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January 2014

Pagan Film Series February-May 2014 10:14 pm / 31 January 2014 by jason clatterbox, at SubRosa - a community space

                             Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In and Community Seed Presents:

Pagan Film Series
February - May 2014

This series is an opportunity to come together, to watch engaging films and also to engage each other, to share thoughts and experiences, and to create more of an overlap of the many social circles that exist in this town.

AGORA
Saturday, Feb. 22nd
8pm SubRosa

In the twilight years of Pagan Rome, Alexandrian philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician Hypatia must navigate a world increasingly under the control of the Christian church and hostile to women in positions of power. Starring academy award winner Rachel Weisz. Rated R.
BLACK ORPHEUS (Orfeu Negro)
Friday, Mar. 28th
8pm SubRosa

A retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, set during the time of the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro. Orfeo is a trolley conductor and musician, engaged to Mira. During Carnival week, he sees Eurydice, who's fled her village in fear of a stalker - it's love at first sight. But she is being stalked by Death, can Orfeo conduct her to safety? Don't look back. Portuguese with English subtitles. Rated PG


BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS
Friday, Apr. 25th
8pm SubRosa

Angela Lansbury, along with three plucky working class kids and the dad from Mary Poppins, put the smackdown on the Nazis with a broom and some hocus pocus. This 1971 Disney animated musical was so subversive, the House on Unamerican Activities had to reconvene and investigate. Just kidding. Rated G.


SORCERESS (Le moine et la sorcière)
Friday, May 16th
8pm SubRosa

A Dominican friar visits a 13th-century French village in search of heretics. Despite the opposition of the local priest and the indifference of the villagers, he finds a seemingly perfect suspect: a young woman who lives in a forest outside the village and cures people with herbs and folk remedies. French with English subtitles. Not Rated.








About Community Seed: Our mission is to provide the local Santa Cruz Pagan community with opportunities to create closer bonds of perfect love and perfect trust, and understanding with one another, through community service, publications, gatherings, and ritual celebrations. We organize, host, and promote events that enrich and improve our lives, our world, and our community at large in the Santa Cruz region.(excerpt from their website and more at http://www.communityseed.org/)

About Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In: SANTA CRUZ GUERILLA DRIVE-IN is an outdoor movie theater under the stars that springs up unexpectedly in the fields and industrial wastelands. Beyond showing great free movies year-round and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is reclaiming public space and transforming our urban environment.  More Info at http://www.guerilladrivein.org/

With child you lose, childfree you lose. 7:55 pm / 31 January 2014 by Francois Tremblay, at The Prime Directive

12-year-old girl: I don’t want kids when I grow up.
Society: You’ll change your mind when you get older. You’re only 12. You’re too young to know what you want.

16-year-old girl: I’m pregnant.
Society: How could you be so stupid? Do you know anything about safe sex? You should be ashamed.

20-year-old woman: I’m a single mother with an infant son.
Society: You should’ve gone to college first. You need a stable career before you can support a child.

33-year-old woman: I’m married and my spouse and I both have stable careers. I have two young daughters now.
Society: You’re not staying home? Who’s going to take care of them? You’re just going to put them in day care while you work? That’s selfish of you. You can’t expect to raise decent kids with a full-time job.

45-year-old woman: I just had my first child.
Society: Why would you have a child when you’re that old? Do you realize the health risks of being pregnant at your age? When your kid is a teenager you’ll be a senior citizen. That’s inconsiderate of you.

60-year-old woman: I haven’t had any children.
Society: Your life must be so unfulfilling. Is there something wrong with you? Why didn’t you want kids? How strange.

From Woman On The Edge Of Tyne.


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Amanda Knox, anti-Italian sentiment in the United States, and racism 5:17 pm / 31 January 2014 by John Madziarczyk, at Lost Highway Times...Paths in Oblivion

I'm very glad that Knox has been convicted, because the reaction to her trial, the fact that she was even put on trial, in the Seattle media and to a lesser extent in the media of the United States as a whole has been terrible. It's been riddled with the idea of Italy as a country where someone can't get a fair trial, where justice isn't in the 20th century but instead dependent on corruption...almost like in a Mafia movie.

In fact, Italy is a modern country like every where else in Europe, and the Mafia doesn't have as much influence as people in the United States would like to believe, but the stereotypes that Anglo Americans have about Italians were set long before Amanda Knox participated in the slaying of Meredith Kercher.

Take this as an example: when was the last time you saw a person of obvious Italian origin in a movie playing just one of the guys, as a generic character whose identity did not depend on his ethnicity? In other words, a group of friends where one is Joe, another is Nathan, another is John, and one of them, normal in every other respect, just happens to be Italian? It doesn't happen, for the most part. People who are obviously Italian are either cast as gangsters or as idiots, as emotional and stupid good guys who you wouldn't take seriously outside of the context of the film.

Being partially Italian myself, and having ancestry involving several Eastern European ethnicities that tend to have darker skin, I can tell you that the difference in treatment is derivative of racism, and not of much else. There are plenty of European ethnicities who have cultural patterns that are different from those of Anglo-Americans. Slavic cultures, for example, tend to be more expressive and less buttoned down. However, Polish culture, if it's thought of at all, isn't really regarded as being weird and overly passionate, as Italian and Hispanic culture is, despite in some cases sharing similar attitudes.

European integration in the United States is based on skin color and facial features. People who are Polish or from elsewhere in Eastern Europe do fairly well, despite having a pretty different culture, because there are many people from these backgrounds who have fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. They can meld in and assimilate to the dominant ethnic look. Others from Southern Europe can't.

I know from personal experience, often having been mistaken for being partially Hispanic or some other ethnicity identified as Non-White, especially in Florida, that the one drop rule is still in effect in different parts of the United States. Living in the "Fake South" of Northern Florida, it was pretty apparent in the small towns that if you looked like you could be something that was non-white, in part or in whole, then you weren't one of us, so to speak. The fact that that something might not be black, or even that it might not be non-European at all, made no difference, even if the people in question knew that. The attitude was based on who was 'one of us' and who wasn't, and who wasn't was pretty well defined.

All of these attitudes, in my opinion, come down to skin color, and are present throughout the United States, even in the great tolerant city of Seattle, where because Knox was accused of killing Kercher in Italy, in Perugia, the system had to be corrupt, it had to be unfair, because the Mafia is down there, and the people look like Al Pacino.  Somehow, I think that they would be a little bit easier on the justice system if it happened in some backwater of Germany, because they're civilized.

*on edit: a perfect example of who Italians are cast as on television and film when they're not cast as Mafiosi is Matt LeBlanc's character on friends: a complete moron who's mostly there for comic relief.



Música árabe con guitarra española 4:00 pm / 31 January 2014 by Blogosfera Mutualista Hispana

Alaitz-ek mundu hobea izan dezalaArchivado en: música

Keep on reading: Música árabe con guitarra española

Dresden: BNG-Streik in Szene-Kneipe 3:05 pm / 31 January 2014 by Rudolf Mühland

Basisgewerkschaft kämpft gegen Kündigungen und fordert Haustarifvertrag Am heutigen Freitag lies die Betreiberin der Szenekneipe „Trotzdem“, die als Friedensaktivistin bekannte Annett „Johanna“ Kalex, Angebote zu Verhandlungen über Rücknahme der Kündigungen fast aller Kellner_innen und den Abschluss eines Haustarifvertrages verstreichen. Damit kündigt die junge Basisgewerkschaft Nahrung und Gastronomie (BNG FAU) ab Samstag ihren ersten Streik an. [...]

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Officials investigate inmate death at Ely State Prison 12:26 pm / 31 January 2014 by NPW, at Nevada Prison Watch

How many more people must die alone, unexplained, without medical care, after very long time inside Nevada's prisons? Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2014, by Ana Ley, Las Vegas Sun State corrections officials are investigating the death of an Ely State Prison inmate who was found unconscious inside his cell earlier this week. Paul Skinner, 53, was discovered by prison staff on Tuesday.

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Games’n’Politics – Folge 29 – Ein Jahr G’n’P: Bilanz und Perspektive des Kanals 12:07 pm / 31 January 2014 by Michi, at Blog von Michael Schulze von Glasser

Am 26. Januar 2013 habe ich meinen YouTube-Kanal „Games and Politics“ ins Leben gerufen. Seitdem habe ich dort 28 Videos über die Darstellung von Politik in Videospielen veröffentlicht. Zum Geburtstag ziehe ich eine Bilanz des letzten Jahres und werfe einen Blick in die Zukunft des noch sehr kleinen YouTube-Kanals. Hier geht’s zum Video!

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3 Cosas Cleaners Face Ongoing Conflict With Unison 10:37 am / 31 January 2014 by Adam Ford, at Infantile Disorder

A picketer outside the IWGB's 'battle bus' in London this week The Industrial Workers of Great Britain's '3 Cosas' ('3 things' in Spanish) campaign has concluded three days of strike action against the University of London and cleaning subcontractors Cofely GDF-Suez. Having achieved their first two wishes (holidays and sick pay) at the end of last year, the cleaners were going for their third

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A little bird told me about the "Naked Norwegians" cheerers in Bothell, WA… 8:59 am / 31 January 2014 by John Madziarczyk, at Lost Highway Times...Paths in Oblivion

Who made headlines a few years ago because of the brutal hazing that accompanied the induction into the group. Bothell is a suburb of Seattle, so tolerant. The "Naked Norwegians" were an unofficial high school cheering group, that's since been banned, made up of guys. The shock came from the kids who wanted to be part of it being beaten across the back with PVC pipes, but there's reportedly something even more shocking, that didn't make the news: every time they were hit across the back, the person doing it shouted "White Power! Kill a N***er!" This supposedly is recorded in the police report, but didn't make it into the news, presumably because people didn't want to cloud the issue....or reveal the complexity of it.


Fort Worth PD Claims Homeowner Reached for Gun Before Being Shot, Officer Not Indicted 8:01 am / 31 January 2014 by Justin L. Oliver, at DFW Alliance of the Libertarian Left

Police Car Lights

After nearly an eight-month investigation into the shooting death of a homeowner by rookie a Fort Worth police officer, the autopsy report on the sequence of events prior to Jerry Waller’s death seems implausible, but the testimony of the responding officers and circumstantial forensic evidence was enough to circumvent a grand jury indictment, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

While responding to the incorrect address of a suspected residential burglary, Officer R.A. “Alex” Hoeppner shot at the 72-year-old grandfather seven times in his own garage. Hoeppner and his assigned partner, Ben Hanlon, testified that they confronted Waller after he was on his way outside to investigate a prowler, ordering him to drop his gun. Waller complied, but for unbeknownst reason supposedly picked up the gun again and leveled it at the officers before being killed.

Hanlon, who was dismissed from the FWPD for providing false information for an arrest affidavit in a separate incident, called in the shooting for an ambulance. His immediate account, which was acquired through a public records request, seems somewhat inconsistent. “The guy came out with a gun. He wouldn’t put the gun down. He pointed it at Hoeppner. Hoeppner fired.”

The officers acknowledged in their report that Waller did put the gun down, but they say he picked it back up after placing on a car in his garage. The wounds on Waller’s body indicate his arms were outstretched, as if he were holding something, according to the autopsy report.

I don’t have all the information and 25 hours of testimony that the grand jury used to reach a decision, but based on the telling so far, it’s understandable for people to suspect there’s a cover-up. As law enforcement officers themselves contend, police are trained to lie; it’s protocol. The public also needs to know what, if any, evidence was withheld from the grand jury. Even given the available information, had the consequences been reversed with a police officer killed by seven bullets, we can safely predict that the grand jury wouldn’t have been so understanding.

Supporters commenting on this story contend that mistakes happen and “it’s a learning issue.” We apparently need to learn to live with the idea that we can be defamed and have outrageous tales be told about us while in possession of a firearm, at least if the people scripting the account have official state sanction.

Maybe if there had been a film of the incident, there would be more credibility to the official story.

Image credit: appleswitch, with Creative Commons license
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