[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, toots … you name it]
[Videos]
Draw for Change – Culture [arte] – “Profiling cartoonists and illustrators from around the world who, through their drawings, are fighting for change. Each episode offers a glimpse into the world of an artist who, in spite of hostility, censorship or threats, makes a political commitment through their work.” Very impressive series on women cartoonists/illustrators from several difficult countries.
The Battle Over Exarcheia Square [.vimeo.] – “In recent years, gentrification has significantly altered the historic Athenian district of Exarcheia, known for its anti-authoritarian and anti-fascist culture. Unicorn Riot previously examined some of the facets of gentrification and the impacts it’s having on the district, specifically Exarcheia Square and Strefi Hill.”
Israel’s Architecture of Occupation: Eyal Weizman on Gaza & Targeting of Jewish Pro-Palestinian Voices [democracy now] – “And Germany silencing Jewish voices — of course, not only Jewish voices, Palestinian, people from the Global South, intellectuals, like my friend, Achille Mbembe, who was one of the first people to be targeted. But right now a third of the people that have been canceled and deplatformed in Germany are progressive Jews. That is a campaign that is — this is why I’m saying, being now in Germany, it is one of the darkest periods to be a German Jewish intellectual in Germany today.” Find the report by Forensic Architecture bellow.
Tumor Valley – A tutto gas! [.vimeo.] – “Siamo la Tumor Valley, ma vi siete mai chiesti davvero il perché? – Ecco da dove veniamo e dove vogliamo andare.” Mamma mia.
Twilight | ContraPoints – I’ve seen better videos by Contrapoints, and it’s very long, but still worth a watch.
Autism Self diagnosis is invalid! – “You know what it takes to get an autism diagnosis? Privilege.” Proudly self-diagnosed neurodivergent!
[Music]
[Podcasts]
Stream Refusing to Forget w/ Vicky Osterweil (03/21/24) | Death Panel [.soundcloud.] – “Beatrice speaks with Vicky Osterweil about the events we’re encouraged to forget, repress, and reinterpret in order to abet genocide, carcerality, or abandonment to a pandemic, and the power of refusing to forget.” Again fascinating how Vicky and Beatrice are not on the same wavelength in regards to the question of the state, but dance around the issue.
Mushon Zer-Aviv [team human] – “Artist, designer, technologist, writer, and Israeli peace activist, Mushon Zer-Aviv shows us why binary partisanship in the Israeli-Palstinian conflict hurts everyone, and what to do about.” I think Mushon is right, we have to say yes/and more. Also find his great article bellow.
“There’s always a tug in my heart” [substack] – “First up is Madelleine Müller, a singer-songwriter, musician and writer living on the scenic island of Bornholm in Denmark. Madelleine has lived with ME/CFS since 2011, and has been mostly bedbound with severe ME/CFS for the past six years. Check out her newsletter The Bed Perspective, about navigating chronic illness and creativity from a feminist and anti-ableist perspective.” A new podcast to watch out for, so far i have only found it on substack though.
Some of my best enemies are feminists: on Zionist feminism | Sophie Lewis [salvage] – “We should not let them steal the memory from us of that fleeting victory. The Islamophobic myth of the Muslim ‘rape cult’ doesn’t fool us any more the older settler-colonies’ ‘myth of the black rapist’ can. As the Palestinian feminist collective Tal’at teaches, there can be ‘no free homeland without free women.’ Though there are feminists on this earth who swear themselves to be the enemies of a free Palestine shared by people of all genders and religions, it was also feminists who first assembled to resolve upon the truth: that treachery to Zionism is loyalty to humanity.” I have never heard Sophie Lewis this angry, but they are right on about everything they say.
Care Must Be a Collective Practice of Survival, Not a Site of Profit Extraction [truthout] – “To me, creating a different kind of world is one where everyone’s care needs are taken care of, where care is a system of collective support that is anti-capitalist, that is anti-racist, that is gender inclusive, that understands the different care needs that people have, and understanding the different capacities that people have to give care. I don’t believe care can be egalitarian. Care is never egalitarian. It is not about equality, but rather it is about giving what we can and about getting what you need. And so for me, a real caring society would be universal in that sense, but it would be one in which we’re all equally invested.” Premilla Nadasen does not take the most radical position on the issue, but it’s a nice interview nevertheless.
Stream Legitimate Protest and the Construction of “Reason” w/ Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu [.soundcloud] – “There’s an argument to be made that we’re all in one way or another being driven mad. In the so-called US, living in a “country” that is actively gaslighting us everyday, what happens to a person when they live in these ongoing conditions, where what they know to be true, deeply in their core, is denied and rejected and dismissed and ignored and pathologised repeatedly by individuals and communities and systems. Where do we go, except in half. What choice do we have than to split?! What better psychological defense mechanism exists than to go mad?
[…]
We can also view madness as an act of radical resistance. As an absolute unwillingness to adopt to the lie. I don’t think there is a greater threat to the social order than people who are not just willing and able to see those through line, but also have the capacity or willingness to act on that. ~ Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu” This episode is death panel at it’s best.
[Toot Threads]
[Pandemic Roundup]
Pandemic Roundup: March 28, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: March 21, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: March 14, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: March 7, 2024
Thank you thank you thank you, Violet Blue, for continued excellent coverage on the ongoing pandemic.
[The Must Read[s] This Month]
Remembering As an Act of Revolt | Vicky Osterweil [ghost] – “This mass gaslighting, this huge project of denial and erasure, also has a cruel resonance with the cognitive impairment and damage done by the Coronavirus itself, with “brain fog”, aphasia, attention deficit and short term memory loss common effects of long covid. […] Time is broken, no one has a good grasp on timelines and events, people joke consistently about not knowing how many years ago something happened, historicity itself is being denuded. This has lots to do with the pandemic and the fundamental reality shift it marked, it has a lot to do with the decades long ideological project of not thinking about climate change, and it has a lot to do with make believe about the economy.” This is the article they talk about on death panel, fantastic meta view anarchist analysis.
“It Was Not an Unexpected Death” : An Account from the Opioid Epidemic [crimethinc] – “In the other kinds of solidarity work I do, the desire to survive is very strong. It compels people to cross continents, to leave everything they know just to find a safer place to be. It is not as difficult to reach out in solidarity to people who desperately want to live. However, it is difficult to do so across the river Lethe, the river in Hades that the dead drink from to forget.
[…]
It is not enough to use clean needles, it is not enough to offer fentanyl/xylazine test strips, it is not enough to help manage use with suboxone, it’s not enough to provide medical supervision for maladaptive coping. Ultimately, if we don’t address the profound alienation at the heart of the capitalist system, we will be hard-pressed to convince those we love that life is indeed worth living, and worth being present for.” Touching account of a friendship defined by the opiate crisis, with a fatal outcome, sadly.
Mainstream Climate Science: The New Denialism? | Jonathon Porritt – “And there goes my reputation as a “glass half-full sort of a guy”! I will, from herein on, be badged as a full-on “doomist”, a “prophet of apocalyptic despair”, an anarchist/communist/subversive seeking “to bring down capitalism” by “existentializing” (I kid you not!) the “perfectly manageable threat of climate change”. Guilty as charged.” A fucking crucial read.
Zionism Über Alles [dissent magazine] – “In the five months since October 7, people around the world have looked on in horror as Germany has wielded the memory of the Holocaust to silence criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza. The German government’s response to the conflict itself has not been all that different from that of the United States: both have increased their supply of weapons to Israel and supported Israel against South Africa in the International Court of Justice. But Germany has gone much further than the United States in persecuting protesters, artists, and intellectuals expressing sympathy for and solidarity with the Palestinian people. It wields its responsibility for a barely distant genocide as a kind of moral authority.” I am so frustrated with the German left and their bizzarre antideutsch reaction to this attrocious war.
Pankaj Mishra · The Shoah after Gaza [lrb] – “So when Israel’s leaders compare Hamas to Nazis, and Israeli diplomats wear yellow stars at the UN, their audience is almost exclusively Western. Most of the world doesn’t carry the burden of Christian European guilt over the Shoah, and does not regard the creation of Israel as a moral necessity to absolve the sins of 20th-century Europeans. For more than seven decades now, the argument among the ‘darker peoples’ has remained the same: why should Palestinians be dispossessed and punished for crimes in which only Europeans were complicit? And they can only recoil with disgust from the implicit claim that Israel has the right to slaughter 13,000 children not only as a matter of self-defence but because it is a state born out of the Shoah.” Mishra offering the perspective of the global south.
[Articles English]
Unauthorized Freedom: Agamben’s Anarchism à l’épreuve of the Pandemic [parisinstitute] – “It seems to me that the fetishization of individual freedom on the part of the anti-vaxxer galaxy precisely reproduces this childish anarchism that, disconnecting praxis from any moral and historical context, reduces it to a form of exasperated individualism. In the end, childish anarchism is a declaration of sovereignty whereby the individual takes exception to any limitation to their own liberty, and therefore fully corresponds to the anarchy of power. As Adam Kotsko emphasizes, this falling back on one’s own individuality has been historically weaponized by conservative forces (especially in the past four neo-liberal decades) to “cut off in advance any effort to challenge existing power structures.”37 The childish anarchism of the anti-vaxxer galaxy is the very opposite of a true anarchic critique of law, the state, and their violence.” This article explains where and how Agamben erred into edgelordism.
Explaining the explanations (or, neither their crises nor their normality!) [buttondown] – “in capitalism dominant cultures or ideologies are particularly dynamic because capitalist society involves an important degree of dynamism and social instability. Social tendencies such as competitive pressures on businesses mean that dominant cultures and ideologies in capitalism tend to have two important traits. One, they can include a great deal of disagreement among the dominant with each other. Two, dominant actors can come to undermine patterns of relationships with their subordinates, even if those relationships were already favoring the dominant.” Nate Holdren has a blog, duh. I only just found out lol.
UniteToFight 2024 – “We envision a world free of Long Covid & ME/CFS stigmatization, where every individual can thrive. Our mission is to create an inclusive, interactive space to address unmet needs and drive societal change. As an international, community-driven platform, we unite passionate voices through digital and tangible means, supported by crowdfunding.” This is a free, online conference, registrations are open.
Indoor airborne risk assessment in the context of SARS-CoV-2: description of airborne transmission mechanism and method to develop a new standardized model for risk assessment – “World Health Organization. (2024). Indoor airborne risk assessment in the context of SARS-CoV-2: description of airborne transmission mechanism and method to develop a new standardized model for risk assessment. World Health Organization. https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/376346. License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO” A PDF offering best practice advice on risk assessments. While this is well done, it furthers the indvidualisation of the resposnibility.
a proper cup of tea – Terry | Downpour – Need a cuppa? How to do it right.
The Sawtooth of History | Margaret Killjoy [substack] – “Building systems of care, safety, and trust takes work, the kind of thankless work that we put in day after day. The revolution is built free meal by free meal. It’s built through phone calls with friends who need support. We build the revolution when we build workers cooperatives and when we build alliances. The violence in our work is generally the violence of defending things that have been built.” Meandering article with some awesome bits innit.
Flexible Labor, Rigid Capital | Vicky Osterweil [ghost] – “This massive system offloads the insecurity and costs of this constantly changing “flexible” arrangement onto the workers, who pay through their bodies, their wages, their lives a cost that used to be held by the capitalist firms as “risk”. This risk took the form of inventory and warehousing, sales competition and the basic vagaries of fads and fashions when it came to consumer demand, and more structural fluctuations when it came to basic commodities.” A wide angle look at the bridge collapse catastrophy in Baltimore.
The Iron Dome is global – and so is the resistance [red pepper] – “It’s too simple, I’m afraid, to say they are united in defense of a single state. They are, of course, but they are also united in defense of a shared belief system. Amidst the reality of global economic apartheid and accelerating climate breakdown, they are united in a shared supremacist vision of safety and security for the few. This vision is the flip side of their steadfast refusal to in any way address the underlying drivers of these crises: capitalism, limitless growth, colonialism, militarism, white supremacy, patriarchy.” Klein not Wolf keeping up her brave stance.
Ye and the Problem of Fascist Art [current affairs] – “The rapper’s embrace of Nazi ideology is strange and awful, but it can teach us a lot about how far-right politics spread.” This article manages to give Ye too much credit, albeit in a back-ass way, because he really is just “a witless edgelord” now. Who uses the vocoder effect too much.
Are You Noise Sensitive? Here’s How to Tell [wired] – “Decades of research shows that excess noise creates a host of issues from the obvious (hearing loss and sleep problems) to the insidious (heart disease, metabolic disturbances, anxiety and depression). For the 20 to 40 percent of people who are noise sensitive, sounds above a certain decibel trigger the amygdala, the reptilian part of the brain designed to protect us, to fire on all cylinders.” Yes, i am very noise sensitive, and i would love for this to not only be my own responsibility but a wider, cultural discussion. Quiet zones, anyone?!
Humanitarian violence in Gaza [forensic architecture] – “Since 7 October 2023, Forensic Architecture has documented the mass displacement of Palestinian civilians being carried out by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip, and identified three overlapping phases in its execution. Across all three phases, the Israeli military has repeatedly abused the humanitarian measures of evacuation orders, ‘safe routes’, and ‘safe zones’, and failed to comply with the laws governing their application within a wartime context. These patterns of systematic violence and destruction have forced Palestinian civilians from one unsafe area to the next, confirming the conclusion echoed across civilian testimonies, media reports, and assessments by the UN and other humanitarian aid organisations, that ‘there is no safe place in Gaza’.” An impressive visualization of the displacement atrocity.
Media celebrated Long COVID Awareness Day by denying its existence | Julia Doubleday [substack] – “Never in the history of public health have citizens been encouraged to contract and spread disease. Never in the history of viral illnesses, outside of anti-vaxxer spaces, have people been encouraged to believe that pathogens improve the immune system (they don’t!). Never in the history of humanity have societies welcomed disease and disease spread as a good or neutral event. These outlets are brainwashing you not only to accept COVID, but to accept that nothing can be done about it, and that those who want something to be done about it are bad and crazy. They are brainwashing you, in fact, to accept and embrace COVID; why else are those wearing masks treated as freaks for wanting to avoid it?” Fuck the corporate media. Let’s built alternative media outlets. Don’t hate the media, become the media. Yadda yadda.
Rachel Corrie Gave Her Life for Palestine [jacobin] – “This day in 2003, the IDF killed American activist Rachel Corrie as she defended homes in Rafah from destruction. As Israel threatens to invade the city, a volunteer who stood alongside Rachel writes on her legacy — a call for steadfast solidarity with Gazans.” This brave activist died many years ago.
News Briefs: St. Patrick’s 2024 | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “An interesting connection is the one between billionaires and the far Right. Millionaires, billionaires, and even most far Right politicians don’t give a shit for Jesus or abortion or any of that. They don’t have souls, they’re banking on Hell being a fiction, and they know they can get their abortions whether it’s legal or not. What the extreme Right voting bloc provides them, however, is a minority large enough to provide a feasible path to electoral victory, given enough gerrymandering, voter suppression, xenophobic media coverage, and social media conspiracy theories. They tie their economic agenda (which allows short-term profits from fossil fuel investment, price-cutting in production standards, stripping social services) to a conservative social agenda to get the votes.” All the best to Peter in his recovery. He needs all our support.
February 2024 Global Climate Report [ncei] – “The February global surface temperature was 1.40°C (2.52°F) above the 20th-century average of 12.1°C (53.8°F), making it the warmest February on record. This was 0.06°C (0.11°F) above the previous record from February 2016. February 2024 marked the 45th-consecutive February (since March 1979) with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average.” This is NOT fine!
Insult and passphrase generator – “Each entry has about 42 bits of randomness. Queries are not recorded. Randomness is probably as good as the random resource in the operating system.” Generator geek that i am.
How mask blocs are keeping communities safe with neglected government stockpiles [the sick times] – “One of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is to wear a well-fitting, high-quality respirator, such as a KN95 or N95 mask. But in 2024, it’s not particularly easy to find effective masks in non-specialty stores, or at affordable prices, without buying large quantities at once.” I wish there was a mask bloc in this shit country.
The Zone of Interest is about the danger of ignoring atrocities – including in Gaza | Naomi Klein [the guardian] – ““Genocide becomes ambient to their lives”: that is how Glazer has described the atmosphere he attempted to capture in his film, in which his characters attend to their daily dramas – sleepless kids, a hard-to-please mother, casual infidelities – in the shadow of smokestacks belching out human remains. It’s not that these people don’t know that an industrial-scale killing machine whirs just beyond their garden wall. They have simply learned to lead contented lives with ambient genocide.” Hated the movie, loved this analysis.
Only Revolutionary Love Can Save Us Now [the nation] – “We wonder why so many young people today are depressed, anxious, and struggling with their mental health. Perhaps it is social media. The attention economy, also driven by a lust for profits, has kept us glued and addicted to our phones—isolated and lonely—endlessly scrolling and comparing ourselves to others, caught in outrage loops and doom spirals. And yet, as author Johann Hari has pointed out, it is perfectly normal for any species to become anxious and depressed when their habitat is being destroyed. Even if social media did not exist, why would we expect young people to be anything other than anxious and depressed when they know that, with rapidly accelerating climate change, the conditions for their very survival are being destroyed?” Maybe not. Love is the way.
‘You don’t want to get better’: the outdated treatment of ME/CFS patients is a national scandal | George Monbiot [the guardian] – “You can trace the origins of this model to a paper published in 1970. Without assessing a single patient or interviewing a single doctor, it blamed an earlier outbreak of post-viral ME/CFS on “mass hysteria” based on case notes alone. The reasoning included the fact that the outbreak affected more women than men. For centuries, doctors have been readier to classify women’s illnesses as hysterical or psychosomatic than they have men’s. ME/CFS, like long Covid, hits women harder, so, the thinking goes, it must be all in the mind.” At least Monbiot is trying his best to understand it
Disabled people’s exclusion from indoor spaces is a civil rights violation, not an annoyance [substack] – “NPR’s decision to platform a piece about the difficulty of navigating life with a spouse who can’t dine indoors, instead of a piece about the difficulty of navigating a society that has made dining indoors unsafe for vulnerable groups, is just that- a decision, and a political one. It is part of an ongoing effort to cast those who cannot play along with the “back to normal” fantasy- those who are being harmed and killed by it- as weird, paranoid, crazy, annoying, and “the problem.” Long COVID is a major thorn in the side of the “back to normal” approach to COVID. While some people (appear) to recover well from COVID, many others suffer long-term post-COVID health problems.” Count me in.
The story of Gaza’s destruction in 100 lives – a visual guide [the guardian] – “The 15% of Gazans who have not been displaced from their homes are not necessarily any less vulnerable than their displaced neighbors. Frequently, those who stay are compelled to do so because disability makes movement impossible. Prior to 7 October, about 3% of Palestinians in Gaza had a disability but that number could easily have doubled based on the injury rate of Israeli attacks. When someone is too unwell to evacuate, family members are often reluctant to leave them behind.” This brings it home as well.
Klee Benally ”Architect of Annihilation: Oppenheimer’s Deadly Legacy of Nuclear Terror’ – “As an ode to the toxic Hollywood industry, and white politics of the Oscars, Censored News is republishing Klee Benally’s two articles on the movie ‘Oppenheimer,’ which received 7 Oscars from the bowels of the industry last night. Klee, Dine’, passed to the Spirit World in December.” Still sad Benally died.
We ignored AIDS. Let’s not repeat the mistake on long COVID [nj.com] – “In the earliest days of the AIDS crisis, America ignored the problem, even though people were dropping dead by the thousands. We’re repeating the mistake now with long COVID. Millions are suffering, but the government has largely turned its back, as new cases emerge with each passing wave.” And again it is up to the sick people (often with almost no energy) to fight. Fuck you normies!
COVID-19 is Still a Threat. So is Biden’s CDC. [current affairs] – “COVID is still an active threat—but so is Biden’s CDC, and its wildly irresponsible policies.3 We need an entirely different kind of leadership, oriented toward the needs of ordinary workers and citizens, not corporations and political parties. We need leaders who actually believe in public health and the health of the collective.” Biden is a fascist eugenicist.
Must-Reads and a 24-Hour Vigil for Gaza – “Grief is the ultimate interruption of the normalization of mass death and mass murder because in grief, we acknowledge the value of life as we do in no other scenario. We grieve because we love life, because we love those we have lost. We love the living. We know the value of humanity. That is what our grief means to us. And so we retake our humanity, we reclaim public space, and we reclaim this day from a genocidal administration with our grief and with our love, and with our refusal to allow those who are dying to go unacknowledged. We hold this space for them. We say their names. We honor them because they are part of us and we are part of them. And so long as they are dying, there is no justice for any of us. And so there shall be no peace for those who lead us.” Beautifully said.
Why wear a mask to a protest? | Julia Doubleday [substack] – “Every month or so, the twitter wars start up again. Someone, often a disabled person, pointedly expresses their frustration that – yet again- leftists are gathering with few masks in sight, without guidance to require masking, and/or without distribution of free masks. This lack of COVID mitigation makes these spaces dangerous for immunocompromised people, people living with Long COVID, and everyone who is at risk of serious post-COVID health problems including long-term disability (that’s everyone!)” Lots of article by Julia Doubleday.
Germany: In the Streets against Fascism, Again : An Interview [crimethinc] – “Who would have expected it? Suddenly, millions in Germany are taking to the streets against the shift to the right and the fascist AfD, and in favor of a society based on solidarity. One record number trumped the next, numerous rallies and demonstrations could not even get off the ground due to overcrowding—in Flensburg, the demonstration moved through the city in a closed circle. More and more smaller towns, in the supposedly quiet countryside for Nazis, are also reporting protests, while encountering massive obstacles in some cases. We too are somewhat moved, pleased to see a break from the lethargy.” After attacking everyone about alleged antisemitism Germans suddenly remembered for a minute that a fascist party is gaining huge successes in their own country.
Landmark study links microplastics to serious health problems [nature] – “On average, participants who had more microplastics in their plaque samples also had higher levels of biomarkers for inflammation, analyses revealed. That hints at how the particles could contribute to ill health, Brook says. If they help to trigger inflammation, they might boost the risk that a plaque will rupture, spilling fatty deposits that could clog blood vessels.” Since most microplastics stem from car tires, i am pretty sure those 5+ years living right next to a super busy, dusty road were not helpful for my health.
Psychological entitlement: New research unveils link to pandemic non-compliance and conspiracy beliefs [psypost] – “Further research has suggested a connection between the level of conspiracy theory endorsement and a sense of entitlement. Psychological entitlement is a personality trait characterized by the enduring belief that one deserves more than others, often irrespective of merit or fairness. Individuals with a high sense of entitlement typically expect special treatment and may become easily frustrated or angry when their expectations are not met, leading to interpersonal conflicts and difficulties in social and professional settings.” Who’s surprised? Edgelordism is taking over the world.
Eichmann in Auschwitz [baffler] – “Arendt’s point in highlighting these ironies was not to dwell on the character traits of committed Nazis—she clarified in a later postscript that she never intended to write “a theoretical treatise on the nature of evil,” and that the compatibility of Eichmann’s “thoughtlessness” with his murderous duties constituted neither an “explanation” nor a “theory”—but instead to illustrate the folly of understanding the Nazis’ crimes against humanity in psychological terms at all. The question was not so much how such a man could have done such things, but instead how so many different personalities in the Third Reich, many of whom were reflexively averse to murder, could all have been conscripted into roles that collectively carried it out on a mass scale.” Arendt needs to be read the correct way.
As Neo-Nazi ‘Active Club’ Grows, Charges Against Its Founder Dismissed [unicorn riot] – “Known hate group ‘Active Club’ has seen explosive growth while the group’s founder was nearly released by a federal judge last week” They are expanding world wide, in Switzerland they have ties to the neonazis from Die Junge Tat.
Jailed, released, jailed again: whiplash in a leading neo-Nazi’s legal case [the guardian] – “The violent neo-Nazi Robert Rundo thought he’d won freedom last week after a US district court judge in California threw out a federal indictment against the white-nationalist militant, arguing prosecutors selectively went after him and did not put far-leftist protesters through the same treatment.” A rightwing judge freed the neo-nazi, but this was then overruled.
Germany Should Be Supporting a Cease-Fire, Not Israel’s War [jacobin] – “The Palestinian people’s suffering appears to be of no interest to the political establishment in Germany. There are hardly any words of sympathy, no memorial events for the thousands of children and young people murdered in Gaza, and certainly no call for the Israeli government to end the war. Nor is there any reconsideration of Germany’s political support for the Netanyahu government — a support expressed not only in the language of “unconditional solidarity,” but also with deliveries of weapons and ammunition.” Germany should come to their senses.
Daniela Klette: dog walker, dancer – and Germany’s most-wanted woman [the guardian] – “Police have yet to confirm the link between the arrest and a podcast from 2023 for which an investigative journalist from the website Bellingcat put the police wanted notice of Klette from the 1990s through the AI image search tool PimEyes, which detected images of the older version of her, AKA Claudia Ivone the capoeira enthusiast, online.” Free Klette and all the other political prisoners.
[Articles German/French]
Milena Krstić: «I wett mi nie meh schäme» [woz] – “Milena Krstić macht als Milena Patagônia mehrsprachigen R ’n’ B und erfindet sich immer wieder neu. Auch in einem Film.” I would never want to feel ashamed again as well.
Rechtsextremismus: Ein heimisches Problem [woz] – “Die Schweiz hat ein Rechtsextremismus-Problem. Aber sie ignoriert es. Und hier kommt die SVP ins Spiel. Seit Jahrzehnten stellt sich die wähler:innenstärkste Partei als brave bürgerliche Kraft dar, patriotisch und eingemittet. Die meisten Medien und alle nichtlinken Parteien (inklusive GLP) übernehmen dieses Narrativ. Dabei tapeziert die SVP das Land regelmässig mit rassistischen Wahl- und Abstimmungsplakaten zu, und ihr designierter Parteipräsident will die Genfer Flüchtlingskonvention aufkündigen. Für viele extrem rechte Parteien in Europa gilt die SVP als grosses Vorbild, ihre rassistischen Sujets sind schon mehrfach praktisch unverändert übernommen worden. Aber noch immer wird die Partei im Schweizer Mainstreamdiskurs nicht dort verortet, wo sie programmatisch steht: extrem rechts.” In Switzerland a right-wing party holds 30% of the parliament. We are a one third fascist country.
Schattenfamilien: Herausforderungen [dmz] – “Die Hauptursache für die Entstehung von Schattenfamilien ist die Angst vor einer Infektion mit schwerwiegenden Folgen für das kranke oder behinderte Familienmitglied. Diese Familien fühlen sich gezwungen, sich zu isolieren und soziale Kontakte zu minimieren, um ihre Liebsten zu schützen. Die Isolation von Schattenfamilien hat schwerwiegende Auswirkungen auf das Familienleben. Sie führt zu finanziellen Belastungen, psychischer Beanspruchung und Problemen im Bildungsbereich. Viele Eltern sind gezwungen, ihre Arbeitsplätze aufzugeben, um die Betreuung ihrer Kinder zu gewährleisten, was zu zusätzlichem Stress und Unsicherheit führt.” We are such a Schattenfamilie (shadow family) of two.
My Kombucha would never engage in Täterschutz | Jessica Jurassica [substack] – “Angesichts der im Rahmen dieser Geschichte getätigten antifeministischen und täterschützenden Aussagen und der Verweigerung jeglicher Verantwortung, lässt sich dieser Gestus in das oben genannte Phänomen einordnen. Gleichzeitig bin ich überzeugt, dass die beschriebenen Gefühle trotz derer Instrumentalisierung echt und in der Tat sehr schmerzhaft sind. Blum schreibt im selben Post auch über «die zerstörerische und oft zutiefst queerfeindliche Gewalt gegen meine Person, meinen queer-feministischen Aktivismus und meine gesamte Existenz(grundlage).»” Jessica Jurassica has started fermenting and i love her even more for that.
Feministische Revolution: «Freundschaften haben subversives Potenzial» [woz] – “Nach Jahrhunderten von kapitalistischem, kolonialem und hierarchischem Denken haben wir die Verbindung zueinander verloren. Wir denken, unser individuelles Wohlbefinden habe nichts mit dem Wohlbefinden anderer zu tun. Radikale Solidarität bricht mit diesem Denken und versteht Menschen, Natur und Kosmos als Einheit, als ein Ökosystem, in dem wir alle unseren Platz haben und miteinander verknüpft sind. Wir können radikale Solidarität besser leben, wenn wir sie emotional spüren.” Wide ranging interview with the french philospher Emilia Roig who lives in Berlin and is one of the leftist jews attacked by Germans for their critique on Israel.
Vulkangruppe Tesla abschalten! : Anschlag auf Stromversorgung [de.indymedia.org] – “Die Gigafactory ist durch ihre extremen Ausbeutungsbedingungen bekannt geworden. Die Fabrik verseucht das Grundwasser und verbraucht für ihre Produkte riesige Mengen der ohnehin knappen Trinkwasserressource. Ohne Skrupel wird dem Land Brandenburg-Berlin für Tesla das Wasser abgegraben. Die Kritiker:innen in den Wasserwerken, die Anwohner:innen, die Ökoaktivist:innen werden mundtot gemacht. Zahlen werden geschönt. Gesetze gebeugt. Menschen betrogen. Dabei lehnt ein großer Teil der Bevölkerung rund um Grünheide die Gigafactory wegen Wasserraub und Gentrifizierung ab. Nach wie vor ist der Protest und Widerstand ungebrochen. Und er wächst, denn Gründe gibt es mehr als einen. Neben der schmutzigen Batteriefabrik will Tesla jetzt sein Werksgelände um weitere 100 Hektar erweitern, unter anderem für einen Güterbahnhof.” They blew up the power station feeding the Tesla factory.
[Older articles, still great]
Your Empathy is Killing Us. | Mushon Zer-Aviv – “To judge by social media, the world is divided between good and evil. No nuances, no context, no gray areas. Thus, to truly eradicate evil one must make a clear cut and choose a side: you’re either with the victim or you’re with the perpetrator. Sadly, this blanket refusal to acknowledge complexity is intensified by the algorithmically induced cycles of engagement / enragement. The more extreme your position, the more tweetable or instagramable it becomes, and the more likely it is to be shared and go viral. And conversely, the more nuanced and devoid of catchy slogans your stated position is, the more it gets suppressed by the algorithm.” Less Yes/no, Yes/but, Ohdearism, more Yes, and! I agree with this. In defense of the Grayzone.
“We Will Need Writers Who Can Remember Freedom”: Ursula Le Guin and Last Night’s N.B.A.s | [the new yorker] – “I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.” Just wow. Always again and again, just wow.
Fucking Like a Housewife – The New Inquiry – “Are trans women de facto alienated from these structures, or is there a path toward reimagining the Housewife beyond the bounds of cisness, whiteness, and subjection under late-capitalist variations on the family? In some sense, this is also a question of whether or not a certain fashioning of heterosexual desire—or heterosexuality as a determinable identity and ongoingness in and of itself—can only and ever be a dead remnant of a racist and misogynist structuration of desire within a system built on commodity fetishism.” These two articles by Jamie Hood were mentioned by Raechel Anne Joile. Agree, what a writer.
Housewife Demonology [the new inquiry] – “No–I was under no delusion that happiness was waiting just around the bend. While awaiting revolution, what I sought was a deferral of further damage. The fact is, I needed to not have one more door slammed in my face. I needed to imagine a world in which my rent would be paid. I needed, urgently, in that dark period, to not get raped again, or to go on stumbling about with the replicative threat of sexual violence seeping from the shadow of every man I encountered.” Dito.
One of the world’s first gay rights activists was racist and sexist. The author of a new book explores how much should it bug us [xtra magazine] – “Laurie Marhoefer’s book on Magnus Hirschfeld looks at the famed German sexologist’s darker side and his relationship with a younger Asian man” He actually was a contriversial figure.
Upping the Frequency: Sara Shelton Mann in Conversation with Keith Hennessy [smallpresstraffic] – “I seem to go from spectacle in group to very, very small. But I’m feeling like, “OK, this is a strange planet that we’re on at the moment.” We’ve been through the pandemic, but we’re not through it yet, and there’s still an awkwardness; things are not like they used to be and things aren’t settled yet how they’re gonna be. We’re in this transitional complexity that’s kind of suspended. Well, welcome to the void. Here we are. So now what? And I think of the void now as the planet. We have everything! We’ve got it all! We’ve got likes and dislikes, we have ice cream, we have fish, we have robots, we have aliens, we have miniskirts, we have people with blue eyes, we have people that don’t like the way we think and don’t want to have anything to do with us. We have terrible opposition, we have right-wrong and power over victim. It’s just rampant. And it makes no sense.” Beautiful interview on the history of the performance/dance scene in San Francisco.
Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (Dritte Fassung) | Walter Benjamin – “»Fiat ars – pereat mundus« sagt der Faschismus und erwartet die künstlerische Befriedigung der von der Technik veränderten Sinneswahrnehmung, wie Marinetti bekennt, vom Kriege. Das ist offenbar die Vollendung des l’art pour l’art. Die Menschheit, die einst bei Homer ein Schauobjekt für die Olympischen Götter war, ist es nun für sich selbst geworden. Ihre Selbstentfremdung hat jenen Grad erreicht, der sie ihre eigene Vernichtung als ästhetischen Genuß ersten Ranges erleben läßt. So steht es um die Ästhetisierung der Politik, welche der Faschismus betreibt. Der Kommunismus antwortet ihm mit der Politisierung der Kunst.” THE timeless classic.
Tracey Emin Is Serious [vulture] – “How are women doing in the art world these days? Well, I think women are doing a lot better than men. Men peak between the age of 40 and 50, and women peak between the age of 50 and 80. Men have one big giant ejaculation, and women come and come and come again. So this is why if you are a female artist and you’re doing okay at 50, you’re going to be doing quite good at 60, fucking excellent at 70, and out of this world at 80 and 90. One of my first and best artist friends in New York was Louise Bourgeois. There were 50 years between us, but she was a big inspiration because there she was, 97, still going for it, still cracking it out, still thinking. If I can be like that, it means I’ve got only halfway through my career.” How brave Emin stands with her disability/illness
R.I.P.
Jess Curtis, Choreographer and Accessibility Champion Here’s his website: Access Services — Jess Curtis/Gravity I knew and loved this guy, but hadn’t seen him in way too many years. I will always keep the fondest memories of him and several of his workshops i attended. Eulogy in the Chronicle
Paul Alexander
Plus too many in Gaza, Ukraine and all the other wars. Plus from COVID.
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Header Photo: From a hill with trees a rainbow goes up into the sky, there is a power plant near it