In New Orleans, a Lesson From Hurricane Gustav?

September 3, 2008 – 2:18 am

By most accounts Hurricane Gustav was not nearly as bad as it could have been, and New Orleans appears to have been spared—though it was only after the winds and rains of Katrina had died down and we were celebrating the avoidance of a direct hit in 2005 that the levees sprung leaks and the city filled up like a bathtub.

Houma, Louisiana, a small city of around 195,000 people, 78% of them white, seems to have taken the most direct hit, and it says something about what we expected after Katrina that the man in the shelter in Shreveport, complaining of the lack of running water and cramped conditions, sounds like he’s whining. After all, he’s got a cot and bottled water, and that’s far more than anyone had in the Superdome or the Convention Center, right? Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, Feature, north america | Comments (3)

Bristol Palin’s Pregnancy: Motherhood and Discipline

September 2, 2008 – 2:46 am

By now, many of us are aware that Bristol Palin, Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter, is pregnant. You probably have listened to the media pundits trying to spin this in several different directions.

Some are gleefully rubbing their hands together, expressing overwhelming euphoria. Senator Obama issued a statement saying, “I think people’s families are off-limits, and people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president.” He specifically denied that his campaign had anything to do with the information becoming public.

Most of the debate on Bristol’s pregnancy deals with whether or not her mother Sarah is responsible, because of her public insistence that abstinence education is what we need to be teaching our children. Some see this as proof that preaching abstinence to our children is a failure, as clearly this approach did not stop the Alaskan governor’s daughter from deciding on her own to engage in sex. Others feel that Sarah Palin is not responsible, because a parent can only control a child’s behaviour to a certain degree. Some claim that the whole debate is irrelevant because it is a family matter. Here you have three opinions on one pregnancy.

It astounds me that people believe that they have the right to even enter into discussion on what another does with their body. It seems that in our post-feminist world, women’s reproduction is still something that is open for social discipline. I find it interesting that no one considered for a moment, that pregnancy could have been an active choice for this young woman. Immediately we assume that birth control failed, that she lacked morals, or that her closed-minded harpy of a mother did not engage in conversations with her regarding sex and sexuality. We claim to acknowledge the autonomy of women and yet motherhood as a conscious decision never once entered the debate.

Yet motherhood cannot be considered an entirely active decision simply because the female body is policed. Though we claim to honour motherhood in this society the opposite is quite true. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, Feature, Society, election 08, family, feminism, north america, politics, racism, sex, women | Comments (7)

Cold War Revisited: “Red Dawn”

September 1, 2008 – 8:35 am

As certain factions speculate that the world is headed toward a new Cold War, Mark Farnsworth examines the artistic legacy of this phenomenon.

Director, screenwriter, and producer John Milius has always fancied himself as a latter day Hemingway, a warrior-poet on the board of directors of the NRA, fiercely opposed to gun control, and a consultant for the deceptively named military think tank - the Center for Creative Technology. A member of the 70s movie brats alongside Lucas, Spielberg, and Scorcese, Milius is the man responsible for the finer moments in “Jaws,” “Magnum Force,” and “Apocalypse Now.” His heroes are Patton, MacArthur, and Roosevelt; not your average right-wing American icons, but mavericks, tyrants, and visionary leaders.

The film critic David Thompson wrote of Milius as having, “earned and even provoked the press reputation of a strident, magnum-brandishing reactionary. But he is more than that. He is an anarchist, he is articulate, and he has an unshakable faith in human grandeur.” This would seem true from his directorial efforts, “Dillinger,” “Conan The Barbarian,” and “The Wind and the Lion.” Yet “Red Dawn” is a rather strange nut to crack.

“Red Dawn” is the ultimate ‘what if?’ movie. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Entertainment, europe, movies, north america, politics | Comments (0)

Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama: Hypocrisy in Mainstream Feminism

August 31, 2008 – 9:22 am

On Friday, McCain announced his choice for a running mate. He chose Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

According to CNN’s John King, McCain met with Palin only one time before deciding that she was his pick, leading one to believe that he chose her because he believed that one vagina could substitute for another. Clearly his aim was to appeal to the disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters. Some women will embrace vagina solidarity, and support McCain because he chose a colluder as his running mate, and others will be enraged because Palins political positions are resoundingly anti-woman.

Palin is not a feminist, though she has benefited from feminist organizing. Were it not for generations of struggle, she would not have the ability to vote, much less run for political office. The Feminine Mystique was written with women like her in mind, and yet if she were elected her decisions would lead to a reduction of women’s rights. The irony of this has not been lost to me, nor I suspect on many women who today are asking how a pro-life woman could possibly represent women’s needs.

Palin is not only staunchly pro-life, she is pro-death penalty, and anti-gay marriage. No matter how many images we see of her shooting guns, or rocking her newborn, her record of conservatism is at odds with everything that feminism stands for. Sarah Palin is not only anti-feminist, she is, as I already mentioned, anti-woman.

Now, the sexist attacks have started against her already. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, feminism, north america, politics, racism, women | Comments (1)

Nice Try With Palin, John McCain

August 30, 2008 – 12:56 pm

John McCain waited until after Barack Obama’s speech to make a superbly-timed announcement of his vice-presidential pick.

Unfortunately for him, he undermined what were his best arguments against Obama with that choice.

Sarah Palin is the first-term governor of Alaska, a large, oil-rich state with a small population, and she’s even younger than Obama. Her only political experience before beating the previous Republican governor, Frank Murkowski, in a primary in 2006 was being mayor of Walsilla.

Palin is a mother of five, including one son who’s off to Iraq and another, just born, with Down syndrome. She is staunchly pro-life and considered a Christian conservative, but, rather obviously, is a high-profile working mother.

She campaigned on ethics reform and is considered (much like McCain) a party maverick. She is also seen as a break from ethically-challenged Alaska Republicans like Senator Ted Stevens. However, Palin is under investigation herself for possibly having abused her office to get her former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, fired from his job as a state trooper, according to the Wall Street Journal. She supports drilling as energy policy, and her husband is a longtime BP employee, but he’s a blue-collar type. Palin has also threatened to evict ExxonMobil and its partners from their drilling rights to publicly held oilfields.

This woman is quite a contradiction, seen at once as a sop to the religious right who have not quite come around to McCain and as outreach to disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters who value biological sex over a record on the issues. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in election 08, north america, politics, women | Comments (6)

Palestine Inside Out: A Review

August 29, 2008 – 11:51 am

This is a review of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation by Saree Makdisi. W. W. Norton. 2008.

Saree Makdisi is a Palestinian-American academic. What makes this UCLA professor stand out right away is the fact that he is the nephew of Edward Said.

Makdisi was raised in a Christian home in Washington D.C and Beirut. Conservative pundits such as Rob Shapiro have long urged UCLA to blacklist Makdisi, who is disliked for launching pro-Palestinian discourse on campus.

The book suggests that Makdisi is very much like his uncle. Read More »

By Jonathan Mok | Posted in Arts & Literature, Current Affairs, book reviews, human rights, middle east, north america | Comments (0)

Sarah Palin: The Female Dan Quayle

August 29, 2008 – 11:33 am

“Dan Quayle in a pantsuit.”

That’s what I thought the minute I found out that Sarah Palin will be the Vice Presidential nominee on the Republican ticket with John McCain. She’s young, she has been Mayor of a small town, and is now a first term governor - not a tremendously impressive resume.

But she’s also a woman, shoots a gun, and is pro-life.

This is blatant pandering at its worst, and a huge mistake for John McCain. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, election 08, north america, politics | Comments (12)

Joe Biden, American Racism, and Optimism

August 25, 2008 – 11:16 am

I must admit my first reaction to Joe Biden being chosen as Obama’s running mate was “meh.”

I’ve had running debates over Joe Biden with a friend for most of the primary season. She loves him, and, well, my feeling was as above. She never managed to convince me, mostly because her arguments were simply that “He’s so intelligent.” Compared to whom? Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, election 08, north america, politics, racism | Comments (3)

Election 2008: Race Is More Than Black and White

August 25, 2008 – 10:44 am

In the current American presidential election, race has become a pivotal issue. Obama is the first African American man to have a legitimate chance of becoming president of the United States. Blacks and whites vacillate between a celebratory end of the racial divide, and the further entrenchment of racial hostilities.

The post racial world debate has gone mainstream, giving rise to conversations that are long overdue.

While we are continually refining the discourse surrounding race, what has become patently obvious is that the term people of colour stands for black. The United States has a historical legacy of black disenfranchisement that clearly needs to be addressed. Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and the rape and sterilization of black women have left a lasting legacy on the social psyche; however this should not erase other bodies of colour from our social conversations. Neither of the candidates, nor mainstream media has made an attempt to specifically address the needs of Muslims, Native Americans, Asians, or Latinos. The aforementioned are the bodies that have become erased. Colour cannot and should not be solely represented by blacks.

Though Muslims are not all of colour they constitute a group of people that have come under extreme social attack since 911. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, election 08, human rights, north america, racism, women | Comments (8)

Cold War Revisited: “The Thing”

August 24, 2008 – 10:33 am

As certain factions speculate that the world is headed toward a new Cold War, Mark Farnsworth examines the artistic legacy of this phenomenon.

“The Thing” is the darkest film in the Kurt Russell trilogy of Carpenter’s science fiction films and the beginning of his “Apocalypse” cycle. It is a master class of pessimism nearly unrivalled in cinema and a bleak critique on the nature of humanity itself, inspired by the Reagan administration, Carpenter’s first foray into studio film making, and the escalation of the arms race with the Soviet Union.

The plot is more closely related to John W. Campbell’s novella; “Who Goes There?” than the earlier Hawks production of “The Thing from another World.” Special effects allow the shape-shifting alien to be realised in all its bloody glory, which in turn gives Carpenter the freedom to develop a claustrophobic atmosphere of mistrust, fear, and growing nihilism.

In the earlier movie the scientists and soldiers work together to destroy the visible threat of the thing, as they would do with communism. There is a unity mostly derived from the fact that they are white and embody a people fresh from the moral victory in WW2. America in the 1950s was still perceived as the ‘good guys’, the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’.

With Carpenter’s creature everyone could be the thing and, as a consequence, an enemy. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Arts & Literature, Entertainment, movies, north america, politics | Comments (0)