When we talk about movies and TV, we usually fixate on actors and directors — but without writers, the whole ship goes down. And once again, Hollywood’s writers are on the verge of a strike, which, if it happens, would be the sixth writers strike in Hollywood’s history.

On April 24, the Writers Guild of America, the union that represents entertainment writers across the country, voted by a wide margin to authorize a strike. On April 25, the union resumes talks that could avert the strike — if the studios agree to their demands, or if a compromise is reached. If not, WGA members will likely walk off sets and stop work starting May 2. In the past, WGA strikes have lasted anywhere from two to 22 weeks, and have had far-reaching consequences for the entertainment industry.

Hollywood union strikes sit at the intersection of the entertainment business and American labor law — two things that don’t often overlap for the average TV or movie viewer. But the strike, if it happens, could affect what makes it to those viewers’ screens in the coming months.

Here’s what the writers are seeking, why they’re seeking it, and what could be at stake.

Today is the anniversary of the Qissa Khwaani Bazaar massacre. On April 23, 1930, British troops opened fire on hundreds of non-violent Pashtun protestors at Qissa Khwaani Bazaar in Peshawar, British India (now in Pakistan). Between 200 and 400 people were killed.

The protestors belonged to the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, who fought for social reforms and Pashtun self-determination through non-violent means. Activists and workers from the movement had experienced massacres earlier – in Takkar and Hathikhel. Their last massacre took place in 1948 in Babbra, where around 600 people were fired upon and killed by the newly-formed Pakistani government.

The atrocities of the British empire and the early Pakistani government have long been forgotten by most. Still, every year, elders and students in northwestern Pakistan gather to honor the sacrifices of the Khudai Khidmatgar activists. As the saying goes: never forgive and never forget.

Massacre sites, concentration camps & death march routes during Armenian Genocide 1915-1923

Not to be this bitch again vol 3

Here’s the back story: I’m a broke sex worker afraid of draconian new laws that will take effect in June. I applied for and actually got a straight job and I am now working full time, doing my training. After the training is finished, I will be working from home, part time. It comes with health insurance, sick pay, paid vacation days, the lot.

Here’s the problem: I won’t get a full paycheck until May 15th. I just received my first partial paycheck for March and it’s only 225 Euros. I am also getting some expenses but they have to be approved by corporate bigwigs and this approval process may take up to two weeks or longer. 

I am still working and taking clients as much as I can, but it’s difficult and I obviously need to be discreet, there’s no legal protection for sex workers and being outed would mean losing the cushy job I am currently busting my ass for. I can’t take client calls or answer client emails at work, and I am only free during a couple hours in the evenings or on weekends. Additionally, school holidays mean a drop in business. 

Main concerns right now are my health insurance payment, rent for next month, utilities, food and cat food. I’m in a permitted overdraft but it reduces itself automatically every month. 

This is my bank statement, I also have about 80 Euros in cash and around 70 in my paypal. That’s it. I can borrow money from a friend too but I am already dealing with debt (as you can tell by the big fat minus in front of my balance) and I would prefer not to accumulate more. 

Me and my cat’s paypal is fannyandbetty@gmail.com 

Thanks for your thoughts, reblogs, support and funds, since I don’t have much time for tumblr right now and my notes aren’t working just try tumblr instant messenger for questions and unsolicited advice. 

So the expenses I was waiting for were approved but then rejected again at the last stage because they were submitted incorrectly! Cause the instructions to the trainees were lacking some rather crucial steps. So the process has to start all over again. I can’t pay rent right now, let alone health insurance and I’m really really fucked. Whoever said straight work is reliable income was fucking lying.

leftists in euro-amerika should be fundamentally opposed to euro-amerikan imperialism (that is, both economic exploitation of the global south, political and military intervention in any capacity, etc), and talk about who’s good and who’s bad in the global south can only ever be talk becase we aren’t in the global south & cant act on it. If you aren’t buying and sending guns to foreign militias it doesn’t matter what you think of Assad or DPRK or whatever. We need to oppose imperialism regardless. Even leninists & anarchists should have no cause for ideological or strategic disagreement in this dimension

jolene33rpm submitted:                        

today is Yom Hashoah

on this day, I would like to commemorate the extensive Jewish resistance that existed in almost every Nazi-occupied nation. from the streets of Warsaw, where Jewish resistance perplexed and bewildered the Nazis so much that a top German general lost his job because of it (and where we inadvertently inspired the Warsaw Uprising) to Sobibor, where Jews killed SS guards and burned a death camp to the ground, enraging the Nazis so much that they ordered the camp’s remains bulldozed into the ground, to Treblinka, where Jews escaped through the barbed wire into freedom and managed to survive to meet the Red Army the next year.

Jews did not go passively into the gas chambers. Abba Kovner, Mordechai Anielewicz, the Bielski brothers, and many others ensured that. 

the image will always live in my mind: during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a Jewish woman armed with two pistols approached General Jurgen Stroop’s command group and opened fire. Stroop’s flame troops set her on fire, but she continued shooting until she collapsed. as Stroop walked over to gloat, she spat on his shoes. 

Jews have always fought for freedom.

Discord’s Inaccessible

Spreading the word from @okami-no-mure.  They said:

the united states is responsible for the denial of the armenian genocide. to be clear, turkey is the most to blame for the systematic revision of history, but the united states is entirely complicit in that revision. the armenian cause–that is, the violent persecution of armenians, which began in the late nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth, culminating in the armenian genocide–was wildly popular in the united states and much of the christian west. if you’re american, your grandparents or great-grandparents may remember the “starving armenians” whose infamous, ongoing tragedy became dinnertime encouragement to clean their plates. you can read about america’s overwhelming response to overseas armenian persecution as it happened in peter balakian’s the burning tigris (available here in full, for free). you’ll also find an interesting breakdown of the movement to deny the armenian genocide and america’s participation in that movement in the epilogue, “turkish denial of the armenian genocide and america’s complicity” (372). 

the u.s. government (“turkey is not endeavoring to undermine our institutions, to penetrate our labor organizations by pernicious propaganda, and to foment disorder and conspiracies against our domestic peace in the interest of a world revolution” (376) – secretary of state charles evans hughes, “[anticipating america’s] cold war alliance with turkey” several decades in advance); u.s. corporate community (“the armenians were moved from the inhospitable regions where they were not welcome and could not actually prosper but to the most delightful parts of syria [well, if the der zor desert counts as such]…where the climate is as benign as in florida and california whither new york millionaires journey each year for health and recreation…. and all this was done at great expense of money and effort” (376)  – retired u.s. admiral colby chester, his eyes fixed on promised turkish oil); and even hollywood (“after a series of exchanges between the two governments, the state department yielded to turkey’s demand and got MGM to drop the project [a movie based on the forty days of musa dagh, a novel about the armenian genocide]” (377)); enabled the denial of the armenian genocide, such that by the 1930s the armenian genocide, once an important part of american public discourse, “was a narrative lost to the public” (377). 

a global armenian consciousness emerged in the 1960s, one dedicated to the memory of the armenian genocide. in the united states, “armenians came out en masse to remember and to educate the world” (378). in response, the turkish government and turkish diaspora organizations kicked off their own campaign, one designed to counter “armenian nationalist propaganda” supposedly invented by “aged armenians…most of them already aged eighty or more” whose “[coached] statements are of no use whatever for historical research,” according to one turkish pamphlet. american academics like princeton professors bernard lewis and norman itzkowitz and ucla professor stanford j. shaw and his wife, ezel kural shaw, authors of the ottoman empire and modern turkey famously joined the movement, rewriting history (sometimes even rewriting themselves, like bernard lewis). an infamous instance of turkish state-sponsored denial was exposed in the 1990s, when heath lowry (also a princeton professor) was revealed to be on the turkish government’s payroll while writing “articles and op-ed columns denying the genocide…[and lobbying] in congress to defeat successive armenian genocide commemorative resolutions” (383). you can read the full (and much more complicated) story in the burning tigris, pages 383-385. 

turkey’s strategic importance during the cold war (and armenians’ irrelevance, especially because the armenian soviet socialist republic was hardly america’s cold wartime ally) meant that the united states was unwilling to officially recognize the armenian genocide. a 1984 armenian genocide commemoration resolution was defeated with president ronald reagan’s help when “the turkish government threatened to close down u.s. military bases in turkey and to terminate defense contracts with u.s. firms” (387). even after the end of the cold war, turkish influence on american politics with respect to the armenian genocide was significant. in 2000, when the house of representatives subcommittee on international relations and human rights passed a nonbinding resolution asking then-president bill clinton to refer to the mass murder of armenians as “genocide” in his annual april 24 statement, the turkish government “warned the united states that it would close its air bases to u.s. planes, including those near the iraqi border, and cancel weapons contracts with the united states” and “told the united states that the passage of such a resolution would ruin u.s. relations with turkey” (389). do i even need to spell out what happened next?

the denial of the armenian genocide, like the genocide itself, was and is systematic. the turkish government (with the help of the united states government) has done its absolute best to quash recognition of the mass murder of 1.5 million armenians as genocide. this is a fight in which american citizens have a stake, and a say. (which is not to suggest that non-americans don’t. you are part of this, too.) please, please use your voice for the better of an unremembered people and their unremembered genocide. read a book, or three. talk to people about what you’ve learned, and demand that it become part of your state or district’s social studies curriculum. counter denialism where you come across it. do not allow armenians’ narrative to be once more lost to the public.