glasses

علمنا الحكيم وقال أمريكا راس الحية

The Indigenous people who farmed and hunted here (and still farm and hunt in what land they have been able to keep and reclaim) were able to grow miles of upon miles of crops with multiple harvests a year, encouraging this biodiversity by creating forest gardens with incredible amounts of food from staples like corn and squash to local fruits like pawpaws to European imports like apples alongside controlled burns which allowed fields and buffalo ranges to expand.

Nowadays my state is known almost exclusively for its fields of nothing but corn and soy beans. Driving through in between the comparatively small cities you'll see nothing but fields where the plethora of different trees and plants were chopped down mile by mile, the remaining wetlands drained and flattened, and the rich black soils robbed of their nutrients through decades upon decades of monocrop agriculture now preserved through the life blood of petrochemical fertilizers which destroy the surrounding environment.

This process was done mile by mile as the tens of thousands of Indigenous people were killed and displaced by settlers and the US army, the land measured and sold acre by acre to white settlers who raped the land as described, filling the pockets of wealthy land speculators (like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) who bought the land directly from the government in schemes so corrupt historians have dedicated entire careers to mapping out their dramas.

But I took it anyway because I wanted to hear from the people the author was speaking to, and now I have been reading the Georgian women's recollections of communism, and it actually made me cry to see how miserable they had become after the capitalist restoration. The depth of love they have for socialism and Stalin and the Soviet Union is so beautiful

Some of my favourite quotes <3

"[Stalin] comes to me at night. He gazes at me, puffs on his pipe, and twirls his moustache. He smiles, and then heads for the door. Then I weep and cry for him to stay. But what guy could be bothered by a woman crying?" ... "...I have the mentality of a socialist hero of labor. When something needs to be done for society, I go and do it. I've produced a wall newspaper for the employees and classes for single mothers bringing up children on their own. In the Communist era, everyone would have respected me. But now that we have capitalism, they look at me as if I'm an idiot. So when I really can't manage anymore, I come to the museum to calm down. And I say, 'Mr. Stalin, I know you'd appreciate it.' And it helps." ... "When the war was on, they closed the museum, so I came to the park, to the statue, and I said, 'Mr. Stalin, you'd have got a firm grip on it all, and there'd be peace.' And sometimes I go and say to him, 'If you were alive, maybe we'd be together. You'd have a good time with me. I know how to cook, I'm a cheerful person, and I can sing well too.' And I fantasize about how nice it would be to be Stalin's wife. But later on I reject those thoughts, because I'm behaving like an idiot. Stalin is dead. Communism has collapsed. It's over. It's finished. Been and gone. If I dream about him when I'm feeling like that, I'm very cold and official toward him in my dream."

"When I was at college, we were still taught that Stalin was an outstanding statesman. But the system changed, the curriculum changed, and now I have to teach that he was a tyrant and a criminal. I don't think that's true. ... And before you start ranting, please let me finish. Are you feeling calmer now? All right, I'll tell you my personal opinion. I regard Stalin as a great man, but I can't say that, either to my students or to the tourists, so I say, 'Some regard him as a dictator, others as a tyrant, and others see him as a genius. What he really was, you can decide for yourselves.'"

"When I see what they've done to our beloved Stalin, my heart bleeds! How could they? How could they make such a good man into a monster, a cannibal, an ogre? Once upon a time, bus after bus came to our museum. People stood in lines several hundred yards long. I used to look at those people's faces, and I could see the goodness emanating from them. But nowadays? One would bite the other. That's capitalism for you." ... "In the morning I get up, cut a slice of bread, make the tea, sit down, and say to myself, 'O Christ, why did you let me live to see times like this? Why do they badmouth our darling Stalin?'" ... "What do we need all this capitalism for, all these American cheeses, juices, and chocolate? You can't even buy normal milk anymore—it has to be in a carton, because that's how it is in America. I think, 'O Christ, take me off to my dear Stalin. Take me away from this world, because I can't bear it here any longer.'"

If, Ocean, you could grant, out of your gifts and dooms,

some measure, fruit or ferment for my hands,

I'd choose your distant rest, your brinks of steel,

your furthest reaches watched by air and night,

the energy of your white dialect

downing and shattering its columns

in its own demolished purity.

Not the last wave with its weight of salt

crumbles the coastline and produces

a truce of sand encircling the world:

but tugging gravity, the pull of force,

the far-flung potency of waters

and the still solitude replete with lives.

Time, no doubt, or brimming crucible

of movement, primal unity

that death has left unsealed, green viscerae

of all-consuming oneness.

Of the drowned arm which lifts the water drop

only a kiss of salt remains. A humid fragrance

of drifting flowers clings where humans

bathed along your shores. Your energy

appears to glide away unspent,

seems to return to its original rest.

The wave you part with,

bow of identity, starry feather,

was only foam when it fell to pieces

and returned to be born, unconsumed,

Your whole strength clambers back to its origins.

You surrender nothing but mangled spoils,

husks your carriage swept aside,

the rejects of your abundant labor,

the shreds of afterbirth.

Your statue throws its shadow beyond the furthest wave

Living and co-related like breast and garment

of a single being and the breaths he draws,

in the matter of light haled from the deep

meadows uplifted by the waves

create the naked membrane of the planet.

You fill your own being with your substance.

And fulfill the curvature of silence.

The cup trembles with your salt and honey,

the universal womb of waters,

and nothing is wanting in you, as in the flayed

Crater, the unpolished pit:

desolate summits, scars, adhesions,

protecting the mutilated air.

Your petals throb against the world,

your submarine crops tremble,

the smooth algae brood like a menace,

the schools navigate and propagate

and only the dead lightning of scales

rises to the thread of the fishing nets

a wounded market in the distance

this is the spanish version:

oh my god finally locked in long enough to finish chapter 4 let's gooooo

Emery looks conflicted, teeth sinking into her lip. Samira's eyes drop, voluntarily, to the action. She is either going to kiss Emery in the next five minutes or move out of her house entirely. For all she knows, the first thing might very well lead to the second.

I recently posted about Fanon’s critique of the National Bourgeoisie - the bourgeois that allied with the colonial power, or gained their status once the colonial power receded. This works hand in hand with the core-periphery model popularised by Wallerstein and Dependency theory that came out of Latin America.

The core-periphery model operates like this:

The core refers to the imperial core - Western Europe and the US. The periphery refers to the rest of the world - the imperialised, colonised, or underdeveloped. This is Latin America, Africa, Asia, and arguably Eastern Europe.

The core and periphery interact through extraction, as capitalism requires constant expansion. The periphery is underdeveloped (or over exploited, as said by Parenti) through their economies never evolving past limited export of raw materials. The core thus gains its wealth through having access to these cheap raw materials, labour, and a monopoly on finished goods.

There are countries that lie somewhere in between these two - Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Spain, South Africa etc. They act as buffer zones. They are examples to point to and say ‘ look! It is possible for the periphery to become the core, for their economies to develop beyond neocolonial extraction.’

This is not the case. These buffer zones exist at the goodwill of the imperial core.

A nuance to have with this, however, is that the Core has a core and a periphery, and the Periphery has a core and a periphery.

The core of the Core is the bourgeois. They are the state, the business owners, and the titans of industry. Some would say that labour aristocracy falls into this too. The Core also has a periphery - historically marginalised groups like African Americans in the US, the Romani people in Europe, or any other group that has their access systemically limited. This is your proletariat. These are the people that must ally themselves with the Periphery.

The Periphery also has a core. They are the comprador bourgeois, the members of state, the nouveau-riche. They too are bourgeois, but they are subordinate to their Imperial core peers (see my previous post about Fanon and the national bourgeois). The Periphery then has a wider periphery - the hyper-exploited proletariat, or even peasant population. Independence from colonisation did not free them from exploitation, and this is why you see militant Marxists emerge from the periphery. They do the labour that allows the core to have gentle capitalism in the form of social democracy.

Where I disagree with the model below is that there is a harmony of interests between the two peripheries. Both must unite to form a global, working class movement. There is no sympathy for the capitalists of the periphery.