Twerp on the loose

"Except you can’t show a topless woman on TV - and you can’t defibrillate a woman in a bra. So..."

Sat, 25 May 2013 16:22:46 +0530

“Except you can’t show a topless woman on TV - and you can’t defibrillate a woman in a bra. So victims of heart attacks on TV are *always* male. Did you know that a woman having a heart attack is more likely to have back or jaw pain than chest or left arm pain? I didn’t - because I’ve never seen a woman having a heart attack. I’ve been trained in CPR and Advanced First Aid by the Red Cross over 15 times in my life, the videos and booklets always have a guy and say the same thing about clutching his chest and/or bicep.

And people laugh when I tell them women are still invisible in this world.”

- distractedbyshinyobjects

re: feministing - for women, heart attacks look different

Things I did not know, but should.

(via elfgrove)

This is a post that might save a life.

(via str8nochaser)

My mom worked for 25 years as an ER nurse and is convinced that a lot of women die simply because folks only know heart attack symptoms that occur in males.

(via darkjez)

Society thinks our bodies are so scandalous that it’s better to put our lives at risk than to show us how to stay safe

(via callingoutsexists)

"According to Peruvian prime minister Yehude Simon, the sending of letters (referring to Evo..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 02:44:32 +0530

“According to Peruvian prime minister Yehude Simon, the sending of letters (referring to Evo Morales’ letter to the Congreso de Indígenas) encouraging revolution was unacceptable. The United States had also demonstrated its opposition to traditional modes of correspondence in Latin America over the years, and had preferred orchestrating coups and training death squads.”

- BELEN FERNANDEZ - PULSE, June 16th 2009

THE BURNING Of THE BOOKS When the Regime commanded that books...

Fri, 24 May 2013 01:28:54 +0530

THE BURNING Of THE BOOKS

When the Regime commanded that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burned and on all sides
Oxen were forced to drag cartloads of books
To the bonfires, a banished
Writer, one of the best, scanning the list of the Burned, was shocked to find that his
Books had been passed over. He rushed to his desk
On wings of wrath, and wrote a letter to those in power ,
Burn me! he wrote with flying pen, burn me! Haven’t my books
Always reported the truth ? And here you are
Treating me like a liar! I command you!
Burn me!

"In Praise of Doubt" By Bertolt Brecht

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:48:00 +0530

Praised be doubt! I advise you to greet
Cheerfully and with respect the man
Who tests your word like a bad penny.
I’d like you to be wise and not to give
Your word with too much assurance.

Read history and see
The headlong flight of invincible armies.
Wherever you look
Impregnable strongholds collapse and
Even if the Armada was innumerable as it left port
The returning ships
Could be numbered.

Thus one day a man stood on the unattainable summit
And a ship reached the end of
The endless sea.

O Beautiful the shaking of heads
Over the indisputable truth!
O brave the doctor’s cure
Of the incurable patient!

But the most beautiful of all doubts
Is when the downtrodden and despondent
           raise their heads and
Stop believing in the strength
Of their oppressors.

   * * *

There are the thoughtless who never doubt
Their digestion is splendid, their judgment is infallible.
They don’t believe in the facts, they believe only in
                  themselves.
When it comes to the point
The facts must go by the board
Their patience with themselves
Is boundless. To arguments
They listen with the ear of a police spy.

The thoughtless who never doubt
Meet the thoughtful who never act.
They doubt, not in order to come to a decision but
To avoid a decision. Their heads
They use only for shaking. With anxious faces
they warn the crews of sinking ships that water is dangerous.
Beneath the murderer’s axe
They ask themselves if he isn’t human too.
Murmuring something
About the situation not yet being clarified, they go to bed.
Their only action is to vacillate.
Their favorite phrase is: not yet ripe for discussion.

Therefore, if you praise doubt
Do not praise
The doubt which is a form of despair.

What use is the ability to doubt to a man
Who can’t make up his mind?
He who is content with too few reasons
May act wrongly
But he who needs too many
Remains inactive under danger.

You are a leader of men, do not forget
That you are that because you doubted other leaders.
So allow the leader
Their right to doubt.

"In “The Religion of the Forest,” Tagore wrote about the influence that the forest dwellers of..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:11:10 +0530

“In “The Religion of the Forest,” Tagore wrote about the influence that the forest dwellers of ancient India had on classical Indian literature. The forests are sources of water and the storehouses of a biodiversity that can teach us the lessons of democracy—of leaving space for others while drawing sustenance from the common web of life. Tagore saw unity with nature as the highest stage of human evolution.”

- Vandana Shiva: Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Forest (via ikenbot)

"There are people here who seem ready to create more poverty but leave those resources in the ground,..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:40:55 +0530

“There are people here who seem ready to create more poverty but leave those resources in the ground, or who even see poverty as something folkloric—as if children in the central highlands should keep dying of gastroenteritis and life expectancy should stay at 35.”

- Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s Path (via iapproveofyouropinion)

"…Knowing the North American media, I would be more worried if they spoke well of me."

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:24:27 +0530

“…Knowing the North American media, I would be more worried if they spoke well of me.”

- Rafael Correa (via purposebehindit)

danieltov: Rafael Correa bajo la lluvia. Guayas, Ecuador, 5 de...

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:40:36 +0530

danieltov:

Rafael Correa bajo la lluvia. Guayas, Ecuador, 5 de enero 2013.

"I am a woman. I am a woman. I am a woman born of a woman whose man owned a factory. I am a woman..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:14:23 +0530

“

I am a woman.
I am a woman.

I am a woman born of a woman whose man owned a factory.
I am a woman born of a woman whose man labored in a factory.

I am a woman whose man wore silk suits, who constantly watched his weight.
I am a woman whose man wore tattered clothing, whose heart was constantly strangled by hunger.

I am a woman who watched two babies grow into beautiful children.
I am a woman who watched two babies die because there was no milk.

I am a woman who watched twins grow into popular college students with summers abroad.
I am a woman who watched three children grow, but with bellies stretched from no food.

But then there was a man;
But then there was a man;

And he talked about the peasants getting richer by my family getting poorer.
And he told me of days that would be better and he made the days better.

We had to eat rice.
We had rice.

We had to eat beans!
We had beans.

My children were no longer given summer visas to Europe.
My children no longer cried themselves to sleep.

And I felt like a peasant.
And I felt like a woman.

A peasant with a dull, hard, unexciting life.
Like a woman with a life that sometimes allowed a song.

And I saw a man.
And I saw a man.

And together we began to plot with the hope of the return to freedom.
I saw his heart begin to beat with hope of freedom, at last.

Someday, the return to freedom.
Someday freedom.

And then,
But then,

One day,
One day,

There were plans overhead and guns firing close by.
There were planes overhead and guns firing in the distance.

I gathered my children and went home.
I gathered my children and ran.

And the guns moved farther and farther away.
But the guns moved closer and closer.

And then, they announced that freedom had been restored!
And then they came, young boys really.

They came into my home along with my man.
They came and found my man.

Those men whose money was almost gone.
They found all of the men whose lives were almost their own.

And we all had drinks to celebrate.
And they shot them all.

The most wonderful martinis.
They shot my man.

And then they asked us to dance.
And they came for me.

Me.
For me, the woman.

And my sisters.
For my sisters.

And then they took us.
Then they took us.

They took us to dinner at a small private club.
They stripped from us the dignity we had gained.

And they treated us to beef.
And then they raped us.

It was one course after another.
One after another they came after us.

We nearly burst we were so full.
Lunging, plunging—sisters bleeding, sisters dying.

It was magnificent to be free again!
It was hardly a relief to have survived.

The beans have almost disappeared now.
The beans have disappeared.

The rice—I’ve replaced it with chicken or steak.
The rice, I cannot find it.

And the parties continue night after night to make up for all the time wasted.
And my silent tears are joined once more by the midnight cries of my children.

”

- “Two Women” - This poem was written by a working class Chilean woman in 1973, shortly after Chile’s socialist president, Salvador Allende, was overthrown. A U.S. missionary translated the work and brought it with her when she was forced to leave Chile. (via socialistpoetry)

"Step forward: we hear That you are a good man. You cannot be bought, but the lightning Which..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:55:19 +0530

“

Step forward: we hear
That you are a good man.

You cannot be bought, but the lightning
Which strikes the house, also
Cannot be bought.
You hold to what you said.
But what did you say?
You are honest, you say your opinion.
Which opinion?
You are brave.
Against whom?
You are wise.
For whom?
You do not consider your personal advantages.
Whose advantages do you consider then?
You are a good friend.
Are you also a good friend of the good people?

Hear us then: we know.
You are our enemy. This is why we shall
Now put you in front of a wall. But in consideration
of your merits and good qualities
We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you
With a good bullet from a good gun and bury you
With a good shovel in the good earth.

”

- Bertolt Brecht: The Interrogation of a Good Man

(via socialistpoetry)

Supermoon Rises Behind a Tree — Nikolakakos Panagiotis

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:52:10 +0530

Supermoon Rises Behind a Tree — Nikolakakos Panagiotis

bolivarianos: Trinchera Creativa “Tenemos que ser...

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:49:37 +0530

bolivarianos:

Trinchera Creativa

“Tenemos que ser creativos…” Palabras mayores (FOTO) #TrincheraCreativa - COMPARTE

We have to be continuously creative. There has to be a search for the theory; a revolution without a theory is not revolutionary.

acynicmeetshope: The ghost of Pinochet haunts the campaign...

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:43:25 +0530

acynicmeetshope:

The ghost of Pinochet haunts the campaign against Chavez

“Thousands of “the detained and the disappeared” were imprisoned in the stadium following the Washington-backed coup by General Pinochet against the democracy of Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. For the majority people of Latin America, the abandonados, the infamy and historical lesson of the first “9/11” have never been forgotten. “In the Allende years, we had a hope the human spirit would triumph,” said Roberto.

“But in Latin America those believing they are born to rule behave with such brutality to defend their rights, their property, their hold over society that they approach true fascism. People who are well dressed, whose houses are full of food, bang pots in the streets in protest as though they don’t have anything. This is what we had in Chile 36 years ago. This is what we see in Venezuela today. It is as if Chavez is Allende. It is so evocative for me.”

In making my film, The War on Democracy, I sought the help of Chileans like Roberto and his family, and Sara de Witt who courageously returned with me to the torture chambers at Villa Grimaldi, which she somehow survived. Together with other Latin Americans who knew the tyrannies, they bear witness to the pattern and meaning of the propaganda and lies now aimed at undermining another epic bid to renew both democracy and freedom on the continent. Ironically, in Chile, said to be Washington’s “model democracy”, freedom waits. The constitution, the system of electoral control and the designer inequality are all Pinochet’s gifts from the grave.

The disinformation that helped destroy Allende and give rise to Pinochet’s horrors worked the same in Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas had the temerity to implement modest, popular reforms based largely on the English co-operative movement. In both countries, the CIA funded the leading opposition media, although they need not have bothered. In Nicaragua, the fake martyrdom of the “opposition” newspaper La Prensa became a cause for North America’s leading liberal journalists, who seriously debated whether a poverty-stricken country of three million peasants posed a “threat” to the United States.

Ronald Reagan agreed and declared a state of emergency to combat the monster at the gates. In Britain, whose Thatcher government “absolutely endorsed” US policy, the standard censorship by omission applied. In examining 500 articles that dealt with Nicaragua in the early 1980s, the historian Mark Curtis found an almost universal suppression of the achievements of the Sandinista government — “remarkable by any standards” - in favour of the falsehood of “the threat of a communist takeover”.

The similarities in the campaign against the phenomenal rise of popular democratic movements today are striking. Aimed principally at Venezuela, especially Hugo Chavez, the virulence of the attacks suggests that something exciting is taking place; and it is. Thousands of poor Venezuelans are seeing a doctor for the first time in their lives, their children immunised and drinking clean water.

On July 26 Chavez announced the construction of fifteen new hospitals; more than 60 public hospitals are currently being modernised and re-equipped. New universities have opened their doors to the poor, breaking the privilege of competitive institutions effectively controlled by a “middle class” in a country where there is no middle. In Barrio La Linea, Beatrice Balazo told me her children were the first generation of the poor to attend a full day’s school and to be given a hot meal and to learn music, art and dansce. “I have seen their confidence blossom like flowers,” she said. One night in barrio La Vega, in a bare room beneath a single light bulb, I watched Mavis Mendez, aged 94, learn to write her own name for the first time.

More than 25,000 communal councils have been set up in parallel to the old, corrupt local bureaucracies. Many are spectacles of raw grass-roots democracy. Spokespeople are elected, yet all decisions, ideas and spending have to be approved by a community assembly. In towns long controlled by oligarchs and their servile media, this explosion of popular power has begun to change lives in the way Beatrice described. It is this new confidence of Venezuela’s “invisible people” that has so enflamed those who live in suburbs called Country Club. Behind their walls and dogs, they remind me of white South Africans…”

http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-ghost-of-pinochet-haunts-the-campaign-against-chavez

"The good ones who listen to women to children and the poor die too soon, their lives ..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:36:53 +0530

“

The good ones

who listen

to women

to children and the poor

die too soon,

their lives bedeviled

by opposition:

our hearts grieve for them.

This was the world my father knew.

A poor man

he saw good men come and mostly go;

leaving behind

the stranded and bereft.

People of hopes, dreams, and so much

hard work!

Yearning for a future
suddenly

foreclosed.

But today

you write me all is well

even though the admirable

Hugo Chavez

has died this afternoon.

Never again will we hear that voice

of reasoned anger

and disgust

of passionate vision

and of triumph.

This is true.

But what a lot he did in his 58 years!

You say.

What a mighty ruckus

Hugo Chavez made!

This is also true.

Thank you for reminding me.

That though life -

this never-ending loop -

has passed us by today

but carried off

in death

a hero

of the masses

it is his spirit

of fiercely outspoken

cariño

that is not lost.

That inheritance

has gone instantly

into the people

to whom he listened

and it is there

that we will expect it

to rise

as early as

tomorrow;

and there

that

we will encounter it

always

soon again.

”

- Alice Walker: The Good Ones, for Hugo Chavez, Presente

(via socialistpoetry)

fuckyeahmarxismleninism: “Between the landowner and the...

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:28:51 +0530

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

“Between the landowner and the Indigenous, I prefer the Indigenous.” - Hugo Chavez

Sabino lives! The struggle continues

Billboard in honor of Venezuelan Indigenous leader Sabino Romero

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:26:56 +0530

humanisticscience: But really, if you’ve ever opened up any...

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:43:07 +0530

humanisticscience:

But really, if you’ve ever opened up any sort of science textbook you’ve no doubt seen this walk of evolution image. The problem is, Man (that is, the depiction of modern homo sapiens) instantly becomes White European Man. Unfortunately, most pictures depicting this “evolutionary walk” instantly evolve homo sapiens into a white male with clear European features, which is problematic for an obvious number of reasons.

Guatemalan Court Overturns Genocide Conviction of Ex-Dictator

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:35:09 +0530

Guatemalan Court Overturns Genocide Conviction of Ex-Dictator:

fylatinamericanhistory:

The decision, which reset the proceedings to April 19, when a judge’s ruling sent the trial into disarray, is a dramatic legal victory for General Ríos Montt, 86.

The plot thickens.

Why aren't more people freaking out about the new Venezuelan labor law?

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:01:00 +0530

lesbo-deluxe:

monetizeyourcat:

dancepunksnotdead:

You know, the one that gives housewives/full-time mothers a pension— wages for housework?

It’s ONLY A HUGE VICTORY FOR FEMINISM, SOCIALISM, AND WOMEN OF COLOR. Not a big deal or anything. Tumblr is mysteriously silent about this.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2013/05/venezuelas-new-labour-law-best-mothers-day-gift

holy shit!

that’s fucking awesome

love it how the reporter has to mention the ‘fact’ that “there are a number of criticisms to be made of the Venezuelan government”. ahhhhhh journalism!!

"Question: Which country alone in the Middle East has nuclear weapons? Answer: Israel, Question:..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:32:34 +0530

“

Question: Which country alone in the Middle East has nuclear weapons?
Answer: Israel,

Question: Which country in the Middle East has just recently used a weapon of mass destruction, a one-ton smart bomb, dropping it in the center of a highly populated area killing civilians including children?
Answer: Israel.

Question: What country in the Middle East was cited by Amnesty International for demolishing more than 4000 innocent Palestinian homes as a means of ethnic cleansing?
Answer: Israel.

Question: What country on Planet Earth has the second most powerful lobby in the United States , according to a recent Fortune magazine survey of Washington insiders?
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East receives U.S. weapons for free and then sells the technology to the Republic of China even at the objections of the U.S.?
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East regularly violates the Geneva Convention by imposing collective punishment on entire towns, villages, and camps, for the acts of a few, and even goes as far as demolishing entire villages while people are still in their homes?
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East routinely kills young Palestinian children for no reason other than throwing stones at armored vehicles, bulldozers, or tanks?
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections?
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East seized the sovereign territory of other nations by military force and continues to occupy it in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions?
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East routinely violates the international borders of another sovereign state with warplanes and artillery and naval gunfire?
Answer: Israel.

Question: What American ally in the Middle East has for years sent assassins into other countries to kill its political enemies (a practice sometimes called exporting terrorism)?
Answer: Israel.

Question: In which country in the Middle East have high-ranking military officers admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were executed?
Answer: Israel.

Question: What country in the Middle East refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing prisoners of war?
Answer: Israel.

Question: What country in the Middle East created millions of refugees and refuses to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses?
Answer: Israel.

Question: What country in the Middle East refuses to pay compensation to people whose land, bank accounts and businesses it confiscated?
Answer: Israel.

Question: In what country in the Middle East was a high-ranking United Nations diplomat assassinated?
Answer: Israel.

Question: In what country in the Middle East did the man who ordered the assassination of a high-ranking U.N. diplomat become prime minister?
Answer: Israel.

Question: What country in the Middle East blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a U.S. ship, the USS Liberty, in international waters, killing 34 and wounding 171 American sailors?
Answer: Israel.

Question: What country in the Middle East employed a spy, Jonathan Pollard, to steal classified documents from USA and then gave some of them to the Soviet Union?
Answer: Israel.

Question: What country at first denied any official connection to Pollard, then voted to make him a citizen and has continuously demanded that the American president grant Pollard a full pardon?
Answer: Israel.

Question: What Middle East country allows American Jewish murderers to flee to its country to escape punishment in the United States and refuses to extradite them once in their custody?
Answer: Israel.

Question: What Middle East country preaches against hate yet builds a shrine and a memorial for a murderer who killed 29 Palestinians while they prayed in their Mosque?
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East deliberately targeted a civilian U.N. Refugee Camp in Qana , Lebanon and killed 103 innocent men, women, and especially children?
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East is in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions and has been protected from 29 more by U.S. vetoes?
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East receives more than one-third of all U.S. aid to the world yet is the 16th richest country in the world?
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East had its Prime Minister announce to his staff not to worry about what the United States says because “We control America ?”
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East signed the Oslo Accords promising to halt any new Jewish Settlement construction, but instead, has built more than 270 new settlements since the signing?
Answer: Israel.

Question: Which country in the Middle East has assassinated more than 100 political officials of its opponent in the last 2 years while killing hundreds of civilians in the process, including dozens of children?
Answer: Israel.

”

- Dr. Norman Finkelstein (via chavista)