized protests, we organized gatherings, workshops, participated in direct action. I was a Teenage Anarchist. When I was younger my opinions where very black and white, I was either for or against something, and that’s how I defined myself. A lot of those opinions where formed by social influence from the scene I was a part of, being younger I felt the need to belong to something, a group of people, I wanted acceptance. Over time I realized how some people use their positions of stature to pursue their own personal agenda’s, selling their own personal brand of self- serving revolution. This all being the complete opposite of what drew me towards Anarchism in the first place. I found that the people who professed the loudest that they were the most open minded individuals were in fact usually the most close minded. I feel like the revolution sold to me when I was a teenager by the punk scene, by the Anarchist scene was a lie. The real revolution was the political awakening. That initial spark that made me want to change the world. And that’s what I’m interested in, maintaining that fire. That’s what the song is about. I am an autonomous individual. I think for myself. I have no need to supplement my identity through belonging to a scene or exclusively endorsing any brand of political thought. And if anyone is offended by that I feel like it only reaffirms my conviction. For if it’s heresy for an Anarchist to say “FUCK Anarchy” then Anarchism is truly just another flag, and I say burn it along with the rest of them.

❝

On a somewhat serious note today because of a conversation the other day:

I am sure every girl can recall, at least once as a child, coming home and telling their parents, uncle, aunt or grandparent about a boy who had pulled her hair, hit her, teased her, pushed her or committed some other playground crime. I will bet money that most of those, if not all, will tell you that they were told “Oh, that just means he likes you”. I never really thought much about it before having a daughter of my own. I find it appalling that this line of bullshit is still being fed to young children. Look, if you want to tell your child that being verbally and/or physically abused is an acceptable sign of affection, i urge you to rethink your parenting strategy. If you try and feed MY daughter that crap, you better bring protective gear because I am going to shower you with the brand of “affection” you are endorsing.

When the fuck was it decided that we should start teaching our daughters to accept being belittled, disrespected and abused as endearing treatment? And we have the audacity to wonder why women stay in abusive relationships? How did society become so oblivious to the fact that we were conditioning our daughters to endure abusive treatment, much less view it as romantic overtures? Is this where the phrase “hitting on girls” comes from? Well, here is a tip: Save the “it’s so cute when he gets hateful/physical with her because it means he loves her” asshattery for your own kids, not mine. While you’re at it, keep them away from my kids until you decide to teach them respect and boundaries.

My daughter is `10 years old and has come home on more than one occasion recounting an incident at school in which she was teased or harassed by a male classmate. There has been several times when someone that she was retelling the story to responded with the old, “that just means he likes you” line. Wrong. I want my daughter to know that being disrespected is NEVER acceptable. I want my daughter to know that if someone likes her and respects her, much less LOVES her, they don’t hurt her and they don’t put her down. I want my daughter to know that the boy called her ugly or pushed her or pulled her hair didn’t do it because he admires her, it is because he is a little asshole and assholes are an occurrence of society that will have to be dealt with for the rest of her life. I want my daughter to know how to deal with assholes she will encounter throughout her life. For now, I want my daughter to know that if someone is verbally harassing her, she should tell the teacher and if the teacher does nothing, she should tell me. If someone physically touches her, tell the teacher then, if it continues, to yell, “STOP TOUCHING/PUNCHING/PUSHING ME” in the middle of class or the hallway, then tell me. Last year, one little boy stole her silly bandz from her. He just grabbed her and yanked a handful of them off of her wrist. When I went to the school to address the incident, the teacher smiled and explained it away to her, in front of me, “he probably has a crush on you”. Okay, the boy walked up to my daughter, grabbed and held her by the arm and forcibly removed her bracelets from her as she struggled and you want to convince her that she should be flattered? Fuck off. I am going to punch you in the face but I hope you realize it is just my way of thanking you for the great advice you gave my daughter. If these same advice givers’ sons came home crying because another male classmate was pushing them, pulling their hair, hitting them or calling them names, I would bet dollars to donuts they would tell him to defend themselves and kick the kid’s ass, if necessary. They sure as shit wouldn’t say, “he probably just wants a play date”.

I will teach my daughter to accept nothing less than respect. Anyone who hurts her physically or emotionally doesn’t deserve her respect, friendship or love. I will teach my boys the same thing as well as the fact that hitting on girls doesn’t involve hitting girls. I can’t teach my daughter to respect herself if I am teaching her that no one else has to respect her. I can’t raise sons that respect women, if I teach them that bullying is a valid expression of affection.

The next time that someone offers up that little “secret” to my daughter, I am going to slap the person across the face and yell, “I LOVE YOU”.

Globally, women aged between fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be injured or die as a result of male violence than through cancer, traffic accidents, malaria and war combined.

(Source: unicef.org)

❝ Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation.