Ronald Inglehart was an American political scientist, co-author of the Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world based on the World Values Survey.
I discovered Inglehart by reading and reviewing Whiteshift (2018).
I believe the studies of values became important again after the failure of the end of history by Fukuyama and 9/11.
These two events proved that it’s not the economy stupid.
David Graeber was an American left-wing thinker and activist, author of Bullshit Jobs, Debt: The First 5000 Years and The Utopia of Rules.
He coined the phrase we are the 99%.
He will be missed.
This happened in March but I only found out today.
How?
By reading Pandemic! by Slavoj Žižek which has a commemoration for Sorkin as epigraph.
Michael Sorkin was an American architect, architectural critic and activist.
An outdated version of Wikipedia says Sorkin was an outspoken supporter of politically leftist causes.
In 2005, he edited Against the Wall, which compares Israel to Apartheid South Africa.
This book caught my attention, as the geopolitical situation of the Middle East is becoming more and more of interest of me.
Not so long ago, it dawned on me that the Middle East was becoming my WWII. Allow me to explain. When I was younger I regularly came into contact with older gentlemen who were fascinated by everything which had to do with World War II.
World War II has never interested me much, except for the Holocaust.
As I grow older, I become fascinated with everything Middle East, with geopolitics and with clashes of civilization.
Agnès Varda was a Belgian-born French film director.
Her films were popular among critics and directors, giving her the status of a cult director.
This is perhaps not the best of times to rid the world of a minor misconception regarding the work of Varda, but it is what I must do after researching her oeuvre following her death.
Agnès Varda made one film about the Black Panther Party, just one. That film was Black Panthers (1968), a color film which can be viewed in its entirety at Archive.org[1].
Another film from that same year is called Huey! and is directed by a certain Sally Pugh. It can be seen in full on YouTube [below] and has nothing to do with Varda, although the general subject matter as well as some scenes overlap.
Reginald D. Hunter stand-up routine:
Reginald: “Of all the female icons women are encouraged to reach for almost none of them reach for Thatcher.”
“I mean hell, they almost all reach for Madonna before they reach for Thatcher,”
Woman: “Well, absolutely. Madonna broke that glass ceiling that had been oppressing women for decades. Madonna showed women they could be sexy, healthy and vital well into their forties and fifties, she showed women that they could and should be smart business people.”
Reginald: “Some of that’s true, but how about this? Thatcher reached all the way to the top in the most male-dominated profession in the world and she didn’t shake her ass one time. She didn’t shake her ass, she didn’t undo her cleavage before she went into a meeting with the boys and she didn’t suck a dick to jump the queue, she was true to game.”
![Anarchy in Palermo by lulazzo [non vede, non sente, non parla]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2250/1786532628_a97233f55d_m.jpg)
Click for image credits
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon(1809 – 1865), who I mentioned here[1], was a French anarchist. He was the first individual to call himself an “anarchist” and is considered among the first anarchist thinkers. He was a workingman, a printer and autodidact. Proudhon is most famous for his assertion that “Property is theft!“, in What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and Government (original title: Qu’est-ce que la propriété? Recherche sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement), his first major work, published in 1840.
The book’s publication attracted the attention of the French authorities. It also attracted the scrutiny of Karl Marx, who started a correspondence with its author. The two influenced each other: they met in Paris while Marx was exiled there. Their friendship finally ended when Marx responded to Proudhon’s The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty with the provocatively titled The Poverty of Philosophy.
My fave quote of him I saw once written on several carriages of a train in Antwerp Central Station.
“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.” (Pierre-Joseph Proudhon)