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Think Irresponsibly
Saturday, September 27, 2008
The Economist is a rag that I love to hate. In terms of international political affairs coverage it can’t be beat. In terms of its politics, I’m inclined to throw a Molotov Cocktail—a figurative one of course—into its editorial department.
The Molotov Cocktail would create less damage than the 160-plus years of its publication has created by helping decision makers, bureaucrats and those who hold the power of the purse think responsibly.
The recent “Think Responsibly” marketing campaign is crafty, The Economist logo on a bottle cap, with a play on the phase beaten into our…
Why copyleft is right (and how commercialization is wrong)
Friday, February 15, 2008
Check this out. A six second drum loop from The Winston’s 1969 B-side “Amen Brother” revolutionized modern music, and pop culture as we know it. From early hip hop of the late 1980’s to the UK Rave scene in the early 1990’s this six second loop created the modern break beat and changed the way people made and heard music. The Winston’s never sought compensation for the usurpation of their beat. The funk/soul group of the Baby Boomer Generation gave it freely to the Gen Xers. …
Watching the right-wing go down in flames is gonna be super-fun. Grab the marshmellows, homies…
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Right-Wing Family Feud
By Liam O’Donoghue
Like a pet tiger, suddenly snapping on its owner after years of serving as a vicious and intimidating sentinel, right-wing talk radio has collectively reverted to it’s primal instincts and turned on its beneficiaries in the GOP. While this ironic twist of political fate brings me no small amount of glee, this splintering of the right-wing echo chamber seems worth examining. For the better part of the past two decades, the so-called “right-wing noise machine” has marched in lock-step to spread sleazy, often baseless, rumors, trumpet conservative propaganda and generally…
Tai Amri’s poetry is concerned with confronting the injustices of this white-supremacist patriarchal-capitalistic paradigm that is suffocating the will of the world. By calling in the divine imagery of the indigenous peoples of Africa, the Americas, and the prophetic social witness of the politically and socially radical Christ and counter-culture enlightenment of the Buddha, his work stands in contrast, and thus works towards disemboweling, poetry which forcibly submits to prescribed definitions of ‘what a poem should be,’ and in doing so it disembowels, ‘what a human should be.’ Common themes in…
“Freida’s Bastard” is an excerpt from Mauricio Escobar’s forthcoming novel, Labyrinth of Struggle. Escobar, a historian and writer, uses fiction to illuminate a nearly forgotten moment in the brutal history of the 20th century: the brief liberation and subsequent enslavement of women who rose against Franco. In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, women of the resistance found a fate worse than death. Rape, torture, and rancid food were their daily reality while caged in dungeons of a bygone era. Through the constant physical violations Freida found life,…
Two points from Mexico: Integrating activism on both the points of production and consumption
Monday, August 20, 2007
By Nico Rahim
During a recent trip to Mexico I spoke with an acquaintance who is a gringo expat in Mexico City working for a community radio station with strong ties to La Otra Campana. While discussing the immanence of revolution in Mexico and the lack of any coherent revolutionary movement in the US she brought up two very important points: 1) the US has vast independent media resources yet lacks a movement for it to mobilize behind, 2) in the US activism focuses too heavily on the point of consumption rather than on the point of production.…
Fault Lines interviewed Josh Wolf and Gabe Meyers, the two people targeted by the federal and local authorities after the July 8, 2005 Anarchist Action Anti-G8 demonstration in San Francisco. Anti-capitalist protests and demonstrations against the G8, WTO, and other institutions that represent neo-colonial domination and corporate globalization have always been met with more aggression and hostility than normal marches for peace. Granted, these demonstrators are often much more militant. With a police officer injured and a police car damaged, the authorities felt a need to subpoena and…
I’m not a big fan of commenting on other people’s blog entries. But, while procrastinating I responded to a blog entry on Ella Baker Center for Human Rights‘ site called “Will the socially conscious people please stand up???” I probably shouldn’t have, given the title alone plays into two of the more annoying expressions of the day, but it does ask an important question—where the fuck is everyone?
Spinning, Lying and Distorting History: U.S. Media’s Response to the Virginia Tech Tragedy
Friday, April 20, 2007
By Liam O’Donoghue
According to syndicated radio talk show host Rusty Humphries, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui is “frying in hell.” “I just wish he were alive,” Humphries added dryly, “so we could put him to death.”
Another ultra-right wing radio host, Michael Savage, spewed bizarre conspiracy theories stemming from the report that Seung-Hui had scrawled the words “Ismail Ax” on his arm. Savage also demanded information related to two other “men of color” who were photographed being handcuffed by police during the raid on Norris Hall. Somehow, he predictably managed to blame Islam.
America has come a long way. Two of the top candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination are a black man and a white woman, something that was unthinkable only a generation ago. This brings to mind an idea I had a while back--a screenplay about a black man and a white woman running against each other in a Democratic presidential primary. As it now stands, the idea has lost its timeliness. Why go for a fictitious representation of a black man and a white woman sacrificing their gender and racial identities to appease the white…
