WHY THERE WILL NEVER BE A BLACK "BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN"

The down-low refers to black men who are in committed heterosexual relationships and then slip off to have sex with other men on the sly.

What was Brokeback Mountain but a glossy film about two men on the down-low set to glorious music and enchanting scenery? It was wholesome sentimentality.

No wonder audiences loved the film. It was more of the same sugary pap manufactured in Hollywood.

"It's pretty clear that if they had been two black men it would have been a different reaction," says Keith Boykin, the author of Beyond the Down Low.

"It would have been an evil, nefarious story about deception and disease. These are guys who blatantly cheat on their wives with other men. There's no way it would have been called a love story if they were black."   more »

Working class people, especially progressives, must come to understand that our interests are not being served by hitching our political wagons to either the Democratic or the Republican Party.

The Republicrats represent a capitalist system that has given rise to class division, the unequal distribution of wealth, private ownership, and a system of wage slavery that does not serve democracy, but plutocracy.

It condemns workers to being the property of their employers. Capitalism is the opposite of Democracy. We are only deceiving ourselves—falling into an old trap—by casting our votes in a system that not only excludes the majority of us, but also treats us with utter contempt.

Whichever party we choose represents a system that favors plutocrats—those of wealth and privilege. It is a system of their creation, for their sole benefit. In that system we are the servants of power and they are its masters.

The vast majority of us, probably ninety percent of the population, is not served by this party. We will always be servile; we will never have representation in this system. Our only rational alternative is to form a new party that represents the silent, repressed majority.   more »

For almost as long as I can remember, the experts have been saying that the US, with 5% of the world's population, consumes a third or more of the Earth's resources. That is no longer true.

China has now overtaken America as the world's leading resource consumer. Among the basic commodities - grain and meat in the food sector, oil and coal in the energy sector, and steel in the industrial sector - China now consumes more of each of these than the US except for oil.

It consumes nearly twice as much meat - 67m tonnes compared with 39m tonnes in the US; and more than twice as much steel - 258m tonnes to 104m.

The important questions now are: what if China's consumption per person of these resources reaches the current US level, and how long will it take for China's income per person to reach the US level?

If China's economy expands at 8% a year in the decades ahead, its income per person will reach the current US level in 2031.

If at that point China's resource consumption per person were the same as that in the US today, its 1.45 billion people would consume the equivalent of two-thirds of the current world grain harvest.   more »

In Delusion and Illusion Worthy of Dickens Maureen Dowd returns to her obsession with male sexual metaphors:

"In their usual twisted way, the Bushies are reducing their abuse of the law to a test of testosterone - knowing that the Democrats will play Judy to their Punch."

Maureen Dowd's got a point. I recently posted an insightful article on war, sexism & patriachy, by Huibin Amee Chew @ Z Magazine. I called it Male Chauvinist Pigs of War.

Chauvinism is such an appropriate word here. It means both extreme patriotism [jingoism] and misogyny [male chauvinism].

Republicans have come to represent both. The Bush Regime symbolizes male warmongering and female submissiveness. Is this the American psyche?   more »

MORE ARROGANCE AND RACISM FROM US ARMY

Seriously, is there something inherently twisted in the ethics and morality of US military personnel and their families?

By now, most must have heard of the sham trial of Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. who killed an Iraqi general during questioning by stuffing him headfirst into a sleeping bag and sitting on his chest.

"Prosecutors described Welshofer as a rogue interrogator who became frustrated with Mowhoush's refusal to answer questions and escalated his techniques from simple interviews to beatings to simulating drowning, and finally, to death."

But thank the maker, Welshofer apologized ... erm .. just not to the Iraqis.

"I deeply apologize if my actions tarnished the soldiers serving in Iraq," he said, fighting back tears.

Oh, Lou they sure did. The US army has the image of Nazi SS on crack cocaine.   more »

The U.S. military trains men to devalue, objectify, and demean traits traditionally associated with women.

It molds men into a gender role of violent masculinity defined in opposition to femininity. “Violent masculinity” is a mode of operating that glorifies violence as a solution to tension.

Furthermore, soldiers are purposefully trained to eroticize violence—from a heterosexual, male-aggressor perspective, even if some soldiers are gay and some are women.

For example, during the first Gulf War, Air Force pilots watched pornographic movies before bombing missions to psyche themselves up.

Until 1999 hardcore pornography was available at military base commissaries, which were one of its largest purchasers.

The military teaches soldiers to internalize the misogynistic role of violent masculinity so they can function psychologically.

At the 2003 Air Force Academy Prom, men were given flyers that read, “You Shut the Fuck Up. We’ll Protect America. Get out of our way, you liberal pussies.”

They were then treated to a play that provided instructions on how to stimulate a female’s clitoris and nipples to get her vaginal juices flowing (in case she was otherwise unwilling?).   more »

It is remarkable how quickly an international consensus has emerged for the eventual use of force against Iran.

Chirac's indirect reference to the French nuclear capability was a warning to Tehran. Mohamed ElBaradei, whose Nobel Peace Prize last year was awarded to rap the knuckles of the United States, told Newsweek that in the extreme case, force might be required to stop Iran's acquiring a nuclear capability.

German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that the military option could not be abandoned, although diplomatic efforts should be tried first.

Bild, Germany's largest-circulation daily, ran Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad's picture next to Adolf Hitler's, with the headline, "Will Iran plunge the world into the abyss?"

The same Europeans who excoriated the United States for invading Iraq with insufficient proof of the presence of weapons of mass destruction already have signed on to a military campaign against Iran, in advance of Iran's gaining WMD.

There are a number of reasons for this sudden lack of squeamishness, and all of them lead back to oil.   more »

By now, the voting will be over in today's Palestinian elections. It's not clear how well Hamas -- the Arabic acronym which stands for Movement of Islamic Resistance -- will do, but opinion polls in the Palestinian territories show the Islamic organization pulling neck and neck with the ruling Fatah party.

This is so even though Fatah strategists have plastered the territories with posters of Marwan Barghouti, the popular younger leader who is serving five life sentences for murder in an Israeli jail.

This is but the latest manifestation of the rise of political Islam in the electoral politics of the Middle East, a development that -- despite the Bush administration's endless promotion of democratic reform in the region -- is causing deep worry among top policy makers in Washington.

Last year began with Islamist candidates winning most of the seats in the first very limited municipal polls in Saudi Arabia and ended with the Iraqi religious parties -- both Shiite and Sunni -- performing handsomely in the December parliamentary elections.

The official Iraqi results, announced on January 21, showed the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance winning almost 80% of the seats that should go to the majority Shiite community. Likewise the Islamic Iraq Party won 80% of the places to which the Sunni minority is entitled.   more »

24 JANUARY

Harry Belafonte Calls Bush "World's Greatest Terrorist": How the Honkies Howl!

America: The Rambo Rogue State

TV "Cleans Up" Iraq War to Make It Acceptable

Authoritarian America

State Terror a Greater Threat than Radical Islam

Global Capitalism: Godzilla Runs Amok

al-Qaeda Develops New Bases to Launch Worldwide Battle Against US Interests

Bush & Alito Joined at the Hip