Wednesday Reads: A Dictator, A Priest and Joe Lieberman walk into a funeral home…

Posted: January 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Baby Boomers, Civil Rights, Diplomacy Nightmares, Foreign Affairs, Haiti, Human Rights, just because, Middle East, morning reads, Tunisia, U.S. Politics, Violence against women, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 27 Comments

Morning everyone! I hope that you have a big cup of coffee, and a nice donut, cause lets dig into Wednesday’s reads:

You have probably seen this news already, R. Sargent Shriver, Kennedy In-Law and Peace Corps Founding Director, Dies at 95 – NYTimes.com

R. Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy in-law who became the founding director of the Peace Corps, the architect of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty, the United States ambassador to France and the Democratic candidate for vice president in 1972, died on Tuesday. He was 95.

Comic relief...picture of fat bulldog with cap.

My brother was very involved in Special Olympics, so to my family, the work that Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy did for Special Olympians was very important to us. It seems that as these last few connections to such a dynamic era are passing away, so is our appreciation of times that were full of conflicts. Think about what was achieved during those years, when Democratic Presidents acted like Democrats.

The baby boomers grew up listening to their parents, talking about living during the Depression and experiencing a World at War. Those who fought for Civil Rights and Women’s Rights, dealt with Vietnam and a revolution of sex, drugs and rock and roll, they know how important the fight was. My generation had the benefit of Grandparents and Parents that appreciated the struggle of surviving on onions and mustard, who understood what was gained in terms of human rights, and enjoyed what Presidents like FDR and LBJ did for “the People.” I can’t help but wonder about what my kids generation will appreciate when they get older. Wii games , iPods and Facebook? Ugh…

Well, Joe Lieberman is retiring, and I must say that I wish he had done it sooner. I always have been fond of Lieberman. I even voted for him when I lived in CT. If you want to read about Lieberman’s decision to call it quits, check out Ezra Klein – Joe Lieberman: Democratic hero? If you don’t care about why he called it quits, and how the Dem’s feel about it, then check out who is thinking of running for that seat. 2 in House could seek Lieberman’s seat – Jake Sherman – POLITICO.com

Joseph Lieberman’s looming retirement from the Senate has focused Connecticutians’ on the House of Representatives, where both Democratic Reps. Joseph Courtney and Chris Murphy say they’re considering a run for his seat. While both are vowing publicly that they’re undecided, a source close to the third-term Murphy said he is leaning strongly toward running for Lieberman’s seat in 2012, when President Barack Obama will be on the ticket in a state he easily carried in 2008.

At least the “Baby Doc” is in custody, and facing charges for the terrible things he did to the Haitian people. No mercy for a tyrant who showed none – The Globe and Mail

The quick decision to charge Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier for corruption and embezzlement, crimes allegedly committed during his 1971-1986 regime, is a welcome sign of life from a government that has been astonishingly listless since the earthquake.

Haiti’s leadership already faces many challenges: reconstruction, a cholera outbreak, a debilitating political impasse, and an outbreak of sexual violence against women living in the camps. About the last thing it needs is the unexpected arrival of an ex-dictator on its rubble-strewn doorstep.

More than 250 rapes in camps were reported in the 150 days following the earthquake. (Photo Amnesty International)

I am using this article to bring to the discussion here at Sky Dancing something that Boston Boomer mentioned to me last week. In a report by Amnesty International, the sexual abuse of women and girls in Haitian tent cities and camps is yet another crisis that has hit these poor people in a still devastated  country. Post-quake chaos fuels rape in Haiti – survey – AlertNet

Haitian women are more at risk of sexual violence because of the breakdown of law and order and the spread of flimsy camps after last January’s earthquake, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

Local women’s groups have documented hundreds of rapes of women and girls since the disaster, but many believe reported cases represent only a fraction of the real number, Amnesty said in a report on survey findings.

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Monday Reads

Posted: January 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Corporate Crime, Gulf Oil Spill, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Good Morning!! Today is the official Martin Luther King birthday holiday. I hope everyone has the day off. I think I have a few interesting reads for you this morning.

I’ll start with this in depth report by Naomi Klein on scientific studies of the impact of the BP oil gusher on the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico. While the government reassures Americans that everything down in the gulf is safe safe safe, scientists are finding plenty of evidence that that’s not the case. According to

Ian MacDonald, a celebrated oceanographer at Florida State University. “The gulf is not all better now. We don’t know what we’ve done to it.”

MacDonald is arguably the scientist most responsible for pressuring the government to dramatically increase its estimates of how much oil was coming out of BP’s well. He points to the massive quantity of toxins that gushed into these waters in a span of three months (by current estimates, at least 4.1 million barrels of oil and 1.8 million gallons of dispersants). It takes time for the ocean to break down that amount of poison, and before that could happen, those toxins came into direct contact with all kinds of life-forms. Most of the larger animals—adult fish, dolphins, whales—appear to have survived the encounter relatively unharmed. But there is mounting evidence that many smaller creatures—bacteria, phytoplankton, zooplankton, multiple species of larvae, as well as larger bottom dwellers—were not so lucky. These organisms form the base of the ocean’s food chain, providing sustenance for the larger animals, and some grow up to be the commercial fishing stocks of tomorrow. One thing is certain: if there is trouble at the base, it won’t stay there for long.

There is evidence of permanent changes in organisms likely caused by the oil and dispersants, and those changes may be passed on to future generations as mutations. In addition, the damage to creatures at the lower end of the food chain is so extensive that it may lead to collapses and even extinctions in larger species. While it will be difficult to directly pin all the damage on BP, there really isn’t much doubt that the oil and dispersants are at the root of the problems. It’s very bad, folks.

Ms Magazine has gotten involved in a protest against the New Yorker.

Last week, Anne Hays put her latest copy of the New Yorker back in the mail, with a note explaining that the august publication owed her a refund for putting out the second issue in a row featuring almost no pieces by women. In a December issue of the New Yorker content by women made up only three pages of the magazine’s 150; one January issue contained only two items by women, a poem and a brief “Shouts and Murmers” item.

“I am baffled, outraged, saddened, and a bit depressed that, though some would claim our country’s sexism problem ended in the late ’60s, the most prominent and respected literary magazine in the country can’t find space in its pages for women’s voices in the year 2011,” wrote Hays in the letter, promising to send back every issue containing fewer than five female bylines. “You tend to publish 13 to 15 writers in each issue; five women shouldn’t be that hard,” she concluded.

Her letter, posted to Facebook and widely circulated last week, has prompted Ms. magazine to start an online petition reminding the magazine’s editors that there are in fact lots of women in the world and that many of them write feature articles, reviews and poems, and that the premier literary/current events magazine in the country should reflect that fact.

According to the article, the New Yorker is not alone in ignoring women writers. Read it and weep.

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