#vulgar comment on female politician

[dumbestthingiveeverheard]

Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard: 7/17/2023

Before we begin, I just want to say that, no, I'm not going to be talking about the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. comments--primarily because everybody else in the media already tore him to shreds over them and I have quite literally nothing to add.

Third Place: E.W. Jackson

Yes, the deranged right-wing pastor is running for President, as Right Wing Watch reported today. Among his proposals are a repeal on same-sex marriage and a Constitutional Amendment which states that “for purposes of law and rights, there are only two genders; that’s male and female, that’s it.” His website includes the text of this proposed Constitutional Amendment, which would also ban the legal recognition of transgender identities on government documents and a banning of transgender people from the public restroom that aligns with their gender identity.

Of course, the President can't just declare the Constitution to be amended, it needs the support of both two thirds of Congress and three fourths of the states. George W. Bush tried to do something similar regarding same-sex marriage--which Jackson also pushes for on his website--and given he was unable to do so at the height of the power of the religious right in the 2000s, the odds of this happening under a President Jackson is about the same as--well, the odds of a President Jackson.

Seriously, the polls have said from the start that this race was going to be between Trump and DeSantis--and it looks like many political commentators, myself includes, were being too nice to DeSantis through considering him a possible rival to Trump. His campaign is failing, and given he is the one with the best chance besides Trump, it doesn't look well for anybody else.

Second Place: Rupert Murdoch

Media Matters released a report today regarding who Murdoch is currently trying to push for President: Glenn Youngkin! Yeah, the Governor of Virginia who barley won his race despite having everything in his favor. He was running as a Republican during a time where a Republican was almost certainly going to win, and against a former Governor in a state known for its hatred of career politicians. Even then, only sixty thousand votes kept him from losing--and Murdoch wants that man to be President, and he's going to push that message with every right-wing propaganda mill he owns.

Winner: Jared Moskowitz

This is a blink and you miss it kind of stupidity, but it's still worth pointing out. While on MSNBC today, Moskowitz compared the recent comment from Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal about Israel being a racist state to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s claim that COVID-19 was scientifically engineered to not kill Jews, because both are examples of antisemitism.

Of course, nothing Jayapal said was antisemitic--there is a difference between criticizing the state of Israel and criticizing the religious of Judaism and its followers just as there's a difference between criticizing the nation of Saudi Arabia and the religion of Islam and its followers. And this attempt to conflate the two, although not uncommon among those who dishonestly argue for Zionism, is disgusting--regardless of what you think of Jayapal's comments, every decent person should be condemning these comparisons and calling them nothing short of vulgar smears.

Jared Moskowitz, you've said the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

[kayla1993-world]

For 18 months, she gave the middle finger to her police bosses in a scorched earth, expletive-filled Twitter campaign against what the self-described whistleblower claimed was rampant sexism and racism among cops and politicians. To no one's surprise, she has been shown the door. Firouzeh “ Effy ” Zarabi-Majd, on paid medical leave for PTSD since 2018, has seven days to resign or she’s fired. After being charged in 2021, the embattled cop cited PTSD and did not attend the tribunal. “She simply wants to avoid being held accountable,” said hearing officer Robin McElary-Downer. Last December, she found Zarabi-Majd guilty of four counts of insubordination and four of discreditable conduct under the Police Act. Until her Dirty Shades of Blue Twitter account was suspended in 2022, the 51 Division officer posted 25,000 tweets to over 6,000 followers over three years that included “vulgarities, obscenities, libelous and false information and degrading comments towards TPS senior officers, the TPS Board, members of municipal government and members of the public.” Sworn in as an officer since 2009, Zarabi-Majd insisted she had been the victim of continuous sexual harassment for nearly a decade. The issues she complained about were hardly imaginary: In 2020, former Const. Heather McWilliam won a landmark human rights case that awarded her $85,000 for enduring a poisoned work environment and sexual harassment. A 2022 Deloitte survey commissioned by Toronto Police found 60% of the 908 respondents had experienced or witnessed harassment or discrimination on the job in the past 5 years. But Zarabi-Majd made few allies with her campaign of feces emojis. The public would view her relentless tweeting of “slanderous accusations of patriarchy, discrimination, racism, and homophobia” as unacceptable, ruled McElary-Downer. In 2018, Zarabi-Majd filed a complaint alleging harassment, racism, and sexual assault by her male colleagues. She was ordered in February 2021 to come in to provide evidence to TPS professional affairs about her allegations but refused to attend. “Workplace harassment does not entitle nor excuse a victim to commit misconduct,” the hearing officer said. “There are appropriate avenues to report such unwanted behavior – and posting tweets on social media damaging the police service's reputation is not an option.” That included reposting on Twitter vile, racist content from a group chat of her male colleagues instead of reporting it to her superiors so they could be investigated, McElary-Downer said. “Rather she chose to publicly shame the TPS.” She also condemned Zarabi-Majd for stalking a former female colleague, suffering from PTSD, to pressure her into testifying about alleged police racism and for repeatedly ignoring requests not to tweet about her. “Const. Zarabi-Majd’s misconduct spanned 18 months. Multiple times, she disobeyed lawful orders. She yelled obscenities at senior officers, using the crudest of terms verbally and electronically. She publicly broadcast her defiance. She publicly accused the TPS, senior officers, and her Board of appalling conduct, including silencing women, enabling sexual predators, racism, and sexism. And she victimized the very people she said she protected,” McElary-Downer said. “Despite the abundance of evidence before me, no evidence has been presented to suggest even a hint of remorse. On the contrary, Const. Zarabi-Majd is proud of what she has done.” According to court files, she turned down a 2019 TPS settlement offer that would have paid her a $400,000 lump sum plus 12 years of PTSD sick leave pay. She said she didn’t want to be muzzled by a non-disclosure agreement. In retrospect, it looks like she should have taken the offer and run.

[tezlivenews]

ऑस्ट्रेलियाई महिला के 'गाउन' पर किए थे अश्लील कमेंट, अब चुनाव लड़कर लेगी बदला

ऑस्ट्रेलियाई महिला के ‘गाउन’ पर किए थे अश्लील कमेंट, अब चुनाव लड़कर लेगी बदला

कैनबराऑस्ट्रेलिया की एक राजनेता ने आगामी ऑस्ट्रेलियाई चुनावों में एक अहम सीट से चुनाव लड़ने के लिए चुनी गई है। इसे वह अपने विरोधी राजनेता की अश्लील टिप्पणी का करारा जवाब मान रही है। वकील ब्रुक विटनेल की एक फोटो पर तीन साल पहले लिबरल नेशनल पार्टी के पूर्व क्वींसलैंड नेता जॉन-पॉल लैंगब्रोक ने एक अश्लील कमेंट किया था। फोटो में एक लो-कट सिल्वर गाउन पहने हुए विटनेल अपने पति जूलियन लीमब्रुगेन के साथ…

[argumentl]

TFOE Radio InterFM version - fan summaries 2015 - 2017

(Topics of each show listed in the links)

Ep 1 Concept of show

Ep 2 - A.I, Military expansion protest, Revenge porn

Ep 3 - Dokugen, Agnes Chan/online liability.

Ep 4 - Dark fashion, Kawashima Naomi/Erotic movies, Igarashi Megumi/Censoring obscenity.

Ep 5 - Taiwan, Doraemon movie, Male only/female only live controversy, Weak school kids.

Ep 6 Mexico, Arche cover design, Honda Keisuke, Playboy magazine.

Ep 7 - Arche cover design, Murder case in Tokyo

Ep 8 - Photography at overseas lives, Doppelgangers, Osaka's Lupin, Celebrities using drugs

Ep 10 - Arche cover design, Shadow art, Murder case, Actor denying fatherhood of child.

Live special #1

Live Special #2

Ep 13 - Banned album covers, Murder case, Sexually suggestive poster.

Ep 14 - Photography, air guitars

Ep 15 Movie recommendations, Grumpy sports personalities, Japan-South Korea relations.

Ep 16 Kaoru's talk event, David Bowie, New Years tv

Ep 17 - Amp simulators, Coming of Age, Trust in staff

Ep 18 - Death row in Japan vs USA, Kim jong-un's shoes, Bionic penis.

Ep 19 - Fukushima Daiichi visit, Baseball player caught doing drugs.

Ep 20 - A.I. Technology, STAP cell/Obokata Haruko controversy.

Ep 21 - Budokan impressions, Questions from listeners, First Japanese politician ever to attempt to take paternity leave caught cheating days before wife gives birth.

Ep 22 - Q and A with Kaoru, Kiyohara drug scandal, Celebrities becoming politicians.

Ep 23 - Fan comments, Child killer identity leak, Politician suggests shutting down politically biased content.

Ep 24 - 5th Anniversary of 3/11, Human canvass artwork, Kyo hayfever, Actress childless by choice, Celeb Instagram spat.

Ep 25 - Old live houses, Censoring of smoking scenes, Beat Takeshi, Arrest of celebrity doctor.

Ep 26 - Ideal female body shape, Child daycare shortage, Ban on beards

Ep 27 - Instant yakisoba, TV/radio presenter faked academic record, New jingle appeal.

Ep 28 - Opposition Party name change, Madonna late to own concert, Baseball players caught illegally betting on games.

Ep 29 - Taboo surrounding disabled sex, Former AV star Dan Mitsu entering politics?

Ep 30 - Internet regulations, Unfair treatment in relation to drugs offenses, Tax hike controversy/criticism of Japanese bureaucracy.

Ep 31 - New jingle campaign, UFOs, French comics/Bandes dessinées.

Ep 32 - Domestic violence, Racial discrimination in USA, Chiba legend 'Jaguar', Ancient mummy wearing Addidas.

Ep 33 - New jingle campaign, Panama Papers leak.

Ep 34 - Death-row art, Man mistakes bear cub for puppy, Japan's place in World Press Freedom Index

Ep 35 - Live-streamed suicide, Tokyo Governer Masuzoe Yōichi scandal, Celebrity Becky's apology for affair, Idol stabbed over 20 times by fan.

Ep 36 - The status of cannabis in Japan, Tokyo Governer financial scandal, Hillary Clinton's promise to reveal UFO info if elected president.

Ep 38 - Subliminal messages, Japanese comedian takes on Cambodian nationality to compete in Olympics, The appeal of Japanese women overseas

Ep 39 - Naked living, Tokyo Sports 'Lowlife Awards', Muhammad Ali's death.

Ep 40 - Time cover showing pregnant rape victim, Hiranabe's bad luck, Brexit

Ep 41 - Underwater band Aquasonic, Tracking a spouse with GPS, Ichiro beats Pete Rose's world record.

Ep 42 - Mode of Vulgar tour finished, Security issues at Rio de janeiro Olympics, Actor Ishida Junichi running for Tokyo Governor?

Ep 43 - Inadequate media election coverage, Increase in motiveless crime.

Ep 44 - Announcement of another live special, Pokemon Go, Palm reading/Palmistry.

Ep 45 - Dobashi in Brazil, 'Crush the NHK' election broadcast, Shark movies.

Live Special #3

Ep 46 - Pokemon Go, Celebrity lawyer in trouble

Ep 47 - Hierarchy in groups/bands, the language barrier overseas.

Ep 48 - Judge posts pictures of himself in his underpants on Twitter, Olympic marathon runner Neko Hiroshi, PM Abe as Mario at Olympic closing ceremony.

Ep 49 - Diverse beauty pageant, Sex doll theft.

Ep 50 - Public reading of erotic literature in library, Dobashi returns from Brazil (with condoms).

Ep 51 - Illustrated guide to poo, Bust reducing bra

Ep 52 - Image of the 'perfect face', Celeb makes AV debut, Thai red-light districts facing destruction.

Ep 53 - Elaborate bentō boxes, Dubious assault on hotel worker by actor, Weekly mag Shūkan Bunshun.

Ep 54 - Playing pre-recorded songs at lives, thought provoking messages, PR video portraying eel as girl in swimwear.

Ep 55 - Fan feedback, Thoughts on Mode of DSS tour, Security cameras in schools.

Ep 56 - Jumping on the Halloween bandwagon, Futon maker-turned-fashion maker.

Ep 57 - Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize, Headlines taken out of context

Ep 58 - Unique tap/faucet designs, Gang rape carried out by Keiō University students

Ep 59 - Looking at works of art from different perspectives, Sinkhole opens up in Fukuoka.

Ep 60 - Illustrated stationary guide/Kaoru's love of drawing, Shin Godzilla.

Ep 61 - Pun art, Nikkatsu erotic movies revival.

Ep 62 - Retouched/Photoshopped images in magazines, Musician arrested for drug use a second time.

Ep 63 - German dinner projection art, Abe-Trump discussing PikoTaro

Ep 64 - Van Gogh animation 'Loving Vincent', Buzzword of the year.

Ep 65 - Christmas, Controversial Fabreeze CM, Rocker Uchida Yūya.

Ep 66 - LAST EPISODE - Looking back at the show.

The radio versions were uploaded to Youtube by Kie, I have simply summarized the content in English. Take a look below!

https://youtube.com/channel/UCR94HUT_vEflCpuGxuqpPqg

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[zakuwatorka]

Strajk Kobiet

反堕胎禁令示威 波兰这事闹大了  Protest against abortion ban; Poland is making a big noise

[I copied, translated and write down the most important words from Chinese article about Strajk Kobiet in Poland; article’s source of the bottom of the post] 

反 fǎn - anti-, to oppose, against 堕胎 duò tāi - to induce to abortion 禁令 jìn lìng - prohibition, ban 示威 shì wēi - to demonstrate (as a protest) “这是女性的革命！”德国电视一台27日称，波兰反堕胎禁令示威运动已持续数日。当地时间26日，在华沙等近50个城市，女性示威者上街堵住街道，表达不满。上周日甚至还有示威者大闹教堂，这在波兰可谓开了先例。 "This is a women's revolution!" German TV One said on the 27th that Poland's anti-abortion ban demonstrations have been going on for several days. On the 26th local time, in nearly 50 cities including Warsaw (capital of Poland), female demonstrators went out to the streets to block them to express their dissatisfaction. There were even demonstrators rioting in the church last Sunday, which set a precedent in Poland. 革命 gé mìng - revolution 示威者 shì wēi zhě - demonstrator 堵住 dǔ zhù - to block up 表达不满 - to express dissatisfaction 可谓 kě wèi - it could even be said 先例 xiān lì - precedent

　　周一，数万名波兰女性在全国各地抗议堕胎禁令。她们坐汽车或推着自行车，或以徒步方式阻挡在各城市的主干道路口，造成严重的交通堵塞。一些人高举“够了”“我不会当你的烈士”“我要（堕胎）选择权，不要恐惧”等标语。 On Monday, tens of thousands of Polish women protested the abortion ban across the country. They ride cars or bicycles, or walk around and block the main road junctions in various cities, causing serious traffic jams. Some people hold up slogans such as "Enough", "I will not be your martyr", "I want (abortion) the right to choose, not to be afraid". 徒步 tú bù - to be on foot 阻挡 zǔ dǎng - to stop, to resist 堵塞 dǔ sè - blockage 高举 gāo jǔ - to lift up 烈士 liè shì - martyr 选择 xuǎn zé - to choose 恐惧 kǒng jù - to be frightened 标语 biāo yǔ - written slogan

　　在华沙一个十字路口，随着人群越聚越多，有女性抗议者跳到汽车上，脱下上衣，并挥动旗帜，引发了一场骚动。由于一些人不戴口罩，让各地政府也非常着急，担心疫情因此恶化。华沙市长特扎斯科夫斯基当天呼吁示威者不要违反防疫规则：“你的愤怒行为不应该伤害到无辜民众。” At crossroads in Warsaw, as the crowd gathered, female protesters jumped into the cars, took off their jackets, and waved flags, causing an uproar. Because some people do not wear masks, local governments are also very anxious, worrying that the epidemic will worsen. Warsaw Mayor Trzaskowski (特扎斯科夫斯基) called on the demonstrators not to violate the epidemic prevention rules: "Your angry behavior should not harm innocent people." 挥动 huī dòng - to wave sth 旗帜 qí zhì - flag, ensign 引发 yǐn fā - to lead to 骚动 sāo dòng - disturbance, to become restless 恶化 è huà - to worsen 违反 wéi fǎn - to violate (a law) 防疫 fáng yì - disease prevention 愤怒 fèn nù - angry 无辜 wú qū - innocent

　　不仅在波兰，邻国乌克兰也有人加入了这场大规模抗议活动。乌克兰女权组织“费曼”的一名成员在波兰驻乌克兰大使馆前赤裸上身抗议。该女子在自己的身上用英文写了“我的身体由我决定”，并用波兰语高喊 “姐妹们武装起来！”她随后被警方带走。警方周一称，上周末，波兰几个大城市有100多场抗议活动，每场抗议活动都有数千人参加。参加者大多数是女性，但也有男性支持者。 Not only in Poland, but neighbouring Ukraine also joined this large-scale protest. A member of the Ukrainian feminist organisation Feynman protested naked in front of the Polish embassy in Ukraine. The woman wrote "My body is up to me" in English on her body and shouted in Polish "Sisters! Armed!". She was taken away by the police. On Monday police said that there were more than 100 protests in several major cities in Poland last weekend, with thousands of people participating in each protest. Most of the participants were women, but there were also male supporters. 邻国 lín guó - bordering country 大规模 dà guī mó - large scale, wide scale 女权 nǚ quán - women’s rights 赤裸 chì luǒ - naked, bare 武装 wǔ zhuāung - arms, equipment 支持者 zhī chí zhě - supporter

　　这已经是波兰连续第5天出现反堕胎禁令的抗议活动。而原因则归咎于波兰法院22日通过的堕胎禁令。该禁令几乎禁止了所有的堕胎行为，规定孕妇在只有强奸、乱伦或孕妇健康有危险的情况下才可以堕胎。这意味着，即使胎儿出现缺陷，孕妇也不可寻求堕胎。为此，欧洲人权委员会委员米亚托维奇表示，这是“妇女权利悲伤的一天”。欧盟委员会至今没有发表评论，观察家认为，这是因为欧盟一直对波兰近几年的法律改革有意见。

This is the fifth consecutive day of protests against abortion bans in Poland. The reason is the abortion ban which was accepted by the Polish court on the 22nd. The new rule bans almost all abortions, stipulating that pregnant women can only abort when rape, incest, or the health of the pregnant woman is at risk. This means that even if the fetus is defective, pregnant women cannot seek abortion. For this reason, European Commissioner Mijatovic said that this is "a sad day for women's rights." The European Commission has not commented on this issue so far. Observers believe that this is because the EU has always had “special” opinions on Poland's legal reforms in recent years. 归咎 guī jiù - to put the blame on, to accuse 法院 fǎ yuàn - court of law 孕妇 yùn fù - pregnant woman 强奸 qiáng jiān - to rape 乱伦 luàn lún - incest 胎儿 tāi ér - unborn child, fetus 缺陷 quē xiàn - defect, physical defect 寻求 xún qiú - to look for 人权 rén quán - human rights 委员会 wěi yúan hùi - committee 欧盟委员会 Oū méng Wěi yuán hùi - Commission of European Union 欧盟 Oū méng - European Union

　　禁令一公布，马上在波兰掀起一轮女性抗议潮。上周日，波兰甚至还出现了前所未有的场面：在南部城市卡托维兹，约7000名示威者聚集在天主教教堂外，高呼“这是战争”及“人道法，非教会法”等口号，又在墙上喷写“无国界堕胎”“手上沾满鲜血”等字句，抗议以宗教教条凌驾法律。发起人苏尔温斯基表示，禁令等于“把女性推进地狱”。在波兹南，还有女性冲入教堂，手持描绘被钉十字架的孕妇海报，以及“天主教徒也需要堕胎”等标语，并向神职人员发放抗议卡，之后与警方发生冲突。

As soon as the ban was announced, a wave of female protests was immediately set off in Poland. Last Sunday, an unprecedented scene appeared in Poland: in the southern city of Katowice, about 7,000 demonstrators gathered outside the Catholic church, chanting "This is war" and "Humanitarian law, non-canon law" and other slogans. Demonstrates sprayed the words "abortion without borders" and "blood on hands" on the wall to protest against the overriding of the law by religious dogma. Sulwinsky, the initiator, said that the ban is tantamount to "pushing women into hell." In Poznan, women also rushed into the church, holding posters depicting pregnant women who were “crucified”, and slogans such as "Catholics also need abortions," and handing out protest cards to clergy, before they were clashed by the police. 口号 kǒu hào - slogan 沾满 zhān mǎn - covered in (mud, blood) 凌驾  líng jià - to be above 发起人 fā qǐ rén - proposer, initiator 地狱 dì yù - hell 海报 hǎi bào - poster 

　　《法兰克福汇报》说，90%以上的波兰人为天主教徒，女性大闹教堂非常不寻常。这被认为是对神职人员的侮辱，此类事件发生在这个天主教国家几乎是无法想象的。不过，波兰教会主动给事件降温，提出加强对话。波兰主教大会主席加德奇大主教呼吁保护“生命权和妇女权利”。同时，他强调，庸俗的言论、暴力、打断教堂礼拜活动和亵渎教会，不是民主国家所允许的。

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung stated that more than 90% of Poles are Catholics, and it is very unusual for women to riot in churches. This is considered an insult to the clergy, and such incidents are almost unimaginable in this Catholic country. However, the Polish church took the initiative to cool the incident and proposed to strengthen dialogue. Archbishop Gadądecki, chairman of the Polish Conference of Bishops, called for the protection of the "right to life and women's rights". At the same time, he emphasised that vulgar speech, violence, interruption of church services, and desecration of churches are not allowed in democratic countries. 天主教徒 Tiān zhǔ jiào tú - Catholic; follower of Catholicism 大闹 dà nào - to cause havoc 神职 shén zhí - clergy, clerical 侮辱 wǔ rǔ - to insult, to humiliate 降温 jiàng wēn - to become cooler, to lower the temperature 大主教 dà zhǔ jiào - archbishop 庸俗 yōng sú - vulgar 暴力 bào lì - violent, force 亵渎 xiè dú - to profane

　　德新社27日称，波兰著名女性组织“全国妇女罢工”还呼吁，全国女性周三进行大罢工。同时，波兰的右翼团体也宣布成立“国民警卫队”，以保护天主教教堂和教徒免受骚扰。波兰一些政治家担心，女性抗议者与右翼团体成员会爆发激烈冲突。尤其是在疫情不断扩大的背景下，抗议示威运动会让波兰疫情“雪上加霜”。

Deutsche News Agency said on the 27th that the famous Polish women’s organization "National Women’s Strike" also called for women across the country to go on strike on Wednesday. At the same time, Polish right-wing groups also announced the establishment of the "National Guard" to protect Catholic churches and believers from harassment. Some Polish politicians worry that there will be fierce clashes between female protesters and members of right-wing groups. Especially in the context of the expanding epidemic, the protest demonstrations will make the Polish epidemic worse. 组织 zǔ zhī - organization 罢工 bà gōng - a strike, to go on strike 右翼团体 yòu yì tuán tǐ - right-wing party 宣布 xuān bù - to proclaim, to declare 成立 chéng lì - to establish, to set up 天主 Tiān zhǔ - Catholicism 教徒 jiào tú - follower of a religion 免受 miǎn shòu - to avoid suffering, to prevent (sth bad); to protect against 骚扰 sāo rǎo - to disturb, to cause a commotion 爆发 bào fā - to break out 激烈 jī liè - intense 冲突 chōng tū - conflict 疫情 yì qíng - epidemic situation 示威运动 shì wēi yùn dòng - rally 雪上加霜 xuě shàng jiā shuāng  　　奥地利《新闻报》报道称，自1993年以来，堕胎禁令一直有效。长期以来，波兰在堕胎法这一微妙的问题上，争议不大。近年来，波兰女性运动兴起，反堕胎禁令已成为她们的主要目标之一。据称，波兰每年有20万妇女在国内非法堕胎或出国堕胎。 The Austrian Newspaper reported that the abortion ban has been in effect since 1993. For a long time, Poland has had little controversy over the delicate issue of abortion law. In recent years, the Polish women’s movement has risen, and the anti-abortion ban has become one of their main goals. It is said that every year 200,000 women in Poland have illegal abortions in the country or go abroad for abortions. 奥地利 Aò dì lì - Austria 有效 yǒu xiào - effective, valid 长期以来 cháng qī yǐ lái - ever since a long time ago 微妙 wēi mìao - subtle 争议 zhēng yì - controversy, dispute 兴起 xīng qǐ - to rise 据称 jù chēng - it is said; according to reports 国内 guó nèi - domestic 非法 fēi fǎ - illegal My previous post about Strajk Kobiet: (CLICK)  My Chinese studygram (Source: Sina Weibo)

[ruminativerabbi]

The Southern Border

As the crisis on our southern border becomes more serious and the problem of how exactly to deal with unaccompanied children crossing, or attempting to cross, into the U.S. becomes more intractable with each passing day, we have begun to hear the same “but this is not who we are” argument so familiar to us all from the days following mass shootings or violent attacks on public buildings or seats of power. In the wake of the January riot at the Capitol, I wrote to you all suggesting that there is something self-serving and untrue in that argument when applied to insurrectionist violence directed against the Congress, an opinion I embraced after reading Joanne B. Freeman’s remarkable book, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. (To review my comments from last January, click here.) Now, I would like to apply that line of thinking to the crisis at the border.

If there was one theme running faithfully through my own public school education, it was that America was a nation of immigrants, that we all came from somewhere, that even the native Indians, incorrectly taken as aborigines by the European settlers who came here in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were themselves descended from people who crossed the then-extant Bering Land Bridge that linked Siberia and Alaska during the Ice Age and so were also reasonably to be considered some version of immigrants to North America. (For more on the Bering Land Bridge, click here.) For most of us, that settled the matter: we were all either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. Even the Indians! And the fact that a significant number of children in my elementary school had parents who had somehow survived the war in Europe and come here after the Second War only made that thought even more satisfying. I believe the first poem I was obliged to memorize during my days at P.S. 196 was Emma Lazarus’s “The Great Colossus,” written in the year of my grandmother’s birth specifically to raise money to construct the pedestal atop which the Status of Liberty stands to this day and eventually cast onto a bronze plaque attached to that same pedestal.

Boy-me was beyond impressed. The poet’s description of the statue as “a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning and whose name the Mother of Exiles” was more than resonant with me. My people, after all, too came here fleeing persecution in Belarus and Poland—a fact my father mentioned regularly throughout my childhood—and that was without knowing the fate that would have awaited them had they failed to get out when they could and did. The rest of the poem spoke equally directly to the young me. When I read that “from her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome,” I imagined my grandparents passing through Ellis Island and wondering what fate awaited them here. And when the poet imagined Lady Liberty herself addressing the decaying lands of the Old World and imploring them to send to us “your tired, your poor,” your homeless and tempest-tost, and that they would be welcomed by Lady Liberty herself, on duty 24/7 holding aloft her “lamp beside the golden door” to welcome them, I knew what made America great—inclusivity, tolerance, hospitality, empathy, and kindness.

It was a very moving set of ideas to boy-me. It still is. But how true is it exactly? That I only found out later when I began to read on my own.

The United States was founded exclusively by immigrants from Europe or by the native-born descendants of earlier immigrants, but their sense of what they wanted future immigration to yield was not quite as expansive as Emma Lazarus’s poem suggests it ought to have been: the Naturalization Act of 1790, for example, dealt with the way individuals coming to the independent United States could become citizens and was quite specific: the ability to become an American citizen was formally to be limited to “free white persons…of good character.”  There was, therefore, no path to citizenship at all for slaves, free black people, Asians, or, most bizarrely of all, actual native Americans. And that was how things were for quite some time. (It is true that some few states before the Civil War allowed Black people to be considered citizens, but only of that specific state and not of the country. Today, of course, there is no such thing as being a citizen of one of the states but not of the nation.) Indeed, the first instance in which a serious number of residents without the priorly requisite European pedigree became entitled to American citizenship was the passing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1831, which created a path to citizenship specifically (and only) for Choctaw Indians who agreed to remain in Mississippi. (In exchange, the Choctaws agreed to abandon their claim to about 15 million acres of land in what is now Oklahoma.) I am quite certain that the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was not part of our curriculum in eleventh grade.

Things moved ahead, but only very slowly. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution offered citizenship to all people born within the boundaries of the United States, including Black people, but specifically excluding Indians residing on reservations. Two years later, Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1870 that created, and for the first time, a possibility for Black people to immigrate to the United States and become citizens…but that same law not only denied the possibility of immigrants coming here from China but actually revoked the citizenship of Americans of Chinese descent who were already here.

The Page Act of 1875 had as its specific point, to quote its sponsor Representative Horace Page (R-California), “to end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women” by making it illegal for Chinese women to immigrate to the United States. And then, seven years later, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made it illegal for any Chinese laborers, male or female, to enter the United States.

And then we get to the twentieth century. The Immigration Act of 1917 went a step further still, barring all immigration from Pacific Island nations and from the Far East, but also imposing for the first time literacy tests on would-be immigrants as well as creating for the first time categories of people to whom immigration was to be denied unrelated to national origin. The sanitized expressions “mentally defective individuals” and  “persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority” were used to deny openly gay people the possibility of entry, along with undesirable “illiterates, imbeciles, insane persons, and paupers.” But it was the Immigration Act of 1924, framed in its day as a mere extension of the earlier act, that for the first time established immigration quotas. Formally, the idea was to restrict immigration to a number equivalent to 2% of the number of Americans who claimed that nation as their ancestral home in the 1890 census. But the real purpose was to keep out Italians, Greeks, Poles, and (I can’t help thinking especially) Eastern European Jews. (I hardly have to pause to note what happened to those Jews who would have come here to start new lives but who were instead condemned to be present when the Nazis occupied their homelands.)

And that is how things stood for a very long time. Of course, no one in those days would have dreamt of using President Trump’s vulgar expression to describe the countries from which the President was keen to see no immigration at all. Or at least not in public. But the sentiment behind the Immigration Act of 1924 was exactly the same, only the identity of the specific nations so qualified was different.

The situation at the southern border is dire. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, himself a Cuban refugee, is doing his best to deal with an impossible situation. And, indeed, it turns out that expressing horror at the policies of the previous administration with respect to the separation of families and the caging of children is distinctly easier than figuring out what exactly to do with large number of unaccompanied children arriving at the border possessed solely of whatever they are carrying with them. There are a thousand good reasons to shove them back over the border and let them fend for themselves. They aren’t playing by the rules. We have no idea who their parents are. They mostly don’t speak English at all, let alone well. Like children everywhere, they have no way to sustain themselves by going to work and legally earning a living. All the above are excellent and fully cogent reasons for giving these kids a hot meal and shipping them back where they came from.

But what of the lady in the harbor and her torch, still burning in the night, still calling out to the tempest-tost, to the homeless, to the destitute, to the exhausted? The question isn’t really what President Trump would have done or what President Biden can or will do. The question is what the Mother of Exiles would say if she could turn to the south and consider the border with Mexico. Would she set down her lamp, shut the golden door, and tell these freeloaders to go to hell? Or would she come down from her pedestal, tie up her skirts, and make her way south to use her “imprisoned lightning” to illuminate the nighttime sky while she gathers the children in unto her and offers them shelter in this, the greatest and most powerful of all nations? It strikes me that it is to Lady Liberty that we should be looking for counsel in the matter of the current crisis, not to even the most well-me of politicians.\

[newstfionline]

In the Philippines, divided politics, divided web

Jessica Mendoza, CS Monitor, April 9, 2018

MANILA--Mocha Uson sweeps into her office at the presidential compound, assistant at her booted heels. She’s late, rushing in from another engagement that ran longer than planned. But she appears composed, almost reserved, as she arranges herself on a faux-leather settee and waits for the interview to begin.

In this setting it’s hard to picture Esther Margaux Uson, known countrywide as “Mocha,” sashaying across a stage in vinyl hot pants or dispensing advice on sex and relationships. Yet for the better part of a decade, provocative entertainment was the core of her career--first fronting for the Mocha Girls, an all-female music group known for racy numbers, and later responding to intimate reader questions via a series of written and video blogs.

Then in 2015, she learned about Rodrigo Duterte.

“He was different from traditional politicians. And at the time … there weren’t any well-known personalities who publicly supported him,” Ms. Uson says in a mix of English and Tagalog. “So I said, ‘I have to make a stand.’”

Through the first few months of 2016, she stunned the Philippine political world by converting the Mocha Uson Blog to an online rallying point for supporters of President Duterte. Its transformation was in some ways the singular product of a nation that regularly elects celebrities into government and ranks first in the world in social media use.

Her ascent, however, also reflects an evolving global political landscape, where information is democratized and every opinion has the opportunity to find a platform. Citizens can directly hold institutions like media and government accountable, while the latter can respond to their constituents sans mediator. Given reach and charisma, anybody with a voice--sex symbols, high-school students, TV comedians, real-estate moguls--can scale the heights of political influence and authority.

The price is often decreased civility, and consensus, say experts. Tribal lines are quickly drawn and held, and fact becomes flightier, hard to pin down and easy to manipulate. The social-media savvy--both individual and corporate--possess more power than ever to shape the tone, trajectory, and themes of political discourse.

Few countries today epitomize this new reality as clearly as the Philippines, the social-media capital of the world, with a norm-breaking president whose campaign supporters harnessed this shifting online landscape to win the election. And few individuals embody it as clearly as Uson. As the 2016 campaign season picked up steam, her name became inseparable from the Duterte lobby, drawing animosity and acclaim in near-equal measure from Filipinos at home and abroad. Her Facebook base has since ballooned from 2.5 million to more than 5 million--a figure that remains unrivaled even by the head of state she serves. In May 2017, after a brief stint with the government’s entertainment regulation board, she was named assistant secretary at the Presidential Communications Operations Office.

Uson shrugs when confronted with her apparent success. “The journey has been colorful and exciting. And I have a sense of fulfillment,” she says. But to her, much of the road thus far seems inevitable. Her feelings about Duterte’s candidacy compelled her to speak out on his behalf, she says, and she felt just as obliged to use Facebook to do so. Because what better way to spread an idea than on a platform that boasts up to 67 million users in the Philippines?

“Everything is on social media,” Uson says. “We can’t avoid the fact that it’s the direction information dissemination is going.”

Experts around the world have been making similar pronouncements since at least 2008, when Barack Obama became among the first politicians to leverage social networks to get out the vote. Less than three years later, the Arab Spring--the series of revolutionary protests that, thanks to Twitter, swept across Tunisia, Egypt, and the Middle East--became, briefly, a symbol of social media’s potential to reinvigorate democracy.

Today about 2.6 billion people use social media worldwide, up from fewer than a billion in 2010. From India to Sudan, the US to the U.K., social media--and the very public web of information and misinformation it weaves--has helped elect leaders, birth movements, crush rebellions, and intensify divides.

Mr. Duterte’s election proved to be the watershed moment for social media and politics in the Philippines. Leading up to 2016, frustration with political leadership after decades of what was widely perceived as weak and corrupt government coincided with a rise in affordable mobile data plans. Filipinos yearning for political change had better access than ever to the online political sphere.

“It made it so much cheaper to engage with each other,” says Tony La Viña, former dean of the School of Government at Ateneo de Manila University. “People felt very liberated to be able to participate in debates, to have [their] opinions disseminated.”

For those who understood the social media space, it also meant new opportunities to amass both profit and political capital. Bloggers like Uson--”influencers,” in public relations parlance--rose to prominence, becoming the most powerful voices for those who had felt excluded from public discourse. Indeed, much of the success of social media in Philippine politics has pivoted on the perception that it is the unvarnished and authentic alternative to traditional media: the newspapers, television and radio stations, and online news sites that Duterte supporters say all but ignored the president’s campaign and continue to smear his administration with negative stories.

“It was the erosion of trust in mainstream [news outlets]. People were looking for an alternative voice,” says pro-Duterte blogger Rey Joseph Nieto, also known as “Thinking Pinoy” (a Tagalog slang term for Filipino). “They found me, [blogger] Sass [Rogando Sasot], and Mocha--for better or for worse.”

“Fake news” is a constant preoccupation of bloggers on the other end of the political spectrum, as well. But their goal is to support, not subvert, traditional media.

“Most of my posts are about debunking false propaganda and calling out the shortcomings of government officials,” says Jover Laurio, whose Pinoy Ako Blog (��I am Filipino”) drew attention for its cutting letters addressed to the administration and its allies.

“And to stop the killing,” she adds, referring to the president’s violent antidrug campaign. “Every time I write a letter, I pray that they read it.”

Less conspicuous than the blogger cohort are the PR and marketing firms who manage politicians’ social media campaigns. A report released earlier this year explored the extent to which such firms, and the strategists who run them, have developed a blueprint for manipulating political opinion in the Philippines via social media. Using the techniques of corporate marketing, these “architects of networked disinformation” hire teams of “digital influencers” to push a particular message on Facebook comment sections and Twitter feeds. The campaigns, which can involve seeding revisionist history or hijacking attention through artificial hashtags, are motivated largely by profit, according to the report.

“The thing about social media is, its incentive structures are about visibility,” says Jonathan Corpus Ong, co-author of the report and associate professor of global digital media at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “What comes up on our news feed is the one that is more popular and is most liked. There are ways in which these algorithms can be gamed and manipulated. That’s made it easy for particular operators to weaponize [it] for politics.”

The effects of all this on the Philippine political space have been far-reaching--and familiar, to audiences following social media’s effects in the West. Online vitriol is at an all-time high. Trust in traditional media outlets is at an equivalent low, with Filipino webizens saying they trust social media more than mainstream publications.

And there’s the sense that, especially on social media, there exist two realities. In one, the Philippines is a place of fear and chaos, where innocents are gunned down in the streets and a foul-mouthed despot encourages ruthless justice against those who defy him. In the other, the country is just beginning to ascend to economic heights and international prestige through the ministrations of a strong, if somewhat vulgar, leader willing to do what needs to be done.

[sj4iy]

Translation: “Owari no Seraph: Guren Ichinose, the Catastrope at 16″ Chapter 03 Summary (Spoilers!!)

Here’s your chapter summary.  Forgive any typos or translation errors, I type as I read (also autocorrect often changes japanese spellings without my permission).  Of course, spoilers ahead.  

Chapter 03:

The Hyakuya church is a magic organization of large scale said to prop up the dark side of the country.  They had a skirmish with the Hiiragi organization, but after WWII, the Hyakuya Church received support from America and carried the seat of the country’s key magical organization. Many politicians received assistance and they ruled the country from the shadows.

The assassin explains that his organization wants to crush the Hiiragi clan and offers their power to Guren.  He replies that he’s not interested, because he’s always been interested in first place and if he teams up with them, it’ll be their first place and not his.  He wonders why they are trying to mix him up in it but tells the assassin to disappear or he’ll make him disappear and grabs his sword.  The assassin finds it amusing but Guren says “I’ll win” and that any opponent that he’s shown his real power to has died.  “But I’ll wait five seconds” and “When you return, tell your superior that Ichinose didn’t change sides”.  Then he starts counting down.  The assassin says that his appearance (yousu) is different from earlier, and asks if he’s bluffing…but Guren keeps counting down.  The assassin finally leaves.  The girls find Guren and tell him it’s a problem if he goes off alone and he tries to tell them he was going to the training room.  They respond that since it’s not finished he should rest, and he says “You’re right, I am a little tired today.  What about the curry?” and Sayuri panics that it’s still on the heat and runs off.  Guren remarks that she’s the same as ever.

At school they are doing training drills and Guren is knocked to the ground by Norito Goshi.  Norito complains “Geez, I can’t train against such a weak opponent” as the other kids suck up to him. Mito Juujou walks up and asks him if it doesn’t bother him that people are saying such things about him, but he plays dumb and says that he could never win against the eldest son of the Goshi clan.  Mito gets angry and calls the Goshi clan second rate, which prompts Norito and Mito to argue until they start fighting.  One of the students asks the teacher about it but the teacher tells everyone to watch the fight and study it.  Just then Shinya walks up and congratulates him on his performance getting hit and says he can’t learn Guren’s level like that.  Guren calls him a stalker and Shinya says “I’m interested in the real power of my future friend who will destroy the Hiiragi clan” but Guren says “I’m won’t be your friend.”  Shinya asks him to be his partner and show him his real power.  He starts giving off massive amounts of power and says “By the way, I’m going full throttle.  No matter how strong you are, it’s impossible to go easy on me.”  Guren tries to give him the “there’s no way I can fight you” excuse but Shinya moves to hit him.  Guren thinks “Aah, shit…can’t be helped” and takes the punch…which sends him flying.  Shinya is surprised and says “No waaay, he’s that stubborn?”  Guren lands with a crash and Mito runs to check on him.  Shinya says “Or he’s really that weak?”  Guren is in bad shape and Mito says “Sensei, Ichinose-kun is spitting up blood!?”  Everyone starts making comments about how strong the Hiiragi clan is and how it’s absurd for the Ichinose clan to fight with their social standing, but Mito and Norito see that Guren is actually hurt bad.  Guren himself thinks “I allowed the hit at an angle that my organs wouldn’t get hurt even if my ribs were fractured…at least, I was supposed to.  I actually messed up…a little bit…” as Norito tells them to take him to the infirmary.

Guren wakes up in a hospital bed with bandages around his chest.  He takes some of them off to see the nasty wound on his chest, just as Mahiru stands in the doorway.  She says “Don’t take your bandages off yourself.”  He’s surprised to see her, and says “It’s been a long time” (using polite speech).  This surprises her and she says “it’s become like that”.  She comes into the room next to his bed and he says “Your father will become angry if you get too close to someone like me.”  She says she’s different from the old days, and that she decides for herself.  She asks him if there’s nothing he wants to say even though it’s been so long, and he says “There’s nothing I am able to say”.  Her hand twitches at this, and she asks him how his wound is, and he says it’s not a problem.  She then says that she’s heard that his ‘value’ is very poor and he responds that if there are reports of it, it must be true.  He then says “Mahiru-sama, you’ve become strong and beautiful in the past ten years.”  She blushes and smiles, and says she’s happy he called her pretty.  Then he very bluntly asks her what she wants with him which takes her by surprise.  She says that when she heard he was hurt, but he replies “I’m sorry to have caused you worry, but it’s no longer a problem.  Is there anything else you need?”  She angrily replies “There isn’t” and takes her leave.  He says “Oh, I forgot to mention…” and she stops…but then he goes on with “I heard from Shinya-sama that you are engaged.  Congratulations.”  She says “Thank you” and angrily walks out of the door.  He watches her leave and grabs his head in anger, saying “…shit, I’m such a bastard.”

Back at school, the technique selection exams (not exactly sure how to word this in english) are starting “tomorrow”.  Shinya is happy to see Guren and says “I’m glad your injuries healed that much, wanna go home together?” but Guren tells him to “die”.  Sayuri calls out to him, but Shigure tells her not to stand out or she’ll get scolded again.  Guren thinks “A lecture later”.  Mito chastises him for having two female followers escort him, calling the Ichinose clan “cowards”.  Norito comes up to him and asks Guren to introduce him to the girls and asks him (in a whisper) which one he’s going out with.  Guren asks if he should be associating with a dirty Ichinose, and Norito responds that “beautiful women are different” and asks Guren if they sleep with him at night since they are under his control.  Mito is shocked and calls him vulgar, and Sayuri chimes in saying “That’s right, won’t you please stop this strange accusations?”  Then she states “Guren-sama still hasn’t made a move!”  Everyone is shocked, Guren face palms, and Shinya laughs, asking Guren if he can tell Mahiru about this conversation.  Guren states “I’m going home.”

On their way out, magic fills the hall.  Guren tells the ladies “don’t move, I’ll deal with it”.  Guren is suddenly kicked back into the wall, and the guy who did it says “Ah, sorry, my foot slipped.”  Shigure goes after the guy but a girl catches her fist and introduces the guy as Seishirou Hiiragi, and says that trying to lay a hand on him is certain death.  Seishirou replies “It’s fine, Yumi, the Ichinose morons can’t understand human speech.  Hitting these kinds of animals is just training.”  Shigure goes to block his swing but he laughs and says “too late”.  Guren thinks “dammit” but Shinya grabs Seishirou’s arm before he can hit her.  Shinya says “If rumor got around about you hitting an Ichinose woman it would hurt your family name.”  Seishirou says “Who asked for the adopted child’s opinion” and when Shinya says “I’m sorry, but” Seishirou hits him in the face.  Shinya is silent, and Seishirou laughs and says “Good judgement.”  He goes on to say that Shinya could never win against him, and Shinya’s judgement is why his father chose him for Mahiru.  Seishirou says that he came to check out Ichinose in the second fight of the exam tomorrow, but “he was nothing but a rat, after all.”  Shinya says he was also suspicious of Guren’s ability at first, but that he was nothing special after all.  “Even though his friend was about to get hit, he’s just garbage who didn’t act.  Someone from a degenerate, second-rate family after all.”  Seishirou laughs and calls all Ichinose people “garbage” and walks off with Yumi.  Norito calls him garbage that can’t protect women and Mito asks him again if he can stand them saying things like that about him and he replies that he can’t go against people of the Hiiragi clan. Mito yells “If they told you to die would you?!” and stomps off.  The rest of the students walking around laugh at him, and Shinya says “You really are a boring guy.  I expected a little more from you.”  Guren says “…don’t make up expectations on your own” and Shinya walks off.

Shigure apologizes for being so weak, and Sayari asks if it’s really necessary to endure all of this.  He tells them “Sorry”, and Shigure tells Sayuri that she feels the same way about their precious master being continually mocked but tells her to endure it. “Our master, who is suffering more than us, isn’t crying.”  Sayuri cheers up and says “Ah, that’s right!  That means tonight for sure we’ll sleep with him…” and he hits smacks her on the head and says “we’re going home.”  He starts thinking about how Seishirou and Mahiru are in the same grade, so they must have different mothers and wonders how much of his power he should show here.

Guren’s waiting outside a market when he sees a little boy with the assassin from before.  The little boy is called him “Saitou-san” and asking if it’s really okay to buy as much candy as he wants.  “Everyone at the orphanage will be happy no matter what I buy, right?”  The assassin asks him if he can buy it himself, and he replies that he’s 8, so of course he can and runs inside.  Guren says “Saitou?  Didn’t you tell me that your name was Kijima?”  The assassin replies “I don’t have a real name” but asks him to call him Saitou in front of Mika (Mikaela).  Guren asks him what he’s using the child for, because the Hyakuya sect is famous for human experimentation.  The assassin says that the Hyakuya church has seriously thought about how to keep the country on the right path, and that Japan will be destroyed if it continues like that.  “It will be caught up in The Final Horn”.  Guren asks if he thought he could convince him to join by using eschatology, but the assassin says this isn’t that kind of conversation.  “A virus will spread” he says, “and makes this world uninhabitable for humans.  This conversation is about war.  God isn’t spreading this virus, humans are…by the name of ‘Hiiragi’”.  The ‘Mikado no Oni” are recklessly trying to steal the seat of power from the Hyakuya church and trying to use forbidden magic.  Then the assassin says, almost jovially, “We are desperately working to stop that.  See?  Our interests align, do they not?  Before the world ends, won’t you join us to destroy the Hiiragi clan?  The war between the Hyakuya church and Hiiragi clan begins in ten days.”

Guren asks if he has until then to choose, and the assassin replies that he needs his answer right away.  Guren says “In that case, my answer is no.  I don’t get involved with people who can’t talk straight with me.”  The assassin says “that’s too bad” just as Mika comes out carrying a lot of groceries and asking for help.  Mika sees Guren and asks the assassin “Who is that guy with the mean look in his eyes?”  and the assassin replies “Who knows?  Probably a degenerate”.  Mika says “Whoa, scary” and Guren has a disgruntled look on his face.  They walk away and Guren thinks that the war starts in ten days and might even destroy Japan.  “How will we conduct ourselves until then?  No…how will we come out on top during the confusion?

That’s all for this month.  Wow, Guren was a complete ass in this chapter.  Nice to see Mika, although a bit creeped out by the situation, as well.  Next chapter will be out on 9/6 (Wednesday).

[ericdeggans]

Why I Think Bill Maher Should Lose His Job at HBO

Here’s why I think Bill Maher should lose his job at HBO: for making me have to endure yet another discussion/fight/consciousness-raising session on social media about why white celebrities should never use the n-word in public.

I didn’t even know what Maher had done until I got an email from a producer at Canadian Television asking me to go on camera and comment. When I realized it was an offhand joke on his HBO show Real Time where he referred to himself as a “house nigga,” I got even angrier. (he has since apologized in a statement.)

It should go without saying that nigger is a complex word. On the one hand, it’s a symbol of hundreds of years of dehumanization and oppression visited by a white-dominated country on those of us, as Curtis Mayfield once described, “who are darker than blue.”

On the other hand, there are a lot of black folks who have found a wide variety of uses for the term. In the same way we turned collard greens and pig intestines into cultural culinary staples, we have redefined the n-word for our own purposes. It can be a term of endearment, dismissal, accusation or acceptance, depending how it’s used.

(Below and throughout this piece are some of the tweets sent to me during my conversation on Twitter about this controversy.)

This isn’t about a TV host using a vulgarity. It’s about the ideas behind the word. And for those who claim its power can be diminished by saying it more often, I disagree. I don’t think you can overcome all of the word’s history, hidden meaning, stereotyping and psychology just by saying nigger more often. Though it’s easy to fool yourself on that score.

The simple fact is, black folks are still working out how we feel about our use of this word, and I doubt we’ll ever be settled on it. Richard Pryor rejected it onstage nearly 40 years ago; Dave Chappelle used it in his standup specials less than three months ago.

You can argue that using it internalizes degradation – which is kind of my view – but we also have a long history of rebellion through action that’s also damaging (see gangsta rap). Potato, potahto.

But, because it’s also used by very cool cultural figures like Chappelle and Chris Rock and a great many rappers, there is always the temptation by white people trying to be cool – which is the definition of a great many celebrities – to sling the word.

When I wrote about comic Lisa Lampanelli calling Girls creator Lena Dunham “my nigga” in a tweet four years ago, I noted the difference between members of a marginalized group using a slur about their group and people outside the group using it.

Jon Stewart can crack jokes about Jewish culture that non-Jewish people couldn’t risk without looking anti-Semitic. Female comics talk about women, gay comics talk about gay life and Latin comics talk about Hispanic culture in ways people outside that group will find problematic.

But this isn’t just about a slip of the tongue. Lampanelli has an act that she pretends is about breaking down political correctness, but too often seems like an excuse to sling a bunch of racist jokes the audience wouldn’t tolerate if she didn’t act as if it was about something more meaningful (a sample that I quoted in my column: “What do you call a black woman who has had seven abortions? A crime fighter.”)

And that’s where Bill Maher comes up short. He has used the word nigger before on TV, during an interview on Larry King Live to accuse conservative politician Newt Gingrich of using code words to refer to Barack Obama that were a stand-in for the slur.

But beyond that, Maher has talked about race, the Muslim faith, women and transgender issues in ways that make me and many other critics cringe. In particular, he’s alluded to a vision of authentic blackness which doesn’t include more assimilated or polished brothers like Barack Obama and Wayne Brady. 

For example, on CNN, he told Fareed Zakaria: “I thought, when we elected the first black president...as a comedian, I thought two years in, I’d be making jokes about what a gangsta he was, you know? Not (joking) that he’s President Wayne Brady. I thought we were getting Suge Knight.”

Maher might have been the only person in America who expected Obama to act more like a rap impresario known for his brutality and ties to street gangs. 

So this slip of the tongue, just like in Lampanelli’s case, is no mere mistake or ham handed attempt at cultural appropriation. It’s evidence of a pattern – one that HBO now needs to decide whether it wants to continue to be associated with, especially for a channel where 22 percent of its viewership comes from black people.

And, to answer all of the oddballs who came out of the woodwork to engage me in this debate on social media, this controversy – and others like it – is not about avoiding hurt feelings or insult. Images, archetypes and attitudes about people of color that are transmitted through media can affect how America’s white-dominated society handles a myriad of issues affecting people of color – from drug sentencing to policing issues to education funding and much more.

So it is very serious business when it comes to the question of who “gets” to use the most incendiary racial slur in America’s history on television or elsewhere in mass media. And it certainly shouldn’t be someone who isn’t black who views the issue so cavalierly, he would toss it in an offhand joke that also references slavery.

I gave a speech on racial issues to a group in Austin, Texas Saturday, and I told them that one of the greatest achievements of the civil rights movement is that it has made the open expression of naked racism socially unacceptable in mainstream American society. (Want proof? Consider how many people who clearly believe white racial culture is superior, still bristle at being called a racist.)

I still believe that is true. But I also believe it only stays that way by continued effort and self-examination.

And by calling out clueless celebrities when they forget the hundreds of years of oppression leveraged by the word nigger, every time they utter it in a public space.

[velmaemyers88]

Next-in-line to be governor of Puerto Rico says she has ‘no interest’ in the position

The politician next in line to assume the post of Puerto Rico governor — after Ricardo Rosselló announced his resignation last week — revealed Sunday she has “no interest” in the position.

Justice Secretary Wanda Vázquez would become Puerto Rico’s second woman to hold the job of governor.

However, in a tweet on Sunday, Vázquez wrote, “I have no interest in occupying the position of Governor.”

She continued, “It is a Constitutional opinion. I hope that the Governor identifies and submits a candidate for the position of Secretary of State before August 2,” the day Rosselló, a Democrat and member of the territory’s New Progressive Party (PNP), is expected to step down.

She added that she told the embattled governor about her wishes.

Puerto Rico Justice Secretary Wanda Vazquez, seen here in January 2018, said she did not want to take over as governor.  (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti, File)

CROWDS FLOOD STREETS AFTER PUERTO RICO’S GOVERNOR ANNOUNCES RESIGNATION

Vázquez made the comments about four days after Rosselló announced he will relinquish his post this coming Friday, becoming the first governor to resign in the history of the U.S. island territory.  Many Puerto Ricans also have demanded her removal amid the crisis.

The embattled governor’s decision came following more than a week of protests against him, spurred by a leak of crude and insulting chat messages between Rosselló and his top advisers. Prior to Rosselló announcing his own departure, lawmakers made threats of impeachment.

His announcement was met with the sounds of fireworks going off in Puerto Rico’s capital, as people were seen crying, banging pots and pans and playing music.

Demonstrators among the jubilant crowds celebrating the resignation in Old San Juan told Fox News on Thursday they were “relieved,” but that there still were a “lot of corrupt people we want to get out of here.”

PUERTO RICO CROWDS HAIL GOVERNOR’S RESIGNATION, BUT SAY THERE ARE STILL A ‘LOT OF CORRUPT PEOPLE’ TO REMOVE

The leaked conversations reportedly showed the governor mocking women, homosexuals, political opponents and victims of Hurricane Maria.

In one message, Rosselló reportedly called one New York female politician of Puerto Rican descent a “w—e” and described another as a “daughter of a b—h.” One chat included vulgar references to Latin pop star Ricky Martin’s homosexuality.

More than a dozen officials already have resigned since the chats were leaked, including former Secretary of State Luis Rivera Marin, who would have been next in line to replace Rosselló, according to the U.S. territory’s Constitution.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The island has tried to restructure part of $70 billion in debt and cope with a 13-year recession that has led to an exodus of nearly half a million people to the U.S. mainland in the past decade. Many Puerto Ricans have been resentful over the resulting pension cuts, school closings and other austerity measures.

Fox News’ Greg Norman, Bryan Llenas, Brie Stimson, Danielle Wallace and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Credit: Source link

The post Next-in-line to be governor of Puerto Rico says she has ‘no interest’ in the position appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/next-in-line-to-be-governor-of-puerto-rico-says-she-has-no-interest-in-the-position/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=next-in-line-to-be-governor-of-puerto-rico-says-she-has-no-interest-in-the-position from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186615085117

[argumentl]

The Freedom of Expression, radio version - Ep 21, Feb 2016 - Budokan impressions, Questions from listeners, First Japanese politician ever to attempt to take paternity leave caught sleeping with another woman days before wife gives birth.

The show starts this time with a series of sound clips of fan comments/messages of support, which were recorded at Budokan. Kaoru then comes on air and says that this is the first show they've recorded since playing at Budokan. He feels kinda strange listening to the fans' comments because he doesn't often get fan feedback in the form of physical voices. Usually its in letters etc. Joe, who was at the TFoE booth which was set up at Budokan, also has 12 notebooks full of fans' written comments.

Kaoru says that these recent two dates at Budokan make it the tenth time for them to play at the venue. The first time was before they even debuted, and about two years after they formed. He says at the time, they didn't really think much about it being Budokan, they just wanted do a powerful show. Now 17 years later, they approached it in a more thorough way. Joe admits its the first time for him to see a one-man Dir en grey live, despite having participated in many of their other previous events. He felt he was really sucked into Dir's world, and thinks it was more than just musical expression. There were theatrical elements to it, and something which caputured his whole being. He was impressed that such things are possible in a big venue like that. Kaoru says, yes, Budokan is good for creating atmosphere. Joe says he was totally pulled in by it, and didn't even feel bored once. He says if the playwrite Terayama Shuji were still alive, he would be in awe of being able to create that kind of atmosphere in such a big space.

Joe then reads out some comments/questions from listeners. The first asks Kaoru if he would ever consider another live broadcast, or a youtube stream of this radio show. Kaoru says it sounds interesting, but some of the show's participats may scare listeners if they show thier faces.

Kaoru mentions that he's recieved a lot of comments asking for guests to be on the show sometimes, especially the other members etc. He wonders how the other members would react to the atmosphere on the show, and has no idea whether the others actually listen to it, except Shinya, who apparently does.

Another question asks Kaoru to do some solo activity. He answers by saying he doesn't have time for it on his schedule. If the timing was right, he might consider it.

There were also some questions about Kaoru letting a spoiler out before the Budokan shows, because in the last radio broadcast he played the song 'KR Cube', and the same song was also included in the Day 1 Budokan setlist.  Kaoru says it wasn't intentional. A few days before Day 1 the members were discussing including some older songs in the setlist, and Kaoru suggested KR Cube. At the time he wasn't sure why that thought had come to him, but later realised it must have been because he'd played it on this show and had it in his mind subconsciously. Moving on from Budokan he plays his first record, 'audience killer loop', from the album Vulgar, in reference to the upcoming Mode of Vulgar tour.

Next they welcome Hiranabe for the Tokyo Sports corner. Hiranabe says the story today has made him pretty angry for the first time in a while. This is the news that 34 year old LDP politician Miyazaki Kensuke (who had announced his plans to be the first ever politician to take paternity leave in Japan) had been outed as having slept with a female celebrity in Kyoto, 6 days before his wife (who is also a politician) gave birth in Tokyo. Having an affair after pledging to take time off for paternity leave is pretty shocking to Hiranabe. In this case, Hiranabe is irate because Miyazaki apparently earned a huge annual income. Again, this on its own would be ok, but Hiranabe also says that politicians often receive a hidden tax-free income, in the form of expenses etc. Hiranabe thinks Miyazaki should be working, and not using hard-working tax payers money for paternity leave. He says that in reality, the LDP are probably happy about this scandal, because it gives them an excuse to get rid of him. He was apparently well known for flirting with the female staff at the Diet building, or any woman he met in the corridor who he thought looked good. Hiranabe repeats his outrage again that if a politician gets so many paid expenses, they should be working. And then to sleep with a celebrity, days before his wife is due to give birth and when he would be due to start paternity leave?! Hiranabe says this is unforgivable. He compares this to the celebrity Becky, who lost everything after admitting to a basic affair. This guy tries to use his position to promote paternity leave and then does this?? Hiranabe is very angry. The story was apparently made known because the woman Miyazaki slept with was bragging about it, and it was eventually picked up by a gossip magazine, who discovered his sleazy reputation and published an article. Hiranabe thinks he should quit. Joe says its kinda refreshing to see Hiranabe so worked up. Kaoru asks Hiranabe if he has any other similar insider info about other politicians. Hiranabe thinks there are probably loads of them getting up to similar stuff. He writes down a name to show the others, and they are not surprised at all about that person. Then he writes another name of a male politician who was apparently having an affair. He doesn't care about these ones though, and says it can't be helped, they are men, everyone is doing it, and at least they are working. Joe asks Hiranabe if he's sleeping with anyone? Perhaps a woman from Hiroshima? asks Kaoru. Hiranabe jokes that before he sleeps with anyone they always ask him how much he will pay them. Laughs from the others at this. Kaoru then composes himself, and reminds listeners to be vigilent when deciding who to vote for in elections.

Kaoru finishes by plugging the TFoE stickers and Dir's plans for 2016, which included the Budokan DVD, the Mode of Vulgar tour, and..hopefully a new single, if they can stay on schedule.

Songs - Dir en grey/audience killer loop, and one other which I couldn't figure out.

[reneeacaseyfl]

Next-in-line to be governor of Puerto Rico says she has ‘no interest’ in the position

The politician next in line to assume the post of Puerto Rico governor — after Ricardo Rosselló announced his resignation last week — revealed Sunday she has “no interest” in the position.

Justice Secretary Wanda Vázquez would become Puerto Rico’s second woman to hold the job of governor.

However, in a tweet on Sunday, Vázquez wrote, “I have no interest in occupying the position of Governor.”

She continued, “It is a Constitutional opinion. I hope that the Governor identifies and submits a candidate for the position of Secretary of State before August 2,” the day Rosselló, a Democrat and member of the territory’s New Progressive Party (PNP), is expected to step down.

She added that she told the embattled governor about her wishes.

Puerto Rico Justice Secretary Wanda Vazquez, seen here in January 2018, said she did not want to take over as governor.  (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti, File)

CROWDS FLOOD STREETS AFTER PUERTO RICO’S GOVERNOR ANNOUNCES RESIGNATION

Vázquez made the comments about four days after Rosselló announced he will relinquish his post this coming Friday, becoming the first governor to resign in the history of the U.S. island territory.  Many Puerto Ricans also have demanded her removal amid the crisis.

The embattled governor’s decision came following more than a week of protests against him, spurred by a leak of crude and insulting chat messages between Rosselló and his top advisers. Prior to Rosselló announcing his own departure, lawmakers made threats of impeachment.

His announcement was met with the sounds of fireworks going off in Puerto Rico’s capital, as people were seen crying, banging pots and pans and playing music.

Demonstrators among the jubilant crowds celebrating the resignation in Old San Juan told Fox News on Thursday they were “relieved,” but that there still were a “lot of corrupt people we want to get out of here.”

PUERTO RICO CROWDS HAIL GOVERNOR’S RESIGNATION, BUT SAY THERE ARE STILL A ‘LOT OF CORRUPT PEOPLE’ TO REMOVE

The leaked conversations reportedly showed the governor mocking women, homosexuals, political opponents and victims of Hurricane Maria.

In one message, Rosselló reportedly called one New York female politician of Puerto Rican descent a “w—e” and described another as a “daughter of a b—h.” One chat included vulgar references to Latin pop star Ricky Martin’s homosexuality.

More than a dozen officials already have resigned since the chats were leaked, including former Secretary of State Luis Rivera Marin, who would have been next in line to replace Rosselló, according to the U.S. territory’s Constitution.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The island has tried to restructure part of $70 billion in debt and cope with a 13-year recession that has led to an exodus of nearly half a million people to the U.S. mainland in the past decade. Many Puerto Ricans have been resentful over the resulting pension cuts, school closings and other austerity measures.

Fox News’ Greg Norman, Bryan Llenas, Brie Stimson, Danielle Wallace and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Credit: Source link

The post Next-in-line to be governor of Puerto Rico says she has ‘no interest’ in the position appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/next-in-line-to-be-governor-of-puerto-rico-says-she-has-no-interest-in-the-position/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=next-in-line-to-be-governor-of-puerto-rico-says-she-has-no-interest-in-the-position from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186615085117

[weeklyreviewer]

Next-in-line to be governor of Puerto Rico says she has ‘no interest’ in the position

The politician next in line to assume the post of Puerto Rico governor — after Ricardo Rosselló announced his resignation last week — revealed Sunday she has “no interest” in the position.

Justice Secretary Wanda Vázquez would become Puerto Rico’s second woman to hold the job of governor.

However, in a tweet on Sunday, Vázquez wrote, “I have no interest in occupying the position of Governor.”

She continued, “It is a Constitutional opinion. I hope that the Governor identifies and submits a candidate for the position of Secretary of State before August 2,” the day Rosselló, a Democrat and member of the territory’s New Progressive Party (PNP), is expected to step down.

She added that she told the embattled governor about her wishes.

Puerto Rico Justice Secretary Wanda Vazquez, seen here in January 2018, said she did not want to take over as governor.  (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti, File)

CROWDS FLOOD STREETS AFTER PUERTO RICO’S GOVERNOR ANNOUNCES RESIGNATION

Vázquez made the comments about four days after Rosselló announced he will relinquish his post this coming Friday, becoming the first governor to resign in the history of the U.S. island territory.  Many Puerto Ricans also have demanded her removal amid the crisis.

The embattled governor’s decision came following more than a week of protests against him, spurred by a leak of crude and insulting chat messages between Rosselló and his top advisers. Prior to Rosselló announcing his own departure, lawmakers made threats of impeachment.

His announcement was met with the sounds of fireworks going off in Puerto Rico’s capital, as people were seen crying, banging pots and pans and playing music.

Demonstrators among the jubilant crowds celebrating the resignation in Old San Juan told Fox News on Thursday they were “relieved,” but that there still were a “lot of corrupt people we want to get out of here.”

PUERTO RICO CROWDS HAIL GOVERNOR’S RESIGNATION, BUT SAY THERE ARE STILL A ‘LOT OF CORRUPT PEOPLE’ TO REMOVE

The leaked conversations reportedly showed the governor mocking women, homosexuals, political opponents and victims of Hurricane Maria.

In one message, Rosselló reportedly called one New York female politician of Puerto Rican descent a “w—e” and described another as a “daughter of a b—h.” One chat included vulgar references to Latin pop star Ricky Martin’s homosexuality.

More than a dozen officials already have resigned since the chats were leaked, including former Secretary of State Luis Rivera Marin, who would have been next in line to replace Rosselló, according to the U.S. territory’s Constitution.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The island has tried to restructure part of $70 billion in debt and cope with a 13-year recession that has led to an exodus of nearly half a million people to the U.S. mainland in the past decade. Many Puerto Ricans have been resentful over the resulting pension cuts, school closings and other austerity measures.

Fox News’ Greg Norman, Bryan Llenas, Brie Stimson, Danielle Wallace and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Credit: Source link

The post Next-in-line to be governor of Puerto Rico says she has ‘no interest’ in the position appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/next-in-line-to-be-governor-of-puerto-rico-says-she-has-no-interest-in-the-position/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=next-in-line-to-be-governor-of-puerto-rico-says-she-has-no-interest-in-the-position

[whittlebaggett8]

Pakistan’s Women Marched for Their Rights. Then the Backlash Came.

On March 8, International Women’s Working day, hundreds of women of all ages in Pakistan came out and marched to show solidarity with their fellow females to push for accountability and restorative justice in opposition to violence, harassment, and injustice. The rally was called Aurat (Girls) March. it was open up to all and no group or society attempted to possess it. The females collected for the march below the banner of “hum Auratain” (we women), which is not an corporation or group but a label which they have given to all girls of Pakistan.

Aurat March commenced previous year in Karachi and distribute to the complete place this calendar year. It has emerged as a new wave of feminism in Pakistan — and with that, the march organizers have been obtaining rape and demise threats on-line.

Nighat Dad, founder of the Electronic Rights Foundation, is one particular of the organizers in Lahore. She received rape threats on Twitter in reply to a single of her posts on the Aurat March. 5 other women of all ages attained out to her nonprofit firm, which works for digital legal rights in Pakistan and operates a cyber-harassment helpline, to complain of acquiring rape and death threats.

Taking pleasure in this post? Click on right here to subscribe for total obtain. Just $5 a thirty day period.

Dad took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce that grievances had been submitted in opposition to dozens of social media accounts that were inciting violence from females marchers and organizers of Aurat March.

Criticism has been filed towards a lot more than dozens of fb, Twitter and YouTube accounts who incited violence towards ladies marchers and organisers of @AuratMarch. DG FIA has ordered Inquiry immediately. We have presently discovered few folks driving some accounts. U know who you are.

— Nighat Father (@nighatdad) March 18, 2019

A number of recognized politicians, religious scholars, and actors also attacked the Aurat March, contacting it versus Pakistani cultural values. Minister of the National Assembly Aamir Liaquat Hussain requested that Key Minister Imran Khan operate an inquiry to learn the actual actors behind the march and their agenda.

Sindh Assembly lawmaker Abdul Rashid registered a criticism with the law enforcement from the organizers of the Aurat March for marketing vulgarity. He also protested in the assembly from placards exhibited at the march, demanding that the provincial govt acquire action.

A movie of a very well-identified Islamic cleric is building the rounds on social media, in which he is visibly furious in excess of a placard at the Aurat March. The sign browse, “Mera jism meri marzi” (my body, my selection). He threatened women of all ages with rape, declaring that if they assert to ideal to their bodies, adult men can also assert that suitable to rape women.

This video has additional than 67,000 sights on YouTube.

What Is the Aurat March?

Past calendar year, a lot more than 8 NGOs functioning for the legal rights of women in Karachi came with each other with a system to organize a march on Worldwide Women’s Day open up to all ladies and transgender and non-binary men and women. They resolved to hold their function nameless and to not acquire in excess of the march’s agenda. When contacted, they explained simply just that the girls of Karachi organized it.

This yr, very similar marches had been held in other cities too – primarily Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi. Countless numbers of youthful girls and females came out and marched with quite a few other individuals to smash the patriarchal norms and demand a well balanced modern society for all.

Lawyer and women’s rights activist Shumaila Hussain Shahani is one particular of the brains driving the Aurat March. She reported that very last 12 months, when they opened the connect with for the march, girls who had not been out in politics were being incredibly skeptical about the plan.

“Many of my friends who hadn’t been to a march ahead of were skeptical about the notion of a march. But just after its achievement, we saw exhilaration and an acceptance towards the women of all ages. Lots of females who or else are not witnessed actively getting component in political functions also joined the march this calendar year,” she claimed.

Aurat March unveiled a manifesto a day right before Women’s Working day, in which they demanded economic justice, implementation of labor rights and the Sexual Harassment Against Gals in the Office Act 2010, recognition of women’s unpaid labor, and the provision of maternity leave and daycare centers to make sure women’s inclusion in the labor power.

The Entire world Financial Discussion board rated Pakistan as 2nd worst in its 2018 Global Gender Hole Report, which gauges financial opportunity, education and learning, wellbeing, and political empowerment.

The manifesto also concentrated on climate modify and how it affects women of all ages. Gender legal rights activists demanded access to cleanse consuming drinking water and air, security of animals and wildlife.

Other needs protected virtually every element of social justice: recognition of women’s participation in the creation of food stuff and money crops, obtain to a reasonable justice method, equal illustration of ladies with disabilities and transgender people, reproductive justice, obtain to the general public, the legal rights of religious minorities, promotion of an anti-war agenda, and an stop to law enforcement brutality and enforced disappearances.

The Controversy

While the manifesto addressed incredibly essential troubles females experience in Pakistan, anti-march critics slammed the organizers for not focusing on the “real issues” of women of all ages and working with their platform to boost nudity, vulgarity, and anti-Islamic norms in the region.

The Aurat March experienced been producing far more headlines in community media for the backlash and criticism it acquired than for its real reason. Very last calendar year, two placards from the Aurat March Karachi chapter significantly captivated the ire of persons on the world wide web. 1 placard examine “khud khana garam kar lo!” (Warmth up your very own foodstuff) and other “Mera Jism, Meri Marzi” (My entire body, my decision).

Both placards were being terribly criticized on each discussion board – mainstream media, social media, and spiritual gatherings.

Pics of each girls with their placards were commonly shared on the world-wide-web. Some social media internet pages also manufactured memes on them. One particular of the women contacted DRF following her photo went viral and another person tracked down her id. She had not informed her family members that she was likely to the march. DRF reached out to Facebook and asked for that the social media big take out some of the most appreciated shots on their web site.

When having difficulties with the conservative composition of Pakistani culture, females seemed extra well prepared for the Aurat March this year. Most of the criticisms ended up again leveled at the placards the gals introduced to the march, which some observed provocative.

Renowned feminist poetess Kishwar Naheed also criticized some of the slogans made use of at a Women’s Day celebration event. Naheed experienced prepared a provocative poem “Hum Gunahgar Aurtein” (We Sinful Ladies) that acquired her fame the two as a feminist and poetess. Her comments on the Aurat March left the full feminist circle in shock.

Some doctored pictures of Aurat March placards also went viral on social media, which the organizers look at an try to harass women of all ages.

Shahani counts the backlash as a dent in the patriarchal structure, indicating that it is resisting.

“We have obtained assist from the ruling occasion of Sindh. I do not feel these petty ideal-wing methods will discourage the marchers. Marches will continue, our wrestle for a gender-just earth will proceed,” she reported.

Aurat March organizers are inquiring lawmakers with a professional-girls strategy to come and aid their cause. Chairman the Pakistan People’s Occasion Bilawal Zardari Bhutto has confident his aid to them.

This March, the female humor depicted by means of the placards has exposed the fragility of the patriarchy and kicked off a new feminist motion in Pakistan. Farida Shaheed, executive director of the non-income group Shirkat Gah – Women’s Useful resource Center, pointed out that the feminist motion had obtained the very same type of criticism in the past much too. Even Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, spouse of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, was not spared from a vilification marketing campaign by the bigoted clerics. They referred to as her a prostitute for supporting the women’s motion.

“It is just the get started of a new era. We need to be proactive, not reactive,” she reported.

Tehreem Azeem is a digital media journalist primarily based in Lahore, Pakistan. She reports on women of all ages legal rights, minority concerns, blasphemy, and media censorship. She tweets @tehreemazeem

The post Pakistan’s Women Marched for Their Rights. Then the Backlash Came. appeared first on Defence Online.

from WordPress https://defenceonline.com/2019/03/20/pakistans-women-marched-for-their-rights-then-the-backlash-came/

[fantasyofmemory-blog]

The “Grievance Studies” hoax exposes postmodernist charlatans

On October 2, Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian published an article titled “Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship,” incorporating the results of a year-long effort to publish hoax articles, deliberately comprised of bunk facts and irrational and reactionary conclusions, in academic journals associated with gender, racial and identity studies.

The results expose the intellectual bankruptcy of identity politics and postmodernist philosophy. Their proponents, who dominate university humanities departments worldwide, are charlatans who have published or given favorable “revise and resubmit” comments to the most absurd and vulgar pseudo-scientific arguments.

These include: a purported 1,000-hour study of dog “humping” patterns at dog parks that concludes by calling for human males to be “trained” like dogs to prevent rape culture; a long-form poem produced through a teenage angst poetry generator about women holding spiritual-sexual “moon meetings” in a secret “womb room” and praying to a “vulva shrine;” a proposal to develop feminist robots, trained to think irrationally, to control humanity and subjugate white men; and additional articles relating to male masturbation. Another proposal, which was praised by reviewers in a paper that was ultimately rejected, encouraged teachers to place white students in chains to be shamed for their “white privilege.”

There is an element of humor in the fact that such drivel could win accolades from academics and journals. The “dog park” article was even selected as one of the most influential contributions in the history of the Gender, Place and Culture journal!

But the implications of the study are deadly serious. Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have confirmed the right-wing political essence of identity politics and postmodernist thought, based on anti-Marxism, irrationalism and the rejection of the Enlightenment and objective truth.

Most chillingly, the authors also submitted a re-write of a chapter from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, with language altered to reference female identity and feminism. The paper, titled “Our struggle is my struggle: solidarity feminism as an intersectional reply to neoliberal and choice feminism,” was accepted for publication and greeted with favorable reviews.

“I am extremely sympathetic to this article’s argument and its political positioning,” one academic wrote. Another said, “I am very sympathetic to the core arguments of the paper.”

In the wake of their public disclosure, Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have come under attack by the proponents of postmodernism and identity politics, who claim the hoax is a right-wing attack on “social justice” disciplines.

Typical is the argument of Daniel Engber, who wrote in Slate: “How timely, too, that this secret project should be published in the midst of the Kavanaugh imbroglio—a time when the anger and the horror of male anxiety is so resplendent in the news. ‘It’s a very scary time for young men,’ Trump told reporters on the very day that Pluckrose, Lindsay, and Boghossian went public with their hoax. Both express a fear of false attacks on men, whether levied by regretful sluts, lefty liberals, radical academics, or whoever else.”

In reality, the hoax has exposed the fact that it is the proponents of identity politics who are advancing views parallel to the far right. While they are enraged with those who voice concern about the elimination of due process and the presumption of innocence for the targets of the #MeToo campaign, they are unbothered by the fact that the writings of Adolf Hitler are published and praised in feminist academic circles.

Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian are self-described liberals who are concerned that the present identity hysteria is “pushing the culture war to ever more toxic and existential polarization,” by fanning the flames of the far right. As a result, identitarians are “affecting activism on behalf of women and racial and sexual minorities in a way which is counterproductive to equality aims by feeding into right-wing reactionary opposition to those equality objectives.”

In contrast, the authors’ aim is to “give people—especially those who believe in liberalism, progress, modernity, open inquiry, and social justice—a clear reason to look at the identitarian madness coming out of the academic and activist left and say, ‘No, I will not go along with that. You do not speak for me.’”

The hoax’s authors are correct to link the identity politics proponents’ hostility to equality with their opposition to rationalism, scientific analysis and the progressive gains of the Enlightenment. But the roots of this right-wing, irrationalist, anti-egalitarian degeneration are to be found in the economic structure of capitalist society.

The academic architects of postmodernism and identity politics occupy well-paid positions in academia, often with salaries upwards of $100,000–$300,000 or more. As a social layer, the theoreticians of what the World Socialist Web Site refers to as the “pseudo-left” are in the wealthiest 10 percent of American society. Their political and philosophical views express their social interests.

The obsession with “privilege,” sex, and racial and gender identity is a mechanism by which members and groups within this layer fight among themselves for income, social status and positions of privilege, using degrees of “oppression” to one up each other in the fight for tenure track jobs, positions on corporate or non-profit boards, or election to public office. A chief purpose of the #MeToo campaign, for example, is to replace male executives and male politicians with women, while ignoring the social needs of the vast majority of working class women.

The weaponization of identity politics is directed down the social ladder as well. By advancing the lie that white workers benefit from “white privilege,” for example, the proponents of identity politics argue: the spoils of Wall Street should not go to meeting the social needs of the working class, including white workers, who face record rates of alcoholism, poverty, opioid addiction, police violence and other indices of social misery. Instead, the world’s resources should go to me. It is this visceral class hatred that serves as the basis for absurd and reactionary arguments like those advanced in the hoax papers.

Nor have the politics of racial identity improved the material conditions for the vast majority of minority workers. Inequality within racial minorities has increased alongside the introduction of affirmative action programs and the increasing dominance of identity politics in academia and bourgeois politics. In 2016, the top 1 percent of Latinos owned 45 percent of all Latino wealth, while the top 1 percent of African-Americans owned 40.5 percent and the richest whites owned 36.5 percent of white wealth.

The influence of postmodernism in academia exploded in the aftermath of the mass protests of the 1960s and early 1970s. Based explicitly on a rejection of the revolutionary role of the working class and opposition to the “meta narrative” of socialist revolution, it is not accidental that identity politics and postmodernism have now been adopted as official ideological mechanisms of bourgeois rule.

In recent decades, a massive identity politics industry has been erected, with billions of dollars available from corporate funds and trusts for journals, non-profits, publications, fellowships and political groups advancing racial or gender politics. Identity politics has come to form a central component of the Democratic Party’s electoral strategy. Imperialist wars are justified on the grounds that the US is intervening to protect women, LGBT people and other minorities.

The growing movement of the working class, broadening strikes across industries and widespread interest in socialism on college campuses pose an existential threat to the domination of postmodernism. Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have struck a well-timed blow against this reactionary obstacle to the development of scientific socialist consciousness.

Eric London via WSWS

[newssplashy]

Opinion: Women in politics often must run a gantlet of vile intimidation

Four days before the 2016 congressional primary in her Northern California district, Erin Schrode woke up to tens of thousands of messages.

“All would laugh with glee as they gang raped her and then bashed her bagel eating brains in,” one said.

“It’d be amusing to see her take twenty or so for 8 or 10 hours,” another said, again suggesting gang-rape.

It has been two years since Schrode, now 27, lost her Democratic primary and moved on. But the abuse — a toxic sludge of online trolling steeped in misogyny and anti-Semitism that also included photoshopped images of her face stretched into a Nazi lampshade and references to “preheating the ovens” — never stopped.

“She needs to stop moving her hands around like a crackhead,” said one tweet this year. “Another feminazi’s plans foiled!” said another.

The 2018 election cycle has brought a surge of female candidates. A record number of women ran or are running for the Senate, the House and governorships, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Many more are running for state legislatures and local offices. And in the process, they are finding that harassment and threats, already common for women, can be amplified in political races — especially if the candidate is a member of a minority group.

Last year, sexist and anti-Semitic abuse helped drive Kim Weaver, D-Iowa, out of her race against Rep. Steve King.

Someone crept onto her property overnight and put up a “for sale” sign. The neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer published an article (no longer available) titled, as Weaver recalled it, “Meet the Whore Who’s Running Against Steve King,” increasing what was already an onslaught of threats. An acquaintance in the German government even called to warn her about a threatening conversation on an extremist message board, and to ask if she had personal security.

“I’m normally a pretty brave person, but when you feel like you’re in a fishbowl and you don’t know who it is that’s throwing rocks at you, it’s disconcerting,” Weaver, 53, said. “You don’t know if it’s somebody sitting in his mother’s basement in Florida or if it’s a gun-happy white supremacist who hates you who lives a block away.”

When she withdrew from the race, King suggested she had made up the threats. “I wanted #KimWeaver IN the race — not out,” he tweeted. “Democrats drove her out of the race — not R’s. Death threats likely didn’t happen but a fabrication.”

No independent organization appears to formally track incidents of harassment, and the Democratic and Republican National committees did not respond to emails asking whether they did. But several groups that work with candidates said they routinely provided personal safety training.

Emily Ellsworth, 31, R-Utah, said that when she was seeking party delegates’ support to get on the ballot for the state Senate this year, a male delegate cornered her at multiple candidate meet-and-greets and messaged her around a dozen times on Facebook. Only after she deactivated her account did he stop.

The messages were not sexually explicit, she said, but made her feel that “he really wanted to push a more personal relationship and had a hard time accepting the boundaries I had set.”

Morgan Zegers, 21, a Republican running for state Assembly in upstate New York, said she had been called a “GOP Stepford wife” and often had to delete vulgar comments on her Facebook page. Lauren Underwood, 31, a Democratic House candidate in Illinois, recalled that when she was visiting a supporter, a local Republican stopped by and was affronted when he learned that Underwood was challenging his friend in Congress.

“He threw his shoulders back and stood at his largest and leaned into me, as if he was going to launch at me for having the audacity to run for office,” Underwood said, adding that her supporter came to her defense.

Harassment is not new for women in politics, or anywhere else — and men face it too, especially if they are African-American or Jewish. But for women, the harassment is ubiquitous and frequently sexualized, and it has come to the fore this election cycle, partly because so many women are running and partly because more of them are discussing their experiences.

Attendees at WomenWin — a forum in June for Democratic women running in Texas, which included a personal safety session led by the police chief of a local university — said they had found a sense of camaraderie in doing so.

“Being in the room with all of those women that are having those same concerns as me made me feel so much saner,” said Samantha Carrillo Fields, 31, a candidate for the Texas House, referring not only to safety but also to other forms of misogyny on the campaign trail. “OK, so this is real. What I’m feeling is real. It was really nice having that validation.”

In a 2017 video by the Women’s Media Center, elected officials — including seasoned politicians like Reps. Katherine M. Clark, 55, D-Mass., and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, 66, R-Fla. — described their experiences as part of a campaign called #NameItChangeIt, which encourages women to speak out about harassment. And women are more willing to do so than they were even a few years ago.

When Rebecca Thompson, a Democrat, ran for the Michigan House in 2014, strangers followed her home from events and drove slowly, repeatedly, past her house. At one point, someone broke into her car. By the end of the campaign, she said, she was sleeping at her partner’s house because she was afraid to be in her own.

“I felt unsafe throughout the entire campaign,” Thompson, 35, said. “It almost seemed like psychological warfare, like they were trying to psych me out. It kept me on edge all the time, because I just didn’t know where I could go, anywhere in the city, without feeling like I was being followed.”

But she was not comfortable speaking out then. “I told myself I had to just suck it up — there’s no crying in baseball; there’s no crying in politics,” she said. “Had those things happened now, I do feel like I would have been empowered to speak up about them.”

Yet even still, some candidates interviewed said initially that they had not been harassed — but then, when given examples like menacing social media messages, said yes, they had experienced those things. Just as many have observed in the #MeToo movement that a certain level of misogyny is so expected as to feel unremarkable, these candidates said they saw the messages as par for the course.

“It becomes so normalized, the types of things that people say,” said Mya Whitaker, 27, a Democrat running for City Council in Oakland, California. “Being a black woman and existing, in some cases, is enough to piss people off.”

A different kind of normalization happens at the other end of the spectrum, where the harassment is so vicious and constant that it overwhelms the ability to react.

As an independent video game developer in 2014, Brianna Wu was the subject of abuse during GamerGate, when women involved in gaming were targeted for harassment.

Now a Democrat running for Congress in Massachusetts, Wu, 41, said death and rape threats came so routinely that she had ceased to feel much in response. Even when people threw objects through her window. Even when they vandalized her husband’s car. Even when they emailed paparazzi-like photos of her in her own home.

“I often look at it and I’m like: ‘I know I should be feeling something right now. I know I should be feeling scared or angry or stressed.’ And it’s at a point where I can’t feel anything anymore,” Wu said. “It’s almost like fear is a muscle that is so overtaxed, it can just do nothing else in my body.”

Many said it was a point of principle not to be intimidated into silence. Others said their political ideals were simply more important.

“For good reason, there’s never any shortage of telling stories about women being harassed on the campaign trail,” Wu said. “But I cannot communicate to you strongly enough: Overall, this job is fun. This job is exhausting, but this job is amazing.”

Repeatedly, she and others urged prospective candidates not to be deterred. Zegers said that was why she deleted sexist Facebook comments.

“A lot of women pay attention to my page,” she said. “It’s important to me that we show a good dialogue about the issues and we don’t scare women away from running.”

And some cast the harassment as a hurdle they simply had to overcome if they wanted to change the systems that fuel it.

The government is still composed mainly of men who have never experienced sexual harassment, while “far too many women experience these things,” Underwood said.

“I think that’s part of the opportunity in running for progress,” she said. “It’s an opportunity to fix this and stop it from happening in the future.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Maggie Astor © 2018 The New York Times

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/08/opinion-women-in-politics-often-must.html