Misogyny in Hollywood

The Apostate writes:

It was silly and very disrespectful to women because it put the burden of sex solely on women, as if sex is all about us and our bodies, not about men’s nakedness. That’s exactly the reason I refuse to have artistic nudes of women in my home – not until there is also an accompanying artistic nude of a man. That’s also why women’s nudity in Hollywood films offends me: It is not only often gratuitous, but so one-sided. I want to see butts and penises of men, thanks – I like women’s bodies, but it’s always misogynistic to strip lop-sidedly.

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Attempted Assassination in Oaxaca

Atximc posts a blog on the attempted assassination of Marcos Garcia in the blog el enemigo común:

On Tuesday November, 27th 2006 in Putla Villa de Guerrero Oaxaca, Marcos Garcia, a state council member of CODEP, one of the many groups inside of the Oaxacan People’s Popular Assembly APPO, is ambushed by four men armed with assault rifles. The men fire over 140 rounds at Garcia’s vehicle, 8 of which impact him all over his body. Garcia survives the attack, and lives to tell his story.

Corporate Sex

Queer Dewd writes about sex in the corporate work place:

What is it with corporate America? I’ve realized that it’s no wonder a lot of people think I’m a freak. Most people spend their lives in a corporate America where it’s de riguer to act as if humans don’t actually have sex or know what it is. Which is a laff a minute given what drives corporate America otherwise: sex. Selling sex, sex, and more sex. I mean christ, among other things, we’re selling cars, boats, yachts, aircraft and lord knows what else. All of those things are sold, each and everyday, on the basis of advertisements and a cultural tapestry of various symbolism which associate cars, boats, yachts, and aircraft with sex, sex, sex.

Hidden Poverty

belledame222 writes:

On a thread a while back a woman spoke about never seeing poverty in the U.S. as bad as what she saw in Mexico. I and lots of other people spoke about how poverty is hidden in the U.S. by zoning laws, police and the prison system.

Here’s a story from the LA Times about a particular hidden community

MC Rove: Not Exactly the Dopest

Nezua blogs over at the Unapologetic Mexican about the racist appropriation of hip-hop at the Radio-Television Correspondent’s Dinner, which included a freestyle performance by none other than Karl Rove.

The point is that for me to see rich, pink, warmongers handling Hip-Hop as a weapon both against black people (see the token grin and clap to lines like “He’s so White, he’ll never be beat”) as well as against the process of Justice creeping up on the GOPs power-hoarding and lording (Fitzgerald tears off “animal tops”?) makes me want to SCREAM.

Someone Else’s Problem

N. (from Bangolore, India) blogs about an encounter she had with a publisher from a feminist publishing house in her blog Noah’s Ark Broken:

I find it disturbing that the representative of a feminist publishing house is not clear about what feminism means, not to the world at large but even just to them. That she gets defensive about the word ‘feminist’. That three other writers with her believe that “women like us” don’t have “such problems” therefore, women like us don’t have to write about them. I find it especially disturbing because it reflects a trend that is common among urban educated women from upper middle class families in India. Feminism is passe. Feminism is uncool. And mostly, it is Somebody Else’s Problem.

Originally linked by Bhupinder at Blog Bharti.

Someone Else’s Problem

N. (from Bangolore, India) blogs about an encounter she had with a publisher from a feminist publishing house in her blog Noah’s Ark Broken:

I find it disturbing that the representative of a feminist publishing house is not clear about what feminism means, not to the world at large but even just to them. That she gets defensive about the word ‘feminist’. That three other writers with her believe that “women like us” don’t have “such problems” therefore, women like us don’t have to write about them. I find it especially disturbing because it reflects a trend that is common among urban educated women from upper middle class families in India. Feminism is passe. Feminism is uncool. And mostly, it is Somebody Else’s Problem.

Originally linked by Bhupinder at Blog Bharti.

Policy of Death

Arthur Silber blogs about U.S. foreign policy in his blog Once Upon a Time…:

One of the primary ways in which evil advances is by means of people’s refusal to see the connection between their actions and their ultimate results. As I have often pointed out, those results are felt by specific, individual human beings. These are not finally abstract questions of “policy” or of intentionally unenforceable “timetables”: these are people’s lives — and people’s deaths.

The Need for Decentralizaiton

Spencer Overton argues against the need for Black leadership in the blog blackprof.com:

a Black “leader” may be the last thing we need.

I just read The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom. The premise of the book is that there are limitations to centralized, coercive, hierarchical organizations headed by a single leader. Decentralized, open groups are often more effective. The title contrasts a spider (chop off its head and it dies) with a starfish (chop it up and it multiplies into several starfish).

Round Eyes

Jenn, of the blog Reappropriate, writes about erasing one’s ethnicty through plastic surgery:

It’s clear to me that any person of colour seeking to change their features to alter features associated with a particular ethnicity is trying to change their ethnic appearance. As an Asian/Asian American woman, trying to enlarge one’s eyes (whether one is successful or not) is just a manifestation of racial/ethnic self-hate.

Capitalism: Money and the State

Phalcon blogs about the nature of capitalism in the blog Guerillas in the Matrix:

The article from which the above is taken does a good job of describing a situation but I believe it misses a key point: the state is not the sole, or the chief entity to blame for this “stratification.” The marriage of wealth and power is the true culprit, and so there are two elements at work here: money and the state. “Social stratification” is actually stratification of money and power – in other words, class.

Note: The first part of the blog page has a lot of text and pictures and the actual blog entry is below all of that.

To Fight or Not To Fight?

G., of the blog subliminal tyranny, shares his internal struggles and doubts:

Beauty makes giving up hurt that much more: I’m not ready to quit, but I don’t know if continuing the battle is worth it.

Mubarak and Elections

As’ad discusses Egypts refurendum in his blog The Angry Arab News Service:

Independent observers report a turnout of 2 or 3% in Mubarak’s referendum, and the official Al-Ahram has this headline: “Mass showing that surpassed expectations in the referendum on the constitutional amendments: citizens ignore the calls by the opposition for a boycott.” But then the same newspaper reports a turnout (in different regions) of: 20%, 21%, 24%, 29%, 40%, 23%, 35%, 29%, 30%, 20%, 20%, 15%, 25%, 21%, 55.6%, 60%, 19%, 30%, and 40%. So which is which, o Mubarak’s mouthpiece?

“Chinese” Rap

Angry Asian Man, on the second (from the top) 3.23.07 (there are no hyperlinks for Angry Asian Man) post writes about a “Chinese Freestyle Rap” video circulating from YouTube:

I know people just want say, hey, can’t you take a joke? But it’s crap like this that continues to caricature and dehumanize Chinese food deliverymen and other similar laborers who are just trying to make an honest living. It perpetuates the notion that they’re somehow less than human. Don’t tell me there’s no connection with this sentiment and the high rate of crime and violence directed towards Chinese food deliverymen.

“Chinese” Rap

Angry Asian Man, on the second (from the top) 3.23.07 (there are no hyperlinks for Angry Asian Man) post writes about a “Chinese Freestyle Rap” video circulating from YouTube:

I know people just want say, hey, can’t you take a joke? But it’s crap like this that continues to caricature and dehumanize Chinese food deliverymen and other similar laborers who are just trying to make an honest living. It perpetuates the notion that they’re somehow less than human. Don’t tell me there’s no connection with this sentiment and the high rate of crime and violence directed towards Chinese food deliverymen.

The Justice System

vegankid, on the blog Taking Place, writes about a young Black girl being sentenced to prison:

When i first read this headline at whitesoap.com, i thought, “this has to be an exaggeration.” So I followed the link to the Chicago Tribune article and sure enough, 14-year-old freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, was sentenced to 7 years in prison for shoving a hall monitor at Paris High School.
…
And just three months before Shaquanda’s conviction, a White 14-year-old female was convicted by the same judge of arson for burning down her family’s house. She was sentenced to probation. The article didn’t say whether she has to write Christmas cards to her family.

Gay Beating OK in Cops Eyes

A blogger, on the blog aggregator Best Gay Blogs, describes a fight he was in and the reaction by a Denver police officer:

Three times I insisted that I wanted Officer Boehnlein and his partner to arrest my attackers and to every request he said “No, go home”. I told him I was a second year law student and that I know I had the right to defend myself after I was attacked. I told him that I have the right to press charges. I told him this was a hate crime. He didn’t care.

A Worthy Massacre

The author of Lenin’s Tomb posts a blog on how liberals are calling for Europe to intervene in the Sudan:

I have no problem with the desire to show solidarity with the people suffering from Khartoum’s vicious counter-insurgency programme…But…the idea that European states have a responsibility to save Africa when many of them are busy destroying it, is utterly bizarre. Imagine one hasn’t got a memory that extends back further than 1989, and suppose that there was never such a thing as colonial genocide, mass hangings, concentration camps, devastating politically-imposed famines and so forth.

Just Another Propoganda Commodity

LeeSee writes a blog about Pat Tilman’s death and government lies in the blog Hasta Los Gatos Quieren Zapatos:

Does the government war machine imagine us so stupid that we will swallow what ever shit they put on a spoon? Do they think we are so misinformed we will fall for any lie regarding the motives for the war and that we believe in patriotism and the American Way of Life? Do they really believe we don’t understand the motives of the Halliburton war machine? That we don’t get the phrase; “no blood for oil” ?

“Britain Shall Never Surrender!”

Snowball, of the British blog Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism, writes about Britain’s role in the slave trade:

Today, such past apologetics for the slave trade and slavery are quietly hushed up – the complicity of the whole British ruling class in the affair – the worst crime in British history – is distinctly embarrassing. ‘Stop apologising!’ screams the Tory commentator Simon Jenkins, describing how he ‘cheered when a descendent of the Bristol slaver, Pinney, refused to apologise for the deeds of his forefathers’. What conservatives of all stripes want us to do is forget the whole affair – they know above all that ‘Great’ Britain, or their green and pleasant land of England, might be tarnished or complicated by such unpleasant and brutal realities. Nationalism is an ideology which has to be constantly produced and reproduced to survive – it depends on myths, on the ideal of national unity – despite that fact that nations are always imagined communities designed to help the powerful shore up hierachical divisions of race, gender and class.

“Britain Shall Never Surrender!”

Snowball, of the British blog Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism, writes about Britain’s role in the slave trade:

Today, such past apologetics for the slave trade and slavery are quietly hushed up – the complicity of the whole British ruling class in the affair – the worst crime in British history – is distinctly embarrassing. ‘Stop apologising!’ screams the Tory commentator Simon Jenkins, describing how he ‘cheered when a descendent of the Bristol slaver, Pinney, refused to apologise for the deeds of his forefathers’. What conservatives of all stripes want us to do is forget the whole affair – they know above all that ‘Great’ Britain, or their green and pleasant land of England, might be tarnished or complicated by such unpleasant and brutal realities. Nationalism is an ideology which has to be constantly produced and reproduced to survive – it depends on myths, on the ideal of national unity – despite that fact that nations are always imagined communities designed to help the powerful shore up hierachical divisions of race, gender and class.

Real White Women

Winter, of the UK blog Mind the Gap, posts a blog on a discussion she and others had about the rise in “lad mags” in the UK:

The construction of female reality is interesting because Nuts, Zoo and Loaded repeatedly claim to be offering images of “real girls” as a marketing ploy — that is women who aren’t professional models or celebrities. I guess presenting some women as “real” creates a fantasy of attainability for male readers, but it’s interesting to think about what this narrative is doing. All women are real. A glamour model is as real as a woman taking a digital picture of herself in her bedroom and a lot of the women sending in their images seem to be aspiring glamour models anyway. The few who are picked out for a centerfold in the magazine then have their digitally enhanced images lauded as “real.” Women putting themselves up for male judgement and approval is an important part of the narrative: they are asked to send in their pictures from which the “best” will be selected for rewards (more pictures in the magazine and a possible career break).

One Young Man’s Atrocities

In the wake of Japan’s official denial of its World War II atrocities against “comfort women,” the folks over at The Fighting 44s post the story of Yasuji Kaneko, a veteran of the Imperial Army who tells readers about his own rapes of Chinese and Korean women forced into sexual slavery:

“They cried out, but it didn’t matter to us whether the women lived or died,” Kaneko said in an interview at his Tokyo home. “We were the Emperor’s soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance.”

Japan’s forced prostitution of some 200,000 women in military brothels in the 1930s and ’40s has long constituted one of the most horrifying chapters of its wartime rampage across Asia. The top government spokesman was finally forced to acknowledge wrongdoing in 1993.

Now the government is questioning whether the apology was needed.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday publicly denied women were forced into the military brothels in conquered lands, boosting renewed efforts by rightwing politicians who claim the women involved were professional prostitutes rather than victims of abuse.

One Young Man’s Atrocities

In the wake of Japan’s official denial of its World War II atrocities against “comfort women,” the folks over at The Fighting 44s post the story of Yasuji Kaneko, a veteran of the Imperial Army who tells readers about his own rapes of Chinese and Korean women forced into sexual slavery:

“They cried out, but it didn’t matter to us whether the women lived or died,” Kaneko said in an interview at his Tokyo home. “We were the Emperor’s soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance.”

Japan’s forced prostitution of some 200,000 women in military brothels in the 1930s and ’40s has long constituted one of the most horrifying chapters of its wartime rampage across Asia. The top government spokesman was finally forced to acknowledge wrongdoing in 1993.

Now the government is questioning whether the apology was needed.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday publicly denied women were forced into the military brothels in conquered lands, boosting renewed efforts by rightwing politicians who claim the women involved were professional prostitutes rather than victims of abuse.

Racist Freestyle Yellowface

The moderators over at the blog CKY=KKK Against the Chinese Freestyle Rap alert readers about a disturbing trend among fans of the CKY (Camp Kill Yourself) rock band, the “Chinese Freestyle Rap”:

We’ve already seen on this blog that the Brandon Dicamillo Chinese Freestyle Rap is incredibly popular. People love this stuff. IT’S SO FUNNY. It’s not just one video. There could be hundreds of slightly different versions. It’s spread to Sweden. Little kids who look like they’re 9 years old are uploading videos of themselves singing it. They build a whole sick community where racism is normalized.