A WOMAN SPEAKS by Audre Lorde

Like her prose, Lorde’s poetry is a performance of the embodied self. Just as many of her essays were originally speeches, so, too, her poetry emerges from an oral impulse. As Lorde composes poetry, both speaking it and hearing it are essential to her. As she explains in the documentary A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde, toward the end of her life when her voice weakens and cracks, she is hard-pressed to continue writing poetry. She depends on speaking the words; hearing them connects with the feeling she is trying to embody in those words. This process, she says, is part of her structure and technique. Reading or hearing her poetry brings one back to Braidotti’s concept of the body as “situated at the intersection of the biological and the symbolic.” Lorde connects her poetry to her body through its oral quality and through patterns of statements and imagery that give concrete form to the issues discussed above: race, gender, sexual identity, the erotic, and mortality. A distillation of these issues can be found in Lorde’s poem “A Woman Speaks” from The Black Unicorn.

The title of the poem, “A Woman Speaks,” and the last three lines, “I am /woman/ and not white” claim the authority to speak that has customarily been denied to the oppressed. In addition, since the title mentions “A Woman,” only later specified as a woman of color, the woman of color becomes the representative or norm. “A Woman Speaks” and “I am /woman/ and not white” create a frame for the rest of the poem that, along with the rest of the poem, is related to Lorde’s image of the “Black mother within each of us — the poet.” (Margaret Kissam)

A WOMAN SPEAKS
by Audre Lorde

Moon marked and touched by sun
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the curse of love
permanent as my errors
or my pride
I do not mix
love with pity
nor hate with scorn
and if you would know me
look into the entrails of Uranus
where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell
within my birth nor my divinities
who am ageless and half-grown
and still seeking
my sisters
witches in Dahomey
wear me inside their coiled cloths
as our mother did
mourning.

I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic
and the noon’s new fury
with all your wide futures
promised
I am
woman
and not white.

Audre Lorde, “A Woman Speaks” from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde, 1997.

review: waltz with bashir

“waltz with bashir” is a thoughtful, somber animated film about the surreal, irrational violence of war – its messiness, its moral ambiguities, its psychological toll. the film focuses on the sabra and shatila massacre – the massacre of palestinian civilians carried out between the 16th and 18th of september 1982 by the lebanese forces militia group, following the assassination of phalangist leader and president elect bachir gemayel. the israeli defense force (IDF), which surrounded beirut’s palestinian refugee camps, allowed the lebanese forces christian militia to enter the two camps of sabra and shatila. between 2,000 to 3,500 people were killed in shockingly vicious, depraved ways.

the film explores the massacre from the point of view of young IDF soldiers and how they’ve dealt with the trauma. many have blocked memories of the massacre and their involvement in it, some are haunted by recurring nightmares, others dissociate from what they saw as if it were a movie. in the hands of the filmmaker, ari folman, the film becomes a tool to reconnect to those memories, recreate the past and ask painful questions.

the animation is intricate, severe, limited to certain colors (e.g. night scenes from the war in lebanon are mostly painted in black and a sickly, fluorescent yellow – symbolic of the flares provided by the IDF which lit up the night sky above the camps and facilitated the murderous work of the phalangists). characters proceed with the mechanized, repetitive movement of shadow puppets. to me it seemed clear that the intent was to emphasize the two-dimensionality, the cold, fragmented, dream-like feel of hindsight. however, once the protagonist can finally plug into his memories, they become very real. how appropriate that animation suddenly turns into real footage. the carnage is no longer a cleaned-up recreation of the past, it comes alive in all its vibrant, colorful, graphic shock.

for those who have the stomach to read it, here is robert fisk’s description of what he saw when he entered the refugee camps. fisk was one of the first journalists to be present on the scene of the massacre on september 17, 1982. he has published a number of different books and currently writes columns for the independent newspaper. the following is extracted from his book, “pity the nation.”

Remembering Sabra and Shatila
SABRA AND SHATILA by Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk was one of the first journalists to be present at the scene of the horrific murders in Lebanon, September 17th, 1982. He has published a number of different books and currently writes columns for The Independent newspaper. The following is extracted from his book, “Pity the Nation.”

What we found inside the Palestinian camp at ten o’clock on the morning of September 1982 did not quite beggar description, although it would have been easier to re-tell in the cold prose of a medical examination. There had been medical examinations before in Lebanon, but rarely on this scale and never overlooked by a regular, supposedly disciplined army. In the panic and hatred of battle, tens of thousands had been killed in this country. But these people, hundreds of them had been shot down unarmed. This was a mass killing, an incident – how easily we used the word “incident” in Lebanon – that was also an atrocity. It went beyond even what the Israelis would have in other circumstances called a terrorist activity. It was a war crime.

Jenkins and Tveit were so overwhelmed by what we found in Chatila that at first we were unable to register our own shock. Bill Foley of AP had come with us. All he could say as he walked round was “Jesus Christ” over and over again. We might have accepted evidence of a few murders; even dozens of bodies, killed in the heat of combat. Bur there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies – blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24-hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition – tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey.

Where were the murderers? Or to use the Israelis’ vocabulary, where were the “terrorists”? When we drove down to Chatila, we had seen the Israelis on the top of the apartments in the Avenue Camille Chamoun but they made no attempt to stop us. In fact, we had first been driven to the Bourj al-Barajneh camp because someone told us that there was a massacre there. All we saw was a Lebanese soldier chasing a car thief down a street. It was only when we were driving back past the entrance to Chatila that Jenkins decided to stop the car. “I don’t like this”, he said. “Where is everyone? What the f**k is that smell?”

Just inside the southern entrance to the camp, there used to be a number of single-story, concrete walled houses. I had conducted many interviews in these hovels in the late 1970’s. When we walked across the muddy entrance to Chatila, we found that these buildings had been dynamited to the ground. There were cartridge cases across the main road. I saw several Israeli flare canisters, still attached to their tiny parachutes. Clouds of flies moved across the rubble, raiding parties with a nose for victory.

Down a laneway to our right, no more than 50 yards from the entrance, there lay a pile of corpses. There were more than a dozen of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death. All had been shot point-blank range through the cheek, the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to the ear and entering the brain. Some had vivid crimson or black scars down the left side of their throats. One had been castrated, his trousers torn open and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn intestines.

The eyes of these young men were all open. The youngest was only 12 or 13 years old. They were dressed in jeans and colored shirts, the material absurdly tight over their flesh now that their bodies had begun to bloat in the heat. They had not been robbed. On one blackened wrist a Swiss watch recorded the correct time, the second hand still ticking round uselessly, expending the last energies of its dead owner.

On the other side of the main road, up a track through the debris, we found the bodies of five women and several children. The women were middle-aged and their corpses lay draped over a pile of rubble. One lay on her back, her dress torn open and the head of a little girl emerging from behind her. The girl had short dark curly hair, her eyes were staring at us and there was a frown on her face. She was dead.

Another child lay on the roadway like a discarded doll, her white dress stained with mud and dust. She could have been no more than three years old. The back of her head had been blown away by a bullet fired into her brain. One of the women also held a tiny baby to her body. The bullet that had passed into her breast had killed the baby too. Someone had slit open the woman’s stomach, cutting sideways and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. Her eyes were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror.

“…As we stood there, we heard a shout in Arabic from across the ruins. “They are coming back,” a man was screaming, So we ran in fear towards the road. I think, in retrospect, that it was probably anger that stopped us from leaving, for we now waited near the entrance to the camp to glimpse the faces of the men who were responsible for all of this. They must have been sent in here with Israeli permission. They must have been armed by the Israelis. Their handiwork had clearly been watched – closely observed – by the Israelis who were still watching us through their field-glasses.

When does a killing become an outrage? When does an atrocity become a massacre? Or, put another way, how many killings make a massacre? Thirty? A hundred? Three hundred? When is a massacre not a massacre? When the figures are too low? Or when the massacre is carried out by Israel’s friends rather than Israel’s enemies?

That, I suspected, was what this argument was about. If Syrian troops had crossed into Israel, surrounded a Kibbutz and allowed their Palestinian allies to slaughter the Jewish inhabitants, no Western news agency would waste its time afterwards arguing about whether or not it should be called a massacre.

But in Beirut, the victims were Palestinians. The guilty were certainly Christian militiamen – from which particular unit we were still unsure – but the Israelis were also guilty. If the Israelis had not taken part in the killings, they had certainly sent militia into the camp. They had trained them, given them uniforms, handed them US army rations and Israeli medical equipment. Then they had watched the murderers in the camps, they had given them military assistance – the Israeli air force had dropped all those flares to help the men who were murdering the inhabitants of Sabra and Chatila – and they had established military liaison with the murderers in the camps.

waltz with bashir

Obama’s War, Editorial, The Nation, Dec 2, 2009

Clear, concise, intelligent analysis of why Obama’s escalation will fail – a must read.

Obama’s War, Editorial, The Nation, Dec 2, 2009

At a time when the continuing economic crisis is creating ever more hardship for the vast majority of Americans and placing ever greater demands on the federal budget, we need clearheaded leadership that is able to strip away myth and dogma and define afresh our most pressing problems and the right strategy for dealing with them. Sadly, in announcing his administration’s decision to send 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan on top of the 68,000 already there, President Obama has fallen short of this test of leadership.

Not only did the president and his national security team reject far less costly options that would have allowed us to disengage militarily from the conflict in a responsible way; they have decided on a strategy that is so full of muddled thinking and so wasteful of lives and resources that it must be opposed as contrary to the best interests of the American people. And his vow to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011 seems not so much part of a carefully considered stabilization strategy for Afghanistan as a way to placate growing Congressional and popular opposition to a war entering its ninth year.

As Obama argued in his West Point speech, the principal purpose of our involvement is “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.” But he failed to explain why that goal requires 100,000 troops at a cost of nearly $100 billion. By the military’s own calculation, there are at most 100 Al Qaeda operatives, mostly low-level, in Afghanistan, the leadership having fled to Pakistan years ago.

In making this war the key to America’s national security strategy against terrorism, Obama has chosen to perpetuate some damaging myths. The first of these is the notion that the greatest danger to American security is a terrorist attack from Afghanistan. This ignores the fact that 9/11 was not launched from Afghanistan and that Al Qaeda can operate relatively freely not only in parts of Pakistan but in Somalia, Yemen and other countries. The best way to keep Americans safe from terrorism is through effective intelligence, expert police work and judicious homeland defense. These practical measures cost far less than war and occupation in Muslim lands, which arouse hatred of the United States–and give strength to Islamist extremists.

The president nonetheless suggested that there is a larger US interest in stabilizing Afghanistan. But if that is so, he did not explain how a strategy that has so far failed will be successful in the future. He seems to be buying into the counterinsurgency myth: namely, that by deploying more forces to protect the Afghan population in urban centers, by laying down more benchmarks for the government, by mixing in more economic assistance and by training more army and police, we can transform Afghanistan into a coherent nation-state with a functioning government.

The undeniable fact is that eight years of US occupation and war have led to a growing insurgency, fueled by anger at one of the world’s most corrupt governments, run mostly by former and not-so-former warlords who were installed by the United States after 9/11. Many of these warlords are deeply involved in the opium trade, among them the brother of Hamid Karzai, the president, who was re-elected only through massive fraud. Obama was not very convincing when he acknowledged this fraud even as he declared that the resulting government was consistent with Afghanistan’s laws and Constitution. And he did not inspire confidence that we will improve our ability to train the Afghan army and police, given current desertion rates.

Although Obama declared that success in Afghanistan is “inextricably linked” to our “partnership” with Pakistan, he has turned reality on its head by embracing the Pakistan myth: that stabilizing Afghanistan is the key to stabilizing Pakistan. But US pressure on the Taliban in Afghanistan is pushing more militants into Pakistan, with the potential for upsetting the delicate political balance there and spreading the Pakistani insurgency beyond the border regions. As many experts argue, elements within Pakistan’s military and intelligence services support the Taliban not because they are afraid we’re going to leave but because they worry we are going to stay and further open up their backyard to Indian influence. As we should have learned from the past few years, Pakistanis will confront Islamist extremists only when they feel threatened by them, not because a very unpopular Washington wants them to. The Obama administration is deluding itself and the American people if it believes its counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is going to change that reality in any appreciable way. And America’s covert counterinsurgency in Pakistan itself (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091207/scahill) is all too likely to deepen what is already widespread anti-American sentiment among Pakistanis.

This is a tragic moment for the nation and for Obama’s presidency. It is true that it would have taken great courage for Obama to do the right thing and end his predecessor’s war. He would have faced harsh blowback from the right, the military and the media establishment. But in a war-weary and economically distressed nation, Obama could have used his impressive oratorical and political skills to marshal the public to his side. Instead, with this escalation, we see the continuing grip of the national security state, whose premises have been shared by conservative and liberal hawks for close to sixty years, and which essentially remain unchallenged among the establishment and the mainstream media. Obama is now at risk of being held hostage to this mindset, as a war bequeathed to him by a reckless and destructive administration becomes his own.

The failure to explore alternatives to military escalation reveals a deeper structural problem: the fact that there are too few countervailing voices or centers of power and authority to challenge the liberal hawks and interventionists, and rarely are they allowed to enter the halls of power.

Our work now as progressives is to expose the premises of this failed national security state as no longer capable of addressing the challenges of our time, from global pandemics and global warming to economic inequality and instability to nuclear proliferation and, yes, decentralized networks of terrorists. We must be strong advocates for diplomacy and security rather than military ventures that cost American lives and legitimacy. Toward the end of his speech, Obama said, “Our security and leadership does not come solely from the strength of our arms. It derives from our people.” Let’s hold him to his word and channel the widespread disappointment over this misguided escalation into a broad-based movement–working with Congress, activists and concerned citizens everywhere–to bring our soldiers home.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

PREAMBLE

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, therefore,

The General Assembly proclaims

This Universal Declaration of Human Rights

As a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11

(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14

(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15

(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29

(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

G.A. res. 217A (III), U.N. Doc A/810 at 71 (1948)
Adopted on December 10, 1948
by the General Assembly of the United Nations (without dissent)

“What Can Be Done” by Damien Adia Marassa

“American-led troops were accused yesterday of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead. Afghan government investigators said that eight schoolchildren were killed, all but one of them from the same family. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed. Western military sources said that the dead were all part of an Afghan terrorist cell responsible for manufacturing improvised explosive devices, which have claimed the lives of countless soldiers and civilians.” (Western troops accused of executing 10 Afghan civilians including children, by Jerome Starkey, TimesOnline, December 31, 2009)

WHAT CAN BE DONE
by Damien Adia Marassa

What? Can be done. What can be done.

The elysian Empire with its golden hair of corn silk blowing in the winds of genetically altered human conscience: this just in.

Strange and bitter crop harvested to fertilize the tree of liberty. Warning: do not become furious at the war ning, nine, nig, nig, niggers are furious. With no reason! Neck out the noose, head off the hook. LYNCHMOBS TURNED LOOSE IN Afghanistan. Breathe easy, queasy.

Notice: no one notices. The soy bean stalking. Soylent green peace keeping. As UnAmerican as rotten apple EmPie or umpire – EVIL EMPORIUM? we sank in (our own teeth) Like Titanic in icebergs.

Sacred as the oroboros backward: devoured by the tail that wags the dog, I walk myself around the town on leashes made of forgiveness and patience, “wait and see,” shock and offal – spilling out of every region’s unclassified transparency:

All we see is the opaque: the lense of eyelids tattooed with a sight that shutters itself over every possible eventuality: our victimization made synonymous with reflection, with remorse, repentence, reparation.

I may not live to see the day – but this, is this called living? – but if not, the night will come, to bring rest to Eyes pitchforked open on the scene of a world’s subjection, toothpicked perky to the rape rape rape and pillage of the old by the new, of the many by the few, of the do do do what you do do do do: best, if not only, and thus worse, and therefore ever after more quickly and more perverse.

I am older every day, and each day I am younger than before as innocence swells swollen jaws and lips, bulging eyes and asphyxia membranes with every tick of the clock, the tock of the time bombs of shock and horror. I am becoming the offspring of orphans, I am become the child of night.

White Power USA

Almost a year ago the inauguration of President Barack Obama was hailed as a turning point in US race relations. The country was said to be entering a new era of post-racial politics, on the path to a future of greater diversity and tolerance. But while crowds flocked to Washington to witness the swearing in, others were refusing to join the party. Racially motivated threats against Obama rose to new heights in the first months of his presidency, with the US seeing nine high-profile race killings in 2009. Meanwhile white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups claim their membership is growing and that visits to their websites are increasing. Is the racial undercurrent that has long structured US politics reasserting itself? Filmmakers Rick Rowley and Jacquie Soohen went inside the white nationalist movement to investigate. Some of the images seen and opinions heard in the film are disturbing.

Images of El Salvador carnage reprised in light of Iraq war

Over the past several weeks, thousands of people have visited New York City’s International Center of Photography (ICP) for the restaging of an exhibition that the museum presented two decades ago, but which has taken on fresh urgency in the shadow of the ongoing war in Iraq. “El Salvador: Work of Thirty Photographers” was first shown at the center in 1984, at the height of the bloody struggle in El Salvador that pitted a popular insurgency against a US-backed regime that ruled through savage military repression and death squads. Full article.

Chris Hedges: The Pictures of War You Aren’t Supposed to See

War’s effects are what the state and the press, the handmaiden of the war makers, work hard to keep hidden. If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of the eight schoolchildren killed in Afghanis…tan a week ago and listen to the wails of their parents we would not be able to repeat clichés about liberating the women of Afghanistan or bringing freedom to the Afghan people. (Chris Hedges)

Full article.

Obama ordered US air strikes on Yemen

US President Barack Obama personally issued the order for US air strikes in Yemen last Thursday which killed scores of civilians, including women and children. Local officials and witnesses in the area of Mahsad, the site of the heaviest US bombardment, put the number of those killed at more than 60 and said the dead were mostly civilians. They denied that the target was an al Qaeda stronghold. Full article.