Anna Begins...

twKanye’s been compared to Jesus, Hitler, Walt Disney and even...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:52:42 -0400

_{twKanye’s been compared to Jesus, Hitler, Walt Disney and even Steve Jobs. And now Kanye has decided to release this, YEEZUS, the most exciting record so far. It should be obvious by now that New Slaves is the undisputed masterpiece on Yeezus. The song is so catchy, most people won’t even remember the words… But they should. And then there’s this one song, I Am A God, that the title practically speaks for itself, but of course, the insecurities of a mainstream music press will never understand its true meaning, because it’s about ME.}

Clark: Thank youLois: For what?Clark: For believing in...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:49:13 -0400

Clark: Thank you
Lois: For what?
Clark: For believing in me.
Lois: It didn’t make much difference in the end.
Clark: It did to me.

nevver: The fireworks are hailing over Little Eden tonight,...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:46:43 -0400

Thomas Prior thomasprior.com

Thomas Prior thomasprior.com

Thomas Prior thomasprior.com

Thomas Prior thomasprior.com

Thomas Prior thomasprior.com

Thomas Prior thomasprior.com

nevver:

The fireworks are hailing over Little Eden tonight, Thomas Prior

supersonicelectronic: Hyuro. Hyuro’s massive street mural in...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:37:36 -0400

supersonicelectronic:

Hyuro.

Hyuro’s massive street mural in Copenhagen shows the progress of an elk as it journeys through several forests. I imagine this is even more beautiful when one drives alongside it. See more of the mural below:

Read More

When You Kill Ten Million Africans You Aren’t Called ‘Hitler’

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:36:28 -0400

When You Kill Ten Million Africans You Aren’t Called ‘Hitler’:

acidshenko:

canadian-communist:

Take a look at this picture. Do you know who it is?

Most people haven’t heard of him.

But you should have. When you see his face or hear his name you should get as sick in your stomach as when you read about Mussolini or Hitler or see one of their pictures. You see, he killed over 10 million people in the Congo.

His name is King Leopold II of Belgium.

He “owned” the Congo during his reign as the constitutional monarch of Belgium. After several failed colonial attempts in Asia and Africa, he settled on the Congo. He “bought” it and enslaved its people, turning the entire country into his own personal slave plantation. He disguised his “business transactions” as philanthropic and scientific efforts under the banner of the “International African Society”. He used their enslaved labor to extract Congolese resources and services. His reign was enforced through work camps, body mutilations, executions, torture, and his private army.

Most of us – I don’t yet know an approximate percentage but I fear its extremely high – aren’t taught about him in school. We don’t hear about him in the media. He’s not part of the widely repeated narrative of oppression (which includes things like the Holocaust during World War II). He’s part of a long history of colonialism, imperialism, slavery and genocide in Africa that would clash with the social construction of the white supremacist narrative in our schools. It doesn’t fit neatly into a capitalist curriculum. Its bad to “say racist things” (sometimes), but quite fine not to talk about genocides in Africa perpetrated by European capitalist monarchs.

Mark Twain wrote a satire about Leopold called “King Leopold’s soliloquy; a defense of his Congo rule“, where he mocked the King’s defense of his reign of terror, largely through Leopold’s own words. Its 49 pages long. Mark Twain is a popular author for American public schools. But like most political authors, we will often read some of their least political writings or read them without learning why the author wrote them (Orwell’s Animal Farm for example serves to re-inforce American anti-Socialist propaganda, but Orwell was an anti-capitalist revolutionary of a different kind – this is never pointed out). We can read about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, but King Leopold’s Soliloquy isn’t on the reading list. This isn’t by accident. Reading lists are created by boards of education in order to prepare students to follow orders and endure boredom well. From the point of view of the Education Department, Africans have no history.

When we learn about Africa, we learn about a caricaturized Egypt, about the HIV epidemic (but never its causes), about the surface level effects of the slave trade, and maybe about South African Apartheid (which of course now is long, long over). We also see lots of pictures of starving children on Christian Ministry commercials, we see safaris on animal shows, and we see pictures of deserts in films and movies. But we don’t learn about the Great African War or Leopold’s Reign of Terror during the Congolese Genocide. Nor do we learn about what the United States has done in Iraq and Afghanistan, potentially killing in upwards of 5-7 million people from bombs, sanctions, disease and starvation. Body counts are important. And we don’t count Afghans, Iraqis, or Congolese.

There’s a Wikipedia page called “Genocides in History”. The Congolese Genocide isn’t included. The Congo is mentioned though. What’s now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo is listed in reference to the Second Congo War (also called Africa’s World War and the Great War of Africa), where both sides of the multinational conflict hunted down Bambenga and ate them. Cannibalism and slavery are horrendous evils which must be entered into history and talked about for sure, but I couldn’t help thinking who’s interests were served when the only mention of the Congo on the page was in reference to multi-national incidents where a tiny minority of people were eating each other (completely devoid of the conditions which created the conflict no less). Stories which support the white supremacist narrative about the subhumanness of people in Africa are allowed to be entered into the records of history. The white guy who turned the Congo into his own personal part-plantation, part-concentration camp, part-Christian ministry and killed 10 to 15 million Conglese people in the process doesn’t make the cut.

You see, when you kill ten million Africans, you aren’t called ‘Hitler’. That is, your name doesn’t come to symbolize the living incarnation of evil. Your name and your picture doesn’t produce fear, hatred, and sorrow. Your victims aren’t talked about and your name isn’t remembered.

Leopold was just one part of thousands of things that helped construct white supremacy as both an ideological narrative and material reality. Of course I don’t want to pretend that in the Congo he was the source of all evil. He had generals, and foot soldiers, and managers who did his bidding and enforced his laws. It was a system. But this doesn’t negate the need to talk about the individuals who are symbolic of the system. But we don’t even get that. And since it isn’t talked about, what capitalism did to Africa, all the privileges that rich white people gained from the Congolese genocide are hidden. The victims of imperialism are made, like they usually are, invisible.

Tony Bourdain referenced this on his program about a week and a half ago. The mention wasn’t very lengthy, but it was enough to make me actually look it up.

I was absolutely horrified.

nprmusic: If Kanye fancies himself a god, he’s apparently an...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:33:23 -0400

nprmusic:

If Kanye fancies himself a god, he’s apparently an angry one. Musically, Yeezus comes off as the vengeful, demonic twin to the chill minimalism of his 808s and Heartbreak from five years ago. Both albums are steeped in electronic music but while 808s was coated in a gleaming frost, Yeezus is a rusted saw blade. Befitting that dark, aggressive, industrial sound, Kanye’s rhymes pack a vicious bite as he takes the weighty chip off his shoulder and swings it like a nail-studded bat.

— Oliver Wang on Kanye West’s new album, Yeezus

"God we fuck up teenagers’ heads. We tell them that biological conditions are moral punishments and..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:28:40 -0400

“

God we fuck up teenagers’ heads. We tell them that biological conditions are moral punishments and then we get all shocked when they don’t practice rational risk management of biological conditions. We teach them “sex is super desirable and all the cool kids do it, and it’s hideously shameful and will destroy your life” and we wonder why they act an eensy bit neurotic about it. If you tried to design a system for making sexually active kids confused and unsafe, you couldn’t do much better than the American media and school system.

And for once, the answer is relatively simple. Just talk about sex like it’s a part of life. Some people have sex and some people don’t, because people are different. STIs aren’t bad because they’re Dirty Crotch Rot; they’re bad because they’re contagious illnesses like strep throat or whooping cough, and you can ask a doctor to check for and treat them just like you would with strep throat. Unwanted pregnancy isn’t a scarlet A; it’s a mostly-preventable accident that sometimes occurs when people are going about their normal business of having sex. You can ask the school counselor about a variety of topics, including career planning, problems at home, questions about sex, or conflicts with teachers.

If we could just get the goddamn stick out of our collective ass and accept that sex is a human activity and teenagers are humans, maybe there wouldn’t be quite so many plaintive “I don’t understand my body and I’m confused and scared and I don’t know anyone I can ask in person” messages flying out into the world.

”

- The Pervocracy - “Teenage Panic.” (via klonazepam)

artsyrup: Little Red Riding Hood by Daniel Egneus

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:28:01 -0400

artsyrup:

Little Red Riding Hood by Daniel Egneus

natgeofound: A Geisha girl poses in her Kimono in Kyoto, June...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:23:28 -0400

natgeofound:

A Geisha girl poses in her Kimono in Kyoto, June 1927.
Photograph by Franklin Price Knott, National Geographic

"People shouldn’t have to appear always, you know, stable and content, because people aren’t always..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:23:15 -0400

“People shouldn’t have to appear always, you know, stable and content, because people aren’t always stable and content. And it makes it harder, and it makes us as a majority more unstable and more discontented because we don’t have the freedom to express all of these darker sides of our emotions. Because we’re supposed to keep everything very, you know, friendly and polite and appropriate all the time. And I think that every emotion is appropriate whenever it arises.”

- Fiona Apple (via lailadot)

ginandbird: rel.e.vant.

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:11:05 -0400

ginandbird:

rel.e.vant.

hippiechix: Paranoia by Salvador Dali

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:04:59 -0400

hippiechix:

Paranoia by Salvador Dali

"It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:16:47 -0400

“It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.”

- Hugh Laurie (via faulknerd)

So true.

(via awellchangedwoman)

Photo

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:47:00 -0400

Photo

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:44:17 -0400

Photo

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:18:36 -0400

“I killed him for money - and for a woman - and I didn’t get...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 03:45:20 -0400

“I killed him for money - and for a woman - and I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?”
Double Indemnity, (1944)

grantgustachegustin: Tahereh Mafi ladies and gents.

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 03:24:27 -0400

grantgustachegustin:

Tahereh Mafi ladies and gents.

booksvscigarettes: Artist Fritz Hegenbarth

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 03:20:20 -0400

booksvscigarettes:

Artist Fritz Hegenbarth

eatsleepdraw: http://hughboyd.tumblr.com/ http://www.flickr.com/...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 03:17:24 -0400

eatsleepdraw:

http://hughboyd.tumblr.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hugh_boyd/