(no subject)

Chris Wilson of Lakeland, Florida, said in an interview that he created the site in 2004 as a simple Internet pornography venture: Users post amateur pictures--supposedly of their wives or girlfriends--and for a $10 registration fee, others can take a look. He claims there are about 150,000 registered users on the site, 45,000 of whom are military personnel. Of the 130,000 unique visitors who come to the site daily, Wilson estimates that 30 percent of the traffic, or 39,000 unique users, are US military personnel.

Early on in his Internet venture, Wilson said, he encountered a problem--potential military customers in Iraq and Afghanistan couldn't pay for membership, because credit card companies were blocking charges from "high-risk" countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not wanting to shortchange US troops, Wilson established a rule that if users posted an authentic picture proving they were stationed overseas, they would be granted unlimited access to the site's pornography. The posting began, sometimes of benign images of troops leaning against their tanks, but graphic combat images also began to appear. As of September 20, there were 244 graphic battlefield images and videos available to members.

...The website has become a stomach-churning showcase for the pornography of war--close-up shots of Iraqi insurgents and civilians with heads blown off, or with intestines spilling from open wounds. Sometimes photographs of mangled body parts are displayed: Part of the game is for users to guess what appendage or organ is on display.

from The Porn of War (some foul language, so perhaps NWS), cited in The Heart of Darkness, linked by antiwar_dot_com

Is the link between sex and violence in pornography, which keeps coming up in myriad ways, an inevitable side effect of the medium? Or does this link form when pornography is produced and consumed in a society rife with imperialism and oppression? I lean towards the latter, and i still hold on to the idea that non-exploitative, non-sexist pornography can be a good thing.

A while ago i wrote about the suggested link between pornography and the Abu Ghraib photos. In that discussion i pondered the ways in which militaristic culture would twist the medium of pornography to the purpose of mischanneling pleasure as part of the culture's efforts to produce a class of soldiers.

If my thesis is right, then woman-positive porn should have some effect towards calming sexism, racism, and militarism -- that is, *if* consumers bottle-fed on high-impact thrill porn can develop a taste for kinder, gentler woman-positive porn.

Unfortunately, exploitation remains profitable, even (perhaps especially) in an industry like pornography. It is as if the archontic forces are aligned against the success of such a project: capitalism, militarism, desensitization, misogyny, racism, addiction, and... i don't know a term for "compulsively seeking prurient thrills in the depiction of violence."

Postscript. I recall having a discussion in my journal at some point, though going back through memories now i can't find it, about the prurient-violent depictions of Hell sometimes given by Bible-thumping preachers, in which it is clear that pleasure is being taken in the thought of sinners suffering in Hell. I think that style of religion plays a role in this too, as part-and-parcel of the cultural pattern of what militarism has done to American culture.

(no subject)

Scholars studying military personnel policy have found a controversial regulation halting the discharge of gay soldiers in units that are about to be mobilized. The document is significant because of longstanding Pentagon denials that the military requires gays to serve during wartime, only to fire them once peacetime returns. According to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, gays and lesbians must be discharged whether or not the country is at war.

...Gay soldiers and legal groups have reported for years that known gays are sent into combat, and then discharged when the conflicts end. Discharge statistics corroborate a pattern of rising expulsions during peacetime and plummeting rates during military conflicts, and Pentagon statistics confirm that, as has been the case in every war since World War II, gay discharges have declined during the current conflict in the Middle East.

...[A] May, 2005 study by the Congressional Research Service says that although gay discharges do decline during wartime, the decrease is the result of "random fluctuations in the data," not an intentional Pentagon policy of retaining gays during wars ["Homosexuals and U.S. Military Policy: Current Issues," p. 12].

from RESEARCHERS LOCATE ARMY DOCUMENT ORDERING COMMANDERS NOT TO FIRE GAYS

(no subject)

(no subject)

Same-sex couples with children have fewer financial resources than heterosexual married parents, with an average household income almost $12,000 less and a home ownership rate 15 percent lower, new research from UCLA shows.

More than 39 percent of same-sex couples in the United States, age 25-55, are raising children, more than 250,000 of whom are under 18 years old.

The picture of same-sex couples raising children presented by the 2000 U.S. Census is much different than the popular misconception that gay people are predominantly male, affluent, urban, white and childless, said Gary Gates, co-author of the study, sponsored by the Williams Project, which studies sexual orientation law.

"Same-sex couples raising children are more racially and ethnically diverse and do not fare as well economically as their different-sex married counterparts. As such, they and their children are in particular need of the legal, social and economic benefits of marriage," he said.

... The study provides an indicator of how "inequality in marriage truly harms our families and our children," said Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Pride Coalition. "It's still the case that many LGBT parents are forced to spend significant amounts of money to cobble together whatever legal protections they can -- if they are able to afford that at all -- because they can't access all the rights and responsibilities of marriage that come freely to heterosexual couples and parents," she told the PlanetOut Network.

from Study: Gay parents poorer than straight ones

you gotta be f*ckin' kidding me.

The Bush Administration has dropped all pretense of holding an actual "investigation" into the Katrina aftermath. Who do you suppose would be the most biased person possible, the one with the most serious risk to his professional reputation, the one with the most to lose at this point? That's right, you guessed it.

Former FEMA director Michael Brown is being retained by the agency as a "consultant."

Brown was on the Hill today to speak with staff at a special House committee in preparation for his testimony at a Tuesday hearing on Katrina. In the session, Brown said that he was working as a consultant "to provide a review" of Katrina preparations and immediate aftermath, according to two congressional sources.

It is unclear what, if anything, he is being paid. "I would assume he is being paid, yes," an aide close to the committee said on background. But no one at the briefing asked that question of Brown.

thanks to riverheart for the link