Checkout the graphic novel by David Axe and Matt Bors titled “War is Boring: Bored Stiff, Scared to Death in the World’s Worst War Zones.” Here is an excerpt from an interview with the author and war reporter David Axe from the Danger Room:

Danger Room: Okay. Of all the fucked-up places you’ve been, what’s the most fucked-up of all? Why?

David Axe: Chad, by far. Even in Somalia, I felt like there was a fairly clear division between “danger” and “safety.” When I was with my fixers, I felt safe. In Chad, I never felt safe. In that country, violence visited me everywhere: in the capital, when corrupt cops hijacked my car; in a Catholic mission in Sudanese border country, when heavily-armed child soldiers hopped the fence and tried to break into my photographer’s and my rooms as a gunfight erupted all around us. Now, as it turns out, my sense of safety in Somalia was an illusion. Just a few months after I left Mogadishu, the guards my then-girlfriend Daria and I had worked with — and had felt safe with — sold a couple of Western freelance reporters into the captivity of an Islamic group. The reporters — Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan — were held for months, tortured, abused. My fixer in Mogadishu narrowly escaped coming to a bad end in that episode. Realizing he could no longer trust the guards and others around him, he went into hiding.

(From New Zealand’s domestic violence support organization Women’s Refuge. H/t: copyranter.)

(People Opposing Women Abuse/POWA, h/t: copyranter.)

Bell Bajao! (Ring the Bell!).

The monsters we create speak volumes about our time and place. The most striking fact seems to be that the monsters who belong to us now are less fantastical and more human. On this note, Salon has an article worth checking out by Thomas Rogers titled “The meaning of torture porn: From “Saw” to “Human Centipede”: An expert on horror movies explains the moral appeal of a controversial genre.” Here is an excerpt:

Horror movies have always been violent, but in recent years, it seems, they’ve reached gruesome new lows. The past few years, the “torture porn” trend — as exemplified by the many “Saw” films — has continued unabated. A recent film, “The Human Centipede,” centered around a German surgeon trying to assemble the gastric systems of three tourists, and this September, one of the most notoriously violent horror films of the ’80s, “was described by Roger Ebert as “so sick, reprehensible and contemptible that I can hardly believe it’s playing in respectable theaters.”)

But it’s precisely the extreme nature of horror that makes it such a lightning rod for debates about hot-topic issues within American culture — like racism, women’s rights, consumerism and sexuality — along with broader issues of morality. A new book, “The Philosophy of Horror,” a collection of essays from academics, edited by Thomas Fahy, the director of the American Studies Program at Long Island University, addresses the latter, with contributions about the hidden messages of everything from “The Birds” to “Hostel.”

(Read our previous post “The Monsters We Create.”)

Our fear of being rejected and ridiculed drives so many of our decisions. We become reluctant to act because of what people will think and feel about us. Ridicule and rejection are not only common reactions they are expected and accepted as our right to inflict upon one another. As we put ourselves out there through social networks, media, and sites like this, what can take place are hostile reactions to who we are and what we do. In affect these mediums can amplify our experiences of feeling rejected and ridiculed because they take place in front of a larger audience. Read more…

The Huffingtonpost has a post worth noting titled “The 15 Most Controversial Video Games.” We have been trying to describe the benefits and dangers associated with playing video games. Our concerns are primarily focused on how precious time and energy are taken away from other important activities and responsibilities and not as much on the impact of violent content. Of course violent content must be taken seriously, but also put in the context of the gamer wanting to play and master the game itself and what is in fact age appropriate material based on the ratings system provided by the video game industry. Lawrence Kutner, PhD and Cheryl K. Olson, ScD in their book Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do reiterate what we have been saying on this blog and through our work with children and families:

Probably the most important thing you can do as a parent to protect your children from the consequences of violence is to shift your focus to those issues that are much more likely to result in making children behave violently or having them be the victims of someone else’s violence. Despite the urban legends and political grandstanding, violent video games are pretty low on that list.

Violent children and victimized children tend to come from violent and abusive environments. We hear this again and agin from child development researchers. (228)

The New York Review of Books has a must read article titled “The Rape of American Prisoners” detailing the alarming numbers of rapes against youth in correctional/detention facilities and the types of conditions that cause these acts of sexual violence to happen. If you have worked in treatment or detention facilities where adolescents are placed you know how the weak are taken advantage of by the stronger and those in power. Read more…