Plenty of links for you today, and with the way I am feeling…all the horrible things these racist bastards are saying and doing, it is just a link dump today. As usual, the post centers around a theme…this Sunday the theme is, forgotten women.
The women have different stories to tell, some are forgotten by time. Others are overlooked or ignored by the government or their husbands, and then you have those who are having an important aspect of being a woman blatantly disregarded…her rights. (Not that she really had all of them anyway.)
So, let’s just get down to it. The link dump starts now:
Seeking to quell a politically charged controversy, the Obama administration announced new measures Friday to allow religious nonprofits and some companies to opt out of paying for birth control for female employees while still ensuring those employees have access to contraception.
Even so, the accommodations may not fully satisfy religious groups who oppose any system that makes them complicit in providing coverage they believe is immoral. The administration’s hope is that the new accommodation will be more palatable because it creates more distance between religious nonprofits and the health services they believe are immoral, by inserting the government as a middleman between nonprofits and their insurers.
But the Family Research Council, a socially conservative group, dismissed the new accommodation as an “insulting accounting gimmick” that still leaves businesses and nonprofits complicit in something they view as immoral.
They never will be satisfied. I knew this before the compromise was first offered way back…
Effective immediately, the U.S. will start allowing faith-affiliated charities, colleges and hospitals to notify the government — rather than their insurers — that they object to birth control on religious grounds. A previous accommodation offered by the Obama administration allowed those nonprofits to opt out of paying for birth control by submitting a document called Form 700 to their insurers, but Roman Catholic bishops and other religious plaintiffs argued just submitting that form was like signing a permission slip to engage in evil.
To opt-out of paying for contraceptives without using Form 700, religious nonprofits can send a letter to the Health and Human Services Department that includes the organization’s name, the type of health plan they offer and the name and contact information for their insurance issuers or third-party administrators, officials said. Groups must also explain which types of birth control they object to and state the objection is based on sincerely held beliefs.
The administration’s proposal to let companies like Hobby Lobby use Form 700 will apply only to “closely held” corporations that are owned by families or a small number of investors. The government is asking for the public’s input about how narrowly to define a “closely held” corporation, meaning the rule-making process will drag out for many months before the fix is finalized.
In a related move, the administration announced plans to allow for-profit corporations like Hobby Lobby Inc. to start using Form 700. The Supreme Court ruled in June that the government can’t force companies like Hobby Lobby Inc. to pay for birth control, sending the administration scrambling for a way to ensure their employees can still get birth control one way or another at no added cost.
he teen birth rate in the U.S. has been declining for decades—it’s decreased 57 percent since 1991. But recently, it’s begun dropping dramatically. More than half of that 57 percent change took place just the past six years, says a new report from the CDC.
Alongside the rapidly dropping birth rate, there’s been an equally precipitous dip in teen abortions, which are also down 56 percent over the past two decades. With the birth rate and the abortion rate both down, it seems that teens have decided en masse to just stop getting pregnant. But why?
[…]
In the Washington Post, Tina Griego covers that possibility. In Colorado, she writes, the teen birth rate has dropped 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, the largest drop in the country. That decline, state health officials say, can be traced to a program designed to improve teens’ access to high quality, long-lasting birth control. WaPo:
The Colorado Family Planning Initiative, supported by a $23 million anonymous donation, provided more than 30,000 IUDs or implants to women served by the state’s 68 family-planning clinics. The state’s analysis suggests the initiative was responsible for three-quarters of the decline in the state’s teen birth rates.
What about the longer term downward trend? In 1957, the birth rate among teens age 15 to 19 was 96.3 per 1,000 teens. In 1991, it had dropped to 61.8 per 1,000, and in 2013, it was all the way down to 26.6 births per 1,000 teens.
The deception behind the wave of state-level abortion restrictions now threatening women’s access to safe and legal abortions was strikingly revealed during a trial that ended last week in Texas.
The trial, held before Judge Lee Yeakel of Federal District Court in Austin, offered an opportunity to examine evidence and hear arguments in a challenge to crucial portions of Texas’ sweeping 2013 package of abortion restrictions. The challenge, brought by reproductive rights advocates, focuses on two rules, one requiring doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and another mandating that clinics meet state standards for ambulatory surgical centers, an unnecessary and prohibitively costly requirement.
The admitting-privileges rule, which is already in place, has severely limited access to safe and legal care in Texas. Absent court intervention, the situation will get much worse. There are now only 19 abortion clinics in Texas, compared with 41 before the new law. This number could shrink to as few as seven after Sept. 1, when the surgical-center rule takes effect.
And this is where the quack comes in:
A team of lawyers led by the Center for Reproductive Rights and their expert witnesses presented compelling evidence of the destructive consequences of the two rules and the emptiness of the claim that they are necessary to protect women’s health and safety.
By contrast, the state’s defense of the rules was a bizarre and unconvincing show. Four of its five witnesses denied, and then conceded (when confronted with incriminating emails) that their written testimony was crafted by Vincent Rue, an opponent of women’s reproductive freedom best known for promoting kooky claims, like the existence of an abortion-related mental illness he calls “post-abortive syndrome.”
Mr. Rue does brisk business these days orchestrating testimony from pliable witnesses willing to supply “expert” support for state abortion restrictions, a task for which he has been paid $42,000, so far, by Texas. That his guidance is relied upon is incredible given that his own past court testimony and theories have been discredited by judges and others.
There is one state where women are getting killed in record numbers. Can you guess what region it is located?
The map is of South Carolina and its counties. “All 46 counties have at least one animal shelter to care for stray dogs,” The Charleston Post Courier reports, “but the state has only 18 domestic violence shelters to help women trying to escape abuse.” One of the red dots represents a 31-year-old, Amerise Barbre, whose boyfriend strangled her. Each red dot represents a woman killed by a husband or boyfriend. In the eight-year period shown, that sort of murder happened 292 times.
The Charleston Post Courier
“Most state legislators profess deep concern over domestic violence,” the newspaper notes in the introduction to a seven-part feature. “Yet they maintain a legal system in which a man can earn five years in prison for abusing his dog but a maximum of just 30 days in jail for beating his wife or girlfriend on a first offense.”
Domestic abuse reportedly occurs there about 36,000 times per year.
The feature posits that public-policy failures largely explain why South Carolina’s homicide rate for women is presently the highest in the nation. It urges sweeping reforms.
As law enforcement continues to use military weapons to terrorize protesters seeking justice for slain teen Michael Brown, the 18-year-old who was gunned down by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, the ache in my soul is primitive and all-encompassing.
Reporters are being arrested, children are being hit with tear gas, and political pundits are being threatened. The stench of fear, fear of the power of collective Black rage and action, is rancid. And that fear breeds desperation. The need to suppress that rage, which screams that we are worth more than this country has shown us, claws at the gate-keepers of White supremacy—elected officials, police officers, and mainstream media—until it eats at them from the inside out.
You cannot control what you can’t contain. Wilson’s cold-blooded execution of Michael Brown, who was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, while in a position of surrender, lit the fuse on years of racial profiling and inequality in the town of Ferguson.
And there can be no peace where there is no justice.
They want us believe that it’s about looting; but it’s not. This entire horrific show of violence being committed in the name of the “law” proves once and for all that the system is not broken. When a Black boy is gunned down and left to bleed out in the street, that’s American justice. When his killer is allowed to leave town under the cloak of anonymity, that’s American justice.
To paraphrase Malcolm X, we are not Americans, we are victims of America. But as conversations about Michael Brown and Ferguson segue into broader discussions about the scourge of police brutality at large, it becomes clear that, despite being on the frontlines, the we in question often does not include Black women.
Be clear: The need to have a very specific, targeted discussion about the fear of Black, male bodies is critical.
And Kirsten West Savali, of Dame explains more at the link.
U.S. airports are littered with advertisements, but that hasn’t stopped them from refusing to run displays featuring basic information about women’s rights.
UltraViolet, an advocacy group aimed at fighting sexism and expanding women’s rights, recently attempted to launch such an ad campaign in several airports. They focused on states with both booming tourist industries and histories of economic inequality between the sexes, like Texas, Louisiana and North Carolina.
When the targeted airports got wind of the ads, however, they flat-out refused to run them.
More than 300 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and descendants of survivors have issued a public statement condemning Israel’s “genocide” of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
The statement was released by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and was placed as an advertisement in the New York Times.
It calls for the blockade of Gaza to be lifted and Israel to be boycotted.
The signatories expressed alarm at the “colonization of historic Palestine”.
It condemns the “racist dehumanisation of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached fever pitch”.
Now Thuot has put together a new incredible GIF showing how oil and gas drilling rigs are moving across states, and the country, in 2014 to the most productive formations.
“We care about rig activity because it is a leading indicator of future production in an area,” he writes. “Rig activity in an area today signals new production from that area in the near-term.”
In his introduction to the volume, John C. Raines summarized the group’s main findings about gender oppression. One, that world religions mirror social constructions of gender and vice versa; two, that the analysis of religious power is always a choice of political allegiance; three, that culturally specific and culturally competent academic work is needed in order to be persuasive; and four, that gender justice activism in religious domains demands multiple culturally appropriate tools and tactics. The contributors posited that all world religions carry their own seeds of positive change within. In John C. Raines’ words, “each of these religious traditions has a strong theory of social justice, and these resources can be harnessed to contemporary issues of gender. We ask, how can our Scriptures, how can our founding Prophets, how can our ancestors be used today to further justice in relations between genders?”
This essay offers resources from within medieval European Christianity in a feminist reading of the Christian dogma of hypostatic union, medieval political theory on royal twinning, and two medieval legends on the numinous double. Pulling these strands together as a feminist hermeneutics of double lives, I argue that the popular medieval story of a ninth century female Pope and the myth of a Fairy Lover have served to unhinge egemonic claims of male Christian superiority in the Middle Ages and in contemporary film today. As acts of subversive story telling or truth to be believed, the stories reconnoiter the possibility of a woman’s benevolent reign in the highest ecclesiastical office, and think up ingenious ways beyond institutional networks through which women might gain access to male dominated higher learning and a liberating sexuality. Safely positioned in part or in whole in the dreamlike realm of the numinous and supernatural, the narratives invite their audience to undo false consciousness. They insist that women deserve better and deserve more than what a misogynist status quo has to offer.
The Siberian taiga in the Abakan district. Six members of the Lykov family lived in this remote wilderness for more than 40 years—utterly isolated and more than 150 miles from the nearest human settlement. (Wikicommons)
In 1978, Soviet geologists prospecting in the wilds of Siberia discovered a family of six, lost in the taiga
Karp Lykov and his daughter Agafia, wearing clothes donated by Soviet geologists not long after their family was rediscovered.
That article is from 2013, I was so fascinated, I looked for more information on the last living family member. A woman named, Agafia Lykova.
The kittens are survivors of a line of cats taken by the Lukov family into the remote forest when they fled from Stalin’s civilisation in the 1930s.
Agafya Lykova, pictured in the middle of eighties with father Karl, left, and Krasnoyarsk professor Nazarov
Agafya Lykova, 68, is the last surviving member of the family of Old Believers who were discovered by a Soviet geologist in 1978. They had cut themselves off from the outside world.
When they were discovered, the family comprised Karp Iosifovich (the head of the family), his sons Savvin, 45, and Dmitry, 36, and his daughters Natalya, 42, and Agafya, then 34. The children’s mother Akulina had died in 1961.
The three other children died in 1981 and Karp in 1988 since when Agafya has lived alone at the family’s smallholding in what is now Khakassky nature reserve.
Rangers from the reserve visited her in February and she asked them to take two kittens back to civilisation – in exchange for a goat and a rooster which they brought her. She had earlier asked for the new animals instead of a medal ‘For Belief and Kindness’ which Governor Aman Tuleyev of neighbouring Kemerovo region wanted to present her.
‘My old cock stopped crowing, please can I have a new one? Also my old goat died and I need another one. And another thing please can I have new boots. I am feeling well thank you, do say hello to governor Aman Tuleyev.’
The reserve press office said that ‘just before their departure, Agafya Lykova gave the reserve employees two kittens, a male and a female, and asked to give them into ‘good hands’.
Last week the recluse warned in a letter to a newspaper that her health was failing and she did not have enough logs for the winter.
‘I don’t know how God will help me survive the winter. There aren’t any logs. I need to get them into the house’, she warned.
After her plea, a helicopter with a doctor on board was sent to check the deeply religious hermit – and to bring her vital supplies. Meanwhile, a well-known Russian millionaire has offered to pay the salary of a helper to live with Agafya in her lonely vigil. German Sterligov, one of the first dollar millionaires as the Soviet Union collapsed, has promised a 40,000 rouble a month salary to a companion who will live with Agafya in the remotest house in Russia.
The helicopter brought fresh food, medicine and household items, and a doctor examined her but the woman – a devout Old Believer – refused his offer to be flown to hospital for treatment. The mercy mission was ordered by governor Viktor Zimin.
‘Nature reserve staff gathered food and other goods for Agafya,’ said a statement from the Emergencies Ministry in Khakassia, the Siberian republic where she lives. ‘They brought cereals and flour for her and cabbage and food for her goats. They also brought vegetables for planting, and in a month Agafya will start growing them at home.’
The team ‘carried logs from the forest closer to Agafya’s house. The logs were cut but it was hard for her to carry them every day.’
‘The doctor examined Agafiya and offered to take her to hospital for treatment. The 68 year old woman complained of headaches and other problems and needs detailed examination. But she absolutely refused to go. The doctor gave her some advice and left medicine.
There are photos and more curious tidbits of information about Agafya and her life at those links, so be sure to take a look.
In her long and often turbulent marriage to Leo Tolstoy, Sophia Andreevna Tolstoy put up with a lot, but “The Kreutzer Sonata” qualified as special punishment. Published in 1889, the story presented Tolstoy’s increasingly radical views on sexual relations and marriage through a frenzied monologue delivered by a narrator who, in a fit of jealousy and disgust, murdered his wife.
In her diary, Sophia wrote: “I do not know how or why everyone connected ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’ with our own married life, but this is what has happened.” Members of the Tolstoy family circle and the czar himself had expressed pity for her, she complained. “And it isn’t just other people,” she added. “I, too, know in my heart that this story is directed against me, and that it has done me a great wrong, humiliated me in the eyes of the world and destroyed the last vestiges of love between us.”
Convinced that the story was “untrue in everything relating to a young woman’s experiences,” Sophia wrote two novellas setting forth her own views, “Whose Fault?” and “Song Without Words,” which both languished in the archives of the Tolstoy Museum until their recent rediscovery and publication in Russia. Michael R. Katz, a retired professor of Russian and Eastern European studies at Middlebury College, has translated both stories into English and included them in “The Kreutzer Sonata Variations,” coming from Yale University Press on Tuesday, adding to a flurry of recent work appraising Tolstoy’s wife as a figure in her own right.
Looks like something good…especially with those cooler days coming our way. (Hopefully.)
What is on your mind today? Let’s have it.
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At about 3:20 a.m., a 6.0 earthquake hit north of San Francisco in Napa County. The earthquake was 10 miles northwest of American Canyon, about 6 miles southwest of Napa. The AP reports that the United States Geological Survey “said it was the largest tremor to shake the Bay Area since the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta quake in 1989.”
Residents reported power outages in Napa and beyond, and fire departments in several counties, along with the California Highway Patrol, were on the lookout for damage to bridges. There were reports of gas leaks, downed power lines and at least one fire. Pictures flooding in from Twitter show damage within homes.
Napa County Fire Department confirms they are swamped with calls, including reports of injuries. It is unclear how severe the injuries are because units are still responding.
A spokeswoman at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa said most of its injured 70 patients had cuts, bumps and bruises. Many are being treated and released, but some have been admitted.
According to PG&E, more than 42,000 customers are without power across the northern Bay Area, including American Canyon, Napa, Saint Helena, Santa Rosa and Sonoma, according to an outage map.
About 80,000 people live in Napa. The outskirts are pretty much wine country, horse ranches,etc.. Afraid of more coming their way in the Bay. People have said California is long overdue.
The Ferguson police officer who shot unarmed teen Michael Brown had worked at a department that was disbanded by authorities over racial tensions, the Washington Post reports.
Darren Wilson and the other officers at the Jennings, Missouri, police department lost their jobs three years ago. Wilson was a rookie cop at the time.
The newspaper described the old Jennings Police Department as “a mainly white department mired in controversy and notorious for its fraught relationship with residents, especially the African American majority… not an ideal place to learn how to police.”
The city council deemed tensions between officers and black residents so bad that it was necessary to fire everyone and build a new, more credible department from scratch.
Yes, I was reading about it yesterday, but today there are a bunch of articles about it. That department completely revamped and now I guess they have really good community policing.
I was saying a few days ago that everyone on that force needs to be fired and I believe that. They need to start over. 1st order of business would be to hire a new African American police chief from an external source. You can’t tell me that there aren’t thousands of highly qualified African American cops to take that position. Then they need to go from there. I think they should have between 50 and 70% African American cops to mirror the community demographics. If they have to go and recruit outside the community then that is what they have to do. Like I said, there are lots and lots of highly qualified African Americans in law enforcement. Probably can’t get these folks on the cheap but that is alright. Quality is worth a hell of a lot more than quantity anyway and it is about building and maintaining the community. The only problem I see is the transition period but the state can send in troopers or they can get police officers on loan from other communities. One thing is certain to me, they just can’t continue with the nonsense their current police force brings to the table.
Now that Ferguson, Missouri, is not producing enough tear gas to keep CNN’s attention, I couldn’t help but notice Chuck Hagel bouncing in his chair, talking about how ISIS is a greater peril than anything mankind has faced since the saber-toothed tiger. Somewhere, just off screen, John McCain is preparing two lists: people we should have bombed, and people we should bomb now. There’s a big CNN fear graphic on the screen right this moment asking “Does ISIS have cells in the US?” There’s a queue extending out into the parking lot of politicos waiting their turn to shake a finger at President Obama for not rushing back to the White House to deal with this Urgent Threat of Unprecedented Proportion. While wearing a tie. As God intended.
You know how much threat ISIS represents to the United States? None. That’s how much. Exactly none. If there was a value less than none, then it would be that, but there’s not, so none is the answer. …
Great post this morning JJ and Hi to everyone. I’m finally back to light internet reading. My vision is slowly improving in my eye and I’m hopeful that I will recover fully from the transplant. Doc said 2-6 months for the blurry vision to resolve, assuming I don’t reject the transplant. When we’re sure the right eye is fully recovered we’ll do the left. FYI… I’ve missed you all and particularly missed reading everyone’s opinion on the murder in Ferguson and all of the other craziness that’s happened in the world over the past 4-5 weeks. Just when I think nothing else can happen in the world that surprises me, something else happens that surprises me. What a screwed up world!!!!!!!
It’s great to see you back here, mouse. I’ve been keeping you in my thoughts and feeling like you’re right here with us and never left. Take care. The Sky Dancers have been keeping us informed so you’ll have plenty of archived stuff to read when you are 100%.
Peter Theo Curtis was freed from the “clutches” of Jabhat Al-Nusrah (the al-Qaeda affiliate fighting in Syria), Secretary of State John Kerry said. The United Nations said in a statement that Curtis was handed over to U.N. officials in Quneitra, in the south west region of Syria, on Sunday night local time. After a medical evaluation, Curtis was released to U.S. representatives, the U.N. said. National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice said Curtis was “safe” and expected to be “reunited with his family shortly.”
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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6.0 quake jolts Bay Area; damage, at least 70 injuries reported – LA Times
6.0 Earthquake Hits Near Napa: SFist
Napa homes burning after Northern California earthquake – SFGate
6.0 quake jolts Bay Area; damage, at least 70 injuries reported – LA Times
From the link:
About 80,000 people live in Napa. The outskirts are pretty much wine country, horse ranches,etc.. Afraid of more coming their way in the Bay. People have said California is long overdue.
OMG!
And one link on Louisiana: Louisiana’s coming abortion restrictions challenged in court | NOLA.com
This is interesting, I would like to see this group in Georgia…with our outrageous gun law: Black Texans Protest Police Violence by Exercising Right to Openly Carry Guns | Mediaite
I’ve been waiting on that to happen. No telling how it will work out but I/m curious.
BB, I know you wrote about Darren Wilson and his dismissal from his former job, but did you see this?
Officer Darren Wilson Began Career At Disgraced Police Department: Report
The whole department had to be let go…
Darren Wilson’s first job was on a troubled police force disbanded by authorities – The Washington Post
Yes, I was reading about it yesterday, but today there are a bunch of articles about it. That department completely revamped and now I guess they have really good community policing.
I was saying a few days ago that everyone on that force needs to be fired and I believe that. They need to start over. 1st order of business would be to hire a new African American police chief from an external source. You can’t tell me that there aren’t thousands of highly qualified African American cops to take that position. Then they need to go from there. I think they should have between 50 and 70% African American cops to mirror the community demographics. If they have to go and recruit outside the community then that is what they have to do. Like I said, there are lots and lots of highly qualified African Americans in law enforcement. Probably can’t get these folks on the cheap but that is alright. Quality is worth a hell of a lot more than quantity anyway and it is about building and maintaining the community. The only problem I see is the transition period but the state can send in troopers or they can get police officers on loan from other communities. One thing is certain to me, they just can’t continue with the nonsense their current police force brings to the table.
Great articles, love those ads, hope they go up in the airports. Will be back, canning tomatoes today.
Great piece of analysis I can get behind this time.
DKos: Stop freaking out about ISIS
Thank you.
Yes, thank you.
Great post this morning JJ and Hi to everyone. I’m finally back to light internet reading. My vision is slowly improving in my eye and I’m hopeful that I will recover fully from the transplant. Doc said 2-6 months for the blurry vision to resolve, assuming I don’t reject the transplant. When we’re sure the right eye is fully recovered we’ll do the left. FYI… I’ve missed you all and particularly missed reading everyone’s opinion on the murder in Ferguson and all of the other craziness that’s happened in the world over the past 4-5 weeks. Just when I think nothing else can happen in the world that surprises me, something else happens that surprises me. What a screwed up world!!!!!!!
Mouse,
I’m so glad to see you! Hang in there. My mom did well with her transplants. Welcome back and don’t be a stranger.
It’s great to see you back here, mouse. I’ve been keeping you in my thoughts and feeling like you’re right here with us and never left. Take care. The Sky Dancers have been keeping us informed so you’ll have plenty of archived stuff to read when you are 100%.
Thanks BB and Janicen.
catching up late … good to see you mouse!
I particularly love the sign being held by the young AA woman that reads “I cannot believe I still have to protest this shit”. Ditto to that.
American freed from captivity in Syria.
Thanks for the great links!
Richard Attenborough Dies at 90 http://dlvr.it/6jVTcn #TPC
Damn. I hate how they are all dying.
Wish I’d seen this, it sounds worthwhile.
Great post, JJ! …I’m catching up late again….