Britain and empire: vessel of cruelty

"Short-term savings gained by drastic austerity measures should be weighed against their long-term costs".

Earlier this year, the New Scientist reported on a Greek austerity tragedy

(via the best fish.)

'Reorienting the discussion about sex work'

here

'Asked why he had not tried to leave, he said: "If we are caught, it is straight to the Palestine Branch. Anyone who goes in there does not come out."'

If, for example, you are an Aguaruna Indian in Peru, with a history of occasional revenge raiding stretching back the small handful of generations which comprise living memory (no Aguaruna can really know the extent to which such raiding was going on even a few generations ago, leave alone millennia), and if you have recently been pushed out of the forest interior into riverine villages by encroachment from oil exploration or missionaries, then your chances of being killed by your compatriots might even exceed those caught in Mexican drugs wars, Brazilian favelas, or Chicago’s South Side.

In such circumstances there would undoubtedly be much more homicide in Aguaruna-land than that faced by well-heeled American college professors, but also much less than that confronted by inmates in Soviet gulags, Nazi concentration camps, or those who took up arms against colonial rule in British Kenya, or apartheid South Africa.

If you find yourself born a boy in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in the center of the world’s richest nation, your average lifespan will be shorter than in any country in the world except for some African states and Afghanistan. If you escape being murdered, you may end up dead anyway, from diabetes, alcoholism, drug addiction, or similar. Such misery, not inevitable but likely, would not result from your own choices, but from those made by the state over the last couple of hundred years.

What does any of this really tell us about violence throughout human history? The fanciful assertion that nation states lessen it is unlikely to convince a Russian or Chinese dissident, or Tibetan.

oh

A hurricane's inequality

Caliban:
You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!

because you're a cunt

Just your typical randomised archive smear against the Met [linked to this], move along now

'It was while he in the custody area that Demetrio witnessed Harrington allegedly assault the 15-year-old, who was handcuffed. Demetrio told investigators he saw Harrington kick the young teenager in the back of the leg and, once he was on the floor, knee him in the back.

He said the alleged assault made an "echoing" sound and the teenager cried out: "I am on the floor now – you can't do anything to me. I am handcuffed and I am on the floor."

Demetrio said that medical staff were called to the scene after the teenager, whose identity is not known, began making "strange" breathing noises for several minutes.'

"a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die...Europe to go fuck off and stay away until we have finished the job"

- Radovan Karadzic

Tyee archive - 'Harperland'

A friend of mine died recently. J was only 50. He was well in all ways except health. This piece from last year about ATOS makes me feel.

Who defines an event as a 'famine' is a question of power relations within and between societies

- Alex de Waal

'Denying Rwanda: A Response to Herman and Peterson'

"Romney now complaining he wasn't born with all the advantages of blacks and Mexicans"

'On Holding Hands and Shouting in the Street'

"The crowd’s attention was drawn and people stared at us, two twenty something gayboys, holding hands in the street."

here

(via MT)

Like some people eat potato chips, Ferguson spots gays in history. It's just his thing.

here

Memo to the executive and legislative branches: there is no “unless it’s, like, a little inconvenient” exception to the Refugee Convention...An estimated 52,000 children have come to the United States since October, which is the mass-refugee-flow equivalent of a goddamned hangnail. That’s not even enough kids to sell out a One Direction show. The Met Life stadium can handle 90,000 screaming Harry Styles fans per night
here

"Only a few months ago, Henry Kissinger was dancing with Stephen Colbert in a funny bit on the latter's Comedy Central show.
...
Hill, who died in 1978, never did testify that Kissinger had urged on the Argentine generals, and the Carter administration reversed policy and made human rights a priority in its relations with Argentina and other nations. As for Kissinger, he skated—and he has been skating ever since, dodging responsibility for dirty deeds in Chile, Bangladesh, East Timor, Cambodia, and elsewhere. Kissinger watchers have known for years that he at least implicitly (though privately) endorsed the Argentine dirty war, but this new memo makes clear he was an enabler for an endeavor that entailed the torture, disappearance, and murder of tens of thousands of people. Next time you see him dancing on television, don't laugh."
re-up from this January in Mother Jones

Some good points last year from the late Norm Geras [RIP], discussing the name of a certain pro gridiron team who ply their trade around the capital city of the USA. Am excerpting the closing money quote; should not have to do this obviously, but there we go. Emphasis is in the original at normblog.

"It is constantly surprising how stuck people can be over the view that racist prejudice is simply a matter of what one intends; and how stubbornly they resist the obvious truth that words and symbols carry meanings associated with their history and which cannot simply be disowned by declarations of good will."

For those interested, Lauren Chief Elk sometimes writes on the topic of the same NFL team, riffing on the name [Chief Elk's Twitter / tumblr].

RIP x

Let them live: Josephine Baker, Maya Angelou, and Rihanna as erotic and holistic by Sesali Bowen.

A colleague of Bowen's has a short obit, which includes a embed of Dr Angelou reading Still I Rise here.