Occupy 12 January 2012
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Occupy Wall Street, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011, Viva La Revolucion!.60 comments
A monkey on a young boy’s shoulder during an eviction from Uruguay Square in Asuncion, Paraguay. A large group of the Ava Guarani ethnic group have been occupying the square for the past seven months, demanding the right to land | Jorge Saenz/AP
Face-off 5 January 2012
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Occupy Wall Street, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011, Viva La Revolucion!.18 comments
Sitra, Bahrain: An anti-regime protester gestures as he faces riot police during a protest | Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters
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Be interesting to watch and see, if 2012 isn’t just a year of the protest and protester, but a full frontal face-off.
Killer 17 December 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, AFRICOM, Egypt, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011, WAR!.52 comments
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Egyptian army soldiers beat a protester wearing a Niqab, an Islamic veil, during clashes near Cairo’s downtown Tahrir Square, Egypt, Friday, Dec. 16, 2011. Activists say the clashes began after soldiers severely beat a young man who was part of a sit-in outside the Cabinet building. At background graffiti depicts members of the military ruling council and Arabic reads: “Killer”. (AP Photo/Ahmed Ali)
A small gallery of just 9 photos from Tahrir Square on December 16th.
Athens 7 December 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Greece, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Occupy Wall Street, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011, Viva La Revolucion!.54 comments
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The Dark And Beautiful Graffiti Of Athens’ Disaffected Youth | Milos Bicanski – Getty
From a gallery at Business Insider
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The streets 23 November 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Egypt, Occupy Wall Street, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011, Viva La Revolucion!, WAR!.64 comments
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Egypt protests: Tahrir Square violence enters fifth day –
Egyptian police have fired teargas at protesters during a fifth consecutive day of unrest in Cairo. At least 35 people have been killed since 21 November in the crackdown by security forces on demonstrators, who are demanding that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces transfers power to a civilian government.
Protesters attempt to get rid of a teargas canister – Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP
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Uncrushable 22 November 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Egypt, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Occupy Wall Street, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011, Viva La Revolucion!, WAR!.47 comments
From a so wonderful gallery of Occupy poster art at the Guardian. Occupy Penang, Occupy Arkansas, Occupy Las Vegas (that place is REALLY in trouble), Toronto, Canberra, of course London…. one mocking the dreadful, commercial poster of Obama in 2008… on and on it goes.
So hard to pick, but finally of course, OWS had to lead the day:
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Occupy Wall Street – Photograph: Buzzfeed.com
I don’t think they can crush it. Tho obviously they have only just begun to try.
In that vein as I was reading this very good piece, I wondered if one could ever retrieve the other Martin, not Martin of the dream speech (much less that travesty, as I call it, Three Gorges Dam Martin)… but a more complex version.
November 22, 2011
Are We Going to Hell?Violence Goes to College
by VIJAY PRASHAD
Before the assassin’s bullet cut him down, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been preparing his sermon for Atlanta’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church. The sermon was called “Why America May Go to Hell.” The theme of the sermon was simple, that the failure to address the acute social crisis in the country had already begun to lead to dangerous violence. A protest in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, on behalf of striking sanitation workers led to mayhem. King escaped from what he had thought would be a non-violent march and remarked, “We live in a sick nation. Maybe we just have to admit that the day of violence is here, and maybe we have to just give up and let violence take its course.”
Such a statement is unusual in King’s repertoire, which is mainly positive and hopeful. By 1968, the carefully wrought counter-revolution to the liberation movements would soon make its appearance. The most dramatic instances were the assassinations of the standard-bearers of liberalism (King in April, Robert F. Kennedy in June). Less dramatic would be the shooting of college students, busy fighting the remnants of segregation and refusing to go shoot at the Vietnamese. Little remembered now is the killing of students on February 8, 1968, when South Carolina’s highway patrol officers shot and killed Delano Middleton, Henry Smith and Samuel Hammond as they tried to protest a segregated bowling alley in Orangeburg. No longer was the violence to come from below. It was more likely to come from above, to be the violence of the counter-revolution.
Campus militancy reached its highest point perhaps by the spring of 1969, when about a third of most students participated in one way or another in the demonstrations. It was in this context that California’s Governor Ronald Reagan said of the students, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement.” On May 4, 1970, four lay dead in Ohio (Jeffery Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer – average age 19 years and 6 months). Reagan got his bloodbath.
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There is a gallery of photos of the Occupy Librairies too…. In the closer shots, clearly showing uncracked spines and crisp covers, I see lots of new books. IMO people were, in an appreciable measure, donating newly purchased books to the libraries.
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London
‘Will Hutton’s The State We’re In is shelved alongside Subcomandante Marcos’s Zapatista Stories, Dean Koontz’s The Husband piled on top of Brian Friel’s Translations’ … the Occupy London library at St Paul’s Cathedral – Photograph: Richard Lea
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In highly peevish news, some people are still stuck on what women do. And does it have, you know, VALUE. Because of course what women do for the cause must be vetted. Must be found to have value.
Lordy.
Wintering 20 November 2011
Posted by marisacat in Egypt, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, la vie en rose, Occupy Wall Street, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011.73 comments
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Flamingos gather on the coast of Nea Kios, in Nafplio, southern Greece. Flamingos use this particular wetland as a resting place during their migration south in the winter [Evangelos Bougiotis/EPA]
Angry Arab pops up with this today:
Israeli solidarity with the Egyptian (nude) Blogger
I don’t want to send that message directly to them so I will send it here. I read that a few Israeli women stripped nude in solidarity with the Egyptian blogger who stripped nude. Why do Israelis intrude into our lives? Why do you get into areas in which you are clearly uninvited and in which you are clearly unwelcome? You are such a bothersome presence. Arabs have made it very clear that they (unlike the tyrants that you like) don’t like you and don’t want you in their midst. It is none of your business what Arabs do and don’t do. Spare us your act of solidarity when you are racists who everyday in your live you take advantage of the racist system that Zionist set up for you. We don’t need your silly and fake solidarity. You are not invited to our lives and our activities. You are such an unwanted presence. Take your solidarity and go away. And stop intruding on every aspect of our lives. After we liberate Palestine, and when you are forced to live in a system based on equality (after we subject you to the same military rule that you imposed on the Arabs inside Israel), you may engage in solidarity but even then it won’t be wanted. You really are without dignity when you know full well that Arabs don’t want to do anything with you, and you keep acting like you are invited to our parties, uprisings, lives and events.Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil at 7:26 AM
Oh No. Whooops. NO. As far as I am concerned, and not knowing preciselyWHO the women are on the Israeli side, but they may most certainly stripe nude if they wish, in sympathy, support, solidarity, identification, whatever is the motivation, with the Eqyptian blogger. Who is herself responding to repression of women under the conservative Salafi rules… and in fact in other posts Angry Arab writes of the increasing conservative Orthodox religious, on the Jewish side!, imposing separation of the sexes on public buses (women to the rear of the bus) and elsewhere.
Perhaps the Israeli women are thinking, oh I don’t know, BROADLY.
I think it is bad business to tell women what to do, what they may or may not do, to lecture them.
Everybody is allowed personal autonomy, I don’t care how politicised a situation or a country is…. if it practicises apartheid or not.
He seems a tad obsessed:
I disagree with Sara and other other feminist comrades at Nasawiyya who I so admire and support. It seems to me that there are so many other issues that women have to worry about in our region (and beyond) to be distracted by this sensational act by one person. If the issue is about sexual liberation and challenging the taboos of religion and state, I am all for it. But this is too shallow an act (and may even echo too many other Western shallow acts) to be taken seriously as a feminist act. Yes, of course, we need to denounce the various reactionary and right-wing voices of condemnation. But the pictures were also circulated for cheap titillation, which I guess is fine if people want to do that. But the feminist movement has other more important priorities to be reduced (or caricatured) by the exhibitionism of one woman (or man). Comrade Khodor (a progressive Lebanese) wrote a letter to `Alya’. I keep wanting to avoid this issue which is filling the pages in Arabic and English but I feel it keeps following me. There are so many other important issues. I am more worried about the status of Tunisian women after the victory of An-Nahdar: and about Western endorsement of misogynistic regime in the GCC countries. These are more serious threats to women and their freedoms, it seems to me.Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil at 8:26 AM
Molotov 25 October 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Europe, Greece, Occupy Wall Street, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011, Viva La Revolucion!.76 comments
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A protester throws a molotov cocktail towards riot police during a demonstration in Athens [Milos Bicanski/Getty Images]
Seems appropriate.
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Revelry 5 September 2011
Posted by marisacat in AFRICOM, Egypt, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011.88 comments
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Tahrir square, Cairo: Revellers enjoy celebrations for Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan [Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters]
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So…. 23 August 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, AFRICOM, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Lie Down Fall Down Dems, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011, Total fucking lunatics.73 comments
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Young Libyan boys flash V signs as they celebrate the freedom of the Libyan city of Benghazi – Picture: AP
So… maybe diversion, maybe disinfo, misinfo…. but the Transition Council has already put forth a draft, repeat draft, of a new constitution for Libya, calling for the state to be Islamic… and the source of law, Sharia.
I almost had to laugh… it was clear months ago, the flag being brandished in Benghazi was none other than the old Kingdom of Libya flag. When the King ruled, Libya was beyond poor (this is not an endorsement of Qaddafi!) and the main export, iirc, was salvage WW2 metal from the deserts…
If Sharia be it… then, I also read that the Pentagon admits to nearly 900 million, which is approaching a BILLION that they will admit to, for this Liberation. And the route to Tripoli, we are told, was cleared for the rebels by the British, Special Forces.
I am guessing the various reb factions were too busy (this is reported as well) calling down NATO strikes on each other.
Can’t y’all just get along?
Hey, clap. Clap some more! Be happy. Don’t worry.
I managed to get out today to buy stamps… they first offered me the Liberty Bell and without thinking, I said, I think its run outta gas… what else do you have? Thankfully the fellow behind the counter laughed.
You just don’t know these days, liberation is so fucking VIOLENT.
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In other news, and this is a real laugh…. the earthquake apparently caused cracks in the Washington Monument. Closed indefinitely.
Doesn’t take much to shake DC up, it seems. Got the Washington Monument, got a spire on the National Cathedral.
Not ENOUGH damage, I say. Hit it again.
Harder.
Marisacat 