250 Favorite Classic Films in no particular order
⇨ Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Look I probably should have told you this before but you see… well… insanity runs in my family… It practically gallops.
(via mrbusterkeaton)
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues
But I shot a man in Reno,
Just to watch him die,
(via bohemea)
The Proposition by Judith Leyster
Date: 1631
Also known as Man Offering Money to a Young Woman
“True revolution
comes from true revulsion;
when things get bad enough
the kitten will kill the lion.”
— Bukowski (via ashleyasdfghjk)
(Source: let-it-remain, via amodernmanifesto)
![nickdrake:
Noam Chomsky
On drugs
Having a substance should not be considered a crime, because so far it’s victimless. If you want to talk about distributing substances that are lethal, yeah, that oughta be brought up, but then, let’s be serious. Tobacco is far ahead of anything else. Alcohol is second. Hard drugs are way down the bottom, and furthermore most drug use, though it’s very harmful for the person, has very little social effect. The crime associated with hard drugs is mostly a consequence of criminalization. [Q: so should we go after the people who make cigarettes?] If the principle is, let’s not get lethal substances out to the public, the first one you’d go after is tobacco, the next one you’d go after is alcohol, way down the list you’d get to cocaine, and sort of invisibly low you’d get to marijuana. [Q: a lot more violence comes from someone snorting some coke?] No, it doesn’t. It comes from purchasing coke and selling coke, but that’s because it’s illegal. That’s because of the criminalization of it, not the effect. There’re good studies of this. Tobacco doesn’t happen to cause violence, but alcohol definitely does. The deaths that are alcohol related are way beyond the deaths that are hard drugs related, if you separate, in the hard drugs case, the deaths that are the result of criminalization. So yeah, when you have drug gangs and narcotraffickers fighting for turfs and so on, sure, then there’s gonna be plenty of killings. Just like when you had Al Capone running Chicago. But that’s a consequence of the criminalization, not the drugs. What drugs tend to do is make people passive. Alcohol on the other hand makes them violent. There’re extensive studies in the criminality literature, and you can take a look at the results. The basic result is that tobacco related deaths are way beyond anything else, just an order of magnitude greater. Furthermore those are not just to the user, they’re to everybody else. So deaths from passive smoking alone are much higher than drug related deaths. Furthermore they’re transferred on to the next generation. Alcohol is the next biggest killer, and it’s a killer not only to the people who use it, which is bad enough, but also to others, because of its relation to violence. Next is things like hard drugs, and they are rarely harmful to others, they’re harmful to the user. When you get down to marijuana, last time I looked there had been about 60 million users and not one known case of overdose. I mean it’s not good for you, undoubtedly, but it’s probably at the level of coffee. And in fact notice that there has never been a medical reason for criminalizing marijuana. I’ve looked through the history of this if you’re interested, I don’t know if you want me to run through it, but it’s an interesting history. Very commonly substances are criminalized because they’re associated with what’s called the dangerous classes, you know, poor people, or working people. So for example in England in the 19th century, there was a period when gin was criminalized and whiskey wasn’t, because gin is what poor people drink. That’s kinda like the sentencing for crack and powder. In the early stages of Prohibition in the United States, one of the targets was immigrant workers, these guys hanging around the saloons in New York, gotta go after them. The rich guys in upstate New York, they’re gonna drink no matter what, you know, they wanna come home after work, they’ll drink. But, go after those guys. What about marijuana? Marijuana was brought in by Mexicans, and the first criminalization of marijuana was in the southwest, in the states. It was in New Mexico, later Utah, and so on, and it was specifically targeted against Mexicans. It didn’t get criminalized in the United States until shortly after Prohibition ended. After Prohibition ended we had this huge bureau of narcotics, and it had to do something. So they discovered, you know, that marijuana is gonna do all kind of terrible things to you. The Senate testimony about this is mind-boggling. They did have a representative of the American Medical Association, who said we don’t have any medical evidence about this. He was shut up, denounced, you know, get rid of him right away. Then they found somebody else, this is literally true, they found a pharmacologist, a guy teaching at Temple University, who was doing experiments with marijuana and dogs. The testimony is hilarious, you really have to read it. They brought this guy and he testified that when he gave marijuana to dogs they went insane, you know, they’d do all kind of things. And then, some senator or somebody asked him, this is from memory, so it’s probably a little off, but something like this, it’s in the thirties. They asked the guy, well have you ever tried marijuana on humans? So he said, yeah, he tried it on himself. And he said, well, what happened? He said, I turned into a vulture, I started flying around the room. So they, oh my god, this stuff is terrible, it makes people insane. And it was declared by Congress that marijuana makes people insane. But then something happened. It turned out that lawyers, defense lawyers, got the idea, OK, I can use this for an insanity defense. So if a guy who killed 3 cops, his lawyer would say, well, you know, he had marijuana before so he was insane, so you can’t do anything. And people were getting off on charges, like cop killing for example, on the claim that they had marijuana. So all of a sudden it was discovered that marijuana doesn’t make you insane. Congress decided, sorry, it doesn’t make you insane, because we wanna wipe that out. The next idea was, marijuana is an entry drug, it’s the drug you take and then you go on to something else. Well, there was never any evidence for that, but that was decided. And then in the early fifties, something else happened, marijuana is being brought in here by Red Chinese to poison the American population and destroy us. So therefore we gotta stop marijuana. And it kinda goes on like this. Actually, the peak of marijuana use was as I said, in the seventies, but that was rich kids, so you don’t throw them in jail. And then it got seriously criminalized, you know, you really throw people in jail for it, when it was poor people.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l05xp4jfqO1qa1iiqo1_1280.jpg)
Noam Chomsky
Having a substance should not be considered a crime, because so far it’s victimless. If you want to talk about distributing substances that are lethal, yeah, that oughta be brought up, but then, let’s be serious. Tobacco is far ahead of anything else. Alcohol is second. Hard drugs are way down the bottom, and furthermore most drug use, though it’s very harmful for the person, has very little social effect. The crime associated with hard drugs is mostly a consequence of criminalization. [Q: so should we go after the people who make cigarettes?] If the principle is, let’s not get lethal substances out to the public, the first one you’d go after is tobacco, the next one you’d go after is alcohol, way down the list you’d get to cocaine, and sort of invisibly low you’d get to marijuana. [Q: a lot more violence comes from someone snorting some coke?] No, it doesn’t. It comes from purchasing coke and selling coke, but that’s because it’s illegal. That’s because of the criminalization of it, not the effect. There’re good studies of this. Tobacco doesn’t happen to cause violence, but alcohol definitely does. The deaths that are alcohol related are way beyond the deaths that are hard drugs related, if you separate, in the hard drugs case, the deaths that are the result of criminalization. So yeah, when you have drug gangs and narcotraffickers fighting for turfs and so on, sure, then there’s gonna be plenty of killings. Just like when you had Al Capone running Chicago. But that’s a consequence of the criminalization, not the drugs. What drugs tend to do is make people passive. Alcohol on the other hand makes them violent. There’re extensive studies in the criminality literature, and you can take a look at the results. The basic result is that tobacco related deaths are way beyond anything else, just an order of magnitude greater. Furthermore those are not just to the user, they’re to everybody else. So deaths from passive smoking alone are much higher than drug related deaths. Furthermore they’re transferred on to the next generation. Alcohol is the next biggest killer, and it’s a killer not only to the people who use it, which is bad enough, but also to others, because of its relation to violence. Next is things like hard drugs, and they are rarely harmful to others, they’re harmful to the user. When you get down to marijuana, last time I looked there had been about 60 million users and not one known case of overdose. I mean it’s not good for you, undoubtedly, but it’s probably at the level of coffee. And in fact notice that there has never been a medical reason for criminalizing marijuana. I’ve looked through the history of this if you’re interested, I don’t know if you want me to run through it, but it’s an interesting history. Very commonly substances are criminalized because they’re associated with what’s called the dangerous classes, you know, poor people, or working people. So for example in England in the 19th century, there was a period when gin was criminalized and whiskey wasn’t, because gin is what poor people drink. That’s kinda like the sentencing for crack and powder. In the early stages of Prohibition in the United States, one of the targets was immigrant workers, these guys hanging around the saloons in New York, gotta go after them. The rich guys in upstate New York, they’re gonna drink no matter what, you know, they wanna come home after work, they’ll drink. But, go after those guys. What about marijuana? Marijuana was brought in by Mexicans, and the first criminalization of marijuana was in the southwest, in the states. It was in New Mexico, later Utah, and so on, and it was specifically targeted against Mexicans. It didn’t get criminalized in the United States until shortly after Prohibition ended. After Prohibition ended we had this huge bureau of narcotics, and it had to do something. So they discovered, you know, that marijuana is gonna do all kind of terrible things to you. The Senate testimony about this is mind-boggling. They did have a representative of the American Medical Association, who said we don’t have any medical evidence about this. He was shut up, denounced, you know, get rid of him right away. Then they found somebody else, this is literally true, they found a pharmacologist, a guy teaching at Temple University, who was doing experiments with marijuana and dogs. The testimony is hilarious, you really have to read it. They brought this guy and he testified that when he gave marijuana to dogs they went insane, you know, they’d do all kind of things. And then, some senator or somebody asked him, this is from memory, so it’s probably a little off, but something like this, it’s in the thirties. They asked the guy, well have you ever tried marijuana on humans? So he said, yeah, he tried it on himself. And he said, well, what happened? He said, I turned into a vulture, I started flying around the room. So they, oh my god, this stuff is terrible, it makes people insane. And it was declared by Congress that marijuana makes people insane. But then something happened. It turned out that lawyers, defense lawyers, got the idea, OK, I can use this for an insanity defense. So if a guy who killed 3 cops, his lawyer would say, well, you know, he had marijuana before so he was insane, so you can’t do anything. And people were getting off on charges, like cop killing for example, on the claim that they had marijuana. So all of a sudden it was discovered that marijuana doesn’t make you insane. Congress decided, sorry, it doesn’t make you insane, because we wanna wipe that out. The next idea was, marijuana is an entry drug, it’s the drug you take and then you go on to something else. Well, there was never any evidence for that, but that was decided. And then in the early fifties, something else happened, marijuana is being brought in here by Red Chinese to poison the American population and destroy us. So therefore we gotta stop marijuana. And it kinda goes on like this. Actually, the peak of marijuana use was as I said, in the seventies, but that was rich kids, so you don’t throw them in jail. And then it got seriously criminalized, you know, you really throw people in jail for it, when it was poor people.
Washington's New Imperialism
PHIL GASPER discusses the roots of imperialism, and why imperialism is critical to understanding U.S. war aims today.
AS THE war in Afghanistan continues, it is increasingly clear that the majority of Afghan people will have little say about what government will be imposed on them when the fighting is over.
Many U.S. politicians and media pundits have decided that Afghans—and other people in the Middle East and Central Asia—are unfit to rule themselves, with some openly calling for a revival of old-style colonialism.
In a recent article titled “The need for a new imperialism,” Financial Timescolumnist Martin Wolf describes Afghanistan as a “failed state” and argues that a United Nations (UN) “protectorate” should be installed to rule the country. Journalist Mark Steyn echoed this theme in a Chicago Sun-Times column headlined “Imperialism is the answer.”
And George Bush himself says, “It would be a useful function for the United Nations to take over the so-called nation building—I would call it the stabilization of a future government—after our military mission is complete.”
Whether or not they try to sugarcoat the message, such statements reveal that this war is about asserting the U.S. government’s right to conquer and dominate weaker nations.
Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s
• One in 86 Louisiana adults is in the prison system, which is nearly double the national average.
• More than 50 percent of Louisiana’s inmates are in local prisons, which is more than any other state. The next highest state is Kentucky at 33 percent. The national average is 5 percent.
• Louisiana leads the nation in the percentage of its prisoners serving life without parole.
• Louisiana spends less on local inmates than any other state.
• Nearly two-thirds of Louisiana’s prisoners are nonviolent offenders. The national average is less than half.
(via ravenspyre)
Thousands march to confront NATO in Chicago, May 20, 2012.
Photos by Bryan G. Pfeifer
(via amodernmanifesto)
“You look at
a mulberry leaf
like a silkworm does, with all your insides.”
— Yusef Komunyakaa, from “The Brain to the Heart” (via the-final-sentence)
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Coleman Hawkins—“Sanctity”
The Hawk Flies High (Riverside 1957).
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
German composer Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Capriccio in E minor, Op. 81 No 3 Andante con moto for String Quartet.
Felix Mendelssohn composed this piece for string quartet in the last few years of his life from 1843 to 1847, which he published shortly before his death as Op. 81. He was 38 years old. The details of the moment of his death are quite poetic. As he lay unconscious in bed surrounded by friends and doctors, a marching band passed by outside his home. A servant absentmindedly threw open the front door and the brass music flooded into his bedchamber. Mendelssohn sat bolt upright in bed with his hands ready to conduct, and then collapsed back on his pillow and was dead.
Recommended Read(s)
- Ashis Nandy’s The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism.
- Vinay Lal’s The Concentration Camp and Development: The Pasts and Future of Genocide
- Vijay Prashad’s Droneland
- Chapati Mystery’s The E Word
- A historical truth deliberately ignored: America’s midwifing of violent transnational Jihad during the Cold War.
- Beyond Power/Knowledge: An exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity.
From my post on Wordpress: Challenging the Empire’s Narrative.
