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Austin, Texas
Joined November 2013
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And HOW is this achieved, this belief? By creating a world of hierarchies & competition, which pits people against each other in efforts to rise & not be thrown to the bottom + ideology, from Social Darwinism to modern economics that holds up competition as an ideal.
It's all too rare. The usual is more like what Shell did to Ogoniland in the Niger Delta: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Sa…
Blow this off & read his MEDITATIONS. In Book I (of 12) he acknowledges those who shaped his life. readaurelius.org/book/1 Who shaped yours?
His grandmother was Haitian, his grandfather was French. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexan…
So too, have generations of little kids reared where they have had access to mud or dust & enjoyed the feel & satisfaction of their bare feet mucking through either, wet or dry.
“The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth.”
~ Luther Standing Bear, Sicangu-Oglala Lakota, (1868-1939)
Enough truth to take seriously, BUT it ignores a third factor: how capitalism has filled our environment with cancer causing toxics & carcinogens.
Another oversimplification of electoral politics that fails to recognize it as a terrain of class struggle in which workers have won victories despite how the game is rigged, e.g., reduced work time, social security, welfare, foot stamps, safety regs, eco-protections.
Worse than the old Cliff Notes! At least with them you had read 20-30 pages. These fuckers provide a way to skip reading almost entirely. Guaranteed: you WON'T understand shit from 20 seconds. la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver…
In short: it was shameless theft then; it still is.
The Benin bronzes are in the British Museum.
More than 900 of them.
They were taken in 1897, when a British punitive expedition burned the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, a kingdom with which Britain had diplomatic and trade relations, and whose metalwork was among the most technically sophisticated on the planet.
Taken. As loot. During a raid.
They are still there.
The British Museum has had decades of requests for their return.
The responses have involved long conversations about legal frameworks and cultural heritage law and the logistics of preservation and the importance of these objects being seen by international audiences.
The objects have seen international audiences.
From inside Britain.
The argument is, essentially: we took these things, we built an institution around the taking, the institution now benefits from housing them, and their presence here proves their importance, which justifies our continued possession of them.
This is not a difficult argument to identify.
It is the colonial argument in miniature, running in the present tense.
The history was removed.
The evidence of the history was also removed.
Sometimes to museums.
ALT Benin City, 18 February 1897. Three British soldiers stand inside the burned royal compound of the Kingdom of Benin, present-day Nigeria. In the foreground lie bronze plaques from the royal palace, amid the destruction left by the British punitive expedition. Thousands of royal and sacred artefacts were looted and dispersed into Western collections, including the British Museum. Before they became museum exhibits, they were spoils of colonial conquest. Photograph: Reginald Kerr Granville, 1897.
Forget "instinct". What you have here is individual decision making about the best way to get beyond the fence.
Suggestion: let there be no more "pets", only companions, friends, & yes, when appropriate 'family members'.
When I taught about workers having to sell their "labor-power" (Marx jargon), I asked my students: "Which part of your body & its abilities are you going to prostitute? Your brain? Your hands? Your genitals? Your creativity? Think about it."
Or, you could ignore this wing of the murder industry because you've decided to stop killing innocent animals who you don't need to eat & who have done you no harm.
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Remember their endurance & sacrifice BUT also remember they were enslaved, used, & abused. Watch WAR HORSE (2011) & think "Never again!" Not for animals, not for humans. End both slavery & war - from which only capitalists profit. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Ho…
Too few of us have seen images of a leopard watching a sunset or a dog sitting on a beach watching the waves or a cat sitting & watching us, and asked ourselves "What's s/he thinking & feeling?" They are ALL both sentient & sapient - in ways both like & unlike us.
"a system built on forced labour, terror, and the ruthless extraction of wealth."? Yes, & it has a name: capitalism, whether enslaving at home or abroad. Name it; fight it!
A Congolese man sits staring at the severed hand of his five-year-old daughter, reportedly cut off during King Leopold II’s brutal colonial rule in the Congo.
Imagine the pain of a father forced to confront such a horrific act against his own child.
This is the human cost of Belgian colonialism in the Congo — a system built on forced labour, terror, and the ruthless extraction of wealth.
Never forget the Congo 🇨🇩
