links for 2009-02-23
February 23, 2009-
But, but, they voted for Hamas. Tell me what you would do! Tell me! Who do you believe, who do you listen to, who do you rely on? You are walled into a prison with guns pointed at you all the time. Food is not allowed in, fuel is not allowed in, medical supplies are not allowed in. You lose count of family members violently dead or maimed. Your schools and hospitals and places of worship are destroyed, your neighborhood is full of rubble with few buildings intact, and you cannot expect to live to thirty. And you don't know any of the people on the other side of that wall.
Who do you listen to as a reliable source? The guys with the guns pointed at you, who took the food away and tell you you deserve to have nothing, but who the outside world tells you are decent folks acting justly? Or the people you're told are evil scumbags, but who provide you food, medicine, a little pride, a little order, and the promise to fight for you? -
Millions of women have died of unsafe abortions in the 35 years since the Helms Amendment was enacted, and tens of millions more have suffered injuries and disabilities due to complications. The end of the Global Gag Rule will begin a new era of U.S. foreign policy that will improve women's health and lives. But the Helms Amendment will remain a major impediment to efforts by governments, advocates and organizations to ensure that the world's poorest do not have to face unsafe abortion. Even with Helms in place, through new and clarifying guidance, the administration can lessen its harm, comply with U.S. international commitments, and save lives of the world's poorest women.
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In the Bible, the land of Israel is promised to the Hebrews, etc. etc. etc. This has no actual relevance, of course. But even people who aren’t that religious sometimes buy into the belief that Jews have a right to that patch of desert that supersedes others’ right to it, because their ancestors lived and worshiped there, or that the haven for Jews all over the world has to be right there. (Somewhat unsurprisingly, the same people are distinctly unwilling to give their houses to descendants of Native Americans.)…Because “pro-Israel” is nearly as bullshit a phrase as “pro-America.” Does being “pro-Israel” mean you support Israel’s right to exist? Sure, why not. Does it mean you support its right to exist if it has to ban non-Jewish political parties and discriminate against non-Jewish immigrants in order to do so? Less black-and-white.
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The film is plot-driven, not character-driven. In fact, it is puzzle-driven, since each episode in Jamal's life, in almost picaresque fashion, is told around the answer to a question on the Indian version of "Who wants to be a Millionaire?". Jamal's character, with his quiet stubborn integrity, never alters from childhood to adulthood. Salim is a fighter throughout. And Latika is never defined, swinging between easy coquetry, realistic debauchery, resigned domestic slavery and the high-mindedness of having a one true love. It is the failure of character development and the concentration on puzzle-solving that are the least satisfying and least realistic elements of the film. Would Jamal really never have learned to compromise, ethically or otherwise, in the conditions under which he grew up? Would not Latika have been warped and neurotic and disease-ridden after those years of sexual bondage?
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There’s no doubt about it – pregnancy can be a costly affair for employers. AND that’s why we have laws forbidding lay-offs due to pregnancy. I can see why it’s tempting for employers to fire the pregnant woman, they have a business to run and being nice doesn’t figure on the annual budgets, and this is exactly why the consequences for breaking the law MUST be more expensive than it’d be to keep the wman employee.
See, right now damages are perhaps fair to the women, but in most cases it’s still cheaper for the company to fire her and pay damages than to keep her and pay both her and her substitute. See the problem? Pregnant women will still be losing their jobs, and once you don’t have a job AND are pregnant it’s pretty fucking hard to get one – same goes if you an infant at home. So perhaps it shouldn’t just be a matter of paying damages, perhaps fines should also be introduced, to increase the cost of undue lay-offs for the companies.
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In a perfect world, no woman would ever need to end a pregnancy. But in reality, one in three women will have at least one abortion by the time she is 45, and these women run the gamut of ages, races, backgrounds and beliefs. “I’ve seen every type of woman in my office, from Catholics to Muslims to mothers with three kids,” says Dr. Oyer. “I’ve even treated someone I recognized—because I’d seen her before, protesting right outside my clinic.”
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And this is where porn comes in. Men have come to assume that using porn is a right. How many of my readers have been in a relationship with a dude who thinks he’s entitled to use porn and that it’s your responsibility to “get over it”? How many of my male readers have used porn while in a relationship, knowing that it made your partner uncomfortable? Why, might I ask my male porn-using readers, do you feel entitled to do something that hurts someone you (purportedly) care about? I have a suggestion for women who are dealing with a porn-using partner: start making out with other men until he stops. Tell him it isn’t cheating because there’s no penetration — and because you don’t feel anything for the other men — and that he’s lucky because you’re coming home to him. Tell him that, since it isn’t technically cheating, he has no right to try to tell you what to do. And then tell him he’s being a hysterical, whiny little bitch if he doesn’t just get over it, that he’s just jealous.
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Long before the wider society woke up to the problem of religious extremism in its midst, perhaps from the mid-80s onwards, women's groups like Southall Black Sisters (SBS) were becoming aware of the growing religious restrictions on the women they were seeing. Militant Khalistanis fighting for an independent theocratic Punjab in India were making their presence felt in Southall and life was becoming more difficult as a result for young women on the streets.
So when the Rushdie affair broke, SBS realised that this was the not just an isolated case of religious fervour. They organised a meeting of white and black feminists from a range of political traditions, ethnic and religious backgrounds which culminated in the founding of Women Against Fundamentalism (WAF) in 1989.
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Peta is well known for its advertising that includes naked women, but the lesser-known ads are also fat shaming, transphobic, ableist and antisemitic. In its most recent attention-grabber, Peta organisers dressed up in white robes and caps, in a reference to the KKK, as they handed out flyers to protest the start of the Westminster Kennel Club Show. In their so-called concern for the ethical treatment of animals, they forgot that humans are also animals. Where is their respect for black people and Jews who historically have been specifically targeted by the KKK?
The KKK is a terrorist organisation. An individual dressed akin to them would not appear to any person of colour as benign, considering the historical interactions. Instead of being encouraged to learn about the message that Peta was trying to promote, they would most likely experience some form of trauma and fear.
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His argument is not that her condition might be reversed, that she might regain some sort of consciousness one day. Not that this was not her wish. It isn’t coming from a disability-rights perspective or any notions of slippery-slope.
No, he thinks she’s a potential fetus container.
Never mind that impregnation by the usual means would be rape. Never mind that she cannot consent to insemination. Never mind that there is no one except him and the Vatican who wants to shove embryos or sperm into this unconscious woman. Her potential as a comatose incubator is the only thing that he thinks gives her existence any value.
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This was my first "mind-blown" experience. At five it had never occurred to me that I could make Barbie or any drawing anything I wanted it to be. I was following "the rules." Barbies were white. Beautiful people were white. I had never occurred to me that I could "break the rules." I looked at my dad's coloring and thought that was the most beautiful Barbie in the world.
I never colored a white Barbie again. I wanted them to be all as beautiful as the one my father had made.
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In this project, P7 students at three schools in Opit IDP camp (one never displaced, one displaced to Opit but now returned to village, one still displaced to Opit) documented life as students and community members through words and images.
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First, a wastefully huge swarm of sperm weakly flops along, its members bumping into walls and flailing aimlessly through thick strands of mucus. Eventually, through sheer odds of pinball-like bouncing more than anything else, a few sperm end up close to an egg. As they mill around, the egg selects one and reels it in, pinning it down in spite of its efforts to escape. It’s no contest, really. The gigantic, hardy egg yanks this tiny sperm inside, distills out the chromosomes, and sets out to become an embryo.
Or would you have put it differently? Until very recently, so would most biologists. For decades they’ve been portraying sperm as intrepid warriors battling their way to an aging, passive egg that can do little but await the sturdy victor’s final, bold plunge. But the first description is closer to the truth, insists Emily Martin, a 47-year-old researcher at Johns Hopkins who has spent the past seven years examining the metaphors used to describe fertilization.
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No wonder the Financial Times is making a fuss about the downturn: our readers are suffering more than most. That, at least, is my conclusion after reading the research of two economists from America’s Northwestern University, Jonathan Parker and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen. Drawing on US data, they found that the biggest spenders are those whose spending fluctuates a lot. The consumption rates of the top 10 per cent of households fluctuate 10 times more than those of the majority – the bottom 80 per cent of households. So a fall in overall consumption is a blip for most people, but a slump for those near the top.
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What do we even mean by saying "obesity causes cancer"? Do we mean that the obese person who gets cancer wouldn't have got it had they been slimmer? Or that they would have been slightly less likely to get cancer? How much slimmer do you have to get? Is there some magical chemical change in your body when your BMI passes through the overweight or obese thresholds?
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In order to unravel the bizarre beliefs of Farquhar and the other (listed) BNP member of the British Israel World Federation (BIWF), let's first have a look at what the BIWF teaches.
Founded in 1919, and currently Registered Charity No. 208079, the BIWF is an organisation that promotes an esoteric interpretation of the Bible, in particular of 'prophetic' passages in the Old Testament, which was first popularised in the 'glory days' of the British Empire. According to the theory of British Israelism, the British, and other European peoples, are in reality the so-called 'lost tribes' of Israel, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who were expelled during the Assyrian Captivity…If we ignore British fascists' links to warped racist versions of Christianity, we do so at our peril.
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Although Britain probably has a lot less ‘hate filled rhetoric against liberals’ floating around the public radio networks or other forms of public access media, that is not to say it does not lurk in a postcode near you. Harry’s Place regular, Edmund Standing, posted a superb research piece on British Fascists and ‘Christian’ racism well worth reading:
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When I hear of conservative groups supporting legislation to help out pregnant women and their children, it actually makes me think that some compromise may be possible. Don’t get me wrong: I believe that the right to begin, continue or end a pregnancy is absolute. But I also have no problem understanding why other people, even other women, believe otherwise. And while I’ll happily fight those same people tooth and nail to keep abortion safe and legal for all women, regardless of their age and financial situation, I’d consider it a huge accomplishment if we could at least make policy on the parts we agree on.
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But this goes beyond that – beyond the insistence that since feminism supposedly has this goal to end gender, that all trans people everywhere must also want the same thing. That trans people must somehow fit into feminist theories about what gender is and why it exists. Per these theories, womanhood doesn’t really exist, therefore making it impossible for trans women (but not cis women) to be women. Cis women get to exist because they were born female. The reason that gender doesn’t exist is because it’s a social construct.
Social constructs include, but are not limited to: laws, governments, national borders, police powers, marriage, religion, families, property, citizenship, loyalty, love, money, cities, states, and nations…the fact is that existing as a concept does not make these things imaginary, for good or ill. Similarly, gender is not imaginary. Gender is real, and part of our everyday life, again for good or ill.
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Though only just under 3,000 women have actually signed the document since its unveiling on October 11, the fact that it exists, and the campaign to gather such a large showing of public support, reveals something important about this movement: that its followers don’t view themselves simply as a remnant of polite, churchy women, holding out against a crass culture, but rather as a revolutionary body waging “countercultural” rebellion against what they see as the feminist status quo.
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In recent years Hollywood has increasingly embraced foreign actors — last year's acting winners were all European — while increasingly relying on revenue from foreign shores.
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Just because Kuczynski is married and wealthy does not make her less obsessive or more profound than Suleman. Kuczynski sounds like a sad, silly child mooning over "fertile but fit" stars like Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Salma Hayek and "John Edwards's sometime mistress," who all had babies in their 40s. Likewise, Suleman takes heart looking at Angelina Jolie. Suleman and Kuczynski represent disturbing emotional extremes. But that should not excuse the rest of us from examining the oppressive competitive natality that seems to have gripped us–the fantasies of "baby bumps" and breeding, always breeding, yet more of "our kind."
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But Wolfson, Moore and thousands of mothers like them call themselves and their belief system "Quiverfull." They borrow their name from Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate." Quiverfull mothers think of their children as no mere movement but as an army they're building for God.
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READERS are going to start thinking I'm obsessed, but I think the final proof that Barack Obama plans once and for all to elevate respect for Americans who don't practice a religion came at this morning's National Prayer Breakfast:
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incl nominees list.
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I wanted to post this because her quote “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” is probably the most misquoted line by radical/progressives in existence and has been used to justify all sorts of crap that I have real problems believing Lorde would have supported.
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IDR: Oh, no. I mean, normally I try not to piss people off, because if I piss off my boss I could get fired, and if I piss off my landlord I could get thrown out of my apartment, and if I piss off my banker I'll never get the loan I want, and if I piss off random strangers on the street I could get punched, and if I piss off a cop I could get shot. I can negotiate all of that, no problem. I'm used to it. But if I piss off a bunch of fans of color, they'll be saying nasty things about me on the internet for days! It's very intimidating.
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Anyway, according to a lot of [info]tnh defenders, all of this is old news. She was *upset*. Somebody she cared about had been *attacked*. They were *hurting*. As always, these selfsame defenders refused to acknowledge that just because poor poor [info]tnh and [info]pnh were crying into their Wheaties, didn't mean that hadn't *done something wrong* and caused huge amounts of pain. They also refused to take even one second to think about why they were trying to hard to defend [info]tnh and [info]pnh's tone while simultaneously attacking every single POC who had appeared thus far as "too angry" and in one case "a pack" (of what, I wonder?).
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Because liberal academics control the minds of your children, such historical myths are propagated without much fight. But the time to fight is now. It is time for us to look back at history through a conservative lens and see the truth about American history. A truth that liberal university professors are either unwilling or unable to share.
Such as:
* Hurricane Katrina was not caused by weather systems. It was caused by an angry God, upset that New Orleans was too gay-friendly.
* The Holocaust just wasn’t that bad.
* Cutting taxes always helps the economy. -
Remember, if you wear a Nazi costume to a party, tell a black person that he doesn’t sound like a black person and call people from Pakistan “Pakis” and “Ragheads,” then you’re a racist. If you’re third-in-line to the British throne and do these things, however, you are just guilty of being “gaffe-prone.”
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I think that these “respectability” standards wherein women’s appearance is concerned are always sexist and always arbitrary. Men who adopt faux-radfem rhetoric to enforce these rules get my misogyny radar blooping and bleeping like nothing else. The women who cheer them on do too.
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PETA Dresses Up As KKK
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And this is also why, when someone tells me that my clothes are “too tight” and that “you don’t have to wear tight clothes to be sexy,” I feel rage. I wonder if they know how hard I had to work just to feel like I was even allowed to wear those clothes, much less feel confident and beautiful in them. I wonder if they’ve ever been slut bashed, and wonder if they’re policing my fashion because they’ve been slut bashed. But I especially don’t understand it when those criticisms come from other supposedly fat-positive people, because in my world, letting the outline of your belly show in a dress, or wearing something sleeveless that doesn’t hide your arm fat isn’t just ok, it’s appreciated. Tight clothes on fat bodies are inherently political, and I would even say moreso when those tight clothes look damn good and are worn with pride.
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"If you could all stop acting like you're generally pleased to see black people walking around, out in the open, that would be better for all of us," NAACP president Benjamin Jealous said to a smiling and misty-eyed press corps that was "just thrilled" to have him there. "It's very kind of you to be so enthusiastic about our achievements, but if it's still on the table, we'd like to return to the times when your reactions varied between unfounded apprehension and complete indifference. To be honest, you people are kind of terrifying when you're happy."
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Compare “transitioning is harmful and it’s wrong to remove healthy tissue!” to a homophobe’s thoughts on how queer sex is Dangerous and Bad For You. They sound the same and they are both just as wrong.
If you believe the notion that being trans* is self harm that means you believe there is something wrong with being trans*; that it is right and natural to be cis*.
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For all of the claims that Watchmen the book was unfilmable, very few of them centered around the kind of special effects needed to make us believe a man could explode and then re-create himself as a glowing blue naked go (In fact, shitty special effects may even have been more in tune with the arch-knowingness of the original book that both acknowledged and transcended its pulpy, ridiculous roots). No, what would make Watchmen unfilmable – and what the trailers and the arcade game-style web extras and the released scenes with too much slow-mo and the black and white portraits od actors and everything we've seen from the film so far have failed to show us is in evidence in the movie – is the deftness of Alan Moore's writing, which manages to balance a formal exploration of the comic medium with a complex, flawed humanity that looks "behind the hood" of the characters to make them into real people who would look ridiculous in those outfits.
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Apparently patience is a partisan virtue, extended only to presidents who start wars and depressions, not those who are elected to clean them up.
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Now, via Angry Black Woman, we get the news that Berlusconi has taken the police state thing one step further — by blaming sexual violence on immigrants and authorizing what are essentially vigilante squads to help combat the “problem.”
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Now, at a time when 70% of women are in the workforce, career women in romantic comedies are generally either portrayed as incompetent, cruel, or both. Dr Tamar Jeffers McDonald, an academic at the University of Kent and an expert on romantic comedies, says that she finds it "quite insulting that a career woman now is something that is so frowned upon. You see depictions of women who are supposedly at the top of their game, yet they can't walk down a corridor in a white suit without pouring coffee on themselves or walking into a bush. The films are not very subtly saying 'yes, they may be at the top in their jobs, but actually what they really need is a man. In fact, a husband.'"
