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Wednesday Open Thread

by: Maryscott O'Connor

Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 03:15:00 AM PST

( - promoted by Maryscott O'Connor)

"The media's the most powerful entity on earth.
They have the power to make the innocent guilty
and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power.
Because they control the minds of the masses."

-- Malcolm X
Assassinated February 21, 1965

Maryscott O'Connor :: Wednesday Open Thread

Tags: Malcolm X, Z: Open Threads, (All Tags)

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Wednesday Open Thread | 26 comments

PLEASE STOP TROLLRATING PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT TROLLS. (10.33 / 3)

That is why we have the ONE rating, the TOTAL FUCKING BULLSHIT rating, for chrissakes, is the one you should be using.

You know who you are. You have given Zero ratings to a front pager (not that it would matter whether he were or not) who pissed you off, crossedd a lin in your eyes -- so, fine -- USE THE ONE, goddamnit.

What the fuck? Was I not CLEAR enough in designating the fucking Zero a TROLL rating?

From the Community Info section:
TROLL RATINGS
The cumulative effect of zero ratings is the disappearance of comments, so BE JUDICIOUS. I am NOT a fan of censorship, so unless the damned comments are totally vile or disruptive, think twice about making them disappear, okay? You can express your displeasure with the 1. (Except when it's a joke, of course. But be judicious about that, too...)
No troll rating except for trolls and trollish comments.
A MLW participant who consistently disagrees with the prevailing opinions around here is not a troll. She is a dissenter, and she is welcome here. Expressing opinions which are anathema to our liberal sensibilities is not a trollish thing to do.
Expressing repugnant opinions designed to elicit disgust, revulsion, anger or hurt IS trollish.
I find it repugnant to see someone say he wishes abortion were illegal and that people who have or perform them should be jailed. But it's not trollish to say so. It's trollish to say so in an abusive manner. It's trollish to say so and imply that anyone who disagrees is a babykiller.
The 1 is a perfectly serviceable way to express displeasure and total disagreement. You guys are smart -- you can tell the difference between a troll and someone who holds different, possibly repulsive, opinions than you do. And HERE'S A HINT: If you SUSPECT the person is a troll, that is NOT license to troll rate. Use the 1. Trolls always give themselves away eventually, and if that happens, you can always change your rating appropriately. But once you zero a comment, you're saying it ought to be censored, and if enough people agree with you and use the zero, the comment disappears, and that peson is designated a troll, regardless of whether it's true or not.
Better safe than sorry -- the mob mentality that has sprung up at DKos and been exacerbated because of its binary rating system should NEVER infiltrate our community. I am ubiquitous around here at this point -- if someone needs banning, I'll see it and do it -- at worst, it will take a few hours because I'm away from the computer. If I still miss it, you can email me.
Am I making myself CLEAR, boys and girls?

Sheeesh.

--7.88, --6.56 If I can't rant, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

by: Maryscott O'Connor @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 06:37:53 AM CST

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Suggestion: (10.00 / 1)

Let us please take discussion of anti_semitism to the new anti-Semitism discusison and leave this Open Thread to people who don't want to be confronted with it.

I'm going to delete dhongi's initial comment here and my subsequent responses, and ed_encho's stand-alone response, and post them in the discussion of the front page essay I just posted.

--7.88, --6.56 If I can't rant, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

by: Maryscott O'Connor @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 07:20:51 AM CST

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I have an even better idea: (2.00 / 1)

How about taking the whole anti-semetism debate into CHAT?

It's been going on for *how* many days now?

If you read MLW according to the "recent comments" column, as I do, you can barely sift any other conversation from the noise being generated by that discussion.

If this is what it was like in summer when the first round of this shit went down--gawd, am I glad I wasn't around for that.

Anyway, it's become amply apparent to me that I can not continue to so much as check in here until this round is over.

TTFN everybody.

And she lived happily ever after in her Hobbithole in the Hood

by: deus ex mechanic @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 12:59:12 PM CST

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Painfully accurate comment by wu ming... (9.00 / 1)

Over at marisacat's overnight Open Thread discussion of the rape of an Iraqi woman by the Iraqi "police," whatever the fuck THEY are:

~~~(lately I've been thinking of them AND American police as something akin to the "Fingers" in V for Vendetta)~~~

"Women's bodies are always a battleground during war, symbolically and corporally."

And why is that? I have never been able to comprehend it, though I've never doubted its veracity. Why are we -- our bodies, that is, and through our bodies, our souls -- the pawns in the man's game of war? So much rape. "Raping and pillaging." Hand in hand.

The closest I came to understanding it was during the Bosnian/Serbian thing (war? conflict? what the fuck was that?), when I was doing a lot of reading -- I was, strangely enough, experiencing my FIRST stay at a psychiatric facility at the time, I believe, in August of 1992 --maybe I have my time periods all mixed up...

Anyway, what I came to understand, through the Bosnia thing, was that through raping the women on the "other side,' they were doing some "ethnic cleansing" of another sort than genocide: by raping the women, they [hoped?] to inseminate them, thereby polluting the gene pool of the Serbs -- or was it the other way around? My ignorance is showing... Anyway -- well, you get the point. I finally did, and is that all there really is to it?The same thing is happening in sudan, all day, every day -- the janjaweed, raping women IN GROUPS as they make their way the three miles or more to gather firewood and clean water...

Or is it just the vicious scumbaggery of these men, taking advantage of the war to fulfill the oft-repeated (and, I have always hoped, fallacious) pseudo-feminist saying that "all men are potential rapists?"

sigh...

--7.88, --6.56 If I can't rant, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

by: Maryscott O'Connor @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 11:07:56 AM CST

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ms xeno's pointed and poignant reaction: (11.00 / 2)

1 ms_xeno - 21 February 2007
I need to find some sort of support group for Isolationist Feminists. Well-meaning American women convince ourselves that we need to save foreign women from exploitation, sexual and otherwise. So we slap a layer of feminist pancake makeup on these brutal imperial jaunts, telling ourselves that we're better than Laura Bush for doing it. Since after all, we are real feminists. All it amounts to is some tarted-up version of the "girls" in WWI who would roll bandages for the Red Cross and bring candy to the soldiers in the hospital- only worse. Because now there are American women perpetrating brutality in foreign countries, as well as being at risk for it, mostly from their own comrades. God Bless America.
Except all that happens in places like Iraq is that we open the other nation's women up to new avenues of exploitation, from more sources. Some statistics have sexual abuse IN THE US MILITARY at 40% of female soldiers. This is not something we should be proud to export elsewhere. We have no business lecturing the rest of the world about how to care for women when WE CANNOT CARE FOR OUR WOMEN.
Shit. Why didn't we just send the Army to fucking Duke University ? It would make a hell of a lot more sense.
[beats head on keyboard]

--7.88, --6.56 If I can't rant, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

by: Maryscott O'Connor @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 11:10:04 AM CST

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Rape as weapon of war (8.50 / 4)

Maryscott,
I think there are a number of reasons why women's bodies become the targets of enemy men. It's not just the idea of inseminating them and forcing them to bear enemy children, although that has been going on since long before any of us can remember; it's also a notion of "pollution." Once an enemy man's dick has been inside a woman, she is essentially polluted, unclean, untouchable to the men around her.
Example? The Fourth Lateran Council mandated that Jews were to wear identifying clothing that would distinguish them from Christians. Why? In order to prevent Jewish men from having sex with Christian women and Christian men from having sex with Jewish women. Why? In order to keep them form "mixing damnably." Pollution. Ancient taboos.

Then there's the whole thing about territory being like virgin soil, like a woman's body. I remember reading in Machiavelli's Discourses his whole discussion of the conquest of other lands. It was like reading rape narratives. If the land of other men is female, what better way to destroy it then by raping, pillaging, plundering. Planting your flag in another's soil.

I could go on and on. But you get the picture. And yep. It is still happening, and we are still turning a blind eye to it because it is so much more important that we figure out why Britney shaved her head or which drugs killed Anna Nicole.

"I have an existential map. It has "You are here" written all over it."

Steven Wright

by: lorraine @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 11:13:32 AM CST

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War IS Rape (7.50 / 2)

Many feminists, scholars, and activists argue that the United States of America is the paradigmatic Rape Culture. America's traditional gender roles which polarize the sexes, offer prescriptions and proscriptions for female and male sexuality. These rigid ideologies serve to label men sexual subjects (predators) and women sexual objects(prey). In a system such as this, it is no wonder rape is as prevalent as it is."
"Transforming a Rape Culture"

The military is a hothouse for the American Rape Culture; it is a misogynist, homophobic institution that relies on patriarchal structures and values. It trains men to devalue, objectify and demean traits traditionally associated with women, demanding a violent masculinity defined in opposition to femininity.

Rape in war is not an anomaly.

War is rape and death and destruction. It is the ultimate expression of Power Over, and America's love affair with war has poisoned our whole culture.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace." ~Jimi Hendrix

by: Damnit Janet @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 13:22:16 PM CST

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thanks, maryscott (0.00 / 0)

it struck me because it had come up in some stuff that i was reading about the chinese response to the mongol invasions. it goes beyond rape, though, in that it includes as well the lionization of those who are not violated, or - in the case that i was looking at - those who commit suicide to avoid rape.

another way that women's bodies become a battlefield can be seen in which rapes and abuses become significant, and which just vanish away in rhetorical irrelevance. those raped by the enemy are martyrs of the nation, outrages that must be avenged; those raped by one's fellow nationals get swept under the carpet.

the people don't fucking matter to the discussion, only the symbolism.

god, i hate abstract ideas sometimes.

surf putah, your friendly neighborhood central valley samizdat

by: wu ming @ Thu Feb 22, 2007 at 02:26:41 AM CST

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ATTENTION, proximity, Stu Piddy, litho, shergald and imhotep... (8.20 / 5)

to name a few of the principals on one side of this melodramatic nightmare of an ongoing "debate..."

My Left Wing is not a refuge for people who wish to turn any discussion about Israel into a flame war. In the course of a mere few days, the more passionately anti-Israel here have managed to drive away several of the members of MLW who had been here from Day One.

They are partly to blame for their own discomfort; my suggestion to ignore people who so obviously wish to goad and anger them is, ironically, itself ignored.

But you are ALSO partially to blame, not only because of the way in which you chose to engage those people, deliberately baiting them with decidedly, calculatedly rude and confrontational commentary, and refusing to simply back off when it was clear from the first that nothing would come of those "dialogues" than rancour and strife and anger.

As I said, there are two sides to this mess, and you are only one. But the other side has opted to retreat. You have "won."

I would like you all to consider the fact that there are many other issues on our collective liberal plate -- and perhaps that you might be adept and gifted at tackling some of THEM for a while.

I am distraught, seriously disturbed by what has taken place here in the course of a few short days. I and this blog have lost several committed, passionate liberal members due in no small part to your words and behaviour here. And, I fear, due to my perhaps misguided belief that I owe it to my principles and to this blog's commitment to open, honest and rational debate and dialogue.

I am seriously beginning to regret my decision, though I now there could have been no other, not if I wished to remain true to those vaunted principles, to which I have sacrificed so much of late. Still, I regret it, because the sacrifice HURTS. Do you understand me? And while I take responsibility for my own words, decisions and actions, and I hold those people who decided to leave responsible for their own words, decisions and actions, so, too, do I hold YOU responsible for YOUR words, decisions and actions.

What is done, in this case, cannot be undone. But it IS possible, I think, to prevent further bloodletting. Peeder mentioned elsewhere the distinct possibility of MLW becoming known as a refuge for strict, vociferous, even strident anti-Likudniks/ anti-Israelis/ anti-Zionists.

I do NOT wish this to become a reality. My Left Wing is so much MORE than that puny title. But if you guys persist in your seemingly single-minded posting here, there is a very real danger of it becoming just that. If I see that happening, I will NOT hesitate to start issuing strong warnings that turn into exactly the thing I have been trying to avoid all this time: I will ban people who insist on attempting to turn my site into a single issue blog.

I don't think any of you (with the exception of imhotep) actually wish that to happen. But the strident tone and seeming GLEEFULNESS with which you have engaged in what has turned into the running out of MLW on a rail of some of my favourite people in the world, you do run the risk of making it so.

I am taking the long way to say this because, goddamnit, I do not WANT to have endured this episode and end up abandoning my goddamned principles, after all. But, see, should it come to that, I don't actually think it WOULD be abandoning my principles. Because if you were to insist on digging in your heels and, by your words, decisions and actions, MAKING this a single issue blog, you will have become trolls, in my estimation -- and thereby candidates for banning.

I hope I have made myself clear, but if I haven't -- please take a long look at your behaviour of late, and consider whether you have any respect for me and my wishes in this instance at all. If you DO, then you will heed my request to check out the large variety of OTHER issues available for discussion and debate -- and perhaps consider adopting a few of the lonelier ones for a while.

And please, please, please, stop being such PRICKS to other people around here. I don't care if you think they've been pricks to you; I'll deal with them separately. YOU... stop being such pricks to people around here. It's painful to watch, it's painful to read, it's motherfucking PAINFUL. I should not have to endure such pain at my own goddamned motherfucking blog.

I hope I have made myself understood.

--7.88, --6.56 If I can't rant, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

by: Maryscott O'Connor @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 12:32:29 PM CST

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Amen. Can someone send me a "ping" when it's (4.00 / 2)

over?

Outta here (this time seriously so).

And she lived happily ever after in her Hobbithole in the Hood

by: deus ex mechanic @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 13:00:36 PM CST

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Thanks for saying something, Maryscott. (0.00 / 0)

Since certain posters really couldn't be reached by other, average posters telling them off, it was necessary for you, the blogmother to intervene and say something. Frankly, Maryscott, you've got much more patience than most people, including myself, have, and, had it been me, I'd have banned the troublemakers a long time ago.

Not to stray too, too far from the subject at hand, but I've seen similar stuff happen on other forums, where people have been driven away due to constant bullying, harassment, and insulting from a certain person or persons, thus depriving others on the forum of the opportunity to hear other peoples' knowledge and experience in particular subjects.

Ahhhh....Life goes on.

by: independentminded @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 16:31:11 PM CST

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I might also add, however, that, (0.00 / 0)

I have to disagree somewhat with you on the idea of just ignoring the offenders. Oftentimes, it's not possible and it doesn't work.

Ahhhh....Life goes on.

by: independentminded @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 16:32:20 PM CST

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i am really selfish.. (10.00 / 4)

all this going on & here i am, no time to read all the new FP posts...but taking a quick ciggie break to share a zen moment.

I hung the horizontal blinds myself! "They are oversized Diane, our windows are special size, it will never work..." be damned!

I cut them down with our miter saw, leveled and hung them & they look fucking professional! Hah.

happy happy joy joy.

Not enough? My first stop before here was to check my hubbie's lottery tickets. We won a hundred bucks on the fantasy 5 (5 outta 6 #'s)

wooo hooo. Yes, he's going to say one more # woulda scored us 409,000...but I sat fuck it wooo hooo!

Feeling brave, gonna tackle the hanging light in the kitchen now...bbl :)

by: Diane W @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 12:54:40 PM CST

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me me me (10.33 / 3)

I rock. I roll. I rock-n-roll.

I hung blinds. I hung the light over the sink. I hung the chandelier light in the kitchen. I dod not get electrocuted. I salted & chopped the ice in the driveway (which has a bigger pitch than any house around) so it is again useable.

I am about to do the range hood, and my neighbor is gonna do the fan.

I fucking rock. Even my husband is in awe.

They will still ask within milliseconds of getting home "So, whats for dinner Mom"

Don't care I'm happy!!!! Happy I tell you, it is all about me. Its like a new kitchen for under 200$!!!!!!!

by: Diane W @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 16:17:04 PM CST

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WTG, Diane! (9.00 / 1)

Excellent. DIY does rock. When appropriate, you will want to teach your children to cook and saw.

by: dus7wind @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 17:55:45 PM CST

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i replanted a rose today (7.50 / 2)

and, uh, yeah, that's all i got.

seriously, diane, that rocks. as one who is utterly incompetent with such things, you have my awestruck respect.

surf putah, your friendly neighborhood central valley samizdat

by: wu ming @ Thu Feb 22, 2007 at 02:20:50 AM CST

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roses are cool. (0.00 / 0)

but I am months out from that.

Seriously, I was terrified the whole time. I fear electricity. But believe it or not, following the directions works!!! Hee.

by: Diane W @ Thu Feb 22, 2007 at 07:08:53 AM CST

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I'd like to comment on the The Media (9.75 / 4)

Malcolm X was so right.

The media is OWNED. GE who builds weapons and who are making a "killing" off of War Pigs like Bush, own NBC.

Greg Palast spells it out clearly in his book "Armed Madhouse". Not only do they have space to sell their general products, they also have space to sell their wars... for profit.

We need to march on CNN.

I've cancelled my paper to the Oregonian because it placed on the FRONT PAGE "American Idol Judges Are Meaner This Season". Now the cocksuckers call me at least once a week to ask if there was a problem with delivery. NO, CONTENT. They ask if I'm mad because I don't agree with everything they write... Are they morons??? I don't expect to agree with everything... I want FACTS. I want INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM.

Camcel. Shut it off. March on them. Call them. Give your money to investigative journalists like Amy Goodman and Greg Palast. And let the war machine fool news KNOW.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace." ~Jimi Hendrix

by: Damnit Janet @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 13:18:24 PM CST

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even better than marching (11.00 / 1)

might be laying seige to CNN. stay put for a while.

surf putah, your friendly neighborhood central valley samizdat

by: wu ming @ Thu Feb 22, 2007 at 02:21:44 AM CST

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Malcom X was right on with that one. (6.00 / 1)

by: epppie @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 15:34:58 PM CST

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Re the identity poll, (0.00 / 0)

I prefer white since I've never been to Caucasia and doubt I have any ancestors from there. But then maybe it's like the "senior" vs "elder" disagreement so never mind.

by: dus7wind @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 18:01:30 PM CST

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Caucasian IS white--It's just a more scientific term for it, that's all. (0.00 / 0)

Ahhhh....Life goes on.

by: independentminded @ Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 18:17:01 PM CST

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Wednesday Open Thread | 26 comments