Saturday: Sailboats at Sunset

Posted: April 30, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Hillary Clinton, morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Escaping Dystopia 2011...

Morning, news junkies.

Chris Hedges ushered in 2011 by calling it a brave new dystopia. For a brief moment in time, the Egyptian and Wisconsin protests provided a glimmer of “there’s something happening here,” but then we were returned to our regularly scheduled dystopic nightmare. I don’t know about you, but lately I’m finding that the actual headlines these days sound more satirical than the ones in the Onion. They leave me either wanting to lolsob…or just sob. So, on that note…

Above, to the right… from National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel:

This photo of sailboats at sunset has us yearning for the sea, which makes it an Editors’ Pick for week one of our 2011 Traveler Photo Contest in the category of Outdoor Scenes. The photographer Ken Michael Jon Taarup writes, “Boracay has never ceased to amaze many people from all over the world. With its white crystal sand, pristine blue waters, and beautiful sunsets, this place still tops the list of the most visited and beautiful resorts in the Philippines.”

That’s so you have something calming to visualize while you read my Saturday picks.

Alright, grab your morning cuppa if you haven’t already, and read on.

Let’s just get the biggest distraction out of the way first…

Tornado aftermath: Pictures say a 1000 words

“Depressing women’s history news of the week”

Being pro-choice means understanding that self-determination for women regarding sex, sexuality, reproduction and motherhood is a fundamental precursor to womens’ ability to achieve their own educational, economic and familial aspirations, a fundamental precursor to the health and well-being of individuals and families, and a core condition of the long-term stability and health of society. It therefore also means understanding the profound connections for women–supported by more than ample evidence–between economic and educational status and unfettered access to comprehensive sexual health education, contraception, family planning services, and abortion care.

The War on Unions… now brought to you by Dems in MA?

The bill will take a month before coming to the state Senate, but the overwhelming vote in the House, and [Gov.] Patrick’s kinder, gentler rights-stripping plan, make it look like something’s going to happen in Massachusetts. Time to get out in the streets in another blue state.

“I’ve played at hundreds of protests and demonstrations, and this was really unique,” he said. “It was every segment of society. It was radical students and cops on the same side, and I’d never seen that before.”

Hillaryland

  • The otherwise serious and reliable Laura Rozen overreacted a bit to Hillary taking a few days of Easter R&R time off with her family. There’s a reason Hill was dubbed the “Energizer Secretary.” The woman works non-stop. She has a personal life that she’s entitled to attend to and/or just recharge every few years or so.

Click to view HQ. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

When Bushies fight… Get out your popcorn

First of all, I didn’t have modest experience in management. Managing Stanford University is not so easy. But I don’t know what Don was trying to say, and it really doesn’t matter. Don can be a grumpy guy. We all know that.

As always, Black Agenda Report tells it like it is…

  • This is an instant classic! Please read and disseminate. Bruce A. Dixon’s Top Ten Answers To Excuses For Obama’s Betrayals and Failures. Note Number 9 — it’s for all the Obamaphiles who won’t accept that Obama is the third Bush-Cheney term. And, to quote a snippet from Numero Uno (Re: “It’s our fault the Obama presidency hasn’t kept its commitments. We need to ‘make him do it.’”):

You cannot make a US president do what he fundamentally doesn’t want to. Michelle Obama is nice to look at, but she is no Eleanor Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt used to publicly bask in the hatred of wealthy banksters. Barack Obama’s dream is mostly not to piss off rich people.

  • For more on the atrocities of Bush-Cheney III, give BAR’s April 25th podcast a listen. In the first segment BAR’s Glen Ford interviews Labor Notes editor Mark Brenner, who sees no growth and no jobs on the horizon and says:

“Absolute disaster for working folks. If we follow the Ryan plan or if we follow the Obama plan, none of it spells good news for the rest of us.”

  • In another segment, Clarence Thomas, former Local 10 union secretary-treasury, says “what one needs to understand is that this is not simply an attack on public sector workers, it is also an attack on public services.” Thomas says the goal is to put labor back where it was before the New Deal, noting that it is a corporate and rightwing agenda in which “the Democratic party is complicit.”

The ongoing crackdown on dissidents: Syria, China

In response to the brutality of the crackdown, President Barack Obama signed an executive order today instituting sanctions against the Syrian intelligence agency and two of Assad’s brothers, a White House official confirmed. Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Council voted in Geneva today to condemn the Syrian crackdown.

“The [Executive Order] is a watershed,” Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Envoy. “This is the first time an Assad has been designated by the [U.S. government], and the first time the USG has issued an EO on human rights in Syria. Until a few months ago Human Rights was a distant fifth on our list of issues with Syria. Now it’s emerged as the center of our policy.”

Ms. Cheng was arrested on what was supposed to have been her wedding day last fall for sending a single sarcastic Twitter message that included the words “charge, angry youth.” The government, lacking a sense of humor, sentenced her to a year in labor camp.

Timeout: Art break

We’re about halfway through, so click to read the rest… Read the rest of this entry »

Where is Iman al-Obeidi?

Posted: March 28, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Libya, Violence against women, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Iman al-Obeidi

The Libyan government claims she has been released and is staying with her sister in Tripoli. But al-Obeidi’s parents say she is still being held in Gaddafi’s private residence. Her mother also says that al-Obeidi has been offered a bribe to change her story.

The mother of Eman al-Obaidi said she received a call from an unidentified person purportedly representing the regime, the parents told Al Jazeera news.

The caller asked the family to tell Ms al-Obaidi to change the rape claim in return for her freedom and benefits, including a house or money, according to the victim’s mother.

According to the UK Telegraph,

Aisha Ahmad, who lives in the rebel-held eastern town of Tobruk, told The Washington Post she had passed on the request to her daughter, who had rejected it.

“I am very happy, very proud,” said Mrs Ahmed.

Iman al-Obaidi, a 26-year-old law student in Tobruk, was held last week after she burst into a Tripoli hotel where foreign journalists are staying and told them of the attack.

“Film me, film me, show the whole world what they did to me,” Miss Obaidi had screamed, as she was dragged off by security guards.

Musa Ibrahim, the Libyan government’s spokesman, said Miss Obaidi has been freed, “but the prosecution is still questioning her to determine the circumstances (of her claim).”

So if government agents are questioning her, are they doing it at Gaddafi’s palace or in her sister’s home? Is the sister al-Obeidi is supposedly staying with the same sister her was used by the Libyan government to smear her? <a href="“>From the Guardian story:

…a man claiming to be her cousin told Reuters that Obeidi was targeted by authorities after taking part in a protest in the west of the country during the initial days of the uprising against Gaddafi.

Wadad Omar said his cousin worked for a tourism company in Tripoli and was detained along with three other women who took part in the protest as they returned to the Libyan capital.

The government also used Obeidi’s sister to denounce her publicly, Omar said: “(Obeidi’s) sister went on television to say her sister is crazy. Muammar wants to prove to the world that she is insane. She (the sister) is certainly under pressure from the government.”

If it is the same sister, how can we be sure that al-Obeidi wants to be with her or that she is safe from further attacks or even torture?

There are reports that either four or five men have been arrested in the case, one of them the “son of a high-ranking official.”

Today protesters in Benghazi organized a rally in support of Iman al-Obeidi.

Following disturbing pictures of Ayman Al Abidi that hit the TV airwaves in Benghazi almost 24 hours after the alleged incident, there was outrage in this rebel capital. Men and women held a rally in support of her and marched towards the courthouse in Benghazi. “We are very sad for this and no will accept what happened,” said a Libyan protestor.Many people in Libya are concerned about her situation and they say that is just a glimpse of what they’ve been facing for decades.

Al-Jazeera reported:

Several doctors say they have found Viagra tablets and condoms in the pockets of dead pro-Gaddafi fighters, alleging that they were using rape as a weapon of war.

They say they have been treating female rape survivors who were allied with pro-democracy forces.

At the Financial Times, Charles Clover, one of the journalists who tried to help Iman al-Obeidi and was knocked down and kicked by Libyan security men for his trouble, writes about his experience:

Ms Obeidi said she had been arrested at a checkpoint on Salahidin Street in Tripoli “because I am from Benghazi”, and then held and repeatedly raped by 15 soldiers over two days.

Hearing the disturbance, a group of waiters and waitresses came over and tried at first to soothe her, then, when that did not work, to shut her up.

Suddenly a melee broke out between journalists and hotel staff. A group of athletic leather-jacketed men barrelled in and began throwing us around the room, chasing Ms Obeidi around the restaurant and finally putting a coat over her head. Many of the journalists at the Rixos jumped into the fray, trying to protect her, but it was a battle we were certain to lose.

Cameras were smashed and one journalist was punched in the face. I ended up wrestling for my Dictaphone, getting thrown down and kicked.

Clover has been told that he is “no longer welcome in Libya,” but he believes that the incident in which he was a bit player is a real tipping point.

All the careful efforts of the Libyan government to nurture their parallel reality were demolished that day. The hired mobs, the theatrical set pieces designed for foreign press consumption, and the alleged civilian casualties of the allied air campaign for which we have been shown little evidence – they all came crashing down, because of one woman’s bravery and desperation.

The questions remains: where is Iman al-Obeidi now? According to Anderson Cooper,

A group of lawyers and human rights activists tried to approach her sister’s house Monday, but were blocked by security forces. Al-Obeidy’s sister’s mobile phone has apparently been turned off, a source with the Lebanese opposition in Tripoli told CNN. And no one has seen the sister since the incident at the hotel.

Journalists and human rights activists much continue their demands to talk to al-Obeidi. She must not be disappeared by Gaddafi’s storm troopers. She is a living symbol of what Libyan rebels are fighting for–freedom of movement and association, freedom to speak truth to power, freedom to control one’s own body.

Yes, I know women are not treated equally in Arab cultures. Guess what? We aren’t treated equally here either. We need to stand up and fight for our rights just as this “lone, brave woman,” — as Charles Clover referred to her — fought for hers. And we must stand with her now and demand that she be freed and returned to her family.

Shorter Hu: Just shut up and buy our stuff because we’ve manipulated our currency to the point you have no choice

Posted: January 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, China, Foreign Affairs, Live | Tags: , , , , , | 33 Comments

If you’re not watching the joint Hu/Obama presser you should be .

2.06pm ET: A Bloomberg journalist asks Hu directly why he didn’t answer the first AP question about human rights – and follows up with a query about the reaction from congressional leaders, as mentioned below.

Hu says he didn’t hear the question about human rights for technical reasons, saying it was a question directed at President Obama, but says he will answer it now:

“President Obama and I have already met eight times. each time we met we had an exchange of views in a candid manner … in the issues we covered we also covered human rights. China is always committed to the protection and promotion of human rights. In terms of human rights China has made enormous progress.”

“Chinese is a huge country with a huge population,” Hu reminds us, and it “still faces challenges in terms of reform”.

2.05pm ET: “We want to sell you all kinds of stuff. We want to sell you planes, we want to sell you cars, we want to sell you software,” says Obama in response to a question about the growth of China.

Joint asskissing session here on CPSAN2.

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Guest Post by Shtuey: Women’s rights: They’re not just for Women anymore

Posted: July 15, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , | 5 Comments

On March 25, 1911 a tragedy struck the city of New York that forever changed the Women’s Movement. Near closing time, from an unknown source, a fire ripped through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory killing 146 people.  Of those, 126 were women.  Though valiant efforts were made to save the Triangle workers, a locked exit and inadequate fire escapes doomed many of the immigrant men and women that worked there.  The grizzly scene of young girls holding hands with their coworkers, leaping to their deaths, rather than face the flames behind them, their burned and mangled bodies strewn upon the sidewalk, shocked the nation.

The women’s labor movement had been called to action two years earlier by Clara Lemlich, a 19 year old Ukranian Jewish immigrant who had been savagely beaten for her union involvement. Her modest but impassioned call for a vote for action began a shirtwaist makers’ strike that rocked New York City.  The movement found new force in the deaths of the young women in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, an event which also drove the final push in the fight to secure the right of franchise for women in America, as was seen at the 1912 New York City March for Suffrage.  Some 20,000 people marched.  A reported half million lined the streets.  But the coals that stoked the fires of these movements were not kindled on those ill fated floors of the Asch Building in Manhattan.  The match was struck upstate, with relative quiet, 63 years earlier in the town of Seneca Falls.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott found themselves in a situation oft repeated in the past 160 years.  Denied seats at the 1840 anti-slavery convention in London, due to their gender, Mott and Stanton agreed that a convention on women’s rights needed to be held.  Eight years later it came to pass, the result of Mott visiting family not far from Stanton’s home in Seneca Falls, New York.

The call was unassuming.  An unsigned notice was placed in the local paper advertising the convention.  Three hundred-forty women and forty men, most from within a five mile radius, attended the convention.

The task of constructing a declarative document fell upon Stanton.  Using the Declaration of Independence as her guide she constructed what she entitled the Declaration of Sentiments.  Within this document lay the undeniable and unshakable truth still contested by the ignorant today (some of whom can be seen blathering away on an almost daily basis on cable television news networks): “All men and all women are created equal.”

One hundred and forty-seven years later, then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, went to Beijing to address an international women’s conference themed, “Listen to the Women.”  In a singular act of bravery, and at great political and personal risk, Senator Clinton, standing on the shoulders of Stanton, Mott, Anthony, Lemlich, Roosevelt and others too many to name, changed the course of the conversation of women’s rights forever.  Echoing Stanton’s declaration she proclaimed to the world; “Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights.”

In other words, women’s rights: they’re not just for women anymore.

It is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as being owned solely by women.  This is an issue of what it means to be human.  In 1995 Hillary Clinton made it plain that it is no longer acceptable for anyone, regardless of gender, skin color, religion, sexual orientation, age, nationality, or creed to be oppressed whether it be physically, emotionally, sexually, or economically, and that it is time for all of us to take responsibility for protecting and defending each other’s rights to live lives of freedom and equality.  Whether it is being paid equal wages for equal time, access to the same employment opportunities, or to share our lives with the partners of our choice, every American citizen should have equal protection under the Constitution of the United States, and every citizen of the world should be recognized as having equal protection of their inalienable human rights.  There is only one race; the human race.  When the rights of one human are violated, we are all violated.  When one of us has obstacles thrown up against them, is oppressed, insulted, attacked, or enslaved then we are obligated by our mutual humanity to stand up in their defense.  That is what Dr. King saw from the top of the mountain.

When Senator Clinton entered the 2008 Presidential Race she asked America to join her in a conversation, a conversation that began 160 years ago in Seneca Falls, New York.  Today we ask you to continue that conversation.  On Saturday July 19th, 2008 we ask you don your Hillary gear and gather together with your friends, your neighbors, your community, your country.  We ask you to look at yourselves, look at your nation, look at your world, and take up the path that Hillary laid before us in Beijing.  Convene in your homes, or in a public place.  Read the Declaration of Sentiments.  And read and sign a new declaration; a declaration that reaffirms the original Declaration of Sentiments, and issues a new call to embrace women’s rights as human rights; that demands that the rights of all people be protected and upheld.

You will find event details, and copies of both declarations at http://www.seneca160.us/

Join us in Seneca Falls.  Celebrate the anniversary of Seneca Falls.  Celebrate Hillary.  Come join the conversation.

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