Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; (Slate)
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| Come on, Petey! They're just pictures. And we're just a cartoon! (Family Guy/adultswim.com) |
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| Police in Fergistan. While crime has fallen to its lowest levels in decades, departments are acquiring more militant hardware and inventing more reasons to use SWAT teams and other heavy-handed tactics, regardless of the situation (Scott Olson/Getty Images) |
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| Bouie on politics, policy, race |
The most striking photographs from Ferguson, Missouri, aren’t of Saturday’s demonstrations or Sunday night’s "riots"; they’re of the police.
Image after image shows [formerly civilian] officers clad in Kevlar vests, helmets, and camouflage, armed with pistols, shotguns, automatic [military assault] rifles, and tear gas.
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| Big Brother (NSA) is watching; join JASL |
In one photo, protesters stand toe-to-toe with baton-wielding riot police, in another, an unarmed man
faces several cops, each with rifles [needlessly aimed at him, as he is already presumably of being black].
What’s more, Ferguson police have used armored vehicles to show force and [intimidate] crowds [by stated US policy abroad -- "shock and awe" and a willingness to commit war crimes with impunity].
In one
photo, riot gear-clad officers are standing in front of a mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle, barking commands, and launching tear gas into groups of demonstrators and journalists.
This would be one thing if Ferguson were in a war zone, or if protesters were violent -- although, it’s hard to imagine a situation in which American police would need a
mine-resistant vehicle.
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What about the sex?
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| Emma Sulkowicz protests Columbia U. (NYM) |
Should it surprise anyone that sex in a police state is sketchy, objectified, and turned into a crime? We don't mean viewed
as a crime; we mean made into an actual crime.
It sounds odd, but we live in a rape culture. We have for a long time. It's taboo to talk about -- not to do
, but to talk
about. Raped? Shut up. Molested as a kid? Never speak of it, not in this family! Harassed at school? Get over it, and stop overreacting; you should be glad they're paying attention to you. (LOL, Irony is fun). It's a mad, mad world!
And while males seem all bad, how about we point some of that wagging finger at the other half, too, the contributors, enablers, colluders? If kids get mad for being molested, they seem to get much madder that their "protectors" kept silent or turned a blind eye -- betrayal, betrayal!
Rape is a terrible thing, but a police state, it's sort of normalized. As long as it never gets called that. There's no "rape" here, not in this country, maybe in other countries. Our people just don't do that kind of stuff.
It's not the American Way, okay, in business maybe. Because the business of America is business, but "America" only refers to the USA; forget all of the rest of America, like that whole continent down there, or massive lands to the north.
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| Oh, Quagmire, will you stop already! |
This is a America, and we rape. You should feel lucky that we're only raping you. We also kill. See this gun? There's lots more like it, enough to arm every child, invalid, senior, female, and a lot of rapists.
It's not just the force, there's plenty of coercion, intimidation, and shaming when it comes to sex. Oh, the shame of it all! We've normalized graphic, violent porno, so much so that that seems like "sex" to US, not just to perpetrators but to enjoyers of sex.
Exploitation, now there's a good one. Who doesn't want to see JLaw's boobs? Or Scarlet Johanssen's? Hollywood used to sell it, but if they show it on purpose, we'll shame everyone involved. Most of us will look, but we'll still shame everyone.
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| Junior Anti-Sex League: 1984 (DU) |
Who teaches us all this shame and shaming? Oh yeah, hypocrites and our state religion -- Judeochristianity. You think Jewish moms are bad, have tried living under Catholic rule? Or Bible Belt Protestant? The tyranny of all who pontificate?
Even the cool Eastern religions aren't exempt. It all keeps the Sex Wheel turning, doesn't it? The dysfunction and shame, the excitement and titillation.
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| Dukkha of injustice is a bitter, bitter thing. |
"I was raped in my own dorm bed, and since then that space has become fraught for me," she says in
a video about the piece, called
Mattress Performance or
Carry That Weight,
published by the
Columbia Spectator. "And I feel like I've carried the weight of what happened there with me everywhere since then." In
an interview with The Cut, Sulkowicz talks about how her performance has been going so far:
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