Dictator Chic.

Trump l’oeil: the atrium of Trump Towers.

Trump l’oeil: the atrium of Trump Towers.

Peter York has a fascinating essay over at Politico, about the shared aesthetics of dictators. Florid, overblown, excessive, and so on. Within this rather limited aesthetic, York identifies 10 defining dictator chic rules obeyed by most dictators, and he wrote a book about Dictator Chic. Just a bit here:

After my book Dictator Style came out, friends and editors would call me to alert me to the latest tranche of pictures to be released: unverified photos of Robert Mugabe’s plutocratic-looking house in Zimbabwe, the sacked Qadhafi compound in Tripoli and the Yanukovych palace in Kiev. Each time, I felt as if I could predict every last chair cover and golden heroic beast. Come on, I’d think, surprise me!

Then, in late 2015, I came across a set of pictures with no identifying text. They appeared to show a gigantic apartment in what looked, from the windows, very much like New York. But I know Manhattan and its sophisticated style pretty well, and at first glance, you would think the place didn’t belong to an American but to a Russian oligarch, or possibly a Saudi prince with a second home in the United States. There were overscaled rooms, and obviously incorrect-looking historical detailing and proportions. The home had lots of gilded French furniture and the strange impersonal look of a hotel lobby, with chairs and sofas placed uncomfortably far from one another. There were masses of gold; there were the usual huge chandeliers, branded relics of famous sportsmen like Muhammad Ali, and mushroom-colored marble floors. There was relatively little in the way of paintings, but otherwise, the place reeked of dictator chic.

As it turned out, this familiar yet unfamiliar apartment—a familiar style to me by then, but in an unlikely location—belonged to Donald Trump, who by then was running for president. This was the penthouse of the potential leader of the free world. The design work, I have since learned, was started by the late Angelo Donghia, a decorator better known for a chic Manhattan look. But the substantive current design had been done by one Henry Conversano, who designed extensively—and perhaps unsurprisingly—for casinos. No matter how you looked at it, the main thing this apartment said was, “I am tremendously rich and unthinkably powerful.” This was the visual language of public, not private, space. It was the language of the Eastern European and Middle Eastern nouveau riche.

Why does all of this matter? Domestic interiors reveal how people want to be seen. But they also reveal something about the owners’ inner lives, their cultural reference points and how they relate to other people.

Head over to Politico for the full article, recommended!

Somebody Else’s Babies. Updated.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), that massive knob of white supremacy combined with super-stupidity, is at it again, this time tweeting about the badness of “someone else’s babies”, by which of course, he means any non-white babies. I’ll be going between two articles here, one from Raw Story [RS], and one from Think Progress [TP].

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has long been a friend to the European far right.

He’s hobnobbed with the leaders of hardline anti-immigrant parties across Western and Central Europe. He’s touted his “friendship” with Norbert Hofer, the 2016 Austrian presidential candidate for the Freedom Party, which was founded in 1956 by a former Nazi officer. And he’s made no secret of his support for French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, leader of the nativist party National Front.

After meeting with Geert Wilders and Frauke Petry — anti-immigrant demagogues from the Netherlands and Germany, respectively — in September 2016, King even tweeted a photo with the aphorism, “Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end.”

@FraukePetry Wishing you successful vote. Cultural suicide by demographic transformation must end. @geertwilderspvv 18/9/16.

But on Sunday of this week, King embraced language that is incendiary even by his corroded standards. In a tweet once again supporting Wilders — who is in the final days of his latest bid to become prime minister of the Netherlands — King said: “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

The tweet also quoted from “Voice of Europe,” an “Anti EU / Pro Europe / MAGA” account that frequently promulgates messages deriding Muslim immigration and endorsing far-right European leaders such as Wilders.

Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.  [TP]

Rep. Ted Lieu shot right back:

Dear Representative Steve King: These are my two babies. –Representative Ted Lieu. 12/3/17.

After King posted the tweet — and former KKK leader David Duke retweeted it — Twitter moved in to mock, deride and chastise the congressman for spreading propaganda from one of Europe’s most virulently racist public figures. [RS]

You can read much more at Think Progress and Raw Story.

Aaaaaand, we have an update, in the water is wet and Steve King is still a white supremacist knob category! He has now defended his Nazism on television:

Asked by New Day host Chris Cuomo to defend the comments on Monday, King doubled down on his view that “western civilization” must be defended. Pressed on whether he believes “a Muslim American, an Italian American, Jewish American, [are] all equal, all the same thing,” King hesitated.

“They contribute differently to our culture and civilization.” the Iowa Republican responded. “Individuals will contribute differently, not equally to this civilization and society. Certain groups of people will do more from a productive side than other groups of people will.”

Full story at Think Progress.

Oh, White People…

@beeredblackman via Instagram.

@beeredblackman via Instagram.

Really? FFS. I’ll let Michael Harriot at The Root do the talking.

In the latest case of tone-deaf whiteness, a craft-beer lover in Birmingham, Ala., posted the above picture to Instagram.

Really?

Some people believe (and by “some people” I mean me) that most white people—and people in general—have tasteless jokes and stereotypes that they are comfortable enough to perpetuate in private or around their friends. But someone went out and brewed a beer, had labels printed up and bottled a beer whose name appropriates a movement meant to save lives. Even worse, some brave retailer looked at all of this and said, “Yeah, I’ll sell it for you.”

Regardless of one’s position on the #BlackLivesMatter movement, it is indicative of the reality of toxic privilege that we live in a world where people are comfortable enough to do this unchecked. Ralph Marion is the guy who shared the pic to Instagram on Feb. 15, and to his credit, he thought the name was uncalled for. He explained to Mic:

“They made a parody of a very serious issue,” Marion said, explaining that there are a lot of beers that “sometimes toe the line of being insensitive but are still funny.” …

“I just find this being clueless of the times that we are living in right now and how it could make people feel,” Marion said of the #Black Stouts Matter beer name.

[…]

OK, my beloved Caucasians, I will explain it one more time. This time, I’ll say it slowly:

You. Don’t. Get. To. Have. Everything.

I know the conquering, pillaging spirit embedded in many of you won’t allow you to hear this, but there are some things in the world that are off-limits, and this is one of them. There are dead sons and daughters in your jovial little joke. There are 400 years of tears entangled in your cute pun. If you call it anything else, it will taste the same, and if it’s good, people will still buy it. Aren’t those the “free market” principles you so proudly declare?

Or maybe you can just call it white tears, which is what you’d cry if a black person did anything equally offensive.

I’ll add that this is a callous attempt to make money off off other peoples’ grief and misery, while appealing to evil bigots. That does not make you clever, and it certainly doesn’t make you smart. Some white people (you know who you are) are a complete and utter embarrassment. Stop that shit.

Via The Root and MIC.

Decolonize Your Gitch.

summer-peters

Summer Peters is hoping to inspire other Indigenous women to push the boundaries of Native art. (Andrea Noline).

Summer Peters, an Ojibway artist, recently won an award for her piece, Decolonize Your Gitch. I have to say, I quite like it, there’s a joyous assertiveness to it, and a bit of happy, rebellious fuck off in there as well. The piece has come under fire from some, there are people who say it promotes violence against native women, but I think those arguments can be consigned to the same old rape culture arguments women always hear, that for some reason or other, it’s totally our fault if we end up raped, beaten or murdered. There are also a number of people, usually not native, who object to any modernization of traditional Indigenous arts.

An Ojibway artist is taking a feminist stand against online critics, who say she should be ashamed of her recent award-winning piece called Decolonize Your Gitch.

Summer Peters recently won a judge’s choice award at a U.S. art festival for her artwork, a bra and thong beaded with traditional floral designs.

After she posted it to social media, “I would say 99% of the people liked it,” Peters said.

But others objected to the piece, accusing her of “promoting violence towards native women.”

“There was a guy that said I should be ashamed of myself, my family should be ashamed of me, that I was nuts, that I was crazy, that my beadwork was shitty,” said Peters.

In response to her critics, Peters wrote in an Instagram post:

“I will take all the negative criticism so that Native lady artists in the future will maybe have an easier time … women should not be told what to do, what to wear in attempts to avoid sexual violation, we should not have to cover up and/or NOT wear a pretty bra & panty set or bikini because we might be violated and it would be all of our faults.”

You can read more here.

The Fake News Pandemic of 1942.

Library of Congress.

Library of Congress.

Politico has an excellent article up about a previous fake news pandemic. It would be good if we could all learn a lesson from the past.

Seventy-five years ago, tens of thousands of white Southerners responded with agitated concern when they learned both by word of mouth and in some regional newspapers that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was traveling widely throughout the former Confederate states, quietly organizing black women into secret “Eleanor Clubs.” The club motto, “A white woman in the kitchen by 1943,” portended a dangerous inversion of the region’s longstanding racial patterns.

It was already widely believed in the South that black men had been brazenly stockpiling ice picks, pistols, rifles and explosives in anticipation of a larger race riot. With millions of white men now serving in the armed forces and stationed away from their families, the story went, white communities were vulnerable to an impending assault. When that day came, black women—many of whom worked in domestic service—intended to force their white employers to cook and clean for them. “Eleanor Clubs are stirring up trouble that never should have arisen,” a white North Carolinian observed with worry. “Clubs are making the Negroes discontented, making them question their status.”

Of course, not a word of this was true. But that didn’t make these race rumors less vivid in the minds of many ordinary white Southerners.

[…]

The parallels between 1942 and today stand out. In both cases, a country undergoing profound demographic and economic change has proven hospitable to many of the same general types of rumors. In 1942, black men allegedly plotted a violent (and sexually violent) coup against white Americans. In more recent times, a Kenyan-born Muslim managed to capture the presidency, and encouraged violent Mexican criminals to vote illegally. Eleanor Roosevelt, a powerful first lady who did in fact champion black civil rights, was allegedly complicit in prompting a race war. Hillary Clinton, a powerful former first lady and would-be president, allegedly trafficked young girls through the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria.

In both eras, for many white Americans—particularly many white men experiencing a decline in economic and political power—these rumors were and are a way to protest a world in which women and people of color demanded greater privilege.

Highly Recommended Reading. Good lessons for us all.

Dudebro Is As Dudebro Does.

Via Twitter.

Via Twitter.

A wall street dudebro was caught on camera, humping the little girl statue facing down the wall street bull. Real nice, dude, getting happily rapey on a statue. I definitely don’t want to know what this asshole does with people. As The Mary Sue notes, the little girl statue was not universally liked by any means, but it seems dudebro was sufficiently threatened by an infantilized representation of women that it was necessary to do a hump grind.

…And yet, thanks to this Wall Street jerk, I find myself reevaluating the statue. Clearly, his masculinity was so threatened by the presence of this corporate-sponsored, deliberately infantilized depiction of female autonomy that he had to immediately establish disgusting dominance over it. Is this actually making Wall Street bros uncomfortable? Does it frighten them with a suggestion that women will one day overwhelm and unseat them from their positions of power? I mean, I can get behind that sort of thing!

More seriously, though, this statue and incident illustrate two equally essential requirements: we must demand and expect better from our feminism, while also anticipating and preparing for the worst from our patriarchal world.

The Mary Sue has the full story.

America Chavez.

Marvel's America Chavez, artist Joe Quinones.

Marvel’s America Chavez, artist Joe Quinones.

The ever fabulous America Chavez, Latina Lesbian Superhero, will have her own series this year!

This spring, young adult novelist Gabby Rivera (Juliet Takes a Breath) and artist Joe Quinones (Howard the Duck) continue the high-octane adventures of America Chavez. Marvel’s lesbian Latina powerhouse, Chavez punches her way through dimensions and faces off against an oncoming alien horde all while managing her social life and trying to attend various classes on alternate Earths. Since her introduction in 2012, Chavez has stood side by side with Marvel’s most powerful heroes, and this year she’s ready to take the world by storm in her new series, America. We asked Rivera about her new series.

You can read the full story at The Advocate.

Rewriting the Constitution.

Photo Credit: Kim Davies / Flickr.

Photo Credit: Kim Davies / Flickr.

Imagine if the U.S. Constitution barred the EPA and Department of Education from existing. All union protections are dead, there are no more federal workplace safety standards, and even child-labor laws are struck down, along with a national minimum wage.

Imagine that the Constitution makes it illegal for the federal government to protect you from big polluters, big banks and even big food and pharma—all are free to rip you off or poison you all they want, and your only remedy is in state courts and legislatures, because the Constitution prevents Congress from doing anything about any of it. The federal government can’t even enforce voting or civil rights laws.

To add injury to insult, the federal government has to shut down Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, because all of these programs (along with food stamps, housing supports and any programs that help the middle class, the less fortunate or disabled) are “beyond the reach” of what the federal government can do.

A few years ago, it would have been a thought experiment; now it’s nearly reality. Billionaires and the groups they fund are working to rewrite our Constitution to provide corprations and the rich with more and more protections and benefits, and chop away at anything smelling of “socialism” like Social Security or child labor laws.

The fact is that they’re just a few states away from meeting their goal, and have already held dress rehearsals in Washington D.C.—with representatives from all 50 states—for a Constitutional Convention that would change America forever.

[…]

On April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against fascist Germany and Japan, the New York Times published an op-ed by Vice President Henry Wallace discussing explicitly the issue of very wealthy people setting out to take over our government.

Wallace spoke directly to the danger of multimillionaire and corporate power, defining right-wing industrialists as people “who in case of conflict put money and power ahead of human beings.” He added that “in their search for money and power [they] are ruthless and deceitful. … They… follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.”

In his strongest indictment of that day’s equivalent of today’s billionaire class, Wallace wrote, “They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

As Wallace’s president, Franklin D. Roosevelt said when accepting his party’s re-nomination in 1936 in Philadelphia, “out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties…. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction.”

We stand at the same crossroads Roosevelt and Wallace confronted during the Great Depression and World War II, only this time the Supreme Court (in 1976 with Buckley, 1978 in Bellotti and in 2010 with Citizens United) has given American billionaires the power to spend virtually unlimited amounts of money to own politicians and demand behavior from them so outrageous that they’d even lie on live TV and deny science itself.

The billionaire right’s behavior today eerily parallels the day in 1936 when Roosevelt said, “In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for.”

President Roosevelt and Vice President Wallace’s warnings have come full circle. It’s critical that we call out these economic royalists for what they’re doing, and not let them and their minions rewrite our Constitution.

Thom Hartmann’s full article is at AlterNet, and very scary reading, but it’s important reading. Highly Recommended.

Sunday Facepalm.

facepalm_estatua1

Today, we have the Compleat Batshit Sweepstakes! Who will win? Will it be Rick Wiles, Cindy Jacobs, Wayne Allen Root, or Lance Wallnau? This is also the S word alliteration contest: pick the winner: from Wallnau, we have sabotaging, sniping and snarling enemies, and from Wiles, we have a slithering cabal of seditious snakes. I think, on pure word performance, Wiles has to take the trophy on S alliteration. The overall winner in the Batshit stakes I will leave up to the reader.

We’ll start with the master of hyperbolic bullshit, Rick Wiles, who is on quite the tear over the Satanistic Cabal of Pedophile Baby Sacrificers. (Why Lucifer comes into this, I don’t know. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. – Psalms 137.9).

Rick Wiles dedicated his radio program yesterday to warning that a secretive pedophile ring is working to destroy President Trump before he can expose their murderous global network.

Wiles said that Trump is “besieged by a slithering cabal of seditious snakes” who are attempting to carry out a coup against him at the behest of the “perpetual war and pedophilia party that has ruled America since they assassinated John F. Kennedy in 1963.”

Huh. I really think someone is confused, because conservatives have always been the ones in favour of war. Pedophilia too, actually. I did not listen to the broadcast, that’s simply asking too much, so I don’t know if he expounded on this “perpetual war and pedophilia party” business, or how they managed to assassinate Kennedy. It really is true, isn’t it, that conspiracies never die. They just get twisted about now and again.

They’re fighting like cornered animals to prevent their pedophile network from being exposed. … It’s about the darkest, most disgusting, vilest corruption you can imagine. And if the American people ever find out the truth about their politicians and their celebrities in Hollywood and their TV idols and their favorite TV anchormen and women, and they find out all these great famous people and they find out that they’re just child molesters—not only molesters, but child murderers, sacrificing children to Satan. When they find out, they will drag their bloody carcasses down Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., with meat hooks! They’ll have meat hooks in their carcasses.

Bloody carcasses! Meat hooks! Meat hooks in their carcasses! Jesus Fuck, the bloodthirstiness of some christians is truly frightening. At least you know where all the projection is coming from, although that’s not at all comforting. Honestly, I’d think that if such a cabal existed, and were descended from the amazing perpetual war and pedophilia party, they’d just quietly carry out another assassination, rather than attempt to ‘destroy’ the Tiny Tyrant, which I read here as discredit. No one at all has to work at discrediting the Tiny Tyrant or his regime, they are bumbling about, doing a fine job of that themselves. The full story is here, complete with soundcloud.

Up next, in the Seriously Eeeuuuuw! category, is Wayne Allen Root, with his praise of just how very much Trump loves business…

[Read more…]

Kliluk in nsyilxcen.

spottedlake_2

In the heart of British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, lies a lake like no other. Known as kliluk in nsyilxcen, it is a site of deep spiritual and cultural significance for the Syilx Okanagan people. Throughout winter and into spring, this lake looks like any other body of water, nestled away in the rolling hills with a shallow depth and shimmering surface.  However, as the summer sun grows hotter and its rays beat down on the lake, water evaporates, lowering the surface level over time. As the water level drops, interesting shapes begin to break the surface.

As the summer heat drives on, it becomes clear that these shapes are sections of giant circles, which are normally lying invisible just below the surface. Now, with the hot summer providing no relief or added water, the circles continue to reveal themselves. Colourful pools of water appear at their centre, displaying gorgeous hues of yellow, blue and green. These beautiful ‘spots’ give this magical lake its English name – ‘Spotted Lake’. The lake’s beauty is only half the story though – its history is fascinating as well.

‘Spotted Lake’ has no outflow; no river or creek to drain it, and receives all its water as run-off from the surrounding hills. Each year, as snow melts and flows into the basin, it brings with it minerals and salts, which accumulate year over year, century over century. As the summer sun evaporates the water, the salts become exposed and the spots change in size and colour over a matter of months, creating these beautiful fluctuating hues, based on the mineral composition of each spot.

You can read more here. And a couple of videos: