Saturday Reads: Where is Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?
Posted: March 15, 2014 Filed under: Crime, Foreign Affairs, morning reads | Tags: Fariq Ab Hamid, hijackings, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Prime Minister Najib Razak, terrorism, Zaharie Ahmad Shah 59 Comments
Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 in Paris in December (AP)
Good Morning!!
For completely selfish reasons I’m going to focus this post on the missing Malaysia Airlines plane mystery, because I’m obsessed with the story and I want to read about it.
A week after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from radar, what happened is still a mystery. Where could it have gone? Early Saturday morning, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the plane was diverted off course by “deliberate action.” Faith Karimi and Barbara Starr at CNN:
“Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation on crew and passengers aboard,” Najib told reporters. “Evidence is consistent with someone acting deliberately from inside the plane.” [….]
“Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, we are investigating all major possibilities on what caused MH370 to deviate,” he said.
Shortly after he spoke, a source close to the investigation told CNN that Malaysian police had searched the home of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53. Shah lives in a gated community in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur.
Earlier Saturday there was no police presence at the residence of his co-pilot, Fariq Ab Hamid, 27.
Here’s a transcript of the Prime Minister’s statement at CNN.
From Bernama, the National News Agency of Malaysia: Cops Visit Residence Of Missing Flight’s Captain.
SHAH ALAM, March 15 (Bernama) — Police were seen arriving at the residence of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the pilot of the Flight MH370 at about 2.42pm Saturday.
This followed Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s press conference on the development of the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) aircraft.
A check by Bernama noted that three plain clothed police personnel introduced themselves as coming from Bukit Aman police headquarters to the security guard manning the Laman Seri residence at Section 13 here before obtaining a security pass to go in.
It was believed that the police have conducted a search at the pilot’s house and all of them were seen leaving the residence at about 4.46pm.
From the Sydney Telegraph: Investigators digging deep into the lives of the pilots from the missing airliner.
Co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid
THE psychological background, family life and connections of the two pilots aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have become a major focus of the investigation into the missing jet.
Pilots Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and Fariq Abdul Hamid have been described as respectable, community-minded men.
Mr Fariq has drawn the greatest scrutiny after the revelation that in 2011, he and another pilot invited two women boarding their aircraft to sit in the cockpit for a flight from Phuket, Thailand, to Kuala Lumpur….
Fariq, the son of a high-ranking civil servant in Selangor state, joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007. With 2763 hours of flight experience, he had recently started co-piloting the Boeing 777. “His father still cries when he talks about Fariq. His mother too,” Ahmad Sarafi said.
Fariq had a brush with fame when he was filmed recently by a crew from “CNN Business Traveller,” and reporter Richard Quest described it as a perfect landing of a Boeing 777-200, the same model as the plane that vanished. Neighbour Ayop Jantan said he had heard Fariq was engaged and planning his wedding. The eldest of five, Fariq’s professional achievements were a source of pride for his father.
Zaharie, the pilot of MH370, joined the airline in 1981 and had more than 18,000 hours of experience. His Facebook page showed an aviation enthusiast who flew remote-controlled aircraft, posting pictures of his collection, which included a lightweight twin-engine helicopter and an amphibious aircraft. Born in northern Penang state, the captain and grandfather was an enthusiastic handyman and proud home cook.
Pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah
Back to CNN story on the Prime Minister’s statement, linked above:
“The plane’s last communication with the satellite was in one of two possible corridors: a northern corridor stretching approximately from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern corridor stretching approximately from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean,” Najib said.
Given that the new search area involves a number of countries, the relevant foreign embassies have been given access to the new information. Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry will brief the governments that had passengers aboard the plane and will brief the relatives of its 239 passengers and crew….
“Based on new satellite information, we can say with a high degree of certainty that the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, or ACARS, was disabled just before the aircraft reached the East Coast of peninsular Malaysia,” the Prime Minister said. “Shortly afterward, near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control, the aircraft’s transponder was switched off. From this point onwards, the Royal Malaysian Air Force primary radar showed that an aircraft — which was believed but not confirmed to be MH370 — did turn back.”
Military radar showed the jetliner flew in a westerly direction back over the peninsula before turning northwest toward the Bay of Bengal or southwest into the Indian Ocean, he said.
“Up until the point at which it left military primary radar coverage, these movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane,” he said, adding that investigators had confirmed by looking at the raw satellite data that the plane in question was the Malaysia Airlines jet.
American and British aviation authorities agreed with these conclusions. A story from McClatchy (via the Miami Herald) explains that an experienced person must have been flying the plane.
Najib’s comments further suggest that someone with significant flying experience must have commandeered the flight, or that a hijacker managed to coerce the crew to take two actions that diverted the flight from reaching Beijing. One involved disabling the flight’s “Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System” over the northeast coast of Malaysia. Then, at 1:21 a.m, someone turned off a transponder that was reporting the aircraft’s location, altitude, speed and other information.
Forensics work and a review of Malaysian radar, Najib said, has now revealed that MH 370 turned back and started traveling in a westerly direction. But the flight was still tracked by satellites overhead. A review of that data, Najib said, revealed that the last confirmed communication between the plane and the satellite was at 8:11 a.m. Malaysian time last Saturday, nearly seven hours after air traffic controllers lost track of it.
Based on this new data, the prime minister said, investigators think the plane could have traveled in two possible directions — “a northern corridor stretching approximately from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern corridor stretching approximately from Indonesia to the southern Indian ocean.” An international search effort has already shifted its attention to those areas, he said.
That first scenario raises the possibility that a hijacker or hijackers could have attempted to land the plane and its passengers in a remote part of Central Asia known to harbor militant groups. But in an age of satellites, doing so undetected would be extremely difficult, and so far there’s been no reported claim of responsibility for the plane’s disappearance.
According to The New York Times, Search for Malaysian Jet Becomes Criminal Inquiry.
Mr. Najib’s news conference, at an airport hotel here on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, came a day after American officials and others familiar with the investigation told The New York Times that Flight 370 had experienced significant changes in altitude after it lost contact with ground control, and altered its course more than once as if still under the command of a pilot.
Military radar data subsequently showed that the aircraft turned and flew west across northern Malaysia before arcing out over the wide northern end of the Strait of Malacca, headed at cruising altitude for the Indian Ocean.
News sources indicate the plane could have kept flying as long as 7 hours after it cut off contact.
“The investigation team is making further calculations, which will indicate how far the aircraft may have flown after the last point of contact,” Mr. Najib said, reading a statement in English. “Due to the type of satellite data, we are unable to confirm the precise location of the plane when it last made contact with a satellite.”
The northern arc described by Mr. Najib passes through or close to some of the world’s most volatile countries, home to insurgent groups, but also over highly militarized areas with robust air-defense networks, some run by the American military. The arc passes close to northern Iran, through Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, and through northern India and the Himalayan mountains and Myanmar.
An aircraft flying on that arc would have to pass through air-defense networks in India and Pakistan, whose mutual border is heavily militarized, as well as through Afghanistan, where the United States and other NATO countries have operated air bases for more than a decade.
Air bases near that arc include Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, where the United States Air Force’s 455th Air Expeditionary Wing is based, and a large Indian air base, Hindon Air Force Station.
A few more articles on missing Flight 370:
WSJ: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Probe Sharpens Focus on Sabotage
The Independent: Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Plane’s communications ‘deliberately disabled’ says prime minister as new radar evidence points to hijacking
CBS News: As U.S. role expands, so do search area and suspicion of foul play
NPR: Boeing 777 Pilots: It’s Not Easy To Disable Onboard Communications
WaPo: Mystery of missing jet recalls past disappearances
What else is happening? What stories are you following today?
Friday Reads
Posted: March 14, 2014 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Bobby Jindal, gentrification, Louisiana, Mary Landrieu, New Orleans, Rick Perry, Southern Orientalism., True Detective 30 CommentsGood Morning!
I’ve been looking at some of the elections coming up for the midterm season as well as reading the scuttlebutt about the presidential campaigns likely to gear up at the same time. There’s still some worry that the Republicans may have the momentum going into the midterms and that the Democratic Party may lose its majority in the Senate. I figured I’d start looking towards fall with my own vulnerable senator and overtly ambitious governor.
The Koch Brothers’ money is hot and heavy in most of the races that are seen as potential switches including my one sane–albeit owned by the oil & gas industry–Senator Mary Landrieu. I’ve been getting really sick of the same stupid Obama-care based attack ad on her that plays endlessly on TV. The Democratic party is evidently trying some new strategies to run the Koch Brothers express off the tracks. Here’s the new response to that ad that’s been bugging the living daylights out of me for months now. The analysis comes from Greg Sargent.
A Dem source tells me the spot is backed by a $200,000 buy. Script:
Out of state billionaires spending millions to rig the system and elect Bill Cassidy. Their goal: Another politician bought and paid for. Their agenda: Protect tax cuts for companies that ship our jobs overseas. Cut Social Security and end Medicare as we know it. They even tried to kill relief for hurricane victims. Cassidy’s billion dollar backers: They’ve got a plan for him. It’s not good for Louisiana.
As I noted the other day, this is all about creating a framework within which voters can be made to understand the actual policy agenda Republicans are campaigning on. This is what the Bain attacks on Mitt Romney were all about: Dem focus groups showed voters simply didn’t believe Romney would cut entitlements (per the Paul Ryan plan) whilecutting taxes on the rich. The Bain narrative made Romney’s actual priorities more comprehensible.
The Koch attacks are designed to do something similar. They aren’t really about the Kochs. They are a proxy for the one percent, a means through which to tap into a general sense that the economy remains rigged in favor of the very wealthy. Placed into this frame, GOP policies – opposition to raising the minimum wage; the Paul Ryan fiscal blueprint, which would redistribute wealth upwards; opposition to the Medicaid expansion, which AFP is fighting in multiple states – become more comprehensible as part of a broader storyline. In that narrative, Republican candidates are trying to maintain or even exacerbate an economic status quo that’s stacked against ordinary Americans, while Dems are offering solutions to boost economic mobility and reduce inequality, which are increasingly pressing public concerns.
In many ways this strategy is born of necessity. The 2014 fundamentals are stacked heavily against Democrats, who are defending seven Senate seats in states carried by Mitt Romney in 2012 that are older, whiter, and redder than the diversifying national electorate. This is made even worse by the midterm electorate, in which core Dem groups are less likely to turn out.
GOP attacks on the health law in red states are not just about Obamacare. They are, more broadly, about casting Senate Dems as willing enablers of the hated president and blaming the sputtering recovery on #Obummer Big Gummint, to channel people’s economic anxieties into a vote to oust Dem incumbents.
Mary Landrieu, meanwhile, is out front and center trying to force through the Keystone Pipeline. This is likely to bring a few jobs to Louisiana and make her oil company donors quite happy.
Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana intensified the pressure on Secretary of State John Kerry, a former Senate colleague, to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
During a hearing on the State Department’s 2015 budget, Ms. Landrieu, a Democrat who has been a strong pipeline proponent and faces a tough re-election fight this year, pressed Mr. Kerry to approve the project, which would carry crude from Canada’s oil sands and from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale Formation to Gulf Coast refineries.
Ms. Landrieu, the new chairwoman of the Senate Energy Committee, said, “Canada is our closest, strongest trading partner,” and “a majority of American people” support Keystone. “It is hard for me to understand why there are still questions about whether building this pipeline is in our national interest,” she said.
Actually, it really isn’t in the national interest since most of the Canadian tar sands oil will be sold on the open market and the danger of polluting the major source of fresh water for five states in the center of the country remains. However, Landrieu always moves to the right during the election cycle. I am certainly not going to vote for Bill Cassidy who could be worse . He still rings all the usual right wing bells albeit not with much charisma as some of his Texas compadres in congress.
Leading Republicans figured Cassidy to be her perfect foil, as a physician (treating the poor in public hospitals) with only eight years in elected office (experience but not a career in politics). He’s not especially charismatic, but he is intelligent and trustworthy. In the recent government shutdown/debt crisis, he voted along with conservatives but, in his rhetoric, he did not get wild-eyed about it.
And that’s a problem. Though U.S. Sen. David Vitter has run interference, Cassidy has been unable to close the deal on the right. For Republicans running for Congress these days, it is not enough to be conservative. If you are not ultra-conservative, then you’re moderate, which is just a slippery slope away from closet liberal. This nagging distrust about his conservatism has created an opening on the right, into which have stepped two other Republican candidates, Rep. Paul Hollis of Covington and Rob Maness of Madisonville.
Maness, with tea party connections, lumps Cassidy together with Landrieu as compromised establishment politicians. Hollis assured Vitter that he would not criticize Cassidy but keep his aim on Landrieu. Yet in his first TV ads, standing under an oak tree, he distinguishes himself as unspoiled by the partisan politics of Washington. His bid for home boy status — “lifelong Louisiana,” he describes himself — is a sly dig at both Maness, an Air Force brat, and Cassidy, whose family moved here when he was 6 years old. His underlying message is: I’m one of us, and they are not.
A more direct slap at the GOP anointed one comes from Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana legislator, who recently told The Hill newspaper that Cassidy can’t beat the incumbent because he’s not conservative enough.
Perkins has his eye on a seat some where right now so he’s hardly an objective on the candidate. Of course, the Republican Party and the Koch ads are hammering away at “Obamacare”. This is an interesting tactic in a state like Louisiana where the needs of so many go unserved and the governor is taking heat for turning down the Medicaid expansion from every paper in the state. Then, there are these numbers. Ted Cruz’s fears have come true. It’s getting popular and most of the recent advertised scare stories used in the political ads are being successfully debunked,
President Barack Obama’s health-care law is becoming more entrenched, with 64 percent of Americans now supporting it outright or backing small changes.
Even so, the fervor of the opposition shows no sign of abating, posing a challenge for Obama’s Democrats during congressional races this year, as a Republican victory in a special Florida election this week showed. In addition, 54 percent of Americans say they’re unhappy with the president’s handling of the issue, according to a Bloomberg National Poll.
That’s an improvement since the last poll, in December, when Obama’s public standing on health care hit a low of 60 percent disapproval after the botched rollout of the insurance exchanges, according to the March 7-10 poll of 1,001 adults.
So, this Louisiana race may be one to watch if you want to see what could happen in the fall. The other thing is that it’s pretty certain that
Governor Bobby Jindal is not giving up his presidential dreams no matter how badly he shows in all the polls. He’s on the campaign trail and introducing legislation that’s been written by the Koch machine. Oh, and he’s in New Hampshire.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal launched a new political action committee (PAC) on Thursday (March 13) to assist conservative candidates in the 2014 midterm elections, just before heading off to New Hampshire for a series of events.
Jindal’s PAC, dubbed “Stand Up to Washington,” will feature former Mitt Romney campaign manager Jill Neunaber in its leadership role. Neunaber is getting to be a familiar name around Louisiana, as the head of Jindal’s PAC and also his recently-formed nonprofit “America Next,” which is aimed primarily at national issues and supporting Republican candidates in this year’s gubernatorial races.
“Obviously, my main focus is still going to be continuing to help governors win their races and candidates to win gubernatorial races,” Jindal told POLITICO in a reported 18-minute phone interview about the new PAC.
“But I also get a ton of requests to go and speak and help federal candidates in the Senate and the House. So we just thought this was a logical thing to do.”
Soon after announcing the PAC, Jindal will head off to the battleground state of New Hampshire for a series of events. He will keynote the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference on Friday; The Nashua Telegraph also reports he will appear at the Wild Irish Breakfast that morning.
Nothing says candidate like Pancake breakfasts and parades. Oh, and appearing on comedy and talk shows. Did you know that Texas Governor Rick Perry got booed during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel live?
Texas Gov. Rick Perry was booed when he took the stage at ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ on Tuesday night at the South by Southwest conference in Austin.
“We do know how to get it stirred up,” the Republican said as he sat down, presumably referring to Texans.
The booing continued throughout the interview, until Perry mentioned decriminalizing marijuana – that prompted the crowd to cheer.
When asked if he’d ever smoked marijuana himself, Perry responded, “No, thank God!”
Kimmel also asked Perry whether he planned to run for president in 2016, after an unsuccessful attempt in 2012.
“This is not the crowd that I want to make this announcement to,” Perry said.
I have to think that most of the folks in Austin will be really glad to get rid of the man, but then you probably should ask Ralph about that since he would know more than me.
I might as well follow up on my post last Friday since this post seems to have taken on a Louisianan flavor anyway. There have been a few more folks–recent transplants and visitors–writing articles on the state still. I’m thinking it must have something to do with True Detective but maybe not. I don’t feel like I can be the outstanding transmitter of what’s special and frustrating about this state as well as a native because frankly, after 20 years, the place still can make me dizzy in both good and bad ways. So, I’m going to quote Lamar White here. See, Lamar, I not only attribute and cite you but I put your name right here. Too bad I’m not any one that matters, but hey, you’re out there making some waves and that’s good.
On Tuesday, Dave Thier, a freelance writer based in New Orleans, published a piece in Esquire titled “Sorry, Louisiana Is Not Actually Made Of Magic.” I really wanted to like Mr. Thier’s piece, because I thought the headline was provocative. But the article was absurdly patronizing and completely disconnected. Mr. Thier is a Yale graduate who has lived in New Orleans for only three years. While we should all celebrate smart, young, educated professionals who move to Louisiana, it is unwise, arrogant, and misguided for a self-described “transplant” to hold himself out, to a national audience, as a curator of Louisiana culture, particularly when he implies that his understanding of his newly-adopted home has been informed by Hollywood.
Indeed, that seems to be the point of his article: Hollywood has lied about Louisiana being magical, which he can prove by way of juxtaposing the banalities of his own life. He watches Netflix and plays video games and prefers Thai take-out over the native cuisine of his adopted Louisiana. And this, I think, may bolster Mr. Thier’s argument that he’s just an ordinary American in his late twenties. But it completely destroys his credibility when it comes to opining on the culture and, yes, the magic of Louisiana.
The same group of Louisiana Bloggers, Twitterati, and Facebookers had it out re: Thier’s article in Esquire, harkened back to Kalegate and the NYT, and then hashed over if we should even be paying these folks some never mind anyway. I personally wonder why these recent transplants get the paid gigs on what is and isn’t New Orleans or Louisiana instead of folks that have either been born here or at least lived here long enough to have decoded some of the unique charms and frustration. Here’s another take in Salon that’s called True Detective goth Southern porn characterizing Louisiana poverty as stemming from a stereotyped swampbilly culture.
As someone who studies southern Appalachia in popular culture, I have become occasionally numb to the portrayal of other parts of the southern United States, viewing their representation/stereotypes as being less severe. Louisiana in particular.
Louisiana gets heaps of praise. “True Blood” made it sexy and campy. “Treme” showed its heart. The last season of “Top Chef” showcased its deliciousness.
There’s another side, though. A bit darker. “Duck Dynasty,” “Gator Boys,” “Cajun Pawn Stars,” “Swamp People,” etc. All reality television series that showcase people living off the land or trying to get by, often downplaying the intelligence of its stars. It paints the state as a different country, with different rules.
But those rules are not as far-flung as “True Detective” might have you believe. Creator Nic Pizzolatto, who grew up in the Lake Charles, La., depicts his hometown as a post-apocalyptic landscape in which the rapes and murders of women and children are covered up by kin connections. He follows what I have deemed the three rules of a Southern horror story: Close Family Relationships, Weird Sex and Malicious Rednecks.
Important note: The more overlap between the above three elements, the better.
Essentially Lake Charles received its own “Deliverance” through the episodes of “True Detective.” Has ever a show depicted such a large number of beaten and bruised female prostitutes? As far as the series reveals, there’s no reason that Marty’s elementary-school-aged daughter draws graphic pictures of people having sex or sets up her toys to depict a doll getting gang-banged. It’s just one of those things kids in rural Louisiana do.
By the way, Lake Charles was not really the center of the series or the filming location or the plot, but then I quibble. I’m not exactly certain why the writers of establishment media have decided to put every one in Louisiana on the couch, but it appears 
there’s some kind’ve creepy fascination that’s playing out in the press right now. Yes, there is unique culture down here. This area has given the world a lot of musical forms, food, and reasons to party. The landscape can be breathtaking in both its lushness and its austerity. You can see any and all of it play out just by visiting here and taking note. But, really, does that mean you can decode it for the rest of the world to earn a few bucks?
Here’s the Cajun version of Mardi Gras that shows you there is plenty of unique culture to celebrate, to learn about, and to appreciate. Thier should take some time away from his video games and Thai take out food to chase some of this down. The last thing I did when I first moved here was to sit at home with all things mundane. I just participated. This part of the country will amaze and capture your attention. The problem that I have with these accidental tourists and transplants is they really haven’t taken the time to let their gumbo simmer. But, when has Hollywood or the New York/Washington DC -centric press ever put any place in any kind of real light? I frankly remember growing up watching TV where every hayseed that became the butt of a sitcom joke haled from Nebraska. (It’s actually a subtheme of The Big Bang Theory right now.) It would absolutely make me even more embarrassed of having to grow up in the place knowing that the rest of the country had a worse opinion of the place than me and mine was pretty darn low.
What I’m more worried though about is this kind of thing : U.S. Agrees to Allow BP Back Into Gulf Waters to Seek Oil. Since corporations are people my friend–at least that’s what Citizen’s United declared–then I say we ought not let a mass murderer out to kill again. But, that’s not the kind of story that’s likely to create any human interest. Well, not yet. So, what should we be more worried about? It does no one a great service to characterize a culture, but at least that doesn’t have the power to take down the culture itself. What’s gotten me to start writing about my adopted home has been my experiences with Hurricane Katrina and the BP Oil spill because having lived here 20 years, I know exactly what’s at stake if the country would lose it. There are things down here both human and natural that are awesome. It’s worth appreciating, experiencing and protecting.
What’s on your blogging and reading list today?
Thursday Reads: A Little Hollywood Glamour before the Daily Horrors
Posted: March 13, 2014 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads | Tags: Austin TX, East Harlem explosion, Elizabeth Taylor, fashion, Firedoglake, James Kirchick, Kevin Gosztola, Liz Wahl, missing Malaysian Airlines plane, movies, Russia Today, South by Southwest Interactive conference, SXSW, The Girl Who Had Everything, the Kremlin 27 Comments
This dress presages Madonna’s lingerie outfits.
Good Morning!!
Last night I watched a little bit of The Girl Who Had Everything, starring Elizabeth Tayor–on TCM of course. I had never seen it before.
The movie was released in 1953 when Liz was only 21. She sure was gorgeous. You have to see some of the outfits she wore in that film, one of which is on the right.
The Girl Who Had Everything (1953) is a feature film directed by Richard Thorpe and produced by Armande Deutsch for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film features William Powell in his last MGM feature and one of his last film roles before retirement.
The screenplay was written by Art Cohn, based upon a play by Willard Mack, which in turn was based on the novel A Free Soul by Adela Rogers St. Johns. The play and novel were also inspiration for an earlier film adaptation called A Free Soul (1931).
The plot:
Steve Latimer (William Powell) is a successful defense attorney who has tried to give his daughter Jean (Elizabeth Taylor) everything he can in life. She decides to leave her boyfriend, the amiable Vance Court (Gig Young), for Victor Ramondi (Fernando Lamas), a rakish and dangerous man with underworld connections whom Steve is representing. Steve tries to warn Jean away from Victor, but she accepts his proposal of marriage.
Trailer:
Now for some outfits.
I can see why JJ loves to watch TCM. Movie stars just aren’t as glamorous these days as in the 1950s.
In real life, Liz was the woman who had everything. After she died, her huge fashion and jewelry collections were auctioned off by Christie’s. From The Telegraph Nov. 19, 2011:
In my job as a fashion curator for Christie’s I have been lucky enough to see close at hand the private clothes of some of the 20th century’s most famous women.
For more information about the latest trend in fashion dresses, visit https://www.groupon.com/coupons/stores/shein.com
Now here was my latest rabbit-hole: a tiny black door framed in black granite, puncturing the windowless facade of an art-handling warehouse in Long Island, New York. I was Alice again, diving down to explore the possessions of another 20th-century icon: the soon-to-be-dispersed jewels, fashion and memorabilia of the last of the great Hollywood Golden Age superstars, Elizabeth Taylor.
Taylor in 1965 wearing the diamond tiara given to her by Mike Todd, her third husband. Photo: Rex
What met my eyes was rack upon rack of Taylor’s clothes, stretching into the far distance. These racks were packed so tightly that hems, frills, collars and belts stuck out; her collection of clothes in bright orange, sequins, prints, sunflower-yellow, lace and feathers were hung in the order they had been unpacked from her house in Bel Air and her chalet in Gstaad. Handbags – more than 200 – emerged one by one from many crates….
As I went through the racks of clothes it became apparent that here was a vast haute couture and prêt-à-porter wardrobe spanning more than 50 years; Elizabeth must have been one of the greatest couture clients of all time. Once she had bought from the collections, she carefully kept these exquisitely made pieces in superb condition on the top floor of her house in Bel Air.
Here a series of rooms, formerly, I suppose, a guest suite, had become one vast dressing-room carpeted in her favourite lilac. All it lacked was the star on the door. In this eyrie, Taylor kept the clothes she had chosen, worn out in public and laid aside for another day. Her handbags were swathed in tissue paper or in specially made bags and stacked neatly by colour. So were her shoes and the more than 30 pairs of cowboy boots…
More gorgeous photos at the link.
Now back to real life and today’s news {sigh….}
Terrible news out of Austin, TX (Statesman.com): Two dead after car crashes into SXSW crowd.
A driver attempting to evade a drunk driving stop hurtled past a barricade on Red River Street and plowed through dozens of SXSW revelers, killing two and injuring 23 in a horrific scene early Thursday morning, police said. The street, home to many popular clubs hosting South by Southwest music showcases, had been closed to motorists and was crowded with music fans waiting to get into the Mohawk nightclub.
According to police, the man, driving a small Toyota car, went the wrong way down Ninth Street after evading a stop at a gas station around 12:30 a.m., turned onto Red River and drove for more than two blocks, striking numerous pedestrians before hitting a scooter traveling on 11th Street, killing the man and woman on board. The driver then struck a taxi, injuring two, and crashed into a parked van, Police Chief Art Acevedo said.
The man then attempted to flee on foot before he was stunned with a Taser gun and detained by the police officer who originally tried to pull the man over at a gas station on the frontage road of Interstate 35.
Speaking to reporters on Red River Street, which was still littered with shoes, clothing and other debris from the incident, Acevedo vowed the man would face capital murder charges in the deaths of the two scooter riders and 23 counts of aggravated assault with a vehicle.
And in New York’s East Harlem, at least seven people are now confirmed dead after a gas explosion leveled two apartment buildings yesterday. WSJ:
At least seven people were killed and more than 60 were injured in an apparent natural-gas explosion that leveled two residential buildings and severely damaged a third Wednesday morning in Manhattan, officials said.
Police said early Thursday that a seventh person was found dead. This follows an adult male pulled from the rubble just after midnight, a woman found about 2:45 a.m. Thursday, and a man discovered about a half-hour later.
The 9:31 a.m. Wednesday blast rocked the East Harlem neighborhood, shattering windows, throwing neighbors from their beds and sending people fleeing down the block in a cloud of smoke and debris.
The century-old, five-story brick structures housed 15 apartments, a church and a piano store in a neighborhood favored by immigrants. The blast also caused significant damage to a neighboring four-story building. More than 100 residents were staying in a nearby American Red Cross shelter.
Emergency workers were searching for victims in parts of the rubble, but sections remained inaccessible because of a sinkhole created by a water-main break, likely caused by the explosion, city officials said.
The missing Malaysian Airlines jet mystery continues as “conflicting reports” sow confusion. From the LA Times:
BEIJING — The mystery of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 deepened amid allegations that the airplane flew four hours more than originally thought and might have traveled more than one thousand miles away from where search and rescue teams are looking.
Citing U.S. national security sources, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that government personnel were pursuing the possibility that the plane was commandeered “with the intention of using it later for another purpose.’’ The newspaper also said that data transmitted by an onboard monitoring system toRolls-Royce Plc., the engine manufacturer, suggested that the plane flew for up to five hours in total after its takeoff from Kuala Lumpur at 12:21 a.m. Saturday morning.
Malaysian officials at a press conference Thursday denied the story and said the last engine data was transmitted at 1:07 a.m., about 20 minutes before the aircraft disappeared from civilian radar screens.
Nevertheless, the Malaysians said they had expanded the search and rescue operation into India and the surrounding waters, the Bay of Bengal, Andaman Sea and Arabian Sea. If in fact the Boeing 777 flew for five hours from Kuala Lumpur, it could have traveled 2,200 nautical miles, as far as the India-Pakistan border.
According to Reuters, there is “no evidence” that the plane continue flying for hours after it disappeared from radar. There had been reports of debris being sighted by Chinese radar, but that turned out to be false. According to BBC News, the photos of the reported debris had been “released by mistake.” Authorities are now investigating the pilots of the plane as well as all passengers and crew. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, they are “paying ‘special attention’ to [a] Chinese Uighur passenger.
Police investigating the backgrounds of all 239 people aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines flight are paying “special attention” to a 35 year-old Chinese Uighur man who undertook flight simulation training, according to a report in a leading Malay language newspaper in Kuala Lumpur.
The Uighurs Muslim ethnic minority group from the north-western Chinese province of Xinjiang have been battling for independence since they were brought under Chinese control in 1949, claiming they are oppressed by China’s authoritarian government and face religious restrictions and widespread discrimination.
Earlier this month the Uighurs, who make up 45 percent of the population of Xinjiang, were blamed for a violent attack at a Chinese train station.
At least 100 people have been killed in the past year in violent clashes between Uighurs and Chinese security forces.
A bizarre and humorous read . . .
Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake inexplicably turned himself into a laughingstock yesterday when he left a bizarre threatening voicemail for James Kirchick of The Daily Beast. Kirchick had written an article last week about the on-air resignation of former RT (Russia Today) anchor Liz Wahl, and apparently Gosztola was outraged that anyone would criticized the official Kremlin propaganda network–perhaps because Glenn Greenwald has praised it and Julian Assange has frequently appeared on it. Here’s the latest from Kirchick: Defending Putin’s Propagandists.
Coming soon to a theater near you: A Filipina Drama Queen pairs up with a Subversive Gay Jew to embarrass the Russian government!
No, this isn’t the tagline for the summer’s laugh-a-minute buddy comedy. It’s how some online media outlets are describing last week’s on-air resignation of Liz Wahl, anchor for RT-America, the English-language propaganda channel funded entirely by the Russian government. Wahl cited the network’s blatantly propagandistic coverage of the crisis in Crimea, its “whitewashing Putin,” and her own family history as the descendant of Hungarian refugees fleeing Soviet oppression as reasons for her departing the network.
And now, the network’s defenders are coming out in droves—and not just from the dark, traditionally conspiratorial corners of the Internet.
Read more about it at the link. As for the Gosztola episode:
This afternoon, a gentleman identifying himself as Kevin Gosztola, who writes for the left-wing website FireDogLake, left a message on my cell phone. He claimed to be working on a project for First Look Media — the high-profile investigative journalism start-up that employs, among others, Glenn Greenwald.
The Daily Beast posted the audio of the voicemail, along with a transcript that I can resist posting:
“So you don’t deny that you encouraged Liz Wahl to resign. We are going to be publishing a story at First Look Media and I know that you’re going to be losing control of the narrative that you’ve managed to create around Liz Wahl’s resignation. We have multiple sources.
“It’s fairly obvious that you have orchestrated this as part of some Foreign Policy Initiative [the think tank where I work] agenda. And this is what we’re going to be putting out there. So your fun little charade, public stunt that you’ve been putting on which the media has completely eaten up here in the United States, is hopefully over
“If you have any comment and if you’d like to respond to me and prove that this is not how it is, you let me know. But otherwise we are ready to go. And, you know, you like to ‘fuck with the Russians’ and we’re going to respond to that and let people know where you’re coming from as you have worked with Liz Wahl to expose what you call a propaganda network.”
WTF?! It’s now bad form at FDL to “fuck with the Russians?” First Look’s editor denied that Gosztola works for them:
“Kevin [Gosztola] doesn’t work for First Look Media. He apparently spoke to Glenn [Greenwald] about the possibility of doing a story for [First Look], but Glenn hasn’t given him an assignment or a contract,” Eric Bates, executive editor of First Look Media, told The Daily Beast in an email. “Glenn let Kevin know that he shouldn’t be representing himself as acting on behalf of First Look.”
How embarrassing. This story was the talk of Twitter yesterday, and not just among the Snowden critics.
I’ll end there and turn the floor over to you. What stories have piqued your interest today?
Tuesday Reads: More Snow, Mystery Plane, Joe McGinniss, Ed Snowden, and Ukraine Crisis
Posted: March 11, 2014 Filed under: Barack Obama, Crime, Foreign Affairs, morning reads | Tags: deaths, Edward Snowden, Fatal Vision, Jeffrey MacDonald, Joe McGinnis, missing Malaysian Airlines plane, South by Southwest Interactive conference, Ukraine crisis, Vladimir Putin, winter weather 44 Comments
A Snowy Harvard Square in 1969
Good Morning!!
I’ve had a scary couple of days. I woke up on Sunday morning to find my house very cold. I soon realized there was something wrong with my furnace. It was still running and there was hot air coming out of the vents, but it wasn’t pushing out enough heat to warm up the house. It turned out the blower motor had died so I called furnace installation davenport ia to diagnose the problem.
Why is it these things always seem to happen on a weekend or holiday? Luckily it hasn’t been terribly cold so I’ve managed to stay relatively comfortable by wearing lots of layers and using a portable electric heater. I was able to find someone to come and fix it yesterday. I got so relaxed that I overslept this morning, and so this post is going to be late.
In addition, health benefits of infrared heating impacts our mind and body. Increases your core body temperature, stimulating continuous blood flow from the heart in and around the body. The improvement of circulation enables an increased level of fresh oxygen and other nutrients to reach vital organs, removing carbon dioxide and other waste substances away from these organs, improving their functions helping to perform better and feel healthier.
So now I’m completely broke but warm, and I’m prepared for the upcoming snowstorm. Yes, the Weather Channel is predicting another one and has given it one of those annoying names. You can check out the predicted impact on your area in this summary article, Winter Storm Vulcan Forecast: Long Swath of Snow Across Rockies, Midwest, Northeast. I can only hope this one turns out to be a bust like the last one. Otherwise, I’ll be shoveling snow again on Friday.
The story of the missing Malaysion plane continues. Here are the latest reports:
Reuters (via Nipawin Journal): Malaysia military tracked missing plane to west coast: Source
KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysia’s military believes a jetliner missing for almost four days turned and flew hundreds of kilometres to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country’s east coast, a senior officer told Reuters on Tuesday.
In one of the most baffling mysteries in recent aviation history, a massive search operation for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER has so far found no trace of the aircraft or the 239 passengers and crew.
Malaysian authorities have previously said flight MH370 disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for the Chinese capital Beijing.
“It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait,” the senior military officer, who has been briefed on investigations, told Reuters.
That would appear to rule out sudden catastrophic mechanical failure, as it would mean the plane flew around 500 km (350 miles) at least after its last contact with air traffic control, although its transponder and other tracking systems were off.
A non-military source familiar with the investigations said the report was one of several theories and was being checked.
Authorities are pretty sure there was no terrorism involved. At least one of the men with stolen passports was an asylum-seeker from Iran.
CBS News: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 search widens; men carrying stolen passports ID’d as young Iranians
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — At least one of the two men traveling on a missing Malaysian Airlines jetliner was an Iranian asylum seeker, officials said Tuesday, as baffled authorities expanded their search for the Boeing 777 on the opposite side of the country from where it disappeared nearly four days ago with 239 people on board.
In the absence of any sign that the plane was in trouble before it vanished, speculation has ranged widely, including pilot error, plane malfunction, hijacking and terrorism, the last because two passengers were traveling on stolen passports. The terrorism theory weakened after Malaysian authorities determined that one of the two men was an Iranian asylum seeker.
Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said at a news conference Tuesday that the international police agency had identified two Iranian men, Pouri Nour Mohammadi, 18, and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, 29. Noble said based on investigations carried out into the men to date, they were “probably not terrorists.” The chief of police in Kuala Lumpur said earlier in the day that Mohamadi was apparently trying to fly to Europe as an asylum seeker.
The plane took off from Kuala Lumpur, on the western coast of Malaysia, early Saturday en route to Beijing. It flew overland across Malaysia and crossed the eastern coast into the Gulf of Thailand at 35,000 feet. There it disappeared from radar screens. The airline says the pilots didn’t send any distress signals, suggesting a sudden and possibly catastrophic incident.
I was surprised and saddened last night to learn that Joe McGinniss has died at 71 of complications from inoperable prostate cancer. McGinniss was only 26 when his first book The Selling of the President 1968 hit the bestseller lists. I bought the book and read it way back then. I couldn’t put it down. Same thing with his pathbreaking true crime book on the Jeffrey MacDonald case, Fatal Vision. From the AP obituary (via First Post World), ‘Fatal Vision’ author Joe McGinniss passes away at 71.
McGinniss was a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1968 when an advertising man told him he was joining Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign. Intrigued that candidates had advertising teams, McGinniss was inspired to write a book and tried to get access to Humphrey. The Democrat turned him down, but, according to McGinniss, Nixon aide Leonard Garment allowed him in, one of the last times the ever-suspicious Nixon would permit a journalist so much time around him. Garment and other Nixon aides were apparently unaware, or unconcerned, that McGinniss’ heart was very much with the anti-war agitators the candidate so despised.
The Republican’s victory that fall capped a once-unthinkable comeback for the former vice president, who had declared six years earlier that he was through with politics. Having lost the 1960 election in part because of his pale, sweaty appearance during his first debate with John F. Kennedy and aware of his reputation as a partisan willing to play dirty, Nixon had restricted his public outings and presented himself as a new and more mature candidate.
McGinniss was far from the only writer to notice Nixon’s reinvention, but few offered such raw and unflattering details. “The Selling of the President” was a sneering rebuttal to Theodore H. White’s stately “Making of the President” campaign books. It revealed Nixon aides, including future Fox News chief Roger Ailes, disparaging vice presidential candidate Spiro Agnew, drafting memos on how to fix Nixon’s “cold” image and debating which black man — only one would be permitted — was right for participating in a televised panel discussion.
Historian David Greenberg wrote in “Nixon’s Shadow,” published in 2003, that McGinniss “sneaked in under the radar screen, presenting himself to Nixon’s men as such an insignificant fly on the wall that they never thought to swat him away.”
McGinnis was criticized for getting too close to Jeffrey McDonald and somehow betraying him, but I think McGinnis got it right. His contract stated that he would have full independence. He started out thinking McDonald could be innocent of the murders of his wife and two daughters, and he had an inside track on the defense; but in the end McGinnis concluded that MacDonald was guilty and wrote about his change of heart in the book.
Colette, Kimberly, and Kristin MacDonald
His 1983 book “Fatal Vision” became a classic of the true crime genre and was based on unlimited access he gained to former Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald and his attorneys during MacDonald’s 1979 murder trial in the deaths of his pregnant wife and two young daughters in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
MacDonald, who at the time of the 1970 killings was an Army doctor, was found guilty and is serving three life sentences.
He has maintained the murders were committed by drug-crazed intruders. McGinniss had begun by expressing support for MacDonald but ended by concluding in his book that he was guilty of killing his family.
“I kept trying to find any reason I could to believe that he was not guilty,” McGinniss testified at a 2012 court hearing where MacDonald sought to be granted a new trial.
New Yorker magazine writer Janet Malcolm, in a 1989 article, accused McGinnis of displaying the underside of journalism by deceiving MacDonald with a show of support and then betraying his confidence, an argument McGinnis vehemently denied.
A terrific writer has left us far too soon.
Edward Snowden has been making more virtual appearances than a best-selling author on a publicity tour. Yesterday he was at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin Texas. I’m sure everyone here knows I’m not a fan of the pale and nerdy defector, so I’ll spare you my editorial comments and just give you a couple few links.
From Politico’s Josh Gerstein: Snowden Inc.
First, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden popped up in Hong Kong. Then, Russia. By Monday, the fugitive from justice, a man regularly accused of treason, was in Austin, Texas, hitting the nation’s hottest tech festival — via the Web, of course.
“They’re setting fire to the future of the Internet,” Snowden warned darkly, in jerky video relayed through a series of proxies from an undisclosed location in Russia. With an image of the U.S. Constitution projected behind him, he urged the tech-savvy SXSW attendees to ride to the rescue against rampant surveillance by the NSA and others. “The people who are in this room, now, you guys are all the firefighters, and we need you to help fight this,” he said, sounding every bit the geek as he described various encryption applications he believes should get wider use.
Snowden was painstaking in how he assembled a huge trove of top-secret documents while working as a tech contractor at an NSA facility in Hawaii. And he’s been equally deliberate in the way he and the team around him have crafted and cultivated his public image — controlling and carefully managing how he’s been perceived by the public in the months since he burst into the spotlight. It’s an endeavor that’s involved everything from coordinated efforts to beat back Obama administration attacks to the careful parceling out of tantalizing tidbits about his everyday life.
Snowden is campaigning for clemency; but frankly, I hope he ends up stuck in Russia for life. Ooops! Sorry, that’s my last nasty comment. A couple more links:
The Verge: Edward Snowden: ‘Would I do it again? Absolutely yes’
The Washington Post: ‘They’re setting fire to the future of the Internet’
I’ll wrap this up with some interesting articles on the crisis in Ukraine.
Putin biographer Masha Gessen at the LA Times, Is Vladimir Putin insane? Hardly. He is merely acting the way he always has, like a playground bully.
Politico, Bill Clinton no fan of ‘crazy’ moves on Ukraine
Financial Times, Ukraine is a test case for American power: If the Chinese leadership were ever to ‘do a Putin’, how could the US and allies react?
Robert Shrum at The Daily Beast, Obama’s All Eisenhower On Russia: Like Ike before him, Obama’s non-moves against Russia are the right moves.
Now what stories are you following today? Please post your links on any topic in the comment thread, and have a terrific Tuesday!
Monday Reads: Women’s Day Edition
Posted: March 10, 2014 Filed under: morning reads 61 CommentsGood Morning!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a woman in a society that only values you under specific circumstances. It’s probably related to the passage of yet another Women’s day on March 8 where I look around and see more lost ground than ground gained. The stereotypes we identified in my women’s studies group in high school are still alive and flung across the internet.
I didn’t watch the Oscars–having no interest in celebs or movies–but I did notice the next few days were filled with the usual snipes and compliments on dresses. Then, there was the hooplah on the plastic surgery of Kim Novak and Goldie Hawn that many deemed’ pathetic and unrecognizable. Novak is 81.
The Internet gasped in horror—or was it amusement? —when the Vertigo star took the stage with Matthew McConaughey to
present the award for Best Animated Feature to Disney’s Frozen (an unfortunate coincidence, generating countless rudimentary puns on social media). A sampling of tweets, including several from well-known figures in the entertainment and media industries: Comedian Nick Youssef joked that “Kim Novak was just safely transported back to the Hollywood Wax Museum”; Chelsea Lately writer Fortune Feimster quipped, “I’m assuming Kim Novak was representing the movie ‘Mask’”; Huffington Post editorial director Howard Fineman broadened the mockery: “#AcademyAward for worst plastic surgery: tie between Kim Novak and Goldie Hawn.”
And blowback against the comments was equally fierce. Newly minted MSNBC host Ronan Farrow shot back, “Half the people being cruel about Kim Novak are ten years away from being Kim Novak.” Actress Rose McGowan tweeted a picture of the actress in her heyday as a sex symbol, adding, “Self-obsessed and disrespectful, that sums up the Oscar audience.”
In a way, by tweeting a picture of Novak sprawled out on a bed in a scene from the 1958 film, Bell, Book and Candle, McGowan was unwittingly acknowledging that we should judge actresses by their looks—because beauty is indeed one of the most important attributes for a Hollywood actress, young or old. Had Novak not won the genetic lottery, she could have easily lost her breakout role in Hitchcock’sVertigo to a prettier face (Novak was a good actress, but not a great one). So why are we surprised when, years after being out of the limelight, viewers continue obsessing over the face that once made her famous? And we should be no less surprised that Novak is obsessed with her face.
Goldie’s dress and face didn’t fare much better. I’ve been thinking of both of them in light of Diane Keaton, Helen Mirren, and Dame Diana Rigg who are still trodding the boards and have passed on certain enhancements. Diana Rigg is one among many devious women starring in HBO’s Game of thrones. She’s a fiesty delight and I enjoyed reading this interview with her.
Diana Rigg is trying to cross the Fulham Road in London. Elegant from two-tone shoes to circular, tinted glasses, she is thwarted by the traffic. “Good timing,” she says after I introduce myself. “You can help me get across.” In the 60s, when she played Emma Peel in The Avengers, a catsuit-wearing Rigg would have vaulted across car bonnets, and if any male driver had remonstrated, she would have karate-chopped him in the throat and kicked him in the crown jewels. But not today.
“It’s my damned tin knees,” she says as we link arms and hobble across the street. She had an operation on one of them recently. I had heard that she damaged her knees with those lengthy tap-dancing routines in the 1987 West End production of Sondheim’s Follies? “No, it’s genetic. My brother, who is 80, has the same problem.”
Not that the 75-year-old actor is unhappy with her lot.”The older you get, I have to say, the funnier you find life,” she says. “That’s the only way to go. If you get serious about yourself as you get old, you are pathetic.”
We settle in the garden of a French cafe. A few years ago Rigg would have sought out the garden to indulge her 20-a-day habit, but Dame Diana gave up smoking a couple of years ago, and today wants to catch the early spring rays and feed crumbs to the birds.
“I found myself talking aloud to the pigeons in the park the other day,” she tells me. “The male pigeons were busily pursuing the female pigeons. I said: ‘You silly farts. Can’t you see they’re not interested?’ And then I realised there were people listening to me.” And what applies to birds, she reckons, applies to elderly men and women. “I think women of my age are still attractive.” She removes her glasses and faces me down with brown eyes that have turned strong men – and, indeed, women – to jelly. “Men of my age aren’t.” Why? “They’ve got their cojones halfway to their knees,” she says, giggling. “They have the same descent as tits.”
Aging is not an easy thing in a society that values women for their looks and their fertility. But, you’re either invisible or you’re fertile and thereby potential property of men and state. Here’s a list of the crap Lousiana legislators are proposing for the women in my state.
HB 388: Requires doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospital before performing abortions.
HB 401: Prohibits advertising of abortion services and distribution of abortofacients.
HB 727: Requires provision of psychological health information prior to abortion.
HB 590: (Constitutional amendment) Prohibits the use of public monies for abortion and provision of public monies to providers of abortion except as may be required by the federal government as a condition of federal financial participation in a public medical assistance program.
HB 348: Prohibits termination of life-sustaining procedures for pregnant women.
HB 305: Prohibits providers of elective abortions and their affiliates from delivering any instruction or materials in schools.
As you can see, the obsession with lady parts is ongoing. In fact, any kind of focus on the state of women in this country brings to focus exactly how unkind of a country we can be.
According to the African American Policy Forum, black girls are suspended at a higher ratethan all other girls and white and Latino boys. Sixty-seven percent of black girls reported feelings of sadness or hopelessness for more than two weeks straight compared to 31 percent of white girls and 40 percent of Latinas. Single black women have the lowest net wealth of any group, with research showing a median wealth of $100. Single black men by contrast have an average net wealth of $7,900 and single white women have an average net wealth of $41,500. Fifty-five percent of black women (and black men) have never been married, compared to 34 percent for white women.
This situation is dire at every level. But perhaps the most troubling thing of all: The report indicates that while over 100 million philanthropic dollars have been spent in the last decade creating mentoring and educational initiatives for black and brown boys, less than a million dollars has been given to the study of black and brown girls!
Several years ago, in line with the rise of the field of Girls Studies in academe, a group of students asked me to teach a course on Black Girls Studies. The number of books and scholarly articles barely added up to enough for a full course syllabus.
It’s amazing to me how many women are still invisible. And, it’s still amazing that we can’t seem to gain ground on any particular front. Here’s a bit from Robin Morgan that’s worth a read on dissent within the feminist ranks. She has some ground rules.
But I have standards, seasoned over 40 years of activism. I don’t waste time debating patriarchy’s defenders. I don’t practise or tolerate personal trashing. I don’t engage with faux feminists who, whether under the aegis of religious fiat or sexual libertarianism, refuse to understand that all women deserve full reproductive rights, all women deserve to love whomever they choose, all women deserve freedom from violence, poverty and illiteracy, that the buying and selling of any human being is slavery. Feminism is for all women and girls, not a privileged few or one ethnicity, religion, age, sexual preference, ability, region or hemisphere. Women born and raised on this fragile planet have more uniting us than dividing us – and it’s the job of feminists to help us realise that. Those are my standards.
Women are still universally treated like chattel.
Around 14 million girls, some as young as eight years old, will be married in 2014.
An estimated 1.2m children are trafficked into slavery each year; 80 per cent are girls.
In 10 countries around the world women are legally bound to obey their husbands
Only 76 countries have legislation that specifically addresses domestic violence – and just 57 of them include sexual abuse.
It makes me dizzy thinking that my 40 years as an activist really haven’t led to much change at all. I did find that there are a few places I can take refuge should I decide to move to a matriarchal society.
The Nagovisi community of South Bougainville, New Guinea is matrilineal with matriclans. The women of the Nagovisi holdpositions of authority and power, traditionally in regards to the cultivation of their gardens. These gardens are the woman’s sphere, and are inherited by daughters. The community is largely based on crop cultivation. With this control of the food, like sweet potatoes and coconuts, woman may remain independent and men are dependent on the women for that food.
The man eating the woman’s food is a symbol of their marriage, and if he were to stop, it would be a sign of divorce. Men typically move into the woman’s family for marriage, and the women are the breadwinners. Men take care of the clearing of the lands, but typically follow the instructions of the woman.
That sounds interesting!
Well, I suppose taking stock of something where progress depends on the very people that benefit from the status quo is a lot to hope for. Especially, when you look at the CPAC attendance and see how many women are willing to collaborate with the the worst of the worst.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today.
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