I understand your concerns but: sometimes the role of an ally is to listen, to acknowledge, and to bear witness.
Not to jump in screaming "here I come to save you". The immediate knee-jerk focus of "should we invade" is galling, sure, but I don't think the alternative needs to be to let's all look away and block our ears.
Knowing what other people in this world are going through is important part of being a human.
When I met someone who is in exile and I was familiar with the basics of why she is an exile, that mattered to her.
I'm just one ill woman in a small country of 5 million, but when I saw some people online warning that their country had just blacked out their internet, the fact that I was already up to speed with the implications in that context meant I could immediately contact our foriegn affairs minister to ask we send a signal that the world is watching -and I got a reply, too, about the diplomatic actions we were taking.
When I protested Apartheid I was just a child. Years later, I found out some of those suffering under Apartheid had heard of our tiny country's protest and taken comfort from it at that time.
No, I did not solve anyone's problems, and nor did they want me to - but it still matters.
One mental health worker in the western province of Herat who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals said the Taliban had barred health professionals from publishing or sharing statistics on suicide, which had previously been published regularly.
Herat had the most reported suicide attempts of the provinces for which data was obtained: 123, including 106 by women. There were 18 reported deaths, 15 of them women
My comment got eaten but I will repost (sorry if it's showing up twice for anyone):
This article doesn’t read to me like a complaint about the film, though?
The tone seems to me to be more, I went to a film about A+B, now I’m sharing my experience that C was a big part of that which wasn’t shown, even though it was symbolised by marbles.
To me, that’s always worth pointing out, especially when so many people seem to get a lot of their views about history from moving image media.
And maybe one day when someone does make something that touches a bit on the historical conditions behind “Great Man” style history, it might be more welcomed than it would be in the current climate, if articles like this one help people know a bit more.
I’m remembering when Patricia Rozema’s adaptation of Mansfield Park came out. The Jane Austen novel is about people living in a house that was literally owned by a slave owner with plantations in the West Indies, but that stuff had never been shown before. Some people were really scandalised but I thought it was quite interesting. Understanding about how Western history intersects with, say, African history is helpful in understanding the world we live in now.
This article doesn't read to me like a complaint about the film, though?
The tone seems to me to be more, I went to a film about A+B, now I'm sharing my experience that C was a big part of that which wasn't shown, even though it was symbolised by marbles.
To me, that's always worth pointing out, especially when so many people seem to get a lot of their views about history from moving image media.
And maybe one day when someone does make something that touches a bit on the historical conditions behind "Great Man" style history, it might be more welcomed than it would be in the current climate, if articles like this one help people know a bit more.
I'm remembering when Patricia Rozema's adaptation of Mansfield Park came out. The Jane Austen novel is about people living in a house that was literally owned by a slave owner with plantations in the West Indies, but that stuff had never been shown before. Some people were really scandalised but I thought it was quite interesting. Understanding about how Western history intersects with, say, African history is helpful in understanding the world we live in now.
This article is about something that was in the movie, though.
The closer we get to the bomb’s completion, the more marbles go into the bowl. But there’s no mention in the film of where two-thirds of that uranium came from: a mine 24 stories deep, now in Congo’s Katanga, a mineral-rich area in the southeast.
As the marbles steadily filled the bowl onscreen, I kept seeing what was missing: Black miners hauling earth and stone to sort piles of radioactive ore by hand.
It was a stylistic choice, as the author confirmed with Nolan at the premiere. Compare with, say, the opening of Uncut Gems where the stylistic choice was to show the conditions in which it was mined.
Personally I think this article is well worth reading. In the West, a lot of the general public's knowledge about colonial activities in DRC is sort of frozen somewhere around the 19th century.
Hi, not trying to start a fight but thought you might be interested; "kangaroo" has no relevance here.
It's ka-nga: "ka" - like the English word "car" but without the R - and "nga" which also rhymes with car and has a soft g like in the English word "sing", not a hard g like in "kangaroo."
Nga might be a bit harder for you, but all kiwis know how to pronounce it, it's the nga in common names like Ngaire and Ngati and "Tutira Mai Nga Iwi".
Te Wera a Waitohi aka Waitohi aka Picton is a crazy one. The NZ Company cycled through naming it Horne Bay, Newton Bay, Cromwell, Beaconfield then finally settled on Picton after a guy who was into slave trading. Facepalm.
If we want to pronounce it properly we do it "Papa" - "ka" - "nga" - "horo" "horo".
I'd predict people who want to mangle it will probably go for something like "Paper" "kanga" "hoaro" (with a hard g like in kangaroo, argh) and leave the last bit off.
Paraparaumu gets called "Parrer Pram" by people who don't pronounce their reo. Not all of whom are pakeha I might add.
That happened to me too. I came in yesterday with something to say, and when I saw that some of the first people in there were making overly simplistic statements using (problematically class-based) American insults with hexbear-specific spelling, I just didn't want to post in there.
They have a full on culture of dogpiling/bullying using in-group memes and it gets overwhelming.
I say this as someone who a) likes the name Papakangahorohoro and b) thinks the locals should thank their lucky stars that it's not named after a local councillor's friend's uncle like so many new development streets are.
Demographically a lot of them are teenage girls and women in their 20s. The "Little Pink Army". So it's like if MAGA was fuelled by the same passion, energy and stamina that fuels a lot of pop star fandom.
Thanks, that's a fascinating read, especially the part about the decisions which distorted women's voices. It reminds me a bit of the choices made with early colour film stock, which was so bad at dark skin tones.
I understand your concerns but: sometimes the role of an ally is to listen, to acknowledge, and to bear witness.
Not to jump in screaming "here I come to save you". The immediate knee-jerk focus of "should we invade" is galling, sure, but I don't think the alternative needs to be to let's all look away and block our ears.
Knowing what other people in this world are going through is important part of being a human.
When I met someone who is in exile and I was familiar with the basics of why she is an exile, that mattered to her.
I'm just one ill woman in a small country of 5 million, but when I saw some people online warning that their country had just blacked out their internet, the fact that I was already up to speed with the implications in that context meant I could immediately contact our foriegn affairs minister to ask we send a signal that the world is watching -and I got a reply, too, about the diplomatic actions we were taking.
When I protested Apartheid I was just a child. Years later, I found out some of those suffering under Apartheid had heard of our tiny country's protest and taken comfort from it at that time.
No, I did not solve anyone's problems, and nor did they want me to - but it still matters.