Whitewash, Workin’ at the Whitewaaaaash…

Rumi

CREDIT: Wikipedia, KGC-03/STAR MAX/IPx/AP.

The lack of diversity in Hollywood isn’t exactly news to many — but the creators of an upcoming film about the 13th century Sufi poet Rumi clearly aren’t getting it.

David Franzoni, an American screenwriter who worked on the film Gladiator, and producer Stephen Joel Brown told the Guardian that they hoped their upcoming film about Rumi would challenge the stereotypical portrayals of Muslims in Hollywood.

But for the two lead characters — Rumi, and his spiritual adviser, Shams of Tabriz — they said they were hoping to get Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey, Jr., respectively. “This is the level of casting that we’re talking about,” said Brown, apparently seeing no irony in believing that whitewashing a film will help dismantle stereotypes.

[…]

As many on social media rightly pointed out, one thing about Rumi’s life, then, is clear: He wasn’t white.

Rumi1

Rumi2

While Hollywood has long taken an interest in other parts of the world, it hasn’t done enough to make sure that the people from those regions get a chance to tell the story. Lead roles have been whitewashed in many movies about the Middle East, including Gods of Egypt starring Gerard Butler, Prince of Persia starring Jake Gyllenhaal, and Exodus: Gods and Kings starring Christian Bale. The full list of movies that have been similarly cast with white actors — despite the characters clearly being of other backgrounds — is far too long, but recent examples include Aloha, Ghost in the Shell, and Doctor Strange, among many, many more.

As ThinkProgress has previously reported, there is a serious lack of opportunity for non-white actors in Hollywood. When it comes to Muslim and Middle Eastern actors specifically, they’re often typecast into roles such as “Terrorist #4” — making it that much worse when a lead role they can actually play is given to a white actor instead.

In an in-depth GQ interview with some of the most famous Middle Eastern actors — like Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed, and Sayed Badreya — Jon Ronson found that pretending to hijack planes and kill infidels were usually the only roles available. As Ronson noted, the lack of opportunity is so warped that many of the actors actually have tips for how to stand out at terrorist auditions.

“If I’m going in for the role of a nice father, I’ll talk to everybody,” Badreya told GQ. “But if you’re going for a terrorist role, don’t fucking smile at all those white people sitting there. Treat them like shit. The minute you say hello, you break character.”

“But it’s smart at the end of the audition to break it,” clarified Hrach Titizian, an actor who appeared on Homeland. “‘Oh, thanks, guys.’ So they know it’s okay to have you on set for a couple of weeks.”

Oh, but we’re post racist, you betcha! :Insert an enormous, spine-popping eyeroll here: If the casting of this movie goes as planned, I certainly won’t be watching it. I have never been a fan of DiCaprio, it’s a mystery to me what people see in him, the most I can elicit is a meh. Having read a fair amount of Rumi’s work, I would love a movie about him and his life if it was done well, and doing it well includes accuracy. That leaves Hollywood out.

Full Story at ThinkProgress.

Roots of Orlando Massacre Run Deep.

seminole-war-in-everglades

The tragedy that occurred in Orlando in the early morning hours of June 12 did not begin a year ago, or a decade ago. Its historical roots go back almost 200 years, to the tragedies that occurred in the swamps of Florida, when the U.S. Army forcibly removed the Indigenous Peoples from the area.

Today, America is indisputably a nation of civilian gun owners, and a major reason for that is those very Seminole Wars. The NRA estimates there are 300 million guns in the hands of everyday citizens, and the argument that often justifies that extraordinary number is the “right to bear arms” contained in the Bill of Rights.

Pamela Haag, author of The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture disputes that. She writes, “We became a gun culture not because the gun was symbolically intrinsic to Americans or special to our identity, or because the gun was something exceptional in our culture, but precisely because it was not… It was like a buckle or a pin, an unexceptional object of commerce.”

In 1837, during the very early days of the transition from the art of gunsmithing to the mass production of firearms, Samuel Colt advertised his “Patent Repeating Rifle” in the New York Courier and Enquirer, with little result. The average citizen did not need multi-firing arms and was not willing to pay extra for them, according to a gun expert quoted by Haag.

Then Colt decided to hawk the repeaters to the U.S. military. Having failed to gain the support of the head of the Army’s Ordinance Department, he took his product directly to field officers. Specifically, to officers engaged in the Seminole Wars in the Florida Everglades.

A precursor to excess military equipment being dumped into cops shops all over uStates, and amped up departments to justify said military equipment.

One Col. William S. Harney, sent by President Andrew Jackson to Florida to wrest control of the land from the Seminoles, was losing, in part because the Seminoles had observed that the soldiers were defenseless when they were reloading their single-shot weapons. In 1835, the Seminoles defeated the U.S. Army in what was one of the military’s biggest defeats in the Indian Wars. The Dade Battle left more than 100 Army troops on the battlefield; reportedly only three of the force survived.

Colt himself delivered 500 rifles and a few pistols to Harney in St. Augustine in 1838. Harney defeated the Seminoles, writing later, “I honestly believe that but for these arms, the Indians would now be luxuriating in the everglades of Florida,” instead of having been forced marched to Oklahoma.

The Second Seminole War was fought near what are now the cities of Tampa, Ocala and Bushnell in Central Florida. Ocala and Bushnell are just north of Orlando.

Colt’s new invention – the repeating rifle – won Andrew Jackson’s bloody war against the Indians in Florida.

[…]

That means several million people have paid from $400 to $2,500 to own a kind of rifle – a repeater rifle – that has been linked to tragedy for almost 200 years in U.S. history.

We’ve ceased to be a blood-soaked nation. We’re a nation with blood overflowing. It has to stop.

Full article at ICTMN.

Targeting Women.

Joseph-Backholm-1024x592

I first read about this several days ago, when it wasn’t well known, and people weren’t terribly sure if this was a real deal or not. Unfortunately, it’s a real deal.

Conservatives in Washington are currently collecting signatures for a referendum to overturn the state’s transgender protections. It is a measure that rivals North Carolina’s HB2 in the way it targets transgender people for discrimination. And now its proponents are encouraging men to follow women into their bathrooms to get their signatures.

Joseph Backholm, director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington (FPIW), is leading the signature collection process for what has been labeled “Initiative 1515.” In recordings anonymously delivered to the Gender Justice League of Seattle, Backholm can be heard encouraging male petitioners to camp out near women’s restrooms, ask women for their signatures, then follow them into the restroom if they don’t agree to sign.

At one meeting on April 27, Backholm can be heard giving various tips to petitioners, such as going to places like retirement communities, where the residents are all registered voters who are excited to have visitors. “For gentlemen,” he then suggested, “what I would encourage you to do, if you are so bold and you want to make the point, take your petitions and stand outside the women’s restroom at the mall, and if any of the women don’t want to sign it, just go ahead and follow ’em on in [laughter from crowd]. ‘Maybe this will be a better time to sign our little petition’, and we can make the point that way.”

[…]

At a May 10 event, Backholm made the suggestion one more time, claiming that he and another petitioner were going to enter a women’s spa together — naked — and, “We’re gonna tell the ladies, ‘If you don’t think we should be here, you need to sign our petition.’ And we think that would be wildly successful.”

Confronted with the recordings by KIRO 7, Backholm refused to comment. King County Sheriff John Urquhart, on the other hand, had no problem confirming that anybody who follows Backholm’s suggestion will be arrested.

And rightfully so. Backholm’s contention, as he makes constantly evident in his public remarks — including the above podcast — is that Washington state’s gender identity protections allow this kind of bathroom intrusion by anybody. That conclusion is based solely on rejecting that transgender women are women and that transgender men are men.

[…]

The notion that transgender protections allow men to enter women’s restrooms has — to this point — been an invented hypothetical that has never actually happened. Backholm and the I-1515 campaign are now trying to actually create that problem in real life for the sole purpose of scaring people into voting against transgender equality.

The campaign opposing I-1515, Washington Won’t Discriminate, is now calling for Backholm to lose his job for “inciting others to commit crimes and putting voters in danger.”

Now is the time for people to be very good citizens. If you see one of these asshats hanging around a public lav, call the cops. Report them every single time. Multiple reports would be even better. Anywhere you see these bigots, report them. Use the current law against them, and it will be an excellent demonstration that existing laws are more than sufficient, there’s no need for their added on hate against transgender people.

Via ThinkProgress.

The Daily Bird #27

From Lofty:

Saw these Little Corellas canoodling, eating and bickering in a city park today. Often they congregate in their thousands on the open grassy areas around dusk but I didn’t have my camera along a few days ago. They are easily spooked into wheeling clouds of screeching featherbrains. These I caught by zooming in from the bike path trying to not make any unusual noise or sudden movements.

They are gorgeous! Click for full size.

1corellas

2corellas

© Lofty. All rights reserved.

There will also be a 21 Bow and Arrow Salute.

I thought of Arlington National Cemetery. Would they allow this young man to “play through” there? (David Rooks)

I thought of Arlington National Cemetery. Would they allow this young man to “play through” there? (David Rooks)

That was the last line in a post about remembering those buried at Hiawatha Asylum. The ceremonies and remembrances were carried out early this month, but there is a weight of unbearable sadness. Not just over the crime of locking people up in the asylum. Not just over the maltreatment of those locked up in the asylum. Not just the terrible weight of grief borne by those who suffered the poisonous touch of the asylum. Yet another weight is the ever ongoing disrespect shown to Indigenous people across Turtle Island. Where are the dead of Hiawatha Asylum? In between the fourth and fifth fairways of the Hiawatha Golf Club course. Golfers waited to play through while the 21 Arrow salute took place.

Sunday morning, June 5, this hallowed ground was fairly warm by 10 a.m. Standing by the lone granite marker, whose bronze plaque carries the names of 120 of those buried somewhere close beneath it, I heard a soft rustle behind me. Ten feet west of the split rails stood a young man with a golf club who appeared to be waiting, more or less patiently. Lying in front of him was a golf ball.

I exited the cemetery on the west side and stopped by a tree. After a few practice swings, the young man approached his ball and then struck it. It skittered beneath the rail, through the cemetery, and out the east end, headed for the fourth green. I thought of Arlington National Cemetery. Would they allow this young man to “play through” there? I then thought of the mass burial site at Wounded Knee, and how nice it would be if it were surrounded by Hiawatha’s manicured lawns and lush and well-pruned trees. But not if it came with golfers.

[…]

Before the salute, Dr. Erich Longie, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Spirit Lake Dakota Sioux Tribe in Spirit Lake, North Dakota spoke. Longie reminded everyone that it is the nature of tribal peoples to keep their ancestors with them always; in their hearts, their minds, and their prayers. Longie also pledged to go back to Spirit Lake and see if he could get his tribe to help fund the purchase and construction of a new fence around the cemetery.

Given the golfer earlier that morning, Longie’s pledge seemed timely.

At the close of the ceremony, a 21-arrow salute was given by an archery team of students from Nebraska Indian Community College.

At the close of the ceremony, a 21-arrow salute was given by an archery team of students from Nebraska Indian Community College.

David Rooks has an excellent 2 page article about the ceremony, and about Hiawatha Asylum: A 21-Arrow Salute: ‘Come See the Crazy Indians’

Four More Heads.

Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. This front page of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper ran with portraits of 11 Modoc Indians, who ended up as federal prisoners.

Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
This front page of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper ran with portraits of 11 Modoc Indians, who ended up as federal prisoners.

The four Modocs dangling from the gallows at Fort Klamath, Oregon, on October 3, 1873, had barely been cut down when the ghoulish souvenir-taking started. Soldiers auctioned off a hank of hair shorn from the head of Modoc leader Kientpoos (a.k.a. Captain Jack) to fit the noose around his neck, and they sold unraveled gallows rope for $5 a strand. Thomas Cabaniss, a physician from nearby Yreka, California, who had worked for the army during the Modoc War, claimed two halters. Other spectators snatched pieces and parts from the gallows. Meanwhile, in a nearby tent, military medical officer Henry McElderry was taking the army’s share of hanging-day mementos.

This image of Kientpoos (Captain Jack) was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

This image of Kientpoos (Captain Jack) was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

In 1868, George Otis Alexander, then assistant surgeon general of the United States Army, circulated an order among military physicians requiring them to help the Army Medical Museum’s effort to build its collection of Native crania. The museum had already amassed 143 skulls and wanted to add more.

“The chief purpose … in forming this collection,” Alexander explained, “is to aid in the progress of anthropological science by obtaining measurements of a large number of skulls of aboriginal races of North America.”

The official purpose for collecting Indian skulls was comparative study of racial differences. George A. Otis, MD, of the Army Medical Museum, after studying the “osteological peculiarities” of the skulls collected up to 1870, announced that America’s Native peoples “must be assigned a lower position in the human scale than has been believed heretofore.” Lewis Henry Morgan, a pioneering physical anthropologist who had sought unsuccessfully to be appointed Indian Affairs commissioner, wrote that Native Americans “have the skulls and brains of barbarians, and must grow toward civilization.” Thus did the crude, pseudo-Darwinist science of the time support herding Natives on to reservations to learn English and farming.

This image of Black Jim was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

This image of Black Jim was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

Army doctors in Indian country could augment the collection by gathering skulls and forwarding them to Washington and the Army Medical Museum. Accurate statistical analysis required as many specimens as possible: “… it is chiefly desired to procure sufficiently large series of adult crania of the principal Indian tribes to furnish accurate average estimates. Medical officers will enhance the value of their contributions by transmitting with the specimens the fullest attainable memoranda, specifying the locality where the skulls were derived, the presumed age and sex….”

The army’s medical officers responded enthusiastically, swelling the collection to more than 1,000 skulls by the time of the Fort Klamath hangings. Some remains came from ancient burial sites, such as the mounds of the eastern United States, others from tribal cemeteries captured during military operations. Epidemics were a boon for the collectors, since, besides felling Indians in droves, they tore apart Native societies and made it difficult for survivors to protect their dead against white grave robbers. And then there were the many battles and executions.

modoc-war-heller-boston-charley

This image of Boston Charley was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

Military medical officers enjoyed easy access to all these opportunities. Plus, they had the surgical skills to dissect away soft tissues and prepare heads for boiling in water or steeping in quicklime to leave only the bare bone the Army Medical Museum wanted.

The Army Medical Museum collection had grown to 2,206 skulls by 1898, when it was turned over to the Smithsonian Institution. The collection had fallen into disuse as academic anthropologists adopted different modes of study, and the museum no longer wanted to maintain it. Almost a century later, the skulls became part of the more than 6,000 individual human remains offered for repatriation by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of Natural History through federal legislation passed in the 1980s and 1990s. The Modoc skulls were among the remains repatriated.

Despite the federal government’s latter-day efforts to make this wrong right, the Army Medical Museum’s collection marks the United States as the only national government ever to officially use warfare to collect human skulls.

This image of Schonchin was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

This image of Schonchin was among those taken by Louis Herman Heller during and after The Modoc War. (Housed at: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

Full Story at ICTMN. And before anyone tsks, shakes their head and murmurs, thank goodness we’re past that now, we aren’t. We’re currently surrounded by so called ‘race realists’ and white nationalists who think this is great science, and we should probably do more of this sort of thing. Don’t go dismissing it, everyone thinks it can’t happen to them.

The Art of Marketing Guns.

This Bushmaster ad ran in Maxim magazine, according to Mother Jones (Bushmaster)

This Bushmaster ad ran in Maxim magazine, according to Mother Jones (Bushmaster)

While large ad agencies these days shy away from working for gun manufacturers, it turns out that they have a little secret to boosting sales. Gun manufacturers obviously and openly pander to toxic masculinity, appealing to every lousy, dangerous trope out there, shamelessly amping up male insecurity and fostering the idea that one can be a manly man if you just get yourself unnecessarily armed to the teeth. And of course, women can be a womanly woman right alongside their manly men, guns for all!

To entice potential customers to purchase its high-powered assault rifle, Bushmaster, one of America’s largest gun manufacturers, uses the slogan “Justice for All.’’ Its print ads tell prospective buyers: “Consider your man card reissued.” Sig Sauer, another major gun manufacturer, advertises its MCX rifle in a dramatic video of a single shooter, calling the gun the “start of a new era.”

In the wake of the massacre at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida, many politicians are demanding stricter gun laws. But a lot less attention is focused on the marketing tactics of American gun manufacturers, who can — unlike cigarette and alcohol companies — legally and freely market their products with little to no regulation.

“If you look at the gun industry’s advertising today, it’s militarized,” says Josh Sugarmann, the founder and executive director of the Violence Policy Center, an American nonprofit organization that advocates for gun control. “It’s focused on two things: assault weapons and high-capacity semi-automatic pistols.”

I was a around for the major societal shift and restrictions on tobacco and alcohol advertising. Those were considered to be good and necessary restrictions, but once again, it seems guns are exempt.

Ever since the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, put assault weapons back in the spotlight, the amount of money spent on gun advertising has increased dramatically. From 2012 to 2013, the amount spent by five of the largest assault weapons manufacturers on advertising their own brands leapt more than 33 percent, according to Kantar Media data.

Remington’s ad spending nearly doubled, from $740,000 to more than $1.4 million in those years; Sig Sauer’s soared from just $30,000 to $230,000, according to Kantar.

Source: Kantar Media Get the data.

Source: Kantar Media Get the data.

Regardless of who’s writing the copy or executing the campaigns, these manufacturers are hardly reliant on ad strategy to drive sales; Smith & Wesson pulled in more than $551 million in revenue last year, thanks mostly to a dedicated, enthusiastic population of loyal gun buyers.

“If you focus on manufacturer advertising, you are missing the larger picture,” Terrence Witkowski, a professor at California State University, Long Beach, who has studied the visual language of gun culture. “American gun culture is a form of consumer culture where much influence flows from the grassroots, bottom up, not top down.”

The sad truth is tragedies like the ones in Orlando or Newtown are actually their own best advertising. While most gun manufacturers will never admit it, the demonization that is rained down on their products is good for business, as sales boom in the aftermath.

In 1993, reports that the weapon used in a mass shooting in San Francisco was a Tec-9 set off waves of people condemning the gun. To Intratec, the gun’s manufacturer, those howls of anger were music to its ears.

“I’m kind of flattered,” Mike Solo, Intratec’s marketing and sales director, told the New York Times. “It just has that advertising tingle to it. Hey, it’s talked about, it’s read about, the media write about it. That generates more sales for me. It might sound cold and cruel, but I’m sales oriented.”

“I’m sales oriented”. Yeah, who cares about all those dead people, there are sales to be made.

Via Raw Story.

Democrats’ Filibuster on Gun Control.

Chris Murphy.

Chris Murphy.

There’s a glimmer of hope that the tiniest shred of gun control legislation might pass the Senate in response to the Orlando shooting that left 49 people dead.

After nearly 15 hours of talking on the Senate floor, the filibuster held by Democrats on Wednesday and into the early hours of Thursday has apparently been a success, and there will be two votes on gun control measures.

The two ideas — stopping people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns, and requiring background checks even when someone purchases a gun online or at a gun show instead of in a store — will be allowed votes by the full Senate, Democrats say.

“We chose to ask for the two least controversial provisions possible that will still do a world of good,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, home to the Newtown mass shooting that killed 20 children and six adults. He spoke from the Senate floor and announced Republicans had agreed “on a path to get those votes.”

With the Senate controlled by Republicans, it’s essentially up to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on whether any piece of legislation gets a vote. So Democrats, led by Murphy, filibustered an existing funding bill, called the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bill. It worked, and now they must focus on winning enough votes to pass the laws.

“Least controversial provisions”. I can’t get past that, nor can I muster up even a tiny bit of hope. Yes, this might help, a teeny, tiny bit, if these actually make it through, but I am so fucking sick and tired of every single sensible person in uStates feeling the need to walk on tiptoes on eggshells, so as not to upset all the gun fetishists. FFS, wouldn’t this normally be called terrorism, where people are scared to death of those with weapons? A good portion of uStates is being held hostage, and nothing is going to be done, unless it’s a tiny, marginally effective sop.

Full Story Here.