Charlottesville didn’t just come to the White House on Jan. 6th, it's echoing around the world to take out all governments and bring every citizen to their knees. For those not seen as the desired perfect specimen in that specific nation state's fascist guidelines will be put against the wall. 

Our children are buried under the rubble

Release the hostages!

You are bombing our hospitals

Release the hostages!

You are blowing up our schools

Release the hostages!

There is not enough water or food

or even fuel

Release the hostages!

There is no milk for the newborns

Release the hostages!

or sanitary napkins for women

Release the hostages!

You also have thousands of hostages

in your prisons for years.

Release the hostages!

You are killing us

Release the hostages!

You are killing your hostages

Release the hostages!

Can you hear us?

Release the hostages!

- Mosab Abu Toha

American informercial conspiracy candidate, abortion rights right there for the win will the Dems give us a hand?

Very interesting that the washed up infomercial conspiracy theory menace to public health candidate for president not only has had part of his brain eaten by a worm but has (for now) completely backpedaled on abortion rights saying he supports ALL abortion, even though he was on record agreeing to national 15 week limit, mmm does this dummy who doesn't seem to get that Kevin Spacey endorsing you is quite insane understands that abortion is the coalition winning issue of our time?

🤔 

I've talked about this and a thousand times to my mom but abortion rights and reproductive freedom is a fight men can get on board helping out here because many do actually support it. 

Right ?? 

🤯  

Did the media lie to us all these years that abortion was just some silly suburban mom or raging feminist bitch issue that took so much wind out of people's sails for organizing and expectations and asks?

🤔

Am I just fantasizing? No I just did a lot of canvassing and talking to people in the mid-terms and men brought this up to me all on their own and this was also the experience of my canvas partners own experiences as well. I was dumbfounded to be honest. Men old enough to be my father and others who are just the standard cis-white males (who are just statistically more conservative leaning) brought it up all on their own. It really was eye opening. It made me think about not always assuming coming across someone and their identity where they stand and a healthy reminder because there are many women who are traitors on this issue. Women who have given birth too. How twisted and sadistic, that's dark you have to admit, it's fucked and they are well organized. No need to debate these people though, there is plenty of other people with their hearts and minds cleaned and open.

I read an article that in Kentucky in 2022 midterms they had specific targeting for men on this issue. From my understanding of organizing time, money and energy you wouldn't do that if you didn't smell blood in the water. The white Christian fascists will always be better funded but they don't have the numbers when an issue is organized around because most people don't want to live in a theocracy. And yesterday saw Kamala Harris' husband whom I had seen on the Men4Choice Instagram account when he had met with them, footage of him on TV speaking about getting men to support this issue. A commentator who was one of the Republicans who ran away from the GOP after Trump was nominated said what a great idea this was. And you can say a lot going on about how the campaign operation is what is working and what isn't or to be improved etc, but they wouldn't be putting money into an issue that has not done off the wall blown out the door and knocked down the house numbers, so something is salient. Trump saying he will be hands off on the states I can and do expect people who support him but support protecting choice will vote for the amendments to believe him on that. I wonder if Nicki had gotten the nominee if she would have tried that lie as well as people polling don't like bans actually.  

Wouldn't it be wonderful if Biden could make some incredible speech about him being a man of faith is what has inspired him to join the fight that he was reluctant to do and evolved on. That despite whatever he believes personally, the reality of suffering about this extremely serious and personal issue can affect his own family as in his granddaughters. So he has to think of all other people's loved ones and that is why we must protect people's healthcare decisions and family planning. It is the most kitchen table issue ever and we aren’t going to let the Republicans and the courts get away with it we are going to fight them all the way down because he understands as a man of faith standing up for values of family. Yeah wouldn't it be wonderful 

😔 

Will the Democrats be organized nationally on this issue or is it just up to each state? Could you stop endorsing people like Cueller?

Are people to desensitized and disillusioned? Is it too late? 

How much is the brain-worm anti vaxxer getting paid I wonder. Is it enough to keep the vast number of skeletons he bragged that he has that he could rule over them in their coffins? 

Is another Kennedy going to be this consequential for American politics once again? Isn’t three times enough?

May 9, 2024

  Photography, it's crazy how the photo world is divorced from speaking of the photography being utilized in what is going on in Gaza and that being on social media as well. We are liars and cowards of our craft if we ignore the function and role of photography in the first genocide of the 21st century we see unfolding on our screens. 

 I guess at the rate of technology we must combine video in many conversations about photography as well. Though they are different mediums of functioning yet they are both visual communication tools for the private, sharing of the personal, selling of the personal, and political.

We not only see through these technologies but hear the horror of what Palestinians are facing. I hope that punctures at least some people's hearts and headspace though it doesn't seem to get to the right ones with the power. Because those in power are reenforced and nurtured that they must be divorced in certain contexts. 

Politics before people, political games before human lives. Corporations over people living out to be full human beings. Profits over what mental, psychological, emotional potential and comfort we could have in our everyday lives. People tell you it's not possible, to go back to work because the boss of their boss of their boss believe people are disposable and need to serve the man.

When I try to imagine the horror of people in Gaza it's only a flash, it's an evil that can't be reached through the screen. What is the complicity of merely bearing witness? There is no real guidelines to all this in the context of viewing this on social media. Is it a question that can be answered truthfully and given easy guidance on? 

Though there are plenty of assholes reactionary to liberal and say you're being too sensitive and virtue signaling consuming a form of torture porn war trauma being hypocritical, but it's like people are dying fuck off with that. We know where some of you will likely be with a fascist regime slowly unfolding into place (it's actually happening now under Biden in the red states and the states who are not fully red but are controlled by red congress houses and governors) you'll be drinking Starbucks disaffected.

May 9, 2024 - 3:44pm

Do you realize how much artists have lost their way in the culture when the man who rapped “Thrift Shop” has more moral courage on Palestine than 90% of mainstream-well known artists out there? He's one of the very very very few vocal and consistently vocal out there. Like one of the most political creative mediums is in a crisis (but many have said for the last almost decade) if the top of the game people Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s are having a pants pull down contest right now. Rap is not even music in my rotation of pop culture knowledge and what I curate in my day to day listening, but even I know this is pretty insane and surreal. Respect to Macklemore because so many artists have truly lost their way.  

we like connecting to one another and knowing about each other and there is nothing much we can do about it

What is confusing about the ruling tech vulture class who seek to dismantle art and replace it with all AI as well as human communications through social media, is that people deeply want to connect to other people. People don't use the internet and scroll social media for the chance to communicate with machines. The machine is the tool to connect with people in some form whether reading, watching, or direct chat and commenting with others. Even the biggest misanthrope is deeply curious and intrigued and desperate to know people in some form whether they avoid direct interaction with them. People love work from actual humans. For centuries people risked life and limb to find people to connect to traveling not knowing what or who they were going to find. Why would this change with technological advancements? 

Covid was the biggest indictor of this. People risking their health in a pandemic to go down to a bar for company with people maybe they don't know or like too much just to have company with stale beer and overcooked burgers. On top of that humans desperate to travel to see their  families, families with histories of deep resentment between many individuals. The perfect excuse to not visit your family with unsolvable troubles that make you tear up when you are by yourself thinking of it all sometimes were tossed by the wayside. Rationality was not going to be the winner in America here. High Covid risk stuffed in an airplane for Thanksgiving before we had vaccines.  That's commitment to human relations. How can AI replace that? It's the ruling class shoving this AI replacements and interactions down our throats that don't understand it.

AI Photography, Palestine, art ego, complicity, it all haunts heavily

As AI haunts my mind and I struggle against the rage and frustration that stirs at not merely the new reality, not merely toward the ruling class tech vultures ready to destroy art at all costs, but my fellow photographers and the photo world people for embracing it. The only people who push back are the people in the comment sections. The art world in the larger scope I'm not surprised. Photographers you think would know better but no they actually seem to be less critically thinking on this issue because they're caught up in art theory approaches and philosophical magical fantasies. 

We don't get to do whatever we want because we are artists. We owe the world to be more than solely acting on our own desires to play around in the creative inspired bubbles we move about in. We don't get to make whatever we want at any cost. The world is more than the artist's playground. Some of us could be humbled more than clapping for the technical feats and dreaming about this tool/weapon. 

To the artists who love to act like they play and exist on the perimeters outside of society, we are all here and stuck together, sorry to break it to you. Maybe that's why some don't take us artists too seriously and some even think of us suspiciously.

Many artists like to think of themselves as especially in tune and sensitive people. Uniquely in touch with the world and can provide guidance into understanding it better. A kind of saviorism and martyrdom. Artists overall would be better to come down off the soapboxes we are enticed by. You don't have to give up shows, awards, or interviews, but the idea that it makes some superior in the intellectual and sensitive sense is demonstrably false. Inflated and fawned over egos are never helpful to artists and art as a whole.

To another point, these characteristics lead many of these artists and photographers to see current AI technologies as their god given right to use anyway they like. As well as keep their silence on Palestine lip locked as to not offend potential donors and collectors who believe in a superiority of certain people’s human rights over another group of people. It's amusing to act like this is not what this is about when it comes to Israel versus Palestine. The positioning of a colonial power formally claiming their people matter more.

People don't want to say out loud the obvious in their support of Israel over Palestinians. They believe Israeli and Jewish people who support Israel matter more than Palestinians. They don't see them on an equal footing, they don't see them as human. They see Palestinians as inconveniences. To some others Palestinians are completely invisible. It’s Gaza a strip of land to them not a people. Rubble not bodies. Infrastructure and buildings, not families and history vanquished.

This is what supremacy over others is, this is colonization and dehumanization. Is this so difficult to grasp? Well the above opinion may soon become illegal with overwhelming support of Democrats in congress. Though I heard Nadler pushed back but we’ll see.

Artists can't claim to speak to a universal human condition displayed in their work if they're silent on these issues. A technology that can upend society for most people for the worst including art, because even if you don't care about human society as a whole as an artist you should care about art. The first genocide of the 21st century paid and proudly supported by our government should also be on your radar and alarm if you spent years fearing and speaking up about the maniac who could very well slide back into office. 

May 4-6, 2024