iotic

delux_vivens, posting in debunkingwhite @ 2:13pm: james ray gets another lawsuit.
via dontpay2pray, The Lakota Nation has filed suit against James Ray, Angel Valley and the United States government citing the Laramie treaty of 1868.

actual filing in pdf format.

local sedona newspaper article.

xposted.

wiped, posting in debunkingwhite @ 5:50am: The gloves come off: Islamophobia in Lilburn
http://brownfolks.blogspot.com/2009/11/gloves-come-off-islamophobia-in-lilburn.html

Tonight in Lilburn, GA, an angry group of Islamophobes have turned on their Muslim neighbors and sought to enshrine their bigotry in law by denying a local mosque the right to expand and build a cemetery. Sadly, the city's Planning Commission sided with the angry mob.

( Read more... )

annwfyn, posting in debunkingwhite @ 11:15pm: Follow up to a story that was posted here a while ago...
I remember the murder of Marwa El Sherbini being posted about here before.

I thought some people might be interested to learn that her killer has been sentenced to 15 years in prison without possibility of parole, which is the maximum possible penalty for murder in Germany.

supafrosh, posting in debunkingwhite @ 5:53pm: Adopted From Korea and in Search of Identity
(NYTimes article link)

November 9, 2009
Adopted From Korea and in Search of Identity
By RON NIXON

As a child, Kim Eun Mi Young hated being different.

When her father brought home toys, a record and a picture book on South Korea, the country from which she was adopted in 1961, she ignored them.

Growing up in Georgia, Kansas and Hawaii, in a military family, she would date only white teenagers, even when Asian boys were around.

“At no time did I consider myself anything other than white,” said Ms. Young, 48, who lives in San Antonio. “I had no sense of any identity as a Korean woman. Dating an Asian man would have forced me to accept who I was.”

It was not until she was in her 30s that she began to explore her Korean heritage. One night, after going out to celebrate with her husband at the time, she says she broke down and began crying uncontrollably.

“I remember sitting there thinking, where is my mother? Why did she leave me? Why couldn’t she struggle to keep me?” she said. “That was the beginning of my journey to find out who I am.”

( Read more... )

More proof that systemic racism can be just as harmful as intentional racism.

fitconniptions @ 3:37pm: Dismantling A Radio, Building A Temple, Back To Bass
I am definitely coming down with something. This is not good.

This game about dismantling a radio, however, is excellent. You do not need to read Japanese to play the game.

You would need to read Japanese in order to fully understand this video:

Still worth seeing though, even if you, like me, have no Japanese. It is awesome enough by itself, but it turns out that the Lego is a model of an actual place - the Kinkaku-ji Temple. This beats that Lego grandfather clock, I'd say.

Last Tuesday I played a solo set at Phibbers, a very pleasant pub on the Holloway Road. It was a quiet night, with no more than a dozen or so people there, though there was one table of six who seemed to be really enjoying the music. Highlight of the evening was when the six people in question came to the stage and turned out to be Tara London's six piece band, who proceeded to put on a show as if it was 1200 people, not 12. Great stuff.

I'm playing bass in two new bands at the moment, both with pairs of brothers. First there's Chris and Justin McConville, with whom I played an eclectic set of largely bluesy mostly covers at Jazz After Dark this Wednesday under the moniker of Macs n Myers. It was also a relatively quiet night but the people there seemed to enjoy it - one extremely drunk Spanish guy insisted on taking my number so he could pass it on to his club-owning friend in Madrid - and it was great fun to sing and play bass again, as I haven't done that in ages. We're hoping to do this or something similiar again soon. Including the country-rock version of Number of the Beast. Oh yes. Out of genre Iron Maiden covers are the future.

I'm also playing bass with Daren and Haydn Callow at Power's Bar in Kilburn, this coming Wednesday, in Daren's new band 'Callow Youth'. It's a pleasure to play with Haydn again after twenty years - he was an excellent drummer then and has definitely been practising - and I've also really enjoyed Daren's solo sets each time I've seen him play, so it's great to get the chance to try and figure out the basslines for playing the same material in a band situation. Hope I'm doing it justice.

I'm also playing a short solo set at Prohibition on Sunday evening, and I've been extremely crap about actually telling anyone.

And I uploaded the first Fit and the Conniptions album to Bandcamp:

Hope that works.

But the best thing to happen this week by far was discovering Warren Ellis's webcomic FreakAngels. How the hell did I miss that for so long?

Bah.

Posted via email from I Am Taking My Ball And I Am Going Home

fitconniptions @ 5:52am: I Have A Bandcamp
It's new. And shiny. And I've uploaded the live EP from last year, which should be embedded below:

If it isn't, you can try http://fitandtheconniptions.bandcamp.com/ directly, or http://www.conniptions.org/ , where the Bandcamp player is also (subtly) embedded.

All being well, you can now download the EP in the high quality format of your choice, with an option to pay via PayPal, and (for now) a minimum price of zero.

I say "for now" because I am not yet sure what happens if you do choose a figure over zero but below the PayPal transaction fee. Idealism has its limits - actually losing money on high quality downloads, if I end up getting stiffed for the PayPal fee on a transaction of 1p, strikes me as dumb. Also I am not Radiohead or NiN, with their large volume of fans, so while the standard quality mp3s will always be free to download, I can see myself setting a minimum price for the high quality downloads some day in the future. Being skint and all.

Feel free to have a play with it and please do let me know if anything doesn't work.

Note to self: check out what the PayPal transaction fees actually are.

Posted via email from I Am Taking My Ball And I Am Going Home

wiped, posting in debunkingwhite @ 12:10am: Shopping While Muslim + more on Islamophobia
As a follow-up to Shopping While Black, here's Shopping While Muslim:

---

In Lilburn, GA, a mosque seeking to expand and add a cemetery to accommodate its members faces opposition from local non-Muslims. There is a good, detailed article about that here. Here are some direct quotes from residents as to why they oppose the mosque expansion:

• “This is about hurting our community, this is about hurting our kids”
• “I just don't like Muslims and I don't want them taking over our neighborhood”
• “This is not what Lilburn needs. This is a Christian community, and they are anti-Christian.”

(real quotes from CBS Channel 9 and The Gwinnett Daily Post) According to the CBS piece, three people also told the reporter that they opposed the mosque because--in their own words--they were racist.

A completely separate mosque in neighboring Lawrenceville, GA is also facing a similar issue, with residents holding similarly racist views, saying things like "They are trying to turn a neighborhood into a mosque."

For those in the metro Atlanta area who wish to get involved in supporting the mosques and fighting Islamophobia, please leave a comment or message me - we need your support, and have an event planned for this month (November).

---

In other recent news, please read about the censorship of an article about "how white gay activists can become complicit with this agenda by painting Islam as inherently homophobic and misogynist, and appointing themselves as the saviours of non-white queers." For more on this subject, see the following:
-OutRage!ous Censorship of "Gay Imperialism"
-Whitewashing gay culture in Lebanon
-'Stop using Palestinian gays to whitewash Israel's image'

---

Finally, here is a great book review titled "Orientalism and Islamophobia in the American left," which deals with anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia not just in the American right, but amongst white liberals and intellectuals as well.

x-posted to ap_racism

supafrosh, posting in debunkingwhite @ 1:22pm: South Koreans struggle with race
Note: I'd like the discussions here to please stay away from unhelpful garbage like "wow Koreans are even more racist/sexist than Americans" and such.

ETA: I posted this to debunkingwhite because I believe it's indicative of how a western (aka white) POV can mix several different issues (xenophobia, nationalism, racism, etc) in a manner that serves to emphasize how much more racist some other race/ethnicity is, which in turn silently reinforces the notion that white racism isn't the real problem.

Original NYTimes article here.

November 2, 2009
South Koreans Struggle With Race
By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL — On the evening of July 10, Bonogit Hussain, a 29-year-old Indian man, and Hahn Ji-seon, a female Korean friend, were riding a bus near Seoul when a man in the back began hurling racial and sexist slurs at them.

The situation would be a familiar one to many Korean women who have dated or even — as in Ms. Hahn’s case — simply traveled in the company of a foreign man.

What was different this time, however, was that, once it was reported in the South Korean media, prosecutors sprang into action, charging the man they have identified only as a 31-year-old Mr. Park with contempt, the first time such charges had been applied to an alleged racist offense. Spurred by the case, which is pending in court, rival political parties in Parliament have begun drafting legislation that for the first time would provide a detailed definition of discrimination by race and ethnicity and impose criminal penalties.
( Read more... )

It's somewhat encouraging to see the mainstream media talking about racial attitudes from a non black/white focus, but I was still disappointed that they only mentioned the white colonialist impact in passing and didn't even bother to try to understand where it came from.

spreadsothin, posting in debunkingwhite @ 3:45pm: White person fails, then asks for help.
Dear debunkingwhite community,

Over the years I have learned so much from being a (mostly silent) member of this community. I do my best to be a white ally. I recognize that my actions may be flawed, but I am trying to educate myself and manage my privilege as best I can.

This is to set you up for the fact that I found three dreamcatchers among my possessions when I moved, and my husband (who is not nearly progressive) asked me how I justified dreamcatchers when I generally try to be so careful against appropriating things.

And I didn't have a good response. Dreamcatchers had been introduced to me at summer camp, and I had never thought critically about them. One is from a dear aunt, one is from pledging for the "hippie" fraternity at college, and one was a gift from a dear friend. I kept them as souveniers and didn't make the connection that they were, in fact, important cultural symbols.

So now what? Do I just throw them in the trash and apologize? Do I send them to a museum? Do I take them apart and use the pieces for other art projects?

My other question concerns smudging. On Sunday, five white liberals including myself bought sage bundles from the health food store to smudge our apartments. I took home the bundle to read some pretty horrible text on the back of the package, which made me realize how wrong it was to appropriate this tradition. Now what?

I realize that this post has Fail all over it, but I'd like to move forward in the most respectful way possible.

Any advice?

vasilisamanuese, posting in debunkingmale @ 2:18pm: My Story
My very first post here.  Almost 39 years old and somewhat on the way with Transitioning M2F.  Been avoiding dating and partner sex for a little over five years and also married to my own inner goddess for about three years.  Just so I maintain having a counter-cultural marriage that sets me apart from the masses.  Partially because I cannot even remain in touch with my own First.  Long since realized that frivolous dating was not the way to feel good about oneself in a culture where one cannot remain involved with just one woman for barely a handful of decades.  Came up with the radical idea that since women do not normally turn to other women in order to feel good about themselves.  Not the best illumination, but a glimpse of things to come is preferable to remaining just another a heterosexual male.  Have heard it said that one has to love oneself first before loving another person.  Transitioning is preferable to excess drinking and I do like no longer loathing what I used to see in the mirror.  Kind of fantastic that I can now almost wrap one of my hands around my upper arm.  Supplements like Estro-Glan are practically my best friend!

smashboredom, posting in debunkingwhite @ 3:25pm: Young Muslims step in police's shoes

On the fifth floor of Scotland Yard in central London, live video feeds are coming in with news of a terror threat.

The 30 people in the room are forced to make decisions that could change lives - which homes do they raid? Who do they stop and search?

But they are not counter-terror officers, in fact many of them are not even sure they trust the police.

They are 17 to 25-year-olds from around London, nearly all of them Muslim, and they are acting as if they are officers responding to a terror attack as part of Act Now, an exercise run as part of the government's £140m Prevent programme.

It aims to stop young people feeling isolated or having mistrust for authorities - targeting those that the government and the police agree are vulnerable to radicalisation.


Youths had to face the decisions anti-terror police make in an instant

What do people think?
Wouldn't it be better for the police to step into the shoes of the Muslim youth? Rather than asking "see why we harass you?" Or am I being too cynical?

fitconniptions @ 6:14am: Cave Story Story
I've been playing quite a lot of games lately.

First, and repeatedly, is David Shute's Small Worlds, his entry into the Jayisgames Casual Gameplay Design Competition 6 (found via MeFi, like most good things). Pixelly graphics, moody music, and a simple, pure gameplay mechanic closely following the 'Exploration' theme of the competition. It's short but sweet, and maybe not infinitely so, but certainly replayable. There are very few games I have completed several times just because I wanted to.

The music is credited to Kevin MacLeod, who has an extremely interesting site at Incompetech.com. Incompetech hosts the Royalty Free Music Library, a large library of Creative Commons licensed royalty free music composed by MacLeod and arranged by genre and mood, intended for use in games and film. But it also hosts a large collection of free online graph paper and other speciality papers including blank sheet music, hexagonal graph paper, storyboard blanks for film and the like, downloadable as PDF in a wide range of user-defined and tweakable formats. Possibly not as comprehensive on the sheet music front as Blanksheetmusic.net is, but certainly worth knowing about.

Not everyone on MeFi liked Small Worlds, and one poster pointed out that in their opinion it wasn't a patch on Cave Story, which I'd never heard of. Cave Story is another independent pixellated graphics 2d platformer but is huge where Small Worlds is tiny, and took Japanese coder / designer Pixel over five years to complete. The sites just linked to is are a fan site and Wikipedia entry - how many independent games are so good they have those - and versions of the game are available for all major platforms.

So I downloaded the Linux version - excited enough to play it that I forgave the download for being binary not source - and bam. It attempted to go fullscreen, failed, then hung X so badly I had to ssh in from next door to kill it. Bummer. Really wanted to play that.

The problem looked like it was the config file, which - as one of the two text documents included with the download explains - is in a weird binary format and can only be edited on Linux using the original Windows config editor through Wine. My system is old and slow and I don't bother with Wine. I was stuck. It was late. I was tired. I really didn't want to sit and write a native Linux config file editor for the thing. Excuses excuses. Meanwhile the Linux port has been out for two years or so, so why has no-one else written a native Linux config file editor?

While trawling Linux gamer forums trying to find a fix for this I got sidetracked and rediscovered David Olofson's excellent Kobo Deluxe, which I last played about five years ago on a previous incarnation of my attempts to run a home Linux system and then lost during one of many botched upgrades. Not everyone likes games that involve flying 2d spaceships around shooting things - it's a close relative of the 'bullet hell' genre - but sometimes there is nothing else I want to do in the world. There's something oddly calming about flying around shooting abstract alien shapes, something oddly meditative.

All at once. I remembered the existence of hex editors, programs to edit binary files directly. Turn the byte at offset 108 from 0 to 1 (run in a window, not fullscreen), the byte at offset 112 from 1 to 0 (I have no gamepad) and try Cave Story again.

Runs like a dream. Quite literally. A great great game.

Posted via email from I Am Taking My Ball And I Am Going Home

tangendentalism, posting in debunkingmale @ 10:35am: Hi everyone,

Apoligies if this is a bit off topic here. I imagine that anything that will help me with this would also help anyone trying to debunk male privilege in other areas too.

I'm going to be running a workshop introducing feminism to a group of university undergraduates in a few weeks. We're focusing on the representation of women in film and tv. Does anyone have any resources or suggestions for things I can get them to do/look at to help begin consciousness raising? I only have an hour and I don't really want to give them anything too long to read. Something that links to contemporary tv aimed at women or to very recent films would be perfect. Statistics are also very welcome.

Thank you!