Nov 16, 2006 Democrats have no good options on Iraq By Walden Bello The recent US election was an exercise in redemption. At a time when many throughout the world had written off the US electorate as lifeless putty in the hands of top White House aide Karl Rove, the voters woke up to deliver [...]

Specialist James Barker, United States Army, took a plea agreement that will allow him a life sentence in a Federal Penitentiary. He was among the group of soldiers that killed an Iraqi family in Mahmoudiya — a father, a mother, and a 4-year-old boy. They had spared the fourth, 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, from death [...]

Pornographic query: Is a DP inherently sexist? ( http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov06/Jensen14.htm) by Robert Jensen Is the sexual practice in which two men penetrate a woman anally and vaginally at the same time — a “DP,” or double penetration in the vernacular of the pornography industry — inherently sexist? When I first got into academic life, I couldn’t [...]

Dear Secretary Gates, I will not judge you now for what you’ve done in the past. Vietnam and Iran-Contra happened when I was working for the government, too. One thing we all have to hold out for is the possibility of change, including personal change. Without both forgiveness and redemption, what’s the point, after all? [...]

We’ve touched on this topic before: the tendency of both Lefty and Righty boys to revert in times of stress to a kind of Tourette’s Syndrome of misogyny, or phallolalia: the compulsive repetition of a stock set of highly gendered (male supremacist) metaphors and tropes. Recently, liberal pundit Billmon has been on a real roll — not that I’m picking on the guy out of personal spite, it’s just that I read his column fairly regularly and so am exposed to the boysh_t content thereof, which imho detracts considerably from the allegedly progressive message. And sometimes you just get fed up, ya know? Thought I’d do a little field anthropology (or andropology) for the ongoing project of the Gender Dyslexicon. A while back we were kicking around the notion of a website called Boysh_t Watch or something of the kind; here’s a foretaste of how durned tedious — and what a full-time job — it would be to keep up with the source material . . . Please feel free to add any recent gems — elections, like other major national sporting events, tend to bring the testosterone to the surface.

Any time you hear the term bipartisan, check your six and check your wallet. It means the ruling class is united and on the move. Given the history of this term, I can’t imagine why it doesn’t send shudders down our collective spine. They call it bipartisanship; but it’s more like The Bipartisan Ship — the primary war vessel of the ultra-elite.

I spent yesterday at the Durham Road Fire Station, voting point for Precint 08-08, Wake County (Raleigh) North Carolina. I arrived at 7:30 AM about one hour after the polls opened and stayed until 6:30 PM, one hour before they closed.

Pornography and Pop Culture: Reframing Theory, Re-thinking Activism

March 23-25, 2007
Wheelock College
Boston