This is a small point, but still worth making: Rush Limbaugh didn't attack Sandra Fluke because of her or anyone else's sexual behavior. Given his personal history -- and his more general ideological proclivities -- it's fair to say that he is vigorously protective of behaviors which are, as a function of what they are, fundamentally dependent on women who behave precisely in the manner of the straw-woman he is attacking. That's not what this is about. Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" because she asserted her right to speak publicly about and make publicly thinkable a set of experiences and problems that he has a very direct and personal interest in excluding from public space. The broader ideological question which Congress was ostensibly discussing -- the question of whether a religious institution can object to covering forms of medical care on the basis of… Read More...

Feminina Beauty Salon: Location is a medium sized Indian beauty salon. Two Indian females were working inside. Singas Famous Pizzeria: Location is an Indian owned franchise pizzeria. Location has the seating capacity for 25 to 30 people. Two Indian males, both 25 to 30 years of age, were working behind the counter. Taste of India: Location is a small sized restaurant that serves Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani foods. The restaurant has seating for 30 customers. One Indian male was serving food to the customers. Two other Indian males were working in the kitchen area. Kanika Fashion Emporium: Location is the biggest Indian clothing store and jeweler on Long Island. Kabul Grill Kabob and Tea House: Location is a small restaurant that has the capacity for 25 to 30 people. Restaurant serves authentic Afghani Halal cuisines. Ali Baba Restaurant: Location is… Read More...

On the surface, Rick Santorum's diatribe against college education is weird: why would the effort to make a college education available to any and all -- presuming that's what Obama is actually doing -- be considered the desire of a "snob"? Shouldn't it be the reverse? Shouldn't the "snob" be a person who wants to distinguish between people who are and aren't gifted, as in this little excursis into the Booker T. Washington playbook from Santorum: “Not all folks are gifted the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands.” Now, that reads to me like a plain and simple expression of class-fitness: some people are suited for intellectual labor and some are suited for using their hands. Some people are suited to be hewers of wood, drawers of water; others are suited to be their managers and masters. Or… Read More...

How California Law has Shielded Oakland Police Violence An interactive map of the celebrity recolonization of Africa. Jean-François Bayart on Globalization, Subjectification, and the Historicity of State Formation Rick Santorum and for-profit colleges The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence. South Kordofan is not Darfur, Mr. Kristof Interview with Robyn Wiegman Why A Big Bank Fired Me - A Whistleblower's Account of Predatory Lending Housing and the 99 Percent THE RHETORIC OF LUCK AMONG THE 99 PERCENT Spinning Necessity as a Virtue: Families to Stand in for Fragmenting Social Safety Nets: "the policy equivalent of getting in front of a mob and trying to call it a parade." Patrick Stewart's account of growing up in a household with domestic violence. Quebec Student Strike Against Tuition Hikes Is Huge. And Growing. Semeiotic Dubai: Peirce and Pop Architecture From Civil War to Civil… Read More...

Political Movements in Bahrain, Past, Present, and Future What We Owe to Each Other: An Interview with David Graeber, Part 1 and Part 2. The Moscow Protests, part one, two, three, and four When Oakland Is Under Attack, What Do We Do? Barack Obama Can’t Stop Making Stupid Sexist Jokes About His Daughters’ Dating Lives I’m Every Woman: Whitney Houston, the Voice of the Post-Civil Rights Era The Scandal of Michigan's Emergency Managers Geneologies of Neoliberalism New Law Requires Women To Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion Unified (Gar)Field Theory From Greece: Declaration for the Defense of Society and Democracy Predictive analytics and information camouflage What is the Liquidity Trap? A Cold War Kafka: Orson Welles’ The Trial Dubai as it used to be. “We Have Chosen To Be Gay” America's Gulag: The Money (in Politics) Behind Prison Privatization  Private Prison Corporation Offers Cash In Exchange… Read More...

Global Copycats The Winners and Losers of the Jobs Report, Economic Theories of the Recession Edition The Ultras' Politics of Fun Confront Tyranny Meeting Muscat Economists: Actively Evil Neoliberal Ideologues or Soulless Technocratic Hacks? How an Israeli Strike on Iran could radically weaken Israel Feel the Lin-sanity: Why Jeremy Lin is more than a cultural curio Ethiopia, Anti-Terrorism, and Human Rights The Arab Digital Vanguard: How a Decade of Blogging Contributed to a Year of Revolution JM Coetzee’s Cricketing Life ‘Little’ Protests, Big Erasures Hose streets? Our streets! Belgian firefighters soak police in protest Arab Talk Interview: Nikhil Pal Singh on Palestine Is [Toto's] “Africa” “Actually” African? -- Mind. Blown. Your scholarship won’t pay their bills. How to stop worrying about class: Today’s New York Times contains a fine example of how ideology works at the high end: report information that might trouble the… Read More...

In 1893, Mary Kingsley found herself with six months to kill, so she went to Africa. But the thing about being a Victorian lady is that you can go to the Gold Coast, but you can't get away from the mansplaining: They have also got the papaw on the Coast, the Carica papaya of botanists. It is an insipid fruit. To the newcomer it is a dreadful nuisance, for no sooner does an old coaster set eyes on it than he straightway says, "Paw- paws are awfully good for the digestion, and even if you just hang a tough fowl or a bit of goat in the tree among the leaves, it gets tender in no time, for there is an awful lot of pepsine in a paw-paw,"--which there is not, papaine being its active principle. After hearing this hymn… Read More...

On Sundays, I post a lot of links to things I think are worth reading, almost always from the previous week, and in exactly no particular order. I try not to link to the NY Times or other huge MSM outlets, and I mostly succeed. Click through, and look for something you weren't looking for. Cairo, Hers Again: excerpt from Ahdaf Soueif's book about Cairo and the Egyptian revolution. The Aesthetics of Authority On Laura Stephen, family ties, and madness Where They At: New Orleans Hip-Hop and Bounce in Words and Pictures. The Poor Storm: Ending mass Incarceration in America Tribalism in the Arabian Peninsula: It's A Family Affair The ‘football riot’ in Egypt and Egypt Soccer Protests Challenge Military Regime “I’m afraid the masquerade is over and so is love, and so is love” Digesting East Kalimantan literature In Which Anonymous Infiltrates… Read More...

I spent the early evening yesterday at the Berkeley anthropology library, which was officially to close at 5 p.m. It did not, because Occupy Cal occupied it — after a resolution taken three days ago — and because a healthy squad of Anthropology professors organized themselves to be present in shifts, all night, and negotiated with the Administration to obviate the “necessity” of sending police to kick the students out. At 4:45, a work-study student announced that the library would be closing in fifteen minutes — to general approval — and then, at 5, he declared the “The Library is Now Closed!” A hearty round of applause and finger-snapping greeted this bit of cognitive dissonance from the 80 or so students still in the (small) library, and he smiled broadly. The library did not close, and the students are still… Read More...

A Country’s Frustration, Fueled Overnight Nigeria: country tense as Jonathan accedes to some of fuel protestors’ demands Nigeria fuel strike ends with soldiers in streets Governor Fashola Condemns Deployment Of Soldiers In Lagos Soyinka Calls for ‘Immediate and Unconditional Removal’ of Soldiers From Lagos Streets Show me the Money ‘Nigerian Spring’ Here to Stay Wristwatch designer, other govt cronies got fuel import allocation Nigerian subsidy crisis opens window of opportunity Fuel Subsidy Removal: Nigerians Speak Ill Decolonising the Nigerian Constitution The Butchers Of Nigeria The Nigerian Strike: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly It is More than Just Subsidy Read More...

The first thing to say about Scorsese’s Hugo is that, from the beginning, the concerns that actually motivate the narrative are deeply, basically, and fundamentally very simple. Hugo wants to have a not-shitty life. He wants the most universal things it is possible to want: family, friends, freedom from fear, security, that sort of thing. These are desires that it is easier to express in negative terms: he wants to have parents who are not dead, he wants to not go to The Orphanage, he wants to not be unemployed and useless, and he wants to not be alone all the time. And before The Bad Thing happened, he had those things and life was pretty great. Jude Law was still in the movie, and who doesn’t love that? But then, arbitrarily and without warning, The Bad Thing happened, and… Read More...