Saturday, January 22, 2011

Making A Living vs Profit

Right now my thoughts on the IPR debate are as follows:

Creators (and aides to those creators) form a product and deserve compensation for the depth of their time and whatever sacrifices they made for that product. That is, making a living.

The Intellectual Property Rights Institutions (ex: Publishing Industry) are concerned with making a profit.

At some point in the 20th Century - making a profit became subtextually branded as 'making a living' (all that, 'the life to which one has grown accustomed'). To where "The Right To Make A Living' became "The Right To Make A Profit", which then further became "The Right To Make A Huge Profit".

Looking around, I see many people incensed that some folks dare say 'The Right To Make a PROFIT - IS NOT AN ACTUAL HUMAN RIGHT' and pointing out the way IPR Institutions develop systems of exploitation.

Personally I find the Publishing Industry extremely culpable in this, since many writers do not actually 'make a living' until the Corporations start making a 'profit', and thus are left propping up the system currently exploiting them.

A serf must first tend to his lord's fields and harvest, then to his own and pay all required fees and taxes. If there was anything left over, that could be sold to contribute to said serf's own 'wealth'.


Oh look the Kyriarchy and intersectionality. But those are just 'made up words' to some. And social justice is 'the new fandom' and people are trying to make names for themselves, and no one really cares about the big important things like starving children in [ insert obviously not developed world far less developed North America here ].

And some people {Who truly disgust me and bring out my annihilate them all urges} just must be BRAVE in pointing out this social justice thing is a bunch of doublespeak for poor people and poc minorities wanting permission to steal/cheat/whatever while claiming the 'system' is 'oppressing' them.

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No, I am not putting up links. I understand as a PoC having a discussion it is my 'duty' to point to people's words, to prove that I am not misquoting them or misrepresenting them. But some truly reprehensible things have been said, to the point where I just don't give a fuck. Believe me or not. I am not pointing you to the cesspool.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

3 Things Make A Post

1. LIAR, by Justine Larbalestier won was officially granted the Carl Brandon Kindred Award this past weekend, it seems. I think Justine Larbalestier is potentially a very nice person. I understand that she 'tries'. I also understand that I will be very unpopular because I do not think LIAR deserved any kind of PoC Exemplar award, and I honestly feel that the award was won more for Larbalestier's actions concerning the 'CoverFail', than for her writing a book with a young black (mixed) girl as an unreliable narrator with potential bestial leanings.

Back in 2009, I mentioned LIAR, without mentioning it by name. Now, I am.

~*~


2. I am aware of Tunisia. If you are not, I suggest you check it out. I am also aware of Haiti and the return of Baby Doc. I also suggest you read Who Removed Aristide; which has some background on the vengeance and exploitation enacted against Haiti by the French and taken up by the USA. As well as The Denial Of Self Determination. I would ask you ponder the term 'Banana Republic', that you ponder assassinations, dictator placements of people (men) who were/are pro-USA policies of exploitation. That you consider why there are people who do NOT think the USA is the greatest country in the world, but often can't say or do much about it. That you ponder what Freedom, really means.

There is potential and there is actuality. The USA has slid past like a sullen teenager on potential for decades, all the while hiding backdeals and dark deeds and now more obviously doing things to affect the average citizen - while leaving its potential, its ideals, by the wayside.

There is very little difference between the USA's corporate elite nobility (major and minor) and the myth of Marie Antoinette's 'Let them eat cake'.

~*~


3. A friend asked me to re-post this statement/thought of mine:
"Sometimes it feels as if people get caught up in being ashamed of what they like, then defending their right to like it. And completely miss the part where what they like is draped in a lot of society's ills and unthinking. And they'd probably have a lot less guilt, if they separated how society uses it most often, with what is the actual structure underneath."


I had originally applied it to kink and sex, realized it could be applied to cultural appropriation and realize now it also applies (to some extent) to patriotism. Many people in the USA, love the USA and refuse to hear a bad word against it, they defend it, unfailingly, despite facts and proof, and lived experiences of others and sometimes their own feelings of doubt and confusion. They refuse to separate the ideal from the actuality; to separate the turn on, from how it is framed.

Example: Someone can love the flavour of vanilla, without loving ice-cream, without having to deny they are lactose intolerant. There are other things with the flavour of vanilla even if how they are introduced to vanilla, is via ice-cream.

Also, please note the USA is not alone in the auto-defense. The French do it, all the time, including thinking that a real Frenchman/Frenchwoman would only say, think, this kind of thing. The Germans do it as well, 'how, who and why is a real German'.

A person can love a thing, and still admit it has problems, it misses the mark, it needs help, it has exploited and hurt and damaged. They can love a thing's ideals, its ultimate form, its dream form. They can love how a thing excites them and titillates them, but also subtract that excitement from damaging circumstances. If you can take fat and calories out of a recipe, or take allergens out of a recipe, how can people not take hate, racism, bigotry and sexism out of a thing? How can they not take dehumanization and objectification out of a thing?

Have a fascinator, not a feathered headdress. Explore power exchange and put away written fantasies about characters in concentration camps or prison or slavery - because really no true romance ever blossomed between authority captor and prisoner there.

And finally, admit American Exceptionalism is a lie. It was exceptionally exploitative, violent and domineering, yes. But it was not the perfect storm that formed a perfect country with no marks or blemishes or wounded, bleeding, dying, decimated, whipped, cut, stolen, beaten, segregated, ostracized, interned, imprisoned, manipulated or denied.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

The Ministry Of Truth Lies Upon De Nile

I've never spoken about this before, because I am not German and I wasn't sure exactly how to phrase things and explain things as a member of the international community of earth, that is/was/could or can be affected by something German.

Swastikas aren't allowed in Germany, even when used as part of a faith and civilization older than Germany - even though the emblem itself was appropriated by a faction of Germany. Also not allowed? Nazi propaganda films. I would have to look a little closer to find out if there's a museum exception or the like, but my general interactions showed no such thing.

Germany comes across as extremely ashamed of its Nazi related past. It puts the insistence of American Jews to never forget, to have and hold memorials and historically accurate exhibits into sharp relief when it seems very much as if Germany is so ashamed of it's Nazi related past that it attempts to expunge all mention; to forget. As if a symbol alone, a pamphlet alone, a film and more, by denying their existence, forbidding them, it would somehow bring back all the dead, all the lost, stolen, burned, destroyed property, all the lives crashed and disturbed and never again the same.

It's a shame merged with terror; an indescribable loss of face. And as I said in the beginning, it's a difficult thing for me to contemplate as I am not German. I do not assume to understand German culture, or German sensibility (or Austrian Culture & Sensibility).

But I do live in America. I have encountered the word Nigger. I've also encountered. "You know those kinds of people" and "Ghetto" and "Your kind are always..." and "Race Card". And and and...

Do the people - I'm not even sure what word to use, it's more than white washing, it's sort of privilege washing with a dash of convenient excising; do these people attempting to erase the word Nigger from Huckleberry Finn, will they ever be able to admit they do this out of shame?

Aside: Re-reading before posting, I'm struck by the similarity to object aversion similar to what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Survivors sometimes deal with. US-America, North America as traumatized by all the various genocides and indigenous torture it helped commit. But more even than the victims, refusing to confront the pain it's caused so it can heal. And thus never being able to meet across the table from anyone who refuses to deny the truth of all that's happened.

No wonder there are two and three and four Americas. The idealized dream, and the broken realities the victims are trying to fix.



It's not as if people reading the book won't have come across the word. Nigger, before. They just won't get a chance to see it used in context, from a certain time period, and associate it with how people thought then, how people think now, the weight of words and terms etc. There will be no chance to grow for people reading this shame-marked book.

I understand in America that many things are simplified and modified under guise of accessible to a wider audience. I can never forget my disgust in picking up a Bible and reading it, and watching Johnathon and David solemnly shake hands, vs the weeping and hugging and far more emotive expressions of friendship, joy, relief and more. It struck me as gender policing and homophobic and completely erasing the historical context (such as it is after hundreds of years and myriad scribing) and also the cultural context.

It seems there's a vein, a streak in American culture production that likes to deny history, and the changes in society, the good and the bad, and all in-between. And now, like the Bible's been changed, Huckleberry Finn will be changed.

And this change comes from fear and shame. This change means teachers and parents don't have to discuss America's past another bit extra than they already don't discuss it now. It's part of the whole 'Oh, Slavery was so long ago - why even Huckleberry Finn has 'respectful' terminology. So why bring up possible present day effects'

It's Post Racial BS, is what it is.

Other countries, other cultures and peoples are preserving the Nazi legacy, if only as a warning, if only so history can be learned from. But in this age of American Commercial Imperialism, who's going to be keeping as non adulterated as possible a time-line via historical artifacts and literature and art, the lessons and relevance of Chattle Slavery; You had a bed, a chair, a horse and a slave. And the horse cost more than the nigger.

Funny isn't it, how White Supremacy gets to decide when a thing is done, has passed it's time, is no longer needed or relevant. How it gets upset when lynching photos are preserved and slave and more often ex-slave, child of ex-slaves diaries and journals are preserved and when history is preserved.

Again I'm reminded of military PTSD survivors , who perhaps don't want to accept and move on past what they did in action. Because it clashes with their concept of themselves as nice people. Even though they're still hypervigilant and trigger happy and apt to respond as if still in that haze of battle chaos and objectification necessary to kill and maim others.


I can't even get into the whole thing with 'Ijun', because to me, Ijun leads to Stolen Generations. You can't separate the two. A dehumanizing word had a purpose and that purpose had means and programs and politics and governments, actions and massacres, justifications, denials and now, in the present day, some shame.

Sometimes the USA (and I expect, Canada as well) is like a being who insists that reality is what they SAY it is, rather than what it actually is. When someone in our households or on the street insists on their reality instead of the one the rest of the world can see, hear, smell, taste and touch - we say they're sick and try to find them help (or some just avoid them, fearful they're dangerous). But Northern America? It's the Emperor With No Clothes, constantly believing it somehow has the power to warp reality to be what it sees in it's inner eye. Water isn't wet. Snow isn't cold. Nigger isn't a painful word of its past and present. Injun was never spoken. Faggot is not a word associated with blood and death.

Oh wait...

Hate is Love. War is Peace.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Happy Gregorian New Year - 2011

Just what it says on the Tin, folks.