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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 6 years ago

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Indigenous Anarchy & The Need for a Rejection of the Colonizer's "Civilization"

First, let’s define some basic terms. “Indigenous” means “of the land we are actually on”. “Anarchy” means “the rejection of authority”. The principles of anarchism include direct action, mutual aid, and voluntary cooperation. “Anarchy; A Journal of Desire Armed” envisions a primitive anarchy that is “radically cooperative & communitarian, ecological and feminist, spontaneous and wild”.

Civilization is a culture that revolves around cities. A city is a collection of people that live permanently in one place, in densities high enough that they must import their food and resources from outside the city in order to survive and ensure the continued growth of the city. So, cities depend on the exploitation of external bodies to maintain themselves.

This externalisation alienates us from both our food supply and our waste. Our food is purchased from a supermarket, grown far from home, prepared and packaged on an assembly line. We are denied any participation in the processes that feed us. Our garbage gets trucked away to be disposed of somewhere out of our immediate sight, and our human waste is flushed down pipes. We don’t fully know where it goes, what it affects, what place it has in our ecosystem.

Civilization aims to dominate life through its various structures that are designed to domesticate us. These structures include industry, colonialism, statism, capitalism, agriculture, racism, schooling, religion, media, police, prisons, military, patriarchy, slavery and more.

Indigenous peoples throughout history have fought and died to resist the forceful encroachment of civilization into their lives. This struggle continues today, as the “uncivilized” are pushed closer and closer to the edge of survival by the “civilized” all over the world, and the technological imbalance between us continues to expand and create a sociological divide that renders us unable to understand each other on even a basic level.

The lifestyles of the civilized and the uncivilized have diverged to such an extent that it has become near-impossible for the civilized to see that their civilization has become an obstacle to our basic survival. Instead, they hold their civilization up as the instrument of their survival and fear living in a world without it. They are so conditioned to the order of their civilization that they can’t fathom a life in its absence.

The entire concept of ‘civilization’ depends on the rule of the colonizer and his brutal subjugation of indigenous peoples. The perpetual march of global civilization is fed by the forced labor and the exploitation of natural resources in the global South (and historically, all lands beyond the European continent).

In order to strip the land of its resources, the people that live on the land need to be displaced and moved to tightly-packed cities, farms or “reservations” where they will be forced to labor to turn those resources into consumer products for Western markets. This process of civilizing indigenous peoples is rapid, and our culture, language and history is often forcibly extinguished by the colonizers to ensure we don’t attempt a return to our previous “uncivilized” lives and reclaim those lands that they have taken for their industry.

The ruling classes are always looking for new avenues to accumulate wealth for themselves. Rulers create subservient underclasses by depriving uncivilized peoples of their natural habitats so they have no choice but to accept domestication and be integrated into the industrial capitalist system. The ruler can then successfully convert the people they have tamed and domesticated into profitable commodities; docile workers that can labor their whole lives to create more wealth for the ruler.

A ruler sees no use for a hunter-gatherer or any person that is not creating wealth and power for the ruler. If people didn’t need to work for rulers to acquire food and shelter, rulers would cease to have power. So the worst enemy of the ruler is a person that doesn’t depend on rulers to survive, or worse; an entire culture of self-sufficient people. An uncivilized culture that he has no control over is a ruler’s worst fear.

Under civilization, no longer will indigenous peoples be permitted to survive off of their ancestral lands, hunting and foraging. Now to survive in this new world forced on us by the colonizers, we must endure back-breaking labor in factories, warehouses, mines and industrial farms. Our children must be educated in the ways of the colonizers; to shape them into productive and submissive workers. We must depend on the state and colonizers to feed and clothe us. We must consume and waste and participate in destroying the ecosystems that sustained us for millennia. We must be “civilized” so that the ruling class may prosper at our expense.

Freedom Through Rejection

To reject civilization is to oppose this coercive arrangement where our history, our culture, and the collective knowledge that allowed us to survive and prosper on our land is taken from us by profiteering industrialists that would have us devote our entire lives to laboring for their benefit as they deny us access to our own lands and resources.

To reject civilization is to oppose urbanization; the cramming of people into small, barren, concreted areas that can be more easily controlled by our rulers to stop us from breaking with their demands that we be “civilized” and obedient.

To reject civilization is to oppose exploitative industrial agricultural methods that force the rural poor to sacrifice their labor to feed the materially wealthy cities, while rapidly despoiling the land of its fertility and sapping the groundwater for irrigation at a much faster rate than it can be replenished.

Civilization depends on a massively unequal concentration of wealth; a brutal capitalist hierarchy where the few that have been lucky enough to climb to the top control everyone beneath them. At the very bottom of civilization’s hierarchy are the indigenous peoples of the world.

Control & Domestication

The voices of indigenous peoples, whether they are accepted by their colonizers as successfully “civilized”, or rejected as “uncivilized”, have been long ignored by everyone that benefits from the march of civilization and the shiny things it gives them. Shiny things made possible by the rampant exploitation of indigenous lands and the manipulation and control of indigenous peoples through domestication.

“Control” is the key word to understanding why civilization has come into being. The capitalist colonizers work hard to convince us that we need to be controlled by them and their civilization. That we need their civilization to protect us from harm. If we labor for them, we won’t go hungry. If we give them our lands and relocate to their “reservations” or their farms or their cities, adopt their language and religion, they will give us protection, allow us to survive with “dignity”, accept us as successfully domesticated and civilized.

The irony to this is staggering. The colonizers decimate our forests and slice open our land to empty it of its resources. They slaughter our wildlife to extinction and douse our plant life with herbicides to ensure we can’t sustain ourselves. They render our water toxic and undrinkable. They destroy our climate with their burning of carbon. They murder us if we dare stand in their way.

And then they offer us sanctuary from their tyranny. A choice between enslavement or extinction. Move to their cities, slums, plantations and reservations and be accepted as “civilized”, or die at their hands for being “subhuman uncivilized savages” that can’t be “saved”. Anything civilization can’t control must be purged to ensure the march of civilization continues without obstacle.

To embrace anarchy is to oppose the very idea of control. To reject the authority of the colonizer and his coercive civilization that takes so much from us to provide comforts to cultures that would sooner see us slaughtered than threaten their industry-fueled lifestyles. Anarchy is to trust in ourselves and our neighbors to work together through mutual aid to solve our own problems, without needing the “charity” of powerful authorities.

Anti-civ indigenous anarchists recognize that the very concept of civilization depends on our colonizers’ ability to control us. Our forced assimilation into the colonizers’ alien civilization, and the punitive laws we’re forced to obey are designed to keep us from resisting the perverse order our colonizers force on us. Their order depends on our domestication and the destruction of our way of life. Their civilization is designed to destroy everything it touches.

Embracing our “Inhospitable Wilderness”

The so-called “inhospitable wilderness” that civilization has seen fit to beat into submission is the lifeblood of our existence. For millennia, we lived in peace with this wilderness, nurturing it as much as it nurtured us. We were caretakers of the land, rather than exploiters of it. Now, as civilized people, we labor for a lifetime for the right to assert ownership over a tiny piece of the land. So that we may pave it over and erect a concrete block to live in. If we are successful. Most of us don’t even get this privilege and are forced to pay wealthy landlords for the right to live in one of the concrete blocks they own.

Uncivilized, we roamed freely, wild fruit and herbs grew in every direction; ready for the picking. Freshwater streams filled with fish dotted the landscape. The sounds of wildlife filled the air. Our labor was minimal and the rewards were instantaneous. We only knew abundance. Or, more accurately: affluence without abundance.

Hunter-gatherers are able to meet their immediate needs without needing to stockpile a surplus the way civilized people must do to survive (with agriculture, jobs, loans, savings, mortgages, pensions, insurance). The uncivilized have no want of material possessions because such frivolous things would stand in the way of their ability to live nomadically with the seasons. Having too many possessions forces us to stay in one place at all times to guard those possessions with our lives, so that we can continue to possess them and not risk them being taken from us. It creates a paranoid security-centric lifestyle that puts owning and protecting property above our most basic needs.

Hunter-gatherers can trust that the environment will provide for us, that going for a walk to hunt or forage will give us and our loved ones with all the food and water we’ll need for a few days. After taking that walk, the rest of the day is wide open for casual leisure.

Civilized people love to refer to hunter-gatherers as being stricken by “poverty”. But this poverty is a material poverty; a lack of surplus, luxuries, things. In real terms, hunter-gatherers are far richer than the perpetually in-debt civilized workers who have little room for leisure and must measure their entire existence in terms of “time”. The civilized, in their agriculture-based societies, must work 5 or 6 days a week simply to survive. The uncivilized have no want of such absurdities. As Marshall Sahlins noted, hunter-gatherers are the original affluent society. With no material needs, there is no need for poverty or wealth. All people may be equal; a true anarchy.

Civilized people plant rows of crops in fenced in, sterilized industrial monocultures that barely resemble the diverse mutually-sustaining interconnected food forests that fed us throughout history. Farmers repeatedly strain the same plots of land year after year to grow these single crops, soaking them with chemical fertilizers and pesticides so nothing but the monocrop can survive. The soil is eroded, barren of life, dependent on the chemical concoctions the farmer must go into debt to procure.

In civilization, water is scarce, controlled and expensive. Fruit comes wrapped in plastic and you must labor in misery for a full day to afford it. Fish is contaminated by the toxic waste that industry spews into waterways, and yet we still are charged for the privilege of eating it. Wildlife has been largely replaced by vast expanses of caged livestock. The endless excrement from these industrial meat facilities also pours into the waterways, further poisoning the ecosystem and sterilizing the land.

The wildness that once defined us has been coerced out of us by our colonizers. Like dogs bred from wild wolves to be obedient and subservient to their masters, we have come to depend on the state and capitalists for our basic survival. Sick and domesticated, we fight each other for the scraps of food thrown down to us by the rulers that deprive us of our land and our very lives.

Understanding Neo-Colonialism

Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah succinctly explained Neo-colonialism in 1965:

The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside. The methods and form of this direction can take various shapes. (Most) often, neo-colonialist control is exercised through economic or monetary means. Control over government policy in the neo-colonial State may be secured by payments towards the cost of running the State, by the provision of civil servants in positions where they can dictate policy, and by monetary control over foreign exchange through the imposition of a banking system controlled by the imperial power.

This description of neo-colonialism still rings true today, with indigenous cultures all over the world experiencing what Nkrumah described in its various forms. Most recently, Chinese neo-colonialists have flowed into indigenous lands, promising to lift us up with their wealth. Their investors, bankers, traders, lenders, developers and charities all promise to improve our lives for the better.

African countries are especially incurring massive debt to Beijing, offering up their land, oil, gas, minerals and other resources as collatoral for every new billion-dollar loan they take out. When they inevitably default on these unsustainable loans, China will seize the collatoral and strip the continent of its natural wealth. Malaysia recently realized the dangers of this debt trap and pulled out of Chinese development deals. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad warned the world, “there is a new version of Colonialism happening.”

The non-profit Confucius Institute that operates in indigenous lands is a vehicle for Chinese propaganda, restricting what the teachers they supply from China can say, distorting what students learn. This propaganda-via-schooling is designed to promote China’s economic interests by conditioning indigenous children to accept colonization and a life of subservience. Colonizers go to great lengths to normalize the terror they bring and convince us it is good for us.

Kwame Nkrumah:

Neo-colonialism might be also the worst form of imperialism. For those who practice it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress. In the days of old-fashioned colonialism, the imperial power had at least to explain and justify at home the actions it was taking abroad. In the colony those who served the ruling imperial power could at least look to its protection against any violent move by their opponents. With neo-colonialism neither is the case.

Similarly to China, South Korea and its multinational corporations have bought farming rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in “under-developed” countries, in order to secure food resources for their citizens. The history of colonialism and banana republics have shown us that this kind of arrangement has only led to misery for indigenous peoples and the degradation of our lands.

South Korea’s RG Energy Resources Asset Management CEO Park Yong-soo:

The (South Korean) nation does not produce a single drop of crude oil and other key industrial minerals. To power economic growth and support people’s livelihoods, we cannot emphasize too much that securing natural resources in foreign countries is a must for our future survival.

The head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Jacques Diouf, warned that the rise in these land deals could create a form of neocolonialism, with poorer regions producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people. It’s safe to say that this latest form of neocolonialism has already arrived, and our corrupt governments are signing deals that make us increasingly dependent on these foreign nations and their promises to “lift us up” by building us cities and infrastructure.

It’s integral that we resist their attempts to civilize our lands so that we will be forced to labor for them; helping them steal our natural resources to grow their empires so they may expand further and exploit more indigenous populations across the world.

And our local authorities, who are so quick to sell our futures for the fleeting luxuries of concrete towers and faster trains are just as culpable in this neo-colonial push to shape us into the beggared workers of foreign empires.

The Maasai, a semi-nomadic tribe that inhabits mostly Tanzania and Kenya, have been migrating with the seasons for centuries. They have increasingly been pushed out of their land by the states and business interests that collude to write laws that prohibit them from cultivating plants and grazing their animals on large tracts of their traditional land.

Tens of thousands of Maasai were left homeless after their homes in the Ngorongoro Crater sightseeing area were set on fire, supposedly to “preserve the region’s ecosystem” and attract more tourists.

The Tanzanian government works with Tanzania Conservation Limited, which is owned by the US-based Thomson Safaris, and Ortello Business Corporation; a luxury hunting company based in the United Arab Emirates, to drive the Maasai off of their land. They’re beaten, shot, and their property is confiscated. Young herders are so frightened that they now run whenever they see a vehicle approaching, fearing for their lives.

The state has now ordered the Maasai people to leave their homeland so it can be turned into a hunting ground for affluent tourists who pay a premium to shoot big game animals and take the carcasses home with them as stuffed trophies.

The state aids in these genocidal acts to secure foreign investment to build its cities. The state will always put the civilized before the uncivilized because the entire reason a state exist is to grow its cities and plunder food and resources to feed that growth.

Civilization has always been the weapon used by the powerful to condemn us to a life of servitude. Reject civilization. Reject the state. Reject capitalism. Reject all attempts to conquer our lands and enslave our peoples.

Looking a Gift-Horse in the Mouth: The Technological Divide

We should understand that there’s a big difference between the concepts of “tools” and “technology”. Tools can be made on a small-scale with local materials, either by individuals or small groups of people on occasions when the tools are needed. Unlike technology, tools don’t construct systems of authority and obedience to allow one group to dominate another, just so long as everyone is able to realistically create or acquire tools on their own. Technology depends on the ability to mount immense operations of extraction, production, distribution and consumption. This demands coercive authority and hierarchy. Oppression.

The Fifth Estate explained the pitfalls of technology in 1981:

Technology is not a simple tool which can be used in any way we like. It is a form of social organization, a set of social relations. It has its own laws. If we are to engage in its use, we must accept its authority. The enormous size, complex interconnections and stratification of tasks which make up modern technological systems make authoritarian command necessary and independent, individual decision-making impossible.

Technology is used by rulers to control and pacify their citizens. The societies of the colonists are laden with technological marvels. But their people are detached from the land they live on, alienated from each other, their eyes constantly fixated on mindless distractions emanating from their screens, as their lands dry up and burn to pay for their addiction to these toxic industrial products.

Technology is used to conquer, to assert dominance, to destroy entire cultures that dare to reject the empire’s world order. Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, entire countries decimated by the great technology of the imperialists, raining death down from the skies.

The colonizers will always have better technology than us. Whatever technologies they promise us in return for our cooperation with their agenda will pale in comparison to the technologies that drive their own societies. They’ll tell us we need their technology to be civilized, to avoid falling behind the rest of the world, but there is no catching up with the empire’s machine. It will grind us up and churn us out long before it ever gives up the secrets it promises.

Technology is a weapon wielded by the most powerful and there is no way for us to ever match that power, so why try? Why dedicate our lives to playing their game, by their rules? To receive their obsolete cast-offs in return? They use their technology to convince us that we are less than them, that we are “backwards” and that they need to “save” us from our “savage” existence. They say all this while their technological supremacy depends on our resources and our labor, on them being able to coerce us into sacrificing ourselves and our children and our children’s children to give them the fuel for their big important machines. Machines that allow them to maintain their dominance over us, so that we remain perpetually inferior to them. If they ever gave us what they promise; the liberation they say their technology will bring, their power over us would be lost. We would no longer need them to “save” us from our wildness because we would be as civilized as them.

When we give up so much of ourselves so that they will give us their technology, they make sure we will need them to maintain it. We become dependent on their technology, and thus dependent on them to continue feeding it to us and to fix it when it breaks. Our lives begin to revolve around the technology and we forget how to live without it. And while we’re distracted by the calming glow of our little screens, our ecosystems are decimated by the colonists.

Technology is a carrot on a stick and it cannot liberate us, only domesticate and enslave us. Reject it. Reject being measured by our technological prowess or how civilized we are. Reject the colonizer and his false-gifts and manipulations. Reject his civilization. Reject his control over who we are and who we will be.

(via The Anarchist Library)

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 6 years ago

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‘Decomposing the Masses: Towards Armed Individuality’ by Flower Bomb (USA)

“Anarchists are opposed to authority both from below and from above. They do not demand power for the masses, but seek to destroy all power and to decompose these masses into individuals who are masters of their own lives. Therefore anarchists are the most decisive enemies of all types of communism and those who profess to be communists or socialist cannot possibly be anarchists.” - Enzo Martucci

For me, individuality is a weapon. It is the weaponized praxis of nihilist anarchy and personal ungovernability. An individual becomes ungovernable by becoming and asserting their negation to socially constructed identities, formally organized groups, or the monolith of mass society. From this perspective, negation embodies a refusal to surrender one’s uniqueness to the confines of formal membership. This is where I draw a line between anarchy and leftism. Leftism encourages the rearrangement of constructed identities, rigid formations, and roles within a formalized social group to which individuals surrender for a “greater good” or purpose. On the other hand, anarchy as life is the decomposition of formal social groups allowing for the existential informality of individual emancipation, development, and limitless exploration. Therefore, for me, anarchy is an individualistic refusal to surrender one’s self to an over-arching power which positions itself above all.

Power structures, socially or institutionally, require the surrendering of individuality to massify their domination. The State can not exist without the individuals who choose to put on the badge and uniform. Capitalism can not exist without the subservience of individuals who make up the mass social body that reinforce its psychological and social validity and domination. Capitalism and the State require individual participation, multiplied to construct mass industrial society. I will give the leftists credit in pointing out that a massive enough worker strike could stunt industrial progress, since it is the worker — the individual wage-slave — that contributes to the life of the mega-machine. But as history has shown, a mass worker strike is not only exhausting to coordinate, but impossible to sustain long enough to collapse capitalism. While many leftists, including myself at one point, will point out that many workers simply do not have access to inspirational radical information, I have also come to learn that many workers simply do not want to strike. For too many reasons to list here, many workers go into work whether rebellions or strikes are happening or not. A fact that is often overlooked is that people are individuals. And as individuals, some choose to rebel against their work place, and some do not.

Collectives, Community Empowerment, and Organizing

Around 2013, I set off with the aim of building community power through collectivist projects that were intended to benefit people in my hood. Everything from a radical book lending library, a zine distro, really really free markets, food not bombs, and community film screenings. The collective I was part of was vibrant and full of energy. One year, we hosted a July 31 st Day of Action Against Racism and Fascism event which included film screening riot videos and clips of nazis gettin’ beat down. We left our door open for people in the hallway to come join, and our tiny apartment was packed with folks who lived above and below us, cheering in excitement while watching the videos. At the end we handed out zines and flyers, and promoted a really really free market we were doin’ the following two days. The next day, only three neighbors from the event showed up and chatted with us.

The day after that, they didn’t come back. At the time, I tried understanding why — despite the videos, the flyers and zines, and the conversations — our neighbors, who had talked about experiencing racism in their lives, were not interested in workin’ on projects with us. A one-on-one conversation with two of them a few weeks later reality-checked me: “That’s cool what y’all doin’, but, you know, we just tryin’ to do that money thing. We just tryin’ to get paid.” After a short debate about “gettin’ rich”, we departed with fist bumps and me feeling confused and defeated. “My” people in my own hood, in my own building, ain’t down with that revolutionary shit.

After a couple more years of hood-based banner drops, graffiti messages, wheat-pasting, a zine written to document and glorify the history of anti-racist rebellion where I grew up, and more community events I realized a truth that no leftist wants to hear: there is no such thing as a homogenized community to radicalize. What is a “community” when your hood is composed of individuals who each have different and often opposing objectives in life? I soon realized that the word “community” was merely a political word that often flattens important differences between individuals and propagates false unity. It is a social construct merely representing a population of people who live in a single area. Sure, we had a couple individuals here and there who were down with what we were doin’, got involved and stuck around for a little bit. But the hood was diverse. And it would be dishonest to say that they or we represented the interests of that hood. Everyone had their own individual opinions and life expectations.

I have seen some hood revolutionary projects that involved a large portion of a community materialize and flourish. Sometimes they last awhile and sometimes they lose membership and fizzle out. This is where my life experience started to define a difference between affinity groups and mass organizing. The individuals who were down with our shit came to us, with or without us having to propagate a program. They showed up because they saw other individuals that they could relate to. Other people just weren’t interested, despite us all living in the hood together, facing gentrification and being mostly POC.

I see something similar happening with anarchism. The same methods and appeals to the community, to the masses, to “the people”, are energetic and heartfelt, but yielding very little results. Potluck after potluck, radical social center or radical library, all end up bein’ filled with pre-existing radicals and end up becoming social clubs rather than places filled with non-radical people living in the immediate community. Attempts to mobilize the masses through street demonstrations end up with spectators on the sidewalk and the same radicals chanting, singing or marching in the street. I watched this spike during different times. When Trump was running for election, everyone and their momma was in the streets. Radicals were out, armed with flyers and zines and radical chants over megaphones. Shortly after the election, things normalized and soon just the radicals were back in the streets doing their thing. I admit, I was there too. Marching, chanting, handing out zines and flyers to sidewalk spectators. I remember, years ago, there was an Occupy march where we took Michigan Street in Chicago. A mass of students saw us, joined in for 3 minutes, then ran back to the sidewalk with high fives and went about their day. We were still in the streets tryin’ to invite them back with popular music. With the sudden drop in numbers, the police surrounded us and escorted us to the sidewalk. What is so wack about this is that this tactic is still being attempted today by radicals. As if the first dozen times it happened weren’t embarrassing enough.

Capitalist Individuality vs Individualist Anarchy

Individuality can be conditioned and subjugated by a socio-political environment that monopolizes a narrative of life. In the case of capitalism, we’re all born into a pre-configured society that reinforces its values, roles, and ideology with the psychological force of formalized institutions. When we walk outside, we see a reality that has been quantified and institutionally constructed to propagate itself. Cars, airplanes, highways, skyscrapers, fast food, etc — all normalized to generate the comfort of order. Without order, without normalization, there is a chaos that breaks the silence of personal subjugation. Organization and order go hand in hand. Values, roles, and ideology are better reinforced when massified to create the illusion of normalcy. This process discourages individuality, uniqueness, and chaos, since all three pose a threat to monolithic formations. While capitalism claims to encourage genuine individualism, it is an individualism that is pre-configured to reproduce capitalism on an individual level. In other words, individuals who surrender themselves to the system of capitalism become members limited to making capitalism functional. Any individual who refuses capitalism, or systems all together, will seek an existence that contradicts the interests of capitalism. From this perspective, individualist anarchy is a refusal to surrendering one’s self to the confines of a formalized system.

Chaos is the personalized strategy of negation to pre-configured order- an order that is pre-decided by those merely interested in gaining further membership. The strategy of creating a mass society or system of order is a strategy of discouraging individuality, chaos, and uniqueness. This strategy includes presenting a one-dimensional view of individualism that is defined by capitalism. But for individualism to be unique and chaotic, it can not be limited by the confines of formal organizations or socialized constructs.

Capitalism is a social construct that requires mass participation to create the illusion of normality to maintain social order. The mass participation composed of subservient individuals allows for capitalism to represent itself by materialized institutions- all physically built by the hands of individual workers. It is true, that the working class built this world, and therefore can unbuild it as well. But this assumes there are no subtle, peer pressuring forces at work that subdue the individual. This is why social war is not only necessary against massified existence, but also necessary with internally breaking the shackles of socially constructed identity and crushing the logic of submission.

The Right and the Left: Two Sides of a Coin Called “Identity”

Identity politics illustrates how different identities are stratified to create hierarchical power dynamics between groups of people. Identity politics also illustrates how individuality and uniqueness are discouraged to the point of social isolation. When people act out of bounds with the socially assigned identity, they are treated as “Others”, not validated to represent an experience. Depending on the system, certain experiences are preferred and validated. For example, to right-winger A, a successful “black” businessman is celebrated and seen as the promotion of capitalism as equal and non-discriminatory. But to right-winger B, that same man is seen as a threat to the white supremacist order and therefore not celebrated. Under leftist A, that same individual will be mocked as an “uncle Tom” or a “sellout”. But to leftist B, the “black” businessman represents successful assimilation, progress and hope for other black people. Both leftism and capitalism each have divided sides. But they all, in one way or another, share the commonality of order, homogenized identities, and membership. Therefore, in one way or another, this individual can be used as propaganda to promote a system. So now lets take for example, a “black” “man” who refuses the identity and roles of “blackness”, patriarchy, and the membership as a worker. Instead, this individual refuses leftism and capitalism. What systems can use this individual as propaganda now? From a leftist or capitalist perspective, what positive aspects of this individual can be used for promotion? As far as promoting a system, there is none. The confinements of a system on a social level have been suspended. All that remains is the anarchy in becoming ungovernable through individual uniqueness.

Individuals who deviate from the normalized social order are not only bad for propaganda, but maintain the threat of inspiring other emancipations. Individuals who desire freedom beyond the limitations of political programs don’t require a package-deal of future utopia. Rather than workin’ now to play later, play and adventure accompany a present determination for wild exploration. Armed with a sense of urgency, life becomes a playground of individual flowering and negation to social constraint- a playground that allows free, open-ended social associations and interactions not coerced by a structural permanence.

Individuality armed with chaos finds itself as an insurgent against the social forces that attempt to subjugate it. As individuality becomes wild, it becomes immune and ungovernable to the carefully constructed programs advertised by the politicians of identity and revolution. Those self-proclaimed revolutionaries can only conceive of revolution as merely reforming the social conditions that constitute order. But some of us prefer insurrection over revolution; an insurrection that doesn’t end with a new system but a life without measure. I want to weaponize chaos as an individualized attack on all governance and social order. I envision anarchy as a wildfire that blackens the civilized, domesticated kingdom of institutional and social domination. Getting free is more than just attacking capital and the state. At least for me, it also means creating your self every single day beyond society’s attempts to define you as a static being.

My war is an individualist war against the right-wing and all its variations. I am at war with the materialized construction of patriarchal “whiteness”, its institutions, and its politically assumed supremacy that materializes the colonial domination of industrial capitalism. My war is also against the left, and all its attempts to manufacture a future world of systematized “freedom” through formal organization, the preservation of socially constructed identity and the subservience of individuality to social groupings. My liberation won’t be found in the holy book of “The Communist Manifesto”, “Forbes Magazine”, nor “The Coming Insurrection”. Freedom isn’t a pre-configured future utopia; it is a lived experience by those who have the courage to reclaim their lives as their own here and now. In the face of those revolutionary elites who attempt to lay claim to the future with their poetic social seduction and academic expertise, I remain insubordinate. (via War Zone Distro)

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 6 years ago

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“We Are All Going To Die” by Black Oak Clique (USA)

An open letter and anti-manifesto to Climate Offensive, Extinction Rebellion, Earth Strike, and other nonviolent movements

When the world ends, people come out of their apartments and meet their neighbors for the first time; they share food, stories, companionship. No one has to go to work or the laundromat; nobody remembers to check the mirror or scale or email account before leaving the house. Graffiti artists surge into the streets; strangers embrace, sobbing and laughing. Every moment possesses an immediacy formerly spread out across months. Burdens fall away, people confess secrets and grant forgiveness, the stars come out over New York City…and nine months later, a new generation is born.

(CrimethInc.)

We’re going to die?

“The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.” But us – me, you, even those who are killing the earth? We’re going to die.

In the worst case scenario, you drown, you starve, or you succumb to heat stroke. Not figuratively. You will drown, you will starve, you will succumb to heat stroke. Perhaps there’s the small chance that you will survive the mass migration to the last reaches of habitable land in and around the poles.

Perhaps.

But let’s be realistic here: In all likelihood, you’re going to die. A slow, horrible, excruciating death at that. We would like to say this is the future we’re hurtling towards at an ever-increasing rate. But it isn’t: it’s the present, the material, graspable present. Islands are sinking into the ocean. The poverty-stricken are freezing to death on the streets. People are burning to death in gigantic wildfires. The collapse is not to be a single event. It’s a process, and it’s currently underway. In the best case scenario, death is liberation. Perhaps the real “you” – your body, your consciousness, your soul, what have you – won’t die, per se: instead, the abstract “you” – your way of life, your social relationships under capitalism, your system of meaning that’s been drilled into your head since day one – will die.

Can’t we reform the system?

No. We can’t. The system is the problem, and the system runs deep. The problem isn’t just capitalism. It’s also the state, but it also isn’t just the state. It’s the ideology of consumption itself: that beings – plants, animals (including humans deemed to be subhuman), fungi, even inanimate natural “resources” – are objects to be bought, sold, and eventually, consumed. This ideology is perhaps the deepest ideology we have. It permeates every form of knowledge: from science, to art, to politics. It seeps through our language (one must think how often we refer to feeling, living beings – ones with the capacity to suffer – as “it.”) It permeates our relationships. It is the very basis of our societies, if it cannot be deemed our “society” itself – the group of capital-h Humans deemed to be worthy enough to be circumscribed by the abstract Community, that constructs itself in opposition to literally everything else.

Your favorite pet politician isn’t immune to this. Not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, not Bernie Sanders, not Jill Stein. Not the Democratic Socialists, not the Green Party, not the CPUSA, and not anyone else, either. Perhaps their hearts are in the right place – but sadly, that isn’t enough. To quote the amazing piece Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloos:

Some people oppose capitalism on environmental grounds, but think some sort of state is necessary to prevent ecocide. But the state is itself a tool for the exploitation of nature. Socialist states such as the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China have been among the most ecocidal regimes imaginable. That these two societies never escaped the dynamics of capitalism is itself a feature of the state structure — it necessitates hierarchical, exploitative economic relationships of control and command, and once you start playing that game nothing beats capitalism.

What about nonviolence?

Concerning nonviolence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.

(Malcolm X)

The struggle against ecocide was never nonviolent, and it never will be, because it cannot be. That’s because ecocide is violence: violence against me and you, against animals (wild and domestic,) against the trees and the grass and the water and the mountains. Climate insurrection is self-defense. Strict adherence to nonviolence – that is, the rejection of violence – is complicity in the face of ecological destruction. It is not “offensive,” it is not “rebellion,” and it’s not a “strike” at climate change. Many of us do not have the privilege of being nonviolent – namely, those of us who already marginalized. We will be the first to go. We’re the rural farm workers and their families being sprayed with pesticides. We’re the houseless freezing to death in polar vortices. We’re the indigenous peoples whose homes are being swallowed by the sea. We’re the poor who will not have the capital necessary to complete the long trek north to the last remaining habitable lands. If we aren’t violent – if we don’t rebel against the system that oppresses us – we will be crushed. Don’t be complicit in our death, in your death.

What’s climate insurrection?

Perhaps the only hope me or you have. It’s destroying that which destroys us - by any means possible.

Wouldn’t that hurt the movement?

No. A better question would be: what has “nonviolent” protest won us in the long run? The answer: absolutely nothing. Many supposedly “nonviolent” movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement, were incredibly violent. There were hundreds of riots throughout the United States, and of course, the existence of armed paramilitary groups such as the Black Panthers, or the Brown Berets. One could make the argument that this narrative of nonviolence is pushed by the very people whose power would be threatened by violence, because violence means (perhaps immediate) change. Hence: why those in the US celebrate Martin Luther King Day, a federally recognized holiday; but not Malcolm X Day. Even the most-oft example of nonviolent resistance, the Indian independence movement, was not so. Bhagat Singh, who after his execution became a folk hero of the cause, was inspired by French anarchist Auguste Vaillant to bomb the British Raj’s Central Legislative Assembly. Less than a year before, he had assassinated a British police officer in retaliation for the death of the nationalist leader Lala Lajpat Rai.

Wouldn’t it be counterproductive?

Counterproductive to what? Getting meaningless reforms passed? Getting empty pyrrhic victories in the legal circuit? Performing impotent marches through major cities that don’t achieve anything other than receiving lukewarm press from second-rate newspapers? Ask the battery hen liberated from cramped cages by animal activists, or the old-growth forest protected indefinitely by logging saboteurs (and all the animals who call those forest home): is direct action productive?

Anarchist action— patient, hidden, tenacious, involving individuals, eating away at institutions like a worm eats away at fruit, as termites undermine majestic trees — such action does not lend itself to the theatrical effects of those who wish to draw attention to themselves.

To quote the great illusionist Georges Méliès, “I must say, to my great regret, the cheapest tricks have the greatest impact.”

If insurrection is so great, how come people aren’t doing it now?

They are. You just haven’t heard of it because the media is smart enough to hide it. Hearing about the heroic stories of those who fight back would be too dangerous for most to hear – it runs the risk of radicalizing them. Movements like the Animal and Earth Liberation Fronts, have been waging war against ecocide since the 1970s.

I don’t want to go to prison.

We dream of a world without prisons.

I’m scared.

We’re scared too, friend. We should be, but we should be

strong, too

What can we do?

We’ll let the great animal activist Keith Mann speak for us.

Labs raided, locks glued, products spiked, depots ransacked, windows smashed, construction halted, mink set free, fences torn down, cabs burnt out, officesin flames, car tires slashed, cages emptied, phone lines severed, slogans daubed, muck spread, damage done, electrics cut, site flooded, hunt dogs stolen, fur coats slashed, buildings destroyed, foxes freed, kennels attacked, businesses burgled, uproar, anger, outrage, balaclava clad thugs.

What if I don’t have the ability to fight?

You do, even if you can’t physically. Despite the tone of this letter, we aren’t totally opposed to above-ground action. In fact, in some cases, we think it’s necessary. Groups like the Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Group and the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group are active in representing and advocating for operatives. As Sinn Féin, the Irish political party once associated with the militant IRA has been described:

Both Sinn Féin and the IRA play different but converging roles in the war of national liberation. The Irish Republican Army wages an armed campaign… Sinn Féin maintains the propaganda war and is the public and political voice of the movement.

What happens next?

We don’t know. But with any luck, we’ve laid out our options.

(via Heresy Distro)

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 7 years ago

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do you have any learning materials for learning chinese?

Are you learning Mandarin or Cantonese or another Chinese dialect/language cuz I’m not sure which resources you want? I can give you some resources for both Canto and Mandarin but I don’t have any resources for other Chinese dialects / Chinese languages

Mandarin Resources

PDF’s (it contains PDF files to learn Mandarine.)

Mandarin Resources / Rec Post

Free Resources For Learning Mandarin Chinese

Chinese Grammar Wiki

yoyochinese

chinesehulu

memrise

Tips on learning Mandarin Tones (Check this post for tips on learning Mandarin Tones. I learnt Chinese tone naturally so I don’t have anything to recommend so I just link you this blog post.)

Chinese Pronouns

Youtube

Learn Chinese Now

Lenguin.com Language Lessons

Vocabulary Videos

How to Speak With Numbers in (Mandarin) Chinese (In the West, we use acronyms for online chatting and texting such as BRB and LOL. For the Chinese, we use numbers! This video will help you learn how to speak with numbers in Chinese.)

Chinese Family Tree

11 Crucial Chinese Phrases

How to Curse in Mandarin Chinese

Textbooks

Integrated Chinese 中文听说读写

Links to watch Chinese (Mandarin) Dramas

DramaFever

Viki

Cantonese Resources

My first language is Cantonese so I’m not learning it from any materials but I’ve found a few site that looks quite interesting and looked quite helpful that you could try.

PDF’s (it contains PDF files to learn Cantonese.)

Apps Rec

Teach Yourself Cantonese

Cantonese Dictionaries

Cantonese Grammar

Cantonese Pronouns

Youtube

Cantonese Tone

iCANTONESE

Cantonese Bad Swear Words

Vocabulary Videos

How to Speak with Numbers in Chinese - Cantonese Version

Chinese Family Tree - Cantonese Version

CarlosDouh (This is helpful to learn some slang and how and when they are used in Hong Kong.)Cantonese Slang (Another clip with a list of some commonly used Cantonese slang)

Sites to watch Hong Kong / TVB Dramas

newasiantv (with subs)

icdrama (without subs)

Watching dramas/films/shows will definitely help you learn and improve your Cantonese.

Chinese Reading & Writing / Character Resources

Chineasy (They also have books you can buy on amazon or on here)

3000hanzi (A site dedicated to help people learn to read Chinese)

Chinese Poems

To improve or learn Chinese characters, try to watch some Chinese dramas and/or shows with Chinese subtitles, it will help you learn and improve your Chinese reading.

Some Info about Chinese Languages / Culture

Cantonese Vs Mandarin (This video tells you the difference between the two.) There is another link you can try here)

Chinese Culture Topic Videos (You should check out their channel, they talk about many other things about Chinese Culture / China.)

The Chen Dynasty

Taiwan vs. Mainland Mandarin Chinese

Blogs / Blog Posts

language-obsession

Chinese resources

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 7 years ago

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Pixel art via me, for more pixel art (I’m still new, so it’s still a bit rough), writeblr content, and various main-blog shenanigans, follow @ball-of-cheap-yarn

Hey guys! It’s so nice to see you for my first vocab list! Thanks for tuning it. Let’s get on with office-themed vocab. I personally have an addiction to stationary, and thought it would be a good first topic!

Japanese - Furigiana (if needed) - English

Basics

会社 - かいしゃ - Office (as in a company)

事務所 - じむしょ - Office (as in an office space)

上司 - じょうし - Superior/Boss

会社員 - かいしゃいん - Office Worker

会議室 - かいぎしつ - Meeting Room

会議 - かいぎ - Meeting

名刺 - めいし - Business Card

Business cards in Japan are more important than you realize. It is common practice to trade business cards, and there even is a certain way to do it! For more info, please pm me!

面接 - めんせつ - Interview

給料 - きゅうりょう - Salary, Pay

What’s On Your Desk?

ぺん - Pen

電卓 - でんたく - Calculator

紙 - かみ - Paper

テープ - Tape

Computers and Office Machines

書類 - しょるい - Document

パソコン - Computer (lit. “Personal Computer”)

コンピューター - Computer

プリンター - Printer

コピー機 - こぴーき - Photo Copier

電話 - でんわ - Phone

ファクス - Fax Machine

SOURCES:

Because of the way Tumblr has been about links lately, if you want to see these articles, which have more info regarding office culture and even more vocab, feel free to pm me.

Personal experience/conversations with a native speaker (Vocab)

Learn Japanese Adventure (Vocab)

FluentU (Vocab)

GaijinPot (Cultural insight regarding business cards)

Reddit (for the difference between 会社 and 事務所)

Thanks for @7withouttae for some Kanji corrections! Got to love auto correct 🌹💞🌹

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 7 years ago

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college vocabulary

だいがく　大学　(da•i•ga•ku) - college

だいがくせい　大学生　(da•i•ga•ku•se•e) - college student

だいがくいんせい　大学院生　(da•i•ga•ku•i•n•se•e) - graduate student

りゅうがくせい　留学生　(ryo•o•ga•ku•se•e) - exchange student

せんせい　先生　(se•n•se•e) - professor

remember, titles go after the last name so this is placed after your teacher’s name!

～ねんせい　～年生　(ne•n•se•e) - …year student

add this to a number to say what year you are in school! ex:

いちねんせい　一年生　(i•chi•ne•n•se•e) - first year student/freshman

にねんせい　二年生　 (ni•ne•n•se•e) - second year student/sophomore

さんねんせい　三年生　 (sa•n•ne•n•se•e) - third year student/junior

よねんせい　四年生　 (yo•ne•n•se•e) - fourth year student/senior

and so on!

べんきょうする　勉強する　(be•n•kyo•o•su•ru) - to study

this verb has an irregular conjugation so when saying *i study* you would use the stem し (shi) and conjugate it as べんきょうします.

クラス　(ku•ra•su) - class

せんこう　専攻　(se•n•ko•o) - major

below i listed some common majors!

ビジネス　(bi•ji•ne•su) - business

コンピューター　(ko•n•pyu•u•ta•a) -computer science

すうがく　数学　(su•u•ga•ku) - mathematics

かがく　数学　(ka•ga•ku) - science

きょういくがく　教育学　(kyo•o•i•ku•ga•ku) - education

けいざい　経済　(ke•e•za•i) - economics

こくさいかんけい　国際関係　(ko•ku•sa•i•ka•n•ke•e) - international relations

せいじ　政治　(se•e•ji) - politics

ぶんがく　文学　(bu•n•ga•ku) - literature

アジアけんきゅう　アジア研究　(a•ji•a•ke•n•kyu•u) - asian studies

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 7 years ago

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animals

どうぶつ　動物　(do•u•bu•tsu)

ペット　(pe•tto) - pets

いぬ　犬　(i•nu) - dog

ねこ　猫　(ne•ko) - cat

さかな　魚　(sa•ka•na) - fish

とり　鳥　(to•ri) - bird

うま　馬　(u•ma) - horse

ヘビ　(he•bi) - snake

カメ　(ka•me) - turtle/tortoise

ウサギ　(u•sa•gi) - rabbit

ハムスター　(ha•mu•su•ta) - hamster

家畜　(ka•chi•ku) - farm animals

うし　牛　(u•shi) - cow

にわとり　鶏　(ni•wa•to•ri) - chicken

ぶた　豚　(bu•ta) - pig

ひつじ　羊　(hi•tsu•ji) - sheep

うま　馬　(u•ma) - horse

ロバ　(ro•ba) - donkey

ヤギ　(ya•gi) - goat

動物園動物　(do•u•bu•tsu•e•n•do•u•bu•tsu) - zoo animals

ぞう　象　(zo•u) - elephant

さる　猿　(sa•ru) - monkey

とら　虎　(to•ra) - tiger

キリン　(ki•ri•n) - giraffe

シマウマ　(shi•ma•u•ma) - zebra

チータ　(chi•i•ta) - cheetah

ライオン　(ra•i•o•n) - lion

パンダ　(pa•n•da) - panda

サイ　(se•i) - rhinoceros

オオカミ　(o•o•ka•mi) - wolf

ゴリラ　(go•ri•ra) - gorilla

some expressions relating to animals

好きな動物はなんですか。= What is your favorite animal?

好きな動物は．．．です。= My favorite animal is … .

ペットがいますか。= Do you have any pets?

わたしは．．．がいます。= I have… .

to count small animals (i.e. dogs, cats, reptiles), use the counter 匹 (hi•ki)

there are some exceptions for this counter

一匹 - (i•ppi•ki)

三匹 - (sa•n•bi•ki)

六匹 - (ro•ppi•ki)

八匹 - (ha•ppi•ki)

十匹 - (ju•u•ppi•ki)

other than these, just add ~hiki to the number!

to count large animals, use the counter 頭 (to•u)

exceptions:

一頭 - (i•tto•u)

八頭 - (ha•tto•u)

十頭 - (ju•tto•u)

to count birds and rabbits, use the counter 羽 (wa)

there are no exceptions for this counter!

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 7 years ago

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chinese studyblrs?

大家好～

如果你讲华语，或正在学华语，请reblog这个文章！我们能一起加油、一起学习✨

虽然我是华人，我的华文程度真的挺差，也没什么机会用（我正在伦敦上大学），所以想多练习一下…希望能找到肯跟我练习的人呵呵

hi everyone~

if you speak Chinese, or are currently learning Chinese, please reblog this post! we can work on it and learn together ✨

although I’m Chinese, I’m actually not that that good at the language, and I don’t really have many chances to use it (I’m going to uni in London), so I want to practice it more…I hope to find people who are willing to practice with me hehe :) or really just reblog stuff from

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 7 years ago

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 7 years ago

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TV shows/movies

@breatheordreamm

Watching TV shows and movies is a great way to improve your Arabic! I think I’ve reblogged a few lists by other blogs, I’ll try to reblog them again.

Al-jazeerah is a great news channel which has a 24-hour news coverage as well as some really interesting documentaries. Their website also has articles - all in standard Arabic, of course.

Wajdah is the first Saudi film directed by a woman - it discusses important issues and is so heartwarming and funny. The Arabic is good and clear, if a little informal. Not too hard to follow.

The Omar series is a biography of the second Caliph of Islam. Really good if you are into Islamic history. The Arabic is very clear.

Al Tabaq al Taer is a really cute kid’s cooking channel - the Arabic is really clear and simple, as are many kid’s TV shows. I reccomend watching these for beginners.

Jana Vlogs - not a TV show or movie but still! This girl is so interesting and her Arabic is really easy to follow, plus she has taken the liberty to caption all of her videos.

These are a few Egyptian films that I enjoyed. If you do learn a dialect, it’s worth learning the Egyptian one since so many films and songs are in the Egyptian dialect.

Asal Aswad - pretty damn funny. I loved it, but you will probably need subtitles.

Hassan wa Marcus - see above.

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 7 years ago

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Harry Potter Vocabulary list

Requested by anon

Click on the words for the audio

[Glossary ref]

Alchemy/ الخِيمياء/Al-kheemyaa’

Astronomy/ عِلْمُ الفَلَكِ / ‘ilmu al-falak

Broomstick/ المِقَشَّة /al-miqash-sha

Chamber of secrets / غُرْفَةُ الأَسْرارِ/ Ghurfatu al-asraar

Charm/ تِميمَة/ Tameema

Chocolate Frogs/ ضَفادِعُ الشُّكولاتة/Dhafaadi’u ash-shokolaata

Comet/ مُذَنَّبٌ/ Muthannab

Curse /لَعْنَةٌ / la’na

Dark arts/ الفُنونُ السَّوْداء/Al-funoonu as-sawdaa’

Death eaters/ أَكَلَةُ المَوْتِ/ Akalatu al-mawt

Death mark/ عَلامَةُ المَوْتِ/ ‘alaamatu almawt

Deathday Party/ حَفْلَةُ يَوْمِ المَوْتِ/Haflatu yawmi al-mawt

Dragon/ تِنِّينٌ/ Tinneen

Dueling Club / نادي المُبارَزَةِ/ Naadi al-mubaaraza

Elixir of life/ إِكْسيرُ الحَياةِ/ Iksiiru al-hayaa

Exploding Bonbons/ الحَلْوَى المُتَفَجِّرَةُ/ Al-halwaa al-mutafajjira

Forbidden forest/ الغَابَةُ المُحَرَّمَةُ/Al-ghaabatu al-muharrama

Four elements/ العَناصِرُ الأَرْبَعَةُ/ Al-anaasiru al-arba’a

Freezing Charm/ تَعْويذَةٌ التَّجْميد/ Ta’weethatu at-tajmeed

Goblet of fire / كَأْسُ النَّارِ / Ka’su an-naar

Goblin/عِفْريت/ ‘ifreet

Hand of Glory/ يَدُ المَجْدِ/ Yadu al-majd

Half-Blood / هَجينـ(ـة)/ Hajeen(a)

Head of the department/ رَئيسُ القِسْمُ/ Ra’eesu al-qism

Hogwarts houses / مَنازِلُ هوغوارْتس/Manaazilu hogwarts

Invisibility Cloak/ عَباءَةُ الاخْتِفاء/ ‘abaa’tu al-ikhtifaa’

Magic/ سِحْرٌ/ Sihr

Ministry of Magic/ وَزارَةُ السِّحْرِ/ Wazaaratu as-sihr

Order of the Phoenix/ جَماعَةُ العَنْقاء/ Jamaa’atu al-anqaa’

Philosopher’s stone/ حَجَرُ الفَيْلَسوف/ Haraju al-faylasoof

Portion/ جُرْعَةٌ/ Gur’aa

Prison of Azkaban/ سِجْنُ أَزْكابان/ Sijnu azkabaan

Pure-Blood / دَمُ نَقِيُّ/ Damun naqiy

School/ مَدْرَسَةٌ/ Madrasa

Spell/ تَعْويذَة/ Ta’weetha

Transportation/تَنَقُّلٌ/Tanaqqul

The three broomsticks (pub)/حانة المِقَشّاتِ الثلاث / haanatul miqash-shaati ath-thalaath

Unforgivable Curses/ اللَّعْنات غير المَغْفورَة/ Al-laa’naatu ghayru al-maghfoora

Unicorn / وَحيدُ القَرْنِ/ Waheedu al-qarn

Vampire/ مَصَّاصُ دِماءٍ/ Massaasu dimaa’

Wand /عَصا سِحْرِيَّة/ Asaa sihriyya

Werewolf/ مُسْتَذْئِبٌ/ Mustath’ib

Wizard/ ساحِرٌ/ Saahir

Wizardess/ ساحِرَةٌ/ Saahira

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 7 years ago

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body parts in Arabic

راس head [ra’s] رقبة neck [raqaba] وجه face [wajh] لحية beard [laHiya] ‎شعر hair [sha’r] ‎عين eye [‘ayn] / عينين eyes [’aynayn] فم mouth [fam] شفة lip [shafa] / شفاه lips [shafaa] ‎أنف nose [‘anf] سن tooth [sinn] / اسنان teeth [’asnan] ‎أذن ear [udhun] / آذان ears [’adhan] دمعة tear (drop) [dama’a] ‎لسان tongue [lisan] ظهر back [zahar] اصابع القدم toes [asabi’ al-qadam] أصابع fingers [asabi’] قدم foot [qadam] يد hand [yad] رجل leg [rijl] ذراع arm [dhira’] كتف shoulder [katif] ‎قلب heart [qalb] دم blood [dam] دماغ brain [damagh] ركبة knee [rukba] عرق sweat [’araq] مرض disease [marad] عظم bone [’azam] صوت voice [sawt] بشرة skin [bashara] ‎جسم body [jism]

other arabic vocab lists

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 7 years ago

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Useful Expressions in Arabic

These are expressions in MSA (modern standad arabic) I thought that they can maybe help you guys. if you need anything concerning Arabic, just hit me up!

EDIT: i added transliteration

One could say: يمكن القول (yomkeen al-kawl)

A little: قليلا (kalilan)

Alright: حسنا (hasanan)

Be careful: كن حذرا (kon hadiran)

Believe it or not: صدق أو لا تصدق (sadek aw la tusadek)

For example: على سبيل المثال( aala sabil al-mithal)

Good luck: حظا سعيدا (haddan saa’aidan)

Have fun: استمتع(ي) (estamtee’ )

How about: ماذا عن (mada aan)

In the meantime:في الأثناء (fi al-athne)

It doesn’t matter: لا يهم (la yuhem)

Make yourself at home: اعتبر نفسك في منزلك (eetaber nafssek fi manzilek)

No wonder: لا عجب (la aa’ajab)

No problem:لا مشكلة (la moshkila)

Of course:طبعا (tabaa’an)

See you later: إلى اللقاء (ila al-lika)

Thank God:الحمد لله (alhamdulileh)

That’s life: إنها الحياة (ineha al-hayat)

Time will tell: الوقت سيخبرنا (al-wakt sayo5birouna)

Until next time: إلى المرة القادمة (ila al-mara al-kadima)

What a mess: (يالها من) فوضى ((yaleha men) fawda)

(what) nonsense:هراء (hura’)

What’s for lunch: ماذا على الغداء (mada aala al-ghida)

Yet again: لكن مرة أخرى (lakin mara okhra)

You included: أنت ضمنهم (anta demnahom)

You’re kidding me: أنت تمزح (anta tamzah)

Last but not least:آخرا و ليس أخيرا (akhiran wa layssa akhiran)

Not at all:أبدا (abadan)

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aspiring-polyglot-uk · 7 years ago

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Animated movies in Arabic

This post was inspired by @ainarstargo’s question. Thank you!

Note : to find a movie, press Control+f then type the name of the movie you’re looking for.

Not all movies are available in Modern Standard Arabic, some movies are only available in the Egyptian Dialect but their sequel can be in Modern Standard Arabic and vice versa.

Note: to find a movie, press Control+f then type the name of the movie you’re looking for.

Not all movies are available in Modern Standard Arabic, some movies are only available in the Egyptian Dialect but their sequel can be in Modern Standard Arabic and vice versa.

Some of these sites have ads which are annoying, just be patient and click the link again if it’s redirected all the links work and the movies should play.

I. DreamWorks

Bee movie

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2

Despicable me [Arabic sub]

Despicable me 2

Flushed away

Hotel Transylvania

Hotel Transylvania 2

Home

How to train your dragon

How to train your dragon 2

Ice Age

Ice Age 2: the Meltdown

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Ice Age 4: Continental drift

Ice Age: Collision Course

Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda 2

Kung Fu Panda 3

Monsters vs Aliens

Madagscar

Madagascar 2

Madagascar 3

Megamind

Mr. Peabody and Sherman

Minions

Penguins of Madagascar

Puss in Boots

Shark Tale

Sinbad: Legend of the seven seas

Shrek [Arabic subs]

Shrek the third

Shrek: Forever After

Spirit

The Croods

II. Disney and Pixar

An extremely Goofy movie

Bambi

Bambi 2

Brave

Big Hero 6

Bolt

Brother Bear

Brother Bear 2

Cinderella

Cinderella 3

Finding nemo

Frozen

Frozen Fever 2015

Finding dory (the movie is mostly in MSA but with a little bit Egyptian dialect included)

Inside out

Mulan

Monsters University

Planes

Tarzan and Jane

Treasure Planet

Toy story

Toy Story 2

Toy Story 3

The Fox and the hound

Tigger movie

The Lion King II

The Lion King III

The Lion Guard

The Three Musketeers

The Wild

Ratatouille

Robin Hood

Valiant

Wreck it Ralph

Zootopia

III. Other movies

A monster in Paris

Astroboy

Anastasia

Asterix in Britain

Barbie and the magic door 2014 (mostly MSA with some Lebanese dialect)

Barbie and the Swan lake

Baribie and the magic door (2017)

Black beauty

Bartok the Magnificent

Border Town

Cinderella monogatari

Epic

Elena and the secret of avalor

Flipper and Lopaka the movie

Great women in the Prophet’s time (Islamic Movie)

Happily never after

Heidi

Hi no ame ga furu

Howl’s moving castle

Kubo And The Two Strings

Little Red Riding Hood (1995)

Lion of Oz

Mohamed the last Prophet (Islamic movie)

Monster House

Niko Flight To The Stars

Salman Al Farisi (Islamic movie)

The adventure of Tintin

The angry birds (2016)

The blind man’s daughter

The boxtrolls

The Sun of Egypt (Islamic movie)

The Nutcracker Prince (1990)

The pirate fairy

The Prince and the pauper

The Swan Princess

The Swan Princess 2 : the secret of the castle

The Secret life of pets

The snow queen

The peanuts movie

The Lorax

The Princess Castle

The Ice Queen

Over the garden wall

Planet 51

Rango

Rail of the Star - A True Story of Children

Rio (subbed)

Rio II

Sango-sho Densetsu: Aoi Umi no Erufii (Child of the sea)

Sleeping beauty

Violin in the starry sky

Who’s left behind

I. Disney and Pixar movies

101 Dalmatians

101 Dalmatians 2

An extremely goofy movie

A bug’s life

Alice in Wonderland

Aladdin

Aladdin : Jafar’s return

Aladdin and the King of Thieves

Atlantis the lost empire

Atlantis: Milo’s return

Beauty and the beast

Bambi

Brother bear 2

Cinderella

Cinderella 2

Chicken Little

Dinosaur

Dumbo

Emperor’s New Groove

Finding Nemo

Home on the range

Hercules

Lilo and stitch

Lilo and stitch 2

Mulan

Mulan 2

Monsters Inc.

Meet the Robinsons

Moana (this movie has a mix of Egyptian dialect and MSA)

Oliver and company

Peter Pan

Peter Pan : return to Neverland

Piglet’s big movie

Pinocchio

Princess and the frog

Ratatouille

Snow White

Lady and the Tramp

The aristocats

The Sleeping Beauty

The Lion King

The Lion King 2

The Lion King III

The Incredibles

Toy story

Toy Story 2

Toy Story 3

Toy Story Hawaiian Vacation

The tigger movie

The jungle book

The jungle book 2

The hunchback of Notre Dame

Tangled

Tangled: ever after

Tarzan

Treasure planet

The little mermaid

Wall-E

Winnie the pooh: the heffalump movie

II. Dreamworks

Horton hears a who

Madagascar

III. Other movies

Thumbelina

If there’s any other animated movie that I’ve missed and you would like to see please send me an ask and I’ll add it.

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