Delivering the inaugural lecture at the three-day Sam Moyo Memorial Conference on “Land and Labour Questions in the Global South”, Utsa Patnaik said that the estimated drain from India to Britain over the period from 1765 to 1938 was a whopping 9.184 trillion pounds, several times the size of the UK’s GDP today.
Patnaik, who is Professor Emerita at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP), JNU, said that the policies followed by Britain during its colonial rule in India were so disastrous that per capita food grains availability in India declined drastically from 197.3 kg per year in 1909-14 to 136.8 kg per year in 1946.
https://newsclick.in/britain-would-collapse-if-it-tried-pay-back-money-it-drained-india
(via ait-baar)
As he brings the double shot of rum to his lips.
I imagine the way it burns as it slides down his throat.
He winces, then smashes the glass against table.
Everyone turns and cheers,
then they go back to their conversations.
He says it again — I swear.
I say: I know.
He looks at me with sad eyes.
Wallahi - he says,
still trying to convince me.
I say: I know.
I watch his eyes turn to glass as he downs another.
I swear I am Muslim - he slurs
I say: I know.
No— he says— you’re judging me, look
and he holds his hands over his ears and he begins to recite.
And I put my hand over his as people begin to stare.
And I say: I know.
And he begins to cry, and his tears look ancient, and his face contorts, and his mouth is open but there is no sound, and his body shudders.
And he tries again and again, never getting past Bismillah.
He keeps on saying “No you don’t understand I am Muslim, I am Muslim, I am Muslim, I am Muslim”
I know, I say.
And he holds the bottle to his mouth and he almost swallows it whole, and he says “marry me Aasiyah, I am a good man, my father is a hafiz of Quran,
it is just this Dunya, it is this world that has killed me”
I know, I say
I know.”
(via almostdefinitelydying)
(via marinashutup)
(via my-lovely-dreams)
Why does being a woman put you at greater risk of having anxiety?
Part biology, part what we teach our kids about their place in the world.
(via almostdefinitelydying)
(via wordsnquotes)
(via almostdefinitelydying)
Classic lit + Onion-style headlines = the mashup you never knew you always wanted. Click here to see all 14!
brought to you by our resident genius, @roonil-freakin-wazlib
I love this so much
YESSSSS
(via the-pizza-doge)
Good people aren’t wealthy.
Let me make this clear here. It’s actually impossible to hoard millions in personal fortune and also live an ethical life.
(via almostdefinitelydying)
maybe i’m in the part of my life that builds character development
let it maroon us at home.
We need nothing more.”
the vast majority of “vegan activism” i guess i would call it is essentially liberal idealist consumer activism (e.g. “vote with your dollar”) that places more importance on ending the use of animal products than… ending capitalism, which is literally the source of global warming, which has caused the extinction of countless species, which will never allow the cessation of the use of animal products because profit is prioritized above all else.
like how am i supposed to sympathize with a vegan who shops at whole foods for their “ethical” lifestyle while whole foods exploits the labor of prisoners? and, like, obviously this is not unique to whole foods; there literally is no ethical consumption under current capitalist conditions, the global economy and every government connected to it is reliant on exploitation.
but yeah i do use the term lifestyle, because the individualist ethical veganism lifestyle is seamlessly integrated into capitalism in the sense that, under capitalism, we are denied meaningful identities, and the identities that society allows us to have are identities defined either by consumption or production.
hence “vegan” is an identity defined by consumption; it is a market demographic. any type of consumer product can be positioned, marketed, designed to garner more sales from the Vegan Market.
anyway, moving on:
there’s the widespread racism and xenophobia towards cultures that have traditions of using animal products. Like i understand if you have a moral objection to, uh, Any Animal Being Killed For Any Reason (regardless of my inability to sympathize with that point of view) but that does not exempt you from the responsibility to exercise nuance and cultural sensitivity. you still have the capacity to express your animal rights beliefs in a racist, xenophobic, islamophobic, or antisemitic way.
it’s not that bigotry within activist circles is unique to animal rights groups, because it isn’t, but the way that it presents itself in animal rights groups reveals where their priorities lie…
and the oft-repeated phrase “they care more about the ‘rights’ of animals than they do about the oppression against people of color and the working class,” sums it up pretty darn well.
of course when talking about anarcho-primitivists and Animal Liberation anarchists, the conversation is slightly different. but a lot of the same fundamental problems are present in those circles as the ones I brought up here.
…side note: a prominent example of a shitshow from far-left animal rights activists is the Deep Green Resistance transphobia debacle. yikes.
(via ardhangini)
