SUPER | DISCO | CHINO

dayan:

(unsurprisingly) this record is completely incredible

the actual gasp of joy i let out upon opening the email that said they’re coming out on tour with us was loud enough that it startled my wife from the next room

A video which appears to show a Syrian rebel taking a bite from the heart of a dead soldier has been widely condemned.

US-based Human Rights Watch identified the rebel as Abu Sakkar, a well-known insurgent from the city of Homs, and said his actions were a war crime.

The main Syrian opposition coalition said he would be put on trial.

The video, which cannot be independently authenticated, seems to show him cutting out the heart.

“I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog,” the man says, referring to President Bashar al-Assad as he stands over the soldier’s corpse.

okay so very clearly i’ve been wrong about this the whole time and the “rebels” that the US is currently assisting and seeking to explicitly, openly arm in their bid to overthrow the existing syrian government are completely fucking awesome

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

May 1, 2013 - Stopping in again briefly with a coda to yesterday’s post regarding the PEN World Voices Conference. A while back I read this illuminating piece on Vaclav Havel by the leftist writer Michael Parenti. Havel of course was the playwright and leading front person for U.S. imperialism in working to bring about the counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia. After that effort succeeded, Havel served as president of the new Czech Republic. Now dead, he’s pretty well achieved sainthood standing as he does for freedom, democracy and art all tied up together in a pretty bow.

The truth, as Parenti points out, is that Havel was the scion of a wealthy family and a fighter above all for his own class interests. He hated the workers’ state, hated the struggle to build socialism in Czechoslovakia—because it expropriated his family’s wealth, wealth that was created by and had been stolen from workers. He fought hard to overturn that system so he and his lot could get their riches back.

In 1992, writes Parenti, “while president of Czechoslovakia, Havel, the great democrat, demanded that parliament be suspended and he be allowed to rule by edict, the better to ram through free-market ‘reforms.’ 

“That same year, he signed a law that made the advocacy of communism a felony with a penalty of up to eight years imprisonment.” How’s that for free speech?

So anyway, Philip Roth’s great revelation at last night’s PEN gala was that he spent a lot of time in the 1970s boosting Havel. He brought him money! He arranged contracts to have his books published in the United States! He soothed and supported Havel and his cronies who, Roth claims, were forced to actually work for a living. Work! Manual labor! What horrors! What nerve the socialist state had, refusing to pay these fine artistes a salary for fomenting counterrevolution! What antidemocratic anti-art baddies! All of this, Roth’s service to U.S. imperialism, he portrayed in his talk, as far as I can tell from reports, as his own personal endeavors, but it’s an absolute certainty that Roth carried out his mission in cahoots with the State Department. That’s how this stuff works.

More: It’s the annual pro-imperialist anticommunist literary love fest

lol i’ve always hated that guy