Photographs

Maduro's Roving Urban Cavalry Provacateurs

Video of President Maduro Praising Police Actions Against the "Fascist Demonstrators"... and their subsequent confiscation of demonstrator's motorcycles... blaming protestors for the roving motorcycle cavalry tactics that his own forces used in murders and assaults captured on Video's here and here/ and more obviously here demonstratting two man surveillance and riot control unit tactics.

The Power of the Symbol

Dream On

...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

- Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"

Venezuela 2-12-14

The Nothing to Otherness: Using Language to Create/ Maintain a Social Distance

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

- Rudyard Kipling, "If"

On Maintaining "Safe" Post-Modern Social Relationships...

What is love? As Alain Badiou, our good friend, put it in his wonderful book In Praise of Love, there is always something traumatic/extremely violent in love. Love is a permanent emergency state. You fall in love. And it’s crucial [to know] that in English and in French we use this expression; you “fall” in love. You lose control. I claim that love, the experience of passionate love, is the most elementary metaphysical experience, it’s a platonic experience. In the sense of, you lead your easy, daily life, you meet [up with] friends, go to parties and whatever, everything is normal, maybe here and there a one-night stand, and then you passionately fall in love, [and] everything is ruined. The entire balance of your life is lost. Everything is subordinated to this one person. I almost cannot imagine in normal daily life, outside war and so on, a more violent experience than that of love. And I think [this is] which is why all the “advisers” that we [supposedly] need today are trying precisely to domesticate or erase this excess of love. It’s as if love is too poisonous and then they, [i.e.] all the marriage and dating agencies, tell you that the trick is how to find yourself in love without falling in love. This idea came to me when on one of my Transatlantic flights I read one of those stupid airline journals and there was a text in there, in big letters, claiming: “We will enable you to find yourself in love, without the fall”, without this dangerous exposure. And I think this fits perfectly to our daily narcissistic metaphysics. You know the old story that I repeat all the time; we want coffee without caffeine, we want beer without alcohol, and we want love without its dangerous moment, where you get lost.

- Slavoj Zizek, "On Love as a Political Category"