Cool Stuff Friday.

Riders in traditional dress perform stunts on horseback at the the second World Nomad Games © Viktor Drachev/TASS

Riders in traditional dress perform stunts on horseback at the the second World Nomad Games
© Viktor Drachev/TASS

World Nomad Games are an international sport competition dedicated to ethnic sports practiced in Central Asia. The first two World Nomad Games were held in Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan. This years the games are underway from 3 to 8 September. Fifty three countries are participating in the event. Sports include eagle hunting, bone throwing and kok-boru, a Central Asian form of polo in which two teams battle for control of a decapitated goat carcass. The highlights of the unusual competitions on the shores of Lake Issyk Kul – in this gallery by TASS.

Click on over to see the slideshow.

Wonder Woman Confirmed Bisexual.

Greg Rucka said Wonder Woman’s queer identity was important to the narrative. Photograph: Frank Cho/DC Comics.

Greg Rucka said Wonder Woman’s queer identity was important to the narrative. Photograph: Frank Cho/DC Comics.

Wonder Woman is queer, her writer has confirmed: “I don’t know how much clearer I can make it”.

Greg Rucka, who worked on Wonder Woman for DC Comics throughout the 2000s, returned to DC Comics this year for the new Rebirth series commemorating her 75th year in print.

He told the comic news site Comicosity the character had “obviously” been in love and relationships with other women, as has long been speculated by fans.

Wonder Woman is known as the warrior princess Diana in her homeland of Themyscira, an island populated only by Amazonian women.

The confirmation was met with celebration on social media.

That said, Rucka then goes on, practically choking in his need to say this doesn’t mean there should be any sort of queer storylines, no. I suppose acknowledgement is a good thing, but representation sure would be nice. Really nice.

Full story at The Guardian.

BE WHITE.

Alt right fliers were found littered around the University of Michigan campus. The university responded swiftly and well, and the fliers have been removed, but this is yet another sign of the supremacist cancer eating away at all decency here in uStates. Deplorable is too light weight of a description. The outright lies, old and new, are disgusting, repellent, and appalling. People who believe such shit or are willing to believe such shit are barren, empty beings, devoid of any good human characteristic.

Several racially charged fliers were found in buildings in the heart of the University of Michigan’s campus in Ann Arbor on Monday, causing outrage among students after images were shared on social media.

One reads, “Euro-Americans! STOP

— Apologizing

— Living in fear

— Denying your heritage

. . . BE WHITE.”

“Denying your heritage.” Right. I find this as profoundly stupid as people who insist on referring to all Indigenous cultures and traditions as “Native American”. There’s no such thing, any more than there is something known as “White heritage”. That sort of lumping is moronic and meaningless. If you’re a white person, and you want to embrace your particular cultural heritage, customs, traditions, and language, I’m all for it! I don’t know anyone who is against that, or why they would be. When you want to lump all white Americans into one bucket, that’s where it all goes wrong. And colonial whiteness is not a thing to be celebrated, and colonial whiteness wasn’t just the genocidal madness against Indigenous people and the enslavement of Black people – it was a wealth of bigotry, hatred and mistreatment of many other white cultures, such as Irish people, and Jewish people. The list goes on. There’s nothing prideful in that.

Another lengthy flier advised white women not to date black men, with lines such as, “Your kids probably wouldn’t be smart.”

Michigan was one of many campuses to start the school year with images and messages that offended many, at a time when racial tensions are high across the country with protests over race and police violence. At the University of North Dakota, four women apparently posted a photo of themselves in blackface with the caption, “Black Lives Matter.” At Eastern Michigan University last week, a professor found the wall of a building on campus spray-painted with “KKK” and a racial slur. And a racial slur and image at Kansas State University earlier this month went viral.

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“White people exist. White people have the right to exist. White people have the right to exist as white people,” the flier added.

Has anyone been going around advocating that white people don’t have the right to exist? Has anyone been demanding that white people cease existing as white people? This isn’t just disgusting, it’s remarkably stupid, too. Quite honestly, the very last thing white people need is an exhortation to ‘be white’. Talk about being the worst person you can be.

Full story at The Washington Post, but whatever you do, seriously, don’t look at, read, or even allow the comments to load. BuzzFeed has more visuals.

Kim & Kim: Interview with Magdalene Visaggio.

kim-kim-cover-issue-three

Science fiction stories are nothing new. It’s a pretty sure thing modern geeks have traveled to and from the stars many times within the pages of a comic book, novel, or in their favorite TV show or movie. At this point, space is no longer the final frontier; it’s as familiar to comic books readers as a superhero’s cape and tights.

So it’s truly rare and exciting to discover a story that can add a new element to the sci-fi genre. Thankfully, four-issue limited series Kim & Kim is just such a story. Published by Black Mask Studios, written and created by our trans writer Magdalene Visaggio, with art by the straight/queer team Eva Cabrera and Claudia Aquirre, Kim & Kim mixes space-faring action, with salty language, humor, and a female buddy adventure with a trans lead character.

In short, this outer space comic book series with a decidedly queer- and female-centric tale is what our modern culture needs. The Advocate was happy to chat with writer/creator Magdalene Visaggio to discuss Kim & Kim, the importance of featuring an authentic trans character, her upcoming work, and what to look forward two in the final two issues of the series.

The Advocate has an in-depth interview with Magdalene Visaggio, good reading, and if you’re new to Kim & Kim, now’s a good time to catch up!

Facebook, Oh Facebook IX.

Charles Wasko (Classmates.com)

Charles Wasko (Classmates.com)

Yet another bigoted, white politician just couldn’t manage to keep all that nasty poison off their facebook. This time, bigotry presents one Charles Wasko, the mayor of West York, Pennsylvania, who likes making monkey jokes about the President and First Lady, and thinks it’s very funny to make jokes about lynching the President. Golly, I find myself with no desire to laugh at all.

Several West York borough council members have called on Mayor Charles Wasko to step down in light of racist posts he has made on Facebook.

Wasko, who was elected mayor in 2013, has posted several pictures on Facebook this year that council members took issue with: Two compared President Barack Obama and his family to monkeys, and one suggested Obama should be hanged with a noose. Another post featured a fictional black person saying that socialism is “when the white folks work every day so we can get all our governmental entitlement stuff for free.”

The four council members reachable by phone on Wednesday — two Democrats and two Republicans —  out of the seven members of the council, said they want Wasko out as mayor.

Wasko didn’t respond to multiple messages seeking comment on Wednesday.

Council president Shawn Mauck said this was the first he’d heard about issues regarding the mayor’s posts. He was shocked when he pulled up the mayor’s publicly visible profile and read them.

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One of Wasko’s posts from June features a picture of a wheelbarrow full of apes with the words “Aww … moving day at the Whitehouse has finally arrived” and “Kenya or bust.” Another, from February, is a photo of a monkey gritting its teeth, to which Wasko added the comment, “Most think it is Obama’s picture……sorry its Moochelles baby photo,” presumably referring to Michelle Obama.

 

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Mauck and councilman Brian Wilson  raised a particular issue: the fact that Wasko has some oversight of the day-to-day operations of the West York Borough Police Department.

“With those types of thoughts in your mind, how can you oversee the police department?” said Wilson, who also called on the mayor to resign. “We can’t have anybody being racist or bigoted … especially an elected official.”

Matthew Millsaps, the acting chief of the department, said Wasko does, by law, have some role in the department’s operations, though Wasko’s interactions with Millsaps have been limited, the chief said. The council appointed Millsaps acting chief after Justin Seibel, who had been chief, was suspended earlier this month.

“I’ve viewed these images and am disturbed,” Millsaps said in a statement he read over the phone Wednesday night.

He said two of the borough’s eight officers are minorities — a Hispanic man and a black woman — so the percentage of people of color in the department is about the same as for the borough as a whole.

“This in no way reflects the ideology or beliefs of this department,” he said,

“Of particular concern are any images with undertones of violence — lynching or that are threatening in nature,” he said.

When asked if the picture of Eastwood and the noose was one such image, he said: “I could understand how it could be taken that way.”

How it could be taken that way? FFS, in what other way could it possibly be taken? West York, you have a serious problem.

[…]

Wasko also has made headlines for physical confrontations with council members.

Former council member Tim Berkheimer said that in November 2013, Wasko grabbed his arm and tried to choke him. Wasko claimed the two men came together when they tried to walk up the stairs to the borough building at the same time, but said he indeed pushed the former councilman.

More recently, this past April, Seibel, the now-suspended West York Police chief, had to physically separate Wasko from Nick Laughman, who then was vice president of the council.

Gosh, what a charming guy.

Full story at York Dispatch.

U.S. History Special Victims Unit.

I…no words.

According to the document, African-Americans “took full advantage” of welfare programs that were created by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society.”

“The long-term results, however, have been devastating,” the document says. “Over three centuries of a strong work ethic, cohesive families, the thirst for education and Christian values as vital parts of the African-American heritage gave way to long-term dependence on the government and the erosion of the work ethic.”

Another section of the packet claims that “[t]he cause for women took steps backward when President Bill Clinton, notorious womanizer as Governor of AR, was publicly accused by Juanita Broderick, Kathleen Wiley, Paul Jones, Dolly Kyle, and others of rape and harassment.”

“First Lady Hillary Clinton joined her husband’s attack on the victim and she ‘stood by her man,’ thereby setting back some distance the cause of the women’s fight against exploitation,” the lesson adds.

It goes on to claim that “black lives did not matter so much” to President Barack Obama because he presided over a “disastrous economy for eight years.”

Via Twitter.

House Democrats Call for New DAPL Permitting Process.

Left to right, Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II, Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Harold Frazier, Lakota elder Faith Spotted Eagle, Apache Stronghold founder Wendsler Nosie Sr., and youth representative Gracey Claymore speak to Democratic U.S. Representatives at a forum on Thursday September 22. Courtesy House of Representatives via YouTube.

Left to right, Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II, Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Harold Frazier, Lakota elder Faith Spotted Eagle, Apache Stronghold founder Wendsler Nosie Sr., and youth representative Gracey Claymore speak to Democratic U.S. Representatives at a forum on Thursday September 22. Courtesy House of Representatives via YouTube.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of permits for the Dakota Access oil pipeline did not comply with legal consultation requirements, House Democrats Raúl Grijalva and Raul Ruiz, MD, concluded after a forum late last week.

Even as the sale of Cannonball Ranch to Dakota Access LLC was being finalized by its private owners on September 22, Lakota and Apache leaders were in Washington D.C. to give statements before Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives about not only the current trials of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, but also the bigger picture.

In a two-hour discussion attended by about two dozen lawmakers, a panel consisting of Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II, Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Harold Frazier, Lakota elder Faith Spotted Eagle, Apache Stronghold founder Wendsler Nosie Sr., and youth representative Gracey Claymore spoke and answered questions about the crisis surrounding the Dakota Access oil pipeline’s construction. They also addressed the larger issues surrounding Indigenous Peoples and their relationship with the United States—what consultation really means, what the implications are for industrial projects, and what needs to happen next with Dakota Access.

The discussion ranged from how the permitting process is conducted, to the impact of sacred sites destruction within the context of historical trauma, to the resurgent hope that has indigenous youth standing up for their cultures, and to the very notion of what constitutes archaeology and who gets to define it.

In terms of Congress, what it came down to was a matter of law.

“I just want to remind everybody that the piece of land we’re talking about is on federal land,” noted Ruiz, the ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Indian, Insular, and Alaska Native Affairs, in closing remarks. “So this is land that is under the jurisdiction of the federal government. And that what we’re talking about here is not just a matter of what is right. It’s the law.”

Not only that, he said, but those laws had been violated, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had been warned earlier this year when three federal agencies wrote separate letters urging the Corps to do a more in-depth environmental and cultural study of the areas of the pipeline that would run through federal land.

[Read more…]

Every alt-right Nazi I know…

Brian Culpepper and Mike Schoeler - Channel 4 screencap

Brian Culpepper and Mike Schoeler – Channel 4 screencap

Trump’s surprise rise to become the GOP presidential nominee, built largely on a willingness to openly criticize minority groups and tap into long-simmering racial divisions, has reenergized white supremacist groups and drawn them into mainstream American politics like nothing seen in decades.

White nationalist leaders who once shunned presidential races have endorsed Trump, marking the first time some have openly supported a candidate from one of the two main parties.

Members are showing up at his rallies, knocking on doors to get out the vote and organizing debate-watching parties.

White supremacists are active on social media and their websites report a sharp rise in traffic and visitors, particularly when posting stories and chat forums about the New York businessman.

Stormfront, already one of the oldest and largest white nationalist websites, reported a 600% increase in readership since President Obama’s election, and now has more than one in five threads devoted to Trump. It reportedly had to upgrade its servers recently due to the increased traffic.

“Before Trump, our identity ideas, national ideas, they had no place to go,” said Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank based in Arlington, Va.

Not since Southern segregationist George Wallace’s failed presidential bids in 1968 and 1972 have white nationalists been so motivated to participate in a presidential election.

Andrew Anglin, editor of the Daily Stormer website and an emerging leader of a new generation of millennial extremists, said he had “zero interest” in the 2012 general election and viewed presidential politics as “pointless.” That is, until he heard Trump.

“Trump had me at ‘build a wall,’” Anglin said. “Virtually every alt-right Nazi I know is volunteering for the Trump campaign.”

One California white nationalist leader dug into his own pockets to give $12,000 to launch a pro-Trump super PAC that made robocalls in seven primary states — with more promised before the Nov. 8 election.

“The idea that [Trump] is taking a wrecking ball to ‘political correctness’ excites them,” said Peter Montgomery, who has tracked far right groups as a senior fellow at People for the American Way, the Norman Lear-founded advocacy group. “They’ve been marginalized in our discourse, but he’s really made space for them…. He has energized these folks politically in a way that’s going to have damaging long-term consequences.”

The LA Times has a good look at this ongoing problem.

The Easy-peasy Regulatory Scheme.

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TRAHANT REPORTS—It always amazes how different people can look at the same set of facts, an event, or even a conversation and walk away with completely different impressions.

Then in four decades of reporting I have never seen a story with as wide a gulf over what is occurring at Standing Rock.

The government of North Dakota sees this extraordinary event as a minor glitch in their rush toward more profits from North Dakota oil. And so many of the characterizations are written as if none of the top government officials—you know the governor, members of Congress, the state’s power structure—have ever been to the site that they know so much about. But that’s me being generous: They have not been there and they are clear about their intentions to never go.

That’s why this is a fight about story. And who gets to tell it?

And the stories North Dakota Officialdom want the public to believe are those of lawlessness, “sound science and engineering,” and an overzealous regulatory structure. The first story is quickly erased by anyone who takes the time to travel to the camps. (Previous: Why politicians should visit Standing Rock camps.) And it is the same with the second story, the debate about science and engineering, because that telling only works when you ignore climate science. (Previous: Overdue national debate about pipelines and sound science.)

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