The whole thing is spot on. This part is almost a tangent to the main point of the essay, but this part especially struck me:
Witnessing the horrors of slavery drilled into poor white workers that things could be worse. So they generally accepted their lot, and American freedom became broadly defined as the opposite of bondage. It was a freedom that understood what it was against but not what it was for; a malnourished and mean kind of freedom that kept you out of chains but did not provide bread or shelter. It was a freedom far too easily pleased.
I’ve definitely taken notice of the really weak definition of “freedom”, of workers’ rights and the whole “it could be worse” attitude, and especially that last part is linked with racist attitudes now… but I’d never considered that it goes right back to slavery.
Thread:
PG&E took the money it was supposed to use for repairs and fed it straight to execs. And since there weren’t enforceable conditions on that money, people are dying.
It’d be one thing if this was a natural disaster. It isn’t. PG&E is killing people.
More info:
Why would they cut the power at 3:30am if it was a planned outage??? And if it were so planned, how come they didn’t plan on medical equipment???
When Ontario had its last big ice storm and it took over a week to get everyone’s power back, banks opened up as recharging stations and warming stations. Sure, living in a bank branch is not ideal, but it’s better than dying.
The whole thing just seems so inept.
Called it.
Thread:
Another from The Dollop. The story of Pemulway and the first peoples’ response in Australia to these rich Colonial assholes and their slavish hordes of Old World European bigots.
What’s so frightening about Colonialism and oligarchic bullshit is that the British shit is much the same as every big empire ever in Eurasia from Anatolia to Japan and Namibia to Norway, but still foreign to some lands within oral memory. Now, unfortunately for all of us, foreign to no one. It eats everything it sees, the system of mob bosses that consume every improvement we make, just to turn it against us.
Listen through to the end and their talk about climate change.
http://thedollop.libsyn.com/353-aboriginal-warrior-pemulwuy-live-wdamien-powers
Sledge the rich…
Ok, this may not be precisely in the vein of this thread, but I can’t think of a better one…
(1) Call my cell any day between 4:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. If I am not already on the phone with another opposing counsel, I will answer and spend up to five minutes on the phone with you. At the end of our five-minute talk, I may instruct my staff to schedule a longer meeting with you if you satisfy the criteria set forth in #2 below. Please note that I spend just five minutes on each call, so if I don’t answer when you call, wait a few minutes and try again.
“Begin by providing my office with a specific agenda of items you would like to discuss,” he wrote. “Be sure to identify the tangible outcomes to be achieved as to each item, and persuasively describe how these outcomes, if achieved, would promote the greatest recovery for my client […] If your email persuades my staff that using my time to meet with you is legally required or is likely to be a worthy investment from the perspective of my client, then they will schedule a meeting (probably a meeting by phone initially),”
Really can’t decide if that’s a hoax or not. Really can’t.
Yeah. I can see some frustrated person at Google pushing back like this.
I can also see someone doing a 'shoop for shits and giggles.
I can also see someone doing a 'shoop to highlight goings on at Google.
All are plausible, given what hss been happening there.
I’m actually down with this:
Nothing like turning their kids hearts to appreciate what makes their own blood boil.