Wednesday, April 7, 2010

MISSING AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN DESERVE MASS MEDIA ATTENTION

This is one woman, one case, one report. Did you see her disappearance reported?

10/20/09 LISA SPENCE IS MISSING

Mirmar ( Florida ) Police need help finding a missing Miramar woman who was last seen leaving her neighborhood on Oct. 7th.
The family of Lisa Spence, 35, a native of Trinidad and Tobago, reported her missing after she failed to report for work at Bella Beauty Supply. Her friends are concerned.
Police have searched her neighborhood and turned up nothing. They suspect foul play.
Anyone with information about her disappearance is asked to call Broward Crimestoppers at 954-493-TIPS.


Immediately below is a cross post from La Reyna's Journal blog, *here*. With gratitude.

In Rocky Mount North Carolina 8 bodies of 10 missing African American women have been found. All 8 are believed to have been killed by Antwan Maurice Pittman who is currently in the Edgecomb County Jail. The governor of North Carolina has sent in the National Gaurd to find the bodies of the last two remaining women, Joyce Renee Durham & Yolanda Lancaster. Watch video on this story below:

http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/missingblackwomen.html

Also from that link:

MISSING BLACK WOMEN


Sign the petition to get black women more news coverage Petition for more coverage

Hi this is George Cook of Let's Talk Honestly. If you visit my site often you know how I feel about the lack of coverage missing black women receive in the media. On this page I will try to do my part to remedy that sad situation. I will post a story about a different African American woman who is missing every week. This page will be updated every Wednesday.I can be contacted at george@letstalkhonestly.com or by phone at 908 963 3824. You can get updates on this page by email by clicking HERE.

Dismantling the Western War Economy and Embracing The Earth as Our Relative

Cross posted from Censored News here. Thanks again, Brenda!

Wednesday, April 7, 2010


Dismantling the War Economy

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News

It is spring, a time for less words and more beauty. Today's contribution is from the working group Referendum, which is underway online in advance of the World's People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia.
Around the world, those preparing for the conference are contributing their thoughts on living in harmony with the earth and upholding the sacredness of Mother Earth in the working groups. (English message follows.)

Mensaje De: Sylvia Maria Valls 
Breve resumen de principios básicos a considerar para una visión compartida y estrategias a seguir:
Desmantelar la economía de guerra a partir de la reafirmación del principio básico de subsidiaridad [link al texto] como criterio de buen gobierno para todas las comunidades, localidades, municipios o condados y resaltar la importancia de darle prioridad a que sean las familias y las familias extendidas las que otorguen la calidad de ciudadanos a sus propios miembros en las localidades donde se vive, trabaja y estudia. 
RECLAMO DE TODOS LOS PUEBLOS A ESTE EFECTO.

Que los intercambios de productos se den a partir de un ordenamiento con base en la naturaleza y no con base en fronteras arbitrarias y fórmulas obsoletas.

Que se redefina la “democracia” a partir de los criterios discutidos y comprendidos en “Perfil de una democracia legítima” [link al texto] donde se propone la desaparición de la “competencia” entre los partidos políticos como base para la selección de legisladores, jueces, administradores (entre otras cosas).

Que se considere la importancia de definir los “derechos” (de la tierra, de los ciudadanos) a partir de las obligaciones hacia los seres humanos con miras a la satisfacción de las verdaderas “necesidades terrestres del cuerpo y del alma”.

Que reclamemos la creación de unos Municipios Unidos de las Américas invitando a todos los demás continentes a hacer igual. www.institutosimoneweil.net

--ENGLISH MESSAGE BELOW--
Brief summary of the basic principle to consider in search of a Shared Vision and of strategies to follow:
Dismantling the war economy by reaffirming the basic principle of subsidiarity as a sign of sound government for all communities, localities, municipalities or counties and stressing the importance of giving priority to families and extended families in the process of granting citizenship to their own members within the localities where they live, work and study.
ALL PEOPLES SHOULD DEMAND THIS POSSIBILITY.

That trade be considered on the basis of natural frontiers instead of on arbitrary and obsolete frontiers and formulas.

That “democracy” be reconsidered following the issues discussed in “Profile of a Legitimate Democracy” wherein the disappearance of“competition” among political parties as a basis for the selection of legislators, judges, administrators (among other things) is set forth as a goal.

That the importance of defining “rights” (of the Earth, of citizens) considering first the obligations towards human beings in view of the satisfaction of the real “earthly needs of the body and the soul” be recognized.
That we bet on the creation of the “United Municipalities of the Americas,” inviting the other continents to do something along the same lines. The United Nations would become the United Biorregions of Mother.

Come one, come all: See the MRAssholes in their Conceptual Cages! Watch how they promote their Pro-rape Evolutionary Psychology CRAP while Virulently Insulting Feminists In the Same Tired Old Ways...

 [image above is from here]

What follows is some majorly vile antifeminist CRAP. And I'd expect nothing less from these P.R.I.C.K.s. The concepts "humane" and "rational" aren't in their politically patriarchal vocabulary, or in their dick-whipped dispositions. I follow up their nonsense with a comment. It's the least I could do. What follows is from *here*

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women


  • ISBN13: 9780060512187
  • Condition: NEW
  • Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
The bestselling classic that redefined our view od the relationship between beauty and female identity. In today’s world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women’s movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It’s the beauty m… More >>
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women


  1. Steve Sailer says:
    Naomi Wolf was a lovely young slip of a girl when she wrote this remarkably brainless book. The only reason people paid attention to this idiotic book was because Naomi was young and hot-looking. It drove Camille Paglia insane that Naomi was being treated like she knew anything about life. Naomi has done a lot of growing up since then, and I imagine she must be pretty humiliated that people are still reading this deeply awful book.
    Rating: 1 / 5



  2. Diet, exercise, make-up, orthodontia, Rogaine, plastic surgery, well-chosen clothes…Do whatever it takes to be beautiful! It’s an eternal value, not something invented by Madison Avenue. As you grow old, just pray your erudition, compassion, and material success compensate for your accumulating wrinkles.

    “Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God.” –Jean Anouilh
    A recovered anorexic and grad school virgin, Naomi Wolf is stuck in a 1960s and 70s victim-mongering feminism. Even Wolf soulmate and “Backlash” author Susan Faludi started to see that female beauty confers intimidating status and sympathize with the powerlessness of men in her latest book “Stiffed” (1999).

    “I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want–an adorable pancreas?” –Jean Kerr

    When Susan Brownmiller, Germaine Greer, and Betty Friedan wrote about women’s belittling mistreatment 30 or 40 years ago, it was called for. MUCH has happened since then. Naomi Wolf missed the train. Women are now 60% of North American college students and climbing. They’re at the center of families and enjoy custody privileges when a family breaks up. They live seven years longer than men and have much lower rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, learning disabilities, mental retardation, and disorders such as autism and hemophilia. If a woman is beautiful besides, this is icing on the cake.

    “Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: You can smell it and that is all.” –Somerset Maugham

    Naomi Wolfe should go have chi tea and hommus with Andrea Dworkin (followed by a game or two of Scrabble?). They can picnic in the shadow of the Ugly Tree from which one of them fell (Ms. Dworkin) and commiserate about how vicious men are. They can then go off and be “roommates” together in a grass hut, away from all that men have done to culture–like the telephone, the computer, the airplane, and electric light.

    “Everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

    [...]P>”Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature.” –Camille Paglia
    Rating: 1 / 5



  3. Me. says:
    Great. Now, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie will be coauthoring a book called “The Work Myth” describing what an utter waste of time our national preoccupation with resume’ writing, pouring over want ads, professional preparation and vocational education, networking and the like are, while in other venues, mocking those who are not wearing the latest designer labels and owning the latest expensive toys.
    Rating: 3 / 5



  4. oaisdiojsd says:
    The existence of Ru Paul and “lipstick lesbians” blows the femnazi claim that beauty was created to opress women out of the water.

    If beauty was a concept designed to opress, then why would men and supposedly liberated women subject themselves to it?

    Evolutionary Psychology and evolution in general defies feminism, though feminism has never really been attentive to empirical evidence (observe how recent feminists claim that reason and science are instuments of male opression — seems to me feminists subconsciously want to return the Victorian age — women are supposedly irrational and apparently incapable of choosing if they want to have sex either, this being the claim that all heterosexual sex is rape.) Female beauty probably emerged as a means to attract vision-driven men.

    It seems only to give credulence to the theory that extreme left wingers and extreme right wingers are basicly the same, when one observes that feminists, by opposing beauty, fall into the same camp as Calvinists and fanatical Muslims.

    “Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault” -Oscar Wilde
    Rating: 1 / 5



  5. Michael says:
    In a Stalinesque move that would have impressed him, Wolf has quietly edited out all the false statistics and bogus claims of the original book and released the leftovers. No mention of this deception is given anywhere in the book, like when Stalin would remove people from photos and pretend they had never existed in history. Ha Ha! Nice try Wolf. It IS embarrassing being publicly exposed as a liar, isn’t it? Maybe stick to facts the next time. Whoever is impressed by this bilge deserves to be misled, and will continue to be misled until they educate themselves with facts, or raise their intellects so as to be able to separate fact from fantasy. It would have won her a doctorate in Creative Statistics if it was an area of academic study. The problem with many of the 5 star voters of this book is that hatred too often leads to outrageous statements that can be accepted as fact only by fellow haters. Hatred distorts one’s mental evaluative machinery, which is only too evident when one looks at works by fellow heterophobics Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Susan Faludi, etc. The Germans made use of this principle well in the 1930s and 40s too, and it also worked here for a while.

    Does Naomi Wolf realize yet that she has done more damage to the women’s movement than help it in any way? The ammunition she has provided to men’s groups has been like manna from heaven, as it is so easily disproved (see Christina Hoff-Sommers) and her thinking is sadly representative of a generation of women who have grown up with the distorted, 50% view of reality seen through a pair of feminist-colored spectacles. They earnestly believe they can make up statistics and get away with it like they get away with everything else in the society they grew up in. Well, a wake-up call for you, Wolf. Objective truth is no respecter of the hypocrisies of modern Taliban feminism and political correctness. Time will see your drivel condemned to the world’s literary garbage bin where it belongs, where it will nestle comfortably with similar drivel from Daly, Dworkin, Steinem, MacKinnon, Faludi and other mysandronists.
    Rating: 1 / 5



  6. Julian Real says:

    That male supremacist beauty standards are tyrannically oppressive to women and increasingly younger girls is obvious to anyone with a brain or a heart.

    But let’s move right along to those without either, and without courage:

    Unfortunately, from the comments above, it appears that someone threw a ‘Men’s Rights To Be Misogynist Petty Assholes’ party, right here in this little cyber-section of the world wide web.

    Too bad these fools don’t get how illogical and inane Evolutionary Psychology and “misandry” and "heterophobia" are.

    Ah, you privileged heterosexual boys with all that wasted institutional power and privilege. You’re so, so pathetic, really. Someone needs to tell you: 'Dick-whipped' isn’t a good look for you guys. Not that media insists you have to care obsessively about your appearances. Sure, there are products for men. But that’s no comparison to the ads and dominant cultural mass media, and the multibillion dollar porn-production industry manufacturing the ideas that women exist for men to rape, and that men rape because of what women look like. (Oh, and because men's dicks evolutionarily tell them what to do!)

Aussie Attitudes about Violence Against Women: we've come a short way, baby.

 
[image is from here

That t-shirt is about the funniest thing about this post. Mostly sad-but-true stuff follows.

All of what is below is cross posted from Cara's FABulous blog, The Curvature. Click on title below to return there.

Australian Survey Shows Dangerous Attitudes Towards Violence Against Women

Filed Under Australia, International, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls  | Posted by Cara |

A new survey of Australian attitudes towards violence against women reveals that a lot of those attitudes are incredibly disturbing. While the full study (pdf) certainly shows some good news — for example, only a very tiny percentage agreed that a man hitting a partner was ever “justified,” in a wide variety of presented circumstances — as well as many significant improvements since a similar 1995 study, many attitudes still held by respondents perpetuate a culture that promotes violence.

One subject of concern is that a rather high numbers of men and women agreed that there are some situations under which domestic violence is “excusable.” Twenty percent of men and 17 percent of women thought that “Domestic violence can be excused if it results from people getting so angry that they temporarily lose control.” Further, 27 percent of men and 18 percent of women agreed that “Domestic violence can be excused if, afterwards, the violent person genuinely regrets what they have done.”

The study authors carefully note:
Viewing the perpetration of domestic violence in terms of a ‘loss of control’ misses the fact that domestic violence is chosen behaviour. Studies of relationships in which violence occurs suggest that in order to escape detection and continue their control, many men choose with care how, where and when they will be violent (Pringle 1995). Australian research finds that men who are violent in their intimate relationships are more likely than other men also to be violent outside the home (Mouzos and Makkai 2004, p59). At the same time, most men using violence against intimate partners do not use violence elsewhere, with the research just mentioned finding that only 12 percent of men who had inflicted violence on their intimate partners had also been violent towards anyone outside the family. In other words, those men who use violence against their female partners or expartners typically do not also use violence in the workplace or in other non-intimate relationships. Men can and do exercise control over their violent behaviour.
It is concerning too that substantial proportions of the community agreed that violence against an intimate partner can be excused if the violent person ‘truly regrets’ what they have done. Expressions of regret or remorse are a regular feature of men’s patterns of abuse of their female partners. Men using violence may apologise for motives ranging from genuine contrition to manipulation designed to receive forgiveness or win post-abuse favours (Stark 2007, p246). In addition, male partners’ apologies for the abuse (as well as promises to change, denials of responsibility, withholding of contact with children, threats of harm, and other actions) make it more likely that women will stay with or return to violent partners (Holtzworth-Munroe et al. 1997, p197). Community support for this excuse has the potential to compromise women’s own resolve to take action as well as the responses of service providers and law enforcement personnel.
Questions on the subject of sexual violence returned some similarly distressing results. In addition to 16 percent of both men and women agreeing that “If a woman is raped while she is drunk or affected by drugs she is at least partly responsible,” a truly staggering 38 percent of men and 30 percent of women thought “Rape results from men being unable to control their need for sex.”

Just when you think that work on a particular rape myth is going pretty well, the truth hits you in the gut. Let me just repeat the fact that the above myth is incredibly misandrist. Every single decent man I know is hugely offended by the idea that he doesn’t have enough self-control over his sexual urges and genitalia to avoid seriously traumatizing another human being. The idea that men are ruled by their impulses and cannot exercise critical thought to control themselves is hugely insulting to men. And the myth is not just misandrist, it’s also used to prop up misogyny, by saying that men cannot be truly blamed for their sexual violence anymore than one can be blamed for blinking. As portrayed under this viewpoint, both are natural phenomena that are simply out of human control. One just happens to result in violence, usually against women.

One last disturbing finding I want to touch on is the rate at which respondents believe that women lie about different types of violence. Only 28 percent of respondents disagreed that “Women going through custody battles often make up or exaggerate claims of domestic violence in order to improve their case” (with 49 percent agreeing and 23 percent unsure). Just as chilling, only 61 percent of respondents thought that “Women rarely make false claims of being raped” (with 26 percent disagreeing and 13 percent unsure). In other words, Men’s Rights Activist’s myths are working, especially in the case of beliefs regarding custody battles. And the myth that women regularly lie about rape is nothing new, but proving extremely resistant to change.

The full study is 80 pages long. Having been unable to peruse the whole thing, I’m sure I missed quite a bit, so let me know what you find.  I do wish that the survey had worked with a definition of sexual violence and intimate partner violence that was a bit more open. While it’s important to notice that the vast majority of such violence is committed by men against women, it’s not useful to erase violence committed with different gender pairings or to overlook the serious rates of violence against people who are trans*, including those who don’t identify within the gender binary. So regularly seeing research that seemingly deliberately excludes the various forms that these kinds of violence can take, and how structural oppression is still linked to them much more often than not, is frustrating and not conducive to an end goal of ending IPV and sexual violence for everyone.

via @abyss2hope

Doods Who Defend White Het Doods Raping Drunk Women: Summary of what male supremacists believe about this matter: "It's Complicated"

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.