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“the US occupation administration in Iraq relies on systematic rape, torture, and sadistic treatment of Iraqi women prisoners in its prison camps in the country.”

Your tax dollars at work - paying people to rape and torture Iraqi women who never tried to harm an American that wasn't there to kill them first.

Last year after Halloween, I wrote a few limericks about the undead. They’ve just been posted at From the Asylum.

Hope they amuse!

In the federal government’s ongoing efforts to salvage COINTELPRO from the dustbin of history, the House of Representatives recently passed H.R. 1955, a bill that would, if it also passes the Senate, create a new National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism and a Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States (sic!), which would study the social, criminal, political, psychological, and economic roots of violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism in the United States and methods that can be utilized by Federal, State, local, and tribal homeland security officials to mitigate violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism.

Here are the definitions for the unwieldy jargon used in the bill:

(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION—The term violent radicalization means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.

(3) HOMEGROWN TERRORISM—The term homegrown terrorism means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

(4) IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE—The term ideologically based violence means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs.

Well, O.K., fine. If that is what the Center for Excellence &c. is going to study, then they may as well start with the worst offenders. May I suggest that they begin with studying the social, criminal, political, psychological, and economic roots of the extremist propaganda coming out of Office of National Drug Control Policy, which promotes the use of force or violence by armed narcs to promote the Drug Warriors’ political and social beliefs against the will of the civilian population? Or perhaps the Internal Revenue Service, which routinely engages in the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence to intimidate or coerce the civilian population of the United States, in furtherance of the United States government’s political objectives with respect to the war on Iraq, Social Security, corporate welfare, government schooling, the drug war, etc.? Or perhaps the Department of Defense, which has used repeated, massive, and merciless ideologically-based violence in order to promote the federal government’s ideology with respect to parliamentary government, nuclear disarmament, etc., etc., etc., in countries all over the world?

I fully expect that they will get right on it. After all, you’d hardly expect a double-standard from the State when it comes to ideologically-based violence.

(Story thanks to Stephanie McMillan 2007-10-28.)

Birthday Boy

Anti-choice comic strip gone wild. Didn't anyone tell this guy that someone is already on the creepy cartoon fetus thing?

This is the best thing I’ve read in probably a month, and it’s am absolute must-read for anyone who’s ever wondered about the political and theological confluence of events that became the religious right.

It’s 3 years old, but I just read it this afternoon, so it’s new to me. Also, it’s long, but I found myself entertained and interested all the way through.

It is, of course, of special interest to those among us who would like to live by Biblical principles, since there’s a fair amount of talking about just exactly what those principles are.

It’s broken up into 5 parts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The author, bradhicks, is awesome in several other ways as well. It’s worth poking around his LJ, especially for some of his political writing.

PS. This was originally posted at my LiveJournal page, but I decided to repost it here for the general quality of conversation.

From Village Voice.

This is absolutely shattering.

In short, the situation is that a Florida woman, in order to deal with her 13 year old daughter ‘having sex with older men’, shaves her head and forcibly pierces her genitals, so as to make sex more painful for her daughter. The problem is (or at least, one of many many problem is) that the ‘older man’ she was having sex with was her mother’s 30 year old boyfriend . . . and rather than deal with this as ‘oh god, my boyfriend committed a horrible criminal violation on my daughter,’ she apparently dealt with it as, ‘my slutty daughter is trying to take my man.’

The prosecutor, fairly reasonably (IMHO) pushed for a greater crime than child abuse, and the jury acquitted.

Or, as La Lubu put it in comments:

Shit, damn, motherfucker. Lemme see if I got this straight—

1. Boyfriend rapes 13-year old daughter.
2. Mom does not call police on boyfriend; mom blames daughter.
3. Mom has daughter’s head shaved, in the hopes that boyfriend will find daughter too ugly to fuck.
4. Boyfriend continues to rape daughter. For years.
5. Mom has friend “pierce” daughter’s genitalia, in such a way that it will make it even more painful for the daughter when mom’s boyfriend rapes her again.
6. “Piercing” gets infected.
7. Child protection finally called in.
8. Piercer goes to jail.
9. Mom put on trial for the piercing, but not for allowing the rapes? WTF, Chuck?
10. Mom acquitted.
11. Finally, an arrest warrant is put out for mom’s rapist boyfriend.

Christ, this poor girl. This makes me very angry. My fists are clenching and I am seeing red. I want to break something. As other people mention in coments, possibly the worst part is that now it’s likely that the daughter will be sent back to live with her mother.

Her mother who blamed her for her own rape. Her mother who shaved her head. Her mother who violated her. Her mother who held her down as a needle was pushed through her genitals. Her fucking mother.

A while back, in one of our discussions of Male Circumcision, I made the point that I consider nonconsensual and elective alteration of another person’s genitals is unacceptable, period, whether you’re the parent or not. As chance would have it, at the time, I compared circumcision to piercing your child’s genitals against their will. There were some people who argued that nonconsensually piercing your kid’s genitals is actually no big deal . . . I mean, it’ll heal, right?

I wonder where those people are now, and I hope they’re ashamed.

Maureen Dowd's recent op-ed column on Hillary Clinton starts promisingly:

It's an odd cultural inversion.

The French first lady, the one in a role where wives traditionally ignored and overlooked their husbands' peccadilloes for the greater gain of keeping their marriages intact and running the Élysée Palace, has fled her gilded perch, acting all-American and brimming over with feelings and feminist impulses.

The former American first lady, the one who's supposed to be brimming over with feminist impulses, has ignored and overlooked her husband's peccadilloes for the greater gain of keeping her marriage intact, as she tries to return to the gilded perch and run the White House.

Cécilia Sarkozy acts so American, while Hillary Clinton acts so French.

That's neat. It lets her use the headline of "Hillary la Française, Cherchez la Femme?", too, and it hooks seamlessly into that conservative view of Democrats as weak French surrender monkeys. But wasn't it Cécilia Sarkozy who did the adultery business in the Sarkozy marriage? If so, shouldn't the parallels be drawn between Monsieur Sarkozy and Madame Clinton?

Nope. Because then Dowd's theme about feminism would be lost. You see, it's important to point out that Hillary is not a real feminist, because she elected to stay in a marriage after her husband's infidelity was revealed to all and sundry. Real feminists bugger off the minute such an insult is revealed, and real feminists are all about emotions.

I didn't know this. What a bad feminist I am. But wait, there's more about feminism in Dowd's piece:

Hillary recently told an interviewer that they should talk like "two girlfriends," and last week her campaign theme was: "Women Changing America." She returns to Wellesley tomorrow to launch Hillblazers, a bid to attract young Hillarys to the campaign. She will be back in the setting of her 1969 feminist triumph as the commencement speaker who described her class's desire for a "more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living" and who spoke truth to power, chastising Edward Brooke for being out of touch.

Hillary doesn't speak truth to power any more. Now that Mark Penn believes women can carry her to victory, Hillary speaks girlfriend to girlfriend.

That tack, Caitlin Flanagan writes in The Atlantic, would only work if she were "willing to let us women in on the big, underlying struggle of her life that is front and center in our understanding of who she is as a woman. Her husband's sexual behavior, quite apart from the private pain that it has caused her, has also sullied her deepest — and most womanly — ideals and convictions, for the Clintons' political partnership has demanded that she defend actions she knows to be indefensible. To call her husband a philanderer is almost to whitewash him, for he's used women far less sophisticated, educated and powerful than he — women particularly susceptible to the rake's characteristic blend of cajolery and deceit — for his sexual gratification.

"In glossing over her husband's actions and abetting his efforts to squirm away from the scrutiny and judgment they provoke, Hillary has too often lapsed into her customary hauteur and self-righteousness and added to the pain delivered upon these women."

I would love to be a fly on the wall in these Washington cocktail parties where feminism is defined in new and astonished forms. To be the commencement speaker at an all-girls college is a "feminist triumph"? What did they usually have for commencement speakers? Marquis de Sade?

It's sort of exciting to have Dowd quote Flanagan. Anti-feminism inside anti-feminism, like those Russian babushka dolls. It's less exciting to note that their ideas of feminism seem to include the demand that a woman is responsible for fixing the consequences of her husband's peccadillos, that all "less sophisticated" women need Hillary Clinton to defend them, and that for someone to be a girlfriend she must dish out all the dirt on her husband's infidelities and especially her own guilt in not somehow keeping him off those other women. But I do admit that I'd love to hear Rudy Giuliani dish out all the dirt on his own infidelities, girlfriend to girlfriend. Then we could braid each other's hair before we'd go out to vote together.

But I would vote for Hillary, naturally, for the reasons Dowd so admirably explains:

But maybe the qualities that many find off-putting in Hillary — her opportunism, her triangulation, her ethical corner-cutting, her shifting convictions from pro-war to anti-war, her secrecy, her ruthlessness — are the same ones that make people willing to vote for a woman.

Yup. For all those reasons and because I suspect that she might secretly drink the blood of little furry animals just because she can.

With friends like Maureen Dowd do Democrats even need any enemies?

Today people around the country are wearing red to protest violence against women of color.

Aishah Shahidah Simmons on why she's wearing red, and on an upcoming action:

I am wearing red because I am a survivor of incest and rape.
I am wearing red because I live in a City (Philadelphia) where a White Woman Judge Terri Carr Deni dropped all rape and assault charges in the case of a woman gang-raped at gunpoint. Because the woman was working as a prostitute, Judge Deni decided that she could not have been raped and changed the charge to “theft of services.” Deni later said that this case “minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped.”
On Thursday, November 1, 2007, in Philadelphia, there will be a Press Conference at 1pm Outside Municipal Court (Criminal Justice Center)1301 Filbert St. On November 6, 2007, I will voice my opinion to Judge Deni by voting “NO!” on her retention as Judge in the Municipal Court of Philadelphia.

I am wearing red because I am very clear that it doesn’t matter if you’re a stripper, a prostitute, a lesbian, a bisexual woman, a heterosexual woman, a single mother (especially with several children from different fathers), on welfare, a high school drop out, college educated, working in corporate America, working at a minimum wage job with no health insurance, or working in the film/music/television entertainment industry. Yes, I placed what some people would view as very different/distinct categories of women of Color in the same category because history has consistently shown me and all of us that if any of the aforementioned Black women are at the wrong place at the wrong time (which could be at any time), we, women of Color, will be left to heal our very public wounds alone.

Check out the images of women who are wearing red today, and find out how you can get involved.