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Items tagged "state of the world":

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    androphilia: Raymond Buys: 15 years old, dead for not being manly | Daily Maverick A truly shocking story is currently unfolding in the Vereeniging District Court. The owner of a “game-ranger training camp” with links to far-right groups stands trial for the torture and murder of a 15-year-old boy in his care in 2011. This is the third teen to have died at the camp in the last six years, although the previous two deaths were recorded as “natural causes”. Echo Wild Game Rangers promised to turn effeminate boys into manly men. By Rebecca Davis April 29, 2013 A picture taken of 15-year-old Raymond Buys shortly before his death in a Vereeniging hospital in April 2011 shows a skeletal, emaciated figure fighting for his life. Buys lay in intensive care for four weeks before he died. The teen’s parents had signed Buys up for the three-month Echo Wild Game Rangers training course in perfect health. When he was admitted to hospital 10 weeks later, he was semi-conscious and convulsing, with his arm broken in two places. There were burns and wounds all over his body. Buys was severely malnourished and dehydrated, and a medical report predicted that his chances of recovery were “virtually zero”. Four years earlier, Eric Calitz, 18, and Nicolaas van der Walt, 19, had both died after being enrolled at the Echo Wild Game Rangers camp, held on a farm near Vereeniging. Calitz’s family were initially informed of his death via SMS, and told that their son had died of a heart attack. Subsequently, the cause of death was changed to a seizure, and later, to dehydration. It was eventually revealed that Calitz had died from bleeding on the brain. Van der Walt, meanwhile, appeared to have been choked with a seatbelt, although his death was chalked up to a heart attack. Echo Wild Game Rangers is a business set up by Alex de Koker, 49, on his farm. Parents pay R22,000 to send their sons on what is supposed to be a three-month ranger training course. De Koker has been advertising the camp since mid-2006, according to a 2007 police report, which also noted that De Koker faced unrelated charges of possession of endangered species, following the confiscation of three snakes, two porcupines and a monkey from his Vereeniging premises. Reports of the kind of activities that teens would undertake while on the camp do not suggest that a lot of “game ranging” took place. A preliminary police investigation in 2007 found that “the para-military style training presented on this course was not normal ranger training”. In that year, the court heard that De Koker and his “co-instructors” addressed each other using military ranks, and taught skills like leopard crawling and endurance running and walking. They also allegedly inflicted treatment on the young men in their care which included torturing them with boiling water and dragging them behind a pickup truck. Last week, the Vereeniging District Court heard the testimony of Gerhard Oostuizen, 19, who shared a tent with Buys. Oosthuizen claims that Buys was chained to his bed every night, was refused permission to visit the toilet and forced to eat his own faeces. He also said that Buys was too weak to carry out some manual labour tasks, and would be beaten with planks, hosepipes and sticks when he failed to discharge his duties adequately. Oosthuizen alleged further that he saw De Koker and his employee, Michael Erasmus, 20, electrocuting Buys, who was naked and tied to a chair with his head covered in a pillowcase. Buys’s mother told Rapport in 2011 that after she sent her son on De Koker’s course, she was repeatedly denied the chance to visit or telephone him. After six weeks, De Koker sent her a cellphone picture of Buys in which he looked thin. A second photo revealed that Buys was emaciated. When she called De Koker to demand to know what was happening, he alleged that Buys kept injuring himself, and asked for her medical aid number. A week later, Buys was admitted to hospital. De Koker styles himself as a “general” in an organisation called “X-MilitereLeiers” (X-Military Leaders), judging from a press release sent out in September 2011, following the arrest of De Koker for the murder of Buys. In it, De Koker is described as providing “crucial services to protect the Farmers Community (Caucasian and non-white) in South Africa”. The statement also accuses the SAPS of using the murder charge as a “senseless smoke screen” in order to “try and obtain information of the farming community’s activities and self-defence projects regarding their farms”. In particular, it references the police’s confiscation of a photo taken showing De Koker with deceased AWB leader Eugene Terreblanche. The statement also claims that Buys had been “cast away due to his rebellious nature, by his mother and her boyfriend, they dropped him off at the gate of the Leader [De Koker]… They were willing to pay thousands of rand just to be rid of him. The group known as X-Military Leaders (7,000 members) took him in and cared for him. The young man’s behavioural deviations were noticed immediately.” Exactly what these “behavioural deviations” were (other than a physical inability to carry out certain tasks) is unclear. Buys is believed to have had some sort of learning disability, as, reportedly, did Calitz and Van der Walt. Gender activist Melanie Nathan has suggested, however, that the other aspect held in common by the three young men was that they were all perceived as “gay and clearly effeminate”. It’s reported that De Koker told Calitz that Calitz “wasn’t a moffie [gay] and he would make a man out of him”. De Koker said this in response to Calitz’s request to leave the camp, which reportedly sparked his torture by De Koker. “With a little bit of digging [into the story], the gay reparative undertones would start to emerge,” Nathan writes, in a reference to the controversial practice of “gay reparative therapy” or “gay conversion camps”. In January, California became the first state in the US to ban gay conversion therapy for minors, after a judge concluded that the practice had no effect and was harmful to minors. Others believe, however, that the camp may have been a recruitment centre for the AWB’s paramilitary wing, the Ystergarde (Iron Guards). Calitz’s sister suggested this in an interview with IOL in 2007. AWB leader Eugene Terreblanche denied this claim at the time, however, saying: “I don’t know who [De Koker and his co-accused]. The Ystergarde has in any case been disbanded and has definitely not regrouped.” In 2009, when De Koker stood trial for the deaths of Calitz and Van der Walt, he got off with a suspended sentence over Calitz’s death, and escaped charges altogether for Van der Walt’s death, because it was ruled to have been caused by a heart attack. This time around, De Koker and employee Erasmus have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, child abuse and neglect, failure to provide adequate clothing, food, housing or assistance and two charges of assault, in a case postponed from November last year. The damaging testimony of Buys’s tent-mate, Gerhard Oosthuizen, may help to shore up the state’s case. “It’s every boy’s dream, every man’s fantasy,” writes the author of a website offering another game ranger course in South Africa. “I sent my son on this course to make him a better man,” Buys’s mother Wilma told the Telegraph last week. She would never see him conscious again. Read more: Teen dies after being ‘beaten’ at camp that ‘makes men out of boys’, in the Telegraph Photo: Raymond Buys on his deathbed. (Unknown source) Copyright © 2013 Daily Maverick.
    Source: dailymaverick.co.za

    androphilia:

    Raymond Buys: 15 years old, dead for not being manly | Daily Maverick

    A truly shocking story is currently unfolding in the Vereeniging District Court. The owner of a “game-ranger training camp” with links to far-right groups stands trial for the torture and murder of a 15-year-old boy in his care in 2011. This is the third teen to have died at the camp in the last six years, although the previous two deaths were recorded as “natural causes”. Echo Wild Game Rangers promised to turn effeminate boys into manly men.

    By Rebecca Davis

    April 29, 2013

    A picture taken of 15-year-old Raymond Buys shortly before his death in a Vereeniging hospital in April 2011 shows a skeletal, emaciated figure fighting for his life. Buys lay in intensive care for four weeks before he died. The teen’s parents had signed Buys up for the three-month Echo Wild Game Rangers training course in perfect health. When he was admitted to hospital 10 weeks later, he was semi-conscious and convulsing, with his arm broken in two places. There were burns and wounds all over his body. Buys was severely malnourished and dehydrated, and a medical report predicted that his chances of recovery were “virtually zero”.

    Four years earlier, Eric Calitz, 18, and Nicolaas van der Walt, 19, had both died after being enrolled at the Echo Wild Game Rangers camp, held on a farm near Vereeniging. Calitz’s family were initially informed of his death via SMS, and told that their son had died of a heart attack. Subsequently, the cause of death was changed to a seizure, and later, to dehydration. It was eventually revealed that Calitz had died from bleeding on the brain. Van der Walt, meanwhile, appeared to have been choked with a seatbelt, although his death was chalked up to a heart attack.

    Echo Wild Game Rangers is a business set up by Alex de Koker, 49, on his farm. Parents pay R22,000 to send their sons on what is supposed to be a three-month ranger training course. De Koker has been advertising the camp since mid-2006, according to a 2007 police report, which also noted that De Koker faced unrelated charges of possession of endangered species, following the confiscation of three snakes, two porcupines and a monkey from his Vereeniging premises.

    Reports of the kind of activities that teens would undertake while on the camp do not suggest that a lot of “game ranging” took place. A preliminary police investigation in 2007 found that “the para-military style training presented on this course was not normal ranger training”. In that year, the court heard that De Koker and his “co-instructors” addressed each other using military ranks, and taught skills like leopard crawling and endurance running and walking.

    They also allegedly inflicted treatment on the young men in their care which included torturing them with boiling water and dragging them behind a pickup truck. Last week, the Vereeniging District Court heard the testimony of Gerhard Oostuizen, 19, who shared a tent with Buys. Oosthuizen claims that Buys was chained to his bed every night, was refused permission to visit the toilet and forced to eat his own faeces. He also said that Buys was too weak to carry out some manual labour tasks, and would be beaten with planks, hosepipes and sticks when he failed to discharge his duties adequately. Oosthuizen alleged further that he saw De Koker and his employee, Michael Erasmus, 20, electrocuting Buys, who was naked and tied to a chair with his head covered in a pillowcase.

    Buys’s mother told Rapport in 2011 that after she sent her son on De Koker’s course, she was repeatedly denied the chance to visit or telephone him. After six weeks, De Koker sent her a cellphone picture of Buys in which he looked thin. A second photo revealed that Buys was emaciated. When she called De Koker to demand to know what was happening, he alleged that Buys kept injuring himself, and asked for her medical aid number. A week later, Buys was admitted to hospital.

    De Koker styles himself as a “general” in an organisation called “X-MilitereLeiers” (X-Military Leaders), judging from a press release sent out in September 2011, following the arrest of De Koker for the murder of Buys. In it, De Koker is described as providing “crucial services to protect the Farmers Community (Caucasian and non-white) in South Africa”. The statement also accuses the SAPS of using the murder charge as a “senseless smoke screen” in order to “try and obtain information of the farming community’s activities and self-defence projects regarding their farms”. In particular, it references the police’s confiscation of a photo taken showing De Koker with deceased AWB leader Eugene Terreblanche.

    The statement also claims that Buys had been “cast away due to his rebellious nature, by his mother and her boyfriend, they dropped him off at the gate of the Leader [De Koker]… They were willing to pay thousands of rand just to be rid of him. The group known as X-Military Leaders (7,000 members) took him in and cared for him. The young man’s behavioural deviations were noticed immediately.”

    Exactly what these “behavioural deviations” were (other than a physical inability to carry out certain tasks) is unclear. Buys is believed to have had some sort of learning disability, as, reportedly, did Calitz and Van der Walt. Gender activist Melanie Nathan has suggested, however, that the other aspect held in common by the three young men was that they were all perceived as “gay and clearly effeminate”.

    It’s reported that De Koker told Calitz that Calitz “wasn’t a moffie [gay] and he would make a man out of him”. De Koker said this in response to Calitz’s request to leave the camp, which reportedly sparked his torture by De Koker. “With a little bit of digging [into the story], the gay reparative undertones would start to emerge,” Nathan writes, in a reference to the controversial practice of “gay reparative therapy” or “gay conversion camps”. In January, California became the first state in the US to ban gay conversion therapy for minors, after a judge concluded that the practice had no effect and was harmful to minors.

    Others believe, however, that the camp may have been a recruitment centre for the AWB’s paramilitary wing, the Ystergarde (Iron Guards). Calitz’s sister suggested this in an interview with IOL in 2007. AWB leader Eugene Terreblanche denied this claim at the time, however, saying: “I don’t know who [De Koker and his co-accused]. The Ystergarde has in any case been disbanded and has definitely not regrouped.”

    In 2009, when De Koker stood trial for the deaths of Calitz and Van der Walt, he got off with a suspended sentence over Calitz’s death, and escaped charges altogether for Van der Walt’s death, because it was ruled to have been caused by a heart attack. This time around, De Koker and employee Erasmus have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, child abuse and neglect, failure to provide adequate clothing, food, housing or assistance and two charges of assault, in a case postponed from November last year. The damaging testimony of Buys’s tent-mate, Gerhard Oosthuizen, may help to shore up the state’s case.

    “It’s every boy’s dream, every man’s fantasy,” writes the author of a website offering another game ranger course in South Africa. “I sent my son on this course to make him a better man,” Buys’s mother Wilma told the Telegraph last week. She would never see him conscious again.

    Read more:

    • Teen dies after being ‘beaten’ at camp that ‘makes men out of boys’, in the Telegraph

    Photo: Raymond Buys on his deathbed. (Unknown source)

    Copyright © 2013 Daily Maverick.

    Tags

    #human condition#trigger warning#death#violence#South Africa#state of the world

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    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Apr 29, 2013 (a Monday)
    time:
    1:26:41 (3 weeks ago)

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    Source: drrestless

    Milo Manara - “Storia dell’Umanità”, 1999

    So many ethnocentric, racist, and sexist implications, so little time. Admirable points that are tarnished by one-sided perspectives, objectification, along with giant leaps of anachronism and missing context.

    I’m not sure if I’m more angry about the problems it has or the brand of history and half-truths that it is a symptom of. It straddles the line of judgement, being technically and aesthetically sound while taking serious liberties with its content.

    Tags

    #Milo Manara#1990s#history#comics#illustration#human condition#state of the world#sexuality#violence#nsfw#war#racism#ethnocentrism#Indigenous Peoples#appropriation#pop culture#figure#nude

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    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Apr 29, 2013 (a Monday)
    time:
    9:08:00 (3 weeks ago)

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    climateadaptation: More doom reality: Bottled Water Sales: The Shocking Reality The Beverage Marketing Corporation, which tracks sales and consumption of beverages, is reporting that sales of bottled water grew nearly 7 percent between 2011 and 2012, with consumption reaching a staggering 30.8 gallons per person. Despite having one of the best municipal tap water systems in the world, American consumers are flocking to commercial bottled water, which costs thousands of times more per gallon. Why? Four reasons: First, we have been bombarded with advertisements that claim that our tap water is unsafe, or that bottled water is safer, healthier, and more hip, often with celebrity endorsements. (Thanks a lot, Jennifer.) Second, public drinking water fountains have become increasingly hard to find. And the ones that exist are not being adequately maintained by our communities. Third, people are increasingly fearful of our tap water, hearing stories about contamination, new chemicals that our treatment systems aren’t designed to remove, or occasional failures of infrastructure that isn’t being adequately maintained or improved. Fourth, some people don’t like the taste of their tap water, or think they don’t. Some people, including the bottled water industry, argue that drinking bottled water is better than drinking soft drinks. I agree. But that’s not what’s happening. The vast increase in bottled water sales have largely come at the expense of tap water, not soft drinks. And even if we pushed (as we should) to replace carbonated soft drinks with water, it should be tap water, not expensive bottled water. This industry has very successfully turned a public resource into a private commodity. Via Peter Gleick (a scientist whom I swear never sleeps)
    Source: climateadaptation

    climateadaptation:

    More doom reality:

    Bottled Water Sales: The Shocking Reality

    The Beverage Marketing Corporation, which tracks sales and consumption of beverages, is reporting that sales of bottled water grew nearly 7 percent between 2011 and 2012, with consumption reaching a staggering 30.8 gallons per person.

    Despite having one of the best municipal tap water systems in the world, American consumers are flocking to commercial bottled water, which costs thousands of times more per gallon. Why? Four reasons:

    • First, we have been bombarded with advertisements that claim that our tap water is unsafe, or that bottled water is safer, healthier, and more hip, often with celebrity endorsements. (Thanks a lot, Jennifer.)
    • Second, public drinking water fountains have become increasingly hard to find. And the ones that exist are not being adequately maintained by our communities.
    • Third, people are increasingly fearful of our tap water, hearing stories about contamination, new chemicals that our treatment systems aren’t designed to remove, or occasional failures of infrastructure that isn’t being adequately maintained or improved.
    • Fourth, some people don’t like the taste of their tap water, or think they don’t.

    Some people, including the bottled water industry, argue that drinking bottled water is better than drinking soft drinks. I agree. But that’s not what’s happening. The vast increase in bottled water sales have largely come at the expense of tap water, not soft drinks. And even if we pushed (as we should) to replace carbonated soft drinks with water, it should be tap water, not expensive bottled water.

    This industry has very successfully turned a public resource into a private commodity.

    Via Peter Gleick (a scientist whom I swear never sleeps)

    (via crookedindifference)

    Tags

    #water#economy#corporations#fundamentally idiotic#environmentalism#state of the world

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    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Apr 28, 2013 (a Sunday)
    time:
    7:51:56 (3 weeks ago)

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    progressiveauspol: ‘China’s Spielberg’, film director Feng Xiaogang, gave an emotional acceptance speech for ‘director of year’ which has gone viral on the microblogging site Sina Weibo. Xiaogang told the Chinese Film Director’s Guild Awards audience, “In the past 20 years, every China director faced a great torment…and that torment is [bleep].” That [bleep] covers the word ‘censorship’. Many exclaimed the decision to bleep out Feng’s mention of censorship was “painting the eyes on a dragon,” a figure of speech which refers to the finishing touch necessary to bring something to life. In other words, the ironic result may only have rendered Feng’s message more poignant. He then went on to say: “A lot of times when you receive the order, it’s so ridiculous that you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, especially when you know something is good and you are forced to change it into something bad. Are Hollywood directors tormented the same way? … To get approval, I have to cut my films in a way that makes them bad. How did we all persist through it all? I think there is only one reason — that this bunch of fools like us love filmmaking — are entranced by filmmaking — too much” Here  is the speech in video form but unfortunately it is not subtitled (X)  
    Source: progressiveauspol

    progressiveauspol:

    ‘China’s Spielberg’, film director Feng Xiaogang, gave an emotional acceptance speech for ‘director of year’ which has gone viral on the microblogging site Sina Weibo. Xiaogang told the Chinese Film Director’s Guild Awards audience, “In the past 20 years, every China director faced a great torment…and that torment is [bleep].”

    That [bleep] covers the word ‘censorship’.

    Many exclaimed the decision to bleep out Feng’s mention of censorship was “painting the eyes on a dragon,” a figure of speech which refers to the finishing touch necessary to bring something to life. In other words, the ironic result may only have rendered Feng’s message more poignant.

    He then went on to say:

    “A lot of times when you receive the order, it’s so ridiculous that you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, especially when you know something is good and you are forced to change it into something bad. Are Hollywood directors tormented the same way? … To get approval, I have to cut my films in a way that makes them bad. How did we all persist through it all? I think there is only one reason — that this bunch of fools like us love filmmaking — are entranced by filmmaking — too much”

    Here  is the speech in video form but unfortunately it is not subtitled (X)

     

    (via popthirdworld)

    Tags

    #China#film#Feng Xiaogang#censorship#state of the world#Chinese#Mandarin

    Info

    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Apr 18, 2013 (a Thursday)
    time:
    7:20:00 (1 month ago)

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    It’s been little over a decade since the last time there has been something of this scale happen on American soil. It belies the blatantly selective definition and significance of certain acts of terrorism, and already has people already posturing for the right angle. Who to blame, who to attack, who to put the burden of proof on before the facts are in, let alone the wounded, dead, and survivors tended fully to. A tragedy is not a mantle to take up and be consumed by, especially when it provides little comfort to those already victims.

    For now the bombing in Boston is a senseless and organized act of violence until we know more. Decisive action is not the same as paranoia and irrational reaction. It stings because people have skin in an increasingly complicated game of Patriots and Terrorists, when people can’t tell themselves apart from the ideas of nation and identity. Does attacking your fellow human, an equal, no matter what the scale or weapons used, make either a better person? It shouldn’t be difficult to see through the haze of nationalism, jingoism, opportunism, proxy wars, and relevant-as-ever racism, and yet here we are again.

    My hope is we take this chance not to fall into the same traps of wasted time and hatred, manufactured panic and even more lost lives. That people can wake up tomorrow, thoughts a bit more collected and with some perspective, and prove we’ve learned from all that has happened in the past 12 years. The fact is these events in the States and those occurring everywhere else in the world are terrible reminders, that there are more pressing concerns beyond (and even fuelling) petty politics and economies taking a dive.

    The measure of progress should not be in the degree of ruthlessness and zeal of reaction or execution of justice, but in tempering emotions with patience and the ability to fully comprehend the nature and source, then acting appropriately. This could be a turning point, away from a trajectory of fear and an induced state of terror—the effort and will must be applied or else risk only similar destinations of differing degrees.

    Tags

    #Boston#state of the world#terrorism#violence#nationalism#USA#politics#war#writing#current events#racism#Boston Marathon

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    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Apr 16, 2013 (a Tuesday)
    time:
    12:44:00 (1 month ago)

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    Slow Consumption: Heirloom Design

    utnereader:

    Heirloom designers aim to change the world by making stuff that lasts

    Source: utnereader

    Tags

    #conservation#economy#state of the world#Long Reads

    Info

    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Mar 13, 2013 (a Wednesday)
    time:
    3:34:42 (2 months ago)

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    The Good, Racist People

    Last month the actor Forest Whitaker was stopped in a Manhattan delicatessen by an employee. Whitaker is one of the pre-eminent actors of his generation, with a diverse and celebrated catalog ranging from “The Great Debaters” to “The Crying Game” to “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.” By now it is likely that he has adjusted to random strangers who can’t get his turn as Idi Amin out of their heads. But the man who approached the Oscar winner at the deli last month was in no mood for autographs. The employee stopped Whitaker, accused him of shoplifting and then promptly frisked him. The act of self-deputization was futile. Whitaker had stolen nothing. On the contrary, he’d been robbed.

    The deli where Whitaker was harassed happens to be in my neighborhood. Columbia University is up the street. Broadway, the main drag, is dotted with nice restaurants and classy bars that cater to beautiful people. I like my neighborhood. And I’ve patronized the deli with some regularity, often several times in a single day. I’ve sent my son in my stead. My wife would often trade small talk with whoever was working checkout. Last year when my beautiful niece visited, she loved the deli so much that I felt myself a sideshow. But it’s understandable. It’s a good deli.

    Since the Whitaker affair, I’ve read and listened to interviews with the owner of the establishment. He is apologetic to a fault and is sincerely mortified. He says that it was a “sincere mistake” made by a “decent man” who was “just doing his job.” I believe him. And yet for weeks now I have walked up Broadway, glancing through its windows with a mood somewhere between Marvin Gaye’s “Distant Lover” and Al Green’s “For the Good Times.”

    In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist. In 1957, neighbors in Levittown, Pa., uniting under the flag of segregation, wrote: “As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens, we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community.”

    A half-century later little had changed. The comedian Michael Richards (Kramer on “Seinfeld”) once yelled at a black heckler from the stage: “He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger!” Confronted about this, Richards apologized and then said, “I’m not a racist,” and called the claim “insane.”

    The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to anyone who might, from time to time, find their tongue sprinting ahead of their discretion. We can forgive Whitaker’s assailant. Much harder to forgive is all that makes Whitaker stand out in the first place. New York is a city, like most in America, that bears the scars of redlining, blockbusting and urban renewal. The ghost of those policies haunts us in a wealth gap between blacks and whites that has actually gotten worse over the past 20 years.

    Source: sunrec

    Tags

    #racism#state of the world

    Info

    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Mar 8, 2013 (a Friday)
    time:
    9:09:00 (2 months ago)

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    Adam Curtis: You Think You Are A Consumer But Maybe You Have Been Consumed

    One of the guiding beliefs of our consuming age is that we are all free and independent individuals. That we can choose to do pretty much what we want, and if we can’t then it’s bad.

    But at the same time, co-existing alongside this, there is a completely different, parallel universe where we all seem meekly to do what those in power tell us to do. Ever since the economic crisis in 2008, millions of people have accepted cuts in all sorts of things - from real wages and living standards to benefits and hospital care - without any real opposition.

    The cuts may be right, or they may be stupid - but the astonishing thing is how no-one really challenges them.

    I think that one of the reasons for this is because a lot of the power that shapes our lives today has become invisible - and so it is difficult to see how it really works and even more difficult to challenge it.

    So much of the language that surrounds us - from things like economics, management theory and the algorithms built into computer systems - appears to be objective and neutral. But in fact it is loaded with powerful, and very debatable, political assumptions about how society should work, and what human beings are really like.

    But it is very difficult to show this to people. Journalists, whose job is to pull back and tell dramatic stories that bring power into focus, find it impossible because things like economic theory are both incomprehensible and above all boring. The same is true of “management science”. Mild-mannered men and women meet in glass-walled offices and decide the destinies of millions of people on the basis of “targets” and “measured outcomes”.

    Like economics it pretends to be neutral, but it isn’t. Yet it’s impossible to show this dramatically because nothing happens in those glass-walled offices except the click of a keystroke that brings up another powerpoint slide. It’s boring - and it’s impossible to turn it into stories that will grab peoples imaginations - yet hundreds of peoples’ jobs may depend on what is written on that slide.

    I want to do a series of posts that will go back and reveal the forgotten roots of some of this fake objectivity that surrounds us today. They will be a series of stories that show how over the past fifty years both the political Right and the Left have gnawed away at the idea of objective truth. Sometimes almost colluding together to help bring about today’s uncertainty and confusion about where power and influence really lies in our society.

    The first is an odd story - with a very strange character at its heart. It is about how in the 1950s the richest man in the world, an oil billionaire in Texas, invented a new form of television journalism. It pretended to be objective and balanced but in fact it was hard core right-wing propaganda. It was way ahead of its time because, in its fake neutrality, it prefigured the rise of the ultraconservative right-wing media of the 1990s - like Fox News, with its copyrighted slogan, “Fair and Balanced”

    Source: sunrec

    Tags

    #media#history#perception#objectivity#consumer culture#politics#propaganda#state of the world

    Info

    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Mar 7, 2013 (a Thursday)
    time:
    11:58:00 (2 months ago)

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    Source: storify.com

    popthirdworld:

    Teju Cole continues to devastate in 140 characters or less. ProPublica: Everything we know so far about drone strikes

    Tags

    #war#state of the world#technology

    Info

    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Jan 30, 2013 (a Wednesday)
    time:
    3:34:00 (3 months ago)

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    While Americans hash out the moral ups and downs of having our electronics produced by Chinese factory hands, a young performance artist named Li Liao decided to jump into the middle of it. He got an assembly-line job making iPads, and forty-five days later he used his wages to buy one. As an exhibit, he put the iPad on a pedestal, tacked up his uniform and badges, and framed his contract.

    (via fullgrownmen)

    Source: particleb0red

    Tags

    #art#conceptual#state of the world#performance#Li Liao#economy#industrialization#China#corporations#Apple#outsourcing

    Info

    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Jan 22, 2013 (a Tuesday)
    time:
    11:17:31 (4 months ago)

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  11. flip ↔ ×
    androphilia: Growing up gay in Iran | guardian.co.uk Mahmoud Ahmedinejad says there are no homosexuals in his country. This is the story of an invisible community By Tehran Bureau correspondent guardian.co.uk Sunday, January 13, 2013 Hey dear friend, The other day when I talked to you, it occurred to me that it has been so many years since the last time we saw one another, and we have been unaware of the stories of each other’s lives. Here in Norway, far from home, when I talk to strangers about my life and the reasons for my escape, I am always amazed by how much they don’t know about life in Iran. And then the other day, I talked to you after these many years and realized that even in Iran, nobody knows our story, our tale. It is hidden behind a thousand veils. Because of all the secrecy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can claim that Iran has no gays. There is no dialogue, no discussion about us or our lives. Even you, my open-minded friend, are so ignorant of our lives that I can hardly blame other people who call us by a thousand diabolic names. If you hear my story and learn about what I endured my reasons for escaping Iran, then perhaps you can better understand the truth. I will start from our years back at that God-forsaken high school in our provincial city. If it wasn’t for the wonderful memories with friends, it would have been the worst period of my life. The mode of education was rigid and meant to be all-consuming. But how rebellious we were. I sat beside Hamid and a little farther from us sat Hamed and Mehdi, and you sat with all the other nerds in the front. It would have seemed that we were attentive in class, but below the desks it was a whole other world. I am not ashamed to recount it now — our curious hands, mine, Mehdi’s, Hamed’s, Hamid’s, exploring and discovering. I’d put my hand on Hamid’s lap and he would do the same on mine. It was all innocent. The most we did was watch each other change in the schoolyard while preparing for the physical education hour. We didn’t feel different then. The all-boys school and growing up among boys, gave a sense of normalcy. All the boys were intimate with each other to some extent; we occupied one end of a spectrum, but even those at the far end didn’t regard us as freaks. Everyone’s circle of friends was completely composed of boys; everyone chose a very close friend or even a soul mate from among other boys. It wasn’t a sin to tell some other boy that you loved him. Oh, there were also those few cool kids who had girlfriends, but how rare they were. Perhaps now, with internet, satellite TV and so forth, the situation is different. When I entered university, I saw that the world was quite different. I discovered women, experienced up close those whom I had deified for so long. Yet by the end of my first year, it had became obvious to me that somehow I failed to enjoy their company in the way I’d expected. I sought refuge in the familiar masculine realm – friends and comrades whom I understood, whose presence brought me happiness. For the first time, I felt different. It was a time of self-discovery, of the realisation that I was not “normal”, that I was of another kind. My needs were also developing – the hunger for physical intimacy, touching, caressing, kissing. I had had such an experience with a girl, but it wasn’t what I had in mind. It felt strange and unsatisfying. I saw that I wanted a person of my own kind, my own sex, a mountain for me to lean on and one for whom I could be a mountain. To be a man for him and him for me. I struggled. I was sure that I was sick. I thought all these desires were unholy and sinful. I sought a thousand different ways to rid myself of these thoughts, but alas it was not possible. They were the inescapable desires of the body and the soul. The first time, I found a guy named Reza. It was by accident that we met and by accident I found out that he too was different. I think we were discussing François Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups when we talked about it first. I was 21 and he was 22. We had no experience at all, and so, little by little, we experimented. We started by talking for long hours, going here and there, here and there until I mustered up the courage for a kiss. I had kissed his cheeks many times before and he mine. You know that we Iranians on hello and farewell hug and kiss each other on the cheeks, so it’s not weird for us. But one day after a few months, emboldened, I kissed his lips… No, not exactly his lips, but his upper lip and the faint line of his moustache. The world was set ablaze, my heart stuttered. It was lust and love. At first I felt filthy and sinful from all that religious indoctrination of my early years. I washed myself again and again as if I could scrub away the sin. In the end I gave in, to me and my needs and wants. By the time Reza finished his studies, his family was on his back to marry a woman. They went on and on about this, so much so that he went with them on a prearranged matchmaking session and gave his consent simply to rid himself of the emotional pressure. I was driven crazy; he was heartbroken. I was afraid that I’d remain alone for the rest of my life, especially in that hellhole of a city. So I gathered my things and moved to Tehran, looking for a new start. In Tehran, I found some friends and at one of our parties I met Naser. We talked for the entire evening. The next day we went to a park and talked from dawn till dusk. Neither of us revealed his desires, neither let on that he felt anything more than just platonic love. We never discussed it, but slowly, I can’t even remember when it started, we were holding hands. Then there was a vacation on which I accompanied him and midway he confessed and I cried and our lives were changed forever. I gave up my place and moved in with him. After two years I found a job at the place he was working and this became a fatal mistake. Up until then we had hid ourselves behind a thousand veils, but every work place has its jealous individuals and a co-worker started rumours about us. One day amid a heated discussion at a company meeting he stood up and called me a queer and so we left the company. But they did not let us be. They called our landlord and told him, so we lost our home as well. As we were looking for a new place to rent, we heard that they had notified the authorities and so there was nothing left but to escape. You know if we were caught we would have faced lashes and then execution. So we fled. We went to Kurdistan and then to Iraqi Kurdistan, from there to Istanbul and finally Greece. We were refugees, and I won’t tell you about all the maltreatment, humiliations and abuse that we faced while in detention. A month passed, then five, six, eight. Finally after 10 months we were given asylum and so we came up to Norway and started here anew, together. My poor father, may his soul rest in peace. I didn’t see him before his death. The last time I saw him was just before I fled the country. I went home, sat him down and talked to him. I told him all about me and Nasser, about my fortunes and misfortunes. He didn’t say a word, but he was shattered within. A traditional man with traditional ideas, he was embarrassed even to hear my words. At the end he broke down. He cried and I cried – it’s a very hard thing seeing a father cry. I thought he was very ashamed of me, but at least he knew that I was speaking my heart. Then came my mother, a deeply religious woman, devoted to her prayers. She couldn’t believe any of it. At first she cursed me. Then she said that she would take me to a doctor in order to cure me. Then she thought that perhaps I could marry a woman who would turn me around. She went on and on until my father asked her to leave me be. When we said our goodbyes my father kissed my cheeks. He did not cry again. He was holding it in so that I wouldn’t become distraught. My mother, though, she just couldn’t let go. She clutched the sleeve of my shirt and cried incessantly, uttering prayers beneath her breath. In the end my father took her hand and pulled her away and they were gone. Nasser and I got on the bus for Sanandaj and the border beyond. I was here in Norway when my father got sick and passed away and I couldn’t be there for him or be with my mother in order to sooth her. My poor father, my poor mother. This was the price that I paid for being different. Up until the time that it all came into the open, we faced no problems. All hell broke loose, however, as the veils were set aside. In Iran if you want to be different you have to hide it; then you are free to do as you please, or rather just so far as they don’t become aware of you and your way of life. If you’re different, if you don’t conform to their standards and it becomes known, you pay the price as I did. You know, before that wicked man in the office brought us so much harm, we had an almost normal life. In Iranian society, close friendships between men are unexceptional. Bromance is normal and accepted. It is not that weird for two men to hold hands in the streets. It is not odd to hug a man, sit with him in a coffee shop, go to a restaurant with him or even live with him. None of these things cause others to judge you as gay, so in this respect being gay in Iran is much easier even than in Europe. As long as people don’t tag you as being gay you are not bothered. On the other hand if you are pointed out as different then the whole world turns against you, from people to the government. You wouldn’t believe how many homosexuals are living under the city’s skin. Nobody knows, nobody wants to know. If you are gay, soon you’ll find friendly places to go to. Take the Café… in Tehran – it was our hangout for a long while. It wasn’t obviously gay, there was no rainbow flag flying at the door. But as soon as you got in, there were little hints. We had our homosexual parties as well. Would you believe it? Yes, in Iran we had parties just for homosexuals, and we had so much fun, we would chat and laugh and dance. It wasn’t jaunty, it wasn’t dirty, it wasn’t an orgy. It was like any other friendly gathering with all the usual constraints of Iranian society. Only the composition of the couples was different, men with men and women with women. Of course, the fear of the authorities was ever-present. But the government was always left behind on the far side of our closed doors, outside our closely knit circles of friends. In our safe space we were free to be us, the real us. And no, there’s not just a few of us. There are just as many homosexuals in Iran as there are anywhere else, it’s just that nobody knows. Nobody knows about Iranian homosexuals. Ahmadinejad is correct in a way when he says that Iran has no homosexuals. His version of Iran – and it’s far from his alone – has no gays, no liberals, no dissidents. Our Iran lives behind closed doors and high walls. One day these walls will be brought down and we will all share a common Iran. The breaking of the walls starts with you, my dear friend. Hear my story, know my story and tell my story. Our coming out starts with your acceptance, I hope that now you can better understand why I made the choices I made and why I did what I did.As told to a Tehran Bureau correspondent Copyright © 2013 Tehran Bureau. [Photograph by Najaf Shokri, from Bachelors, a collection of photos of young men in Tehran, which does not reflect sexual orientation.]
    Source: Guardian

    androphilia:

    Growing up gay in Iran | guardian.co.uk

    Mahmoud Ahmedinejad says there are no homosexuals in his country. This is the story of an invisible community

    By Tehran Bureau correspondent

    guardian.co.uk

    Sunday, January 13, 2013

    Hey dear friend,

    The other day when I talked to you, it occurred to me that it has been so many years since the last time we saw one another, and we have been unaware of the stories of each other’s lives.

    Here in Norway, far from home, when I talk to strangers about my life and the reasons for my escape, I am always amazed by how much they don’t know about life in Iran. And then the other day, I talked to you after these many years and realized that even in Iran, nobody knows our story, our tale. It is hidden behind a thousand veils.

    Because of all the secrecy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can claim that Iran has no gays. There is no dialogue, no discussion about us or our lives. Even you, my open-minded friend, are so ignorant of our lives that I can hardly blame other people who call us by a thousand diabolic names.

    If you hear my story and learn about what I endured my reasons for escaping Iran, then perhaps you can better understand the truth. I will start from our years back at that God-forsaken high school in our provincial city. If it wasn’t for the wonderful memories with friends, it would have been the worst period of my life.

    The mode of education was rigid and meant to be all-consuming. But how rebellious we were. I sat beside Hamid and a little farther from us sat Hamed and Mehdi, and you sat with all the other nerds in the front. It would have seemed that we were attentive in class, but below the desks it was a whole other world. I am not ashamed to recount it now — our curious hands, mine, Mehdi’s, Hamed’s, Hamid’s, exploring and discovering. I’d put my hand on Hamid’s lap and he would do the same on mine.

    It was all innocent. The most we did was watch each other change in the schoolyard while preparing for the physical education hour. We didn’t feel different then. The all-boys school and growing up among boys, gave a sense of normalcy. All the boys were intimate with each other to some extent; we occupied one end of a spectrum, but even those at the far end didn’t regard us as freaks.

    Everyone’s circle of friends was completely composed of boys; everyone chose a very close friend or even a soul mate from among other boys. It wasn’t a sin to tell some other boy that you loved him.

    Oh, there were also those few cool kids who had girlfriends, but how rare they were. Perhaps now, with internet, satellite TV and so forth, the situation is different.

    When I entered university, I saw that the world was quite different. I discovered women, experienced up close those whom I had deified for so long. Yet by the end of my first year, it had became obvious to me that somehow I failed to enjoy their company in the way I’d expected. I sought refuge in the familiar masculine realm – friends and comrades whom I understood, whose presence brought me happiness.

    For the first time, I felt different. It was a time of self-discovery, of the realisation that I was not “normal”, that I was of another kind. My needs were also developing – the hunger for physical intimacy, touching, caressing, kissing. I had had such an experience with a girl, but it wasn’t what I had in mind. It felt strange and unsatisfying. I saw that I wanted a person of my own kind, my own sex, a mountain for me to lean on and one for whom I could be a mountain. To be a man for him and him for me.

    I struggled. I was sure that I was sick. I thought all these desires were unholy and sinful. I sought a thousand different ways to rid myself of these thoughts, but alas it was not possible. They were the inescapable desires of the body and the soul.

    The first time, I found a guy named Reza. It was by accident that we met and by accident I found out that he too was different. I think we were discussing François Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups when we talked about it first. I was 21 and he was 22. We had no experience at all, and so, little by little, we experimented. We started by talking for long hours, going here and there, here and there until I mustered up the courage for a kiss.

    I had kissed his cheeks many times before and he mine. You know that we Iranians on hello and farewell hug and kiss each other on the cheeks, so it’s not weird for us. But one day after a few months, emboldened, I kissed his lips… No, not exactly his lips, but his upper lip and the faint line of his moustache. The world was set ablaze, my heart stuttered. It was lust and love. At first I felt filthy and sinful from all that religious indoctrination of my early years. I washed myself again and again as if I could scrub away the sin. In the end I gave in, to me and my needs and wants.

    By the time Reza finished his studies, his family was on his back to marry a woman. They went on and on about this, so much so that he went with them on a prearranged matchmaking session and gave his consent simply to rid himself of the emotional pressure. I was driven crazy; he was heartbroken. I was afraid that I’d remain alone for the rest of my life, especially in that hellhole of a city. So I gathered my things and moved to Tehran, looking for a new start.

    In Tehran, I found some friends and at one of our parties I met Naser. We talked for the entire evening.

    The next day we went to a park and talked from dawn till dusk. Neither of us revealed his desires, neither let on that he felt anything more than just platonic love. We never discussed it, but slowly, I can’t even remember when it started, we were holding hands. Then there was a vacation on which I accompanied him and midway he confessed and I cried and our lives were changed forever.

    I gave up my place and moved in with him. After two years I found a job at the place he was working and this became a fatal mistake. Up until then we had hid ourselves behind a thousand veils, but every work place has its jealous individuals and a co-worker started rumours about us. One day amid a heated discussion at a company meeting he stood up and called me a queer and so we left the company. But they did not let us be. They called our landlord and told him, so we lost our home as well.

    As we were looking for a new place to rent, we heard that they had notified the authorities and so there was nothing left but to escape. You know if we were caught we would have faced lashes and then execution. So we fled. We went to Kurdistan and then to Iraqi Kurdistan, from there to Istanbul and finally Greece. We were refugees, and I won’t tell you about all the maltreatment, humiliations and abuse that we faced while in detention. A month passed, then five, six, eight. Finally after 10 months we were given asylum and so we came up to Norway and started here anew, together.

    My poor father, may his soul rest in peace. I didn’t see him before his death. The last time I saw him was just before I fled the country. I went home, sat him down and talked to him. I told him all about me and Nasser, about my fortunes and misfortunes. He didn’t say a word, but he was shattered within. A traditional man with traditional ideas, he was embarrassed even to hear my words. At the end he broke down. He cried and I cried – it’s a very hard thing seeing a father cry. I thought he was very ashamed of me, but at least he knew that I was speaking my heart.

    Then came my mother, a deeply religious woman, devoted to her prayers. She couldn’t believe any of it. At first she cursed me. Then she said that she would take me to a doctor in order to cure me. Then she thought that perhaps I could marry a woman who would turn me around. She went on and on until my father asked her to leave me be.

    When we said our goodbyes my father kissed my cheeks. He did not cry again. He was holding it in so that I wouldn’t become distraught. My mother, though, she just couldn’t let go. She clutched the sleeve of my shirt and cried incessantly, uttering prayers beneath her breath. In the end my father took her hand and pulled her away and they were gone. Nasser and I got on the bus for Sanandaj and the border beyond.

    I was here in Norway when my father got sick and passed away and I couldn’t be there for him or be with my mother in order to sooth her. My poor father, my poor mother.

    This was the price that I paid for being different. Up until the time that it all came into the open, we faced no problems. All hell broke loose, however, as the veils were set aside. In Iran if you want to be different you have to hide it; then you are free to do as you please, or rather just so far as they don’t become aware of you and your way of life. If you’re different, if you don’t conform to their standards and it becomes known, you pay the price as I did.

    You know, before that wicked man in the office brought us so much harm, we had an almost normal life. In Iranian society, close friendships between men are unexceptional. Bromance is normal and accepted. It is not that weird for two men to hold hands in the streets. It is not odd to hug a man, sit with him in a coffee shop, go to a restaurant with him or even live with him. None of these things cause others to judge you as gay, so in this respect being gay in Iran is much easier even than in Europe. As long as people don’t tag you as being gay you are not bothered. On the other hand if you are pointed out as different then the whole world turns against you, from people to the government.

    You wouldn’t believe how many homosexuals are living under the city’s skin. Nobody knows, nobody wants to know. If you are gay, soon you’ll find friendly places to go to. Take the Café… in Tehran – it was our hangout for a long while. It wasn’t obviously gay, there was no rainbow flag flying at the door. But as soon as you got in, there were little hints.

    We had our homosexual parties as well. Would you believe it? Yes, in Iran we had parties just for homosexuals, and we had so much fun, we would chat and laugh and dance. It wasn’t jaunty, it wasn’t dirty, it wasn’t an orgy. It was like any other friendly gathering with all the usual constraints of Iranian society. Only the composition of the couples was different, men with men and women with women.

    Of course, the fear of the authorities was ever-present. But the government was always left behind on the far side of our closed doors, outside our closely knit circles of friends. In our safe space we were free to be us, the real us. And no, there’s not just a few of us. There are just as many homosexuals in Iran as there are anywhere else, it’s just that nobody knows. Nobody knows about Iranian homosexuals.

    Ahmadinejad is correct in a way when he says that Iran has no homosexuals. His version of Iran – and it’s far from his alone – has no gays, no liberals, no dissidents. Our Iran lives behind closed doors and high walls. One day these walls will be brought down and we will all share a common Iran.

    The breaking of the walls starts with you, my dear friend. Hear my story, know my story and tell my story. Our coming out starts with your acceptance, I hope that now you can better understand why I made the choices I made and why I did what I did.

    As told to a Tehran Bureau correspondent

    Copyright © 2013 Tehran Bureau.

    [Photograph by Najaf Shokri, from Bachelors, a collection of photos of young men in Tehran, which does not reflect sexual orientation.]

    Tags

    #LGBTQ#state of the world#Iran#Long Reads#human rights

    Info

    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Jan 15, 2013 (a Tuesday)
    time:
    5:43:07 (4 months ago)

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    Woman said she pushed man to death because she thought he was Muslim

    thalamtnafsee:

    thepeacefulterrorist:

    NEW YORK — A woman who told police she shoved a man to his death off a subway platform into the path of a train because she hates Muslims and thought he was one was charged Saturday with murder as a hate crime, prosecutors said.

    Erika Menendez was charged in the death of Sunando Sen, 46, who was crushed by a train in Queens on Thursday night, the second time this month a commuter has died in such a nightmarish fashion.

    Menendez, 31, could face 25 years to life in prison if convicted, Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said.

    “I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001, when they put down the twin towers, I’ve been beating them up,” Menendez told police, according to the district attorney’s office.

    On Dec. 3, another man was pushed to his death.

    A photo of the man clinging to the platform was published by the New York Post, causing an uproar about whether bystanders should have tried to help him rather than take pictures.

    A homeless man has been charged with murder.

    it is so dangerous right now for Muslim women who wear the physical hijab (that openly identifies them as Muslim). 

    (via wankercat-deactivated20130122)

    Source: thepeacefulterrorist

    Tags

    #violence#racism#current events#state of the world

    Info

    posted by:
    panicinthestudio
    date:
    Dec 30, 2012 (a Sunday)
    time:
    1:05:59 (4 months ago)

    Notes

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