Pakistani boys are not fuckboys arent they rapist? They have rape culture in the country

GIRL WHAT

So I'm not totally sure how prevalent this idea is with Daenerys antis, but I've seen more than one person talk about how Dany was racist towards the Dothraki and Ghiscari. This is, of course, ridiculous. Dany embraces both these cultures when she lives among them and even considers staying with them multiple times. Yes, she disagrees with and is even disturbed by some of the traditions these cultures have, but these traditions are ones of slavery, rape, and injustice. We the readers should also recognize these are not good traditions.

In every culture, there are traditions that are harmful, this is an unfortunate consequence of our humanity. No matter what country, city, etc you are coming from, there are things in the history of the place and people that are not good. The same is true of the world of ASOIAF. Slavery of Old and New Ghis, the right of the First Night in the North, the Ironborn's practice of taking thralls and salt wives, the Dothraki raping the women of whomever they defeat, the human experimentation in Valyrian, the invading armies of Westeros raping and burning the smallfolk. All these are practices meant to be condemned by the reader and acknowledged by povs as being wrong. Acknowledging a huge flaw like legal rape and fucking slavery is not being racist!

When Viserys calls the Dothraki barbarians and is actually racist towards them, Dany defends them and claims them as her own people. After all, she believes at this point that she will spend the rest of her life among the Dothraki. Now someone could try to argue that Dany refusing to stay a Khaleesi in the Dothraki Sea after Viserys' death is an example of her looking down on them ("If I were not the blood of the dragon...this could be my home.")

However, this is, firstly, not about race, second of all, this isn't about her thinking she's better than them, this is about her perceived duty to her house. Viserys raised her to believe it is their duty to their house to reclaim the IT, and not that he's dead, the duty lies solely on her and her unborn child. She isn't the only character who sacrifices her happiness out of perceived duty, Jon joins the Night's Watch because of this and literally anything Tyrion does on Tywin's orders or for Cersei.

With the Ghiscari, Dany only has issues with the slavers. She loves the slaves and is driven to free them, and, let me remind everyone, slavery in ASOIAF is not race-driven, that was another thing the show fucked up on. When Dany rules in Meereen, she embraces the culture quickly, just like with the Dothraki. She wears the traditional clothing, learns Ghiscari, and has Ghiscari nobles and freedmen on her counsel.

Any and all negative thoughts and associations Dany has with Ghiscari traditions (the tokar, the wedding ceremony) are because of the false peace and the continued power of the slavers. She hates how it feels to put on the tokar because it's a reminder that she is constantly compromising with the slavers and is allowing the Astapori and Yunkai'i slaves to fall back into chains. She doesn't want to marry Hizdahr because she knows he is working with the Harpy and he is constantly pressuring her to give into other demands by the slavers. The only traditions Dany has issues with are associated with slavery and the false peace in Meereen.

Daenerys isn't ever racist towards the Dothraki or Ghiscari, she values their council, and respects their traditions except the ones revolving around rape and slavery. She is only driven to take the IT because of perceived duty to her house. Daenerys is unhappy in Meereen because she hates slavery and is dissatisfied with the false peace there.

there is no universality between women. except if you look globally, there is. prostitution is at the end of the day the same exact evil in every country and culture - justified and set up differently perhaps, same exact shit w the same horrible results. except if you look globally several cultures completely deatched from each other have implemented menstrual huts (nepal parts of africa certain native american tribes pre colonialization). except globally both the marriage of girl-children as well as bridal kidnappings have been very common cultural phenomenon, because the moment a patriarchy and patrilinial system is instated, women and girls become breeding cattle. except throughout this whole planet female infants have been massacred (arab world & china just two examples), and girl-children have been physically tortured and branded (ancient chinese foot binding, ancient egyptian female genital mutilation). except throughout so many cultures tribes would trade women between themselves, because women were property and lesser than men. except globally when men go to war, women and children get raped. except globally in a patriarchal society, femininity and sex stereotypes and expectations are opressive and are meant to serve the male. except globally we see certain trends - patriarchal societies also enstate male gods, and claim that a male has created and controled life, not the female

almost like universally the fact that were female becomes a matter of opression the moment that a patriarchal society is set up. obviously there are places and there were places which werent patriarchies, they were more egalitarian societies or even matriarchies. unfortunately there used to be a lot more than today.... but universally, where patriarchy has been estated (which for gods sake in many places was much before colonializm had anything to do with anything), weve been fucked

there is no universality between women. except the fact that we can have international conversations on our struggles in and of itself proves that there is

What people fail to recognise is that brexit was marketed as something that it never became. People aren’t anti immigration as such, but more anti illegal immigration where showing up gets you a hotel room, bumped to the top of the council housing list, benefits, and virtually no accountability whereas people who’ve emigrated here legally (like mine and many others parents/grand/greats etc.) and worked for everything being entitled to nothing and still facing genuine discrimination (no dogs/blacks/Irish, my mother was paid less than her white colleagues for the same job, my father when promoted in his work was told “I’m not going to be managed by a black man” and yes this was in the 70&80s), feel a reasonable sense of betrayal as do those born here who are repeatedly overlooked by the system, living in coastal towns and cathedral cities with a sudden influx of men in particular who have a dim and predatory view of western culture and treat young women like meat, why isn’t there more outrage about the rapes happening? There seems to be some fear of calling this BS out, and Brexit was sadly poorly marketed, messy, and should’ve been more provisional for those who aren’t part of the criminal underworld. I’m a remainer for my own reasons but I can see and understand why some voted to leave (don’t get me wrong there’s a lot of racism embedded in some leave voting perspectives however they aren’t the only perspective). Our government has for some reason allowed this country to become the worlds safe haven…there are many other safe countries but we’ve been betrayed by a greedy government and misguided social justice types who want to save all the “innocent fleeing persecution” from the Middle East and Europe which simply isn’t the case. Brexit and Megzit have no correlation, this was about Europe and her unwavering influx of a very negatively impactful minority of people (drugs, money laundering, people trafficking, etc.) who unfortunately have tarnished the reputation of decent normal Europeans who just want to work and live and likely escape poverty in their own country because the infrastructure simply isn’t there, makes you wonder why so many left and continue to leave their countries in droves for a better life because there’s simply nothing at home for them which is sad, and the sign of a larger problem. Brexit was poorly designed and badly executed and has nothing to do with RMM, it’s pathetic to watch every little thing now be seen as anti this or that or somehow prejudice. We have racism in this country, and intolerance, always have and likely always will. However it’s not from the majority of citizens, and for some people their intolerance comes from a place of deep resentment for being overlooked, underfunded, and sidelined by their government, it’s bound to create resentment and feelings of anti immigration when you see the massive problems arising from a small number of people and our government is literally funding it. Why? That’s the key question here. Because our politicians and wealthy elite will never have to live amongst the people they are blindly giving a privileged life to, it just doesn’t make sense. Again, why? And lastly, Rachel, brexit never was and never will be about you. Change the record.

Thank you! Excellent post!❤️

I live in a country where 70% of the population is Christian,according to a government survey. Yes,this sucks in every way. The bible sees abuse as something normal and has a moralistic and conservative aspect that is actually something archaic and toxic,the bible also defends homophobia and here and in this country it is normal for you to hear homophobic speeches in the name of "God". So, hypocrisy is also common among the herd,racism,intolerance towards other religions,especially African religions. Christianity here works as a perfect hiding place for abusers and psychopaths,because their own book and doctrine defends these aspects and uses these religious aspects to canonize scoundrels and clean up their image,they want to mold society into their archaic and toxic ways and brainwash you.

Brazilian laws are grotesque and defend sexism and patriarchy that has great religious influence here (Christian) here it is common to see religious fascism and fascist politics hand in hand. Most people here are extremely prejudiced and sexist,customs are conservative but most of them live on appearances and men who say they are Christian and conservative are actually hypocrites and have mistress.

This country actually resembles a medieval colony. Christianity helps fuel the rape culture that is still very strong here and this is seen as normal and even if you are the victim in the story the laws here benefit abusers.

When the victim is tired of being abused and decides to take the law into their own hands (because the justice system is mercenary and doesn't defend victims) then they use the law to silence you,harm you or put you in prison.

Here it is very common for abusers to leave unscathed for all the harm caused to the victim and even more common for each of them to become religious and be considered "saints and good people" by society because they are Christians or some other similar religion that canonizes scoundrels.

So it's common for you to see a pedophile or rapist or any abuser living normally as if nothing had happened and they were "good" people. All this is very grotesque and disgusting,it makes me nauseous,because there are really many people who defend abusers and my wish for all of them is that they die a painful death and burn in some hell out there after their deaths, unfortunately the law does not allow shooting in their heads.

So Christianity is nothing more than a den of serpents for the most part,a factory of alienation and cancerous customs.

Doing Me Too right

Me Too has trended in recent times. There are multiple facets of this of course. But when one steps back at looks at it in a broader historical context, there has never been a time in history, across cultures, in which sexual harrasment was not considered bad. It is just that unjustifiable sexual harrasment has been very narrowly defined in the past and the social and legal tools to fight it have been very limited. Over time, with the changing status of women, there have been intermittent bursts of social and legal reform and both the definition of unjustifiable sexual harrasment and the tools for fighting it have grown. Such bursts have depended on some famous events of a given moment, or a succession of such events, and a public response to it shaped by contemporary currents of social thought. Me too is just the latest such burst. But not every spike of public attention on a given social problem leads to reform. Some such trends peter out without adding to the stock of systemic solutions. That is especially unfortunate because the problems are real and chronic even in quieter times when the public eye is not directed towards them. If reform can only happen at a moment which manages to become a nexus of public attention, and such moments are necessarily rare, it is clearly irresponsible to squander any such moment. The key is to put long term constructive thinking over momentary emotionalism

Me Too has galvanized actual legal reform in some countries but in Western countries, the new machinery of trying to convict sexual predators has been extralegal. A sort of people's court is used and some kind of blackballing or "cancellation" is the punishment for the condemned. Now a starting requirement for such a people's court is clearly that it must be willing to convict on flimsier(but still psychologically convincing) evidence than the law courts. Otherwise what is the point? But how far can one take it until it becomes a kangaroo court, a parody of natural justice that becomes unsustainable when the first enthusiasm of the underlying movement has died out? Me Too goes the whole hog of taking a single complainant's testimony as sufficient to convict and loses much of its credibility and durability. On the other hand, the negative fallout, such as an increased unwillingness on the part of businesses to hire women is also greater

Can we keep a people's court model of reform, which will still convict significantly more offenders, especially serial offenders, and yet manage a much better balance and appeal to more people as being consistent with natural justice? I think we can and the following is my proposed reworking of the Me Too process. First let us ask a broader question. In what ways can a people's court relax its standards of evidence necessary to convict in comparison to actual law courts? The first principle is that people's courts must assign greater credibility to personal testimonies and circumstantial evidence. They cannot demand forensic evidence which they don't have the competence to evaluate anyway. The second principle (which will be crucial to what follows) is that someone can be convicted on the accumulated evidence of their entire history. Perhaps surprisingly the law courts do not allow this. A person with ten prior convictions of rape, if charged again for the same, is guaranteed that the jury cannot be informed of his criminal history, and he can only be judged on the facts of the current case. A people's court can profitably ignore this principle. The third principle is of course the radical one of banishing due process all together and convicting on the strength of a single complainant's testimony. My contention is that the second principle is strong enough especially in the context of sexual harrasment and the controversiality of the third principle can be avoided altogether. Serial sexual predators especially depend on the fact that in each case on its own, the evidence against them is circumstantial and depends on a conflict of personal testimonies - theirs against the complainant's - and their testimony will win out in credibility in that comparison. But stack the evidence over several cases and suddenly the game changes dramatically. Cosby is the best example. Anyone might consider a single complaint as merely a shakedown of an eminent philanthropist who will pay to avoid the fuss and humiliation of a court battle even if justice is on his side. Twenty and up separate complaints by separate women who knew Cosby over a wide swath of time and didn't know each other and Cosby's guilt starts to look like a common sense fact. The principle of accumulating evidence across cases is very powerful and does not offend against ordinary people's idea of natural justice. If the extra power of Me Too comes from just this principle, it is still extremely powerful, and now moreover sustainable

Without further ado, let me lay down a blueprint for the actual process:

Step 1: The first complaint is made to some appropriate personnel. The identity of the complainant will be known to the personnel but if she wishes, it will be kept private from everyone else. The fact that a complaint has been made will be made public. If possible, the publicity can be restricted to other potential complainants only, women who have worked with the accused, but nobody else, by means of something like a group text or email. But these women should know so that a groundwork is set up for subsequent complaints

Step 2: Once the first complaint has been made, a term will be set for the time left for subsequent complaints. Typically something like one year. At the end of that term, there will a trial

Step 3: The correct form when a complaint is made, even if the complaint as well as the complainant's identity is fully public, is that neither accused nor accuser is treated any differently. "ALWAYS BELIEVE WOMEN" IS REPLACED WITH "NEVER DISBELIEVE ANYONE" It is precisely this civilized restraint and the abeyance of impulsive judgement and condemnation that will encourage further complaints which will take the process further

Step 4: Near the end of the trial period the accused will be informed so that they can prepare their defence

Step 5: During the informal trial chaired by handpicked senior people in the field, the evidence of multiple complaintants will be tested for mutual independence,internal coherence, whether the women had told someone else at the time of the alleged incident etc, whether the women know each other and had any common cause against the accused etc

Step 6: All or much of the trial minus specific details on request will be released to the public

Step 7: An occasional acquittal must be accepted with the same grace by the public as a conviction. Otherwise there is no point to the process

The great advantage of such a balanced process is that we can actually hang on to it as a way of dealing with sexual predators long past the current trending status of Me Too. The local trend may pass into history but it's impact remains as an systemic improvement

The apocalypse we choose

Mike Johnson's record as Speaker of the House

Timothy Snyder

Mar 3, 2024

In four months as Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson has given Russia a chance to win its war in Ukraine, and thereby turn the world towards tyranny. 

Johnson's term of office consists of stratagems to avoid funding Ukraine.  He and a minority of Trumpist Republicans have left Ukrainians without the means to defend themselves, and enabled Russian aggressors to retake Ukrainian territory.  As a result, troops are killed and disabled every day. 

Around the world, Johnson's behavior is seen as betrayal and weakness.  We tend to focus on the details of Johnson's various excuses, rather than seeing the larger pattern.  Johnson's success in making the war a story about him exemplifies the American propensity to miss the big picture. 

Alive?  Thank a Ukrainian.  The great American capacity is to take others for granted, and our specific form of hubris blinds us to the great services others perform for us.  The resistance of the Ukrainian armed forces and Ukrainian civil society is holding back every form of modern catastrophe.  Ukrainians are preserving an order established after the Second World War, but also pointing the way towards a brighter future.  Their tremendous daily efforts have pushed the world toward a set of better alternatives we would all lack without them.  But they need us at their back. 

An elementary form of apocalypse is genocide.  Russia is making war on Ukraine with the genocidal goal of eliminating Ukrainian society as such.  It consciously fights its war with its own national minorities, and takes every opportunity to spread racist propaganda (including about African-Americans).  Russian occupiers deport Ukrainian children, rape Ukrainian women, castrate Ukrainian men, and murder Ukrainian cultural leaders with this purpose in mind.  They keep children out of school and force families into emigration, all with the goal of putting an end to a nation.  Ukrainian resistance, though, has put the backbone into "never again."  Where Ukraine holds territory, and that is most of the country, people are saved.  Ukrainians have shown that a genocide can be halted -- with the right kind of help. When we cut off that help, as we have done, we enable genocide to proceed.  This is not only a horror in itself, but a precedent.

A great fear of our age is nuclear war, and Russia has used nuclear blackmail against Ukraine.  Russians want Ukraine (and the rest of us) to give up because Russia has nuclear weapons.  Russian propaganda instructs that a nuclear power cannot lose a war.  This is of course untrue.  The U.S. lost in Vietnam, the USSR lost in Afghanistan.  Nuclear weapons did not hold the British and French empires together, or bring Israel victory in Lebanon.  Had Ukraine submitted to Putin's nuclear blackmail, this would have incentivized every country to build nuclear weapons: some to intimidate, some to prevent intimidation.  Ukrainian resistance has saved us from this scenario -- thus far.  Should America abandon Ukraine, we can expect nuclear proliferation and nuclear jeopardy.

Another traditional worry has been a Russian attack upon a European country that triggers the collective defense provision of the NATO alliance.  For now, Ukraine is making this all but impossible.  Ukraine has absorbed an attack by Russia.  At horrible cost, Ukraine is fulfilling the entire mission of NATO, thereby sparing all other NATO members any risk of loss of territory or of life.  The NATO economies are about two-hundred and fifty times as big as the Ukrainian economy.  If they exploit a tiny fraction of their economic power, they could easily sustain the Ukrainian armed forces.  Unfortunately the largest by far of these NATO members, the United States, is doing nothing.  Should this continue, and should Russia win its war in Ukraine, then further war in Europe becomes not only possible, but likely.

For the past two decades, the main concern in Washington, D.C. has been a war with China in the Pacific over Taiwan.  Never was this concern more pressing than in February 2022, when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  Putin had just received China's blessing for his adventure.  Had Ukraine fallen, as so many expected, it would have been a signal that other such adventures were possible.  Ukraine's endurance has made clear that offensive operations are unpredictable and costly.  Ukrainians are achieving what we could not, as Americans, achieve ourselves: sending a counsel of caution to China without in any way antagonizing the Chinese.  Of course, should Ukraine be abandoned by its allies, and should Russia win, our earlier fears would return, and rightly so.

Russia is testing an international order.  The basic assumption, since the Second World War, is that states exist have borders that war cannot alter.  When Russia attacked Ukraine, it was attacking this principle.  Russia's rulers expected that a new age of chaos would begin, in which only lies and force would count.  The consensus in Washington, we should remember, was the same.  In the beginning, the American leadership expected the Ukrainian president to flee and for the country to fall in three days.  Every day since the fourth day is one in which Ukrainian blood has bought for us a future that we ourselves did not think we had.  After two years, too many of us take this for granted.  But if we decide not to help the Ukrainians, disorder will ensue, and prosperity will collapse.Albrecht Dürer, “Apocalypse,” (third panel), 1498

For the past half century, people have been rightly concerned about global warming.  Whether we get through the next half century will depend upon a balance of power between those who make money from fossil fuels and lie about their consequences and those who tell the truth about science and seek alternative sources of energy.  Vladimir Putin is the most important fossil fuel oligarch.  Both his wealth and his power arise from natural gas and oil reserves.  His war in Ukraine is a foretaste of the struggle for resources we will all face should Putin and other fossil fuel oligarchs get the upper hand.  Precisely because Ukraine resisted, important economies have accelerated their green transition.  Should Ukraine be abandoned and lose, it seems unlikely that there will be another chance to hold back fossil fuel oligarchy and save the climate.  More broadly, Putin's idiotic nation that there is no Ukraine is an example of the kind of oligarchical fantasy wastes time and destroys life as we try to confront the world's actual problems.

Global hunger is an important scenario for catastrophic global suffering in an age of drastic inequality and resource strife.  Here no country is more important than Ukraine.  For more than two thousand years, since the ancient Greeks, the fertile soil of Ukraine has fed neighboring lands and civilizations.  Ukraine today is capable of feeding something like half a billion people.  Russia's war against Ukraine has also been a hunger war.  Russia has mined farms, flooded others by destroying a critical dam, targeted grain-storage facilities, and blockaded the Black Sea to prevent exports.  In 2023, Ukraine was able to win an astonishing victory, clearing the western Black Sea of the Russian navy, and opening lanes for export of grain.  Because the Ukrainians did this on their own, it has hardly been covered in our press.  But it is a huge achievement.  People in the Near East and Africa are being fed who might otherwise starve.  If Ukraine is allowed to fall, all of this can be reversed, and suffering and war will spread to those vulnerable and critical areas.

From a different perspective, people fear that our world can end as a result of artificial intelligence, digital propaganda, and the collapse of the human contact needed for political decency.  For a decade now, Russia has been in the forefront of digital manipulation.  Its first invasion of Ukraine, in 2014, was successful chiefly as a hybrid war, in which it found vulnerable minds in the West and inserted useful memes -- ones which are still in use today.  And Russia does find backers today among the digital oligarchs, most notably Elon Musk, who has bent his personal account and indeed his entire platform to become an instrument of Russian propaganda.  That said, the Ukrainians have, this time, shown how this can be resisted.  Volodymyr Zelens'kyi and other Ukrainian leaders, by taking personal risks in time of danger, have reminded us that there is a real world.  And Ukrainian civil society has this time taken a playful approach to new media, deconstructing Russian propaganda and reminding us of the human side -- and the human stakes.

Perhaps the most insidious calamity we face is one of doubt: we cease to believe in ourselves, as human beings with values, who deserve to rule themselves in the system we call democracy.  For most of this century, democracy has been in decline, and this decline has been accompanied by a discourse of passivity and a lack of resolve.  Russia's attack on Ukraine -- the rare event of an armed autocracy seeking to destroy a peaceful democracy by military force -- was a turning point in this history.  Which way we will all turn remains to be seen.  By resisting on the battlefield, Ukraine has, for the time being anyway, preserved its own democracy, and given new hope to democracies in general.  There is nothing automatic about democracy.  People have to believe that they should rule.  And this will always involve some risk.  By taking great risks for the right values, Ukrainians can and do encourage others around the world.  If Ukrainians are killed, maimed, and forced to retreat as a result of U.S. policy, everyone is demoralized -- including us.

If Americans let Ukrainians down, it will be a blow, perhaps a fatal one, to the "spirit of freedom," as a Ukrainian veteran put it in a speech I heard at the Munich Security Council.  We need that spirit, in part to oppose those who lack it.  The people who block aid for Ukraine today wish our own democracy ill.  In the last few days and weeks we have witnessed, again and again, the overlap between Russian influence in American politics, opposition to aid to Ukraine, and hostility toward the American constitutional system.  Putin knows that his only route to Kyiv passes through Washington, D.C., and he has acted accordingly.

The people working to assure the destruction of democracy in Ukraine also oppose democracy in America.  We have just experienced a bogus impeachment proceeding against President Biden, where the chief accusation (long ago discredited by Ukrainian and other journalists, incidentally) arose from a Russian agent.  Mike Johnson is in a submission chain that passes through Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin.  Trump presents himself as an admirer of Putin and had been his client, in one form or another, for a decade.  He has succeeded in conditioning the media by teaching his followers to shout "Russia hoax" whenever the subject comes up: but, all the same, Russia has backed him in every campaign and is backing him in this one.  Johnson's 2018 congressional campaign, for that matter, took laundered funds from a Russian oligarch, and Johnson was one of the congressmen most deeply implicated in Trump's attempted coup in 2021. 

Ukraine should and can win this war.  To do so, it needs arms and funds.  The amount needed of both is tiny on an American scale, not anything we would even notice.  It is the choices of certain Americans that have brought the Ukrainians to this cruel pass, and brought the world to the edge of multiple catastrophe.  Should we fail to assist Ukraine, we will be inviting the worst of catastrophes.  We will put the security of the world at risk, and betray what is best about ourselves.  Americans can enable Ukrainian victory.  If we fail to do so, we will face an apocalypse Americans have chosen.  And, in particular, an apocalypse Mike Johnson has chosen.

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Blog Post #1 Af-Amer 112A

African American Studies 112A

Professor Due 

01/18/2024

Blog Post #1

In all of the works, Get Out, The Comet, and Wake had a powerful and unfortunately accurate representation of blacks in regards to their black history, which as we learned in class can be considered as ‘black horror’. At the roots of black horror is racism, and these films and stories showcase that message. In Wake, we see messages of black magic/black voodoo when Ruth kills her father and his corpse's soil to create a husband. I have always associated voodoo with African Americans, specifically in the South in cities like New Orleans. Voodoo is part of the black culture in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the fact that we see a black woman using voodoo/black magic enhances her character’s black history. 

The Comet shows a more depressing side of black horror, a truly scary side that is painful to revisit, but is necessary as we still see discrimination in our country every day. In The Comet, there is a black man, Jim, and a white woman, Julia, who for a moment believes that they are the last people alive after surviving a Comet strike in NYC. In this moment, Julia sets her racial prejudices aside and treats Jim as if he is a man. She even thinks to herself that it is odd he is acting like a man when he doesn’t look like one because of his skin, in terms of acting like a civil gentleman. To me, this was the most powerful line in the short story by DuBois, because it shows how horrified white people are of black people for no reason at all. In fact, if Jim wasn’t the last man alive, to Julia’s knowledge, she would not have even talked to him in reality and made this realization. It is tragic, which black horror as a genre shows, that people have a preconceived notion to discriminate and stereotype black people. At the end of the story when all seems to be back to ‘normal’, Julia’s father first asks if Jim raped Julia. He of course didn’t, and Julia ends up defending this agreeing that Jim did not rape her, but it is so disturbing that the first thought when he sees her daughter after a Comet strike is to assume that a black man, who protected her, had raped her, after giving off zero signals that he might have aside from him being a black person. 

In Get Out, right from the beginning, we see that there are some underlying roots of racism within the family of Rose, who is Chris’s girlfriend. We also see a theme that is not so common outside of The Comet and Get Out, where the white woman is dating, or communicating, with a black man. Black men have this horribly misunderstood stereotype that they are more dangerous or sexually assault more women, so they should be handled with more caution. This film beats that stereotype and actually shows how white people are the enemy in this race fight. Rose’s father defends himself when Chris points out that all of their workers are black, which has already set the tone of the film. I really liked in this film how Chris handles himself because although he has the right to overreact, he doesn’t give them that option or that pleasure. I was on the edge of my seat watching this film, which is also an accomplishment for Jordan Peele, to keep the audience not only engaged, but thrilled at the images on the screen. His goal was to relate to everybody in the audience, and while I am not African American, I am a woman of color, and in that sense I felt like through our country’s history, and my knowledge of that, I could also relate to the film in a different way than the black audiences would. 

Before this class, I knew nothing of black horror, and I did not know that black horror was directly related to black history. I also hated horror films, and after the second week of this course, I am starting to get more comfortable with horror films and fascinated by the history of black horror in these specific films. This course is different, in a good way, from what I was expecting– I did not expect this many films to watch, but I love watching movies in my free time so this has been very enjoyable homework thus far and I look forward to the future films we are assigned to watch.

‘we’re decent humans bc we don’t oppress’ statements -- where is sex. lol sex is certainly a mark for discrimination

female sex faces material and sometimes violent oppression not on account of silly cultural trappings but due to unfortunate biological mechanisms (ie length of gestation vs infant mortality in the ancient world required a high pregnancy rate, average 5-6 children per woman, and robust younger populations were necessary for non-nomadic groups to maintain control of a location (early settlements and even cities)...obviously this is no longer necessary, but the mentality has dovetailed into modern political philosophies and spiralled to the point where people in rich countries are very brainwashed about what ‘female’ does and doesn’t imply-- it exceeds a level of docility necessary for governance). not everything is physical, yet some purely physical examples can still be found in the modern world: being forced to sleep outside when bleeding, or being stoned to death for having a broken hymen. in the first world, the wage gap makes everything more difficult for women on average and its pattern probably has something to do with expectations of maternity leave in otherwise healthy-looking adults. the wage gap is especially detrimental in less socialised societies where charity welfare the dole &c are seen as shameful; people share when coexisting and nothing is entirely set down in the money books, so there may be some compensations, but in a society where sharing amongst strangers is regarded with hostility and suspicion this will obviously be less. a bit tangential to the point but to illustrate that there’s probably some underlying dogma at play, people study business and or economics at uni & never discuss the claim that men also would have more liquid resources if women were paid more

gender used to be a word people used when they didn’t want to say S-E-X in an official document, letter, speech, whatever

when you change the meaning of 'woman,’ the few protections which ostensibly existed for women become technically meaningless

^this might be deliberate, i dunno

women are the marked group, yet this is farce: there is no character trait that women have in common which does not apply to all humans. what women have in common are the impositions of biology. Even female socialisation affects women to varying degrees, and there will always be an exception to every ‘woman trait’ because the distinctions were made to defame and thereby control women, and some people are more difficult to control than others. There may be some patterns in the ways people react to being treated a certain way from the inception of memory, which frames one’s entire world, but there is no female personality. And yet the crux of a movement which says you can opt into a gender is to say: there is some metaphysical difference between men and women which tradition has failed to account for. This transparently upholds sexism.

in certain biological realities, certain increased risk factors, separate health concerns, and particular traps hidden under tailored social forms, women have things in common with other women. These things are experienced, but not wholly subjective. Yet according to modern standards of correctness this group can’t be grouped and is unmentionable by changing the meaning of the word everyone has known. ‘Birthing people’ is how men have perceived women since ages, but plenty of women never have sex with men so they won’t give birth. Oddly it appears there’s a group of women who are attracted to women and absolutely must include anyone who claims to be female in their dating pool or suffer quite a significant amount of annoying conversation, plus death or rape threats which somehow people find acceptable to catalyse social ‘change’-- I guess this is another nameless group. efforts to effect change, btw, should be targeted at legislation and institutions and not at individuals (even if you bloody a person up a bit and force them to submit to your ideologies youve done nothing to change the world; violence already exists since time immemorial). anyway it's evincing the most witless docility to simply agree that an individual’s personal feelings of ~identity or ~inclusion ought to supersede legal and medical definitions in these same spheres.

apart from those whom the state deems to have forfeited rights by violation of social contract (incarcerated women most importantly, about whom literally none of these faux-left ‘activist’ (talkativist) types care a jot), all people should have the right to live their lives and be as annoying as is legal. When delicate handling of personal feelings comes at the expense of hard-won legal rights of an unnameable group, it should not, according to any considered and rational opinion, be sanctioned by law

what one feels inside should be respected in contexts where sharing on that level is appropriate. what is and isn’t legal has to do with people living cooperatively together, and depends on a common conception of reality. the law has been used to oppress groups, but in some cases laws are also floodgates against popular oppression. (See the terrifying example of a world in which people are whatever gender they say they are, regardless of physical appearance, but women still experience employment bias. A company can hire exclusively men provided some claim to be women, and women are not a group so cannot seek redress.)

The entire gimmick plays on the american left’s fear of being called racist. The movement brings race up frequently, often at very inappropriate moments (ie to gain funny social credit, not out of interest for black rights). clearly the united states cherishes a lot of sub-surface racism, which is why this fraudulent tactic can ever be successful. (then again, if white people went around calling themselves black because they’d supposedly had ‘the black experience’ people would, hopefully, tell them to get a grip...) It is common now for women to allow their rights to be jeopardised, while wearing a stupid grin. This movement was funded by male billionaires, probably under the slogan, ‘Women getting too uppity? divide them & trick those fools into denying their own existence.’ Somehow it worked.

I suppose it could be a coincidence that the acronyms movement is based in the united states, which has the lowest educational standards in the ‘first world’ and a long history of thoughtlessness. Note: the US constitution’s fourteenth amendment, which is supposed to guarantee all persons due process and equal protection under law, has been said not to apply to women, because there is no legal precedent for women being full persons (Scalia, 2011)

Domestic violence – A choking knot

On hearing the word “Home,” our mind inevitably transports to a familiar comfort zone, and its calming effect can be felt at any given moment. Home has a different connotation for us. For some people, the word ‘home’ means memories of a countryside or a small cozy bed next to a window. What memory we may have of our home, the overarching emotion is always that of love, comfort and a sense of belonging.

Can you now force yourself to think of a scenario of living in your home with a feeling of fear, emotional torture or physical injustice? It’s an uneasy feeling, right? Unfortunately, this is a reality for many women living in our cities, towns and villages who continue to suffer from domestic violence; the assaulter being none other than their own spouse.

In India, since childhood girls are often made to believe that marriage is their only gateway to enter a life filled with love, bliss and companionship. Other than the common expectations of their respective families, the sacred word of marriage is considered as a promise between two souls to mutually respect, overcome every obstacle and live together as popularly captioned “Happily Ever After.” Imagine the mental state of a woman, when her “prince charming,” “the better half,” stabs the very essence of that belief. With every blow, every slap, her dream of a happy life metamorphose to the experience of a living hell.

What is even more frightening is that this is the condition of every third woman in India, who suffer from sexual and physical violence within the confines of their own homes. It is ironic that in a country where the dominant religion is graced with female goddesses in various avatars and where festivals are celebrated in their honour- the very existence of women is threatened across the nation and within the confinement of their home.

What is alarming is the fact that there is no limit to which man skinned monsters can go to prove their dominance; instances of inflicting burns, throwing acid or cutting the body parts are to name a few. To intentionally lock someone in the dark or keeping an animal as a ploy to trigger the phobia questions the existence of humanity left in such people. In other acts of barbarity, there have been news reports of men forcing their wives to have physical relationships with friends or cases of wives being used as bait in business or profession. All this may sound beyond belief but unfortunately it is a regular crime in our society.

It is a common notion that people who commit suicide go to hell. My opinion changed when I saw a victim of domestic violence in a hospital with chopped off fingers.

To make things worse, violence within homes is often ignored because legal systems and cultural norms view domestic violence as a private affair that should be handled within the family by its members. Objectification of women and the belief that women exist for the satisfaction of men’s personal, sexual, emotional and physical needs continues to be prevalent in many parts of our society. Hence the legal system often turns a blind eye and ends up being lenient towards the handling of cases of domestic violence.

Can you put yourself in the place of a father who finds red marks of a violent slap on the face of her daughter? It is ironic that more often than not, the woman in question and her family remain silent for the sake of the family’s honour and the future of the marriage.

Indeed, it is time to shake the roots and question the benefit of such marriages? Parents should be more attentive towards their newlywed daughters and should not ignore signs of abuse in the early stages. Turning a blind eye towards their daughter’s plight could not just lead to prolonged physical abuse but also death.

Indian Law system has recognized Dowry as a social evil and has passed significant laws to protect women; however it does not acknowledge the existence of “marital rape” if the wife is older than 15 years of age. There are multiple reasons for this, as well. There have been multiple cases of the Dowry Law being misused by women and their families to extract money from their spouse and his family. Such miscreants should feel responsible for the women who get affected by the harassment and atrocities.

There are many support groups and NGO’s dedicated towards working with victims of domestic violence. The fear of judgment and societal dissociation is a heavyweight under which they often die. We have to stand up and challenge this societal practice, which validates that a girl can be treated as a human punch bag by her life partner or his family only because she is married to a man. I object and defy this ideology, would you stand up with me?

@papirouge @msburgundy

Because @papirouge blocked me so I could not respond. I am going to adress 2 of your points.

I explained why abortion has no translation in most NOT all of African LANGUAGES.

You are not from every country in Africa. And i highly doubt you speak every African language from Krio, Hausa, Twi, Yoruba, Igbo, And the 101 different languages and dialects under each of these languages.

So lets address the first lie.

There is a language equivalent for a abortion but it is not called abortion in Yoruba.

It is not a single word.

It is called Yö Oyun. It means to remove a pregnancy which means abortion.

But if you actually read what I wrote. There is no single word for abortion the same way their arent words that start with an X or a Z in so many African languages. Or no word equivalent for Biology. Or chemistry.

I am not a linguist. But common sense says the english language is based off the root words of the Latin language and Greek Language. We do not have the same equivalent words for a lot of them. Bc they are different languages and root words

There is no equivalent African word for hysterectomy or cancer but it does it mean it stops existing.

Point 2: i am not sure if this point is towards my point or not.

The OP asked a question about Abortion relating Africans.

Lets get some things straight.

1. Abortion is not a new concept or tool created by the West or Western Medicine.

Abortion has existed since women having been having sex or being raped.

Surgical abortion is somewhat a new concept. Probably around 17th centuary?

Back then women would go to farmers or "witches" but really just midwives to get back alley abortions. In the back of the barn.

Margaret Singer & Planned Parenthood did not invent abortion.

I keep seeing this shit and its fucking stupid and fucking annoying. And shows how a lot of you have no understanding of the history of Gynecological & Obstretic health past Western medicine.

The medical term for a miscarriage is literally called a Self Abortion.

Whether it is the body making that makes the choice for you or a woman making the choice for her body. Abortion one way or another still ends up happening.

2. The history of a abortion relating to Margaret Singer is a mute point concerning Africans. The culture and the customs.

African women arent getting abortions in mind to exterminate the Negro race.

Most african women getting these abortions arent even aware of racial relations or even the history of racism in the US. They dont teach the Alantic Slave Trade in Nigeria as part of history. Or Jim Crow.

Shocking but the US & the West isnt the sum of the worlds history.

African women & girls still get abortions despite it being banned. We make abortion legal and we need it legal in the US so other countries who are on the fence look to America for their progressive policies to help develop their own respective countries.

There is no way in any good conscious can you justify why an 8 year old child should carry a pregnancy to term.

And unlike America. Unfortunately these numbers arent small or miniscule

Nigeria makes 40% of child marriages for all of West Africa.

Ages on avg 11+. Depending on the region those ages go lower.

A lot of these girls die in child birth. They dont make it to see 16 years of age.

Fistuals, incontinence, hemorrhaging, internal bleeding etc. All of this on the body of a 12 year old child

Abortion is women's healthcare and it is apart of Gynecological & Obstretic care.

@papirouge blocked me which was ironic because in the post she said "she is delusional and can never seem to justify her points why she is against "bleaching or US foreign policies but not abortion"

Well here is why I am for it

Child marriage is still happening actively on certain parts of the continent. Women are being raped and they rarely reach court to get justice.

Genocide, tribal war and war rape continues to still happen.

So @papirouge why do you want the body of little girls to carry a pregnancy to term that will kill them?

Martin Luther King Jr., Guns, and a Book Everyone Should Read

BY JEREMY S. | JAN 15, 2018

“Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 89 years old today, were he not assassinated in 1968. On the third Monday in January we observe MLK Jr. Day and celebrate his achievements in advancing civil rights for African Americans and others. While Dr. King was a big advocate of peaceful assembly and protest, he wasn’t, at least for most of his life, against the use of firearms for self-defense. In fact, he employed them . . .

If it wasn’t for African Americans in the South, primarily, taking up arms almost without exception during the post-Civil War reconstruction and well into the civil rights movement, this country wouldn’t be what it is today.

By force and threat of arms African Americans protected themselves, their families, their homes, and their rights and won the attention and respect of the powers that be. In a lawless, post-Civil War South they stayed alive while faced with, at best, an indifferent government and, at worst, state-sponsored violence against them.

We know the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857 refused to recognize black people as citizens. Heck, they were deemed just three-fifths a person. Not often mentioned in school: some of that was due to gun rights. Namely, not wanting to give gun rights to blacks. Because if they were to recognize blacks as citizens, it…

“…would give to persons of the negro race . . . the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, . . . and it would give them the full liberty of speech . . . ; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

Ahha! So the Second Amendment was considered an individual right, protecting a citizen’s natural, inalienable right to keep and carry arms wherever they go. Then as now, gun control is rooted in racism.

During reconstruction, African Americans were legally citizens but were not always treated as such. Practically every African American home had a shotgun — or shotguns — and they needed it, too. Forget police protection, as those same officials were often in white robes during their time off.

Fast forward to the American civil rights movement and we learn, but again not at school, that Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a concealed carry permit. He (an upstanding minister, mind you) was denied.

Then as in many cases even now, especially in blue states uniquely and ironically so concerned about “fairness,” permitting was subjective (“may issue” rather than “shall issue”). The wealthy and politically connected receive their rights, but the poor, the uneducated, the undesired masses, not so much.

Up until late in his life, MLK Jr. chose to be protected by the Deacons for Defense. Though his home was also apparently a bit of an arsenal.

African Americans won their rights and protected their lives with pervasive firearms ownership. But we don’t learn about this. We don’t know about this. It has been unfortunately whitewashed from our history classes and our discourse.

Hidden, apparently, as part of an agreement (or at least an understanding) reached upon the conclusion of the civil rights movement.

Sure, the government is going to protect you now and help you and give you all of the rights you want, but you have to give up your guns. Turn them in. Create a culture of deference to the government. Be peaceable and non-threatening and harmless. And arm-less, as it were (and vote Democrat). African Americans did turn them in, physically and culturally.

That, at least, is an argument made late in Negroes and the Gun: the Black Tradition of Arms. It’s a fantastic book, teaching primarily through anecdotes of particular African American figures throughout history just how important firearms were to them. I learned so-freaking-much from this novel, and couldn’t recommend it more. If you have any interest in gun rights, civil rights, and/or African American history, it’s an absolute must-read.

Some text I highlighted on my Kindle Paperwhite when I read it in 2014:

But Southern blacks had to navigate the first generation of American arms-control laws, explicitly racist statutes starting as early as Virginia’s 1680 law, barring clubs, guns, or swords to both slaves and free blacks.

“…he who would be free, himself must strike the blow.”

In 1846, white abolitionist congressman Joshua Giddings of Ohio gave a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, advocating distribution of arms to fugitive slaves.

Civil-rights activist James Forman would comment in the 1960s that blacks in the movement were widely armed and that there was hardly a black home in the South without its shotgun or rifle.

A letter from a teacher at a freedmen’s school in Maryland demonstrates one set of concerns. The letter contains the standard complaints about racist attacks on the school and then describes one strand of the local response. “Both the Mayor and the sheriff have warned the colored people to go armed to school, (which they do) [and] the superintendent of schools came down and brought me a revolver.”

Low black turnout resulted in a Democratic victory in the majority black Republican congressional district.

Other political violence of the Reconstruction era centered on official Negro state militias operating under radical Republican administrations.

“The Winchester rifle deserves a place of honor in every Black home.” So said Ida B. Wells.

Fortune responded with an essay titled “The Stand and Be Shot or Shoot and Stand Policy”: “We have no disposition to fan the coals of race discord,” Thomas explained, “but when colored men are assailed they have a perfect right to stand their ground. If they run away like cowards they will be regarded as inferior and worthy to be shot; but if they stand their ground manfully, and do their own a share of the shooting they will be respected and by doing so they will lessen the propensity of white roughs to incite to riot.”

He used state funds to provide guns and ammunition to people who were under threat of attack.

“Medgar was nonviolent, but he had six guns in the kitchen and living room.”

“The weapons that you have are not to kill people with — killing is wrong. Your guns are to protect your families — to stop them from being killed. Let the Klan ride, but if they try to do wrong against you, stop them. If we’re ever going to win this fight we got to have a clean record. Stay here, my friends, you are needed most here, stay and protect your homes.”

In 2008 and 2010, the NAACP filed amicus briefs to the United States Supreme Court, supporting blanket gun bans in Washington, DC, and Chicago. Losing those arguments, one of the association’s lawyers wrote in a prominent journal that recrafting the constitutional right to arms to allow targeted gun prohibition in black enclaves should be a core plank of the modern civil-rights agenda.

Wilkins viewed the failure to pursue black criminals as overt state malevolence and evidence of an attitude that “there’s one more Negro killed — the more of ’em dead, the less to bother us. Don’t spend too much money running down the killer — he may kill another.”

But it puts things in perspective to note that swimming pool accidents account for more deaths of minors than all forms of death by firearm (accident, homicide, and suicide).

The correlation of very high murder rates with low gun ownership in African American communities simply does not bear out the notion that disarming the populace as a whole will disarm and prevent murder by potential murderers.

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated 1,900,000 annual episodes where someone in the home retrieved a firearm in response to a suspected illegal entry. There were roughly half a million instances where the armed householder confronted and chased off the intruder.

A study of active burglars found that one of the greatest risks faced by residential burglars is being injured or killed by occupants of a targeted dwelling. Many reported that this was their greatest fear and a far greater worry than being caught by police.48 The data bear out the instinct. Home invaders in the United States are more at risk of being shot in the act than of going to prison.49 Because burglars do not know which homes have a gun, people who do not own guns enjoy free-rider benefits because of the deterrent effect of others owning guns. In a survey of convicted felons conducted for the National Institute of Justice, 34 percent of them reported being “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim.” Nearly 40 percent had refrained from attempting a crime because they worried the target was armed. Fifty-six percent said that they would not attack someone they knew was armed and 74 percent agreed that “one reason burglars avoid houses where people are at home is that they fear being shot.”

In the period before Florida adopted its “shall issue” concealed-carry laws, the Orlando Police Department conducted a widely advertised program of firearms training for women. The program was started in response to reports that women in the city were buying guns at an increased rate after an uptick in sexual assaults. The program aimed to help women gun owners become safe and proficient. Over the next year, rape declined by 88 percent. Burglary fell by 25 percent. Nationally these rates were increasing and no other city with a population over 100,000 experienced similar decreases during the period.55 Rape increased by 7 percent nationally and by 5 percent elsewhere in Florida.

As you can see, Negroes and the Gun progresses more or less chronologically, spending the last portion of the book discussing modern-day gun control. It’s an invaluable source of ammunition (if you’ll pardon the expression) against the fallacies of the pro-gun-control platform. It sheds light on a little-known (if not purposefully obfuscated), critical factor in the history of African Americans: firearms.

On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I highly recommend you — yes, you — read Negroes and the Gun: the Black Tradition of Arms.

And I’ll wrap this up with a quote in a Huffington Post article given by Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter: 

https://cdn0.thetruthaboutguns.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/huffpo-maj-toure.jpg”

All I Want for Christmas is for White People to Stop KILLIN My Culture!

Understand that when you utter words rooted in BLACK CULTURE, you are cosplayin in the BLACK EXPERIENCE.

That aint ok.

What YOU may view as "fun" is actually a means to dilute and cheapen well-cultivated modes of self-expression.

When I was a teenager, only the HARDEST of em used the phrase that has now been shortened to "AF"--I'm talkin car jackers, drug dealers, gangstas...Now you got suburban soccer moms wearin shirts that say "Coffee AF". (Unfortunately, I saw that in real life, smh.) That don't even make sense!

White people: most of the time when y'all "borrow" (I use that term lightly, considering y'all history of "borrowing" cultures/people/countries) Black vernacular, you not only use it WRONG (because, again, Black language is rooted in the collective Black EXPERIENCE), but you literally aid in the death of the word/phrase that you've pillaged from our PLIGHT.

What every Black American knows is that once white America gets a hold of something, it aint COOL no mo because it aint BLACK no mo.

The story of the Native American peace pipe is relevant here. I read in a museum how many Native American rituals and sacred objects were essentially cheapened by their white colonizers, who, in seeing the objects being used in exclusive rituals--yet being completely ignorant to the fact that what they were witnessing were not everyday objects nor daily occurrences-- quickly appropriated them, causing said objects and rituals to lose their holiness, and by proxy, their POWER. The white colonizers would request (or demand!) that the Native American elders light their peace pipes during so many social gatherings and occasions that would not have normally warranted their lighting that the Native Americans, themselves, unknowingly became complicit in the dilution of their OWN sacred practices.

Lest y'all forget, YOUR ancestors made the collective decision to abandon your individual ethnicities (i.e. Irish, British, Dutch, etc.) and create a new, all-encompassing "white" identity so that you could aggregate, concentrate and wield all the power within the fragile membrane of said "white" identity, and main control over BLACK people in America. Y'ALL PEOPLE DID THAT. With that being said, in the game of LIFE you do NOT get to both "all-powerful" oppressor AND purveyor of hip, Black culture. You just don't. You don't get to be a cool/fashionable oppressor. Rather than SHARE the Earth's resources, Y'ALL ANCESTORS chose to rape, plunder and pillage. That is the price of whiteness in America, whether you wanna pay it or not. Similarly, I don't get to choose whether or not my Black skin is perceived as a threat by non-Black people, nor the consequences that come along with that. These are the rules of the game that your white forefathers created.

If you don't like it, then HELP US CHANGE IT. If you wanna be an "ally" then be an "ally" but STOP APPROPRIATING MY LANGUAGE AND STOP KILLIN MY CULTURE!!

The Post-American Age and Israel

The American debacle in Afghanistan is bad for America, and bad for Europe. The jihadists of the Middle East have received a huge gift of military equipment. They may even receive “humanitarian aid” from the US, in return for releasing some of the Americans still in Afghanistan. The Americans may call it aid, but everyone knows it is ransom for the release of hostages.

Psychologically, this is a massive boost to Islamic militants everywhere. Their belief that Allah is on their side has been confirmed. While I am probably too old to see them marching into the Vatican, unless present trends are reversed, my children probably will. Maybe they will find our Menorah, the one that Titus looted from the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE.

America’s defeat is also bad for Israel, and not just because of the American-made arms that the Taliban is selling to Iran and to every swaggering group of savages who believe they have a divine mandate to loot and rape. Even before the disaster in Afghanistan, the forces of jihad here have been feeling the wind of history at their backs, and have become drunk with their power to make demands and have them met by a government which is always willing to choose, as Churchill said, dishonor over war – and which, like Britain under Chamberlain, got war anyway.

So when six murderous terrorists from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Fatah organizations escaped from an Israeli prison on Monday, their parent organizations threatened violence. Hamas, apparently feeling left out, also made threats of escalation and launched incendiary balloons across the border. The tension has been growing for the past few weeks, as Hamas makes demands for loosening of restrictions on the entry of building materials and financial aid from Qatar, and Israel tries vainly to satisfy them with concessions.

Recently, Israel agreed to “loan” the Palestinian Authority about $150 million, in order to “strengthen the PA against Hamas.” This is a strange “loan:” the source of the money is about $186 million of funds that were collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, for Palestinian taxes on imports that pass through Israeli ports. Israel, however, withheld the money from the PA because of an Israeli law that forbids transferring money as long as it is used to pay stipends to imprisoned terrorists or the families of “martyrs.” The Palestinians have refused to stop paying their heroes, so the transfer is called a “loan” in order to bypass the law. Wrap your head around that.

I know, it’s complicated. There is the PIJ, there is Hamas, and there is the Fatah-dominated PLO which in effect constitutes the PA. But here’s a rule to make it simpler: they are all waging jihad (even Fatah, which is officially secular), they are all deploying terrorists against us, and they are all dedicated to the idea that if they kill enough Jews the rest of us will pick up and go back to Poland, or wherever they believe we come from.

The new government is not quite as dysfunctional as the preceding one, but because of the inclusion of left-wing parties and even an Arab Islamist party – that’s right, a party whose ideology is that Israel should be ruled according to the principles of Islamic sharia is part of Israel’s governing coalition – it seems to be unable to deal with the escalating chutzpah of its Palestinian enemies.

The Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, is someone with a solid right-wing ideology, at least he has always expressed himself as such, but I believe that he is not able to call the shots in a government whose majority is center-left and left. Incidentally, and I know I will get a lot of objections to this, I think he is a courageous person who has sacrificed his political career – I doubt that his party will even get into the Knesset in the next election – to extricate the country from an endless series of elections and caretaker governments. The present situation is not good, but it was worse before. For this, I am grateful to him.

But now is not the time for concessions. America is leaving the Middle East, starting with Obama’s tacit decision to allow Iran to get nuclear weapons (as long as the breakout happens after his presidency), continuing through his inaction when Bashar al-Assad crossed his “red line” by using chemical weapons, and now being concluded by the empty suit in the White House. It should be clear to every American ally in the region, especially Israel, that it is impossible to count on support from America. Of course Israel doesn’t need American troops to fight for it, or even military advisors. But political developments in America make it uncertain if it will continue to support Israel diplomatically, with military aid, or even by selling her weapons for cash.

I don’t want to be even more negative than I have to be, but there is a fundamental cultural instability in America that seems to be becoming more intense with time. I suspect that Americans will soon be concerned more with their own personal security, even their physical safety, than anything else. Maybe it looks worse from here than it is, but I visualize it as an engine revved far beyond its redline, and holding there. At any moment it will fly apart.

We are living at a major historical inflection point, with America withdrawing her influence everywhere. Unfortunately the beneficiaries of this are Iran and the Islamists of all stripes, as well as the totalitarian Chinese Communist party, nuclear-armed Pakistan and North Korea, and others.

The end of the Roman Empire was followed by the Dark Ages, which aren’t called that for nothing. It’s going to be hard for everyone.

Abu Yehuda

When I ask myself what films in recent years have been my favorites, I find that the answers all seem to have a few things in common.  One, the movie must tell a compelling story; two, it must rise above its genre to make a larger statement about life or some universal idea; and three, it must be technically well made.  All great art—including film—can serve as a vehicle for the presentation of ideas, and the promotion of a certain virtue.  Although the mainstream American film industry has become more and more a sad repository of feminist cant and lowest-common-denominator commercial pandering, the foreign film world has undergone something of a renaissance in the past fifteen years.

The best films of France, Germany, Spain, and the UK are edgier, more intelligent, and more masculine than anything found in the US.  It was not always so.  But the work of great European directors like Jacques Audiard, Gaspar Noe, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Shane Meadows leaves little room for doubt that the true cutting-edge work is being done in Europe.  (Argentina deserves honorable mention here as having an excellent film industry).  The mainstream, corporate-driven US film industry has effectively smothered independent voices under an avalanche of political correctness, girl-power horseshit, chick-flickism, and mind-numbing CGI escapist dreck.

Movies that deal with masculine themes in a compelling way are not easy to come by these days.  Honest explorations of masculine virtues are repressed, marginalized, or trivialized.  One needs to scour the globe to cherry-pick the best here and there, and in some cases you have to go back decades in time.  Luckily, the availability of Netflix and other subscription services has made this task much easier than it used to be.  Access to the best cinema of Europe, South America, and Asia can be a great way for us to catch as glimpse at a foreign culture, as well as reflect on serious ideas.

I want to offer my recommendations on some films that I believe are an important part of the modern masculine experience, in all its wide variety and expression.  Out of the scores of possible choices, I decided to pick the handful of films that are perhaps not as well known to readers.  My opinions will not be shared by all.  I encourage readers to draw up their own lists of films dealing with masculine themes, and hope they will reflect on the reasons behind their choices.  Below are mine, in no particular order.  In italics is a brief plot synopsis, followed by my own comments.

1. Straw Dogs (1971).

A mild-mannered American academic (Dustin Hoffman) living in rural Cornwall with his beautiful wife becomes the target of harassment by the local toughs.  Things escalate to a sexual assault on his wife, and eventually to a brutal and protracted fight to the death when a local man takes refuge on their property.

Dustin Hoffman reaches his breaking point in “Straw Dogs”

This is a classic example of the type of movie that could never be made today.  Arguably Sam Peckinpah’s most daring film, it contains a controversial rape scene that seems to leave open the question whether Hoffman’s wife (played by Susan George) was a victim or a willing participant.  Faced with his wife’s betrayal, and continuing harassment from local miscreants, Hoffman’s character finds himself completely isolated and must learn to stand his ground and fight.

A chance incident later in the film sets the stage for a blood-soaked confrontation which is as inevitable as it is necessary. Peckinpah presents a compelling case for the cathartic power of violence, and the achievement of masculine identity through man-on-man combat.  It is a theme I find myself strongly drawn to. Controversial, powerful, and unforgettable, Peckinpah proves himself an unapologetic and strident advocate of old-school martial virtue.  We would do well to listen.  His voice is sorely missed today.  (Note:  avoid the pathetic recent remake of this movie).  Honorable mention:  Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) and Bring Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).

2. Sorcerer (1977).

A group of international renegades find themselves down and out in Nicaragua, and volunteer for a job transporting unstable dynamite across the country to quell an oil rig fire.

Due to inept marketing when this movie was first released, it never achieved the credit it so fully deserved.  A motley group of international riff-raff (including the always appealing Roy Scheider) seeks redemption through a harrowing trial.  But will they get it?  Is it even desirable to escape one’s dark past?  The answers are complex, and director William Friedkin refuses to supply easy ones.  The characters in this film are doomed, and they know it, but they still hold true to their own code.  Which is itself honorable.  Consequences must be paid for everything we do in life, and often the price comes in a way never expect.  Dark, brooding, and humming with a pulse-pounding electronic score by Tangerine Dream, this film has deservedly become a cult classic.  The ending is a shocker you’ll never see coming.

Roy Scheider undertakes the most perilous journey of his life in William Friedkin’s 1977 masterpiece “Sorcerer”

3.  The Lives of Others (2006).

A coldly efficient Stasi (East German security service) officer (Ulrich Muhe) is enlisted by a Communist party hack in a surveillance program against a supposed subversive writer and his girlfriend.  But monitoring the writer’s life awakens sparks of nascent humanity in the Stasi man, and he eventually must decide whether to follow orders and destroy the writer, or to sacrifice himself to save him.

This German masterpiece was made with great fidelity to the look and feel of 1980s East Germany, and the results are evident in every frame.  It belongs on any list of the greatest films ever made.  The masculine virtue here is of a different type than viewers may be used to:  it is a quiet, understated heroism, the type of heroism that probably happens every day but is hardly noticed.  There is no bragging here, no chest-beating, no big-mouthed bravado.  (In short, none of the wooden-headed caricatures that pass for masculinity in the US).  The ethic here is about love and self-sacrifice, the noblest and greatest virtues of all.

The ethos of self-sacrifice is now considered old-fashioned and almost a punch-line, but historically it was valued very highly.  It features in nearly all the old literary epics and dramas of Europe and Asia.  Actor Ulrich Muhe pulls off a minor miracle of characterization here with his portrayal of a Stasi man named Weisler, whose special wiretapping assignment against a playwright transforms him from heartless automaton into awe-inspiring hero.  The movie made me wonder just how many quiet, unassuming men there must be out there, whose toil, heroism, and sacrifice has never been, and never will be, acknowledged.  The ending is transcendently beautiful, and moving beyond words.

4.  Homicide  (1991).

A police detective (Joe Mantegna) is assigned to investigate a murder case.  The case awakens in him stirrings of his long-suppressed ethnic identity.  Unfortunately, he will eventually be forced to choose between conflicting loyalties.  And the consequences will be devastating.

No modern American director has probed the meaning of masculine identity more than David Mamet, and all of his films are meditations on themes related to illusion, reality, masculinity, and struggle.  Homicide, a nearly unknown gem from the early 1990s, is perhaps his profoundest.  Mamet knows that a man must make choices in his life, and for those choices, consequences must be paid.  And very often, we find ourselves derailed by the mental edifices we construct for ourselves.  The Mantegna character is led through a complex and increasingly ambiguous chain of events, only to find that at the heart of one mystery lies an even more inscrutable one.  Beware the things you seek.  You may not like what you find.

Joe Mantegna deals with the fatal consequences of his decisions in David Mamet’s “Homicide”

5.  A Prophet (2009).

An Algerian Arab is incarcerated in a French jail, and is drawn into the savage world of Corsican gangsters.  Forced to kill or be killed, he is drawn into a pitiless world that recognizes only cunning and brutality.  He finds himself straddling two realities:  the world of his own nationality, and that of the Corsicans.  And to survive and emerge triumphant, he must learn to play all sides against each other.

This film must be counted among the greatest crime dramas ever made.  You simply can’t take your eyes off the screen.  The lesson here is that a man must learn to survive on his wits, and do whatever is necessary to stay alive.  The Corsican boss whom Al Djebena (Tahar Rahim) works for is just about the most malevolent presence in recent screen memory.  Part of France’s continuing internal dialogue about its immigrant population, A Prophet is not to be missed.

Tahar Rahim learns a thing or two about Corsica in “A Prophet”

6.  The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005).

An intense young man (Romain Duris) works for his father as a real estate shark in urban Paris.  His “job” consists of intimidating deadbeat immigrant tenants, vandalizing apartments, and forcibly collecting loans.  He also plays the piano.  Eventually, he is forced to decide which life he wants:  the path laid out by his shady father, or the idealistic path of his own choosing.  He’s seeking redemption, but will he find it?  And at what cost?

Again, we have here the themes of redemption and moral choice.  Romain Duris has a screen presence and intensity that rivals anything done by Pacino in his prime, and some of the scenes here are fantastic.  (His seduction of his friend’s wife, Aure Atika, is one of many great scenes).  All men will be confronted and tested by crises and situations beyond their control.  How they respond to those situations will define who they are as men.  Duris’s character proves that redemption can be achieved, if wanted badly enough.

Romain Duris embodying screen intensity

7.  Red Belt (2008).

Martial arts instructor Mike Terry is forced, against his principles, to consider entering a prize bout.  He is abandoned and betrayed by his wife and friends, and must confront his challenges alone with only his code and his pride.

Another great meditation on masculine virtue and individualism by David Mamet.  In his own unique dialogue style, Mamet showcases his belief that, in the end, all men stand alone.  At the moment of truth, it is you, and only you, who will be staring into the abyss.  Our trials by fire will not come in the time and at the place of our own choosing.  But when they do come, a man must be prepared to hold his ground and fight his corner.  Watch for Brazilian actress Alice Braga in a supporting role here.  We hope to see more of her on American screens in the future.

8.  Fear X  (2003).

A repressed security guard (John Turturro) is searching for answers to who killed his wife.  His strange behavior and ticking time-bomb manner begin to alarm friends and co-workers.  One day he finds some information that may be a lead to solving the mystery.  This discovery sets him on the path to realization. Or does it?

I am a big fan of the films of Nicolas Winding Refn (The Pusher trilogy, and Valhalla Rising), and this one is perhaps his most penetrating examination of a wounded psyche.  It failed commercially when it first appeared, as many viewers were put off by his artistic flourishes and opaque ending.  For me, this film is the deepest study of grief and repressed rage ever committed to film.  All men will be confronted by tragedy, grief, and inexplicable loss during their lives.  How we handle it will define who we are.  The greatness of this film is that it explores Turturro’s claustrophobic, neurotic world in a deeply personal way, and at the same time suggests that he may actually be on to something.  This film covers the same philosophical ground as Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, in that it hints at the ultimate ambiguity of all things.

John Turturro confronts the unrelenting darkness of his own psyche in “Fear X”

If you are a Netflix subscriber and watch movies frequently, as I do, you may find it useful to keep a notebook near your television and jot down the titles of movies you see, and a few notes about what you liked or didn’t like.  You’d be surprised how much you can learn from movies.  There are just so many good and bad ones out there that having some system for keeping track of them will be time well spent.

Since you have lived in both countries, do you think the racism is worse in England or Spain? I've always heard complaints of racism in southern countries (ie Spain, Italy, Greece...)

Spain. 100% Spain. Spain is super, super racist. Also, in general, because there are fewer people of colour living in mainland Europe, a lot of parts of mainland Europe are a lot more racist than the UK. (Although at the same time, people have fewer preconceptions because they have fewer experiences with people of different races and cultures. It's not that simple.)

But Spain, OK. A white friend of mine here had a black boyfriend for a bit. When they walked down the street together, they would get comments shouted at them ranging from 'harmless' like: "Hey, café con leche!" (coffee with milk)

To: "Watch out, he's gonna rape you!"

The wall of my sons' preschool is decorated with lots of things painted there, including three children holding hands. A blond child, a child with black hair and a black child. This painting has to be redone every few weeks because every time the faces of the black-haired child and the black child are crossed out with graffiti. Which to me is darkly comic because my sons are like 2 of... 4 kids in the entire school who are properly blond. Spanish kids are not blond at all. Sorry, who do you want to attend the school, just my Russian kids with their German passports and the Slovenian family (with the other blond kids)? But we live in a part of town which is basically China Town so I guess they're going for 'No Chinese, no blacks'. The Chinese run the best restaurants in our part of town and own all the best corner shops where you can buy anything any time of the day. They're referred to as 'chinos' and no one bats an eye at that. That's like, if you'd say in England, "I'm going down to the Paki" when you're talking about going to your local corner shop.

Also, these things, a mascot for a type of candy that exists in Spain, are in almost any shop:

And before you think, oh boy, okay but... maybe that's really just a ball of chocolate that's unfortunately designed and doesn't have anything to do with-

Nope. These are the older designs:

So that's Spain for ya.

And I'm talking about Madrid. Which is pretty liberal. Don't get me started on rural Spain, where you are likely to walk into a bar plastered with portraits of Franco (actual fascist dictator).