Good News for Women
With so much going on right now, it seems the
reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act(VAWA) slipped through the cracks. The good news is that it was reauthorized and strengthened. For the first time ever, assistance will be provided not only for rape prevention and education but for actual victims. The bill also allows victims of abuse to break a lease to flee their abusers and expands access to transitional housing. The VAWA was also authorized with a section explaining all programs are gender neutral, so it covers all victims of abuse and sexual violence, men and women.
Spotlight on Darfur
Catez over on
Allthings2all is hosting a
Chrismtas Spotlight on Darfur. It's really well worth taking a look at. The collection highlights the writings of a diverse group of bloggers from all over the world, conservatives, liberals and everything inbetween coming together to raise awareness about the atrocities occuring in Darfur and bring the world to action.
Bush Still Confused On Why We Invaded Iraq
Today and much of Yesterday, papers all over the world printed the story that Bush is taking responsibility for Iraq. While he has finally stepped up to the plate and said that even though there was faulty intelligence the ultimate decision was his. But if you read it more closely, he can't even remember why he made the decision to take us in there to begin with, or at least what he "said" the reason was at the time.
But he [Bush] said, "My decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision" because he was deemed a threat and that regardless, "We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of a brutal dictator."
We
supposedly invaded Iraq to strip them of the WMDs they were hiding and keep them from falling in the hands of terrorists. Or at least, that's what Bush was saying at the time:
"The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities." - from Bush's address to the Nation, March 19, 2003.
There are many many more texts where he refers to the WMDs as the reason for entering Iraq :
"America is determined to enforce the demands of the United Nations Security Council by confronting the grave and growing danger of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. This dictator will not be allowed to intimidate and blackmail the civilized world, or to supply his terrible weapons to terrorist groups, who would not hesitate to use them against us. The safety of the American people depends on ending this threat." President's Radio Address, March 1, 2003.
At least he took half of FDR's advice, admit you're wrong and then try something else. We're still waiting for him to try something else...anything else. Instead, stay the course - which is not a plan at all, it's just something you do when you have no other options.
Proof Coming out about CIA's Not so Secret Prisons
Extraordinary Rendition cover-up finally beginning to unravel:
PARIS (Reuters) - A month-old investigation has reinforced allegations the CIA ran a network of secret prisons in Europe, abducted prisoners and transferred them between countries, a European human rights investigator said on Tuesday.
Swiss senator Dick Marty, who is looking into the scandal for the 46-nation Council of Europe human rights watchdog, criticised the United States for failing to come clean over the allegations.
This really shouldn't come as much of a surprise with
Rice refusing to "confirm or deny" the secret prisons and Cheney lobbying congress to exempt the CIA from
McCain's anti-torture legislation.
Bush uses more Fuzzy Math - How do we get out of Iraq?
In a speech today, Bush estimated that only 30,000 Iraqis have died since we invaded Iraq. "I would say 30,000 more or less have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis,"
the president said. "We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq."
This must be more of Bush's fuzzy math, because he "misunderestimated" the fatalities by about 70,000. The study, conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
estimated that 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invaded Iraq. "The researchers called their estimate conservative because they excluded deaths in Fallujah."
Also interesting were the results of a poll or Iraqi citizens that found "More than two-thirds of those surveyed oppose the presence of troops from the United States and its coalition partners and less than half, 44 percent, say their country is better off now than it was before the war,
according to an ABC News poll conducted with Time magazine and other media partners."
All of this has had me thinking recently on how exactly we can get out of Iraq without making the situation worse there. Everyone seems to offer criticism and want us to pull out right away, but how do we feasibly leave this mess we created?
In considering the current realities in Iraq, I keep hearkening back to the lessons we learned from World War II and the Marshall Plan. Now that was a plan to "win the peace." Not only did it rebuild Germany and Japan, but helped shape them into the economic powerhouses they are today. One of the key elements was that it put the German people to work, rebuilding Germany. Iraq has a mind-boggling unemployment rate estimated
between 27 percent and 40 percent. By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate during the Great Depression peaked at around 25 percent. And what is the only job we seem to be offering them? Police officers or military personnel? One of the most dangerous positions around.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out people who don't have a job and means to support their family are not the happiest people around. You can look at the statistics of any city in the US and the areas with the highest unemployment are the areas with the highest crime rates. So how do we curve the violence and improve the image of the US? Give the Iraq people jobs - not just soldiers or policemen. We need to stop outsourcing the rebuilding of Iraq to Haliburton and other American companies that are making millions off of American taxpayers, and give the Iraq people a chance to rebuild their own country.
Until Iraq has a rebuilt economic base and a lower unemployment rate, the violence will continue and the US will be stuck there with continuing casualties. I think we should take a look back at what FDR once said "Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something. "
"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
-FDRPlease, feel free to leave your own thoughts on improving the situation in Iraq. There certainly haven't been any plans coming out of the government, perhaps it is time for "we the people" to lead.
Clinton Calls out Bush on Kyoto
President Clinton called out the false assertions by Bush & Co. saying,
"the Bush administration is "flat wrong" in claiming that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to fight global warming would damage the U.S. economy." Speaking at the UN Climate Conference, Clinton urged that creating energy saving technology would in fact strengthen the economy.
"There's no longer any serious doubt that climate change is real, accelerating and caused by human activities," said Clinton, whose address was interrupted repeatedly by enthusiastic applause. "We are uncertain about how deep and the time of arrival of the consequences, but we are quite clear they will not be good."
It's hard to believe that Bush can get away with saying that reducing emissions will harm our economy but creating new treaties like CAFTA, that will only encourage companies to take production (and jobs) outside the US where they can pay people less, will create new jobs and improve the economy? Sure, it'll create new jobs--in Guatemala. What Bush really means is that it'll lower the profits of his oil company friends, record profits.
Instead of aiding conservation and reducing emissions, we're subsidizing energy company's drilling, and if Bush gets his way, we'll soon be subsidizing their quest to make more oil refineries. All this to companies who are making record profits while price gouging the American public.
Not unsurprisingly, the Bush administration attempts to throw the environment a bone by pointing out that the government is spending a whopping $3 billion a year on
"research and development of energy-saving technologies as a demonstration of U.S. efforts to combat climate change." Woo-who - $3 billion a year. We are spending $6 billion a month in Iraq. The 2006 military spending request is $441.6 Billion, with an additional $49.1 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And where in the world is all of this funding for our military going anyway when many reservists and active duty soldiers alike still don't have body armor? It certainly is not going to veteran's services to take care of the over 10,000 soldiers that were wounded in Iraq & Afghanistan. As a matter of fact that funding is being cut. Maybe we should stop subsidizing the oil companies and use that money to support our veterans in the way they were promised when they signed up to begin with.
I'm starting to feel more and more that the
Onion's humorous piece on the vanishing middle class is perhaps more prophetic than satirical:
National Museum Of The Middle Class Opens In Schaumburg, IL
SCHAUMBURG, ILÂThe Museum of the Middle Class, featuring historical and anthropological exhibits addressing the socioeconomic category that once existed between the upper and lower classes, opened to the public Monday.
...
Others among the 99 percent of U.S. citizens who make less than $28,000 per year shared Chavez's sense of disbelief.
"Frankly, I think they're selling us a load of baloney," said laid-off textile worker Elsie Johnson, who visited the museum Tuesday with her five asthmatic children. "They expect us to believe the government used to help pay for college? Come on. The funniest exhibit I saw was 'Visiting The Family Doctor.' Imagine being able to choose your own doctor and see him without a four-hour wait in the emergency room. Gimme a friggin' break!"
World AIDS Day
Ok, it was actually yesterday but the whole point is to raise awareness, not just to remember the epidemic for one day. While the epidemic continues to grow, some progress has been made in treating it and finding a cure. Sadly, society (or at least some societies) seem to be ebbing into a more conservative and repressive environment and limiting education on AIDS and condom use. Find out more about HIV and AIDS and what you can do to protect yourself and help those affected
here.
On a lighter note,
Buenos Aires residents awoke on World AIDS day to see one of their landmarks covered with a giant condom. Rather humorous if you ask me. For some reason it reminds me of this little jingle they had in England when I was younger about AIDS:
AIDS kills
So Don't be Silly
Wear a Condom
On your Willy
Leave it to the English to come up with a kids' song about AIDS right? They had one about Bubonic plague too. Somehow I doubt the jingle will find it's way into the South African version of Sesame Street that features an
HIV+ Muppett.
Petition for Darfur
Professor
Samuel Totten (university of Arkansas), editor of "
A Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts," is seeking 2,000 actual signatures.
You can get the formatted petition
here, then cut, paste, sign and mail it to
Dr. Samuel Totten, University of Arkansas, COEHP, 205 Peabody Hall, Fayetteville, AR 72701
or send it by email to
stotten@uark.edu
