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A revolutionary Marxist Leninist that seems to add two books to the stack for every one book I take off...
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Preston Maness finished reading Democracy for the few. by Michael Parenti
subcutaneous quoted Settlers by J. Sakai
Content warning world war 2, antisemitism
The Allies were notorious in blocking Jewish evacuation from the path of the oncoming Nazi conquest. Roosevelt refused to lift restrictions on Jewish immigration. As the war approached, on April 23, 1939, the U.S. State Dept. announced that quotas were so "filled" that Jewish immigration was to be halted except for special cases. Desperate German Jews were told that they had a minimum six year wait, until 1945. The New Deal's vicious attitude was displayed in their mocking statement that Jewish "applicants of Polish origin, even those who spent most of their life in Germany, will have to wait at least 50 years" to obtain entry visas to the U.S.! The same day the Roosevelt Administration announced that no tourist visas to Amerika would be issued to German Jews - only those Germans with "Aryan" passports could greet the Statue of Liberty.
During the war the U.S. rejected pleas from the Jewish underground that they use bombers to knock out the rail lines to the death camps (and even knock out the ovens themselves). Yet, On Sept. 13, 1944 the U.S. 15th Air Force bombed the I.G. Farben industrial complex right next to Auschwitz death camp (a few bombs fell in Auschwitz itself, killing 15 S.S. men and 40 other fascists). Although this proved the U.S. military's ability to strike at the Nazi death camps, U.S. imperialism still refused to interfere with the genocide. And this was when the Nazis were feverishly slaughtering as many as possible - at Auschwitz as many as 24,000 per day!
Based on an extensive study of law and business (MBA) students in an American university in which she used the concept of habitus developed by Pierre Bourdieu, Debra J. Schleef (2006: 21) showed that the key motivational factor for attending professional schools was students’ desire for “maintaining a possibly precarious class status.” As they internalized the tastes, values, context, and world view of their immediate family, they did not aspire to be professionals because of “an ardent interest or perceived aptitude in these fields,” but because of “a deep-seated economic source—the need for the credentials that provide the salary, prestige, and lifestyle attendant on the upper-middle class” (Schleef, 2006: 20). Things really had not changed that much from the late 1970s, when Richard P. Coleman and Lee Rainwater (1978) wrote that earning a substantial income was the principal determinant of career choice : “[t]he status attached to given schooling levels is a function of the realistic observations people make of how much money those in different educational categories actually earn” (qtd. in Brint, 1994: 42).
Professionalism amounted to “[t]he process of reproducing a class position” across generations; students “did not consider the advantages of a given occupation separate from its social class position” (Schleef, 2006: 20, 45, 202, 203). And once at their respective schools, they allowed themselves not only to be convinced to take career paths that were presented as “appropriate to their elite status,” but also to see such choices “as inevitable.” Students “modif[ied] [any] earlier entrepreneurial and anti-corporate attitudes to value more traditional big business goals,” easily moving “from the amorphous careers they were considering at entry to careers in investment banking, consulting, or corporate law in large firms.” Professionalism became a “remarkable” form of “class continuity,” where individuals, as they progressed in their chosen occupation, learned to embrace the logic, attitudes, choices, and procedures of that occupation so as to ensure that they remained within the social-class level to which they had become accustomed and to which they now had an even stronger personal allegiance.
subcutaneous quoted Topographies of Whiteness by Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (Series on Critical Race Studies and Multiculturalism in LIS, #2)
Though white women continue to be hindered by gender inequity in academic libraries, whiteness still enables them to access and wield hegemonic privilege and power. Such access, paired with the belief that professional success is the result of individual hard work and merit, lends itself to white feminist neoliberal thinking. As Deborah Hollis noted nearly two decades ago, “the ‘good old boys’ are turning into the ‘good old girls,’” and this continued concentration of whiteness at the top solidifies an institutional structure predicated on marginalizing, assimilating, and/or silencing the “other.” White feminist leaders, for whom a commitment to social justice is an integral component of their cultivated progressive identity, use their authority to reinforce a professional culture that avoids or elides explicit discussions of race and racism.
— Topographies of Whiteness by Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (Series on Critical Race Studies and Multiculturalism in LIS, #2)
Megan Watson, "White Feminism and Distributions of Power in Academic Libraries"
Preston Maness rated The Last Lecture: 3 stars
Preston Maness finished reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
Preston Maness started reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Almost done with chapter two, which is basically the nuts and bolts of the drug war without any investigation into demographic data. Basically, "how" the drug war works, not about "who" it targets or "why."
Preston Maness set a goal to read 12 books in 2023
Preston Maness started reading Democracy for the few. by Michael Parenti
Halfway or so through, on page 42. OMG this guy Huxley is obsessed with painters. I'm not getting any of your references, bro :( I've never particularly cared for paintings or painters.
I really wish there was a companion edition or something that had the various references and allusions ready-presented on the opposite page or something. But I'm sure that the bean-counting dipshits that are in charge of the estates of these painters have seen to it that such a volume could never be economically produced. Or is that just my doubt degenerating into suspicion?
Anyway...
TheDoorsOfPerception #DoorsOfPerception #Huxley #AldousHuxley #high
Preston Maness started reading The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (P.S.) by Aldous Huxley
Preston Maness started reading China: Revolution and Counterrevolution by Gloria La Riva
subcutaneous quoted The Cambridge Project by Judy Kaufman
The slogan of "academic freedom" or "right to do research" does not mean freedom or rights for anybody or everybody to do what they please. Those who control the university control hiring and firing as well as research facilities. Government, big business and foundations friendly to them control the money and other resources necessary to do large-scale research. The same interests control most of the means of communication. In the final analysis, researchers can only do what they please as long as they please those who employ them and support their research. In reality, therefore, "academic freedom" and "night to do research" basically entail the "right" and "freedom" to serve imperialism -- and not the "freedom" or the "right" to fight it, to work against it.
— The Cambridge Project by Judy Kaufman, Bob Park, Betsy Useem, and 1 other (Page 48)