Archive for November, 2007
day one…
b. medusa 25 November 2007 9:52:16 pm
of 16 days of activism against gender violence (see sidebar logo), running from Nov 25 – Dec 10. this year’s 16 day campaign theme is “Demanding Implentation, Challenging Obstacles: End Violence Against Women.” today (Nov 25) is The International Day Against Violence Against Women.
other important days include:
Nov 29 – International Women Human Rights Defenders Day
Dec 1 – World Aids Day
Dec 10 – International Human Rights Day
finally the Carnival Against Violence Against Women is being held @ Black Looks. deadline for submissions is Dec 6. please head over there for more info (additional info & links on the 16 day campaign can be found there also).
- 16 days , activism , feminism , gender , oppression , sexism , violence
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a veteran’s day recap
b. medusa 12 November 2007 7:29:54 pm
posted the day after because we vets are so easily forgotten. how many times have you seen “Support Our Vets”?
UPDATE: Military demands return of bonus pay from wounded vets (h/t to pudgyindian)
Wounded Vet Told To Pay Back Bonus
Partially-Blinded In Iraq, GI Billed For Army Signing Bonus; Pentagon Admits Mistake
Veterans more likely to be homeless
WASHINGTON (CNN) — More than 25 percent of the homeless population in the United States are military veterans, although they represent 11 percent of the civilian adult population, according to a new report.
On any given night last year, nearly 196,000 veterans slept on the street, in a shelter or in transitional housing, the study by the Homelessness Research Institute found.
“Veterans make up a disproportionate share of homeless people,” the report said. “This is true despite the fact that veterans are better educated, more likely to be employed and have a lower poverty rate than the general population.”
[...]
Veterans such as Jason Kelley find themselves in a Catch-22, not able to find a job because of the lack of an apartment, and not being able to get an apartment because of not having a job, The Associated Press reported.
“The only training I have is infantry training, and there’s not really a need for that in the civilian world,” the AP quoted Kelley as saying in a phone interview. In addition, he has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, he told the AP. Kelley served in Iraq with the Wisconsin National Guard, the news agency said.
full article (h/t to ABB)
Military Sexual Trauma
Roughly one in seven of America’s active duty military soldiers is a woman, but a NOW investigation found that sexual assault and rape is widespread. One study of National Guard and Reserve forces found that almost one in four women had been assaulted or raped. Last year alone, almost 3,000 soldiers reported sexual assault and rape by other soldiers.
In one of the only national television broadcasts of the issue, NOW features women who speak out for the first time about what happened. One woman recounts her ordeal of rape by her superior officer. Many more don’t report the incidents for fear of how it will affect their careers. The shocking phenomenon has a label: military sexual trauma, or MST. NOW meets women courageously battling to overcome their MST, bringing light to an issue that’s putting the Army in shame.
read the transcript
watch the video
Veteran Dies After VA Refuses Treatment For Days
Since Walter Reed is considered the military’s premier medical facility, many are now questioning the condition of military and veteran facilities around the country.
Today we look at the story of a 58-year-old Vietnam veteran named Willie Dougherty. He died in October after suffering two pelvic fractures. His family says he died because he was refused treatment.
Monsanto’s Agent Orange: The Persistent Ghost from the Vietnam War
Meryl Nass, MDFrom 1962 to 1970, the US military sprayed 72 million liters of
herbicides, mostly Agent Orange, in Vietnam. Over one million
Vietnamese were exposed to the spraying, as well as over 100,000
Americans and allied troops. Dr. James Clary, a scientist at the
Chemical Weapons Branch, Eglin Air Force Base, who designed the
herbicide spray tank and wrote a 1979 report on Operation Ranch Hand
(the name of the spraying program), told Senator Daschle in 1988,“When we (military scientists) initiated the herbicide program in the
1960s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin
contamination in the herbicide. We were even aware that the ‘military’
formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the ‘civilian’
version due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However,
because the material was to be used on the ‘enemy,’ none of us were
overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own
personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide.”quoted by Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, 1990
[...]
By 1983, 9170 veterans had filed claims for disabilities that they
said were caused by Agent Orange. The VA denied compensation to 7709,
saying that a facial rash was the only disease associated with
exposure.Congress passed the Veterans’ Dioxin and Radiation Exposure
Compensation Standards Act of 1984 in response. It required the VA to
appoint a ‘Veterans’ Advisory Committee on Environmental Hazards’ to
review the literature on dioxin and submit recommendations to the head
of the VA.According to Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, “The VA.directly contradicted its
own established practice, promulgating instead the more stringent
requirement that compensation depends on establishing a cause and
effect relationship,” improperly denying the bulk of the claims.fast forward to DU
Military may ease standards for recruits
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON – Faced with higher recruiting goals, the Pentagon is quietly looking for ways to make it easier for people with minor criminal records to join the military, The Associated Press has learned.
The review, in its early stages, comes as the number of Army recruits needing waivers for bad behavior — such as trying drugs, stealing, carrying weapons on school grounds and fighting (hate crimes? – b. medusa 1) — rose from 15 percent in 2006 to 18 percent this year. And it reflects the services’ growing use of criminal, health and other waivers to build their ranks.
Overall, about three in every 10 recruits must get a waiver, according to Pentagon statistics obtained by AP, and about two-thirds of those approved in recent years have been for criminal behavior. Some recruits must get more than one waiver to cover things ranging from any criminal record, to health problems such as asthma or flat feet, to low aptitude scores — and even for some tattoos (spider webs? swastikas? – b. medusa 2).
1, 2Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts
- counter-recruitment , fta , imperialism , militarism , oppression , poverty , rape , veteran mistreatment , violence , war , war is a racket
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just fuckin’ stop it, ok
b. medusa 4 November 2007 1:36:16 am
this shit frickin annoys and/or sickens me:
- infantilizing women
- victim blaming
-
Why did Megan Williams go out with this white guy, let him beat her, and then go back for more, only to be taken hostage by him and his family? Didn’t she know that one of these people had been convicted of killing his own mother or something? (via vox ex machina)
-
women enabling or engaging in patriarchial boyshit isn’t bad enuf, some of them have to take it to the level of excusing rape?
Why is is blogging for justice the same thing as “protecting our women”? Who do black women belong to in this case? Why do we assume that the person/people doing the protecting aren’t rapists themselves? Why is the answer to a rape culture to “protect” women rather than changing a rape culture?
[...]
And why are Megan Williams and the Dunbar Village victim the only survivors of sexual violence being talked about in this campaign??? Does violence against black women not count when it is black lesbian women being violated and imprisoned for protecting themselves?
some of the same questions/trepidations i’ve had. bfp articulates them beautifully.
now that fuckin infuriates me. it also hurts me.
vox has the best comeback i’ve seen yet:
It doesn’t matter what her IQ is. It doesn’t matter that she had a previous relationship with her tormenters. It doesn’t matter if a woman is a single mom, unemployed, a sex worker, walking alone after dark, or “dressed like a slut.” (or what some refer to as “groupies”, or “golddiggers”; where did you get those fucking terms from anyway? – b. medusa)
Believing any woman “deserves” to be abused, assaulted, raped, tortured, or murdered because she is “stupid” or “should have known better” or “was asking for it” is reprehensible.
- assumptions , gender , rape , sexism , violence
- Comments(3)
theys
b. medusa 4 November 2007 1:32:39 am
“they always tell you what they’re gonna do before they do it.”
a thought that has been shared more than once by some of my friends & i. not necessarily while we were passing joints either. they being the conspiratorial they. or them, take your pick. sounds delusionally paranoid doesn’t it? but its a thought that runs through my head when i watch or read more or less far-fetched fiction (terminator, matrix, universal soldier, etc). then i console my paranoid ideas with the thought, “nah, even they couldn’t be that
stupid.”
then i see shit like this:
…Leading the field is the USA, of course, with 5,000 robots deployed in Iraq alone, everything from a nine-pound Dragon Runner, a “throwbot” that can be tossed over a wall, out a three-story window or up a flight of stairs, to the Special Weapons Observation Remote Reconnaissance Direct Action System (SWORDS), armed with an M249 rifle. All these systems are still controlled by a human, but that will soon change. Noel Sharkey wrote recently in The Guardian:
[F]ully autonomous robots that make their own decisions about lethality are high on the US military agenda. The US National Research Council advises “aggressively exploiting the considerable warfighting benefits offered by autonomous vehicles.” They are cheap to manufacture, require less personnel and, according to the navy, perform better in complex missions. One battlefield soldier could start a large-scale robot attack in the air and on the ground.
This is dangerous new territory for warfare, yet there are no new ethical codes or guidelines in place. I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination is terrifying.
The Pentagon is taking its cue from a 1995 dystopian movie, Screamers, which features a fighting robot called Autonomous Mobile Sword…
Robot Nation by Linh Dinh
Dissident Voice/ November 3rd, 2007
delusionally paranoid, eh?
rescue is only for the rich
b. medusa 3 November 2007 9:26:22 pm
you prolly think life is precious, dontcha? all life. and in time of disaster, if it is humanly possible to rescue everyone, then everyone should be rescued. well, prepare to be disabused of that quaint notion:
Rapture rescue will airlift you to safety. If you can afford it
The booming business of privatised disaster services in the US goes against the principle that every life is of equal value
I used to worry that the US was in the grip of extremists who sincerely believed the Apocalypse was coming and that they and their friends would be airlifted to heavenly safety. I have since reconsidered. The country is indeed in the grip of extremists who are determined to act out the biblical climax – the saving of the chosen and the burning of the masses – but without any divine intervention. Heaven can wait. Thanks to the booming business of privatised disaster services, we’re getting the Rapture right here on earth.
Just look at what is happening in southern California. Even as wildfires devoured whole swaths of the region, some homes in the heart of the inferno were left intact, as if saved by a higher power. But it wasn’t the hand of God; in several cases it was the handiwork of Firebreak Spray Systems. Firebreak is a special service offered to customers of insurance giant American International Group – but only if they happen to live in the wealthiest zip codes in the country. Members of the company’s Private Client Group pay an average of $19,000 to have their homes sprayed with fire retardant. During the fires, the “mobile units”, racing around in firetrucks, even extinguished fires for their clients.
[...]
And your home alone. “There were a few instances,” one of the private firefighters told Bloomberg News, “where we were spraying and the neighbour’s house went up like a candle.” With public fire departments cut to the bone, gone are the days of rapid response, when everyone was entitled to equal protection. Now, increasingly intense natural disasters will be met with the new model: Rapture response.
During last year’s hurricane season, Florida homeowners were offered similarly high-priced salvation by HelpJet, a travel agency launched with promises to turn “a hurricane evacuation into a jet-setter vacation”. For an annual fee, a company concierge takes care of everything: transport to the air terminal, luxurious travel, bookings at five-star resorts. Most of all, HelpJet is an escape hatch from the kind of government failure on display during Katrina. “No standing in lines, no hassle with crowds, just a first-class experience.”
Naomi Klein
Saturday November 3, 2007
The Guardianread the full article
(i thought the Titanic was a better metaphor than the Rapture, but that’s just me – b. medusa)
what did Michael Moore say about our socialized rescue services in Sicko? hmm, i guess that was prior to Rescue Version 2.0.
by now everyone knows about the ongoing tragedy of Katrina (unless you’ve living in a cave for the last 2 years). you may not be aware of the treatment that was accorded to native americans or those assumed to be undocumented immigrants during the California fires. pay attention, because if you think paid rescue will allow “the little people”* to get in the way of providing the rich w/ “a first-class experience”, think again.
* that’s the rest of us, no matter how much better you think you are than “those people”
- assholes , capitalism run amok , class war , hierarchy , infrastructure , poc , poverty , privatization
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