We are reproducing a slightly edited version of What is Marxism? by Rob Sewell and Alan Woods, last published in 1983 to celebrate the centenary of the death of Karl Marx. The three articles on the fundamental aspects of Marxism, Marxist Economics, Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism were originally published separately in the 1970s. These articles are a good, brief introduction to the basic methods of Marxism and can serve as a first approach to the ideas developed by Marx and Engels.
We are reproducing a slightly edited version of ‘What is Marxism?’ by Rob Sewell and Alan Woods, last published in 1983 to celebrate the centenary of the death of Karl Marx. The three articles on the fundamental aspects of Marxism, Marxist Economics, Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism were originally published separately in the 1970s. These articles are a good, brief introduction to the basic methods of Marxism and can serve as a first approach to the ideas developed by Marx and Engels.
German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.
(click-through for full story)
Can we have this tech now please? I know coal is fun and everything, but yeah, renewable energy from the sun sounds pretty good right now.
“
Then, in August 2009, the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, told Mr. Brennan that the agency had Mr. Mehsud in its sights. But taking out the Pakistani Taliban leader, Mr. Panetta warned, did not meet Mr. Obama’s standard of “near certainty” of no innocents being killed. In fact, a strike would certainly result in such deaths: he was with his wife at his in-laws’ home.
“Many times,” General Jones said, in similar circumstances, “at the 11th hour we waved off a mission simply because the target had people around them and we were able to loiter on station until they didn’t.”
But not this time. Mr. Obama, through Mr. Brennan, told the C.I.A. to take the shot, and Mr. Mehsud was killed, along with his wife and, by some reports, other family members as well, said a senior intelligence official.
”—
President Obama and the Secret Kill List
Look at that Nobel Peace Prize winner. Executing people without trials and not even caring about collateral damage (or, as we might call them, murdered innocent civilians.)
(via fearandwar)
In case anyone was confused about how the Executive works (because apparently, according to Tumblr, Obama isn’t to blame but “institutions which can’t be changed”):
Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.
“He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go,” said Thomas E. Donilon, his national security adviser. “His view is that he’s responsible for the position of the United States in the world.” He added, “He’s determined to keep the tether pretty short.”
[…]
In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.
They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”
Read that last sentence again.
(via mohandasgandhi)
(via mohandasgandhi)
I’m off again for a while, meaning I won’t have access to a computer for a few days. So, another blast from the past, in honor of the forthcoming campaign … from July 2011.
———————
I know, I know: you’re thinking politicians lie as a defect of character. They lie because they’re liars. So why…
“[T]ake the notion of “political correctness”. It is true that movements of conscience have piled demands onto people faster than the culture can absorb them. That is an unfortunate side-effect of social progress. Conservatism, however, twists language to make the inconvenience of conscience sound like a kind of oppression. The campaign against political correctness is thus a search-and-destroy campaign against all vestiges of conscience in society. The flamboyant nastiness of rhetors such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter represents the destruction of conscience as a type of liberation. They are like cultists, continually egging on their audiences to destroy their own minds by punching through one layer after another of their consciences.”
— Phil Agre on Political Correctness (via jonathan-cunningham)
Have you observed sexism on the radio or in the music industry?
Do you think it’s strange that male vocalists overwhelmingly dominate radio playlists often despite singles and albums charts?
We want to hear from you!
Here are some typically sexist stats based on a quick analysis of playlists on Spotify
For instance : Various Artiists - Best of British, 2011
20 artists listed on this double CD
Only 2 female artists: Joan Armatrading, Dusty Springfield
so the percentage of females is 10%
But if we analyse the total number of musicians/ band members credited:
( eg: rolling Stones = 5 members, all male
Paul McCartney and Wings = 5 members, 1 female member) we get another percentage
Totals are approximate for band members!
Male musicians: 136 musicians
Females:
Dusty and Joan
Also
Helen o’Hara (Dexy’s Midnight Runners)
L.inda McCartney
Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley (Human League)_
Alabatross, Fleetwood Mac classic is before female presence in that band!
So total female musicians credited: 6
Which is 6 out of 142 total , now the percentage drops to about 4%!!!
That’s 4%…this is too easy x
“Articulation is not a simple matter. Language is the effect of articulation, and so are bodies. The articulate are jointed animals; they are not smooth like the perfect spherical animals of Plato’s origin fantasy in the Timaeus. The articulate are cobbled together. It is the condition of being articulate. I rely on the articulate to breathe life into the artifactual cosmos of monsters that this essay inhabits. Nature may be speechless, without language, in the human sense; but nature is highly articulate. Discourse is only one process of articulation. An articulated world has an undecidable number of modes and sites where connections can be made.”
— Donna Haraway, The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others (via foxesinbreeches)
To The Black Ballerinas.
These women have let the world know through their grace, beautiful, strength and fluidity that the dancing black female body is a gorgeous force to be reckoned with. The bodies of black women have been politicized, sexualized, and dissected by every blade the collective public has, both physical and otherwise. But when these women dance, their bodies are unconquered, moving like sweetwater, undefined and unfathomably glorious. This photoset is to the power of the ballerina, who declare themselves with their feet, when they dance…they sing.
omg omg but if i can be that annoying bunhead bitch for one moment.
none of these women are ballerinas, technically.
“ballerina” is an actual title. that people work hard towards, for a long time. and really, it’s a title that american ballet companies don’t use anymore, it’s more of a russian thing (and i don’t know if even they still use it). in the u.s., where all of these dancers were/are based, - you have corp de ballet, soloist, and principal, which is the highest rank. Misty Copeland is a soloist for the American Ballet Theater, and Aesha Ash WAS a corp member in New York City ballet before becoming a soloist for Alonzo King’s Lines company. Neither of them were/have been principals/”ballerinas”. in fact, there has never been a black woman principal ballet dancer in either American Ballet Theater or New York City Ballet.
ETA: although i don’t know who the women in the bottom right picture is, so she might in fact be a principal. but she’s still not a “ballerina.”
further, not all of these women are ballet dancers. or are doing ballet in the pictures! Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus were both modern/African/Afro-Caribbean dancers. Josephine Baker was a shake dancer/vernacular dancer/caberet performer.
and i really do get the point the caption is trying to make, really i do. but part of being a dancer is knowing your dance history, knowing the specifics of different dance styles and techniques, and to know the lingo of your art form. if we’re going to drop knowledge let’s drop it respectfully and correctly. :)
an example of being Tumblr-told off! x
(via withrevolutionarycries)
