Academia Link: CLICK HERE TO READ

ABSTRACT: Mainstream analysis and commentary on drug trafficking and related violence in Mexico focuses overwhelmingly on the narco-cartels as sources of the problem and presents the US as a well intentioned player helping to conduct a ‘war on drugs’ out of concern for addiction, crime and violence. This article offers an alternative interpretation, grounded in critical political economy, showing that in addition to fuelling the narcotics industry in Mexico thanks to its large drug consumption and loose firearms regulations, the US shares much responsibility for its expansion thanks to its record of support for some of the main players in the drugs trade, such as the Mexican government and military, and by implementing neoliberal reforms that have increased the size of the narcotics industry. The war on drugs has served as a pretext to intervene in Mexican affairs and to protect US hegemonic projects such as NAFTA, rather than as a genuine attack on drug problems. In particular, the drugs war has been used repeatedly to repress dissent and popular opposition to neoliberal policies in Mexico. Finally, US banks have increased their profits by laundering drug money from Mexico and elsewhere; the failure to implement tighter regulations testifies to the power of the financial community in the US.

Academia Link: CLICK HERE TO READ

MVP

You, a normie: “Most Valued Player”

Me, an intellectual: “Minimum Viable Population”

“Would that bright-eyed Athena should care to love you as once she cherished mighty Ulysses in the land of the Trojans, where we Achaeans suffered woes -for I never saw the Gods showing such open affection as Pallas Athena stood by him for all to see.”

“Education is not the filling of a vessel, but the kindling of a flame.” 

—Socrates

And when Taylor Swift said

“You were all I wanted,

But not like this.

Not like this.

Not like this.”

I don’t know how many times you’ve heard this but ”be so completely yourself that everyone else feels safe to be themselves too"

“There is still one difference left between us. You have a tenderness grown weary and I have a weariness grown tender.”

—Dulce Maria Loynaz, Absolute Solitude

Bad Timing 1980

When SYML said “If you’re scared, I’m on my way. Did you run away? Did you run away, I don’t need to know. If you ran away. If you ran away, come back home. Just come home.”

And when Hozier said “I woke with her walls around me……She never asked me once about the wrong I did.”

“The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free.”

— Margaret Atwood

“The weird thing about houses is that they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives"

—John Green, The Fault in Our Stars.

muzzystar:

“To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.”

— Barbara Brown Taylor (via llleighsmith)