[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, tweets … you name it]
[Videos]
– The Zapatistas are here, they have started their invasion erm visit to countercultural europe.
QAmom – Confronting my mom’s conspiracy theories
[Music]
Lisa – Kämpf wiä äs Meitschi (technically from May)
[Podcasts]
Cui Bono: WTF happened to Ken Jebsen? [podigee.io] – “Die sechsteilige Dokumentar-Podcast-Serie “Cui Bono: WTF happened to Ken Jebsen?” erzählt die Geschichte vom Aufstieg und Fall des ehemaligen Radiomoderators Ken Jebsen, der in den letzten Jahren zu einem der einflussreichsten Verschwörungstheoretiker Deutschlands geworden ist. Wie konnte es dazu kommen? Was ist mit Ken Jebsen passiert?”
[Articles English]
Queer Nation Manifesto – A manifesto written in 1990 by ACT UP. [verso] – “How can I tell you. How can I convince you, brother, sister that your life is in danger: That everyday you wake up alive, relatively happy, and a functioning human being, you are committing a rebellious act. You as an alive and functioning queer are a revolutionary. There is nothing on this planet that validates, protects or encourages your existence. It is a miracle you are standing here reading these words. You should by all rights be dead. Don’t be fooled, straight people own the world and the only reason you have been spared is you’re smart, lucky or a fighter. Straight people have a privilege that allows them to do whatever they please and fuck without fear. But not only do they live a life free of fear; they flaunt their freedom in my face. Their images are on my TV, in the magazine I bought, in the restaurant I want to eat in, and on the street where I live. I want there to be a moratorium on straight marriage, on babies, on public displays of affection among the opposite sex and media images that promote heterosexuality. Until I can enjoy the same freedom of movement and sexuality, as straights, their privilege must stop and it must be given over to me and my queer sisters and brothers. Straight people will not do this voluntarily and so they must be forced into it. Straights must be frightened into it. Terrorized into it. Fear is the most powerful motivation. No one will give us what we deserve. Rights are not given they are taken, by force if necessary. It is easier to fight when you know who your enemy is. Straight people are your enemy. They are your enemy when they don’t acknowledge your invisibility and continue to live in and contribute to a culture that kills you. Every day one of us is taken by the enemy. Whether it’s an AIDS death due to homophobic government inaction or a lesbian bashing in an all-night diner (in a supposedly lesbian neighborhood).
AN ARMY OF LOVERS CANNOT LOSE”
How Real Madrid’s Florentino Pérez Built His Evil Empire [jacobin] – “Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez wasn’t just a key player in the botched European Super League attempt — he’s also vicious capitalist who has profited from outsourcing and privatization at the expense of the Spanish public.” “Modern” football in all its ugliness.
Critical race theory’ is the right’s new bogeyman. The left must not fall for it [the guardian] – “Rightwing politicians and media outlets are attacking a strawman version of antiracism. A disappointing number of liberals and leftists have bought into it.” The origins of the critical race theory conservative moment explored more in deepth in the article about Rufo in the new yorker further down in the list.
Warren Ellis reportedly returning to comics after dozens of misconduct allegations [boing boing] – “Even after learned about his abusive behaviors, I had hoped that he would demonstrate a capacity for change. But a year on, it seems like he may have been more intimately familiar with his fictional cruelty than I had believed.” It seems that Ellis did contact the women after this shitstorm.
Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes On Social Media, Research Shows [npr] – “Researchers have found just 12 people are responsible for the bulk of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.” They sure know how to work it.
Who are you in 1917 Russia? – “Take our test, “Political Compass of the Revolution,” to find out who you would have been 100 years ago – an Anarchist, a Cadet, a Right SR, a Bolshevik or a member of the Black Hundreds” Why, anarchist of course.
Michel Foucault before the commission for penal code review [lundi.am] – “These past few weeks I’ve often been asked about the subject which has taken the name of the “Michel Foucault affair” (even though there was no “affair” to speak of), following the delirious accusations of a right-wing essayist and their circulation without investigation (that is, with complicity).” Puts the allegations against Foucault in perspective while laying it all out.
IT IS OBSCENE: A TRUE REFLECTION IN THREE PARTS [chimamanda.com] – “In certain young people today like these two from my writing workshop, I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship. I find it obscene.” I pretty much only enjoyed this paragraph of the article, the rest feels like a lame vendetta. But this part is great.
How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory [thenewyorker] – “To Christopher Rufo, a term for a school of legal scholarship looked like the perfect weapon.”
Davos is dead, and the coronavirus killed it [ft] – “The pandemic has sparked a global existential crisis in many of us, including pillars of the Davos establishment. It has been about recognising, belatedly, that what we’ve been calling “normal” is a form of civilisational suicide. Many of us are coming to terms with the fact that we don’t know how to decorrelate greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth and that the phrase green growth is, for now and the foreseeable future, an oxymoron. In a world where about 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions are produced by the 10 per cent wealthiest humans — those of us who earned not millions but $38,000 or more in 2015 — the climate crisis is fundamentally an inequality crisis.” It is of course great that finally some of the key players seem to start to see capitalism for what it is, essentially a death cult. But hey, all they should have done is read one or two of our protest signs. It is almost too late now. And let us truely hope that the WEF in Davos is indeed dead.
The rush to ‘go electric’ comes with a hidden cost: destructive lithium mining [the guardian] – “As the world moves towards electric cars and renewable grids, demand for lithium is wreaking havoc in northern Chile” Watch the video, that woman broke my heart.
Ten-year hactivist fugitive Commander X arrested in Mexico [ars technica] – “A decade after Chris “Commander X” Doyon skipped out on a federal hacking charge and fled the country, the long arm of US law enforcement this week stretched out its hand and plucked him from Mexico City, where he had claimed political asylum. Doyon now faces all of the original charges for coordinating a 2010 High Orbit Ion Cannon (HOIC) DDoS attack on servers belonging to Santa Cruz, California, plus a serious new charge for jumping bail.”
Global Climate Report – May 2021 [ncdc.noaa.gov] – “The May 2021 global surface temperature was 0.81°C (1.46°F) above the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F). This value tied with 2018 as the sixth warmest May in the 142-year record. May 2021 was also the 45th consecutive May and the 437th consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average.” It’s still happening. We are doomed.
Prisoners Inventions [pluralistic] – “2003’s PRISONERS INVENTIONS is an underground classic, a high-stakes precursor to MAKE Magazine, combining ingenuity, adversarial interoperability, and user-centered design. After 13 years out of print, Half Letter Press published a new, expanded edition.”
Billionaires din’t pay taxes [pluralistic] – “These records – which include tax data for Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Carl Icahn and others – reveal that it’s not just sneering boasters like Trump and Helmsley who avoid the tax the rest of us pay – it’s the whole cohort.” But of course they didn’t.
Punk Didn’t Realize Being an Anarchist Would Require so Much Reading and Social Organizing [thehardtimes] – “That idea went to shit when I tried to join a local anarchist group and they all turned out to be a bunch of nerds. They basically gave me homework and asked if I’d like to distribute anti-capitalist pamphlets. Where’s the molotovs, the destruction, the stealing of police horses? Instead they gave me some book entitled ‘The Conquest of Bread’ and told me to read up. If I wanted to conquer bread I’d just throw a brick through the window at the Piggly Wiggly.” Great satire.
Old Women [believer magazine] – “A fall 2019 report by the publications Artnet News and In Other Words found that despite much clamor over increased attention being paid to artists from long-marginalized groups, “just 11% of all acquisitions and 14% of exhibitions at 26 prominent American museums over the past decade were of work by female artists.” The market is even worse: between 2008 and the first part of 2019, only 2 percent of the roughly $197 billion spent on art at auction went toward works by women. As if that weren’t bad enough, in the same period, more money was spent on pieces by Picasso than on those by six thousand female artists combined.” How to suceed as a woman artist. Keep doing it and get very old.
Why every single statue should come down [the guardian] – “Statues are not history; they represent historical figures. They may have been set up to mark a person’s historical contribution, but they are not themselves history. If you take down Nelson Mandela’s bust on London’s South Bank, you do not erase the history of the anti-apartheid struggle. Statues are symbols of reverence; they are not symbols of history. They elevate an individual from a historical moment and celebrate them.” Statues should ring an alarm bell, an attempt to mold history into steel.
Climate tipping points could topple like dominoes, warn scientists [the guardian] – “Analysis shows significant risk of cascading events even at 2C of heating, with severe long-term effects” Oh it has started, guys. Let’s not kid ourselves.
How many people has climate change killed already? [grist] – “The researchers estimate that higher temperatures driven by greenhouse gas emissions caused more than half the heat-related deaths in several countries, including Thailand, Peru and the Philippines. On average, climate change was at fault for 37 percent of heat-related deaths. The world has only warmed around 2 degrees Fahrenheit so far, but that’s already enough to kill roughly 100,000 people every year, if you apply this paper’s estimate to the entire world.” Too many!
Aaron Swartz vindicated [pluralistic] – “It’s been eight years since Aaron Swartz took his own life. Aaron had been charged with 13 felonies under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) for violating the terms of service on the JSTOR database of scholarly articles.” This is still so sad.
Real American men and the liberal war on meat [opendemocracy] – “From castigating ‘soy boys’ to Jordan Peterson’s carnivorism, meat means masculinity for the Right. Even those who don’t yearn for a white nation might associate veganism with women or celebrate meat as food that builds muscular strong men. Such shared ideologies make this an important area for the normalization of far-Right politics.” Of course they would… Men, aye, wouldn’t wanna be one.
[Articles German/French]
Les Zapatistes arrivent ! [lundi.am] – Prendre une bouffée d’espoir et respirer
Fremder im Dorf [republik] – “In Leukerbad schrieb der afroamerikanische Schriftsteller James Baldwin einst einen wegweisenden Essay über Rassismus und weisse Vorherrschaft. Was kann ein Schwarzer Schweizer siebzig Jahre später damit anfangen? Eine Dorfbegehung mit dem Berner Rapper Nativ. «Reise in Schwarz-Weiss», Folge 4.” Journalist takes a poc rapper to the swiss village where James Baldwin stayed.
«Staatliche Entwicklungshilfe – schafft sie ab!» [republik] – “Frankreich kolonialisiert Afrika weiterhin, afrikanische Politiker sind käuflich, und Entwicklungshilfe ist schädlich. Das sagt die westafrikanische Oppositionspolitikerin und Schweiz-Kamerunerin Nathalie Yamb. Und eckt damit nicht nur in ihrer Wahlheimat Côte d’Ivoire an, sondern auch bei einer Schweizer Lobbyfirma, die ihr mit einer Klage droht.” Africa still gets exploited by the former colonial powers.
Gewalt gegen die Polizei: Verletzte und verletzende Polizisten [der spiegel] – “Das Leben bei der Polizei ist nicht ungefährlich. Trotzdem muss man bei Zahlen zur Gewalt gegen Beamte aufpassen. Vor allem, wenn sie zeigen sollen, dass die Linke durchdreht.” The statistics are handled in a very loose way, even minor injuries not sustained in contact with protesters get counted.
Aufmerksamkeiten [kurt marti stiftung] – “Martin Beutler hat die Installation «Aufmerksamkeiten» konzipiert und realisiert. An neun Orten in der Stadt Bern, die im Leben und Wirken von Kurt Marti eine Rolle gespielt haben, reagieren Klangquellen auf Passant*innen und spielen einen der rund hundertfünfzig Beiträge ab. Sobald ein Beitrag abgespielt wurde, verschwindet er für eine Weile, ehe er wieder unerwartet auftaucht. Was man hört, ist ebenso überraschend und breit gefächert wie Kurt Martis Schaffen es war.” Cute local project honoring a great poet.
Herr Drosten, woher kam dieses Virus? [republik] – “Kaum jemand weiss mehr über Coronaviren als der deutsche Virologe Christian Drosten. Was er von der Theorie hält, Sars-CoV-2 komme aus einem Labor, warum das mit der Herdenimmunität bei Menschen nicht funktioniert und seine Antwort auf die wichtigste Frage: Ist die Pandemie jetzt wirklich vorbei?” Drosten as usual delivers.
Führt Identitätspolitik zu einer gerechten Gesellschaft? [zdf.de] – “Schwarz, feministisch, queer – immer mehr Menschen betonen ihre Gruppenidentität. Brauchen wir Identitätspolitik, um Verschiedenheit in der Gesellschaft anzuerkennen?” I kinda like this format trying to find consensus, but the gamification gets on my nerves.
Corona und Menschenrechte: Versammlungsfreiheit unter Druck [netzpolitik] – “Mehrere Menschenrechtsorganisationen haben die Auswirkungen der Corona-Krise auf Grund- und Menschenrechte in Deutschland untersucht. Sie kritisieren, Demonstrationen seien übermäßig eingeschränkt worden.” We don’t have to go all out Agamben to see that, yeah.
[Older articles, still great]
«Diese Revolution beginnt in unseren Köpfen» [woz] – “Nativ ist das Gesicht der Schweizer Rapszene. Auch weil er Themen wie Rassismus und Zugehörigkeit längst mit einem positiven Selbstbewusstsein behandelt. Er fordert die Schweiz auf, ihr Selbstbild upzudaten.”
The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill [wired] – “All pandemic long, scientists brawled over how the virus spreads. Droplets! No, aerosols! At the heart of the fight was a teensy error with huge consequences.” Since Republik translated this to german this month, here’s the original.
Pussy Tourette – French Bitch (I remember seeing her in Club Uranus)
Roger Ballen’s Theatre of Apparitions (2016)
R.I.P.
My hope
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Header Photo: Our garden in “summer”?