Posted on Tuesday, July 19, 2011 by s.e. smith
UK-based activist Jonnie Marbles added a note of absurdity to the proceedings at the Murdoch hearing this morning by introducing what appeared to be a cream pie to the general vicinity of Murdoch’s person. Shortly before the pie incident, he Tweeted:
It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat
Already at a high level of political theatre, the hearing entered the farcical with the addition of the pie, pretty much ensuring that it would land on the lede of every major news outlet this evening. The pie story, as Emily points out, distracts from the actual issues going on, which I suspect you’ll be finding as topics here at Tiger Beatdown within the next few days (if you just can’t wait, Flavia’s got you covered), but there are two pie-specific issues I’d like to explore for a moment before we return to our regularly scheduled programming.
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Posted on Friday, July 15, 2011 by Emily McAvan
So I wrote this piece for Alternet last week about Bradley1 Manning potentially being trans (most likely a trans woman, though not necessarily), and right on cue, Wired has made public the full chat logs between Manning and Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned Manning in.
The conversations are fascinating, occasionally incoherent, strewn with technobabble, bragging, complaining. Lamo quite sleazily says, “I’m a journalist and a minister. You can pick either, and treat this as a confession or an interview (never to be published) & enjoy a modicum of legal protection” and then proceeded to make the conversations very, very public.
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Posted on Thursday, July 14, 2011 by s.e. smith
Among the myriad fabulous topics we cover here at Tiger Beatdown is pop culture, the many ways in which it manifests, and the fascinating things it says (or doesn’t) about groups of people such as ladies, and queer folks. A pretty critical pop culture event is unfolding across the US tonight and in the small hours of tomorrow, as people file into movie theatres to catch the midnight showings of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part the second, because apparently there was just so much they wanted to cover that they had to split it in two. (Surely a desire to attribute this decision to a plan to drag out the franchise for more profits is churlish and unkind of me.)
I was looking forward to talking about the film, and the franchise as a whole, because, better or worse, the Harry Potter franchise has had a profound impact on pop culture. Rowling’s characters are so well known that you can pretty much always toss off a Harry Potter reference and people will get it; it is the franchise that launched a thousand ‘ships (and an ocean of fanfic); these are the books that allegedly taught those rascally young folks that those square things with pictures on the cover have words inside; these are the stories that made a single mum wealthier than the Queen of England.
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Posted on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan
Chances are that you have heard there is a corruption scandal currently unfolding in the UK. This scandal involves the tabloid News of the World, one of the most popular and far reaching in Britain.
Leave it to Wikipedia to provide a handy short summary of the events timeline:
The controversy began in 2006, when the Metropolitan Police laid charges against Clive Goodman, the News of the World’s royal editor, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, alleging that they intercepted voicemail messages left for members of the royal household. Both men were jailed in 2007. Allegations against the News of the World in relation to illegal voicemail interceptions have continued in subsequent years, implicating other journalists and staff at the paper; numerous public figures, including politicians and celebrities, were found to have been targeted by the interceptions.
The Metropolitan Police began a new investigation into phone hacking allegations in February 2011, at which time more than 20 civil cases against the News of the World were also active. Attorneys for the victims allege that as many as 7,000 people had their phones hacked by the News of the World, and have estimated that litigation over the paper’s actions may cost News Corporation £40 million.
In July 2011, further allegations were made that the News of the World hacked into the voicemails of murder victim Milly Dowler, as well as victims of the 7/7 attacks and relatives of deceased British soldiers. The news was met with public outrage in the United Kingdom. Advertisers withdrew from the News of the World and other News Corporation holdings, and the company’s proposed acquisition of the broadcaster BSkyB was seriously threatened.
On 6 July, British prime minister David Cameron announced to parliament that a public government inquiry would convene to further investigate the affair. The following day, James Murdoch announced that the newspaper would shut down on Sunday, 10 July 2011, after 168 years of publication.
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Posted on Monday, July 11, 2011 by Emily McAvan
So, occasionally your beloved Tiger Beatdown writers (and I) write pieces at other places. And they are all incredible and worth your time. Imagine, if you will, the following as roughly a sitcom intro:
There’s probably some other things we’re forgetting, but that’s what Twitter is for. And what, dear readers, have you written lately that you’re proud of?
Posted on Thursday, July 7, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan
The newly created organization within the UN, UN Women, led by former president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, (Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director) dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women which was established to accelerate progress on meeting the rights of girls and women worldwide, has released their first report yesterday, Progress of the World’s Women.
The report can be downloaded here (link goes to PDF file) and the facts sheets (also in PDF format) are available here.
In the interest of brevity for this post (and you will notice that brevity has not been achieved given the amount of data I went through), I have specifically gone through the fact sheets and not focused on the overall report. I might collate the data in the report itself (which deals with specific cases and studies in each region) for a future post.
Now, a couple of observations: to start with, I am particularly upset that the rights and issues specific to trans* folks are nowhere mentioned in these reports. Not even once. I suspect this is because the UN, in its need for consensus among member States, sometimes invisibilizes certain issues so as not to irritate the governments of those countries who are adamant about recognizing the need for work/ improvement/ change in certain areas (or even acknowledge the mere existence of certain issues). Still, a global report about the state of gender equality and women’s rights that doesn’t address the gross inequalities and discriminations faced by trans* folks is an incomplete one. The same applies to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer folks. Not mentioned at all in these reports.
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Posted on Wednesday, July 6, 2011 by s.e. smith
Almost every time I crack open the Los Angeles Times, I’m reminded of Public Enemy Number One in the United States: Public employees. Public employees are to blame for everything that is wrong with society, with their greedy demands for pensions, unreasonable requests for vacation time, and persistent and annoying habits like putting out fires, educating children, cleaning up garbage, and building roads.
And when I say ‘almost every time,’ I’m not kidding; I just clicked over to their front page, which features this ‘expose’ on state employee salaries front and centre on the first page. Approximately 208,000 people are employed by the State of California, and the Times wants us to know that ‘more than 1,400’ of them make an excess of $200,000 a year. Those faceless bureaucrats, stealing money from the mouths of children! Oh, wait, most of them are health care providers in the prison system. How dare doctors and nurses provide health care services?!
The United States is facing an unprecedented attack on public employees, spearheaded by both democrats and conservatives. As the economy tightens and hardship becomes more apparent, almost every media outlet can spare some ink on blaming public employees for the crisis, particularly in regions like California, where they are fingered for the state’s budget problems because of their employment-linked benefits, contractually promised to them as part of the terms of employment. Many of these attacks are not actually based in fact, but that doesn’t stop people from believing, and repeating, the rhetoric. Clearly, all of California’s budget problems would be solved if only we didn’t have to pay pensions to retired schoolteachers.
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Posted on Monday, July 4, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan
I’ve written extensively about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. I’ve said almost everything I had to say on the subject. That was until Friday when the case fell apart and I resorted mostly to third party quotes and small sound bite commentary because I was too angry to properly articulate my thoughts.
See, my views about the victim prevent me from any objectivity in this case. Honestly (and this is why I would have never been a good journalist), I have no sympathy, empathy or even good thoughts for Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Not just because of the rape accusations but also because of his betrayal of the socialist ideals he was supposed to uphold as a prominent member of the French Socialist Party. His ideals that went through the drain when he accepted to become head of the IMF, one of the most subjugating, neo-imperialist institutions imposed on the Global South.
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Posted on Thursday, June 30, 2011 by s.e. smith
The streets of Athens exploded yesterday with Greek protesters lamenting severe austerities adopted by the Greek parliament. The nation faces a fire sale of national assets in an attempt to balance out its flailing budget and, of course, to rescue creditors who refuse to accept a Greek default, and are reluctant to even consider write-downs. Once again, the irresponsibility of the financial industry, in the form of extending loans to a nation known to have serious fiscal problems, will be paid for in the blood of the people, who have five years of proposed austerities to endure in the interest of protecting the banks.
Meanwhile, the California legislature finally passed a budget after weeks of wrangling, including extensive childish behaviour on the part of legislators; Democrats and Republicans alike engaged in petulant stomping when it became apparent that they wouldn’t get their way, while Governor Jerry Brown initially vetoed a budget proposal, making history and triggering a temporary shutdown of pay to lawmakers. With the budget year ending today, California was down to the wire, and Brown has indicated that he will sign the new budget, though he, along with pretty much everyone else, is not very happy about it.
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Posted on Thursday, June 30, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan
Catchy title, eh? Only that no, Halliburton is not the only reason why I have little interest in a feminism that only seeks to advance women in corporate life. As journalist Laurie Penny tweeted yesterday, when news that Christine Lagarde was appointed head of the IMF:
Some people still think feminism is about getting a few businesswomen through the glass ceiling when the basement is flooding.
Today, I’ve been catching up with the trial of Jamie Lee Jones, which started last week. Jones is suing Halliburton because she claims she was drugged and gang-raped while working for military contractor KBR in Iraq (at the time, a division of Halliburton). Jones was on her fourth day in post in Baghdad in 2005 when she says she was assaulted by seven contractors and held captive, under armed guard by two KBR police, in a shipping container. In case you are not familiar with the case, Laura Flanders provides a succinct summary:
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