Nov
2
Justice for All?
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment
The Pat Tillman case seems to have been blown out of the water by Jon Krakauer. But then, Tillman embodies much of what American culture places at the top of the hierarchy which is part of the reason this case gets so much attention. While I certainly don’t begrudge the justice that he or his family deserves, I would also like to see justice for all of the women in the military who have been sexually assaulted and raped as well as for the string of military “suicides” (ie brutally raped and murdered women) like Lavena Johnson.
Sep
6
like old times
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment
ragged snippets of memory like leaves in the wind
some of them stick
Aug
29
I turned on talk radio for the first time in ages today. And I thank my lucky stars, for I have finally realized that socialism and communism ARE in fact godless!!! They lack THE FREE MARKET!!!
In the midst of Steve Malzberg ranting about 45 million people having access to health care if Obama’s plans go through, and Sean Hannity trashing the idea of providing a decent living for all, (apparently because we who advocate this love government – not because we care about people) it hit me. Just replace “In God We Trust” with “In Free Market We Trust.” They are interchangeable. I’ve seen the light, hallelujah.
So, Malzberg kept up the yelling refrain over his caller of “WHERE ARE THE DOCTORS DELLA???” See, letting 45 million people go without health insurance is perfectly ok because the doctors just aren’t there. And here I thought people like him didn’t believe in evolution, but apparently subscribing to some sort of fucked up survival of the fittest is A-Ok. What chaps my hide even more is Mr. Malzberg can be secure about his health care thanks to doing a job he is horrible at. I may abhor Hannity and Limbaugh, but they are good propagandists.
This whole thing makes me think of Joel Osteen’s screwy teaching of “prosperity gospel.” That if you’re right with god you’ll be blessed with material goods. (To the detriment of other people, who I suppose, are not right with god!) If you are lucky enough to play by the free market’s rules the same thing might happen. Both are ways of assigning value. And both are ridiculously shitty ways of thinking.
Lastly, I really couldn’t help laughing (to the detriment of my hurting back) when Hannity commented that a less than knowledgeable person he had just interviewed was educated by our public government schools!!!! I guess the free market could solve our education woes too. If people can’t afford to pay they must not be smart enough to go!
Aug
5
Come on, really?!
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment
NPR classifies The Lord’s Resistance Army a “military cult” but fails to note that the army identifies as Christian. And why does the media never discuss the religion of the participants of the Rwandan genocide? Yet they never hesitate to point out terrorists who identify as Muslims. All part of the typical process of default/other.
Apr
17
Dear Allure:
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment
The recent nude photo spread in which you railed against puritanical attitudes and billed the disrobing of women as “empowering” and something that is “good for girls” was a cynical, disingenuous ploy that hijacks feminist language for the purpose of selling the consumer shit and pushing the destructive diets found in your pages.
When you splash those pages with perfect celebrity bodies and their quotes in which they opine about how IMPERFECT their bodies are, and what a GOOD thing for girls this is to see, all I can hear those girls thinking is:
If they are imperfect, what does that make me?
I guess we are lucky that Allure handily provides all the solutions to the insecurities it perpetuates. If I want to see perfect, (*however laughingly you would all like to claim them imperfect) naked women I can just look at the lad mags. I’m tired of the meme that the sum of a woman is her parts.
Yours truly,
Sick of this.
*I can understand that with the pressure women face to live up to a perfect feminine ideal in this society, that even celebrities have insecurities about their bodies and that they are certainly not perfect. But don’t give me airbrushed, oil slicked bodies and expect me to believe that this will subsequently foster healthy attitudes in girls about their bodies.
Nov
27
I’m burned out after months of nonstop reading blogs/news/nonfiction books/etc and need a break. No mystery that this also comes with the last bit of warm weather, bringing on perpetual crankiness, an understanding of animals that hibernate, and no desire to censor myself at the moment. I can’t resist a few parting shots with the things I’ve been kicking around before the blog goes silent for a bit. So I guess this is kind of messy and unpolished, but whatever. And who knows, maybe tomorrow I will be miraculously motivated again.
I feel remiss that I did not acknowledge the historical significance of Obama’s presidency at all, despite having a number of fundamental problems with him.
I am bitterly amused that continued outrage is being leveled towards Michael Vick for his torture of dogs, yet we continuously honor men who are rapists and abusers. If I had a dime for every time someone blew off a man’s abuse of a woman to wax poetic about him I’d be rich. (And no, I don’t condone what he did, I think it’s abhorrent. I just wish there was some parity here.)
The conversations going on around me about the auto industry all have to do with those “greedy” auto workers who get paid “too much” for such an “easy” job and how unions need to be weakened. It strikes me as incredibly odd that our remaining factory workers, lionized as models of class mobility and the American Dream, are now bearing the brunt of the blame for reaping the benefits that make those things possible. I feel more like an alien than I thought I could.
In light of that, I liked this post at Socialist Resistance >> America Changing for Real?? and particularly this portion of it:
The ongoing fight over auto is not about saving jobs and communities, or converting the industry to sustainable mass transit. It’s about whether the bankruptcy of the Big Three would be one of those moments of “creative destruction” so dearly beloved by free-market ideologues, whose own lives of course aren’t at stake. It’s about whether the companies will go bankrupt anyway – so why postpone the inevitable? – or whether the impact of their precipitous collapse on the system as a whole is too enormous to risk.
I am frustrated and disgusted at a culture of learned callousness. Going into the city and seeing homeless, the performances they need to put on to solicit people’s kindness, the way people ignore them anyway. If the victim isn’t perfect we knee jerk and withdraw our support. I see this in my own thought patterns when I give them money and hear their stories.
The “it’s my paycheck” bullshit. I abhor this. Your paycheck is earned on the backs of others. You are not a monolith, a person all by yourself that you earn your paycheck in a vacuum, that it is not linked to a local and global community of people. And I do believe that this is one of America’s greatest failings – this teaching of such extreme individualism that so many couldn’t care less about others outside of “their circle”, having no understanding of community and the way one’s actions ripple outward.
I did not drop from the womb with a desire to wear makeup. As someone who was born with a vagina it is not a biological imperative that I put on lipstick. This is not intended to shame women who do so, it is directed towards people who seem to think they can tell me I should do this because I am a woman.
I just finished Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks and well, damn if she isn’t brilliant when it comes to discussions of the way power works.
I have finally put an actual name to that ethereal thing I’ve wanted to study for years and this makes me kind of excited. (Sounds much better than “I am interested in economic tyranny and the way development is a vehicle for neocolonialism.” – which is NEVER this concise when I get asked to describe my primary interest. I feel a little dense that it took me this long to actually find a discipline that has the potential to explore this.)
And a link I meant to quote but never did. I thought there were more, but oh well:
The Sanctuary >> Hate Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum – A post that details the rhetoric and the hate crimes towards immigrants that have been occurring in the Long Island area. I’m shocked that it’s this extensive in my area and had no idea. I like the way the post emphasizes the importance of the way we speak about issues and how this can create an environment where these things occur – too often we devalue language and its impact.
Sep
14
Recent developments in Bolivia
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment
Trying to get a handle on recent events in Bolivia beyond what the mainstream news is going to tell us, a search for “Bolivian opposition funded by US” yields an article at Democracy Now. An interview with Benjamin Dangl reveals that Peace Corp volunteers were requested to spy on Venezuelans and Cubans in Bolivia, and FURTHER, that USAID is funding rightwing groups in Bolivia to help oppose Evo Morales.
USAID is the US government’s development agency but I’ve always wondered where the “helping hand” stops and the imperialism begins.
Interesting that when Morales was elected, funding for their program targeting Coca growers was frozen. I guess it was being directed…. elsewhere!
Andean Information Network – Bolivian Coca Growers Cut Ties with USAID
EDIT – Found this last night 9/16 – darkdaughta posted an email from School of the Americas Watch on the situation in Bolivia.
EDIT – 9/25 – Is a U.S.-Approved Coup Under Way in Bolivia?
Sep
9
“And what are the broader social implications for believing that there is just some power in this world that you shall remain completely passive in front of?” – brownfemipower
I would just like to give an ode to my wonderful blog feed. Lately whenever I feel like I’m really losing it, or just want to read something interesting I go to my reader and there is an endless amount of important/interesting/”this makes me feel sort of sane” stuff to keep me going.
The past few days have been no exception, though this post is meant to highlight the more disturbing things that have shown up. I still haven’t found a good way to quote a lot of material at once so it’ll probably be a little confusing.
Basically, while those at the RNC were crowing about freedom, civil rights and liberty the police were arresting activists preemptively and engaging in the brutal and unwarranted (illegal?) arrests of protesters. I’ve been reading a number of things about this and it’s basically going to be one huge list of entries with quotes. AS WELL, I’ve noticed a lot of comments from people that “these were just troublemaking democrats/liberals/leftists/anarchists who got what they deserved. L0lZ!!!@@#@”
I am quoting what brownfemipower quotes of Amy Goodman in her entry:
“There was a photographer right next to me who was also taken down pretty violently. He was screaming he was press, as well. He had credentials. He kept saying he was a photographer for the New York Post. And quite funnily, he said, “For Christ’s sake, it’s a Republican paper!” But that didn’t seem to matter.”
In that same entry are a compiled a bunch of videos on the matter I’m embedding Amy Goodman’s here:
Brownfemipower on Why All That Police Brutality Stuff Matters:
She didn’t do anything to deserve it.
And then I went back and thought of all the other dismissals about the police brutality we’ve seen.
What were those protesters expecting?
What did they think was going to happen?
Why were they even there?
Who cares, it’s their own fault for causing trouble!
It’s just a bunch of old hippies and troublemakers looking for attention!I’ve heard all this before. I’ve heard all this before over and over and over again.
What was she thinking?
What was she expecting was going to happen?
Why was she even there?
Who cares, it’s her own fault for causing trouble!
It’s just some fat bitch looking for some attention!
and a video – Police Brutality at the DNC – Cop slamming woman in the chest and then arresting her – brownfemipower
Nezua of The Unapologetic Mexican The Front Line is Everywhere – RNC 08:
The GOP actually needs an army now, to make itself evident and dare celebrate anything in public. They have lied, killed, they laugh while we suffer with health problems or bemoan the loss of life and humanity. They bring their army to protect them from the voice of the People they supposedly serve.
Chale. I am not sorry that I refuse to cheer for that army. I refuse to belittle those with enough heart to throw themselves at the symbols of encroaching police state and behind them, those who are responsible for all this hell and horror that our nation has entangled itself in and has unleashed upon other nations and thus, is becoming, morally and actually.
If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy. I just don’t think this is going to go away. I think as class divisions increase and resources become more scarce and the elitist politicians and CEOs and related kinds horde more treasure and starve the rest of both food, honest government, and truth, they will need more and more force to keep the illusion of a fair society in place.
and on his arrest at RNC 04 as part of the 1800 people that iWitness mentions in the next quote – Overlords in Name and Deed
PREEMPTIVE ARRESTS of the iWitness team – this is the blog entry that Eileen Clancy wrote as they were in a house that was surrounded by police:
This is Eileen Clancy, one of the founders of I-Witness Video, a NYC-based video collective that’s in St. Paul to document the policing of the protests around this week’s Republican National Convention.
The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone told me is an M-16.
We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don’t know, I-Witness Video was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out of 1800 arrests, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements which were fabricated by police officers. It seems that the house arrest we are now under and the possible threat of the seizure of our computers and video cameras is a result of the 2004 success.
We are asking the public to contact the office of St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman at 651-266-8510 to stop this house arrest, this gross intimidation by police officers, and the detention of media activists and reporters.
This doesn’t seem to be the half of it. There also seems to have been REPEATED RAIDS ON BOTH THEM AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED IN ACTIVISM DOWN THERE. THAT IS A LIST OF ARTICLES.
During the Olympics just weeks ago, there was endless hand-wringing over the efforts by the Chinese Government to squelch dissent and incarcerate protesters. On August 21, The Washington Post fretted:
Six Americans detained by police this week could be held for 10 days, according to Chinese authorities, who appear to be intensifying their efforts to shut down any public demonstrations during the final days of the Olympic Games. . . .
Chinese Olympic officials announced last month that Beijing would set up zones where people could protest during the Games, as long as they had received permission. None of the 77 applications submitted was approved, however, and several other would-be protesters were stopped from even applying.
On August 2, The Post gravely warned:
Behind the gray walls and barbed wire of the prison here, eight Chinese farmers with a grievance against the government have been consigned to Olympic limbo.
Their indefinite detainment, relatives and neighbors said, is the price they are paying for stirring up trouble as China prepares to host the Beijing Games. Trouble, the Communist Party has made clear, will not be permitted.
Would The Washington Post ever use such dark and accusatory tones to describe what the U.S. Government does? Of course it wouldn’t. Yet how is our own Government’s behavior in Minnesota any different than what the Chinese did to its protesters during the Olympics (other than the fact that we actually have a Constitution that prohibits such behavior)? And where are all the self-righteous Freedom Crusaders in our nation’s establishment organs who were so flamboyantly criticizing the actions of a Government on the other side of the globe as our own Government engages in the same tyrannical, protest-squelching conduct with exactly the same motives?
Just review what happened yesterday and today. Homes of college-aid protesters were raided by rifle-wielding police forces. Journalists were forcibly detained at gun point. Lawyers on the scene to represent the detainees were handcuffed. Computers, laptops, journals, diaries, and political pamphlets were seized from people’s homes. And all of this occurred against U.S. citizens, without a single act of violence having taken place, and nothing more serious than traffic blockage even alleged by authorities to have been planned.
A fine time to be reading The Shock Doctrine.
Aug
27
SOMEONE ACTUALLY SAID IT OUTRIGHT
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment
My jaw dropped.
Deval Patrick’s DNC speech -
The poor are in terrible shape. But the middle class are one paycheck away, one serious illness away from being poor.
I see this attitude a lot. It’s like, the poor are poor and that sucks but they’ll always be poor, and obviously if they’re poor they deserve it, oh well! But now the middle class are impacted, and that’s a real issue! The middle class don’t deserve to be poor, now we need to fix things!
ETA: The transcript of the speech has him saying “and.” So while it wasn’t intentional, I think it a pretty appropriate slip!
Aug
25
Been slowwwwwwwwwly reading my way through Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, a compilation of talks Noam Chomsky has given and came across this today…. feel like it really pertains to my last post:
Look, there isn’t any true capitalist society in the world, it couldn’t survive for ten minutes, but there are variations on capitalism, and the U.S. is towards the capitalist end of the world spectrum – not very far towards it, I should say, but towards it at least in values. And if you had a truly capitalist society, everything would be a commodity, including freedom: there would be as much of it as you can buy. Well, since the U.S. is towards that end of the spectrum, it means there’s an awful lot of freedom around if you can afford it. So, if you’re a black organizer in the ghetto, you don’t have much of it, and you’re in trouble – they can send the Chicago police in to murder you, like they did with Fred Hampton [a Black Panther assassinated by the F.B.I. in 1969]. But if you’re a white professional like me, you can buy a lot of freedom.
flickr
