Restraint

If you want a picture of the future

June 27, 2010 – 7:02 pm

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Certain Features of the Historical Development of Toronto

June 27, 2010 – 6:37 am

A post for my brothers, both literal and figurative, trying to stay safe in Toronto:

The anarchist concept of “direct action” has been corrupted- mostly by those who claim the anarchist label- beyond all recognition in recent years, especially in North America, and, of course, beyond all measure in the USA. [...] The classic such act would have been IWW walkouts at a certain hour to enforce a certain working time. What does this mean ? It means that direct action is something that has an immediate effect, or at least the possibility of same. That it corrects an injustice or advances the interests of the oppressed not in some American psychobabble way but in a real material result.

Such actions are totally disconnected from how “militant” or “violent” such actions are. They may be “militant”. They may be violent”. In most cases, however, they are neither. The foundation of an “infoshop” for instance is “direct action”. Bombing a newspaper station because you think they ’support capitalism” is not. The former actually accomplishes something and is a direct response to correct a problem. The latter is (an invariably juvenile) expression of personal frustration that accomplishes nothing.

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NurtureShock

June 2, 2010 – 3:13 pm

How to Raise Racist Kids:

Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.”

Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two.

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Homoerotic Sexual Terrorism

April 21, 2010 – 4:11 pm

This information and analysis was compiled elsewhere, not by me. The majority of the information comes from the thirteen-volume report of the Joint Select Committee established by Congress in 1871 to “inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrectionary states”.

“The Klan Report” contains dozens of accounts, many of them firsthand, of men and women of both races who were the objects of sexual terror. (If you are uncomfortable with descriptions and analysis of racial and sexual terrorism, you probably don’t want to read any further.)

The utility of the Report is further enhanced by the fact that testimony, substantial portions of which are confirmed by external sources, was elicited across a wide spectrum of southern society, from the humblest freedpeople to the most esteemed planters and politicians.

An illustrative example from one of South Carolina’s major Ku Klux Klan trials evokes something of the texture and meanings that may be gleaned from the historical record of these atrocities.

Arguing for the defense, Cyrus Melton seeks to vindicate his client by employing a familiar courtroom tactic – refuting guilt through emotive reference to the heinousness of the crime alleged. With studied disbelief, he queries “Was ravishing helpless women a part of this conspiracy?”

“We have had here, from women, details of the most disgusting character, put forward for the purpose of showing from this act that ravishing women was one of the purposes of this organization. Now, I ask you, do you believe it, and that there did exist upon the face of God’s earth an organization which would have among its purposes that of committing these gross outrages upon helpless women?”

While he plainly oversimplified the prosecution’s position for rhetorical effect, it is nonetheless true that the KKK and its imitators purposefully resorted not only to rape, but to an entire spectrum of sexual crime as a means of advancing their agenda. Whereas Melton depicts the “ravishing” of freedwomen as an unintended, even regrettable, consequence of klansmanship, I contend that sexual terror was in actuality among the KKK’s most starkly defining features, designedly effected to compromise the stability, resolve, and selfhood of the newly freed slaves at the same time it punished their white “accomplices” as traitors to their race, thereby denying them the privileges of color that would otherwise have accrued.

A. Group Sexualized Whipping

Of the thousands of physical assaults perpetrated by the Reconstruction-era Klan, whipping was by far the most commonplace.
Klansmen exercised little restraint in these attacks, subjecting men, women, and children of all ages and colors to brutal lashings that resulted in the deaths of many and serious injury to countless more.

While it would be an overstatement to assert that all, or even most, of these attacks were unambiguously sexual in nature, it is fair to say that even“ordinary” klan whippings often bore a distinctly sexualized cast.

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Yesterday’s radical is today’s conservative.

April 16, 2010 – 5:02 pm

On norms:

“This is Chauncy Morlan, and around 100 years ago his obesity was so shocking that people would pay money to see him as he toured the country as a circus “fat man”. I find the unremarkableness of his size to be a telling sign of how we’ve pushed the limits of obesity in the past 100 years.”

(Related, via MeFi: Weighing 607 pounds, Bruce Snowdon was a sideshow fat man from 1977 to 2003, billed as “Harold Huge”. His death on Nov. 9, 2009, at the age of 63 marks the end of a long tradition dating back centuries.)

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When I am walking down Rideau Street, I never ask what they are charging.

December 12, 2009 – 3:50 pm

The transcripts of the Senate debate on the recently-amended drug bill are pretty amazing:

Hon. Claude Carignan: People often bring up the hypothetical situation of a youth who gets sent to jail for passing a joint to a friend. This bill has nothing to do with situations like that. Have any of you ever seen a three-kilogram joint?

Senator Comeau: That would be huge!

Senator Carignan: It would indeed be a huge joint.

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Αλέξανδρος Γρηγορόπουλος

December 9, 2009 – 2:28 pm

A year after 15-year old student Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot and killed by police, the streets of Athens are again blanketed by tear gas. Nearly a thousand people have been detained by Greek authorities, and schools have been occupied by anarchists in protest of the violation of academic asylum.

Anarchist flag waving over the Propylaia of the University of Athens. (gmesthos)

Anarchist flag waving over the Propylaia of the University of Athens. (gmesthos)

Protests in memory of Alexandros Grigoropoulos (apαs)

Protests in memory of Alexandros Grigoropoulos (apαs)

Fight in athens

Protests both peaceful and violent have been taking place across the city over the past few days, and no immediate end is in sight.

Marches against state terror unleashed in the last few days against the movement took place in Athens and Salonica on Tuesday 8/12 amidst government lies and bragging of its ability to detain more than 800 citizens out of which 13 have been charged during the marches in memory of Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

In Athens the protest march called at Propylea at 19:00 found the university asylum grounds once again blocked by long triple chains of riot cops in utter breach of the 16th article of the constitution.

Athens Police

After several people were seriously wounded by a motorized police charge, Civil protection minister Michalis Chrisochoidis responded to criticism of brutal tactics by stating that “Police detentions, when justified, are not illegal in a democratic society. Neither is it illegal for judicial officials to press charges.” He added, “Vandals and hooligans have nothing to do with democracy.”

(Background, previously.)

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Obamasculation

October 23, 2009 – 10:24 am

Are you a Republican? Libertarian (ha-ha!)? Did you feel emasculated after Obama won? Maybe you feel a little less virile, a little less of a man?

As it turns out, you are!

election_testosterone

The present study investigated voters’ testosterone responses to the outcome of the 2008 United States Presidential election. 183 participants provided multiple saliva samples before and after the winner was announced on Election Night. The results show that male Barack Obama voters (winners) had stable post-outcome testosterone levels, whereas testosterone levels dropped in male John McCain and Robert Barr voters (losers).

Wired has an oversimplified assessment of the study’s results, but the findings are clear:

Male voters exhibit biological responses to the realignment of a country’s dominance hierarchy as if they participated in an interpersonal dominance contest. [...] Moreover, since the dominance hierarchy shift following a presidential election is stable for 4 years, the stress of having one’s political party lose control of executive policy decisions could plausibly lead to continued testosterone suppression in males.

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Proposed topic for tonight’s dinner

September 13, 2009 – 4:58 pm

Norman Borlaug, “the plant scientist who did more than anyone else in the 20th century to teach the world to feed itself,” has died at age 95. On the staff of the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, Borlaug “developed a “miracle wheat” that tripled grain output and moved the country to self-sufficiency. Dr. Borlaug then took his high-yield, disease-resistant wheat to Pakistan and India, averting the mass famine and starvation that had been widely predicted.”

Yet, despite his achievement, and being one of only five people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, Borlaug was hardly a household name: a 1997 Atlantic profile described him as the “forgotten benefactor of humanity.”

(Post by NotMyselfRightNow, via MeFi.)

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I am zero means zero

September 1, 2009 – 3:16 pm

Yup, it’s true. I can’t keep it a secret any longer.

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