“America’s chickens are coming home to roost! We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism! We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism! We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working fathers. We bombed Gadafi’s home and killed his child. ‘Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against a rock!’We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay bac for the attack on our embassy. Killed hundreds of hard-working people; mothers and fathers who left home to go that day, not knowing that they would never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima! We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye! Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school, civilians – not soldiers – people just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans, and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yards! America’s chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism.”
Tag: middle east
IKEA replicates a Syrian home
We all know IKEA. I mean, we probably see a particular shade of yellow and blue and just know. We know that they showcase and sell products in a way that we know how we’ll actually use them, by arranging them in a way that appeals to our visual senses. Instead of us wondering where we can put that preposterous beanbag that YES I REALLY DO NEED, MA, DON’T ASK QUESTIONS, they’ll show us how perfectly it’ll fit in the corner between the window and the desk, providing the perfect reading space.
We go to IKEA and if we’re [re: I’m] not drinking glass after glass of that glorious lingonberry sparkling water, aka nectar of the Swedish Gods [blasphemy, forgive me actual and only God], we’re pointing at the beautifully black and suave looking kitchen, complete with a cutlery decorated island/ACTUAL LIBRARY and a fake fruit bowl, shrieking “I WANT THAT. THAT’S GOING TO BE MY KITCHEN”. And then it’s the huge bedrooms with a super king-sized bed placed diagonally across a corner [Amazing? Why didn’t I think of that?], with fluffy grey rugs on wood flooring and a vanity mirror slap-bang in the centre and gah.
We’re so used to seeing homes in a condition that we’re familiar with, or a condition that we long to be familiar with. Messy childrens rooms, decent sized bedrooms that look like a neater and better designed version of ours, something totally achievable. We can look at a room and say “lol, mine’s better”. Everything is mostly affordable. We see massive kitchens [like the aforementioned beautiful black room where probably the best steak in the world is made], and we see nothing that is surprising to us.
We don’t see anything that isn’t ‘normal’ to us, and in not being exposed to this in real life [read: not just behind a TV screen, far away from our grasp], it keeps us ignorant as to what may be ‘normal’ to everybody else.
IKEA is probably at the forefront of providing the most normalised setting – the home – to the average person. And it has set out to change this ignorance.
Read more
Tax the rich, feed the poor
This is part of a series I am going to do, as there are many important things I would like to speak about. Here you’ll find the summaries of each post. For a world who is so proud of our technological advances, we are relapsing and it’s time for me to unleash my frustrations.
We are a world who let a witty black president make us believe that we are overcoming racism. But we are regressing dangerously fast. Where it is okay to arrest a non-white child over a clock they thought was a bomb. Where it is okay for the police to violate someone just for being black. Every black person is a thug, every Asian or Arab is a terrorist, every Mexican is a lazy criminal. But every white cop isn’t a violent, racist piece of shit – even though, painfully, we have a multitude of evidence for it. There is one and only one race that is never generalised. But no, we are definitely overcoming racism. There is definitely no preferred race in this world.
We are a world where feminists are becoming much more active. Women are becoming stronger, in charge of the image of their own bodies, because that is the most important thing we have to deal with, right? Not women being given the same recognition as men when achieving something great, not women being given the education to achieve the same or higher positions as men, but the right to be naked without being objectified. The right to be respected without having to earn it. Women have started to strip naked in order to reject objectification, to storm into religious meetings and proclaim that women must not have the choice to cover up, because to be free means to be naked. Women are denying other women the right to be their own woman. But feminism is definitely a step in the direction for all of us.
We are a world that believes that women should be their own type of beautiful, but men must still look like underwear models, a world where women claim to be in a patriarchal society but forget that men are subject to objectification too. We finally believe that women should reject the photoshopped images in magazines, containing standards of beauty that don’t exist. But we still have to conform to European standards, of course, just without being stick thin – we have come to the conclusion that only fat women are “real women”. Instead of urging us to become fit, we must be happy with unhealthy bodies. Buzzfeed articles recreate Disney princesses as the “average woman”, telling us that ‘fat’ and unhealthy looking is average. The media tells us that we have to have European features and European skin, but the assets of “exotic” women. Sultry eyes, a big butt and everything else. But you have to be fair skinned. Body shaming begins again. Racism complements it. Read more