Victor Ehikhamenor / Kehinde Wiley / Omer Ba.

Victor Ehikhamenor, I am Queen Idia, the Angel of Kings, 2017. Copyright the artist, courtesy of Tyburn Gallery.

Kehinde Wiley, Fishermen Upon a Lee-shore, in Squally Weather (Zakary Antoine), 2017.

Omer Ba, Amazone-Behanzin, 2017. Courtesy of Hales Gallery.

From a European perspective, the affirmation of cultural identities on display in these shows is important in London as it is anywhere in the world. There’s a dangerous lack of strong political opposition to the rhetoric of the far right just now, and the contribution of artists is vital to broadening and enriching the context in which significant debate and action can occur. Ba, Ehikhamonor, and Wiley aren’t interested in sloganeering, or in producing pre-digested protest art; instead they’re asserting their presence and cultural sovereignty, and reminding us that the climate of xenophobia in Europe is nothing new.

Kehinde Wiley: In Search of the Miraculous  is on view at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, through January 27, 2018.  Omer Ba: Supernova is on view at Hales Gallery, London, though December 9, 2017.  Victor Ehikhamenor: In the Kingdom of this World is on view at Tyburn Gallery, London, though January 20, 2018.

You can read much more about these artists at Garage.

Killing ALL The Fun Of Christmas!

Retrospace.org. Creepy as fuck.

Now that the ‘war on christmas’ has been won, the conservachristians have a new complaint. You just knew this was coming, right? Life is no fun for conservachristians unless they can gripe and whine. Fox News host and Trump cheerleader Laura Ingraham is concerned about women. She’s concerned that women, those awful killjoys, might suck all the fun out of christmas parties, because what else so typifies christmas as the drunken office party?

“Is the #MeToo movement becoming a spoiler for this season’s Christmas parties?” Ingraham asked Friday evening during a segment on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle.

Speaking with comedian Jimmy Failla, Ingraham said she was worried that women who feel empowered to report sexual misconduct might ruin the holiday season by making office Christmas parties less festive.

“I can see this year it might be — a little less festive, let’s say that. No alcohol and no fun and no lampshades and, I don’t know, maybe that’s better,” she said.

“Is this just killing all the fun of Christmas?” she wondered absurdly.

Maybe that’s better? Unbelievable, especially coming from the SHN (Sexual Harassment Network). If your party hits the lampshade point, you’ve gone too far. Seriously. The next day will be flashes of very embarrassing behaviour, always remembered by at least one person, who will spread it all over the place, massive headaches, and someone will get stuck cleaning up all the pools of vomit. If you want to do that sort of thing in your own house, go for it. When it comes to office parties, which many people feel obligated to attend, having a lower key affair will come as a relief to many a person.

As for killing the fun of christmas, gosh, I thought your celebration was supposed to be Christ centered, and you all should be getting pickled in Jesus juice.  Ah well, the truth always outs – christmas, it’s about being a drunken lout!

Failla and Ingraham then turned their attention to Vox, which they ridiculed for imposing a two-drink limit at this year’s office holiday party in an effort to keep things under control.

Limiting the alcohol limits the fun, Failla argued, offering an enthusiastic endorsement of drunkenness at office parties.

“I’m pro-holiday Christmas party,” he said. “I think it serves a purpose, which is to build camaraderie over someone getting trashed. You know, you get that one night a year to be like, ‘Simmons took his shirt off and jumped in the the water fountain.’”

The reason so many people get wasted at office parties is anxiety and nervousness. That kind of ‘camaraderie’ always comes at someone’s expense, so it shouldn’t be that gosh darn hard to dispense with it.

Via Share Blue.

Sunday Facepalm.

© Marty Two Bulls.

© Marty Two Bulls.

A trio of youtube nazis, oh pardon, white nationalists, have decided to stop pretending they aren’t nazis. Ooops, white nationalists. My keyboard just keeps slipping. These three chuckleheads are not helping me out of a current case of Benderitis (kill all humans).

Faith Goldy, a former Rebel Media reporter who has grown ever closer to the alt-right, joined Red Ice host Lana Lokteff and 4chan YouTube muse Lauren Rose in a video uploaded yesterday to deliver full-throated endorsements of ethno-nationalism, a movement that seeks to promote white supremacy in Western nations.

…“Civic nationalism perpetuates that it’s OK to bring foreign people into your country as long as they’re a bunch of tolerant egalitarians. That’s how I see it personally. It doesn’t take anything else into consideration like religion, race, ethnic group. As long as you’re tolerant and have egalitarian values, that seems to be OK,” Rose said, going on to say that she, Goldy and Hargraves have recognized that “when you replace the founding stock of a nation, you replace the entire nation.”

Golly, what a group of geniuses we have here. A little further on, they talk about knowing history well. As you can see, their actual knowledge of history is quite impoverished. Okay, let’s pretend all the immigrants to Turtle Island are cattle. Or dogs, whatever. If you start with a specific stock, and breed from that stock, and continue breeding, you aren’t replacing the initial bloodline (stock). Now, if you let your stock die out, or kill them, and get something completely different, then yeah. Exactly how you’re applying this to Amerika, I’m not sure. There was one wave of immigrants after another, which resulted in a massive tangle of people from all over the place. Many of the people who emigrated here could not be described as ‘tolerant egalitarians’, and all manner of immigrants were treated like they were lower than shit on a shoe. It was a sort of bigotry free for all.

Later in the interview, Goldy claimed that civic nationalism was invented as “an answer to ethno-nationalism” and that she didn’t care “what anyone thinks about ethno-nationalism” because detractors of the white supremacist movement have “not properly studied history” and don’t realize that “ethno-nationalism was the greatest propeller of human history when determining the maker or breaker of empire of civilization. This is what rallies men and gets them moving.”

I can name three people who have not studied history at all, let alone properly: Faith, Lana, and Lauren. There is no one “empire of civilization”. Empires come, empires go. Eventually, all empires decline and fall. That’s a thing you can find when studying history. Propeller is quite the interesting word choice. Oh yes, the notion of “hey, let’s go conquer” has been a long held rally cry of sorts. Generally speaking, all the men who had to get moving in history had to do so under the orders of assorted royalty and the ruling classes. Mostly, they were cannon fodder, winning lands for people who could not give one hearty fuck about them. Some things just don’t change.

Goldy continued, “It is a natural tribal instinct for human communities to go with their own. So the question is, are we going to continue to work against nature and try to rise above it even though we’re 40, 50, 60 years into this experiment?”

:facepalm: Forty to sixty years? Seriously? Holy shit. So, this whole ‘civic nationalism’ has only been going on since 1957, has it? Yes, people have a tendency to gather together when in an immigration situation, because there’s comfort in people who come from the same place you do, share a culture and language. That does not mean that people don’t expand outwards, learning other languages, customs, and becoming a part of their adopted homeland. Y’know, if you have this stupid idea that people at large need to be kicked out, that means you too, because none of the Indigenous people who were already long here on Turtle Island ever invited any of you.

Lokteff went on to remark that she thought “it’s really funny that a lot of these civic nationalists that we hear popping up, that they claim to be more on the right side, it’s only white people talking like that. Sure, you might have a few blacks or Latinos in there, but it’s like a white ideal, you know? What’s going to happen when they’re a minority? Seriously.”

Gosh, you could, oh I don’t know, fucking deal with it. So terrified of losing your privilege and power. Tsk. I can’t speak for anyone else, but from my viewpoint, we aren’t going to be running out of white people anytime soon. All this fretting over nothing. Whipping up fear for no good reason.

Goldy said that middle-class white men are “literally committing suicide” because immigration policies have made those white men feel like “strangers in our own backyard.”

Uh huh. A lot of white men can’t seem to manage to kill themselves without first slaughtering as many people as possible. Perhaps if these fellas who feel like strangers in their own backyard could do something truly radical, like saying hi to their neighbours. Maybe have a barbecue or something, what with that being such a white dude tradition. Get to know people a bit. Might work wonders.

“Some of the white guys are kind of mad right now when they’re literally on the shit list. They’re last in line for schools, for loans, for jobs, for grants. They’re blamed for all the problems in the world. They can’t be in politics. I have a son. I don’t want him to grow up in that kind of world where he’s on the shit list and later on he’s a minority,” Lokteff said. “How do you think they’re going to be treated when that happens?”

Such fucking idiocy. If you could wave a wand, and turn everyone in Amerika whitey-white, white men would still moan, whine, and hate each other. That happens when you raise people up with the idea that everything and everyone on the planet belongs to them, that they are entitled. There are a whole lot of people who are last in line for schools, loans, jobs, and grants. The majority of them are not white, and not male. They aren’t exactly thrilled to always be on the shit list which all minorities are consigned to, and here again is the one true thing you fear: that you will be treated the way you treat others. Be nice if you figured out just why that scares you so damn much.

As you’re looking for someone to blame (as always) about no good jobs, etc., raise your eyes to the filthy rich. Raise your eyes to shit regime you ushered in.

Rose agreed that white men are the “most under-attack group right now” and claimed that liberals began importing immigrants from developing countries because it “ensures their power.”

Immigrants are people, you flaming doucheweasel, they aren’t products. No, liberals are not in business importing people. People who immigrate here do so because of various reasons, with one important factor: they want to do so.

She said “whites are going from this vast majority of our nation—the face, the founding stock of our countries—and are now going to become minorities in less than a century. And people think that this is going to all be OK because we’re all tolerant, right?”

The ‘face’ of our nation is due for a change, I’m good with it. And no, Ms. Rose, we are not all tolerant. You certainly aren’t. That said, I’m not a fan of tolerance. I prefer acceptance.

She continued, “I think we should take whites and we should move to a foreign nation and start voting as voters and voting for our own interests and then the government will start to benefit whites rather than the natives. And then when they start complaining that their new system is benefiting us and not the natives, we can call them privileged bigots.”

You have no idea how favourable I find this cunning plan. Although, I hesitate to inflict you assholes on any other nation; every one has enough problems of their own.

“There is still a white majority and I think that any sort of movement that we have going forward has to appeal to that majority, as Donald Trump did implicitly whether he wants to admit it or not, but he did,” Goldy said.

Yes, a white majority. Fancy that. Here’s hoping that most white people are not stupid, bigoted nazis like you.

Lokteff elaborated later in the interview, “We want the natives to be the majority. There will be some people that aren’t of that native stock, but they need to be a smaller percentage of the population, correct? Right?”

Goldy agreed, “For me, I put it very, very plainly. For me, just a simple majority. Let’s start there.”

:snort: You want natives to be the majority? Great! When are you all leaving? I’ll come to the airport and wave bye. You fucking hateful assholes are not. native. stock. You are not natives. You are fucking immigrants, the descendants of criminals, thieves, and genocidal maniacs. Also, all the people in this country who are not white, but their families have been here for generations upon generations? They are just as ‘native’ as you are, whether you like it or not. There isn’t enough fuck off in the universe for you all.

RWW has video, if you wish.

War on Christmas: Won!!1!

The Cephalopodmas Tree. © C. Ford.

Oh, the war on xmas, it be won! It’s the Trump effect! People can say merry christmas again! :eyeroll: The dumbfuckery of this is overwhelming. Who gives a fuck if you want to say merry xmas or have a safe and sane saturnalia? All this crap, yet another attempt by idiotic christians to pretend they are long-suffering martyrs who are oh-so-persecuted. Everyone in the world isn’t an exclusive asshole like we are! *sob*.

This morning on “Breitbart News Daily,” host Alex Marlow spoke with Williams about international issues and the White House tree lighting ceremony. Marlow asked Williams if there was “more for the president to be doing” to promote Christmas, to which Williams responded that he hopes the Trump administration continues the work it’s doing because “people were really fed up with the war on Christmas that we’ve seen over the last few years and really during the entire Obama years.”

“Part of the swing toward populism, toward nationalism, is also a swing toward religion and a recovery of some sort of Christian identity, the importance of faith. And I think that we’re seeing more public expressions of that,” Williams continued. “There are the new tallies on Christmas card sales and things, and ‘Merry Christmas’ is blowing away ‘Happy Holidays’—you know, these kind of whitewashed greetings from past years are looking more and more like a thing of the past.”

Your christian identity and the importance of your faith is dependent on a commercial holiday greeting? Puddles have more depth than you sanctimonious hypocrites. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, and Happy Holidays and Season’s Greetings were quite popular back then. I don’t remember anyone having shit fits and compleat meltdowns over it. There’s room for a whole host of holiday greetings and sentiments. In our house, we have Ratmas and Cephalopodmas, none of which is taken seriously. It’s a silly holiday, it should be fun. I’m not twisting in the wind because you christians are ignoring Brumalia, and will ignore the upcoming Saturnalia. Also, most christians are well aware that your precious Jesus wasn’t born on the 25th December.

“So what I’m seeing, and I’m very delighted with, is people are more overtly expressive of their own faith and religiosity, and that’s part of the Trump effect,” Williams said.

Marlow said he agreed and thought there has been a “substantial war on Christmas.” He also alluded to a newfound “war on Thanksgiving” taking place in which liberals want to “ruin Thanksgiving for us.” He expanded that he thought it was interesting that liberals want to destroy holidays that feature religious components.

Since when is ‘thanksgiving’ religious? It’s people stuffing their faces and watching sportsball. Granted, those things are near religious in Ustates. I have no love for fucking liberals when it comes to ‘thanksgiving’ either, because if they wanted to do something, they’d give up their day of overeating in favour of the National Day of Mourning, seriously boosting the voices of indigenous peoples. They could also stop patting themselves on the back for having their “giving Tuesday” the week after their food and shopping overindulgence. You should be fucking ashamed of yourselves.

Williams said the wars on Christmas and Thanksgiving are “a real globalist push from certain Americans on the left.”

Excuse me? The ‘thanksgiving’ disease is Amerikkan, and like most diseases, has infected other countries, but certainly not all. There’s no war. Much like your god, your holiday wars are all in your head.

Via RWW.

Sunday Facepalm.

Today we have Judy Reyher, a Colorado repub who was recently appointed to the state legislature. Ms. Reyher has some all too common views.

The Denver Post reports that Judy Reyher posted multiple offensive statements and memes on her Facebook page, including one that questioned why Muslims would come to the United States if they “hate pork, beer, bikinis, Jesus and freedom of speech.”

Hateful bigots always come up with the oddest assortment of words in their pitiful attempts to paint Amerikka. Pork, beer, bikinis, Jesus, freedom of speech. Wow, that’s more than a bit of a mess. A lot of people aren’t into pork, and they aren’t insulted and ostracized for it. A lot of people don’t care for beer. Bikinis? What the fuck, Ms. Reyher? It really couldn’t have been all that difficult to come up with something somewhat relevant. A lot of christians are into modest swimwear, and have no use for bikinis. Oh, and you know, women who happen to be muslim go to the beach, too, and their beach gear is along the same lines as christian modest, perhaps not quite as severe.

I have  no use for Jesus, and I wish all those who yak about that particular god all the time would shut the fuck up, and mind their own business. Once again: Judaism, Islam, Christianity, all based on the same damn books. Same god, different interpretations. I think by now everyone knows that “freedom of speech” is bigot code for “I can’t yell hate speech all over the place without people reacting! Woe is me! I am so persecuted!”

Reyher also questioned the authenticity of former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, and subsequently told the Denver Post that “the black community and the Democrats are the most racist group of people that exist,” while also claiming that black people “hate white people with a passion.”

Oh dear. No, black people don’t hate white people with a passion. I might be reaching that point though. White people suck at listening, and they really truly suck at coming to terms with their privilege and sense of entitlement, to everything. If you’re going to go around assuming people of colour hate you, and behave as though they do, you certainly aren’t giving them much reason to consider you kindly.

“I would like to apologize for the comments or posts on Facebook that have been found offensive and racist,” she wrote to the newspaper. “However, the fact of the matter is, I am not a racist. This country was founded by immigrants, and I embrace all Americans, no matter their walk of life. Diversity is what makes America, America.”

Oh yes, you are racist, Ms. Reyher. Very much so. Announced it, actually. This country was already founded and occupied when you all decided to steal it. Oh sure, diversity makes Amerikka, after all, there are just so many shades of white, right?

Via RawStory.

Yer So Trad…

Prairie Dress. Jumpinbloomers.com

I’m not entirely sure how to introduce this one. Okay, a bunch of Nazis were hanging out in a garage, drinking and smoking cigars, listening to Tom Petty, when they decided to write their own song, set to Petty’s Yer So Bad.

Before you click play, you might want to read the lyrics:

My girlfriend Stacy wants lots of babies
Maybe in five years or so
While I’m in the basement she larps as a peasant
Soon we’ll go live in the woods

In Fashy Dating she pretends she’s a lady
Yer so trad, liftin yer skirt for chad
In a world gone mad, yer so trad

She reads Evola, a lesbian chola
What kind of wheat fields are these?
A culture or fetish? A THOT with a purpose
Fishnets under the prairie dress

Oh Nazi Lady, oben bobs and vagene
Yer so trad, best lay I ever had
In a world gone chad, yer so trad

Incels and autists, virgins and kissless,
Too good to wed single moms

Oh Nazi Lady, oben bobs and vagene
In Fashy Dating (in fashy dating!), She pretends she’s a lady
Yer so trad, givin it up for a chad
In a world gone mad, yer so trad

Yer so trad, best lay I ever had
In a world gone mad, yer so trad

They described the song as “funnier than the original” and “about the scene of trad thoughts that are out there.”

Could just be me, but I don’t find that to be funny at all. Then again, I’m not a Nazi. You can read more at RWW.

The Migrant Quilt Project.

TUCSON SECTOR 2004-2005, 282 deaths.
Made by Carol Hood, Sunny Klapp, Phyllis Sager, & Virginia Wenzel, of Prescott, Arizona.

Picked from the desert, I’m gazing at the tiny pieces of Jeans. These are what’s left of real lives. They had hopes and dreams of better and safer futures. (Virginia Wenzel)

There is a wealth of heartbreak at The Migrant Quilt Project, but it’s heartbreak all should feel. No one should be able to turn a cold heart and hateful mind to the mute witness of so much death.

The Migrant Quilt Project.

People: Touching, Sleeping, Matching.

Stefan Drashan photographs people in museums. People Touching Artworks:

Visitor at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, from Stefan Drashan’s Tumblr, People Touching Artworks (all photos courtesy Stefan Drashan).

Visitor at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, from Stefan Drashan’s Tumblr, People Touching Artworks (all photos courtesy Stefan Drashan).

People Matching Artworks:

Visitor at the Musee Picasso in Paris, from Stefan Drashan’s Tumblr, People Matching Artworks.

From Stefan Drashan’s Tumblr, People Matching Artworks.

People Sleeping In Museums:

From Stefan Drashan’s Tumblr, People Sleeping in Museums.

Via Hyperallergic.

White Spots App.

Visualization of networks in Brooklyn, and a map to escape them, on the White Spots app (screenshots by the author for Hyperallergic).

White Spots: A Journey to the Edge of the Internet was launched last year as an app for iPhone and Google Play. It visualizes the digital networks around us, mapping those “white spots” where there is no network connection.

[…]

The multimedia project involves a VR experience where you can use Google Cardboard to scan local digital signals in real-time, as well as a smartphone world map pinned with short documentaries on living with and without the internet. If you visit a white spot, you can add a pin with the story of your experience.

On launching White Spots, my screen was immediately swarmed with cellphone networks and a jarring digital noise. You can click the text “get me out!” to map directions to the nearest white spot. From my apartment in Brooklyn, I am 156 km (97 miles) to the nearest one, a quiet corner of Lake Waramaug State Park in Connecticut. However, for me, and potentially most White Spots users, disconnecting would be a choice. The app’s world map shows much of North America and Europe in the black, while large sections of South America and Africa are white voids.

Documentary stories on the White Spots app (screenshots by the author for Hyperallergic).

White Spots is free to download for iPhone and Google Play.

You can read and see much more about this app at Hyperallergic.

You Can’t Free My Slaves!

Steve Prattor, Sheriff of Caddo Parish in Louisiana, addresses reporters (Screen cap).

Apparently, Sheriff Steve Prattor is not the least abashed in hollering out his displeasure over non-violent convicts being released early.

Steve Prattor, the Sheriff of Caddo Parish in Louisiana, is not a fan of his state’s new criminal justice reforms that will free many prisoners convicted of nonviolent offenses earlier than they had been scheduled to be released.

In a press conference held this week, Prattor said that keeping some of the “good” prisoners in jail was necessary for the prisons to keep functioning because they could provide needed labor that you couldn’t get out of more violent and dangerous prisoners.

“The [prisoners] that you can work, the ones that can pick up trash, the work release programs — but guess what? Those are the ones that they’re releasing!” Prattor fumed in his attack against criminal justice reforms. “In addition to the bad ones… they’re releasing some good ones that we use every day to wash cars, to change the oil in our cars, to cook in the kitchen… well, they’re going to let them out!”

My, my, you’re going to lose your slaves, what a pity. Perhaps you should learn to wash your own cars, how to change the oil in them, and strap an apron on, Sheriff, and get your arse to work.

Via Raw Story.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day.

In celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day, have a book! Nothing like some good reading. Give As We Have Always Done by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson a read, you won’t be sorry! Ms. Simpson’s site is here, Peter d’Errico reviewed here, and the book can be purchased direct from UMN press.

Repeating: 6 Banal Defenses of Columbus Day, And How You Should Respond to the Moron.

Photo courtesy starpulse.com

Photo courtesy starpulse.com

We’re going to go back in time a bit, to an article Simon Moya-Smith wrote in January this year. He’ll help you out with Columbus apologists. Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

Glaring contradictions. Stupid fucking lies, and good ol’ American bullshit.

Yes, folks today we are talking U.S. history, and there’s nothing more politically correct than American History. It’s RIFE with soft language to spare the feelings of fuckers who desperately want to believe their homesteading great-grand-pappy wasn’t a murdering, raping, thief.

OK. So today let’s hit on the numbskullery surrounding Columbus Day. “Why in January?” you ask. Well because Colorado State House Representative Joseph Salazar, a democrat, is currently working to repeal the foul thing from the state’s list of recognized holidays. And lately he has received an onslaught of hate mail from dipshits who don’t seem to understand the seemingly elusive concept of logic and facts.

Recently, Rep. Salazar has been forwarding me these messages, and they range from fucking hilarious to seriously fucking delusional. They’re more on the seriously fucking delusional side, though.

So, I thought I’d share with you some responses you can use against the common, hackneyed pro-Columbus Day arguments you will surely continue to encounter for as long as you engage the willfully blind. Feel free to share the following with your friends or family, or maybe just that fucker who sits at the end of the bar incessantly defending the bullshit American narrative as written. (Remember: The American narrative HATES to be fact-checked. So fact-check that goddamn thing any time you can.)

Okey dokey, here’s what you can say to those dullards spewing trite claims and arguments about Columbus and Columbus Day, and let us start with the most common and least accurate:

[Read more…]

Repeating: The Lie That Is Columbus Day.

ict_editoon_100716-2

© Marty Two Bulls

Other posts from last year:

The why of the “holiday”.

A Rapist, A Murderer, Deserves No Holiday.

Columbus Didn’t Kill Us All: Taino Daca.

For Indigenous Peoples Day, Write to Columbus.

Moron Bingo!