Crow posted:

Its good shit my dude. Planning to sell my car tomorrow and move to the most expensive city in the world, NYC, so I can attend iso meetings to make iso hash (??? Not quite sure what Trotskyism is yet..)

are you really moving to NYC.

Crow posted:

Yea i am, i need a "Radical" change in my life

here's some tips for living in new york city:

1. there is no god but god and muhammad is his messenger.
2. pray five times a day.
3. give alms to the needy.
4. take a pilgrimage to mecca if possible.
5. fast during the lunar month of ramadan.

Yet the executives at PBS apparently decided that, on the eve of the 2012 election, American viewers must be reminded of the true path to global freedom. So on the first two days of October, Nicholas Kristof’s fiercely neoliberal series Half the Sky reprised the tried-and-true Friedman formula, in content, form, and financing. Kristof, a lauded op-ed columnist for the New York Times, might seem at first blush an unlikely standard-bearer for the Friedman televisual tradition—but that is exactly the point. After three decades of steady high-market consensus in American culture and politics, the formerly doctrinaire libertarian Friedman and the putatively pragmatic liberal Kristof are now advancing the same policy objectives. The bestselling book on which the series is based (which Kristof coauthored with his wife, journalist turned banker Sheryl WuDunn) hits all the high notes of market triumphalism masquerading as considered social policy; its subtitle is Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, not Ending Gender-Based Oppression Because It Sucks and Is Immoral.

Half the Sky presents a litany of reforms tailored for a market-besotted (but, you know, concerned) viewing public. The show focuses obsessively on a distinctly Westernized notion of education (and the entrepreneurial opportunities that duly market-reformed schools provide), casts state-crafted barriers to market freedom as human rights issues, and understands women and girls in terms of “untapped” economic returns. “Time and time again,” WuDunn says, “what impressed us the most is that girls represent an opportunity. Think of all that untapped potential.” Yet in the great tradition of debate-reframing pioneered by Friedman, Kristof’s show displays a chronic lack of interest in women’s lived experiences under conditions of poverty. Stripped of its you-go-girl trappings, the basic argument is the same: more people should have access to the free market. Even the core format of the presentation—famous and flashy guest presenters, gritty travelogue footage, and a rotating corps of state-sanctioned or academic weigher-inners—is lifted from the Friedman series script.

Indeed, Kristof remains one of the Times’ most ardent parroters of free-market dogma. From his prestigious perch in the paper’s opinion section, he has downplayed the grievances of striking workers, single-handedly revitalized the Welfare Queen scare, and thumped the tub for neoliberal educational reform—i.e., the gradual privatization of the American public school system.

On screen, however, Kristof is happy to let others share the spotlight—and he has plenty of celebrity takers. George Clooney, in the Arnold Schwarzenegger role, opens the series. While images of a young female rape victim in Sierra Leone appear on screen, Clooney’s voiceover explains that stories such as hers are “interesting.” But the real story, we quickly learn, is Kristof himself: “Nick is the guy doing the legwork,” Clooney proclaims. “The celebrity involvement may be able to amplify the story,” the actor adds. “That’s all. That’s all we can do!” Clooney, long known to covet elected office, says this in the surprised tone of a man who has been asked to do more but has regrettably proven incapable. Of course, in a given year, George Clooney earns close to a full percentage point of Sierra Leone’s entire GDP from his film work alone, so he could do more if he wanted to. But what he wants is for viewers to honor the underappreciated work of a two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning Times columnist while images of young brown women living under severe repression flash across the screen, context-free. (The corollary footage in Free to Choose has Friedman droning on about the failures of Social Security to promote market competition while brown urban youth play gleefully around an open fire hydrant.)

If this were a publicly funded project, a sense of accountability might have crept into the script. But like much of what now passes for public media, the film was funded by a coterie of foundations—longstanding ones, like the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur and Ford Foundations, but newer players, too: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women, the IKEA Foundation, and the Nike Foundation. These are all, in other words, philanthropic arms of businesses that have derived enormous profits by taking advantage of some of the same women in developing nations we meet over the ensuing four hours.

Yet what happens during this pair of two-hour episodes is difficult to parse. Bookended by Clooney’s boosterism, the series is divided into six forty-minute segments, each filmed in a different developing nation, now struggling to emerge from recent geopolitical and human rights conflicts. Each installment boasts a celebrity guest, a host activist, and a star victim. These last play support roles in the narrative, rather like Rose Friedman in Free to Choose: each designated victim is easy to overlook because she is so often spoken for. So even though it’s a documentary, about a New York Times journalist, on PBS, it’s hard to tell what exactly transpired, and what did not. In journalism, activism, and foreign aid—arguably the three pillars of Half the Sky—the distinction between fact and fiction should be clear, but it collapses completely.

Let’s look, for example, at the second segment, filmed in Cambodia, in which movie star Meg Ryan and local activist Somaly Mam join Kristof in saving victims of sex trafficking. Much of the episode focuses on a woman named Somana, formerly Long Pros, of the Somaly Mam Foundation’s Voices for Change program, an NGO that trains survivors of sex trafficking in advocacy and public speaking. Since 2005, when she first moved to a shelter run by another of Mam’s foundations, Somana has served as a high-profile symbol of the human trafficking problem in Cambodia. She is also an ardent and outspoken activist on sexual health and women’s rights issues. Her disability—she is missing an eye—marks Somana as one who has survived. Heroically. She’s met with Hillary Clinton. She’s been featured on Oprah.

With prodding from Kristof, Somana reveals her tragic tale on camera to a group of sex workers she seeks to aid. “My eye was stabbed by a brothel owner,” she says, describing continued abuse, rape, and degradation in the wake of the attack. But this was only the start of her story, she tells the young women gathered around her, as the crowd’s mingled sympathy and horror mounts. “Believe it or not, when I returned home, my mother and father didn’t want me around.” That’s not what Somana’s parents told the Cambodia Daily, which questioned the eye-stabbing tale soon after it aired on PBS. They describe a healthy relationship with their daughter, who, they say, visits regularly. Her facial deformity is explained by the removal of a tumor in 2005, they claim. Dr. Pok Thorn of the Takeo Eye Hospital confirmed that the girl had undergone surgery and recovery in his care. Other doctors the Daily contacted reported that her scar did not appear to be consistent with violent trauma; the police chief of the anti-human trafficking bureau in Phnom Penh similarly reported that he had never received word of such a stabbing. Indeed, an earlier version of Somana’s story left the incident out entirely: in 2008, she told another writer her face had been kicked in, and doctors had removed her eye as a result. A spokesperson for the Somaly Mam Foundation apologized and announced days later that Somana would be demoted pending a review of her case.

This outcome was especially unfortunate, given Somaly’s own history of truth-bending. In April 2012, Mam presented false information to the UN, stating that when her center was raided in 2004, eight girls were murdered. She later apologized, claiming ambiguous statements had been misinterpreted. No such deaths have ever been reported, although anti-trafficking police acknowledge that a number of women did leave the shelter at that time, perhaps willingly. Earlier, in her 2007 autobiography The Road of Lost Innocence, Mam claimed her own daughter had been kidnapped; Mam’s ex-husband disputes that claim.

The ambiguity mirrors an even more pressing issue. Several of Mam’s—and, by extension, Kristof’s and the New York Times’—“rescue missions” have been, well, not so rescuey. Together, Mam and Kristof have raided brothels and reportedly saved girls allegedly abducted by sex traffickers. Shortly after the duo’s well-hyped adventures, though, many “saved” girls simply returned to their jobs. (Remember when Kristof “bought” two girls from a brothel in 2004—a crime, by the way, for which he has never been charged? One of them later returned.) Mam claims that rescued women suffer something like Stockholm syndrome, but another explanation may be even more distressing for certain readers: some sex workers prefer their jobs to the available alternatives. In Cambodia, there is really only one other choice for women: jobs in the too-low-wage-to-survive garment factories. Rehabilitation, as shown in Half the Sky, includes sewing lessons. Reports have surfaced that some supposed trafficking victims are held against their will at Mam’s centers. (“Don’t talk to me about sewing machines. Talk to me about workers’ rights!” is a rallying cry for sex workers in Southeast Asia.)

The problem is not just that Kristof is a bad journalist for failing to see clear inaccuracies, follow up with questions, and provide readers an accurate look at the developing world, or any world. (Although, of course, he is.) The deeper problem is that the truth—here, and in Free to Choose—isn’t valued. Somana’s lies, delivered as recruitment speeches to the women she aims to enlist to Mam’s cause, may have been learned from Mam herself. Certainly Mam did not seek to uncover them. And who can blame either? There are too few options for women’s employment in Cambodia, as the nation moves into the wage-and-rights-indifferent vanguard of today’s global capitalism. Somaly Mam’s funding comes largely, if not exclusively, from American sources—which, in turn, come to her organizations through Kristof’s regular coverage. The service Mam provides in exchange for Kristof’s attention may seem distasteful to you, but the narrative sells papers. That’s market logic. Or as Friedman himself famously put it: “The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are . . . it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.”

What you want to buy is the Superman myth, although you will settle for rags-to-riches inspiration and good old lesbian porn, which, luckily enough, is also on offer in Half the Sky. Indeed, the final episode is a crude celebration of market viability, starring ladies. Olivia Wilde, the smartest celebrity in the Kristof retinue, arrives alone at the Umoja Women’s Village in Kenya. They welcome her with a vagina song. They visit an actual market. They devise business plans. They talk microlending. They position U.S. trade as a central component of any successful business. It’s like a girl-on-girl slashfic version of Free to Choose.

In the end viewers are left not with an organization to support, a child to sponsor, or an accurate understanding of the world useful for eradicating further injustice. No: They’re left with only Half the Sky—the book. It is the primary focus of the whole enterprise, in fact, netting more mentions than any single victim, activist, or celebrity. In the six-segment, four-hour complete run, Nicholas Kristof, the brand, gets six plugs. And Half the Sky, the book, gets nine.

mongosteen posted:

swampman posted:

in the "without makeup" pictures they look like normal human beings you fucking nerd

improve your standards lol

goat once your daughter grows a couple of zits are you going to be packing her ass off to Tranquility Bay for drug intervention

mongosteen posted:

Everyone is pretty in their own way, or, can be made pretty