[-empyre-] under the gun

Wed Nov 16 00:11:16 AEDT 2016

All,

frankly i don't see any less or more horrors confronting us after 11/9 than before. 

can't we get on with what looked like a very promising discussion? or rechedule this discussion till a later date? i'm very sad to not being able to read (about) all these wonderfull people having prepared for this discussion no doubt, on a subject that really interests me...
 sincerely,

Dirk Vekemans

http://vilt.wordpress.com

      From: Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn at gmail.com>
 To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> 
Cc: Michael Boughn <mboughn at rogers.com>; William Bain <willronb at yahoo.com>; Maria Damon <damon001 at umn.edu>; Adeena Karasick <adeenakarasick at cs.com>
 Sent: Monday, November 14, 2016 4:22 PM
 Subject: Re: [-empyre-] under the gun

Dear Ana, the horrors you are anticipating in Europe and the States, many of them are unfortunately true.

I just want to pick just on Sarandon's comments which I think you are quoting admiringly. I think she is the exhibit 1 for the narcissistic self satisfaction and self-righteousness that a strain in the left in the United States represents. Sarandon voted for Stein, the Green candidate. One of the first things Trump and his party will do is open the entirety of the United States for oil exploration, get out of the climate change agreement this country achieved with China and the majority of the other countries in the world and abolish all the executive order Obama signed for climate control. I am sure Sarandon feels very pure and smart ("I don't vote with my vagina," the vagina reference again in relation to this election). To me, she is ridiculous. Perhaps, who knowd, she voted for the high quality of Stein's songs and band.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 11:25 PM, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:

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Friends as a one -empyre old timer and an old time activist, jailed for several years, waterboarded and a lot of etc, exiled in Sweden for more than 30 years now back in South America I dare to add my voice to this collective lamentation. 
The election in the US was an election between Schila and Caribdis. Hillary Clinton played for many years in the powers inner territorium and she became flawed or tainted.  Her support to the war in Irak and her support to Israel hawks made her a very impopular candidate among leftist or radical thinkers. 
Women didn't vote for her "per se", Susan Sarandon who voted for Jill Stein, told a reporter "I don't vote with my vagina". Many saw not in Clinton a champion of radical feminism. 
But in comparison with Trump ' blatant antisemitism bigotteri and lies she become mother Teresa.
Now we, the world, must cope with four years of backlash and xenophobic rethoric.
We got six former Guantanamo prisoners to Uruguay they spent 13 years in jail without trial. They were vaguely accused of belonging to al Qaeda or to be Osama bin Laden drivers or other more or less ungrounded accusations.
One of them, Ahmed, is now a friend to me. He was at my home today and tried unsuccessfully to reach his family living in the living hell of Aleppo.
Trump has said he and Putin are going to go together against Isis and it means supporting and keeping Assad in power.
It means all those millions killed and displaced in Siria sacrificed themselves for nothing, Assads goes out from this war stronger than ever.
And in Europe it's a lot worse my Swedish friends are in dismay.  Trump promised Putin to accept officially Russians annexation of Crimea and Trump answered to the question of a journalist "I am not ready to take the US to a war for some suburbs to St Petersburg".
(He was speaking about Ucrania Letland Estonia and Lithuania of course).
If we are not able to make a world coalition against Trump and Putin we are going to see a new world order scarier than that we had before.
Sorry for my long rant!
Ana
Den 14 nov 2016 00:33 skrev "AAR" <ghostnets at ghostnets.com>:

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I’ve dipped in & out of this thread. Yes, there’s a lot of hysteria going around for very good reasons. A video by Van Jones has been circulating in which he basically advises people to step back and reinforce our personal base- with love, happy routines, etc, even as we search for the ways forward. He thinks there are some opportunities. I don’t know. T. is moving swiftly to install people and initiatives that could rapidly lead to planetary ruin for most of us. It’s hard to stay focused. Personally, I find that besides my rage, owning my grief helps a lot. i stay on FB threads with smart people I admire. I keep working. As a Jewish person, I am weighed down by millenia of PTSD. I am trying to see past my own horror and terror to everyone else’s. I have my walls up against white Christian male complacency and misogyny. But hey, there are tons of female male-identified misogynists out there as well. The news screams about happy white supremacists spawning a whole new generation of Nazis, and every hour it seems I hear about another hate crime. Artists and intellectuals did not do well in the Third Reich. I think we will all be walking targets for the disaffected, but more to be revealed. The RNC of the USA pulled a fast one in slow motion in this country, with voter suppression and gerrymandering, whipping up false fears, controlling the media, making unholy coalitions with hypocritical evangelicals, Putin and our very own FBI so fossil fuels can destroy the earth asap. So many will be collateral damage. So many already have been. Some are talking about common cause with other poor people who happen to be white supremacists. I doubt it. So the answer? At least keep talking, writing. At the very least, let us not harm each other. Let us clearly identify the real enemies. 

“What the world needs is a good housekeeper.”
Aviva Rahmani, PhDAffiliate INSTAAR, University of CO. at Boulderhttps://www.nyfa.org/ArtistDir ectory/ShowProject/1446ef3a- 0a9d-4449-96be-74023eb9c376Watch “Blued Trees”:  https://vimeo.com/135 290635
www.ghostnets.com
www.gulftogulf.org

On Nov 13, 2016, at 8:32 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
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I'm hoping this goes to the list, since I believe I received it from the list, not from the cc?

I find " We don't want to discuss some very hard realities that exist on the ground. By "we" I mean specifically the kinds of liberal intellectuals and artists who inhabit this list." - because you assume that we don't understand those "hard realities" - whereas you really don't know what any of us, non-white or white, even Trump supporters, are going through, and that's part of the problem. The post is divisive, even though I agree with it. So I can say on another list I co-moderate, there is considerable hysteria, on Fb there is the same, and there are hard realities for many many of us - ranging from issues of Obamacare to sensing an approaching armageddon of forced exile. And many of us are protesting, are out there, are organizing, as much as anyone else.

_No one_ has been ready for this, and one of the heartening things at the demonstration yesterday was the call for unity, from people ranging from Muslims to Jews, Blacks to whites, all sorts of sexual orientations etc.

I will absolutely not apologize or accept the category of "liberal intellectuals who inhabit this list" - we're subscribers, and we subscribe to many many other lists and real-life organizations and practices; in other words, I don't see this as a totality - any nore than I see Trump supports as all poor uneducated whites. I'm not trying to sound antagonistic - I don't feel that way honestly, I'm just trying to get rid of labels and hopefully increase the understanding that many many many of us are under the gun, even whites - I'm thinking of some people I know who are worried about dying when the medications run out... I should also note being Jewish, I've been subject to hate crimes myself, etc. It's all shameful.

Please, if you do have any suggestions, offer them. And hopefully we won't have censorship on this list. We do have to realize everyone's feelings are on edge, in every part of the country, and we have to learn to listen. At the same time we have to learn how to concretely oppose the bullying and hate crimes have have increased at least 300% in the past few weeks.

Alan

On Sun, 13 Nov 2016, empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.ed u.au wrote:

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