shortformblog:

haaretz:

Egyptians take to the streets to protest against President Mohammed Morsi

The protest spirit is alive and pulsing as ever in Egypt, where President Morsi’s recent decree granting himself inordinate power above and beyond the limits of the judiciary has sparked ferocious discontent.

Source: haaretz

nymoon:

“Dust” explores the conditions and relevance of empty architectural spaces in Egypt, presenting an entwined dualism: dust as materiality that layers the city, literally tracing the passage of time upon urban objects – but also as a temporal metaphor that registers these changes on the level of memories, both past and present.

Architecture constructed in Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – usually referred to as ‘Cosmopolitan Architecture’ – is rapidly succumbing to neglect, a real estate frenzy and the overpopulation of the cities. These factors lend particular urgency to Nikolskaya’s documentation of these spaces. Since she first initiated this project in 2006, a number of the locations depicted in her work have been demolished, while others have gone through a process of renovation and modernization.

On view at the Townhouse First Floor Gallery (Hussein El Me’mar Pasha St, off Mahmoud Basyouni St, Cairo, Egypt) from May 6 through June 13

via tanya 77:

8 Reasons Young Americans Don’t Fight Back -

How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

via kateoplis:

1. Student-Loan Debt. Large debt — and the fear it creates — is a pacifying force. […] Public universities continue to be free in the Arab world and are either free or with very low fees in many countries throughout the world. The millions of young Iranians who risked getting shot to protest their disputed 2009 presidential election, the millions of young Egyptians who risked their lives earlier this year to eliminate Mubarak, and the millions of young Americans who demonstrated against the Vietnam War all had in common the absence of pacifying huge student-loan debt. 

Read on. 

#3 fucking kills me. It’s so dead-on, no shit.

#7 is missing “Reality TV” which has helped create one of the worst generations as far as work ethic and heightened many Americans’ assumption that being on TV is the pinnacle of human existence.

It’s all so sad. 

Just this morning, I listened to a fantastic interview with this author on the Majority Report. Reading this article, alongside breaking news out of San Francisco - regarding the police making a quick phone, and ta-da!, the telecoms happily shut off large areas of cellphone service, as to keep people from being able to… you know, fight back against police gunning down the homeless in crowded metro stations - is making me sick to my stomach. It almost feels inevitable now… we’ve been squeezed and squeezed and watered-down to the point where all it takes is someone being shot in the back by the law to set people off who have felt neglected their entire lives. 

Source: kateoplis

via Mark Maynard 

I’ve read that the wealth disparity in America is greater than that in Egypt, where the masses just recently rose up and took back their country. Conventional wisdom seems to be that it can’t happen here, though. Americans, it’s thought, are a complacent bunch, as long as they have decent football to watch, an ample supply of beer and the promise of the lottery. (Porn and reality television help too.) I’ve got to think there’s a breaking point, though. And, I can’t for the life of me understand why the rich in this country can’t see that it’s approaching. I get that it’s nice to be rich, and that it’s hard to hand over money that you feel that you feel as though you’ve earned (even though you likely inherited it), but I can’t see how it makes good business sense to sacrifice stability for another 5%.

Personally, if I were in the Koch brothers’ shoes, I’d rather make a million dollars less a year and live in a country where someone wasn’t waiting around every other corner, looking for an opportunity to hit me in the head with a brick and steal my last crust of bread. I’d want people to have opportunities. I’d want people to have access to health care and a decent education. I’d want neighbors who really believed that, if they worked hard and applied themselves, their children could achieve more than they did. And I know that some folks at the top feel this way, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, but I don’t get why there are so many who insist on fighting for their loopholes and those few extra percentage points. Stability, I would think, would have to be worth something. I can’t imagine that these people who comprise the top 1% would want to live in the America that they’re creating.

But, I guess they feel insulated, as though they’ll be able to escape what’s coming somehow. I don’t see as how that’s going to be possible, though. And I have to think that some day they’ll regret allowing our schools to crumble, or social safety net to decay, and our public libraries to close. 

Source: markmaynard.com

Hedge Fund Gamblers Earn the Same In One Hour As a Middle-Class Household Makes In Over 47 Years

The top 25 hedge fund earners took in $22.07 billion in 2010. Thanks to a generous tax loophole these billionaires will pay a top tax rate of 15 percent instead of 35 percent. Closing that loophole on just those 25 individuals – just 25 guys who wouldn’t miss a penny of it — would raise $4.4 billion, which is enough to rehire 126,000 laid-off teachers.

What’s amazing about our staggering income inequality is that it sparks so little anger among the general population. It’s going to take the kind of sustained protest that we’ve seen in Egypt and Wisconsin to force the Government’s hand - I say Government specifically because this is exactly what Government is intended for, it is a tool for doing together what cannot be accomplished alone, like any tool it can be taken advantage of. 

We are watching the crest of a 35 year long wave begin to break; dropping union numbers, stagnent wages, austerity cuts in education and public programs; a concentration of wealth - and by concentration, I mean a deliberate theft of Government influence, law and resources by the richest one-percent, for the richest one-percent. If there is any silver-lining here, it is that our current environment is unsustainable, something is going to give, hopefully is gives sooner than later. 

Source: alternet.org

via GOOD : America’s Inequality Is Far Worse Than Egypt’s and Tunisia’s

It’s important to keep in mind that, on a whole host of other metrics - average income, poverty rate, infant mortality rate, etc. - America is far better off than places like Egypt and Yemen. That’s great, of course, but it ultimately does little to negate the fact that the rich are pulling away from the poor in our country at unprecedented rates. If past is prologue, don’t be surprised when the poor stop taking it. 

Source: GOOD

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