tooyoungforthelivingdead:

If people ever ask you why mentioning a woman’s appearance, even when irrelevant, is a bad thing - show them this graph.

It’s from a survey about two fictional people running for Congress: Jane Smith and Dan Jones. Both have similar backgrounds, and after reading bios the survey respondents prefer Jane slightly, 49-48.

What happens next is awful:

Then they read a second story. In one version of the story, there’s no physical description of either candidate, and Jane’s lead stays pretty much the same. In a second version, there’s a neutral description of Jane’s appearance. Suddenly she’s 5 points behind Dan. In a third version, there’s a positive description of her appearance. Now she’s 13 points behind Dan. A fourth version that contains a negative description has about the same effect.

In other words, any description hurts Jane. And any non-neutral description, even a positive one, just kills her.

Psychology rules. Sexism can do one.

Dan Jones clearly has a firm, sculpted butt to match his firm stance on tax cuts. His latest rally was marked by the fact that he wore a grey pinstripe cotton linen mix slim fit suit, accentuating his muscled frame and signalling a noticeable departure from his usual looser attire. His neatly coiffured auburn hair blew gently in the wind as he spoke about industrial subsidies; his well-moisturised skin belying his 17 years of political experience.

Racial Maddow vs. the Islamic Republic of Iran - Shirin Sadeghi.

Love Shirin for writing this. I’m relieved to know not everyone’s foolishly in love with Rachel Maddow.

(via mehreenkasana)

I just watched the video, ugh. Orientalist, imperialist propaganda from Maddow. Another excuse to portray Bush’s axis of evil in convenient ‘us and them’ terms, painting all Iranians as extremist zealots, and yet more footage of North Korean people all doing the same thing in a large crowd, as if that’s the only footage of them in existence. i.e. both countries are clearly nothing more than brainwashed collective masses who don’t know what’s good for them and so of course need the enlightened west, where everyone’s a free individual (and definitely not Muslim or anything like that) to come spread democracy and rationality. 

The whole patronising ‘dictatorship’ spiel - ffs it was your CIA who overthrew the democratic government of Iran and replaced it with a US-friendly monarchical dictatorship in the 50s. And hmm I wonder if America had anything to do with Korea in the past… let’s not mention that though.

Ugh and the way she sneers at ‘dictatorships’ for celebrating their leaders birthdays, less than a minute after having shown the US list with Lincoln’s birthday right there ffs. Funnily enough no comment on how the land of the free celebrates mass colonial genocide on Columbus day either…

The highest military spending in the world, a bloody global empire, the highest prison population in the world, institutional racism, entirely unscientific drug laws, 90% of media controlled by 6 companies with interlocking share ownerships, 3 times fewer women in ministerial government positions than Iran.

But yeah keep pointing that finger.

‘Progressive’

(via kyaryarchy)

theveganarchist:

odinsblog:

Rachel Maddow breaks it down so simply that an 8th grader could understand it:

1. ExxonMobil is more profitable than Walmart, Google, McDonald’s, American Express and Goldman Sachs combined
2. Exxon’s fine for the oil Pegasus Pipeline spill in Arkansas is only a tiny fraction of its daily profit
   
3. Again, Exxon paid just a tiny fraction of its daily profit for the entire Yellowstone oil spill

This begs (at least) three questions: Why does the U.S. Government even subsidize oil companies in the first place? Why doesn’t our government have more serious fines for oil spills? AND ARE WE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE?!? REALLY? NO, REALLY? 

The Keystone Pipeline will absolutely, positively spring a leak already has sprung several leaks

The oil industry has no clue how to clean up or prevent the leaks and they aren’t even exploring new technologies for oil spill clean ups

The KXL Pipeline will go through a MAJOR clean water drinking aquifer. Is America so stupid to “drill baby drill” that we’re willing to endanger our most valuable non-renewable resource —water— for a finite fossil fuel that wind and solar tech will ultimately replace?

This needs WAY more notes

OK so in case anyone’s surprised about how the oil cartel gets away with this sort of thing:

• ExxonMobil is the biggest company in the US.
• Chevron is the 2nd biggest oil company (and 3rd biggest overall)

Back in the 70s there were 7 oil companies (‘The Seven Sisters’) which entirely dominated the world market.

These were:

1. Standard Oil of California (SoCal) which became Chevron
2. Standard Oil of New York (Socony) which became Mobil
3. Standard Oil of New Jersey (Esso) which became Exxon and then merged with Mobil to form ExxonMobil
4. Texaco which was then acquired by Chevron
5. Gulf Oil which was then acquired by Standard Oil of California and incorporated into Chevron
6. Anglo-Iranian oil company which became British Petroleum
7. Royal Dutch Shell

5 out of 7 are now either ExxonMobil or Chevron.  3 of them were borne from John D. Rockefeller’s original Standard Oil, which itself once had a 90% market share (there was also Standard Oil of Indiana, or Amoco, but that merged with BP…)

It is an obscene concentration of wealth.

John D.’s heir/only surviving grandson, David Rockefeller, happened to chair one of the most influential policy think tanks in the US. He was also the single largest shareholder in Chase bank.

Then there was the other Rockefeller grandson, Nelson - he helped launch the modern war on drugs and later became vice-president.

I wonder if it all means anything.

Yeeeaah, oil companies getting $78bn in US government subsidies 2012-2017! Record profits even as workers are sacked! Let’s go bomb Iran! etc

(via randomactsofchaos)

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

British Intelligence Said to Have Had Role in Lumumba Assassination

The British intelligence services may have just had one of their best-kept secrets blown: their role in the abduction and assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister whose Pan-African nationalism and pro-Moscow leanings alarmed the West.

For more than 50 years, rumours have swirled over allegations of British involvement in Lumumba’s brutal murder in 1961, but nothing has ever been proved — leaving the CIA and its Belgian peers alone to take the rap for what a Belgian writer has described as “the most important assassination of the 20th century.” Now, in a dramatic revelation, a senior British politician has claimed that he got it from the horse’s mouth that it was MI6 that “did” it.

In a little noticed letter to the editor in the latest issue of the London Review of Books (LRB), Lord David Edward Lea responded to the claim in a new book on British intelligence, Empire of Secrets: British intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire by Calder Walton, that the jury is still out on Britain’s role in Lumumba’s death.

“The question remains whether British plots to assassinate Lumumba … ever amounted to anything. At present, we do not know,” writes Walton. 

Lord Lea retorted: “Actually, in this particular case, I can report that we do.

“It so happens that I was having a cup of tea with Daphne Park … She had been consul and first secretary in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, from 1959 to 1961, which in practice (this was subsequently acknowledged) meant head of MI6 there.

“I mentioned the uproar surrounding Lumumba’s abduction and murder, and recalled the theory that MI6 might have had something to do with it. ‘We did,’ she replied, ‘I organised it.’”

Same old story, US/UK (and in this case Belgian as well) backed coup to depose popular anti-imperialist leader and install corrupt, capitalist-friendly, kleptocratic military dictatorship (i.e. Mobuto). And the country is robbed blind.

MI6 for you.

In reality, James Bond is the villain.

getting real sick of the word ‘austerity’

‘austere’ implies moral rectitude, self-discipline, spiritual focus

no - you’re inflicting poverty, suffering and death on people

it’s not for their own good or the betterment of their character, it’s for your own greed

and another thing, it’s not a ‘haircut’ if you steal people’s money from their bank accounts

the money doesn’t grow back in a couple of months free of charge, it’s gone

when the hairdresser cuts your hair they don’t then keep the hair in a little bag and use it to gamble on the financial markets

and then there’s ‘tightening our belts’. which ties in to the whole bullshit weight loss = health = better person discourse (which ties in with the moral discipline spiel of ‘austerity’)

if anyone has to tighten their belts as a result of government cuts, it’s probably because you’re doing your damnedest to make sure they starve to death

‘bail out’ implies the banks were like sinking ships, damaged and sinking under powers beyond their control, and that they’re all about to die

when the fact is it’s their system, they intended it this way, and they’re making out like bandits

I don’t even know wtf ‘quantitative easing’ is supposed to mean

but ‘easing’ it is most certainly not

and it’s not a ‘recession’

a recess is a small indentation ie in a wall

which you’ll notice could also be described as a ‘depression’ in the wall

what part of ‘millions of people are suffering and dying’ makes you think of uneven wall surfaces

mehreenkasana:

Little to no difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to mindless slaughter in the name of foreign policy.

am I being super paranoid if I’m suspicious of this sudden influx of proud, unusually vocal, ‘fascist conspiracy theorists’ on tumblr, going around following leftist blogs and winding them up?

I mean, hold up, the conspiracy (to the extent that it is even secret) is a fascist conspiracy. centralisation of power in government, centralisation of wealth, and the increasing melding of the two into a corporatist/militarist/racist superstate -> fascism.

either there’s a weird new trolling craze on 4chan, or it’s a concerted effort by people who are getting paid for their efforts. because only the other week there was more news coming out about intelligence agencies using social media to influence opinion

might well be nothing, but you can’t help but notice it does create a very visible association between fascism and the label thrown at many critics of that fascist superstate, ie ‘conspiracy theorist’. and there’s already the strong association with right-wing racist militia groups.

tbh it reminds me of the Israeli government’s propaganda tactics (‘we’re not racist for our supremacist apartheid state, you’re racist for criticising us!’) 

You really need to read this. I’ll quote a bit from the New Scientist article and put a link to the actual study at the bottom for anyone who can understand complex mathematics:

[…] From a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 transnational corporations and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company’s operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the “real” economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. 

article details:

The network of global corporate control, 2011,PLoS One, Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, and Stefano Battiston, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (pdf)

the amount that would be raised in one year if corporations were forced to pay their fucking taxes

is greater than (>)

the total value of all the public sector cuts combined

£2 trillion taken from the public and given to private banks.

£43 billion a year just paying interest on national debt to private individuals and financial institutions.

headline news - extra £3bn for infrastructure! (after having made £13bn+ of cuts to infrastructure)

big whoop everyone

careful now George you’ll spoil us

ellentansey:

Let’s not start this rhetoric where Osborne is this clueless idiot that doesn’t know the hardship people go through. He knows. He just doesn’t care.

This is a calculated move to appease the capitalist class. That is what parliamentary politics always has and always will be.

This ^^^. Fuck this mainstream discourse of incompetence, blunders and gaffes. It’s calculated propaganda.

The man is a multi-billionaire heir to an 18th century baronetcy, who keeps his money in the oldest and most exclusive bank in the country (secret and invite-only) and his best friend is Nathaniel Rothschild, scion of the Rothschild banking dynasty.

David Cameron is a fucking linear descendant of fucking King William IV and a fifth cousin of the Queen twice removed, married the daughter of the eighth baronet of Sheffield and was born into five generations of banking wealth. And they were all in the exclusive fucking Bullingdon Club together with Boris Johnson. This is the state of politics in Britain right now.

It’s not a failure when he fleeces the country, gives money to private banks and cuts corporation tax. THE SYSTEM IS WORKING AS INTENDED. That’s the worst part.

Osborne claimed £47 on public expenses to pay for two DVDs of his own speech, and the speech was about value for taxpayer money. It’s all a sick joke to them, they’re sociopaths.

(Source: titotansey)

would it be improper or lacking in decorum if I said I wanted someone to grab that red briefcase and bludgeon George Osborne to death with it until the red of his blood mixed with the red of the briefcase and it looked like the briefcase was melting all over his evil fucking face

which had huge economic/political consequences for America, its oil companies, financial institutions, and the military-industrial complex

seriously though the war was because freedom and democracy

wow, watching the news talk about so-called ‘austerity’ you wouldn’t think that there’s actually this thing called defaulting on a debt

debt repayment is a contractual obligation, you don’t have to consent to that contract

capitalists do it all the time

the sky is not going to fall in

I think what I’m trying to say here is: people’s fucking lives > paying debts

especially when the so-called creditors are creating the money out of thin fucking air (go look up ‘fractional reserve banking’)

re that fascism/corporatism post, how could I forget to include the fact that the Tories are trying to privatise half the state, including the police, and seemingly want to outsource everything wholesale to fucking G4S, who are already the third-largest private sector employer in the world, and whose management positions are filled with ex-military…