Mastodawn

> ... they didn’t give it to Donald Trump, but.. the next best thing.. as #MarcoRubio is concerned, if he needs justification to escalate military operations against Venezuela. It really seems to be a disastrous choice and a smear on the — I mean, your next guest is #CoryDoctorow. It’s really the enshittification of the Nobel.. I mean, they gave it to Kissinger in the 1970s, but at least he — they waited 'til he negotiated an end to the #VietnamWar.
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/10/nobel_peace_prize
#GregGrandin

2025 Nobel Peace Prize for Anti-Maduro Leader María Corina Machado “Opposite of Peace”: Greg Grandin

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to María Corina Machado, a leading Venezuelan opposition figure. Machado was set to run for president last year, but she was disqualified by the government of President Nicolás Maduro, with fellow opposition leader Edmundo González standing in for her. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council ultimately declared Maduro the winner of the contested election, and he was sworn in for his third term in January. Machado has voiced support for U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and other efforts to topple the government; she aims to privatize the country’s state oil industry and has praised right-wing Latin American leaders, including Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. Friday’s Nobel announcement comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has openly campaigned for the award. “It’s a perplexing choice,” says Greg Grandin, a historian of Latin America. “They’ve given it to somebody who’s completely aligned with the most militarist and darkest face of U.S. imperialism.”

Democracy Now!

bsmall2 Oct 8

> A petrocritic may be someone looking to say something about texts about oil; she may also be looking for oil in cultural places where it is otherwise unspoken or unspeakable, at once too close, too far, and too immense to be immediately perceptible; and she may be looking, in fictions, for the profoundly uneven distribution of oil’s benefits and consequences to peoples and territories around the globe.
> #AmitavGhosh coined.. “#petrofiction”..1992
https://stateofthediscipline.acla.org/entry/petro
#PetroCritic

State of the Discipline Report

The American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) produces a decennial report on the state of the discipline of comparative literature.

bsmall2 Oct 8

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bsmall2 Oct 7

🧵
> ... their ideas about the sacredness of the Earth were very important to that movement, you know? It’s not necessarily something that you or the press always emphasizes. But, in fact, the longevity of that movement, the resilience of that movement really depends on Native American ideas of the sacredness of the Earth, of the vitality of the Earth.
#NativeAmericans #IndigenousStories #IndigenousViews #IndigenousIdewas #SacredEarth #VitalEarth #LivingEarth

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bsmall2 Oct 7

🧵
> A crowd had gathered at the train station to welcome Mrs Pacetta back and she detailed her experiences in the notorious Ktzi’ot prison, including being stripped and left in the sight of male soldiers.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25522247.scots-woman-gaza-flotilla-reveals-vile-treatment-israeli-jail/
#MargaretPacetta

Scots woman on Gaza flotilla claims 'vile' treatment in Israeli jail

The first Scot to be deported back from Israel after travelling on a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza has spoken about her treatment in jail.

The Herald

bsmall2 Oct 7

> ".. They took all my meds. They took everything off me - my inhalers, my nebuliser. They eventually gave me the nebuliser back, but they threw away the medicine for it,.. This is all I had. They never gave me my rucksack. I have no clothes. These are Israeli prison bottoms.".. "They gave us ten slices of cucumber for 18 people. Four stale pieces of bread - very stale, you could break your teeth on it. The cucumber was covered in ants."
https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/glasgow-grandmother-recounts-horrible-israeli-32624306
#SumudFlotilla #Israel

Glasgow grandmother recounts 'horrible' Israeli jail ordeal on Gaza aid flotilla

Margaret Pacetta, 70, was part of the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), which attempted to breach Israel's naval blockade of the conflict-ravaged territory with over 40 vessels and around 500 people on board.

Glasgow Live

bsmall2 Oct 7

> The book starts out by wondering why it is so difficult to get climate change into a modern English-language novel that isn't science fiction. It concludes that Western literature has, in the past 200 years or so, become trapped in a world where human comedy and tragedy is separated from nature. Along the way, Ghosh considers the power dynamics that make the climate debate so different in the Eastern than the Western hemisphere.
https://www.dw.com/en/amitav-ghosh-what-the-west-doesnt-get-about-the-climate-crisis/a-50823088
#GunIsland #GreatDerangement #AmitavGhosh

What the West doesn't get about the climate crisis

The new novel by award-winning Indian author Amitav Ghosh, Gun Island, uses climate change as a backdrop. He tells DW about the different perceptions of the climate crisis in the East and West.

Deutsche Welle

bsmall2 Sep 13

> Imagine after MLK was assassinated, his supporters being like, “Whatever you do! DONT QUOTE HIM!” --- David Zirin^1

> "[The death penalty] should be public, should be quick, should be televised… I think at a certain age, it’s an initiation… At what age should you start to see public executions?"
https://zeteo.com/p/charlie-kirk-in-his-own-words?r=1i4x2t&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
/HT @DarleneRyan

#ReflectionsOnTheGuilloutine

^1 https://www.facebook.com/edgeofsports/posts/pfbid02B6LhqnQMGuvvYQBgs2ir6uRVLqFuQKwC7Vh8T2TqUU896SMEz6aSa52C8odT8Xrbl?__cft__[0]=AZV3Gir_SWi3I8RvUzauPClNC2x8tWJLIirhj0i-mYe4U6wSJjWU0kodbYAuxK-Q2KwBhJx2LV9jo2nACq_pZZVPhYwhdeRItNMgcfxxE220DpOmNQ7x8Xcn6kWmtE-mh0-zfB19FTR-yJ2Xwz76ZavskJajTFJfcX9AWTKRnbwb4pky4ZcrnOrbP--OxvMtzkc&__tn__=,O,P-R

Charlie Kirk in His Own Words

17 quotes you should read from Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and Trump ally who was shot and killed on Wednesday in Utah.

Zeteo

bsmall2 Sep 13

> "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up new age term that does a lot of damage."

https://zeteo.com/p/charlie-kirk-in-his-own-words?r=1i4x2t&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

/HT @DarleneRyan

#CharlieKirk #uspol #USAEmpathy

Charlie Kirk in His Own Words

17 quotes you should read from Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and Trump ally who was shot and killed on Wednesday in Utah.

Zeteo

bsmall2 Sep 10

Albert Camus in _Sisyphus_ makes me want of find Mike Davis on Wokova in _Dead Cities_. OCMS in "I hear them all" mentions "the great Paiute Wokova" too. Davis got me thinking Wokova provided the essential, condensed spritual message but I have to find the book again.
> “Karamazov, is it true what religion says, that we shall rise from the dead, that we shall see one another again?” And Aliocha answers: “Certainly, we shall see one another again, we shall joyfully tell one another everything that has happened.’’..
#SisyphusKaramazov #DavisOnWokova

bsmall2 Sep 9

bsmall2 Sep 8

Not only do we need to oppose them; we need to be the opposite of them... "Kindness, compassion, generosity are often talked about as though they’re purely emotional virtues, but they are also and maybe first of all imaginative ones," and that imagination can be fed and encouraged--or starved... #DianeDiPrima , once said, "the only war that matters is the war against the imagination."
#FarawayNearby #RebeccaSolnit #WarOnImagination

https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/the-war-for-the-imagination/

The War for the Imagination

I and we are wildlife whose natural habitat is libraries, when it comes to physical space, because they contain books in which minds roam free through time and space, encounter Dogen and Dante and Sappho and Black Elk and others long since gone, meet ideas and possibilities, meet each other

Meditations in an Emergency

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