Work Your Brain — 11/1/06

Tales of the Detainee Kind

• The Case Of Bilal Hussein — Justin Gardner @ Donklephant reports on Bilal Hussein, an AP war photographer, accused by the U.S. military of helping some insurgents kidnap a couple journalists. Only those journalists have been rescued and they say Hussein is a hero. The AP wants to know why he’s been detained since April with no charges having been filed against him while right-wing bloggers call for his head.
  

  Six months is more than enough time to get some facts together and make a case against Hussein. The military hasn’t done that, and they should…or else they should release Hussein without charge.

  As Gardner points out, Hussein isn’t the first journalist to be treated as such.

  Read the rest of this entry »

  Tags: detainees, Bilal Hussein, Abdul Rahim Al Ginco, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, al-Qaeda, Insurrection Act, FEMA, Lynne Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, liberals, rightwingers, patriotism, pragmatism, American soldiers, Republicans, Democrats, GOP, Georgia, Genital Cutting, abortion, pro-choice, pro-life, TSA, airport security, bomb-making materials, Christopher Soghoian, Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, Indiana University, fake boarding passes, Ed Markey, FBI, Police State

  comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, Natural Disasters, Women's Rights, The Middle East

Recommended Reading — Mostly Women’s Rights Edition

• A Proposed Small Step For Womenkind — Buttercup @ Buttercup & Bean writes about the problem of unwanted attention from men and how the real problem is not that women are putting themselves in situations where they could become targets but that men feel that they are entitled to any “piece of female ass that shows up in their vicinity.” Excellent post.
• To iPod or not to iPod (or, See the Person!) — Colleen @ For All the World to See wonders if technology isn’t creating a society of isolation and anti-social individuals.
  

  We pass people in the grocery, on the street, at school, at work, in the car and they’re just people. The plural, the generic, the masses.

  But they aren’t. Each person is a person.

  And what a difference we would make if we saw each one of those people as a person , not as one of a mass.

  As an individual, who maybe had a bad day, woke up on the wrong side of the bed, their coffee maker didn’t work this morning, they got in a fight with their kid, they got some unexpected money, they passed a test, they finished a big project, have a headache, found out their mom has cancer, found out their wife was pregnant….

  You get the idea.

  What if we each did that, maybe not to every person we came in contact with, but made an effort to really see the person we pass on the grocery aisle or who serves us our coffee, or who takes the parking place we had our eye on? What if?

  What if we didn’t wear our iPods so as to be lost in our own little world, but instead had the earphones out of our ears, so we heard the little old lady behind us in the grocery ask for help getting something down…or we actually talked to the server who takes our order, instead of talking to them in short, one-word comments while our cell phone is pressed to our face?

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Tags: Women's Rights, iPod, technology, anti-social, outsourcing, India, IT, AIDS, JonBenet Ramsey, Bob Herbert, violence against women

3 comments See also in My Life, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, Featured, Women's Rights

Work Your Brain — 09/09/06

A Little Fun First

• Thursday Thirteen #2 — ribbiticus @ Pond Perspective offers some gems of advice. Here are my favorites:
  

  5. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

  10. Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

  11. We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.

  12. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

  13. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.

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Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Crayons, terrorism, Logan Airport, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Congress, wiretapping, Osama bin Laden, Mother Jones, liberals, 9/11, religion, aetheists, women, virginity, Journal of Sex Research Western soceity, involuntary virgins, economy, America

Work Your Brain — 09/04/06

Women’s Rights

• Class warfare at Starbucks — lambert @ CorrenteWire writes about how class warfare starts over breast milk. Companies are far more likely to be accomodating to executive mothers who need breaks during the day to pump breast milk, but the women who work in the stores and “on the line” have to “barricade themselves in small restrooms intended for customers, counting the minutes left in their breaks.” There’s a lot of pressure to breast-feed in this day and age, but it’s easy to get discouraged and give up under less than ideal conditions.
• A Mystery From the Time When Abortion Was Illegal and Dangerous — olvlzl @ ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES remembers a horrible, deadly practice from the pre-Roe era — infanticide.
  

  The woman who owned the trunk was in her 60s in 1983. The papers say she was called a “pillar of the community” when she lived in the area. People who remembered her said that at the time the babies had been killed she often appeared to be pregnant but she never had children. The authorities found her but she wouldn’t say anything about the trunk. I don’ t know of any legal pressure put on her to talk. The fact that there were five corpses of infants wrapped in newspapers from different years certainly suggests serial infanticide, not a misdemeanor in anyone’s book.

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Tags: Starbucks, Women's Rights, breastfeeding, class warfare, abortion, baby snuffer, infancticide, Islamofascism, propaganda, War on Terror, WWII, Osama bin Laden, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, Domino Theory, Hitler, whistleblowers, Russell Tice, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Department of Justice, 101st Fighting Keyboarders, Fox News, David Warren, Debbie Schussel, Kathleen Parker, Mark Steyn, Glenn Greenwald, hypocrisy

Work Your Brain — 09/02/06

First Some Fun

• Thursday Thirteen #3 — Baggage @ Baggage That Goes With Mine wrote thirteen reasons why the internet is better than real life. This is my favorite.
  

  11. On the internet, you can pop into a forum or a blog and tell a person that their beliefs are dumb, they should be breastfeeding, they should never co-sleep, they should divorce their husband, they should shave their legs, and they should stop wearing mom jeans. In real life, people would punch you in the face.

In Memory Of Katrina

• But you can keep them for the birds and bees — Mac @ PeskyApostrophe wonders about all of that Katrina aid money the U.S. asked for and got from other countries last year. She comes to the same conclusion I did.
  

  I’m appalled at a variety of things when it comes to the Katrina rebuilding effort and FEMA’s role in it all, but this is a whole new level of incompetence. As part of my new job, I am now involved in grant-writing. In a good portion of grants, the grantee expects a report as to how the money was used. While I’m sure these gifts did not come with any reporting requirements, if one of our grantees found out their money had been either wasted or didn’t got to the program for which it was intended that would pretty much guarantee they’d never give money to us again. And you have to wonder if, should another emergency situation arise, these countries would think twice about giving aid money to the U.S. if we’re not going to use it and use it wisely.

• First the Flood, Now the Fight — Spencer S. Hsu @ WashingtonPost.com wrote a special report on the butting of heads between FEMA and state and city officials in the rebuilding of the Gulf States and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA swears it’s not trying to be difficult but the process seems to be designed to wear down those requesting help until they just give up and either take what little they’ve been given, which isn’t much if anything.
  

  Through hundreds of such disputes large and small, the most costly disaster in U.S. history is fast becoming its most contentious, with appeals and disputes worth nearly a billion dollars bogging down repairs of critical public systems and delaying the return of residents.

  Current and former officials at all levels blame FEMA workers’ inexperience with eligibility rules, weaknesses in U.S. disaster laws and inconsistent treatment by Congress for much of the wrangling. The huge scale of the storm and honest disagreement over whether federal or local taxpayers should pay the tab add to the conflict.

  “Disasters should be difficult to declare. . . . But once you get them, FEMA should not worry about cutting costs,” said Daniel A. Craig, who stepped down in October as head of FEMA’s recovery division and is now consulting for New Orleans. “Public entities are eligible for everything they have lost due to the disaster. It is not up to FEMA to cut corners or makes sure money is saved.”

  Gil H. Jamieson, FEMA’s deputy director for Gulf Coast recovery, agreed that “we’re in this to rebuild the city” and added: “We are not in it to delay for the sake of delay. Are there folks who sometimes hose it up? Absolutely. But I think we’re doing a good job of helping it recover.”

  The disputes come as the costliest part of the recovery begins: restoring water, power, roads, bridges, schools and other public facilities along the Gulf Coast. Agency veterans said the spending will have more impact on the physical rebuilding of the Gulf area than anything else FEMA does over the next decade, possibly eclipsing its role in aiding individual victims of the storm.

  The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, for instance, sustained $446 million in storm losses, said Executive Director Marcia St. Martin. But FEMA has committed just $113 million so far.

  FEMA notes that New Orleans promised U.S. environmental regulators $640 million in repairs before Katrina, and that the antiquated system is too big for the Crescent City’s reduced population.

  “That’s what makes a city — if you don’t have water, sewer and drainage, you don’t have a city,” lamented Robert Jackson, spokesman for the sewer board. “The money so far only scratches the surface of the devastation.

  Hat Tip: Susie @ Suburban Guerrilla

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Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Internet, Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, aid money, Gil H. Jamieson, Daniel A. Craig, Gulf Coast recovery, New Orleans, Islamofascism, George W. Bush, Muslims, women in the media, Support the Troops, defense appropriation bill, Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congress, Pentagon, Lower 9th Ward, National Hurricane Canter, 9/11, Max Mayfield, Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, terrorism, Ann Jones, Taliban, NATO, Christians, American Dream, Martin Niemoller, Germany, Nazis, Rocky Anderson, Utah, Salt Lake Tribune, patriotism, lie, Walter Jones, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Caddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld

Recommended Reading - 08/28/06

• Moral relativity and the “war on terrorism” — Kevin @ Preemptive Karma wrote an excellent post about the double standard of the this administration and the expectations of the Right that expect Rep. Cynthia McKinney to apologize to the police officer she had an altercation with earlier this year but accepts the fact that the U.S. has imprisoned and tortured innocent people in Gitmo and elsewhere without apology or explanation and that is just fine.
  

  Apparently in the twisted world of rightwing freaks slapping someone requires an apology but busting out the teeth of a perfectly innocent Lebanese or torturing an innocent Turk, not to mention their imprisonment, is something that those particular victims ought to just suck it up over, be glad that they eventually regained their freedom and to hell with apologizing to them.

• Republicans: Making the world safe for bigots and racists — Jill @ Brilliant at Breakfast writes about recent incidents in the South where black children have been segregated to the back of the school bus and a church has voted not to accept black members and she wonders what has made this sort of thing acceptable as we approach the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, “leaving tens of thousands of black New Orleans residents stranded or dying, while the President of the United States was yukking it up with 2008 Presidential hopeful John McCain over birthday cake.”
  

  You can trot Condoleeza Rice out there till the cows come home, it doesn’t change the fact that when it comes to black Americans who do not serve the Republican party, as far as that party is concerned, they might as well drown.

• Have Some Foil — chicago dyke @ CorrenteWire has a nice piece up about two whistleblowers, who uncovered secret wiretapping in cell phones around the world. They’ve been murdered, of course. Read the rest of this entry »

  Tags: terrorism, Cynthia McKinney, Guantanamo Bay, torture, detainees, rightwingers, Republicans, racism, George W. Bush, Condi Rice, John McCain, Hurricane Katrina, whistleblowers, wiretapping, American Society of Civil Engineers, JonBenet Ramsey, pedophiles, relationships

  1 comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, 9-11 & Terrorism, Hurricane Katrina, Conspiracy Theories, Natural Disasters, Women's Rights

More Women Brainiacs But Still Less Dough

According to a new 379-page report released yesterday, women “now earn the majority of diplomas in fields men used to dominate — from biology to business — and have caught up in pursuit of law, medicine, and other advanced degrees.”

Federal statistics released yesterday show women now also earn the majority of bachelor’s degrees in business, history, and biological and social sciences . The same is true for traditional strongholds such as education and psychology.

And in disciplines where women trail men, they are gaining ground, earning larger numbers of degrees in math, physical sciences, and agriculture. [“Degreewise, women
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Tags: Women's Rights

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Kuwaiti Women Vote For First Time

Yeah, Baby! Vote!

Polling is taking place in a Kuwaiti council by-election in which women are allowed to vote for the first time.

Two women are also among eight candidates running for the seat in the Salmiya district, south of the capital.

The 28,000 eligible voters, 60% of whom are women, are voting in segregated polling booths, a condition demanded by Islamist and tribal MPs.

Women were granted equal political rights last year and will vote in full legislative polls in 2007.

[…]

Kuwait’s first women candidates are 32-year-old Jenan Boushehri, a chemical engineer at the Kuwait Municipality, and 48-year-old Khalida Khader, a US-educated
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Tags: Kuwait, Women's Rights, vote

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Abdul Rahman Vs. The Women Of Afghanistan

You know, I’ve been thinking the last couple of days about Abdul Rahman, the Afghan man who converted to Christianity from Islam. The Muslims in Afghanistan, that country we freed from the restrictive Taliban, want to kill him for this “crime” against Islam.

Apparently, while we were cheering about all of those changes we brought to the country, no one was paying attention to the fact that there weren’t any real changes being brought to the country. We ousted the Taliban and we’ve had those nifty elections where we forced the Afghan men to let the Afghan women vote
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Tags: Abdul Rahman, Afghanistan, Women's Rights, George W. Bush

Recommended Reading

There’s so much going on in the news and on the web that I really wanted to comment on it all today but it’s got my brain buzzing. Still I didn’t want some of these things to slip away without sharing because they really are worth a good read.

• Iraq through the Prism of Vietnam - a nice comparison of the two wars by Retired Gen. William Odom. “He lists striking similarities and asserts that only after it pulls out of Iraq can the U.S. hope for international support to deal with anti-Western forces.”
• To the
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  Tags: politics, Iraq, Vietnam War, Women's Rights, warrantless wiretapping, patriotism, Men's Rights

  comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, Iraq & Afghanistan, Women's Rights, The Middle East

Why Does Congress Hate Women?

(Note: Icky personal ahead, but bear with me for the point…)

Over the past sixteen years I’ve been very vocal on the subject of insurance and contraceptives — mostly I’ve been a walking billboard for proponents fighting to force insuance companies to cover contraceptives as part of universal basic coverage.

Why? Didn’t I just confess to the blog world the other day that I am the world’s oldest living virgin?

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Tags: Women's Rights, birth control, contraceptives, Senate, HIMMAA, Mike Enzi

Every Two & A Half Minutes

Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted.

One in six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape, and 10% of sexual assault victims are men.

In 2003-2004, there were an average annual 204,370 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. In 2004 alone, there were 209,880 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assaults according to the 2004 National Crime Victimization Survey (pdf). Of the average annual 204,370 victims in 2003-2004, about 65,510 were victims of completed rape, 43,440 were victims of attempted rape, and 95,420 were victims of sexual assault.

About 44% of rape victims are under age 18, and 80% are under age 30.

Since 1993, rape/sexual assault has fallen by over 64%.

Because of the methodology of the National Crime Victimization Survey, these figures do not include victims 12 or younger. While there are no reliable annual surveys of sexual assaults on children, (pdf) the Justice Department has estimated that one of six victims are under age 12.

In 2002, according to the 2002 National Crime Victimization Study, 86,290 women were raped. According to medical reports, the incidence of pregnancy for one-time unprotected sexual intercourse is 5%. By applying the 5% pregnancy rate to 86,290 women, RAINN estimates that there were up to 4,315 pregnancies as a result of rape.

Source: Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network

National Sexual Assault Hotline • 1.800.656.HOPE • Free. Confidential. 24/7.

One in six women? How many women do you know in your social circle? In your family? I know of two people in my life who’ve confided to me that they’ve been raped, but I certainly know more than 12 women. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

5% might get pregnant as a result of such an attack — I pray to God none of them live in South Dakota…

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Tags: rape, sexual assault, Women's Rights, incest

The War on Women in Iraq

Between 1999 and March of 2003, in Iraq there were 22 attacks on women and one death where the victims were attacked for not wearing the traditional headscarves and veils. That’s before the U.S. invasion.

According to the Women’s Rights Association (WRA), a local NGO in Baghdad, the number of attacks has trippled; there have been 80 attacks to date against women and reports of four women being killed by their families in 2005.

“It’s difficult to say how many women wear headscarves and veils,” [WRA spokeswoman Mayada] Zuhair added. “But, before 2003, roughly, seven out of 10 were wearing
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Tags: Iraq, Women's Rights, Honor Killings

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That Gray Area Between Pro-Choice & Anti-Abortion

There’s a lot of hoopla about the abortion fight lately. There’s a lot of name-calling and word-twisting going around. It’s almost dangerous to join into a conversation and express your opinion because the truth is very few people are 100% extremely for or against abortion and the people in the middle are in a mosh pit of sorts.

The Blogsphere, especially the feminist-leaning ’sphere, is filled with a whirlwind of terms and phrases — War Against Women, Women-Haters, Women-Opressers, Pro-choicers, Pro-lifers, Anti-abortionist, Anti-lifers. Personally, I’m not fond of the “pro-life” and “anti-life” versions as they really don’t reflect the groups labeled as such. I think “pro-choice” and “anti-abortion” are probably the best fits I’ve heard or read so far.

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Tags: pro-choice, anti-abortion, abortion, War on Women, Women's Rights

Arizona’s Battle of the Sexes

Jill @ Feministe pointed me to an article at azstarstarnet.com about a ridiculous battle of the sexes, reproductively speaking.

Apparently, last Monday the Arizona House of Representatives voted to make it illegal for a woman to sell her eggs, but they refused to impose similar restrictions on men selling their sperm.

Talk about your sexism and inequality of the sexes!

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Tags: Women's Rights

Women’s Right’s In Afghanistan Almost As Bad Now As Under The Taliban

Three years ago, President George Bush told us, “The mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school – today women are free.”But very little has changed. Most women still wear the burqu, not because it’s all the rage, but because they fear they have to. A third of Afghan women in Kabul are forbidden from leaving the house by the male members of the family. It is still next to impossible for a woman to get a divorce in Afghanistan, even from an abusive husband.

Just because we swept in and knocked back the Taliban, doesn’t mean that we instantly changed social attitudes and traditions that have been around probably since before there was tea in Boston Harbor.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Women's Rights, George W. Bush, Taliban, Dr. Massouda Jalal

Safe Sex Leads To Less Abortions

A recent study suggests that safe sex leads to less unintended pregnancies which leads to less abortions. (Duh.) It also suggests that when the government reduces funding for family planning or birth control to poor women and teenagers, unintended pregnancies and therefore abortions go up. Huh.

At a time when policymakers have made reducing unintended pregnancies a national priority, 33 states have made it more difficult or more expensive for poor women and teenagers to obtain contraceptives and related medical services, according to an analysis released yesterday by the nonpartisan Guttmacher Institute.

From 1994 to 2001, many states cut funds for family planning, enacted laws restricting access to birth control and placed tight controls on sex education, said the institute…

[…]

“The most powerful and least divisive way to decrease abortion is to reduce unintended pregnancy,” said Sarah Brown, director of the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. “If we can make progress reducing unintended pregnancy, we can make enormous progress reducing abortion.”

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Tags: safe sex, abortion, family planning, birth control

comments See also in In the News, The World, Women's Rights

The War on Women

If you don’t think Women’s Rights in America are in jeopardy, check out these stories:

• The Bush Administration is quietly fighting to limit women’s access to birth control
• Mississippi is following in South Dakota’s footsteps and a committee in its state House has voted through a bill that would ban most abortions
• A judge threatened to send a woman to jail for refusing to view the videotape of her rape
• A town can force a woman to kick out her children or their father based on it’s definition of “family”

Tags: Women's Rights

Quote of the Day: The War on Women

MJS at Corrente writes that, in view of recent proposals that would hand over ownership of women’s lady parts to the state, a terminology change is in order. The Jivester suggests that rather than using the negative “anti-choice” label for those who not only want to force unwanted pregnancy on all females, including rape and incest victims, but also to thwart access to emergency contraception and, yes, even the good ol’ birth control pill, we instead accentuate the positive and call this new confiscatory policy what it is: a War on Women (WOW).

May this latest US declaration of hostility be as successful as the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror have been. [The War on Women: A Modest Proposal (Tennessee Guerilla Women]

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Tags: Quote of the Day, Women's Rights, birth control, War on Women, abortion, unwanted pregnancy

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Women Vs. Morally Righteous Pharmacists

The last few days, there’s been quite a buzz about how Target now is backing its pharmacists who refuse to fill valid prescriptions for emergency contraception. Personally, I’m alarmed, because like AMERICAblog’s John in DC, I’m concerned about where the line will be drawn if this continues.

I particular like the opinion piece of Dr. Erik Steele, chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, that appeared in the Bangor News:

The reluctance of a pharmacist morally opposed to abortion to do anything that might result in an abortion is certainly understandable. However, a pharmacist
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Tags: Women's Rights, Pharmacies, birth control, Plan B

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