Marguerite Bennett's Blog, page 65
July 4, 2017
swan2swan:
ultralaser:
kittysback:
“this is as patriotic as...
“this is as patriotic as I’ve felt in a long time” (source)
this is what i wanted, none of his words, just him getting wrecked on loop
I also forgot I had this queued for Freedom Day well GUESS WHAT KIDS
Child: Daddy! Look! I drew you and mommy at school today!!
Me: Hell yeah, fanart
riluu:
stephanieruble:
runwithskizzers:
systlin:
rebelcaptain4life:
fempunkandkittens:
the-ford...
wait….are any americans aware that the cia overthrew the democratically-elected premier of iran in 1953 because he wouldn’t concede to western oil demands….and how that coup was the reason for the shah’s return to power, the iranian revolution, and the resulting fundamentalist dictatorship…..like, america literally dissolved iranian democracy and no one knows about it???
No. No we don’t know about it.
Americans aren’t told this shit.
The only thing we’re taught about any Middle Eastern country in school is that 1) the region exists 2) it’s where The War is happening and 3) Muslim people live there. That’s it. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get into the Hammurabi Code and some early Babylonian stuff but American schools seem to think that if it happened outside Europe and before the colonial period, or makes America look bad and isn’t about A Very Watered Down Version of What Slavery Was, it’s not important.
Info on this is almost notoriously hard to find. It’s not in any texts on American and Russian involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War that I can find. You have to specifically look for a book about the Shah’s return to power, and even then you’d be hard pressed to find a book like that at your local bookstore. Once you get into some higher level college courses you might know about it, but the people who can afford those are more likely to already be indoctrinated into a certain Way of Thinking (read: they’re racist as shit) by the time they get there. And it’s almost like you have to know about it beforehand if you want to find information on it.
The only reason I knew about it is because there’s a thirty second summary of the event in Persepolis. Those thirty seconds flipped my entire worldview.
“All the Shah’s Men” by Stephen Kinzer is a good, accessible text for people who want to know more about this.
!!!
I had to explain literally this to one of my co-workers, who is so fuckin racist against Middle Eastern people it’s insane.
She’s 60. She never heard of this.
As I was explaining this and how, during the Regan years, we funded Osama Bin Laden to fight against Russia, leading to the destruction of much of the infrastructure in the region, one of the plant workers came in to get his badge fixed.
He works in the quality control lab. He served 15 years active duty in the Army. Super smart guy, has a masters in chemistry and another masters in biology, raises saltwater fish in his spare time for sale, has the saltwater aquarium setup of the gods. Raises rare corals too, some of which he donates to be used in re-seeding reefs around the world, but that’s a side tangent.
And he listened for a minute, then nodded and said “Yeah. I was there during that. I helped train people to fight. They wanted us to help them build schools and hospitals, after, but we were only interested in them as cannon fodder. Left the whole area in ruins. I wasn’t surprised when they hated us for it later. Told people then it would happen. We let them know then that they were only valuable to America as expendable bodies. Why wouldn’t they resent us for that?”
And she just looked floored.
“So…” She started, after a few minutes. “What do you think of Trump?”
“I hate him. He’s a coward and he’s going to get good people killed.” He didn’t even blink. “
She looked back and forth between us for a second, and then asked how I knew all this.
“I research things.” I said. “Google is great.” He nodded enthusiastically.
And she just sat there for a second and then said, really quietly, “I didn’t know.”
She lived through it.
American schools don’t teach you any of this sort of thing.
I thought of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi too. Never underestimate the power of a good book.
Every year in my entire schooling in small town Indiana, we’d start the year studying the revolutionary war. By the end of the year we would reach world war 2. The next year, the cycle would repeat. Every year. Revolutionary war to world war 2. Rinse and repeat.
We never studied the Vietnam War. Korea. No current events. No ancient cultures. No history of other countries. When 9-11 happened I was in high school, and me and my classmates legitimately had no idea who would attack the U.S. or why. We were baffled. Because we were taught our entire lives that America is always the good guy.
History class in America is an utter joke.
severalbadpunslater:
whoreoscopes:
doomf:
That’s a cute foot fetish you got there, would you mind...
That’s a cute foot fetish you got there, would you mind keeping it 25796323689432 feet away from me?
25796323689432 feet you say?
this is literally my favorite post on tumblr
annearachne:
hamiltonyourrighthandman:
This is at the...
This is at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. This is a statue of Thomas Jefferson.
Those bricks behind him?
Each one has the name of an enslaved person that Thomas Jefferson owned.
Also written behind him on the wall is the section of the Declaration of Independance which states all men are created equal.
fieldbears:
catsbeaversandducks:
Couple Mourning Their Cat Find...
Couple Mourning Their Cat Find a Note from a Stranger Whose Life was Touched by Their Cat
A couple from the UK were saddened when their cat suddenly passed away, but little did they know that their beloved feline had helped fill a void in a stranger’s life.
Bear and his brother Teddy were always together, sharing their every adventure. What their humans (reddit user TravUK) didn’t know was that they had made a friend next door for quite some time.Two weeks ago, Bear suddenly passed away. As the couple was still in mourning, they came to find a note attached to Teddy’s collar one day. That’s when they realized that someone else they had never met was also missing their cat.The note reads: “Dear Owner; I’m your neighbour, living in 4. I’m also your cats’ close friends as they (2 cats) are used to coming to my room everyday. But one of them, a bigger one has disappeared for two weeks. Is he ok? I’m so worried about him. He is so lovely cat and always touched my heart. Wish he is fine. - Y.T. 2/March/2017.”
“We posted a letter back into number 4, saying that our other cat had passed away. We also included our email address,” TravUK said.When they woke up the next morning, they received a lengthy email from the neighbor, explaining how she loved her time with their cats, especially Bear.
The cat admirer is an exchange student from China studying at a nearby University. She loved every second she spent with Bear as he filled her heart with joy and kept her company when she needed a friend. As a student studying overseas, she experienced being homesick. Bear was able to comfort her and remind her of home.The email she sent touched the couple’s hearts. She shared how she used to practice her university presentations to Bear. “He would sit on her bed and listen… she didn’t have anyone else to practice with. Very touching… She even attached some pictures they had taken of my boys which warmed my heart,” he said.
The neighbor visited Bear at his grave in their garden and brought him flowers to show him just how much he meant to her. “Makes you proud that he could brighten up more than just my households lives.”
Via Love Meow
July 3, 2017
"Women invented all the core technologies that made civilization possible. This isn’t some feminist..."
Women invented all the core technologies that made civilization possible. This isn’t some feminist myth; it’s what modern anthropologists believe. Women are thought to have invented pottery, basketmaking, weaving, textiles, horticulture, and agriculture. That’s right: without women’s inventions, we wouldn’t be able to carry things or store things or tie things up or go fishing or hunt with nets or haft a blade or wear clothes or grow our food or live in permanent settlements. Suck on that.
Women have continued to be involved in the creation and advancement of civilization throughout history, whether you know it or not. Pick anything—a technology, a science, an art form, a school of thought—and start digging into the background. You’ll find women there, I guarantee, making critical contributions and often inventing the damn shit in the first place.
Women have made those contributions in spite of astonishing hurdles. Hurdles like not being allowed to go to school. Hurdles like not being allowed to work in an office with men, or join a professional society, or walk on the street, or own property. Example: look up Lise Meitner some time. When she was born in 1878 it was illegal in Austria for girls to attend school past the age of 13. Once the laws finally eased up and she could go to university, she wasn’t allowed to study with the men. Then she got a research post but wasn’t allowed to use the lab on account of girl cooties. Her whole life was like this, but she still managed to discover nuclear fucking fission. Then the Nobel committee gave the prize to her junior male colleague and ignored her existence completely.
Men in all patriarchal civilizations, including ours, have worked to downplay or deny women’s creative contributions. That’s because patriarchy is founded on the belief that women are breeding stock and men are the only people who can think. The easiest way for men to erase women’s contributions is to simply ignore that they happened. Because when you ignore something, it gets forgotten. People in the next generation don’t hear about it, and so they grow up thinking that no women have ever done anything. And then when women in their generation do stuff, they think “it’s a fluke, never happened before in the history of the world, ignore it.” And so they ignore it, and it gets forgotten. And on and on and on. The New York Times article is a perfect illustration of this principle in action.
Finally, and this is important: even those women who weren’t inventors and intellectuals, even those women who really did spend all their lives doing stereotypical “women’s work”—they also built this world. The mundane labor of life is what makes everything else possible. Before you can have scientists and engineers and artists, you have to have a whole bunch of people (and it’s usually women) to hold down the basics: to grow and harvest and cook the food, to provide clothes and shelter, to fetch the firewood and the water, to nurture and nurse, to tend and teach. Every single scrap of civilized inventing and dreaming and thinking rides on top of that foundation. Never forget that.
”-
from a post by Reclusive Leftist on women’s erasure in history.
her comments relate specifically to an article by the NYT thanking “the men” who invented modern technology, but pick absolutely any academic field of study, and women’s contributions are minimized, if not outright ignored.
literature has been a huge part of my life for a long time, and i grew up reading the classics–which, of course, are typically books written by white men, depicting their experiences. i was taught that the first “modern novel” was Don Quixote, written in the early 1600s by a guy (Cervantes). i don’t think i know of a word to accurately describe my mixture of outrage, shock, and pride, when i discovered later that actually, the first modern novel was written 600 years earlier–by a woman! (it's The Tale of Genji, written by a Japanese lady-in-waiting who was known as Murasaki Shikibu.)
this might not seem important, but if you’re a woman you know just how vital this knowledge is. even now, when women are being told that we can do anything we set our minds to, the historical, literary, and scientific figures we learn about are all men. it’s a much more insidious way to discourage women from aiming high–because what’s the point in putting in so much hard work if it’s not even going to be remembered after you’re dead?
(via sendforbromina)
dontbearuiner:
prettyprettymangirl:
bluefall-returns:
rosalui:
guys i’ve found my new reaction...
guys i’ve found my new reaction image for literally every fucking piece of news that comes out of this godforsaken administration
agreed.
YES YES YES YES.
Yes good.
dominawritesthings:
dragonofeternal:
One of the most important things I’ve learned as a Real...
One of the most important things I’ve learned as a Real Adult™ is the importance of a job half done.
Today I did a load of dishes, wiped off my stove, and swept the kitchen floor. Did I do the best job, or finish every dish? No! My stove still has that caked on caramel that I need to bust out an SOS pad to take care of, one of our big pots is still sitting in the sink, and somehow a kitty kibble unearthed itself while I was wiping down the stove (?? how??).. but the kitchen looks a LOT better. It’s once again an inhabitable, usable space.
Parents, bosses, teachers, even my own self, harp upon absolute perfect completion of a task as the be all and end all of a job well done, but god damn, my kitchen isn’t terrible because I took the time to improve it. Little steps, especially when you’re struggling, are important. They mean a LOT. They are a sign that you won, if only in that brief moment, and they make getting all the other stuff done so much easier later on down the road.
I…need to remember this. Thank you.
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