In short, Hollywood is full of shit.

[the_future_modernes]

In Hollywood, An Urban Legend Worth A Fact-Check

A shockingly low number of African-Americans thrive in the movie business. Here's one statistic: Of the 150 highest-grossing films last year, nine of them had black directors.

Or try this statistic: Last summer there were two Hollywood movies with a black male star topping the marquee. They were The Karate Kid, played by 12-year-old Jaden Smith, and Lottery Ticket, starring former kid rapper Bow Wow.

...
Aside from the occasional drama backed by a superstar like Oprah Winfrey, the thoughtful Hollywood film about and by black people went out with the pager. Writer-producer Michael Elliot has been making a living in Hollywood and says studio executives believe they can't sell tickets when they take a black movie overseas.

"There's a whole, huge stream of revenue that studios feel like they don't get to taste because the project's black," Elliot says. "There is no foreign market for this, and we've been told this forever."

...

Whatever. My man with The Booty Call Theory knew he couldn't get Will Smith for his movie. It's a low-budget sleeper called Medicine for Melancholy, about two strangers who bike and dance around San Francisco in the wake of drunken-stranger party sex. Medicine for Melancholy screened in just three American cities — one at a time — and then Barry Jenkins took it onto the international festival circuit.

"I went to Krakow, Poland; Toronto, Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata, Paris, a few other places. London. And the reaction was absolutely amazing," recalls Jenkins. "Literally, I had people say to me, in many different languages, 'We've never seen black people like this before.' And I was like, 'Well, they exist. In pretty much every city.'"MORE

American entertainment is a goddamn behemoth. As a result, the problematic isms that are entrenched therein get farmed out to a great deal of the world's population, and thus perpetuate inaccurate and damaging stereotypes. I have totes lost patience with the BS, meself. We totally need to be challenging the system.

Giant fire in Israel - International aid helping combat the blaze.

[silveradept]

A massive forest fire in Israel is being fought with assistance from the international community.

"HAIFA, Israel – Foreign firefighters and aircraft poured into Israel Friday in an unprecedented wave of international assistance as the country battled a huge forest fire that has killed at least 41 people and displaced thousands....

...Some 100 firefighters from Bulgaria arrived as well as fire extinguishing planes and crews from Greece and Britain, Israeli officials said. More aid was on its way from the United States, Russia, Egypt, Cyprus, Jordan, Spain, Azerbaijan, Romania and Turkey — which put aside tensions over Israel's deadly raid on a Turkish Gaza-bound flotilla in May to lend a hand."

(Fox News reporting.)

Big fire. Really big fire. Hopefully under control and put out by now.

Julian Assange has been arrested in the UK as a result of the Swedish warrant.

[the_future_modernes]

Guardian LIVEBLOG

Wikileaks Central follows all the news stories on the saga, great sources. Just to let ya know that Mastercard and Visa have said that we can't use their cards to donate to Wikileaks. Of course, as the Guardian Liveblog points out, we can use their cards to donate the motherfucking Ku Klux Klan, among other interesting organizations.

No rape apologia in threads please. If you are confused about the situation,

Swedish feminist blog Feminism and Tea will clarify that for you.


Would you all mind adding interesting links if you see them, in the comments?


AWESOME part of the Guardian Liveblog:

11.40am: Internet guru Clay Shirky has an interesting post on WikiLeaks and how America's pursuit of the site opens it up to the charge of hypocrisy:

The leaders of Myanmar and Belarus, or Thailand and Russia, can now rightly say to us: "You went after WikiLeaks' domain name, their hosting provider, and even denied your citizens the ability to register protest through donations, all without a warrant and all targeting overseas entities, simply because you decided you don't like the site. If that's the way governments get to behave, we can live with that."

In this context comments by Hillary Clinton (below) in a Foreign Policy article earlier this year are coming back to haunt her:

Photograph: Win Mcnamee/Getty Images On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress. But the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognise that the world's information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it.
This challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic. The words of the first amendment to the constitution [guaranteeing freedom of speech] are carved in 50 tons of Tennessee marble on the front of this building. And every generation of Americans has worked to protect the values etched in that stone.

But please. Justice and transparency only apply to those other non-US countries. The US is an EXCEPTION, dammit! Its for the World's good!!! Fucking hypocrites.

Protest! (UK specific but with transferable ideas)

[spiralsheep]

unusualmusic asked me to crosspost here but I'm not sure my post would work for most non-Brit readers here without additional commentary so I've added some brief explanations (and am open to being asked questions in comments) and there is more detailed discussion amongst the Brits in comments at my original post. Plz 'scuse our developed-world problems, sry.

0. My country's current economic problems are, of course, mostly the (ir)responsibility of a few greedy rich white male bankers (as is true in so many countries but with added "chickens coming home to roost" in Britain's case). My country's current right-wing ConDem coalition government intends to continue giving free money to their rich friends while using our economic problems as an excuse to attack the poor, which they were planning to do anyway because that's their ideology.

1. The students are revolting. Sometimes people ask me why I'm "still" so angry about social justice, as if they believe I should have grown out of caring about my fellow human beings. Well, I haven't and I hope the generation of young people currently protesting about inappropriate cuts never do either.

How to support your local (student) occupation, with a links list of current occupations:

http://nsafc.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/how-to-support-your-local-occupation/

ETA explanation: Government cuts to EMA, for example, will cut off educational opportunities for many poor children at 16. /ETA

2. The highly respectable Fawcett Society (ETA: work for equality for women /ETA) also organised a protest against inappropriate and unjust cuts:

"Support Fawcett's bid for a judicial review of the budget

JOIN US TO PROTEST OUTSIDE THE HIGH COURT

12.30 pm - 2pm, Monday 6th December, Royal Courts of Justice, the Strand, London WC2A 2LL

In August, the Fawcett Society lodged papers challenging the legality of the government’s emergency Budget. Of the £8 billion pounds worth of cuts made through changes to tax and welfare in the Budget, 70 per cent are set to come from women’s pockets. The Fawcett Society believes such a skewed budget could not have been drawn up in accordance with the law. We believe the Treasury did not, as is required by law, consider whether their plans would have a disproportionate impact on women and affect women’s equality. On Monday, lawyers on both sides will present their arguments to a judge, who will decide whether or not to grant us a judicial review of the budget. Come and show your support for Fawcett’s case, be seen and be heard. Making women bear the brunt of cuts is wrong; drawing up a budget without thinking who it will affect is unlawful."

http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk//index.asp?PageID=1202

And SHAME on the ConDems for seeking to alter the law so they would no longer have to consider equality when budgeting and passing legislation.

ETA: The protest happened but the judicial review was denied. The (British) Equality and Human Rights Commission is now supposedly investigating the budget. I doubt if they'll do anything but it's embarrassing for some members of the ConDem government and might help keep the story in the news. Further protests are planned. /ETA

3. Reality check on taxation and who doesn't pay. Remember students and people on benefits all pay tax in the form of VAT (sales tax), amongst other taxes which disproportionately hit the poor, which the ConDem government are raising to 20% in January. Here are three examples of many possible examples of tax avoidance by the ConDem government's rich friends (remember 18 members of the current cabinet are millionaires):

Tax avoidance by Vodafone = £6 billion
Tax avoidance by ConDem advisor Philip Green = £285 million in one year

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/03/topshop-philip-green-tax-avoidance-protest

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/14/vodafone-tax-evasion-revenue-customs

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=22513

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/10/467024.html

One of the many incidences of tax avoidance by (Con) Tory peer Lord Ashcroft = £3.4 million

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/27/lord-ashcroft-tax-conservative

General tax avoidance news (warning: for the Grauniad's middle-classness)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/taxavoidance

4. Protest! It works!

http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/06/tax-dodging-billionaires-protest

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-protest-works-just-look-at-the-proof-2119310.html