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.

More

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

Recommended Reading - 08/01/06

• An Epidemic of Hatred — Shakespeare’s Sister has written an excellent must-read piece on the lack of media attention on the war against homosexuality in America.
  

  Consider for a moment the stories you see on the nightly news. Try to recall the scare stories that are built up around two children nationwide getting injured by a faulty toy, or three people nationwide having died from side effects of a medication, or ten people in your city having been attacked by pit bulls over the last twenty years. “A rash of incidents.” “An epidemic.” “What can we do?” “What you need to know to protect yourself.”

  Consider that after two women died after taking RU-486 (after it has been dispensed over half a million times), two anti-choice Senators jumped to propose legislation that would suspend the use of the drug.

  Consider that as the Senate passed legislation to federally criminalize the evasion of parental notification laws, the Republican Senator who wrote the legislation justified it by saying, “If it is happening 20 times a year, it is still worth doing to protect those parental rights and to protect those children from being in these kinds of situations.”

  Consider that the flag-burning amendment was deemed a necessity, though only something like five flags have burned in decades.

  Consider that the Pledge Protection Act was deemed a necessity, on the possibility that someone might bring a legal challenge based on the phrase “Under God.”

  Consider that one of the primary rationales among opponents of marriage equality is that it must be prevented lest preposterous hypotheticals about men wanting to marry dogs come to fruition.

  How little it takes to whip up the media into an exploitative frenzy, all in the name of “protecting” us. How little it takes to move our Congress to pay attention to an issue and pass legislation to “protect” us. (Which is, of course, ever an excuse to limit our rights, but they nonetheless claim it’s about “protection.”) One or two incidents, or, sometimes, just an imaginary scenario of what might happen. That’s all it takes.

  But in the course of two months, there have been at least six vicious attacks on the LGBT community, and the media is silent. And Congress, well, they were pushing for an amendment to deny equal rights to same-sex couples. Their focus was “protecting the sanctity of marriage.” They’re more concerned with protecting an institution, an abstract concept, than protecting people.

  When churches throughout the South were being burned, it was national news. When a hate crime at Seattle’s Jewish Federation claimed the life of someone the other day, it was national news. And it should have been, in both cases. But an epidemic of hatred against the LGBT community in this country is not garnering the same attention—even as Congress pursues discriminatory legislation and courts are ruling against challengers to marriage inequality.

  Think there’s a correlation?

  The anti-gay hysteria that’s leading to an epidemic of hate crimes against the LGBT community is constantly being inflamed by the GOP’s use of gay rights as a wedge issue, their use of anti-gay rhetoric, their exploitation of anti-gay sentiment. And even with people being attacked and their homes being burned, the Dems can’t be arsed to take a bloody principled stand. And the media doesn’t care. They’ve finally got a real epidemic on their hands and it’s utter silence.

  Read the whole thing…

  And then do something about it.

  Write your Congress members and your local media and tell them to pay attention to this Epidemic of Hatred against the LGBT community. Donate to LGBT advocacy groups. Straight people, register your support with Atticus Circle and PFLAG. And keep talking about this. Blog this issue. Tell anyone who will listen and get them involved.

  Hatred flourishes in silence. Let’s make some noise.

• Israel, anti-Semitism, and the experience of being a lapsed Secular Jew in America — Jill @ Brilliant at Breakfast brings us her unique viewpoints from a lapsed American Jew on Israel, Lebanon, Mel Gibson and recent remarks by Ron @ Middle Earth Journal.
  

  These are tough times to be on the left side of the fence with even a marginally Jewish identification. Sometimes the left is as knee-jerk in its “Israelis are butchers” generalizations as the right is in its “everything Israel does is justified” attitude. I’m disgusted at the nearly 60-year-long battle on the part of the Arab world to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Right now I feel like a parent with two squabbling kids in the back seat of the car. I don’t give a shit who started it. I just want it to stop. As Bill Cosby once said about HIS kids, I don’t want justice, I want quiet. Deal with it and find a way to live with it. It’s not that the Arab world is so fond of the Palestinians

  I’m equally appalled at the Israelis thinking they can prevent another Holocaust by behaving like Nazis. I’m doubly appalled because these are supposed to be arguably “my people.” These are the people who are really the public face of worldwide Jewry.

  There is plenty of blame to go around here. I don’t think we need to choose up sides.

  I understand that opposition to Israel doesn’t necessarily mean hatred of all Jews.
  So why does it FEEL as though it does? Why, even when I agree with the anti-Israel blog rant, does my stomach knot up?

• Wise Old Toddlers. — Michael Reynolds @ Donklephant wrote this excellent piece which perfectly describes the state of the government as I’ve come to understand it. It’s made my head hurt. I’ve felt as if my brain was seeping out of my ears over the last few years but this piece is exactly the way I’ve pictured it.
  

  Toddler: We always said it would be bloody.

  Adult: No, you said it would be a cakewalk.

  Toddler: Everyone knew there would be difficult patches.

  Adult: The Iraqi police are militia death squads, refugees are fleeing the killing that takes place right under our noses, the Iraqi army keeps ’standing up’ and yet we’re sending more guys, our army is overstretched, our own intel admit that Iraq is the new jihadist training ground and that it’s been a boon to terrorist recruiting, the Syrians are less afraid of us and the Iranians are laughing as they process fissile materials right next door.

  Toddler: Yes, of course, exactly what we always said would happen. And a good thing, too.

  Adult: Oh, and it’s cost us hundreds of billions.

  Toddler: Yes, just as we said: it’s paying for itself. Why, it’s working out marvelously. Just you don’t lose heart. You’ll see.

• We’re Afraid! Please Spy On Us More! — Becky @ Preemptive Karma writes about Fox News “scaremongering” efforts to assist the Bush Administration to easily scare American citizens into giving up their freedom not to be spied upon by thier government. Fox News went so far as to suggest that an American city would be nuked by Hezbollah (remember al-Qaeda?).
  

Tags: Israel, Lebanon, Mel Gibson, Bill Cosby, Palestinians, Jew, Arab, Nazis, Iraq, George W. Bush, politics, Fox News, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda

Day 1,230

Today is Day 20 of the “Crisis in the Middle East”.

Do you know how many days it’s been since the U.S. invaded Iraq?

According to Frank Rich in yesterday’s New York Times, yesterday was Day 1,229, making today a nice even 1,230.

According to CNN, “there have been 2,802 coalition deaths, 2,576 Americans, two Australians, 114 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, three Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, one Hungarian, 31 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, two Romanians, two Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of July 31, 2006.”  1,000 plus Iraqis per month have lost their lives in Baghdad alone the last few months.

However, according to Frank Rich:

On the Big Three networks’ evening newscasts, the time devoted to Iraq has fallen 60 percent between 2003 and this spring, as clocked by the television monitor, the Tyndall Report. On Thursday, Brian Williams of NBC read aloud a “shame on you” e-mail complaint from the parents of two military sons anguished that his broadcast had so little news about the war.

This is happening even as the casualties in Iraq, averaging more than 100 a day, easily surpass those in Israel and Lebanon combined. When Nouri al-Maliki, the latest Iraqi prime minister, visited Washington last week to address Congress, he too got short TV shrift — a mere five sentences about the speech on ABC’s “World News.” The networks know a rerun when they see it. Only 22 months earlier, one of Mr. Maliki’s short-lived predecessors, Ayad Allawi, had come to town during the 2004 campaign to give a similarly empty Congressional address laced with White House-scripted talking points about the war’s progress. Propaganda stunts, unlike “Law & Order” episodes, don’t hold up on a second viewing.

The steady falloff in Iraq coverage isn’t happenstance. It’s a barometer of the scope of the tragedy. For reporters, the already apocalyptic security situation in Baghdad keeps getting worse, simply making the war more difficult to cover than ever. The audience has its own phobia: Iraq is a bummer. “It is depressing to pay attention to this war on terror,” said Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly on July 18. “I mean, it’s summertime.” Americans don’t like to lose, whatever the season. They know defeat when they see it, no matter how many new plans for victory are trotted out to obscure that reality.

So much for supporting our troops, eh?  What happened to reporting all of that good news that was supposed to be happening in Iraq?

I’m upset about Israel and Lebanon too.  Heck, I’m outraged; however, remember, Iraq and Afghanistan are our wars and our messes and our soldiers are dying over there.  Shame on our media for a lack of patriotic priority.

Hat tip AmericaBlog.

Tags: Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Baghdad, American soldiers, New York Times, ABC, Fox News, NBC, Nouri al-Maliki, Frank Rich

Recommended Reading

• Censorship is “Just a Policy” — All Spin Zone blogged about how FEMA won’t let trailer residents give media intervies without a FEMA chaparone.
• Third time’s not the charm: Sunday-morning talk shows still imbalanced — Media Matter’s study proving that Sunday talk shows are far from so-called liberal media. In fact, it’s been over a decade since they’ve been anywhere near balanced near that direction. The statistics clearly show that if it’s Sunday, it must be a Conservative guest.
• There was another report of Homeland Security’s TALON database being misused to store student anti-war and anti-military recruitment protestors in the news. (Hat tip AmericaBlog)
• Right-Wing Attacks American Evacuees: ‘Ingrates,’ ‘Whining,’ ‘Spoiled-Rotten Little Children’ — ThinkProgress.org reported on Fox News childish, incompassionate, extremely unprofessional journalism. No wonder, the average right-winger thinks this is appropriate behavior. The comment section is worth a read, but be sure you have some time set aside to sit and read it all.
• Israelis and Lebanese talking…on the net — ThinkProgress.org also reports abouts about Israelis and Lebanese who would rather not be bombing each other but would instead prefer something more peaceful reaching out to each other via the Internet. Too bad those aren’t the ones in charge…
• 128 — the number out of 400,000 frozen embryos that have been adopted, according to ThinkProgress.org. I suppose that leaves 399,872 that could be used to help find cures for cancer, AIDS, and who knows what else that’s killing Americans and other people across the globe.
• Italy is considering serving the US with extradition papers for 26 CIA agents for the abduction of an Islamist cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, who was seized from Milan 3 years ago, taken to Egypt, and tortured. [Guardian Unlimited]

Tags: FEMA, liberal media, TALON, Homeland Security, Fox News, Israel, Lebanon, Veto, World Peace, stem cell research, Middle East, Italy, Abu Omar

Bush Administration Ignored CIA Intelligence, Same Old News

I watched 60 Minutes last night and I’ve been reading all of the related articles on Yahoo!News, The Washington Post, CNN, and Reuters. O.K. It’s all the same article. They all say the same thing. And really for those of us liberals who’ve been paying attention since 2002, it’s nothing new. In fact, there wasn’t anything in that report I hadn’t heard before, so it’s hard to get excited.

And I know none of the conservative right-wingers were paying attention anyway so it was just preaching to the choir. In fact, I stopped by Fox News and there’s no mention of the story on their website, not even something to refute Tyler Drumheller’s claims that the White House flat out ignored CIA intelligence that conflicted with what they needed to make the case for war in Iraq.

“The (White House) group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested,” he was quoted as saying in interview excerpts released by CBS on Friday.

“We said: ‘Well, what about the intel?’ And they said: ‘Well, this isn’t about intel anymore. This is about regime change’,” added Drumheller, whose CIA operation was assigned the task of debriefing the Iraqi official. [“Ex-CIA agent says WMD intelligence ignored” (Reuters)]

Tags: WMD, Tyler Drumheller, Fox News, Yahoo!News, Washington Post, CNN, Reuters, White House, CIA, Intelligence, Iraq, 60 Minutes

The Returning American Soldier And PTSD

As some of you know, my cousin served in Operation Desert Storm, something I am extremely proud of, despite the fact that I am a self-proclaimed pacifist. He committed suicide several years later and though I’ve written that mental illness runs in my family, I do think that he was never quite right after returning from the Middle East. I don’t think he ever got the care he needed after coming home and maybe if he had, he’d still be at family “reunions” annoying the heck out of me.
It is a very brave thing our soldiers do for those of us who don’t or can’t go to war. Certainly it would destroy some of us. Certainly it destroys some of those who do go. Certainly no one who faces that kind of violence and danger and destruction cannot return unchanged or untouched in some way.

According to VA statistics, 505,366 troops from Iraq and Afghanistan have left the military as of February. Of that number, 144,424, 29 percent, have sought VA health care, and 20,638, more than 14 percent of those, have been diagnosed with PTSD.

Symptoms of PTSD include hyper-vigilance, irritability, outbursts of anger, sleeplessness and fatigue, and can be accompanied by alcoholism, depression, anxiety and drug abuse.

Meagher said an alarming rate of violent incidents, suicide, homelessness and unemployment among recent veterans has been documented, but the issue has not garnered much national attention.

“We simply have not been the beneficiaries of that type of substantial coverage by the media these past three years,” she said. “So, how exactly would the public be expected to be prepared for what’s to come — in fact, what is already here?”[“Vet’s Mental Health Needs Intensify”(FOXNews.com)]

By the way, I had to follow that “documented” link out of curiousity. It’s really very interesting; it’s a database of (so far 87) cases of of American soldiers committing suicides, murders, robberies or other crimes due to PTSD due to their time in Iraq or Afghanistan. These men need our help. They deserve our help. They sacrificed for us and they deserve the best medical care we can provide.

Tags: Operation Desert Storm, American soldiers, PTSD, Iraq, Afghanistan, VA, Fox News

Pay No Attention To The War Behind The Curtains

Remember three years ago when the U.S. was invading Iraq and the media kept intercepting Iraqi news coverage of the whole affair from Baghdad?

The top advisor guy to Saddam came on when we first invaded and he was like “Oh, there’s no invasion. Nothing to worry about. Everyone go about your business. No one would dare invade Iraq while Saddam is in charge.”

Then like a day or so later, he was like “O.K. The Americans are invading but Iraq is strong and mighty and we are beating the vernim back and we are winning the war under Saddam’s mighty leadership.”

Then as American soldiers were approaching Baghdad, he kept going on the television like every hour or so in a very panicky way telling the Iraqi public not to panic because the U.S. troops were no where near Baghdad, but toward the end there it was so ridiculous because you could not only hear the bombs going off in the background but you could see the walls trembling from the nearby blasts.

I’ve been flashing back to these scenes the last few weeks as Rumsfeld and Cheney and even Iraqi “official” types have made announcements to assure the American populace that Iraq was not having a Civil War and was no where near a Civil War and Fox News even claimed that the media had made up the idea of a Civil War.

Now all of a sudden over the weekend, everyone’s like, “O.K. Maybe there’s a Civil War. In fact, maybe it’s been going on for six months or so. We really didn’t want to mention it. Didn’t want to worry anyone.”

I guess there’s only so long you can hide the really, really obvious for so long. I mean, how many Americans were really buying that story about there being no Civil War when there were reports of 50 to 100 bodies being found daily in acts of violence? We’re not talking about muggings and gang wars here, y’all. I just don’t understand why the White House and the Pentagon and even the media like Fox News wanted to candy coat it and pretend it wasn’t happening. We can’t actually solve the problem until we accept it for what it is. Didn’t George learn that as one of his steps of recovery?

Tags: Iraq, Civil War, George W. Bush, politics, Fox News

Quote of the Day: On Fox News

I’m going to take Britt Hume’s argument to heart and I hope he’ll understand when I say that, if you wanted to clear cable of about 75% of the bullshit spewed into the national debate, you could just fire-bomb Fox News headquarters. You’d probably have to set up a couple firing points outside with a rifle to make sure none of the on-air talent survived.

Of course, that would be morally reprehensible. [“It’s All Good If You Say It’s Wrong (Nitpicker)”]

Tags: Quote of the Day, Fox News

Why isn’t America talking about Cyrus Kar?

I first heard about Cyrus Kar last week while listening to NPR. Since then, I’ve kept an eye open for stories on such media sites as CNN.com. Most of the information I’ve found about the strange case has been from foreign media and blogs.

Any American media references appear to be mostly after this past weekend and I’m amazed to note that while CNN.com has no searchable references, the right-wing biased Fox News does. This North Carolina paper’s site only had a sentence on the subject.

And yet, this is the tale of an ex-Navy Seal who was arrested in Iraq simply for being in the wrong cab at the wrong time. This is a right-winger American film-maker on a personal journey to research a former Persian king who supported civil rights who was arrested simply because the trunk of the taxi he was in had washer timers, commonly used for bomb-making in the Middle East. He was held in a 5′x7′ cell without due process even after the FBI informed his family that he had been cleared of suspicion after passing a polygraph test.

“Saddam Hussein has had more due process than Cyrus Kar. This is a detention policy that was drafted by Kafka.”

I just don’t understand why a bigger deal isn’t being made of this. I thought we were supposed to be fighting for freedom and liberty and all of that. I thought we were supposed to be bringing freedom to these other countries. Not only are we out of control in treating the citizens of other countries like non-entities, we have begun stripping the rights of Americans.

What kills me is the argument so many people give that if you haven’t done anything, the FBI or the CIA or whoever is enforcing the Patriot Act, won’t be knocking down your door to haul you away to some prison where they’ll be able to hold you without telling you why and without letting you talk to lawyers, family, or friends indefinitely. Cyrus Kar didn’t do anything wrong. He was just taking a taxi, the wrong taxi…

Who’s next? Your neighbor? You? Me?

Why aren’t we talking about this? Why are we letting it slip into the back pages of the paper to be forgotten by the time we read the comic pages?

Tags: Cyrus Kar, NPR, Fox News, detainees, Iraq, FBI, innocent, Civil Rights