bidrohi bloc

destroy all nations

(Source: imagesfromthefuture)

Communist Alliance for Christina Aguilera (CACA)

(Source: fullannaism, via fullcommunism)

Girls Aloud - Kronstadt

Here are the lyrics from a very early (and as far as I can tell, very rare) “b-side” from wor Cheryl and the gang. If anyone has more details or a recording, do share with the class.

“In the Russian snow the sailors said to Lenin go
But Trotsky was not afraid
A revolution he had made
So if you are down and you feel sad
You won’t feel as down or bad
As the anarchists did at Kronstadt “

The anarchists are on the ice
Shot by Lenin which wasn’t nice
In the freezing Russian cold
There is a story which must be told
About Kronstadt

It must be said
There were some dead
And that isn’t very pleasant
But Russia’s better Red
Than run by Whites and peasant”

It has to be said the lyrics read as if the song it written from an unsympathetic and bolshevik point of view. Nevertheless, many will take this as confirmation of Cheryl Cole’s secret love of revolutionary history and communism.

piercepenniless:

Some very quick thoughts on this article, here because I don’t have time to work them up into a full response:

(i) I’m willing to believe it’s highlighted because of the subbing, but the locution ‘as an activist’ is unpleasant for a number of reasons, like trading on credentials that presume…

it’s like that

fullanarchy:

Eighteen months ago today I had an abortion at the bpas clinic in Brighton. A few days previously I’d noticed my breasts hurting and finally admitted to myself that yes, despite having an IUD fitted there might be an explanation for that missing period other than stress. I got off the bus, bought a pregnancy test and went home praying that it would come out negative. It didn’t.

I don’t want to be pregnant. That’s not to say I don’t want children, but if I decided to introduce one into my life it would be via someone else’s vagina. I’ve wanted to adopt for a very long time. Some people have to make a really difficult decision about what to do with an unplanned pregnancy. I’m lucky. There was no decision to make. As far as I was concerned I had a ‘thing’, a growth in my uterus and it needed to be gone.

After pissing on the stick I phoned the family planning clinic. They had a walk-in clinic that I could make if I rushed. I rushed. The first person I told that I was pregnant was the nurse – no-one, not my boyfriend, not my best friend, was more important. She did another pregnancy test, we had a chat and she agreed to refer me to the clinic. I got on another bus and went to see my boyfriend.

On the morning of the bpas consultation we went to the clinic together. I felt like I was going to have to fight for the abortion because it would be deemed a ‘lifestyle’ choice and I’d get sniffy looks and doctors refusing to approve it. When the counsellor said I couldn’t bring my boyfriend in to the appointment I was raging – I needed backup!!

I needn’t have worried. They don’t let men in so that the woman is the only person making the decision and has a safe space in which to disclose other issues like abuse. We had a chat about the pregnancy, what contraception I’d been using and what contraception I might want to use in the future.

Then I did some more waiting before having a scan. I was 7 weeks pregnant – I didn’t care. I just wanted it out.

I saw another counsellor and was again very definite that I wanted the abortion. Instead of trying to put me off or telling me I couldn’t have it, she found me a slot two days later and booked me in. I was elated – I hadn’t had to fight. Other people genuinely believed that I had a right to decide what my body did. After spending a lifetime in a female body with society telling me what I should and shouldn’t do the idea that there was a whole institution that was fine with me doing what I wanted to was almost beyond imagination.

So, eighteen months ago today I travelled to the clinic listening to Amanda Palmer’s ‘Oasis’ (it was the only song I knew about abortion that didn’t involve shedloads of WOE) and feeling pretty good. It’d been decided that I should have a surgical abortion because of the mystery IUD. I was worried about having a general anaesthetic, but that was it. The thing was being taken out and I was even getting a new IUD put in whilst I was under (and anyone who has been through the indignity and discomfort of having their womb measured understands that that is a BIG FAT BONUS).

I spent the morning sitting about in a dressing gown waiting to go in. Eventually I was wheeled into the theatre and chatted to the doctor who was going to perform the procedure whilst they prepared the anaesthetic. Then I was under and out the other side. Free of the thing. Then I lived happily ever after.

 So why am I telling you this? Right now, today, there are a group of Christians and anti-choice activists in the UK who don’t think I should have had that choice. They would rather wave pictures of mashed-up foetuses at people, or pray at them, or take photos of them, than understand what takes women to bpas clinics. For lent, they have given up the Christian values of compassion and love for others, preferring to bully people instead. They have called this campaign 40 days of life.

These people think my foetus’s life was more important than mine, its health more important than my sanity, its existence more important than my future. They think that my uterus is somewhere they have a say (I think that if they really like uteruses they’re welcome to have mine on their mantelpiece). Except wait, that’s not what they’re really about. It’s not about the foetus, or the uterus. I’m not even convinced it’s really about religion. It’s about controlling women and defining their role in society. It’s about reclaiming the spaces we’ve created for ourselves.

They aren’t alone. Everyone’s favourite MP, Nadine Dorries, thinks that teaching girls to say no will somehow reduce pregnancies, whilst at the same time wanting to reduce access to abortion services (THIS WILL DEFINITELY NOT GO WRONG). She thinks that anti-choice Christians offer better counselling on abortion than abortion providers like bpas do. It is worth saying that I had offers of counselling coming out of my fricking EARS when I went to bpas, but they respected the fact that I didn’t need it. I would tell Dorries that but I know she doesn’t care, because she’s not really interested in what women (who aren’t her) have to say.

Even when people are on ‘our side’ they can make it difficult. The images I associate with abortion are of sad, confused women who are on their own, and that is entirely the fault of lazy magazine editors. You can tell us it’s ‘our choice’ all you want but when photos like these are appended it tells us exactly what kind of choice it should be. I pulled a couple of pictures out of stock libraries a la Vagenda so you could see what I mean.

(One of the interesting things about Corbis is that when you search ‘abortion’, most of the photos are of men)

If everyone is telling women that abortions will be horrible and traumatic, then the job of groups like Abort67 becomes much easier. It’s a bit like having a cut – you’re vulnerable to infection. Women are constantly swamped with other people’s opinions and we’re taught to consider them in a way men aren’t. At the point that you are deciding to have an abortion, those opinions can get in the way even more than they usually do.

If you’re already finding it difficult, then you’re ‘doing it right’ but that means going through a really horrible process and possibly having to deal with the emotional impact of that for the rest of your life (because apparently that’s what happens). And how should you feel if you don’t find the decision difficult? Guilty? Callous? Like some heartless bitch who didn’t love ‘her baby’ enough to even struggle with the decision to get rid of it? No. Fuck that. Abortion is not an easy decision for everyone, but it’s not difficult for everyone either. It’s a truth that’s often acknowledged within pro-choice and feminist circles, but we need to be much more open about it in places that aren’t quite as safe.

In the end, it’s my body and my choice, and I’m not going to feel sad or guilty that I made the right one.

To celebrate making that choice I’m joining in with 40 days of treats and taking a delicious peanut butter cake up to the clinic as a thank you to the staff for trusting me with my own body.

support poetic justice//hospitalise andrew lansley

withoutpity:

fuck, in DC you have to work 140 hours a week at minimum wage to afford a two bedroom home at fair market rent, and the very best states are still around 60 hours. 

TOPMAN’s new range in racist fashions, “COLONIAL”, celebrates the last days of the Empire.

“The collection features the jacket style worn by members of the British armed forces while they massacred thousands of workers who were on strike in India in the 30’s, modified with a skinny trim for the fashion conscious imperialist in 2012.”

YO TOPMAN, IMMA LET YOU FINISH BUT VOGUE HAD SOME OF THE BEST RACIST FASHION ACCESSORIES OF ALL TIME.

(Found via @CollinsonAlex)