Tiny Fangs

i’m such a n00b i don’t even know how to navigate my own blog. like i put a caption on...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 07:17:56 -0400

i’m such a n00b i don’t even know how to navigate my own blog. like i put a caption on something the other day and now *poof* it’s gone :(

nickdrake: will smith and mariah carey

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:25:56 -0400

nickdrake:

will smith and mariah carey

Brown Berets, Black Panthers, and Yellow Peril standing in...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 06:58:48 -0400

Brown Berets, Black Panthers, and Yellow Peril standing in solidarity.

dreamy

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 06:58:05 -0400

*dreamy*

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Thu, 11 Apr 2013 06:56:52 -0400

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Thu, 11 Apr 2013 06:55:48 -0400

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Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:59:36 -0400

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Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:54:06 -0400

i can't decide which james baldwin book is my favourite book of all time

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:00:00 -0400

"When someone you love is happy, you have been given a great gift; you are the honored guest at a..."

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:59:30 -0400

“When someone you love is happy, you have been given a great gift; you are the honored guest at a rare celebration. If you are burdened, the joy of your brother lightens your burden, if you are crawling on your belly, his joy brings you to your feet. It’s true: my soul is a witness. After days, or weeks, of despair, and inertia, you are given the force to go out and contend for the rent money, and to get your watch out of the pawnshop. The happiness of someone you love proves that life is possible. Your own horrors, whatever they may be, must simply await your return from the celebration - there can be no question of your taking them with you. And there they sit, indeed, in your room, when you return, looking baleful and neglected, and you realize that some horrors need you far more than you need them, and mercilessly, you begin to clean house.”

- James Baldwin, Just Above My Head, pg 571

"To overhaul a history, or to attempt to redeem it - which effort may or may not justify it - is not..."

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:54:40 -0400

“To overhaul a history, or to attempt to redeem it - which effort may or may not justify it - is not at all the same thing as the descent one must make in order to excavate a history. To be forced to excavate a history is, also, to repudiate the concept of history, and the vocabulary in which history is written; for the written history is, and must be, merely the vocabulary of power, and power is history’s most seductively attired false witness.”

- James Baldwin, Just Above My Head

"[trigger warning: racial violence] “A black man does not look around him in the same way a..."

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:20:16 -0400

“

[trigger warning: racial violence]

“A black man does not look around him in the same way a white man does: there is a difference. In a way not too unlike the way i have learned to live, more or less, with my fear of flying, i have learned to live in a white world. It may sound banal, or unfriendly, but it must be said: when a black man looks around him, he is looking, after all, at the people who control his social situation, if not his life, at the people his children will encounter, win lose, or draw, at the people who menace everything and everyone he loves. And, though this fact controls every single aspect of their lives, the people he sees when he looks around him, either do not know it, or do not know they know it, or do not want to know it, or pretend not to know it. Yet they use, and are protected by this power every hour of every day. In the humiliating, dangerous, disastrous, or bloody event, it will make no difference what they know or don’t know. All that will matter is what they do, and he knows what they will do: they will kill him, or allow him to die. if one of their number protests this, and attempts to protect him, this white person then becomes […] a traitor - a reproach - and the two, the black and the white - are dispatched together.

It is impossible for a black man, here, not to anticipate, endlessly, disaster at the hands of his countrymen. The result is that he is always looking around him at people who do not know, or dare not know, what he is thinking, people who have been rendered incapable of seeing him. I listen to what white people say and, still more, to what they don’t say. I must: my life may depend on what I hear: I cannot afford to be surprised.

This means that, in the generality, everything a white man says to a black man is a confession, though the white man never knows it. Sometimes i sing because i’m happy, true, and sometimes i sing because i’m free: but sometimes i sing because it is so grinding down to spend one’s life listening to confessions”

”

- James Baldwin, Just Above My Head, pg. 350

iinventedeverything: omg, people feminists keep saying “i didn’t agree with her “politics” but she...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:29:01 -0400

iinventedeverything:

omg, ~~people~~ feminists keep saying “i didn’t agree with her “politics” but she was still a woman” or some shit—they keep calling what she did her “politics.” her “politics.” what a neutral kind word. as if her “politics” were really just her “feelings” on something, rather than a very real set of consequences from her policies that had devastating repercussions for women throughout the world.

fotojournalismus: International Roma Day // April 8,...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:15:51 -0400

fotojournalismus:

International Roma Day // April 8, 2013

International Roma Day is an opportunity to celebrate Romani culture but also to highlight the persecution and discrimination that Roma people face in all areas of life.

Photos :

1. A woman holds a sign during a protest against Romani evictions in front of the European Union Parliament to mark International Roma Day in Brussels on April 8, 2013. (REUTERS/Francois Lenoir)

2. A Roma child loads recycled items on his bicycle in Pristina on April 8, 2013. (AFP/Armend Nimani)

3. A Roma woman and her baby are seen though the window of their caravan at a camp in Strasbourg on April 8, 2013. (REUTERS/Vincent Kessler)

4. A teenage girl fixes her hair near hanging laundry in Indre, near Nantes, western France on July 30, 2010. (REUTERS/Stephane Mahe)

5. Roma children wear masks during activities marking the International Roma Day in Pristina on April 8, 2013. (AFP/Armend Nimani)

6. Ioan Plesa, a Roma man, carries a bundle of twigs he collected to make brooms in Prislop village, 300 km northwest of Bucharest on September 29, 2010. (REUTERS/Radu Sigheti)

israelfacts: We couldn’t help ourselves: The sight of the...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:08:33 -0400

israelfacts:

We couldn’t help ourselves: The sight of the young, newly released detainee drove us into a paroxysm of laughter. But the laughter quickly morphed into sad embarrassment. The detainee was a boy of 8, in second grade. When we met him this week, on the streets of Hebron, he was on his way to his grandfather’s home. He wore a red sweatshirt emblazoned with an image of Mickey Mouse, and he had a shy smile. His mom had sent him to take something to Grandpa. Eight-year-old Ahmed Abu Rimaileh was not the youngest of the children, schoolbags on their backs, that Israel Defense Forces soldiers took into custody early on Wednesday, last week: His friend, Abdel Rahim, who was arrested with him, is only 7, and in first grade.

Twenty-seven Palestinian children never made it to school on that particular day. IDF troops lay in ambush for them from the early morning hours on the streets of the Hebron neighborhoods that are under the army’s control, and arrested them indiscriminately. Only after they were in custody did the Israeli security forces examine the video footage they had in their possession, to see which of the youngsters had thrown stones at Checkpoint No. 160 earlier that morning, which separates their neighborhood from the settlers’ quarter of the city. It was here, a few weeks ago, that IDF soldiers shot and killed a teenager, Mohammed Suleima, who was holding a pistol-shaped lighter.

Most of the young children were released within a few hours. The older ones were kept in detention for a few days, before being released on bail. One adult, who tried forcefully to prevent the arrest of a colleague’s son, was brought to trial this week.

The fact that 18 of the children were under the age of 12, the age of criminal responsibility according to the 1971 Israeli Youth Law (Adjudication, Punishment and Methods of Treatment ), was apparently of no interest to the IDF, the Israel Police or the Border Police. Nor was the severe report issued just two weeks earlier by the United Nations Children’s Fund, which condemned Israel for arresting some 7,000 Palestinian children in the past decade.

“Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized,” the UNICEF report stated, and added, “In no other country are children systematically tried by juvenile military courts.”

The Youth Law forbids the arrest of children under the age of 12. It also appears that the provision stipulating that older children must not be interrogated without the presence of their parents and their lawyer does not apply to Palestinian children.

A volunteer from the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group, who documented with a video camera the operation in which the children were arrested, forwarded the footage to B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and B’Tselem gave it to us. (The video can be viewed on the B’Tselem website and on YouTube.) One soldier is seen spitting crudely on the ground, another actually carries the schoolbag of his little detainee - as though he were a babysitter who had come to escort the child home from school. The amateur photographer from the ISM was deported from Israel that same day, after she also had the temerity to take part in a demonstration in Hebron against the visit of President Barack Obama.

Indeed, the mass arrest of the youngsters took place on March 20, the day Obama arrived in Israel, and the day before he made his remarks about Palestinian children in Jerusalem. “Put yourselves in the Palestinians’ shoes,” the president told the Israelis.

From early that same morning, Palestinian residents of Hebron noticed dozens of Israeli soldiers taking up positions in the streets and on rooftops in the neighborhood. One frightened resident called B’Tselem fieldworker Manal al-Jaabari, to ask what was going on.

Divided by age

For his part, Ahmed Abu Rimaileh woke up at 7 that morning and, with the NIS 2 he received from his mother as pocket money, set out for school; sometimes he gets NIS 1.5, sometimes 2. He attends the Hadija Elementary School down the street. Adjacent to it are three other schools that are part of an educational complex, which is located a few hundred meters from the checkpoint.

His father, Yakub, is a construction worker. His mother, Hala, is now sitting with us in their home. On the way to school, Ahmed says he stopped at the corner grocery store and bought a packet of cookies for NIS 1, and kept the other shekel for recess. As he was about to leave the store, he relates, seven or eight other children suddenly came running in, some his age, some older. Hard on their heels were soldiers, who arrested all the children in the store.

One soldier ordered Ahmed to put the cookies in his schoolbag before grabbing him by the shoulder and hauling him toward the checkpoint. Ahmed says he was very scared. He also admits that he cried, though only a little. At the checkpoint, he and all the other detained youngsters were thrust into an army vehicle - 27 children in one vehicle, some sitting, some standing, according to Ahmed’s description.

There were three soldiers with them in the vehicle. Some of the children were crying, and the soldiers told them to be quiet. One child was hit, Ahmed says. They were all taken to the nearby Israeli police station, next to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where they were told to sit on the ground, in a closed courtyard. The children above age 12 were separated from the younger ones and taken to the police station in Kiryat Arba and afterward to Ofer Prison, north of Jerusalem.

Ahmed Burkan, 13, was not released until the evening. Malik Srahana, also 13, was held in custody for three days at Ofer Prison before being released on NIS 2,000 bail. B’Tselem fieldworker Musa Abu Hashhash, who met with him immediately after his release, says the teenager showed signs of trauma.

According to a report transmitted by the International Red Cross to B’Tselem, 18 of the detained children were under the age of 12. They were kept in the courtyard, with a policeman guarding them for almost two hours. No one offered them food or water.

Children asked to go to the bathroom but were forbidden to do so, Ahmed recalls. The policeman asked who among them had thrown stones, but no one confessed. He then asked if they knew which children had thrown the stones and they named two of the older ones, who had been arrested and separated from them.

After a time, three jeeps arrived and took the younger group to Checkpoint 56, next to the settler neighborhood of Tel Rumeida. There the children were met by three Palestinian police “security coordination” jeeps, which took them to their police station. The Palestinian police gave them food and asked all those who had thrown stones to raise their hand. All the hands went up.

The parents were called to come to the station to collect the children. Ahmed’s parents and those of four other youngsters did not show up. Those five children were driven home in a car of the Palestinian Ministry of Education. Their worried parents were waiting for them.

Hala says she is not angry at her son. She only asked him not to cry the next time he is arrested by soldiers. “We are used to it,” she says, adding that her son had a dream about the arrest that night.

The IDF Spokesman’s Office provided the following statement in response to a query from Haaretz: “Last Wednesday, March 20, 2013, Palestinian minors threw stones at a force that was manning the checkpoint in Hebron. An IDF force that waited in ambush close to the site caught the stone-throwers in action. The Palestinian minors were detained on the spot, and seven of them, who are above the age of 12, were taken for interrogation by the Israel Police. As the Israel Police interrogated the minors, the question about the non-presence of a parent/lawyer during the interrogation should be addressed to them.”

The day after the incident, Ahmed did not want to go to school, but was persuaded by his parents to do so. For one day he was a hero among the children: Ahmed, the released detainee. He did not enter the classroom that day, staying instead in the principal’s office. He wants to be a doctor when he grows up, like a few others in his extended family, he tells us. His mother says he is a good student and a good boy.

Ahmed has seven brothers and sisters. The five boys sleep in one room, on two beds and on mattresses on the floor. There is an old computer in the room, which is turned off; they do not have an Internet connection. Out in the street a young peddler, of the same age as Ahmed, can be heard hawking his wares. After school the boy sells halabi, a sweet homemade pastry oozing with oil, for half a shekel.

Haaretz

CeCe’s back in St. Cloud: Show her some love!

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:55:45 -0400

CeCe’s back in St. Cloud: Show her some love!:

freececemcdonald:

Our sweet CeCe got transferred to Stillwater and back again. Please send her much love by sending her a letter, book or the good vibes!

Dear CeCe Supporter,

As was previously announced, CeCe was transferred to MCF-Stillwater, at her own request, at the beginning of March. She was enrolled in the Atlantis treatment program there, which operates in a separate unit from the general population. She was glad to be at Stillwater for a number of reasons, but was quickly frustrated with the program because of issues ranging from blatant transphobia in the program to the snitching culture that is fostered within it. We are unclear on the specifics, but she was kicked out and placed in segregation within a few weeks of being there, and received an additional 30 days onto her sentence as a disciplinary measure. After repeated pleas from her and her advocates to remain at Stillwater and be placed in the general population there, she was instead transferred back to St. Cloud recently. She remains in segregation.

We are still unsure where she will be placed for the remainder of her sentence, but in the meantime we are calling on folks far and wide to write to her immediately! Send her your love and let her know she is not alone, that we are all watching out for her, and that we got her back!

Chrishaun McDonald
OID#238072
Minnesota Correctional Facility-St. Cloud
2305 Minnesota Boulevard S.E.
St. Cloud, MN 56304

Keep an eye on this website, or sign up for our mailing list, for the latest information.

With many thanks and lots of love,

CeCe McDonald Support Committee

dreamcatz92: well i’m turned on…

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:37:46 -0400

dreamcatz92:

well i’m turned on…

i want to be this cat!

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 18:12:23 -0400

i want to be this cat!

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Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:21:20 -0400

to all these white british people who cling to tea for their national identity, or their personal...

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:37:00 -0400

to all these white british people who cling to tea for their national identity, or their personal identity - just have a think for a second about how tea came to be in england. ffs. is that really something you’re proud of? surely we can do better than this.