Tag Archives: OddBox

Family displacements through urban renewal

When “urban renewal” broke black families and businesses.

Hundreds of thousands of families were displaced in the 1950s under “urban renewal” programs. The families were disproportionately minorities. Renewing Inequality, from a research group at the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab, revisits the topic and how it reflects in the present.

Renewing Inequality presents a newly comprehensive vantage point on mid-twentieth-century America: the expanding role of the federal government in the public and private redevelopment of cities and the perpetuation of racial and spatial inequalities. It offers the most comprehensive and unified set of national and local data on the federal Urban Renewal program, a World War II-era urban policy that fundamentally reshaped large and small cities well into the 1970s.

Many of the people displaced never receive promised compensation or fair market value for their property, which is kind of messed up.

Learn.

Tags: family, urban

Punishment Sustains Patriarchy

Male self-delusion to get a pass for someone who supports what you support is as infinite as other self-delusions to justify making the world like you want it. Should Al Franken Resign

Punishment Sustains PatriarchyAl Franken the serial groper. Al Franken the scapegoat.

History proceeds clumsily. Innocent people — or “innocently guilty” people, like the junior senator from Minnesota — often get unfairly hung out to dry. Should he have to resign? As far as I can tell, his alleged sexual wrongdoings over the years consist of three butt grabs, several uninvited kisses, a breast grope and a waist squeeze.

There may be more, of course, and they add up to something beyond what could be called innocent mistakes or misunderstandings. An adolescent sense of entitlement seems to be at work here, but . . . this is the moral standard of a Congress open for purchase by corporate lobbyists? Who among us (Roy? Donald?) hasn’t committed transgressions worse than the above? And shouldn’t a person’s positive achievements be factored into the severity of his punishment, at least when no permanent damage has occurred?

Yet . . . yet . . .

We live in a deeply problematic and unfair world, but suddenly social awareness has solidified around the wrongness of sexual abuse, so much so that powerful men are feeling the sting of accountability for stupid and cruel behavior that until recently seemed consequence-free.

I get the outrage, which is a release of decades — centuries — of the hopeless despair of so many women, who have been powerless even to stop, let alone get justice for, sexual abuse, harassment, assault. We live in a deeply problematic and unfair world, but suddenly social awareness has solidified around the wrongness of sexual abuse, so much so that powerful men are feeling the sting of accountability for stupid and cruel behavior that until recently seemed consequence-free.

I get that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who has long stood up courageously against the sexual assault that permeates the U.S. military, led the way in calling for Franken to resign and calling for zero tolerance of all forms of sexual harassment.

But I also get the counter-outrage: the support for Franken (including “feminists for Franken”); the calls for him to reconsider his resignation; the outcry that zero tolerance for minor transgressions, sexual or otherwise, is morally simplistic and can quickly devolve into destructive self-righteousness that only makes matters worse; and the demand for some sort of due process, e.g., convening the Senate Ethics Committee to consider the accusations against Franken.

What’s clear is that this is a moment of social change. I believe we should value everyone who is a participant in it, willingly or otherwise. Real social change leaves no one out.

So . . . should Al Franken resign?

As Masha Gessen wrote last month in the New Yorker, “maybe ‘Should Al Franken resign?’ is the wrong question.

“The question frames the conversation in terms of retribution, but it is not possible to hold to account every man who has ever behaved disrespectfully and disgustingly toward a woman. Nor even every senator, or every comedian. And, even if it were possible to punish every single one of them, what would be accomplished? Punishment, especially when it is delayed, is not a very effective deterrent.

“. . . the real issue here,” she goes on to point out, is “the power imbalance that allows some men to take women hostage using sex. Franken, from what we know, was not such a man.”

Harvey Weinstein, on the other hand, held women sexually hostage with the power he wielded over their careers. So did Roger Ailes — and so many others. But even they, and all those who preceded them in such behavior, and worse, weren’t acting simply as bad individuals. They were acting in a social context. a.k.a., the patriarchy, in which male sexuality mattered more than female humanity.

Rape, indeed, was once a property crime. “The idea that rape is a crime against a woman, and specifically a crime against a woman’s body, is relatively new,” writes Emily Crockett at Vox. “For most of human history, rape has been treated as a property crime against a woman’s husband or father, since they effectively owned her.”

This is the horrific social context that has suddenly stopped coddling the tainted celebrities of the 21st century, some of whom have lost their careers because accusers have finally felt empowered to tell their stories. But for the most part the national conversation about it has not moved beyond the bad behavior of individual men and the need to punish them for what they did. I keep believing that we can move more deeply into the matter.

Consider, for instance, how the tiny indigenous village of Hollow Water, Manitoba, confronted, back in the 1980s, its own long-festering sex abuse problem, as described in Rupert Ross’s book Returning to the Teachings. The sex abuse was the hidden part of the problem, which manifested in alcoholism and various forms of violence, as well as the profound alienation of the community’s teenagers.

Inflicting punishment on the perpetrators of various crimes, the Western way, did nothing but further destabilize this fragile community. The situation became so desperate that a group of community members finally came together and started talking.

Several years ago, after I heard Ross and Burma Bushie, a resident of Hollow Water, speak at Des Moines University, I wrote : “And at the core of it all was the circle: the whole. They sat with one another in peace circles and talked with raw honesty. They sat with the injured and those who caused harm. As Ross put it, ‘Their definition of justice sounded more like our definition of healing.’ It was about healing, about reconnecting people with one another and their surroundings. The Hollow Water team had made lifelong commitments to heal their community and supplant the Western replacement legacy of punishment-based justice and welfare bureaucracies, which only intensified the wreckage.”

The global restorative justice movement emerged from indigenous communities, such as Hollow Water, beginning the process of healing themselves by reclaiming the tribal circle, which included truth-telling and forgiveness. Accountability is a far more difficult process to undergo than punishment, but it empowers everyone, both victim and perpetrator. Indeed, claiming accountability turns perpetrators into healers.

All of which brings me back to Al Franken, and why his resignation seems to accomplish little more than fueling the momentum of revenge. It further splinters the political culture but does nothing to set free its collective secrets.

And as long as punishment rules, the patriarchy remains intact.

Robert Koehler
PeaceVoice

The post Punishment Sustains Patriarchy appeared first on LA Progressive.

Trump as Balfour

Trump as Balfour

Trump as Balfour

Al-Junaidi arrested (Photo: Wisam Hashlamoun,)

In Hebron on December 7, over 20 Israeli soldiers arrested 14-year-old Fawzi Al-Junaidi, blindfolded him and marched him off to detention. The image of the arrest, the violence of it, startled many people. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan mentioned the arrest and said sharply: “Israel is a terrorist state. We will not abandon Jerusalem to the mercy of a child-murder state.”

Erdogan was referring to the renewed controversy over Jerusalem. On December 6, President Donald Trump declared that the United States would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. To move the embassy suggests that Israel’s capital is no longer to be Tel Aviv but Jerusalem. This action is against long-standing international policy, which sees Jerusalem as an “international city”—one that would be governed by various parties to protect the city’s special status as home to major religious sites of Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Trump’s statement on Jerusalem rattled Palestine, where the people have long worried about the seizure of East Jerusalem, which the United Nations deems to be part of Occupied Palestinian Territory, and the rest of the old city. Protests broke out in the West Bank, in Jerusalem and in the Gaza Strip. These were largely non-violent, a mirror of the frustration of the Palestinian people with the collapse of their national liberation project.

Dangerous escalation

On December 8, which was a Friday and therefore a day of prayer for Muslims, Israeli forces gathered in a show of force near the Al Aqsa mosque, revered by Muslims as the third holiest site in Islam. Prayers went on as usual in the mosque, although the tension on the streets was palpable. It provoked protests from Palestinians in the city, who marched in small groups chanting: “Jerusalem is ours, Jerusalem is our capital.”

Israeli forces descended upon the demonstrations with ferocity. Israeli troops on horseback galloped down Salah Eddin Street in the old city, scaring passers-by. The soldiers smashed up shops and arrested men, women and children. The Red Crescent said that about 800 Palestinians had been injured and a handful, mostly in Gaza, had been killed. Israeli forces used a combination of rubber bullets and live fire in the West Bank and Jerusalem and air strikes against Gaza. Two days later, on December 10, an Israeli military vehicle ran over a five-year-old Palestinian girl in the city of Hebron, perhaps the tensest city in Palestine.

It was in Hebron that 14-year-old Al-Junaidi was arrested and detained. His uncle said that the boy had gone out to get medicine and food for his family. This young boy cares for his father, who had undergone surgery recently. The incident moved the uncle to say: “We are the children of Palestine. Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine in the hearts and minds of our children. They will never be able to erase it.”

Wisam Hashlamoun, a Palestinian photojournalist, took the iconic picture of Al-Junaidi. About 50 Israeli soldiers attacked a group of Palestinian youths, Hashlamoun recounts. Al-Junaidi fell to the ground, sustaining a head wound. The soldiers “pulled him to his feet and encircled him”, which is the moment Hashlamoun photographed the boy. “It definitely didn’t occur to me that this photo would become a symbol,” Hashlamoun said. “I wanted to expose Israeli violence.”

Israeli state media concentrated on a few rockets fired into Israel from Gaza and the stabbing of an Israeli security guard at the entrance of Jerusalem’s bus station. These acts of violence were taken to justify the massive use of force by the Israelis against Palestinians—spurred on by Trump’s inflammatory declaration. It is inevitable that Palestinians will respond to the Israeli violence, which comes on top of the occupation that has lasted over 50 years. Little wonder that some Palestinians chanted: “We don’t need empty words. We need stones and Kalashnikovs.”

Many world leaders—from Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani—have called Trump’s statement a “dangerous escalation”. It will only create far more violence.

No wonder, too, that many world leaders—from Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani—have called Trump’s statement a “dangerous escalation”. It will only create far more violence. The European Union and the U.N. have roundly condemned Trump’s statement.

Jerusalem as emblem

In 1947, the U.N. passed Resolution 181 which placed Jerusalem under the administration of the U.N. It was to be a city governed by a “special international regime”. The countries of the world recognised Jerusalem as a special place, precious to the major Abrahamic religions and located in the midst of tensions between the new state of Israel, exiled and occupied Palestinians and the neighbouring Arab states.

Over the years, the U.N. Security Council has voted seven times to condemn the Israeli 1980 Basic Jerusalem Law, which claims the city as the “eternal and indivisible” capital of Israel. The first of these resolutions, 478 in 1980, was passed unanimously, with an abstention from the U.S. But even former (and late) U.S. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie suggested that Jerusalem was a unique city. “We must share a common vision of that ancient city’s future—an undivided Jerusalem, with free access to the holy places for peoples of all faiths.” At the same time, the U.S. held that it had the right to have its embassy in Jerusalem. Any instruction from the U.N. to move its embassy, Muskie said in 1980, would not be binding.

The tone in the Security Council in 1980 was strongly against an Israeli annexation of Jerusalem. Pakistan’s then Ambassador to the U.N., Naiz A. Naik, said that as international pressure mounted against Israel, it had “revived with increased vigour the obsessive Zionist scheme to Judaise the Holy City of Jerusalem by destroying its historical personality and turning it into ‘the eternal capital of Israel’”. Israel’s then Ambassador to the U.N., Yehuda Zvi Blum, responded that Jerusalem had been the capital of Israel from its origin and that Israel would not honour any U.N. approach to the city. “Israel will not allow Jerusalem to become another Berlin,” Blum said, “with all that implies not only for the welfare of its citizens but also for international peace and security.”

Israel, with U.S. backing, ignored the U.N. It would, over the course of these past 50 years, gradually annex pieces of Jerusalem and weaken the Palestinian hold on the city. Land grabs in East Jerusalem came alongside the encroachment of Jewish settlers into and the expansion of the Jewish quarter in the old city. The attrition of Palestinian space in the city included the operation to destroy the Mamilla Cemetery, a site of immense importance for Palestinian history (“Grave Silence”, Frontline, February 21, 2014).

‘No, Mr Trump’

A week after Trump’s declaration, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence and former Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., wrote a stinging open letter to him. “No, Mr Trump,” he wrote, “Jerusalem is not Israel’s capital.” His letter is a rebuke to Trump. “If you want to rectify your misbegotten and cavalier act,” he wrote, “you can issue a statement recognising the Palestinian state and its capital in East Jerusalem. Otherwise, forget whatever sweet words you blandish at us. Native inhabitants of what is called America have coined the phrase, ‘White man speaks with forked tongue’. We have known that phrase since 1917.” That this comes from the heart of the Saudi establishment says a great deal about the tensions in the region. Many suggest that Saudi Arabia is preparing a public diplomatic opening to Israel, although Trump’s action might have ended that possibility.

From Beirut, Lebanon, Syed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, called Trump’s statement the Second Balfour Declaration. The first Balfour Declaration was made by the then imperial power, Britain. It promised to seize Palestinian land and give it to European Jewish settlers; this would be an antidote to European anti-Semitism. Trump’s declaration, by the current imperial power, gives Israelis carte blanche to seize more Palestinian land. In both cases, Nasrallah said, no one spoke to the Palestinians. It is for this reason that Nasrallah called for an intifada—an uprising, the Third Intifada.

Trump’s inflammatory decision came just before he signed an extension that allowed the U.S. embassy to remain in Tel Aviv. The U.S. embassy will not move to Jerusalem for at least six months, when Trump will again have to revisit the twice-annual ritual in the U.S. for the President to sign this extension. It is unlikely that the U.S. will actually move its embassy.

This seems more dangerous theatre than anything else. It is another of Trump’s mischievous political acts; he pleases his base, including conservative Christian evangelicals, and he creates news.

Meanwhile, in Palestine, children like Al-Junaidi suffer. It has been their lot for decades.

Vijay Prashad
CounterPunch

The post Trump as Balfour appeared first on LA Progressive.

Nine Rows of Ribbons!

Military Grade Inflation

Military Grade Inflation

He may need a bigger chest for all those ribbons

General Robert Neller, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, is in the news since he told Marines to get ready for a big fight.  This doesn’t really alarm me.  A military exists to be ready to fight, and the Marines place a premium on combat readiness.  No — what bothers me is the nine rows of ribbons General Neller is sporting on his uniform.

He may need a bigger chest for all those ribbons

And compared to the other services (Army, Navy, and Air Force), the Marines are usually the most reluctant to hand out ribbons freely.

Our military is suffering from rampant grade inflation. We are giving ourselves far too many trophies. When even the Marines fall prey to ribbon and medal proliferation, it’s not a good sign for future combat effectiveness.

I wrote about this back in 2007: why medals and metrics in the U.S. military mislead. A big offender back then was General David Petraeus, whose uniform was festooned with ribbons and badges of all kinds, most of them of the “been there” rather than “done that” variety.

When I was a lieutenant in the Air Force, circa 1987, I took part in a random survey in which I was asked, “What one change would you make to military practices,” or some such question. My answer was to get rid of all the “everyman” ribbons, the meaningless awards and medals that made a sergeant’s or captain’s uniform in 1987 look like that of General George Patton’s in 1945.

You can see how much my recommendation made a great impact on today’s military!

Seriously, though, our military is suffering from rampant grade inflation. We are giving ourselves far too many trophies. When even the Marines fall prey to ribbon and medal proliferation, it’s not a good sign for future combat effectiveness.

Military uniforms should not look like overdecorated Christmas trees.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone!

WJ Astore
Bracing Views

The post Nine Rows of Ribbons! appeared first on LA Progressive.

Li Yang


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404 NOT FOUND

Li Yang 李扬 was born in 1984 in a desert city called 404. Located in the Gobi desert in Western China, this city is nowhere to be found on any map. 404 was built in the 1950s, when China initiated its first nuclear weapons testing.

“404 was the first and the largest nuclear technology research base supporting nuclear bomb projects in China,” explained Li. “During its days, there were about 50,000 people living in this city. Just like other cities, it had all governmental departments — bureau of public security, of land, of public education and Intermediate People’s Court, etc. However, as opposed to other cities, the residential area of 404 was only 1 square kilometre. When the city was built, elites from all around the country were selected to move to 404. At that time, the city had the best nuclear scientists, technicians, chefs, teachers, and doctors.”

“I am the third generation of 404, and every scene in this series is related to my own experience. The scenes include my kindergarten, my primary school which was the same school my parents graduated from, our weekly public bathroom which was also an important social place for local people.” Li had to leave his hometown to attend college in Beijing. When he came back with his camera in 2014, he attempted to capture the contradictions between abandoned yet familiar empty places filled with memories.

Li graduated from China’s Southwest University of Science and Technology, majoring in Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HAVC) in 2007. Between 2007 and 2013, he designed the HAVC system of the nuclear power station in the China Nuclear Power Engineering Co., Ltd. Since 2013 he has been working as a freelance photographer based in Beijing. His photographic series “404 NOT FOUND” won the Best Photography Award at the 7th Dali International Photography Exhibition.

More information: liyangphoto.com

Dominique Darbois


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— Written by Françoise Denoyelle

Dominique Darbois (1925-2014) was the daughter of a major specialist of Asian arts and a novelist. She participated in the Free French Forces during the Second World War in 1941. Being a member of the resistance and Jewish, she was arrested and imprisoned at the Drancy camp for two years. In 1944, she continued to fight against the occupiers and received the Resistance Medal. In 1945 France was liberated and Darbois left for Indochina via Shanghai. Although she was only twenty, she had already lived several lives. After the war ended, she came back to France and became the assistant of the French photographer Pierre Jahan, which prompted her career as a photographer.

In 1951, she organized an expedition to Amazonia and Guyana with Francis Mazière and Wladimir Ivanov, from which originated four publications: “Parana le petit Indien” (1952), “Les Indiens d’Amazonie” (1954), “Mission Tumuc-Humac” (1954), “Yanamalé village of the Amazon”. The first publication was translated into eight languages. She then began the collection “Enfants du monde” [Children of the world], a series of twenty volumes containing images and texts by Darbois herself. This collection offered a world tour not from an ethnographic standpoint but rather as a photographer committed to meet children in a world where not everyone was born equal. She surveyed over fifty countries.

If she spent only a few days in Mongolia in 1957, she actually stayed much longer in China during the Hundred Flowers period [during which the Communist Party encouraged its citizens to openly express their opinions of the communist regime]. Thanks to the French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson – who photographed the last days of the political party Kuomintang in 1949 – she obtained a visa only a few people would get at that time. She accompanied an archaeological expedition that led her to photograph the Maijishan Grottoes in Gansu province as well as the Gobi Desert. She captured daily life in both cities and the countryside, while seizing traditions: acrobatics, games of chance, operas, puppets shows… and the new oil refineries around Lanzhou, oil wells around Yumen, political posters, and even the lives of prisoners in labour camps.

In 1960 she published “Les Algériens en guerre” [Algerian at war]. She completed reportage on the maquis and the training camps of the National Liberation Front [the socialist political party in Algeria] in Tunisia. This reportage was forbidden in France. Darbois was interested in the moving world and in ancient civilizations. She published “Kaboul, le passé confisqué. Trésors du musée de Kaboul, 1931-1965” [Kabul, the confiscated past. Treasures of the Kabul Museum, 1931-1965] (2002).

While she could have put aside her cameras, started to manage her archives, once again she committed herself to women in France and in Africa. She published then “Afrique, terre de femmes” [Africa, land of women] (2004) and “Terre d’enfants” [Children’s Land] (2004), with a text written by Pierre Amrouche. This was her ultimate work.

Dominique Darbois donated her whole archive to the French scholar and historian of photography Françoise Denoyelle. Since then, Denoyelle has been compiling an exhaustive inventory and started to document Darbois’ life and career. Due to the diversity and the richness of the primary material, this study of Darbois’ oeuvre will require several years of research and will be turned into exhibitions, articles and publications.  

Unexplainable Photos of Freddie Mercury Riding on Superman’s Shoulders in Queen Concerts in 1979

Freddie is being carried by “The Man of Steel” Superman while performing “We Will Rock You” in Queen concerts during Crazy Tour in November and December 1979.

After the release of the single “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, the band decided to change the concert dynamic they used to do the last years. In this tour Queen would revisit smaller venues, many which held fewer than two thousand seats.

The Crazy Tour is generally considered by fans to be Queen’s strongest tour they ever did in terms of performance quality.

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