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Things that are pissing me off today: Lynndie England is blaming the media for printing the photos taken at Abu Ghraib of Iraqi prisoners being tortured. According to an AP piece, she acknowledges that after the photos of the atrocities were exposed, the Iraqi insurgency picked up. Here's her quote:

"Yeah, I took the photos but I didn't make it worldwide.

There's a great article on Womensenews about "Torture Porn" makers co-opting the word feminism as an excuse for their extreme graphic violence.  Torture Porn, a term coined by David Edelstein in this NYT article, refers to movies like Saw, Hostel, Captivity, Vacancy and The Devil's Rejects, among others, with over the top sadistic violence.  Edelstein notes "Unlike the old seventies and eighties hack-’em-ups (or their jokey remakes, like Scream), in which masked maniacs punished nubile teens for promiscuity (the spurt of blood was equivalent to the money shot in porn), the victims here are neither interchangeable nor expendable...Some of these movies are so viciously nihilistic that the only point seems to be to force you to suspend moral judgments altogether."