Quotes

The Enlightenment held that individuals should be free from the coercion of concentrated power. The kind of concentrated power they were thinking about was the church, the state, the feudal system, and so on. But in the subsequent period, a new form of power developed — namely, corporations — with highly-concentrated power over decision-making in economic life. We should not be forced simply to rent ourselves to the people who own the country and its institutions. Rather, we should play a role in determining what those institutions do. That’s democracy.

The utterance of a word by Thoth; by their means the earth could be rent asunder, and the waters forsaking their nature could be piled up in a heap, and even the sun’s course in the heavens could be stayed by a word

I guess I never caught that bug where you’re only supposed to care about your own country or your own local area. To me, 49 decapitated Mexicans is just as bad as 49 decapitated Americans and I know if there were 49 decapitated Americans in the street anywhere in the country, it would be like 9/11 all over again. It would be the largest news story for years – if it just happened once – but it happens time and time again in Mexico… and I guess as long as Americans aren’t getting decapitated, apparently the rest of the country, and especially our media, couldn’t give a damn and that’s part of what’s sick and wrong with this country’s media. And so, we march on as if nothing is wrong, as if everything is hunky dory, as if the war on drugs makes sense and hasn’t created these grotesque gangs that grow larger and more grotesque by the day – and it’s not because of the drugs. It’s because the drugs are illegal.

Magic in its earliest form is often referred to as The Arte. I believe this is completely literal… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people’s consciousness…. In latter times I believe artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art and writing are merely forms of entertainment… they’re not seen as transformative forces that can change a human being… they are seen as simple entertain… things with which we can fill twenty minutes, half an hour, while we’re waiting to die.

But–to bring this essay full-circle–Loki is a pretty queer god, and this goes hand-in-hand with his shunning by more conservative Asatru elements (and Christian missionaries). He’s a shapeshifter and a cross-dresser, who is heavily implied to engage in all sorts of kink, and at one point gives birth to Odin’s horse Sleipnir. (For what it’s worth, I’ve had some non-heathen pagan friends, highly immersed in kink at present, suggest to me that Loki’s painful, humiliating binding, detailed in Voluspa, influences my own sexual proclivities. Seeing how all the personal gnosis I can muster implies that he hates and is ashamed of the binding, and it’s torn his family apart (he is bound with his son’s own intestines), I was outstandingly pissed off at the suggestion. So I guess there are limits to what I’ll claim, when it comes to this.)

I don’t think it’s coincidence that he seized me when I was young. And I’m coming to see drag and queer activism, generally (as much as I’m involved in it, which isn’t as much as I’d like) as a devotional act. For whatever reason–quite possibly, at least in part, my queerness–he’s a god who adores me and cares for me, and I figure that no matter what anybody else thinks it’s the least I can do to give him some attention and love back, through queer, genderfucking acts.

Hail Loki. And in the words of the modern skalds, fuck the haters.

Every criminologist knows that corporate crime — white-collar crime — is enormous in scale, and well beyond street crime in scale and effects.

Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature.

The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.

I am the mother to Odin’s stallion, Sleipnir. I am the father of Fenrir sun-eater and of Hel half-rotted and of Jormungund the world-serpent. I am Loki Scar-Lip, Loki Skywalker, Loki Giant’s Child, Loki Lie-Smith. I am Loki, who is fire and wit and hate. I am Loki. And I will be under an obligation to no one.

For forty years, Cuba has been under constant US attack: military attack, economic warfare, efforts at strangulation, trying to induce maximal suffering on the population – straight outright terror, lots of it – so who’s the ‘rogue state’?

In the political domain I would like to see people energized to think for themselves and reject systems of propaganda to overcome illegitimate authority, domination and hierarchy and free themselves. That’s the best legacy I can imagine.