Sunday, March 6, 2011

Women's Rights In The New Egypt, Pfc Manning Slept Here

Dana Milbank

"Sometimes dictators have good ideas.'' — Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle,
''I'm a huge supporter of women. What I'm not is a supporter of liberalism. Feminism is what I oppose. Feminism has led women astray. I love the women's movement -- especially when walking behind it.'' — Rush Limbaugh
''I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism. And I have a communications degree.'' - Sarah Palin


An overseas manager of malls has decided to get out of the US market before they go bankrupt, opting to close over 588 malls throughout the USA. We only have two malls in our town, and the one closing is the more profitable one, with Macy's, Dillards, and Hooters as anchor stores. This is happening just when the recent unemployment numbers came out, saying that private sector jobs were more than public jobs for the first in a very long time. Good to know that we are about to reverse that trend, and if a certain coalition gets elected to the city council, all of the schools will close and every child will have to be homeschooled... ok, I made that up, but these guys still want to slash the city budget until we're beyond dysfunctional. The only city workers will be the ones at the courthouse and at the police station, everything else will be privatized. The privatization will eventually cost us twice as much, as we will have to buy new city equipment to take back those jobs we lost to privatization, which will turn out to be twice as corrupt and dishonest and lacking in oversight, and eventually costing us  to resolve litigation...




Interesting article in the NY Times, about how women are struggling to be heard in the reforming of the Egyptian government: "Egypt’s popular revolution was the work of men and women, bringing together housewives and fruit sellers, businesswomen and students. At its height, roughly one quarter of the million protesters who poured into the square each day were women. Veiled and unveiled women shouted, fought and slept in the streets alongside men, upending traditional expectations of their behavior.


The challenge now, activists here say, is to make sure that women maintain their involvement as the nation lurches forward, so that their contribution to the revolution is not forgotten." there's not one woman appointed to the eight member group of legal experts advising the military on rewriting a new constitution. So, we get these really stupid clauses, like: "the Egyptian president may not be married to a “non-Egyptian woman...” They might be able to keep the right to drive a car at this rate, which even the women of Saudi Arabia don't have. A few months ago there was a protest in Riyadh, where lactating mothers chose to breast-feed their babies while driving, or being driven by someone other than their older brother or father. The authorities wisely let that protest happen without incident. Can you imagine the al Jazeera camera-work if the moral police started tearing out breast-feeding women out of their cars along the main boulevards in broad daylight? There would be protests in Saudi Arabia all right, but mainly ones of laughter...


The longer that people are still out protesting in Egypt, it will get more dangerous to be out in the streets, and violence will take hold. It's the danger that all of the violence from Libya may ignite the whole region, until a senseless bloodbath ensues, and already forces in Saudi Arabia are readying for just that kind of scenario. It would be pretty incredible, if the streets of Cairo, Damascus, and Beirut were all to become safe for women to walk at night. Could men become educated enough to give up that weird form of machismo, and treat all women like they were their sisters? Yeah, I doubt it, too, pass the kif pipe over here...


Wisconsin's governor Scott Walker, who may end up in the new film, Dead Walker Walking, has mailed off the pre-lay-off notices to public employees. Basically, they read: 'you're gonna be laid off soon if the Dems don't come back to Madison' with no real time-table attached. It has already been established that the bill that Walker wants to pass has nothing to do with balancing the state budget and that he only following the orders from his demon handlers...

Besides, if we really wanted to balance the federal budget, we don't need to debate or cut programs for a few million here and a few million there. All we have to do is get rid of every other intelligence and security department other than the CIA and FBI. Together, the sixteen redundant agencies have a budget of $1.2 trillion per year. While we're at it, stop granting government security contracts to mercenary outfits and individuals, it sure would save us some embarrassment in Pakistan and Afghanistan...

Our justice system needs an overhaul, it is breaking down awfully fast. It's one thing to be creative when bringing charges against someone who has committed a crime, but some of the charges that Eric Holder's Justice  Dept has charged Eric Loughner with border on the fantastical. Why mix solid indictments with sentences that are guaranteed to be laughed out of court?

Speaking of laughing all the way to court, the military jailers of Pfc Manning, who is being charged of downloading the wikileak files, is under a special 23 hour lock-down, where he is isolated from everyone else, with one hour per day where he can exercise by himself. When his lawyer told him that the reason the jail had him on this isolation watch, is because they were afraid that he was going to hurt himself. Manning replied, rather sarcastically, that gee, he could just as much damage to himself with the elastic from his underwear and the rubber from his flip flops. Fearing whatever gay ninja mind tricks he may have picked up in the Muddle East, Mr Manning now sleeps naked, and must present himself naked during morning inspection; I guess they check for bruises... Hey, he's not being tortured or anything like that... We really have a long ways to go to get these boys educated and up to snuff, the flunkies and sadistic ones get to stay behind and do guard duty...



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