ihya:
Cultural Cleansing in Iraq
Why Museums Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered
by Raymond W. Baker, Shereen T. Ismael, Tareq Y. IsmaelWhy did the invasion of Iraq result in cultural destruction and killings of intellectuals? Convention sees accidents of war and poor planning in a campaign to liberate Iraqis. The authors argue instead that the invasion aimed to dismantle the Iraqi state to remake it as a client regime.
Post-invasion chaos created conditions under which the cultural foundations of the state could be undermined. The authors painstakingly document the consequences of the occupiers’ willful inaction and worse, which led to the ravaging of one of the world’s oldest recorded cultures. Targeted assassination of over 400 academics, kidnapping and the forced flight of thousands of doctors, lawyers, artists and other intellectuals add up to cultural cleansing. This important work lays to rest claims that the invasion aimed to free an educated population to develop its own culture of democracy.
I recommend this to anyone who hasn’t read it yet. It’s an eye opener.
The only thing cuter than a sloth is a pygmy sloth
20 miles off the coast of Panama in Central America there’s a tiny island that’s home to a unique species of tiny sloths. The pygmy sloths of Escudo Island, Panama have evolved in isolation and shrunk to about half the size of the normal three-fingered sloths found on the mainland. They live in the mangrove swamps where they’re fond of eating a vine that is known to have similar properties to Valium. So they don’t just look stoned, they are stoned. For thousands of years these mellow midgets have hung out on their paradise island, free from predators. But a recent scientific expedition has revealed that there are now less than 100 sloths left as their mangrove home is being destroyed and local fishermen have taken to killing the slow moving stoners and eating them! They urgently need your help so please click here to donate a few pennies to help the unique evolutionary treasure that is dwarf sloth island.
Students in Quebec were asked to send the cops the route of their march. Here is what they replied with.
vive quebec :)
PROBLEM: Women’s bare bodies are on display in billboards, movie posters, and many other kinds of ads. Though plenty of studies have looked at the ramifications of this pervasive sexual objectification, it’s unclear if we see near-naked people as human beings or if we really do view them as mere objects.
METHODOLOGY: Researchers led by Philippe Bernard presented participants pictures of men and women in sexualized poses, wearing a swimsuit or underwear, one by one on a computer screen. Since pictures of people present a recognition problem when they’re turned upside down, but images of objects don’t have that problem, some of the photos were presented right side up and others upside down. After each picture, there was a second of black screen before each participant was shown two images and was asked to choose the one that matched the one he or she had just seen.
RESULTS: The male and female subjects matched the photos similarly. They recognized right-side-up men better than upside-down men, suggesting that they saw the sexualized men as persons. On the contrary, the women in underwear weren’t any harder to recognize when they appeared upside down, indicating that the sexy women were consistently identified as objects.
CONCLUSION: People objectify women in sexualized photos, but not men.
SOURCE: The full study, “Integrating Sexual Objectification With Object Versus Person Recognition: The Sexualized-Body-Inversion Hypothesis,” is published in the journal Psychological Science.
Could we all take a minute and reflect on how brilliant this experiment design was? I’m sure there is a lot to discuss regarding methodology and implications—but for just a second, let’s admire an extremely clever study.
With Nurture Studies, Diana Scherer presents an archive of flowers she has grown from seed over a six-month period. Rather than letting the flowers grow in open soil, she has forced each plant to develop within the confines of a vase. Only at the end of the process does she remove the plant’s corset, exposing roots that retain their shape as an evocation of the now absent vase.
(via reysayshey)
“I am neither a fanatic nor a dreamer. I am a black man who loves peace, and justice, and loves his people.”
—El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (الحاجّ مالك الشباز) | Malcolm X
Happy Birthday!
(via itsallreallyverysmall)
(Source: jabius, via itsallreallyverysmall)
The House of Representatives defeated a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 that would have required those detained in the United States to be tried in civilian courts. The amendment was supported by more liberal Democrats and more libertarian Republicans. The most prominent opposition to the amendment came from the rest of the Republicans.
Many of my more libertarian friends are at least as outraged as I am over current U.S. law involving detention. And it’s nice to see some principled Republicans breaking party lines on this one. But … I think we need to be clear on how the party lines are drawn.
- Nineteen Republicans opposed indefinite detention. Two hundred and nineteen supported it. On the Democratic side, the numbers were flipped. Nineteen opposed the amendment and one hundred sixty-three supported it. In other words, the Democrats overwhelmingly supported it and a few libertarians-leaning Republicans joined them. If you’re voting party-line Republican, this is one of the things your guys are supporting.
- The Obama administration has threatened to veto the law over concerns about the detainee provisions. We can anticipate that the administration will do the same thing it’s done in the past with veto threats. Specifically, Obama will get some better-than-nothing concessions and grudgingly sign the bill. It’s fine to be disappointed if the concessions aren’t enough—but if you end up voting for Romney, you’re voting for the guy who won’t even ask for that much.
- The judge who recently declared a portion of the 2012 NDAA unconstitutional was an Obama appointee. The judge the Republicans would appoint is likely to have a much more expansive view of executive power. (Yes, even applies to a judge Ron Paul would appoint. Unless Paul takes a personal interest in the judicial philosophy of every appointee, his role in selecting judges to be appointed likely gets delegated to the hangers-on. In other words, you get a run-of-the-mill conservative jurist.)
