If we could imagine for an instant (we cannot) the pain and fear that live around the corner from our own ideas of Freedom, and were somehow willing to envision a time before the military industrial complex began its ongoing campaign(s) to liberate the nations of the world from their leaders and religious traditions, it might be possible to understand this image. Sadly, however, it isn’t possible. Not for you, and not for me. We weren’t paying attention then.
Update: The Subject of Massoud Hossaini’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photo - NYTimes.com
“They’re quite joyous occasions,” she said. “It’s very liberating, not using money.” At one market, she said, she approached a woman who had come along with three large trays of homemade cakes and was selling them for a unit a cake. “I asked her: ‘Do you think that’s enough? After all, you had the cost of the ingredients, the electricity to cook …’
“She replied: ‘Wait until the market is over’, and at the end she had three different kinds of fruit, two one-litre bottles of olive oil, soaps, beans, a dozen eggs and a whole lot of yoghurt. ‘If I had bought all this at the supermarket,’ she said, ‘it would have cost me a great deal more than what it cost to make these cakes.’”
What rules the system has are designed to ensure the tems continue “to circulate, and work hard as a currency”, said Christos Pappionannou, a mechanical engineer who runs the network’s website using open-source software.
No one may hold more than 1,200 tems in the account “so people don’t start hoarding; once you reach the top limit you have to start using them.”
And no one may owe more than 300, so people “can’t get into debt, and have to start offering something.” (via)
tphd:
BEAST by THERON JACOBS
(PLEASE PRETEND TO BE A BEAST WHILE READING THANK YOU)
The brilliance of Patricia Lockwood and her poem about Popeye.
Excellent, excellent essay by (Australian!) academic McKenzie Wark.
A warning that this art installation might be disturbing to some (it was certainly disturbing, and interesting, to me).
I’m neither an atheist or religious, but Chris Hedges is one of my heroes. This might be one of the most beautiful pieces of writing (and calls to justice, specifically on the Occupy movement) you read this week.
Full text, Spanish translation, and links to literary criticism.
If injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth, - certainly the machine will wear out…; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.
Haunting reflection on the longing for sex to destroy you, and the power of Richard Siken’s poetry in “Crush”. Click through to read.
