i am mai.

pikabowie :3 ZIGGY STARSHOCK ATTACK!

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:41:55 -0400

pikabowie :3

ZIGGY STARSHOCK ATTACK!

Thomas Sankara

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:43:32 -0400

“Our struggle to defend the trees and the forest is first and foremost a democratic struggle that must be waged by the people. The sterile and expensive excitement of a handful of engineers and forestry experts will accomplish nothing! Nor can the tender consciences of a multitude of forums and institutions — sincere and praiseworthy though they may be — make the Sahel green again, when we lack the funds to drill wells for drinking water just a hundred meters deep, and money abounds to drill oil wells three thousand meters deep!

As Karl Marx said, those who live in a palace do not think about the same things, nor in the same way, as those who live in a hut. This struggle to defend the trees and the forest is above all a struggle against imperialism. Imperialism is the pyromaniac setting fire to our forests and savannah.”

—Thomas Sankara, Save Our Trees, Our Environment, Our Lives

***

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (December 21, 1949 – October 15, 1987) was a Burkinabé military captain, Marxist revolutionary, Pan-Africanist theorist, and President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. Viewed as a charismatic and iconic figure of revolution, he is commonly referred to as “Africa’s Che Guevara”.

Sankara seized power in a 1983 popularly supported coup at the age of 33, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power. He immediately launched the most ambitious program for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent. To symbolize this new autonomy and rebirth, he even renamed the country from the French colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso (“Land of Upright Men”). His foreign policies were centered around anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth, and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nation-wide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Other components of his national agenda included planting over ten million trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel, doubling wheat production by redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents, and establishing an ambitious road and rail construction program to “tie the nation together”. On the localized level Sankara also called on every village to build a medical dispensary and had over 350 communities construct schools with their own labour. Moreover, his commitment to women’s rights led him to outlaw female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy, while appointing females to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant.

In order to achieve this radical transformation of society, he increasingly exerted authoritarian control over the nation, eventually banning unions and a free press, which he believed could stand in the way of his plans. To counter his opposition in towns and workplaces around the country, he also tried corrupt officials, counter-revolutionaries and “lazy workers” in peoples revolutionary tribunals. Additionally, as an admirer of Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution, Sankara set up Cuban-style Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs).

His revolutionary programs for African self-reliance as a defiant alternative to the neo-liberal development strategies imposed by the West, made him an icon to many of Africa’s poor. Sankara remained popular with most of his country’s impoverished citizens. However his policies alienated and antagonised the vested interests of an array of groups, which included the small but powerful Burkinabé middle class, the tribal leaders whom he stripped of the long-held traditional right to forced labour and tribute payments, and the foreign financial interests in France and their ally the Ivory Coast. As a result, he was overthrown and assassinated in a coup d’état led by the French-backed Blaise Compaoré on October 15, 1987. A week before his murder, he declared: “While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.”

Reading:

Wikipedia page on Thomas Sankara

Thomas Sankara : A View of The Future for Africa and The Third World

Thomas Sankara on the Emancipation of Women

’We are heirs of the world’s revolutions’ : Lessons from Thomas Sankara

How imperialist ‘aid’ blocks development in Africa

We Are Heirs of the World’s Revolutions: Speeches from the Burkina Faso revolution 1983–87

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Wed, 08 May 2013 21:25:16 -0400

“for that classy ‘deer-in-headlights’...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:53:44 -0400

“for that classy ‘deer-in-headlights’ look….”

hrtbrkmusic: + mumford & sons // little lion man + the only...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:56:24 -0400

hrtbrkmusic:

+ mumford & sons // little lion man +

the only worse thing than getting your heart broken is being the asshole who breaks someone else’s heart. i put together a mixtape that was just this song repeated 14x over but i couldn’t even bring myself to give it to her so i just listened to it alone in my room with the covers over my head.

sorry, pocket smile. you deserve better.

repost for mr. fake-email. but seriously, fuck mumford & sons.

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Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:05:06 -0400

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 14:49:49 -0400

collectivehistory: A woman being tattooed, early 1900s (via...

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 14:48:13 -0400

collectivehistory:

A woman being tattooed, early 1900s (via Imgur)

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Sat, 06 Apr 2013 21:56:28 -0400

trying to do this tonight with varying levels of success

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 23:26:21 -0400

trying to do this tonight with varying levels of success

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Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:39:04 -0400

"The fox, they say, once had an elegant walk, for which the other animals loved him. One day, he saw..."

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 21:24:32 -0400

“The fox, they say, once had an elegant walk, for which the other animals loved him. One day, he saw a prophet striding along and decided to improve on what was already beautiful. He set out walking but could not match the prophet’s gait. Worse, he forgot his own. So he was left with the unremarkable way the fox walks today.”

- K’NAAN

this shouldn’t make me SO HAPPY. but it does.

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:53:00 -0400

this shouldn’t make me SO HAPPY. but it does.

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Sat, 09 Mar 2013 18:51:31 -0500

rookiemag: fat-grrrl-activism: “In 1921, early suffragettes...

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 09:57:42 -0500

rookiemag:

fat-grrrl-activism:

“In 1921, early suffragettes often donned a bathing suit and ate pizza in large groups to annoy men…it was a custom at the time”

(via Cult of Aphrodite Vintaga)

PIZZA AND BATHING SUITS

-naomi

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 13:12:02 -0500

Freakonomics » Women Are Not Men

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:10:37 -0500

Freakonomics » Women Are Not Men:

the section in which uri gneezy studies whether competitiveness is biologically gender based, or due to cultural upbringing, is the best.

his conclusion? well yes, it is based on our culture and upbringing. but maybe instead of using that as a reason to bring up our girls to be more aggressive, wouldn’t it be better to bring up our boys to be less conflict-oriented?

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Tue, 26 Feb 2013 06:25:07 -0500

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Sun, 24 Feb 2013 02:25:57 -0500

weird. but i like it.

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:51:14 -0500

weird. but i like it.