November 2011
“The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: “Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and The Discourses (via sunrec)
I have some privilege checklists for all of you.
Click each privilege for a link.
educate yourselves.
reblog and add any other RELEVANT privilege checklists (as in, don’t add female privilege checklist, cause if you do, you’re a jerk)
I have to memorize all of these…
“Our blacks are so much better than their blacks.”
—
Ann Coulter on the allegations against Herman Cain and conservative blacks in general
Wow. I expected a more nuanced view from Coulter.
Not your friend: dissensus and the police →
southissouth.wordpress.com
Cops depend on wages and salaries like the rest of us—that is true. They might have a series of grievances against their ranking officers and the government.
But every cop knows that the moment they publicly sympathize with a people’s movement, or refuse to carry out repressive order, they will be out of work. They understand that part of their job is to stop the people from rising up.
Rank-and-file soldiers in the military, who typically serve only for a few years, have at several key historical moments defected, torn off their uniforms, and switched back to the workers’ side in large numbers. Professional police officers, who have chosen to join that institution of repression as their life’s work, almost never do.
Can several truths about the police co-exist? I believe so. It is possible to be protected by police, just as it is possible to be brutalized. But that police are emboldened by legal authority to enact force—and in the United States this includes lethal, militarized weapons of war—makes the police, to put it in colloquial idiom, “not your friend.”
Virginia Police Arrest Photojournalist Documenting Occupy Richmond Crackdown →
pixiq.com
A Virginia photojournalist was arrested early this morning while documenting a police crackdown on Occupy Richmond protesters.
Ian Graham, who was shooting for RVA Magazine, was arrested on charges on trespassing for crossing a public street outside Kanawa Plaza where protesters had been camping out since October 15.
That should get laughed out of court.
But, of course, it doesn’t matter to police if the charges stick or not because they were able to prevent him from documenting their actions.
Another sign of our growing police state: they’ll arrest you just to stop you from documenting their crimes, not to punish you for a crime.
#ThatAwkwardMoment when you realize that Kim Kardashians failed marriage could have paid your college tuition for 2,833 years.
U.S. sues South Carolina over immigration law →
cnn.com
Justice Department officials pressed their campaign against an immigration law in South Carolina on Monday, saying the measure passed there this summer unconstitutionally pre-empts federal authority.
South Carolina’s law also could lead to the harassment and detention of authorized visitors, immigrants and citizens, federal officials argue in court documents.
The law would “undermine federal law and invade federal authority by imposing punitive sanctions for conduct that falls outside of the state’s police powers and that Congress affirmatively decided should not be subject to such sanctions. And it will interfere with and undermine the federal government’s control over relations with foreign governments,” officials argue, referring to the state trying to require the carrying of documents to prove residency.
We should stop referring to feminist "waves"
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the way people often describe feminism as occurring in “waves” and associate certain individuals, ideologies, and issues with each period of time. Although I understand why this may be appealing, I think it is a huge limitation of the movement to periodize feminism in this way. All of the so-called waves simultaneously reveal change and growth, while expressing continuity, as pertinent issues during past waves are still relevant today. Rather than using this as a reason to separate and compartmentalize feminism, we should see this as a natural progression of any social movement.
To assume that certain periods of time were more important than others privileges a very specific definition of activism based on widespread media coverage, large protests, and major legislative changes such as the right to vote. This also implies that certain years were more important than others, when in reality feminism has been present during all of these time periods.
Feminist activism is about so much more than rallying and reforming legislation; it is also about breaking silences, finding and using your voice, raising consciousness, and surviving oppression. We should not keep dividing ourselves from others because of these arbitrary categories of time, when there is already so much standing in the way of our unity and solidarity, such as racism, cissexism, heterosexism, classism, and ableism.
5 Most Likely Ways the U.S. and China Could Spark Accidental Nuclear War →
theatlantic.com
After 10 years of close but unproductive talks, the U.S. and China still fail to understand one another’s nuclear weapons policies, according to a disturbing report by Global Security Newswire and the Nuclear Threat Initiative. In other words, neither the U.S. nor China knows when the other will or will not use a nuclear weapon against the other. That’s not due to hostility, secrecy, or deliberate foreign policy — it’s a combination of mistrust between individual negotiators and poor communication; at times, something as simple as a shoddy translation has prevented the two major powers from coming together. Though nuclear war between the U.S. and China is still extremely unlikely, because the two countries do not fully understand when the other will and will not deploy nuclear weapons, the odds of starting an accidental nuclear conflict are much higher.
Noam Chomsky has a quote of something like “We’re all living at the very edge of extinction from nuclear weapons, but we laugh at it.” It’s just amazing to me that we’re one mistake away from actually ending up dead as a world.
Playing the "race card".
That’s a phrase that just generally trivializes the discrimination faced by people of color. When someone says “It’s because I’m black/not-white!” or something to that affect, it generally isn’t because we’re just butthurt for whatever reason. It’s because we have strong reason to believe we are being treated a certain way due to the color of our skin. Some people will say we’re being too sensitive.
But why shouldn’t we be sensitive? After all the centuries of oppression, after all the mental conditioning that has ruined our self-esteem and torn us apart as a people, after watching the white race prosper at our ancestors’ expense, after seeing firsthand how the effects of slavery and institutionalized racism are still a heavy burden on us, and as we are still being shat on by white people in power, why the fuck shouldn’t we be sensitive???
People of color have every fucking right to be sensitive to issues of race.
-end-
Cell Phone Surveillance System →
schneier.com
Britain’s largest police force is operating covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network, transmitting a signal that allows authorities to shut off phones remotely, intercept communications and gather data about thousands of users in a targeted area.
The surveillance system has been procured by the Metropolitan police from Leeds-based company Datong plc, which counts the US Secret Service, the Ministry of Defence and regimes in the Middle East among its customers. Strictly classified under government protocol as “Listed X”, it can emit a signal over an area of up to an estimated 10 sq km, forcing hundreds of mobile phones per minute to release their unique IMSI and IMEI identity codes, which can be used to track a person’s movements in real time.
[…]
Datong’s website says its products are designed to provide law enforcement, military, security agencies and special forces with the means to “gather early intelligence in order to identify and anticipate threat and illegal activity before it can be deployed”.The company’s systems, showcased at the DSEi arms fair in east London last month, allow authorities to intercept SMS messages and phone calls by secretly duping mobile phones within range into operating on a false network, where they can be subjected to “intelligent denial of service”. This function is designed to cut off a phone used as a trigger for an explosive device.
A transceiver around the size of a suitcase can be placed in a vehicle or at another static location and operated remotely by officers wirelessly. Datong also offers clandestine portable transceivers with “covered antennae options available”. Datong sells its products to nearly 40 countries around the world, including in Eastern Europe, South America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
Take a look at that bold part. We really are the leaders of the free world, aren’t we? Seriously, how long until this is used against people for suspected drug offenses or having the wrong political ideas? It’s insane how powerful our governments are and how no one is talking about that in this election cycle.
