Just Do It
Morning Comrades! A few more in-depth topics to go through today, COP26, 300 days plus minus a few into Biden’s presidency, AI surveillance and Amazon, the Rittenhouse Trial and subsequently some new art, and that’s what we are going to start with today.
With the retirement of the RIOT design and the text I wrote in regards to that, the art block and so on it’s nice that ending that run clearly has set a new found interest in making new work in motion. Despite, or possibly because I had heaps of adulting to do on Monday I ended up putting together about 9 new pieces yesterday, mostly digital for now and some of those are for upcoming collabs both for BL and other brands. The first one that I am going to share today, and don’t for second believe I am done ripping into major brands like Nike just because the RIOT design is gone, is direct relationship to the soon to be over court case of Kyle Rittenhouse. Now, the entire case is an act absurdity, with its reality so deep up our current system’s flawed execution of the rich white man’s wants and needs that it begs to ignore all discussions about what is actually being argued about at the trial. Rittenhouse will walk, of that I am certain and the arguments during said trial are absurd and representative of a white patriarchal system that require one action and one action alone: destruction. The fact remains that in any healthy society a young man would not and should not run around a town armed with an assault rifle shooting people. End Of Discussion. With that, here’s a visual response to the violence of said system. Feel free to share and I’ll throw this up in our Telegram Group also.
The line is a play on the infamous Doors song “You cannot petition the Lord with prayer” that I am sure most of you will know and I am sure most of you can understand the play on words I used here. Analysis without subsequent logical action only serves the Reaction and gatekeeps the powers that are. Or as Marx so aptly put it:
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
-Karl Marx, Eleven Theses on Feuerbach
COP26, the big meeting of the global elite to act together to face the man-made Climate Catastrophe ended without big fanfare, mostly because it ended the way any 4th grader would and could have predicted, wasteful, without any agreements and zero intentions from the Global North West to do anything other than continuing to fleece the Capitalists pockets. Nonetheless I wanted to share to perspectives with you, one from Jason Hickel, an Economic Anthropologist whose work on De-Growth is very much on point. Secondly, a take from The Peoples Dispatch, specifically Zoe Alexandra and Vijay Prashad on protests, threats and responses during COP26.
What Would It Look Like If We Treated Climate Change as an Actual Emergency?
What would such a world look like? Our cynicism and fear would melt into hope and solidarity. We would feel the thrill and camaraderie of being part of something big, something transformative, something together. There would be a lot less needless commodity production, and a lot fewer bullshit jobs. Our society would be more equal, and poverty would be a thing of the past. Our economy would be organized around human needs and resilience rather than around endless capital accumulation.
A great read for all of you to dig into!
At COP26, the only person arrested and charged was a Communist.
Amid the deepening climate crisis, it has become increasingly clear that capitalism is not only the root of the problem, but it also offers no viable solutions. Police cracked down on those that bore the clarion call “socialism or extinction”
A most brilliant take as well and you can read that piece by clicking on the above image. Long story short: As often as I beat around the fact that without stopping Capitalism and a truly reformative revolution this planet is as good as dead. If you get sick and tired of hearing me yapping on about this, read these two accounts from people infinitely smarter than me.
I know, nothing new here to be honest, however, the above tweet lists, and it is such a damn long list, all of the fuckening WE warned about months before this lunatic was elected President of the US. I do find it helpful to be concise about the crimes & violence committed in light of the most powerful propaganda machine at work convincing so many people of the opposite. A few examples to follow, but be sure to go through that whole list:
-Air Strikes in Syria -Mass deportations of Haitians -Using title 42 to expel 690,000+ people -generally deporting 1,283,413 people -Stopping testing for COVID on ICE deportation flights -killing 10 people in a drone strike in Afghanistan -continuing to expand offshore drilling--Senate Democrats deciding to drop paid family and medical leave, a “cornerstone” of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, from their social spending package. -sending more military equipment to American neighborhoods than Trump did. -proposing a $753,000,000,000 Pentagon budget, -Biden's DOJ continuing to defend Trump in the defamation case that accuses him of raping journalist E. Jean Carroll -settling on a 25% corporate tax rate- like I said, the list is long.
This is such a chilling piece of news that it took a day or so to really get my head around it, as it exposes or rather hints at what these tech companies are truly up to behind their facade of Meta and Prime Shopping:
“AI surveillance takes U.S. prisons by storm” - again, it’s anything but surprising that the US allows and encourages to do the most inhumane and vile bullshit to their prison populations, and with that, this piece of investigative journalism isn’t truly about that but once you read between the lines and take the next logical step, you can fathom what this experiment will mean for everyone, regardless if you are in prison or not.
Again, not doom-scrolling here but wanting to highlight the fuckening our overlords are up to so that we all can make plans, because making plans is about as much freedom as we still have.
Get to it.
Until then, as always,
Yours, without compromise,
V.