says Augustine of Hippo

"What are kingdoms but great robberies? And what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, 'What tho meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled Emperor.'"

THRONG

Clicking the link above will take you to a piece made of screenshots I took while at work between December 2010 and November 2011. I constrained myself by only taking shots of phrases happened upon between the hours of 9am and 5pm.

On December 9, 2011, I performed THRONG at Kroswork Gallery in Oakland, CA.

In 2005 David Harvey knows

"But one persistent fact within this complex history of uneven neoliberalization has been the universal tendency to increase social inequality and to expose the least fortunate elements in any society--be it in Indonesia, Mexico, or Britain--to the chill winds of austerity and the dull fate of increasing marginalization. While such a trend has been ameliorated here and there by social policies, the effects at the other end of the social spectrum have been quite spectacular. The incredible concentrations of wealth and power that now exist in the upper echelons of capitalism have not been seen since the 1920s. The flows of tribute to the world's major financial centres have been astonishing. What, however, is even more astonishing is the habit of treating all of this as a mere and some instances even unfortunate byproduct of neoliberalization. The very idea that this might be--just might be--the fundamental core of what neoliberalization has been about all along appears unthinkable. It has been part of the genius of neoliberal theory to provide a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights, to hide the grim realities of the restoration or reconstitution of naked class power, locally as well as transnationally, but most particularly in the main financial centres of global capitalism."

TO THE EXTENT IT IS EROTIC, IT IS TRAGIC

"But what is sobriety if not the fear of everything that is not lasting" (Bataille)

"In the new way of working, a high rate of devotion to the company's objective is necessary: those who have the privilege of working in a long-term position have to demonstrate a total availability to the 'mood shifts' within the company and to the oscillations in production caused by the variations in demand. This is the explanation for the increase in overtime, often unpaid, which would seem paradoxical when on the outside a full 10 percent of the population is statistically unemployed. This, however, also explains why we are moving from a regime where in the job market the social rights of workers were almost universally acknowledged (in the form, for instance, of collective bargaining) and were protected by solid and lasting juridical norms, to a regime where workers' rights are rapidly disappearing under the pressure of economical needs and contingencies. When the marketing of goods is in charge and imposes quantity and quality in real time (just-in-time), work becomes increasingly constrictive: we need to show ourselves capable or devotion and obedience, under penalty of losing our job. When production can no longer be planned since the market is no longer able to expand infinitely, as happened in Fordism, due to the compression of purchasing power; when, in other words, contingency reigns, the unforeseeable becomes the rule and everything rests on immediate adaptability. The spaces for juridical protections and universal rights, independent from specific juridical persons, close up."

 -- Christian Marazzi, Capital and Affects

"What grief displays . . . is the thrall in which our relations with others hold us, in ways that we cannot always recount or explain, in ways that often interrupt the self-conscious account of ourselves we might try to provide, in ways that challenge the very notion of ourselves as autonomous and in control. I might try to tell a story here about what am I feeling, but it would have to be a story in which the very 'I' who seeks to tell the story is stopped in the midst of the telling; the very 'I' is called into question by its relation to the Other, a relation that does not precisely reduce me to speechlessness, but does nevertheless clutter my speech with signs of its undoing. I tell a story about relations I choose, only to expose, somewhere along the way, the way I am gripped and undone by these very relations. My narrative falters, as it must.

"Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something."

(J. Butler, from Precarious Life)

• Qaddafi, Muammar
• Al-Gathafi, Muammar
• al-Qadhafi, Muammar
• Al Qathafi, Mu'ammar
• Al Qathafi, Muammar
• El Gaddafi, Moamar
• El Kadhafi, Moammar
• El Kazzafi, Moamer
• El Qathafi, Mu'Ammar
• Gadafi, Muammar
• Gaddafi, Moamar
• Gadhafi, Mo'ammar
• Gathafi, Muammar
• Ghadafi, Muammar
• Ghaddafi, Muammar
• Ghaddafy, Muammar
• Gheddafi, Muammar
• Gheddafi, Muhammar
• Kadaffi, Momar
• Kad'afi, Mu`amar al- 20
• Kaddafi, Muamar
• Kaddafi, Muammar
• Kadhafi, Moammar
• Kadhafi, Mouammar
• Kazzafi, Moammar
• Khadafy, Moammar
• Khaddafi, Muammar
• Moamar al-Gaddafi
• Moamar el Gaddafi
• Moamar El Kadhafi
• Moamar Gaddafi
• Moamer El Kazzafi
• Mo'ammar el-Gadhafi
• Moammar El Kadhafi
• Mo'ammar Gadhafi
• Moammar Kadhafi
• Moammar Khadafy
• Moammar Qudhafi
• Mu`amar al-Kad'afi
• Mu'amar al-Kadafi
• Muamar Al-Kaddafi
• Muamar Kaddafi
• Muamer Gadafi
• Muammar Al-Gathafi
• Muammar al-Khaddafi
• Mu'ammar al-Qadafi
• Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi
• Muammar al-Qadhafi
• Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi
• Mu`ammar al-Qadhdhāfī 50
• Mu'ammar Al Qathafi
• Muammar Al Qathafi
• Muammar Gadafi
• Muammar Gaddafi
• Muammar Ghadafi
• Muammar Ghaddafi
• Muammar Ghaddafy
• Muammar Gheddafi
• Muammar Kaddafi
• Muammar Khaddafi
• Mu'ammar Qadafi
• Muammar Qaddafi
• Muammar Qadhafi
• Mu'ammar Qadhdhafi
• Muammar Quathafi
• Mulazim Awwal Mu'ammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi
• Qadafi, Mu'ammar
• Qadhafi, Muammar
• Qadhdhāfī, Mu`ammar
• Qathafi, Mu'Ammar el 70
• Quathafi, Muammar
• Qudhafi, Moammar
• Moamar AI Kadafi
• Maummar Gaddafi
• Moamar Gadhafi
• Moamer Gaddafi
• Moamer Kadhafi
• Moamma Gaddafi
• Moammar Gaddafi
• Moammar Gadhafi
• Moammar Ghadafi
• Moammar Khadaffy
• Moammar Khaddafi
• Moammar el Gadhafi
• Moammer Gaddafi
• Mouammer al Gaddafi
• Muamar Gaddafi
• Muammar Al Ghaddafi
• Muammar Al Qaddafi
• Muammar Al Qaddafi
• Muammar El Qaddafi
• Muammar Gadaffi
• Muammar Gadafy
• Muammar Gaddhafi
• Muammar Gadhafi
• Muammar Ghadaffi
• Muammar Qadthafi
• Muammar al Gaddafi
• Muammar el Gaddafy
• Muammar el Gaddafi
• Muammar el Qaddafi
• Muammer Gadaffi
• Muammer Gaddafi
• Mummar Gaddafi
• Omar Al Qathafi
• Omar Mouammer Al Gaddafi
• Omar Muammar Al Ghaddafi
• Omar Muammar Al Qaddafi
• Omar Muammar Al Qathafi
• Omar Muammar Gaddafi
• Omar Muammar Ghaddafi
• Omar al Ghaddafi

from Fanon's "Letter to a Frenchman"

Millions of young bootblacks. Millions of "porter, madame?"
Millions of give me a piece of bread. Millions of illiterates "not knowing how to sign, don't sign, let us sign."
Millions of fingerprints on the police reports that lead to prisons.
On Monsieur le Cadi's records.
On the enlistments in the regiments of Algerian infantry.
Millions of fellahs exploited, cheated, robbed.
Fellahs grabbed at four in the morning,
Released at eight in the evening.
From sun to moon.
Fellahs gorged with water, gorged with leaves, gorged with old biscuit which has to last all month.
Motionless fellah and your arms move and your bowed back but your life stopped. The cars pass and you don't move. They could run over your belly and you wouldn't move.
Arabs on the roads.
Sticks slipped through the handle of the basket.
Empty basket, empty hope, this whole death of the fellah.
Two hundred fifty francs a day.
Fellah without land.
Fellah without reason.
If you don't like it you can just leave. Shacks full of children. Shacks full of women.
Wrung-out fellah.
Without dream.
Six times two hundred fifty francs a day.
And nothing here belongs to you.
We're nice to you, what are you complaining about?
What would you do without us? A fine country this would be if we left!
Become a swamp in no time at all, yes!
Twenty-four times two hundred fifty francs a day.
Work fellah. In your blood the prostrate exhaustion of a whole lifetime.
Six thousand francs a month.
On your face despair.
In your belly resignation…
What does it matter fellah if this country is beautiful.

the bread of the needy is their life: 
he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood

(Ecclesiasticus 34:21, as quoted by Tzvetan Todorov in The Conquest of America)

"At one point, in the town of Kitzingen, Casimir ordered the gouging out of the eyes of fifty eight burghers who had, he declared, 'refused to look at him as their lord.' Afterward he received the following bill:

80 beheaded
69 eyes put out or fingers cut off: 114.5  fl.
from this to deduct
received from the Rothenburgers: 10 fl.
received from Ludwig von Hutten: 2 fl.
Remainder
Plus 2 months' pay at 8 fl. per month: 16 fl.
Total 118.5 fl.

[Signed] Augustin, the executioner, who the Kitzingers call 'Master Ouch.' "