Yep they're smart...!

Elephants are self-aware enough to recognize themselves in a mirror.

And then we have cats:

Shell to sea...!

What first caught my attention about this campaign was the Rossport 5's arrest. Anytime average people are willing to go to prison for their beliefs, I pay attention.

The more I learned about Shell in Mayo, the more shocked I became. Many political campaigns have good and bad on both sides, but not this one. The Irish people are getting nothing out of this deal, while Shell is being handed a windfall.

Please spread the word about this to everyone you know.

I'm back....

Sorry I didn't post a "Gone Surfing" sign. I was visiting my dad and friends and catching waves in Southern California. I couldn't have asked for better weather! And the surf started off small, glassy and easy, then built during the two weeks I was surfing until the last three days, I paddled out in waves generated by Hurricane Paul off Baja. By then I was able to handle the overhead, awe-inspiring walls of translucent blue-green water. It was exhilarating!

No doubt about it, Southern California is a paradise--for the prosperous. I was blown away by the abundance and cheap prices of restaurants, produce from all over the world, petrol, electronics, clothing!

The flip side is that the lucky wealthy residents seem invested in keeping the real costs of that cheap affluence well hidden. No signs of war were visible, unless you count the ubiquitous stars and stripes on bumpers, front lawns, car lots and everywhere, and this despite the fact that my dad lives only 30 minutes from Camp Pendleton, home base of many of the Marines in Iraq.

The city council of Escondido, where he lives, just passed an ordinance permitting law enforcement to investigate tips that residents may be “illegal aliens.” The cops can demand immigration documents, forward same onto the Immigration authorities, and fine (perhaps jail) the landlords who rent to the “illegals.”

I was sickened to hear of this! Though not surprised. Escondido is one of the few places in San Diego County with rents low enough for poor Mexican immigrants to find housing. The ones with greencards will now face legalised harassment, while those without will be forced to live in fear or flee. To me, this mean-spirited law epitomises the So Cal attitude: the rich will hire undocumented immigrants as nannies, maids, gardeners, and handymen, but don’t expect them to allow them to live nearby! Tortilla Curtain (by T.C. Boyle) anyone?

I’m happy to be back in Dublin. Life, while good, is not nearly so easy here, but neither are people so determinedly ignorant.

Special thanks to feminists...!

I was tagged by my favourite blogger, Shakespeare’s Sister, to share Five Things Feminism Has Done for Me, with the hope being (according to Shakes) that feminist bloggers in America run with it as they have in Canada in response to the Canadian federal government's funding cuts to Status of Women Canada.

I’m delighted and honoured to be a part of this effort from the other side of the Atlantic! Sorry I’ve lagged in responding: it’s NOT due to lack of interest, but because one of my favourite friends from CA has been visiting while I’m preparing to return to CA for the first time in nearly three years on vacation, and consequently I haven’t had time for blogging lately. (Shhhh, don’t tell anyone: I’m trying to sneak this in now at work…)

1) First and foremost, feminism offered me the framework upon which to define myself, a necessary first step to clawing my way out of the darkness and confusion that resulted from growing up transgendered in a backward, red-necked American community in the 1950’s. The book that opened my eyes was The Women’s Room, by Marilyn French, still relevant and inspiring to young feminists after all these years. I read it in my late 20’s and the protagonist’s experiences, while different in specific detail, mirrored my own in emotional truth. The light bulb went off and suddenly I understood, at least partially, why I was depressed, frustrated, angry and, as I was isolated from feminists at the time, very lonely.

2) The oppression I experienced as a working-class girl and woman then provided the lens through which I viewed and analysed all subsequent oppressions, including against queers and trannies. I’ll never forget how harmful the ubiquitous set of restrictions, controls, expectations and general invisibility were as I was growing up. Even now, though I am perceived as a man, my fundamental identification and political passion (not to mention, romantic passion) remains primarily with women.

3) Some of the most transcendent emotional experiences, the greatest highs, I’ve ever had were in feminist gatherings or demonstrations before I put it together that I wasn’t a dyke, but rather an ftm. The first was at a Northern California Women’s Music Festival, it must have been around 1983. I know Women’s music festivals have a history of exclusion of trannies and others and problems with lack of sensitivity around race, class, disability and other issues. But I was blissfully ignorant at the one and only festival I attended, and what I felt was pure ecstasy to be OUT in a spectacular rural setting, listening to the icons of woman’s music in the company of hundreds of proud, feminist women. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite that euphoric again.

Add to that my first “Take Back the Night March,” around 1983 or 84 in San Francisco. My first Pride Parade. My first few times at a dyke bar. As proud as I am to be FTM and all the highs I’ve experienced with my FTM brothers, and there have been many, because we are such a tiny minority there is simply no equivalent to the experience of being a feminist woman in the company of the feminist masses.

4) My mom was born in the United States in 1918, before women had the right to vote. As a child, the only women professionals I ever saw were nurses and school teachers. I never saw women bus drivers, police officers, scientists, medical doctors, corporate executives, mayors, senators, or congresswomen. Likewise, electricians, plumbers, carpenters and members of other trades. Women are still far too underrepresented in almost all high-paying, high-profile professional fields and in politics, but compared to the era when I was a child, progress has been immense. All due to the sacrifice, struggle, commitment and courage of feminists.

5) The first time I got pregnant, by accident in 1975, abortion had just been legalised in my country of residence at the time, France. Contraception had been legal for only eight years. A woman’s ability to control reproduction is critical to her ability to determine and control her future. Likewise, the liberalization of marriage and divorce laws. These rights are far from perfect and far from universally available, and are under siege in places where they do exist. Without freedom to choose whom to marry and the ability to control when and with whom one has children, women become baby-making serfs. Progress to date on this issues has been thanks to feminists. And I, for one, remain eternally grateful.

You can't make this shit up...!

Mark Foley's slimy pursuit of Congressional pages perfectly illustrates the moral depravity at the heart of the Republican Party.

Republicans preach and strut, condemning queer families like mine, banning same-sex marriage because they say we’re "perverts," preventing us from adopting or fostering children, while they sneak into hotel rooms with both male and female prostitutes, divorce their wives when they’re undergoing chemotherapy, and sexually pursue high school students while heading Congressional committees charged with protecting children from pedophiles.

Throughout all, the one principle the holier-than-thou gang follows faithfully is protecting one another.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 — Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues, Republican lawmakers said Saturday.

What revolting hypocrites!

Not to mention, arrogant imbeciles. How in the name of William Henry Gates the Third could Foley have imagined he could send explicit emails to pages and never be caught?!

A quick net-search shows Foley has been fighting gay rumors for years. Watch Republicans denounce him now and turn this into a "Gays are molesters" issue. Bastards.

NYT story here.

Welcome to the future...

Even the middle-of-the-road Gray Lady recognised the danger of the Bush administration's Military Commissions Act of 2006.

From yesterday's editorial:

...Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

The editorial compares the bill to the Alien and Sedition Acts. Personally, I think this legislation is worse.

And while I'm glad I live outside the US, that doesn't make me safe.

This law gives the president power to name anyone an "illegal enemy combatant," subjecting both legal residents of the United States and foreign citizens living abroad to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal.

Irrestible....

This little guy is my current favourite at The Daily Kitten. (Though there are so many to chose from!)

(David Scull for The New York Times)

Death knell of a republic....

When I visit the US next week for the first time in more than two years, I'll be entering a country which no longer recognises a Constitutional guarantee of the writ of habeas corpus.

I’ll be entering a country which has legally codified the right to torture.

I’ll be entering a country which four years ago, granted Bush the power, formerly vested only in Congress, to declare war.

In other words, I’ll be entering a dictatorship: “an autocratic form of absolute rule by leadership unrestricted by law, constitutions, or other social and political factors within the state.” (Wikipedia.)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — The Senate approved a measure on Thursday on the interrogations and trials of terrorism suspects, establishing far-reaching rules to deal with what President Bush has called the most dangerous combatants in a different type of war.

The bill would set up rules for the military commissions that will allow the government to proceed with the prosecutions of high-level detainees including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, considered the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

It would make illegal several broadly defined abuses of detainees, while leaving it to the president to establish specific permissible interrogation techniques. And it would strip detainees of a habeas corpus right to challenge their detentions in court. [emphasis mine]

The bill is the same as one that the House passed, eliminating the need for a conference between the two chambers. The House is expected to approve the Senate bill Friday, sending it to the president to be signed.

To say this makes me more than a bit nervous, is a huge understatement.

Chris Floyd has a few, more succinct words on the subject here.

And the NYT story is here.

Small victory...?

From today's Salon:

...At a time when substantive victories in Washington are rare, the failure of Congress to enact legislation authorizing warrantless eavesdropping -- thereby ensuring the continuation of the National Security Agency scandal, enabling various lawsuits challenging the legality of the president's actions to proceed, and virtually assuring full-scale investigations if Democrats take over one or both houses -- is significant.

According to Glenn Greewald in a later post in War Room the delay and probable victory for rule of law has nothing to do with Democrats' opposition (big surprise!) but rather Republican disarray.

If Friday sees no passage of a bill, however, the chance that the FISA issue will stay alive for the mid-term elections and--if Democrats regain control of Congress--lead to criminal indictments for members of the Bush administration is to be fervently hoped for.

(Salon requires subscription or ad viewing.)

Not with a bang, but a whimper....

Ok, if Congress passes the McCain-Warner (misnamed) compromise bill, I think we can agree that America as we knew it will be officially kaput.

The new America will be a nation without habeas corpus. A country which imprisons indefinitely without charges, trial or the chance to repudiate "evidence" against oneself. A homeland whose government sanctions and openly employs torture.

Or, as Glenn Greewald over at Salon puts it:

...Put another way, this bill would give the Bush administration the power to imprison people for their entire lives, literally, without so much as charging them with any wrongdoing or giving them any forum in which to contest the accusations against them. It thus vests in the administration the singularly most tyrannical power that exists -- namely, the power unilaterally to decree someone guilty of a crime and to condemn the accused to eternal imprisonment without having even to charge him with a crime, let alone defend the validity of those accusations. Just to look at one ramification, does one even need to debate whether this newly vested power of indefinite imprisonment would affect the willingness of foreign journalists to report on the activities of the Bush administration? Do Americans really want our government to have this power?

The changes that the administration reportedly secured over the weekend for this "compromise" legislation make an already dangerous bill much worse. Specifically, the changes expand the definition of who can be declared an "enemy combatant" (and therefore permanently detained and tortured) from someone who has "engaged in hostilities against the United States" (meaning actually participated in war on a battlefield) to someone who has merely "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States."

Expanding the definition in that way would authorize, as Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies points out, the administration's "seizure and indefinite detention of people far from the battlefield." The administration would be able to abduct anyone, anywhere in the world, whom George W. Bush secretly decrees has "supported" hostilities against the United States. And then they could imprison any such persons at Guantánamo -- even torture them -- forever, without ever having to prove anything to any tribunal or commission. (The Post story also asserts that the newly worded legislation "does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant," although the Supreme Court ruled [in the 2004 case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld] that there are constitutional limits on the government's ability to detain U.S. citizens without due process.)

[Salon requires subscription of ad-viewing.]

(Catherine Opie for The New York Times)

The kids are alright....

When Brian Sullivan — the baby who would before age 2 become Bonnie Sullivan and 36 years later become Cheryl Chase — was born in New Jersey on Aug. 14, 1956, doctors kept his mother, a Catholic housewife, sedated for three days until they could decide what to tell her. Sullivan was born with ambiguous genitals, or as Chase now describes them, with genitals that looked “like a little parkerhouse roll with a cleft in the middle and a little nubbin forward.” Sullivan lived as a boy for 18 months, until doctors at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan performed exploratory surgery, found a uterus and ovotestes (gonads containing both ovarian and testicular tissue) and told the Sullivans they’d made a mistake: Brian, a true hermaphrodite in the medical terminology of the day, was actually a girl. Brian was renamed Bonnie, her “nubbin” (which was either a small penis or a large clitoris) was entirely removed and doctors counseled the family to throw away all pictures of Brian, move to a new town and get on with their lives. The Sullivans did that as best they could. They eventually relocated, had three more children and didn’t speak of the circumstances around their eldest child’s birth for many years. As Chase told me recently, “The doctors promised my parents if they did that” — shielded her from her medical history — “that I’d grow up normal, happy, heterosexual and give them grandchildren.”

Needless to say, doctors' predictions proved far from the mark. I met Bonnie/Cheryl at a party in San Francisco just around the time she was starting ISNA (and I was eager to begin transition). She is an absolutely brilliant person and has accomplished so much in the short period of time since then. I remain ever in awe of her.

Bravo to her and the other brave people who have come out publicly in their fight to end the barbarous practice of non-essential surgery on babies!

Chase’s position — that cosmetic genital operations on intersex children should be stopped and that children should be made to feel loved and accepted in their unusual bodies — is still considered radical. Most people believe, reflexively, that irregular-looking genitals would be extremely difficult to live with — for a child on a sports team, for an adult seeking love and sex — so why not try to make them look more normal? Katrina Karkazis, a medical anthropologist at the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford, interviewed 19 clinicians and researchers of various specialties who treat intersex individuals, 15 intersex adults and 15 parents of intersex children, and she found that a majority of the doctors and parents felt surgery was a good idea. “We chose surgery for my daughter mainly because we did not want her to grow up questioning her sexual identity,” one mother explained about her baby, who was born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a genetic defect of the adrenal glands that causes girls’ genitals to appear masculinized at birth. “We felt that she should look like a female, so we chose the clitoroplasty and the vaginoplasty. We felt that she would have a better self-image if she did not have a ‘phallic structure’ and ‘scrotum.’ ”

Within the medical community, Chase has been successful in tempering the explicitness with which people publicly make this argument. As Chase has explained innumerable times, intersex babies are not having difficulty with sexual identity or self-image. The parents are, and parental anxiety about the appearance of a child’s genitals should be treated with counseling, not with surgery to the child. [emphasis mine]

The article goes on to detail the discomfort some parents feel when their little "girl" starts to play with her enlarged clitoris around age two.

In other words, parents would rather subject a toddler to the physical pain and emotional trauma of surgery and risk destroying nerve sensation and their child's sexual functioning later in life, than deal with the reality that their child is a sexual being who may not fit into the neat little box the parent has constructed.

As for the prospect of children or adults living normal lives with “unusual” bodies, one of the most widely read articles I ever wrote was at Cheryl’s invitation for a special issue of Chrysalis focused on intersexuality.

In it, I explained a technique to shower in an open (male) gym setting when one lacks a penis. At the time I wrote it, I thought it would be read by all of 12 people. Instead, it is (to date) the sole piece I’ve written to be cited in a couple of professional books, journal articles and to have influenced (very slightly) a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Much to my chagrin (due to a playfully chosen title) it’s often the first link to come up when I’m googled

Chase's long-term goal is the eradication of infant genital surgery conducted for the sole purpose of altering appearance, a goal that the NYT article describes as "outlandish to many medical professionals and to most of the general public as well."

All I can ask is, "Why?!"

Go get 'em, Bill...!

Damn! This is one of the most satisfying news clips I've watched in years! Bill Clinton nails Fox News! Fantastic!

(H/T to Crooks & Liars, where you can view the complete clip. This is the longest clip I could find on You Tube.)

Must see...!

As usual, the trailer doesn't do this movie justice. I saw it today, and it's one of the most powerful movies I've ever seen. Absolutely incredible. GO SEE IT!

New music...!

My ex, Michael, turned me on to Iron and Wine today.



We were IM-ing, he in San Francisco, me in Dublin. How would I manage without the internet? Living as I do as many as 8 time zones away from so many of the people I love.

I've experienced many deaths in my life, from an early age. Lost my beloved nana when I was 14. My mom at 17. One of my first loves, in fact the man who set my feet on the path to eventually healing from my mom's death, at 22. Another first love, many years later at 44, when he crashed his airplane into the Pacific. Many friends passed away to AIDS when I was in my 30's. And others died from various causes throughout the years.

Breaking up can feel like death. Especially when the breakup is bitter, leaving no possibility of a gentle re-connecting after the initial searing pain dissipates. In those cases, the separation feels nonnegotiable, like death.

Blessedly, I'm still close to my sweetest, most extraordinary exes, Michael and Nicole. I was with each of them as a guy, Michael shortly after transition when manhood felt like a gift to be opened each morning as if it were Christmas; Nicole years later, after I'd settled more into my masculinity.

They are both much younger than me, although ftms tend to experience puberty and young adulthood at whatever age we find ourselves when we first start testosterone. Many of us look a good 15 or more years younger than we are, too. I got carded when I was 43: the waitress refused to sell me a beer because I didn’t have my id. Thus, my age difference with Michael and Nicole wasn’t an obstacle in the usual sense of shared interests, excitement for life, first times, and mismatched egos.

Where it did pose problems had to do with larger developmental issues. There simply are certain adventures and misdeeds a person needs to be footloose and fancy free enough to take on, else resentment and frustration sets in. No amount of love and longing can bridge that gap, believe me.

In each case, the breakup was extremely amicable, though far from painless. With Nicole, it required three attempts and me to remove myself to the other side of the Atlantic to finally make it happen. And yet, we still manage to think so much on the same wave length that out of the blue we’ll email each other simultaneously after a silence of weeks. And Michael still makes me smile like no other person in the world.

I will love them both as long as I live.

The truth about the military....

I wish this video had been available when my nephew was planning to enlist in the late 1980's into the Marines. I wrote him a long letter, trying desperately to dissuade him. But his parents, both Right-Wing Christians, supported his decision and signed the permission papers, as he was only 17.

He wasn't sent to war, but emerged from the military a wrecked man nonetheless. He was discharged early (I'm not sure why) and has been a total mess ever since. Can't hold down a steady job. Drifts from place to place. No friends. Never in a relationship. Holds scary extreme right views. He's fascinated with guns, knives and survivalist views.

Clearly, I can't blame the military for all his troubles. But (a) if he was that emotionally vulnerable, he should never have been allowed to enlist, especially as a teenager; (b) something happened, in basic training or during the couple of years he served, that sent him completely over the edge; and (c) the military could give a damn that they discharged a broken man back into society who can't cope, holds extremely anti-social views, and has advanced military training.

His latest attempt to pull his life together? More military training, this time under the auspices of a private contractor, and two tours in Afghanistan.

In other words, he's become a mercenary.



(H/T Red State Son.)

Oh my god....

I've been trying not to think about this, as the mid-term elections approach and my trip to the US nears. God save us, if Bush escalates this to a full-scale invasion of Iran. (H/T to AlterNet.)

Yep, that's him...!

...Rich draws a quick but brilliant sketch of Bush as a lazy, entitled boor, lacking in any real ideology beyond crony-capitalist Republicanism, who above all wanted to win and was accustomed to winning -- because he had always played with a rigged deck.

[snip]

"...Iraq was just the vehicle to ride to victory in the midterms, particularly if it could be folded into the proven brand of 9/11. A cakewalk in Iraq was the easy way, the lazy way, the arrogant way, the telegenic way, the Top Gun way to hold on to power. It was of a piece with every other shortcut in Bush's career, and it was a hand-me-down from Dad drenched in oil to boot."

Brilliantly apt description from a review of The Greatest Story Ever Sold, by Frank Rich in today's Salon. (Requires subscription or ad viewing.)

Another clever ad....

Ok, this is for alcohol. But loving the ocean the way I do, I find it really appealing.

Lovely vibrator ad....

I've been finding world events a bit much lately. It's all I can do to follow the news. Darfur. Gaza. Iraq. Afghanistan. An Inconvenient Truth. Bush at the UN. Bird flu.

Time to turn to You Tube again!

And what better place to start than this charming, faux-retro, pro-lesbian vibrator ad?

Go, Keith...!

Keith Olbermann at MSNBC has been on fire lately on the subject of George W. Bush! Too bad his mettle is so rare among American journalists.

What really happened...?

I just came across this interesting critique of the official 9/11 story (H/T to The Gaelic Starover).

It caught my eye in part because I had just commented on the very topic over at Salon today, in response to a review of What Terrorists Want, by Louise Richardson (requires subscription or ad-viewing).

In my comment, I queried whether we really know beyond a shadow of a doubt that bin Laden and al-Qaida were responsible for the attacks on 9/11.

Given the Bush administration's track record for lying, and the obvious benefits for bin Laden of claiming responsibility, I really wonder. I'm not a Bush-blaming conspiracy nut, far from it! But until bin Laden is given due process and a trial--something unlikely to happen--I believe the idea that a defined entity, "al-Qaida," under the leadership of bin Laden, planned and executed the attacks of 9/11 should be treated as open to question.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed explores the question in more depth.

Five years after the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania that shook the world, scepticism [sic] about the Bush administration account of what happened, as well as of the “War on Terror” in general, has increased exponentially. This has accompanied the emergence of all kinds of pet theories about what happened, some of them truly bizarre, others intriguing but vacuous, and perhaps a few based on compelling facts.

For someone not familiar with these theories, it’s difficult to know where, and why, to start. And particular variants of 9/11 “truth”, such as the “no planes” theory that the whole event was merely an audiovisual technicolor chimera concocted on our TV screens, don’t help.

But is it all just a pile of lunacy? If only it was, I could sleep much better at night. Unfortunately, beneath the mountain of theories and speculations, there remain disturbing and persistent anomalies that have yet to be resolved. In this respect, the mainstream media’s approach to criticism of the 9/11 official narrative has been wanting in the extreme, focusing largely on bizarre pet theories and fringe speculations, suggesting that anybody who has doubts about the official story must be delusional, dumb, or both.

His exploration is worth reading, if for no other reason than it raises issues I've not come across elsewhere. Such as the charge that al-Qaida's operational links to the CIA and DEA were (indeed, still are) very much alive and well in September 2001.

Read it here.

R.I.P.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Tyron Garner, one of two men [on the left, in the photo above, John Lawrence is on the right] whose 1998 arrests led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down bans on sodomy, has died, according to a spokesman for the legal firm that represented him.

Garner died early Monday at a Houston hospital, said Mark Roy, a spokesman for Lambda Legal in New York City. Garner had been suffering from meningitis and had been in his brother's care for the past six months.

Garner and Lawrence were arrested when police entered Lawrence’s apartment on September 17, 1998, responding to a false “weapons disturbance” call, and found the two men engaged in sex.

I wonder what role race played in the arrest. Would the Houston police have arrested two white men caught having consensual sex in the privacy of their home?

According to Wikipedia, Lawrence must have been around 44.

How very sad he's gone.

Complete story here.

Stop homophobia...!

This from the Guardian's Comment is Free:

Fifty-eight alleged lesbians and gays have been outed by the Ugandan newspaper, Red Pepper - the latest outrage in an on-going homophobic witch-hunt orchestrated by the government, police, media and churches of Uganda.

Uganda is the new Zimbabwe. President Yoweri Museveni is the Robert Mugabe of Uganda - a homophobic tyrant who tramples on the human rights of gays and straights alike.

Taking a lead from Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Museveni has found it politically convenient to demonise and scapegoat gay people as "the enemy within", thereby helpfully diverting attention from human rights abuses, poverty, unemployment, corruption, unfair elections and mass deaths from HIV.

In the latest tabloid outing, last Friday, 8 September, 13 supposed lesbians were exposed by Red Pepper. They include two boutique owners, a basketball player and the daughters of a former MP and a prominent Sheikh. Under the headline, "Kampala's notorious lesbians unearthed", the sleazy tabloid published a photo of two very glamorous, unnamed, scantily-dressed women embracing at a party. The article urged readers phone a hotline to "name and shame" any lesbians they know:

"To rid our motherland of the deadly vice (lesbianism), we are committed to exposing all the lesbos in the city. Send more names us (sic) the name and occupation of the lesbin (sic) in your neighbourhood and we shall shame her. Call: 0712XXXXXX," wrote Red Pepper.

Citizens who are happy, healthy, sexually fulfilled and free to pursue love and affection from partners of their choice do not fall prey to the manipulations of corrupt despots, like Yoweri Museveni, Robert Mugabe or, for that matter, GW Bush.

Which is why authoritarians and tyrants of all stripes seek to control and restrict the sexuality of the people they desire to dominate.

Campaigns like the one above also divert attention from society's genuine ills and the myriad ways crooked leaders fail their people.

My heart goes out to Uganda's LGBT folk. Please check out the entire column and write (a polite email) to the Red Pepper’s senior editor, Arinaitwe Rugyendo at: rugyendo@mail.redpepper.co.ug

Oh, this explains it...!

(H/T to Salon's Video Dog.)

President Smirky McTorturer....

There are five-year-olds who have greater reasoning and mental capacity than this president of the United States.

The mainstream media's not giving him quite as free a ride as they used to...

War criminal....

I (obviously) didn’t see Bush’s “9/11 address to the nation” last night, as I'm(thankfully!) out of the nation.

I heard snippets on the radio this morning, which were enough to put me off my feed. I could barely bring myself to read it in its entirety today.

I do not understand how anyone can be taken in by Bush! His nauseatingly overblown rhetoric is more appropriate to satirical works, like Orwell’s 1984, than to the speech of an honest-to-god sitting president.

Some quotes and my responses:

“Nineteen men attacked us with a barbarity unequaled in our history.”

No disrespect to those killed on 9/11/01, but America’s history is replete with barbaric acts, many perpetrated by its very own citizens. Against African slaves. Or Native Americans, who initially greeted European newcomers with generosity. Or Vietnamese peasants. The list is tragically long.

“Today, we are safer…”

Every objective measure challenges the veracity of that statement.

“Since the horror of 9/11, we've learned a great deal about the enemy. We have learned that they are evil and kill without mercy…”

First, as Bush has reiterated ad nauseam, we have not suffered another attack on American soil since 2001, thanks to his glorious efforts to protect the Homeland. (Otherwise known as good luck.) So, wouldn't it be more correct to say “On 9/11, we learned”?

More importantly, since we had killed, as of October, 2004, more than an estimated 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, wouldn't Bush’s words better describe us?

And finally, simplistically characterizing an enemy as evil killers is a timeworn propaganda tactic. I’m shocked anyone would be taken in by it.

“America did not ask for this war.”

Excuse me? America invaded an innocent country, Iraq, without provocation. (Twice, I might add.) And as for the attacks of 9/11, I abhor and condemn all terrorism, including those acts. But America's long history of meddling in the Middle East, arms sales, coups (such as the one that set up Saddam Hussein or the Shah in Iran), and partisan support of Israel against Palestine, made the US far from an innocent bystander.

“Every American wishes it were over. So do I.”

I seriously doubt that. The “War on Terror” is the primary means by which the Bush administration rammed through its radical authoritarian, proto-fascist agenda.

Not to mention, Bush, Cheney and their allies are making megabucks on the war and its historically high oil prices.

“Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone.”

Straw man argument. No one has seriously made such a ridiculous claim. Other than Bush and his supporters, in order to make their own points in the process of tearing it down.

“They are thrown into panic at the sight of an old man pulling the election lever, girls enrolling in schools, or families worshiping God in their own traditions. They know that given a choice, people will choose freedom over their extremist ideology.”

Give me a bucket, I'm going to hurl! If an Irish leader spouted such treacle, he or she would be jeered off the stage. Are Americans really so stupid?

“And then, on a bright September morning, it became clear that the calm we saw in the Middle East was only a mirage.”

Which calm was that exactly? The calm in Israel and Palestine? Or between Iraq and Iran? Or maybe the calm in Afghanistan under the Taliban? Oh, I know! The calm in Lebanon before Israel bombed the small country into rubble with US manufactured bombs, helicopters, and F16's last month!

“At the start of this young century, America looks to the day when the people of the Middle East leave the desert of despotism for the fertile gardens of liberty, and resume their rightful place in a world of peace and prosperity.”

That Bush can utter such words, given the monumental amount of deaths and destruction he is personally responsible for in the Middle East, is truly astonishing. [Re-reading this a few hours later, I realise that while it's ungrammatical, it effectively communicates my sputtering outrage!]

"The attacks were meant to bring us to our knees, and they did, but not in the way the terrorists intended. Americans united in prayer, came to the aid of neighbors in need, and resolved that our enemies would not have the last word. The spirit of our people is the source of America's strength. And we go forward with trust in that spirit, confidence in our purpose, and faith in a loving God who made us to be free.

Thank you, and may God bless you."

Unfuckingbelievable. The nation's founders are rolling over in their graves.

You gotta be kidding...!

SYDNEY, Australia Sep 12, 2006 (AP)— At least 10 stingrays have been killed since "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin was fatally injured by one of the fish, an official said Tuesday, prompting a spokesman for the late TV star's animal charity to urge people not take revenge on the animals.

[snip]

Stingrays are usually shy, unobtrusive fish that rummage the sea bottom for food or burrow into the sand.

They have a serrated spine up to 10 inches long on their tails, which they can lash when stepped on or otherwise frightened.[emphasis mine]

Are people completely insane?! To retaliate against a naturally timid, unobtrusive creature in supposed revenge for the life of an avowed conservationist?!

Crikey, indeed!!

Complete story here.

Incestuous amplification....

Pass this video on, too! Buy the book. (H/T again to Crooks & Liars.) And pray you live long enough to see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the rest of their cronies in prison for war crimes.

Right on...!

This clip is being edited for use in various netroots campaigns across the US. Catchy tune and excellent idea!!! Pass it on. (H/T to Crooks & Liars.)

Alison Bechdel

My favorite cartoonist has been branching out, publishing a graphic memoir, Fun Home, to great acclaim this year and now, sharing an exhibit at the Pine Street Art Works in Burlington, VT, with artist friend, Phranc. Bechdel is exhibiting these amazing drawings on four-foot wide Kraft paper.

She made a movie of them:



Incredible stuff! Here's the post about the drawings on Bechdel's blog.

[Edited to fix html on 13/9/06.]

Brian's last public performance....

According to Wikipedia, this is footage from The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, Brian Jones' last public performance, filmed in December, 1968.

The film wasn't released for 25 years because Mick Jagger was unhappy with the band's performance.

It's certainly not their best. But I love the song and it's Brian's final public gig.

He was found motionless in the bottom of his Sussex, England, swimming pool around midnight July 3rd, 1969. (My mother killed herself in March of that year, half a world away in California.) Controversy surrounds the circumstances of Brian's death, but what isn't disputed is that he'd been on a downward spiral of drugs, alcohol and depression for some time.

And yep, that is John Lennon in the clip! I couldn't believe my eyes the first time I watched it. But according to Wikipedia, he and Yoko Ono performed in Rock and Roll Circus, along with many other outstanding performers.

the Stones....

On the other hand, the bad boys of rock were always my favorites!

Mick's sizzling sexuality blazes from his eyes, doesn't it? Damn! And then there's Brian Jones, looking like a little kid dwarfed by his sitar!

Feeling nostalgic....

Surfing through old music videos tonight at You Tube.

I saw this performance (February 9th, 1964) Live on our old black and white TV. Then went out the next day and bought the single. It's possible my brother still owns it.



[edited: added date of appearance.]

Muzzle the mouse...!

From the NYT:

Three members of the Clinton administration have written the chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, ABC’s parent, to complain that the network’s coming two-part miniseries “The Path to 9/11” is fraught with factual errors and fabrications.

The letters ask that the five-hour movie, scheduled for broadcast Sunday and Monday, be either edited for accuracy or canceled, and ABC gave a small indication yesterday that some changes might be made.

Later in the article,

ABC, meanwhile, continued to explain that the mini-series, though largely drawn from the report of the Sept. 11 commission, was a dramatization, not a documentary. [emphasis mine]

Oh, that makes it alright! We all know how adept American TV viewers are at keeping fact and fiction straight!

Since I prepared to post this, news broke that Bill Clinton's lawyer, Bruce Lindsey, has also written ABC a letter. (HT to Shakespeare's Sister.)

NYT story here.

What a find…...!

A guy happened upon a box of old photos at a flea market, and from it came what looks like a marvellous book.

To think, I was a confused little transgendered kid in the redneck suburbs of Southern California, when these trannies were crossdressing in the Catskills!

...These men had one foot in the mainstream and the other in the margins,” Mr. Hill said the other day. “I’m fascinated by that position and their paradox, which is that the strict gender roles of the time were both the source of their anxiety and pain, and also the key to escaping that pain.”

What still moves Murray Moss, the impresario behind Moss the store, about the images in the book is their ordinariness. “You think of man dressed as woman and you think extremes: it’s kabuki, Elizabethan theater, Lady Macbeth,” he said. “It’s also sexual. But these aren’t sexual photos. The idea that they formed a secret society just to be ... ordinary. It’s like a mirror held up to convention. It’s not what you would expect. It’s also not pathetic. Everybody looks so happy.”

The NYT is its usual mix of poignancy and clueless in this article, as in these few sentences in the lede.

In those pre-Judith Butler, pre-Phil Donahue days, when gender was more tightly tethered to biology, these men’s “gender migrations,” or “gender dysphoria,” as the sociologists began to call cross-dressing, might cost them their marriages, their jobs, their freedom.

Does the writer really think the same is no longer true, especially in George Bush's America?!

Ah, wouldn't the world be amazed to find out who, among their heterosexual male friends and acquaintances, cross dresses!

I’d like to get this book.

Complete story here.

(Photo from here.)

Maybe she's a Simon & Garfunkel fan...?

Faye Weldon argues in her new book, "What Makes Women Happy?" (according to Broadsheet) that women should fake orgasms to make men happy and out of gratitude for all the great progress women have made (yeah, like in Japan).

...She seems to base this argument on the fact that "eighty percent of women only sometimes -- or never -- experience orgasm." Even kindly bypassing the fact that the difference between sometimes having an orgasm and never having an orgasm is, uh, monumental, there's something genuinely wacky about solving a lack of orgasms by faking them. But Weldon seems OK with the idea that most women will largely go orgasmless and expects that any thoughtful woman will accept this and redirect her attention to soothing the male ego. After all, why upset his sense of manliness over something that is likely unattainable? You've already won your high-powered career -- to the detriment of his ego -- so stop your complaining and shut up already!

Some feminists are outraged, calling Weldon an unrepentant misogynist. But her argument reeks of nasty disdain and condescension toward men, depicting women as higher intellects stuck with the sorry task of looking after apelike males who think only in primal terms of defending their egos. This isn't just antifemale, it's antimale!

Not sure I agree with Salon on this.

Weldon’s advice may be, more than anything, the reflection of a huge generation-gap. Weldon came of age during the 1950's, when sex was not a proper topic of discussion for polite, young ladies. Without sex-education for men or women, misinformation was widespread.

Moreover, partners were not expected to talk about what they wanted, and thus clear up misconceptions. It’s not surprising that Weldon might hold outdated notions.

That she would in the 21st century, however, get a book past editors that advises women to fake orgasms is as maddeningly frustrating as her advise is sad and misguided. While I question the reliability of the “80%” figure (I hope it’s not true!) fact is, a lot of women do NOT orgasm with a male partner. So, is stating the truth “antimale”?

If men are ever to reach a better understanding of women’s bodies, and thereby be able to assist in attaining the big O, lying about orgasms is a really bad idea. Throws your partner way off base, so to speak, in addition to undermining the foundation of honesty and communication between partners.

Broadsheet snippet here (requires subscription or ad-viewing).

No shit...!

GOP vows honesty (NOT!)

HT to Harpers; story here.

(Photograph: John Giles/WPA/PA.)

Bush's bitch under pressure....

Seven members of Tony Blair's government resigned today in protest at the prime minister's reluctance to publicly name a departure date.
One junior minister, Tom Watson, quit as well as six parliamentary private secretaries, after 48 hours of leaks and rampant speculation about an exit timetable.

The open rebellion, after Downing Street dubbed reports of Mr Blair quitting next May "speculation" but did not deny them, led the Conservative leader, David Cameron, to describe the Labour party as in "meltdown."

In his resignation letter, Junior Minister Watson said, "It is with the greatest sadness that I have to say that I no longer believe that your remaining in office is in the interest of either the party or the country."

I would add, "or the world," to that list. Along with George Bush's name to the letter's salutation.

I've never understood why so many Britons remain loyal to Blair, despite his dragging them into the Iraq fiasco.

Complete story here.

(Photo here.)

Patriarchy survives threat in Japan....

Tokyo, Sept. 6 (AP): Japan's Princess Kiko gave birth to the royal family's first male heir in four decades on Wednesday, easing a succession crisis and quelling a fractious political debate over whether to allow women on the throne.

Kiko, 39, underwent a Caesarean section at a Tokyo hospital, bearing a boy who is third in line to the throne after Crown Prince Naruhito and Kiko's husband, Prince Akishino, 40. The baby's name was to be announced next Tuesday.

The arrival of a new Prince _ Emperor Akihito's first grandson _ defused a succession crunch in the coming generation of the royal family, which traces its roots back some 1,500 years.

[snip]

The closely watched birth was also likely to put the brakes on a divisive debate over whether to change Japan's 1947 imperial law to allow women to inherit the throne. Under that law, only men in an all-male line to the emperor can assume the crown.

While eight women have ruled as emperor over the centuries, the last taking the throne in 1763, they served mostly as placeholders until a suitable male could be found, and none passed the crown to her offspring. [emphasis mine]

For some time now, doesn't it feel like one step forward and two steps back for progressives and feminists?

I was watching this story, hoping for the birth of a baby girl, thinking it could propel Japan's patriarchal, regressive society forward.

But no luck.

I know Japan is far from alone in the world community when it comes to sexism. The US has yet to elect a woman president. The very idea! That in this day and age, one has to possess a penis and balls to be fit for leadership.

Arghhhhhhh!

Complete story here.

The Scots invented golf to help men whose self-esteem wasn’t low enough already….

Lewis Black was outstanding last night! He had the audience of roughly 800 people in Dublin's run-down Olympia Theatre falling out of our seats with laughter for an hour and a half. The show was worth every penny of the 29 Euro ticket price.

What presence Black has on stage! He launched into his characteristic and utterly satisfying rants about Cheney and Bush, American culture ("The closest thing to culture we have in the US is when someone, say, leaves the natural yogurt in the fridge too long."), Jesus Christ, Mormons, Michael Jackson, masturbation, his "Jewish lack of mechanical aptitude," and crazy news items. Like the story about the guy whose wife almost bit off his dick after he spilled scalding oil down her naked back while she was giving him head as he was cooking pancakes for her. News items which, as Black pointed out, cheer you up simply because they happened to somebody else.

Black smoothly integrated local material into his shtick, joking about the taxi strike inadvertently timed to coincide with his arrival at the airport, the outrageous prices of everything in Dublin (“My three producers each had a drink and some snacks at a bar and the bill was 100 fucking Euro!”), and, of course, the weather. When the audience informed him that Michael Jackson was in Ireland and possibly planning to settle in Cork, Black joked about the weather and Jackson!

Like all great stand-up comedians, he thinks at light speed on his feet. What a joy he is to watch!

(The clip I've posted is not Dublin. Couldn't find any clips from Ireland.)

The reality of Iraq....

In my recent downward spiral, I haven't dared read Baghdad Burning.

I surfed over to it today for the first time in weeks, was drawn in, and left utterly sickened.

Previously, the blogger, a Baghdad resident, had maintained a surprisingly upbeat demeanour despite the chaos and violence engulfing her city. No longer. And I don't blame her a bit for her rage, bitterness and pessimism.

Here's a sampling. And if you're American, remember your tax money is paying for this.

...At nearly 2 pm, we received some terrible news. We lost a good friend in the killings. T. was a 26-year-old civil engineer who worked with a group of friends in a consultancy bureau in Jadriya. The last time I saw him was a week ago. He had stopped by the house to tell us his sister was engaged and he'd brought along with him pictures of latest project he was working on- a half-collapsed school building outside of Baghdad.

He usually left the house at 7 am to avoid the morning traffic jams and the heat. Yesterday, he decided to stay at home because he'd promised his mother he would bring Abu Kamal by the house to fix the generator which had suddenly died on them the night before. His parents say that T. was making his way out of the area on foot when the attack occurred and he got two bullets to the head. His brother could only identify him by the blood-stained t-shirt he was wearing.

People are staying in their homes in the area and no one dares enter it so the wakes for the people who were massacred haven't begun yet. I haven't seen his family yet and I'm not sure I have the courage or the energy to give condolences. I feel like I've given the traditional words of condolences a thousand times these last few months, "Baqiya ib hayatkum… Akhir il ahzan…" or "May this be the last of your sorrows." Except they are empty words because even as we say them, we know that in today's Iraq any sorrow- no matter how great- will not be the last. [snip]

It's like Baghdad is no longer one city, it's a dozen different smaller cities each infected with its own form of violence. It's gotten so that I dread sleeping because the morning always brings so much bad news. The television shows the images and the radio stations broadcast it. The newspapers show images of corpses and angry words jump out at you from their pages, "civil war… death… killing… bombing… rape…"

Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it's not really the latest- it's just the one that's being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last. The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Families don't report rapes here, they avenge them. We've been hearing whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naiveté of Americans who can't believe their 'heroes' are committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped the country, why not the people?

In the news they're estimating her age to be around 24, but Iraqis from the area say she was only 14. Fourteen. Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your 14-year-old daughter. Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths and then the girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape. Finally, her parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American heroes... Raise your heads high supporters of the 'liberation' - your troops have made you proud today. I don't believe the troops should be tried in American courts. I believe they should be handed over to the people in the area and only then will justice be properly served. And our ass of a PM, Nouri Al-Maliki, is requesting an 'independent investigation', ensconced safely in his American guarded compound because it wasn't his daughter or sister who was raped, probably tortured and killed. His family is abroad safe from the hands of furious Iraqis and psychotic American troops.

It fills me with rage to hear about it and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself to care because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?

Why don't the Americans just go home? They've done enough damage and we hear talk of how things will fall apart in Iraq if they 'cut and run', but the fact is that they aren't doing anything right now. How much worse can it get? People are being killed in the streets and in their own homes- what's being done about it? Nothing. It's convenient for them- Iraqis can kill each other and they can sit by and watch the bloodshed- unless they want to join in with murder and rape.

Buses, planes and taxis leaving the country for Syria and Jordan are booked solid until the end of the summer. People are picking up and leaving en masse and most of them are planning to remain outside of the country. Life here has become unbearable because it's no longer a 'life' like people live abroad. It's simply a matter of survival, making it from one day to the next in one piece and coping with the loss of loved ones and friends- friends like T.

It's difficult to believe T. is really gone… I was checking my email today and I saw three unopened emails from him in my inbox. For one wild, heart-stopping moment I thought he was alive. T. was alive and it was all some horrific mistake! I let myself ride the wave of giddy disbelief for a few precious seconds before I came crashing down as my eyes caught the date on the emails- he had sent them the night before he was killed. One email was a collection of jokes, the other was an assortment of cat pictures, and the third was a poem in Arabic about Iraq under American occupation. He had highlighted a few lines describing the beauty of Baghdad in spite of the war… And while I always thought Baghdad was one of the more marvelous cities in the world, I'm finding it very difficult this moment to see any beauty in a city stained with the blood of T. and so many other innocents…

This post was from July 11th. There are more recent ones, equally and understandably furious. Every American should read them. Each. And. Every. One.

Then DO SOMETHING to stop this war-crime being perpetrated in your name. Join your local anti-war group, then in groups of four or six, chain yourselves to the doors of your federal buildings in protest. Quit paying your income taxes. Refuse to redeploy to your military units if called up. Do something!!!

If you do nothing, you are complicit.

Baghdad Burning is here.

R.I.P.

Woke up this morning to this news on my radio. What a shock!

The Queensland Ambulance Service have confirmed Australia’s ambassador for our wildlife has died suddenly from injuries sustained earlier today while diving, from a stingray barb to the heart.

Steve, also kwown [sic] around the world as 'Crocodile Hunter' was filming for his daughter Bindi's new TV series at the time of the accident around 11am AEST off Batt Reef Port Douglas in Far North Queensland.

A Queensland Rescue helicopter crew, including a doctor and paramedic was flown in to try and revive him. CPR was administered during the rush to nearby Low Isl but to no avail and he was pronounced dead soon after.

He is survived by his wife Terri and two children Bob and Bindy. Terri was in Tasmania trekking Craddle Mountain at the time of the accident and has been informed.

Steve Irwin and his family ran Australia Zoo north of Brisbane where flowers and condolences are already pouring in. He was a wildlife conservationist who donated money earned from his documentaries watched in 130 countries around the world to help wildlife.

A sad loss and a shock to all Australians.

The guy definitely took risks in the course of doing what he loved. Still, what an unlucky way to die.

I used to work in Scripps Institute of Oceanography at an office located right above a seawall off the La Jolla beach. We were the first point of contact for swimmers and surfers who were stung by rays. It's amazing the damage a ray can do! And from what people said, the pain of the venom is absolutely excruciating. Unless you’re stung near a vital organ, however, it's not a life-threatening injury.

My condolences go out to his wife and kids.

Story from here.

Over the falls....

Lewis Black's reference to the guy surviving a plunge over Niagara Falls got me curious so I googled him.

Crazy!

..."He just looked calm. He just was gliding by so fast. I was in shock really that I saw a person go by," Brenda McMullen told WIVB-TV in Buffalo.

Jones was not seriously injured and remained hospitalized in stable condition.

Surviving a leap from Niagara Falls had intrigued Jones for years, said his mother, who had spoken to him only briefly since the jump.

"He said he always thought there was a spot you could jump and survive," Doris Jones, 77, told The Associated Press from her sister's home in Keizer, Ore. "We never agreed to it. We thought it was risky." [emphasis mine]

No kidding!

Complete story here.

Black at his best....

A tirade against legislation to ban profanity on air in the US...Effing brilliant!!

Black on the gay threat to the American family....

Can't wait til tomorrow night when I get to see him in person!

And this....

What can I say, I'm a cat person!

Kitty throw rug....

Continuing on my break from posting about hard news, here's something to make you smile....

Fly like an eagle....

I'm afraid of heights.

Moreover, with a vivid, overactive imagination I'm the type of person who would work himself into an absolute state in the hours leading up to a jump rendering me utterly incapable of actually going through with it.

But, jeeze, don't I wish I could do this!!



Don't let the ease and antics of these fellows fool you: base jumping is one of the riskiest activities you can engage in.

From Wikipedia:

BASE jumping grew out of skydiving. Although both share certain similarities, there are three main technical differences between the two. First, BASE jumps are generally made from much lower altitudes than skydives. Second, a BASE jump takes place in close proximity to the cliff or tower which provides the jump platform. Third, the BASE jumper generally has a lower airspeed than a skydiver throughout the jump, because a BASE jump starts with zero airspeed, and due to the limited altitude, a BASE jumper very seldom approaches the terminal velocity (airspeed) of a skydiver. All three factors have significant implications.

The BASE parachute system is designed to open very quickly at low airspeeds. Second, the cliff or tower presents a risk to the BASE jumper if, for example, the parachute opens facing backwards. An off-heading opening is not considered a problem in skydiving, but has caused fatal impact injuries in BASE jumping. Off heading opening resulting in object strike is the leading cause of serious injury and death in BASE jumping.

An experienced skydiver is recommended to deploy their parachute no lower than 2,000 feet (610 m). At that time, if they have already been in free-fall for at least 1,000 feet (305 m), the jumper is traveling 120 miles per hour (54 m/s), and is 11 seconds from the ground. Most BASE jumps are made from less than 2,000 feet (610 m). For example, a BASE jump from a 500 foot (152 m) object is about 5.6 seconds from the ground if the jumper remains in freefall. On such a jump, the parachute must open at about half the airspeed of the skydiver, and more quickly (ie. in a shorter distance fallen). Standard skydiving parachute systems are not designed for this situation. Many BASE jumpers use specially designed harnesses and parachute containers, with extra large pilot chutes, and jump with only one parachute - since, with a total freefall time of 5.6 seconds, there would be no time to use a reserve parachute.

Lewis Black on wmd's....

I'm going to see the great Lewis Black on Monday. He'll be in Dublin as part of the Bulmer's International Comedy Festival. I can't wait!

Puppy v kitty....

This one was making the rounds a few months ago. It's still one of my favorites.

I love the way the kitten keeps charging back for more! The camera-operator has the good sense to keep quiet through most of it. And could you find a cuter puppy?!

Tired....

Sorry, but my heart's not been in it for the past few days.

I think I hit a bad news overload, what with ongoing death and destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Gaza, the continuing blockade of Lebanon by the Israelis, the anniversary of Katrina, the approaching 5-year anniversary of 9/11, the Lieberman bullshit campaign, and the endless garbage spewing from the mouths of Bush and his morally bankrupt supporters regarding Iran, terrorism, domestic traitors, and on and on.

In short, I need a break.

Hence, it'll be video clips for a while. Til I can face the news again….

Too cute for words...!

(HT to Salon's Video Dog.)

Gays in the military...

According to the late, great Bill Hicks.

Mounds of debris fill a waste collection point in New Orleans one year after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. (Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press)

Can't get my head around this photo...

The mind boggles at such an immense pile of rubbish!!!

First, the scale of destroyed goods brings home Katrina's immense power.

But there’s also the fundamental, inescapable point: look at how much garbage our society produces! Jaysus, are we totally insane?!

And this photo is from just one city! Multiply that times the number of cities in the US, not to mention the rest of the developed world.

There’s no way such a level of consumption and waste is sustainable.

Photo from The Boston Globe.

(Photo: NOAA.)

Starving the beast....

One year after Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, more than half the city’s population have not returned. Blame Mother Nature for the storm’s birth, but for the devastation it delivered to The Big Easy blame a succession of Republican administrations dating back to President Reagan.

Radical followers of the "starving the beast" philosophy in these administrations systematically dismantled a panoply of FDR-era social programs, including public health programs, consumer safety, public education, welfare, and maintenance of municipal infrastructure, including that of NO’s levees.

The strategy of these proponents of "small government" was to avoid direct assaults on popular programs, favouring a stealth approach instead in which they demonized all taxes while slashing income and property taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Enormous deficits and a zero-sum economy did the rest.

Twenty-five years later, with their city's levees weakened, emergency services understaffed, and evacuation plans nonexistent, New Orleans' poor and infirm had literally no way out. GW's war in Iraq diverted valuable construction and rescue equipment along with the National Guard units to operate it, while his free-market cronyism reversed wetlands restoration and sold the Mississippi delta’s protective acreage literally down the river. Add bipartisan inaction and incompetence, and the city’s elderly, young, poor and mostly black residents were forsaken to drown, swelter, starve and die of thirst in one of the richest countries in the world.

The aftermath reminded me of a much less severe emergency I witnessed in 1989. The Loma Prieta earthquake struck on an October Tuesday while I was in journalism school at UC Berkeley. Red Cross volunteers set up a temporary shelter in the San Francisco Convention Centre, located in the gritty South of Market (SOMA) district. Expecting to house "refugee” baseball fans from the interrupted World Series, the centre was inundated instead with poor, predominately black, Latino and Asian, chronically homeless San Franciscans as word spread on the street that there was free food and lodging.

When I arrived Thursday evening, hundreds of men, women and children, a number of the adults suffering obvious substance-abuse and/or other psychological problems, milled about inside the upscale centre. It was obvious that the local Red Cross were in over their heads with a population they had neither the experience nor the resources to handle, but they meant well and were doing their best. To the relief of homeless women I spoke with, they had enforced compulsorily segregation between the women and children, and the men. Even so, the presence of a range of noticeably sketchy individuals insured the situation felt just short of chaos.

I spent the next three days there, going home briefly each night to sleep. I grew familiar with the shelter’s routine, how a buzz would build in anticipation of celebrities who breezed in for photo ops, then die down as they left. As in New Orleans 16 years later, Jesse Jackson showed up, preceded by a huge entourage of television, radio and print reporters. He swept through on a tour then stopped for questions. Standing there clutching my reporter's notepad, a woman then, surrounded by the big guns of the national media, I gathered my courage and, identifying myself as a student, asked a question.

I’ll paraphrase it from memory here. “Do you think with the eyes of the nation focused on those San Franciscans made homeless by the earthquake, the idea that some homeless people deserve help while others do not might illustrate the wrong-headedness and moral bankruptcy of leaving people to live and die on the streets when there's no emergency?”

Without warning, Rev. Jackson, a large man, exploded into motion, grabbed my arm and swept me along with him in the middle of the cameras, reporters and hangers-on. He was talking the whole time and I was trying to scribble while running to keep up with his large stride. Suddenly we stopped, he released my arm, jumped into a limo that appeared before us at the curb and poof! was gone. Hands shaking, I looked down at my notepad to read what he’d said. Then re-read it. I couldn’t believe it! Consummate politician that he is, Jackson had spoken many words but they amounted to nothing of substance. No real position, no criticism, no proposed solution.

Sometime on Friday or Saturday, professional national Red Cross employees arrived in town. First thing they did was hire the company that oversaw rock impresario Bill Graham Productions to provide security at the doors. “I’m running this like a Dead concert!” I overheard one guard say to another. As word spread that you'd be frisked at the doors, the shelter population shrank by more than half. Which was exactly the goal. With the situation becoming safer, San Francisco politicians and business people had shown up to hold meetings behind closed-doors at the centre. Word leaked out that a convention was scheduled for the following Tuesday and big bucks were on the line. Somehow, someway, the convention centre had to be cleared.

And cleared it was. On Sunday, the “undeserving” homeless, probably a quarter of the number who’d originally shown up, were shipped off in city busses--the men to a decommissioned navy ship tied up at dock, the women and children to the Navy Presidio. From what I could gather later, many (most?) trickled back to the streets in subsequent days.

Nothing was done to address homelessness and poverty in the Bay Area—or the rest of the nation, including New Orleans. Clinton’s business-friendly administration was followed by Bush’s incompetent and utterly-indifferent-to-the-poor regime. Then 16 years later, Katrina upped the Loma Prieta ante.

One year beyond that, and the poor are still waiting.

Fourth estate failures....

This excellent post at Media Matters blames the Fourth Estate for Americans’ appalling ignorance of world affairs and governmental malfeasance.

In January, we noted that the day after The New York Times broke the story of the National Security Agency's (NSA) warrantless wiretapping scheme (which has now been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge), the Times and The Washington Post combined to devote 6,303 words to the story, in articles attributed to a total of 12 reporters. By comparison, we pointed out that the day after the Monica Lewinsky story broke in 1998, the two papers combined to run 19 articles totaling more than 20,000 words and reflecting the work of 28 named reporters, in addition to both papers' editorial boards -- in just one day.

[snip]

We concluded by posing some questions to leading news organizations:

1. How many reporters, editors, and researchers did you assign to the Lewinsky story when it broke? How many remained assigned to that story one month later?

2. How many reporters, editors, and researchers did you assign to the NSA story when it broke? How many remained assigned to that story one month later?

3. How do you explain the disparity?

[snip]

After all, it's no coincidence that half the country falsely believes that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When NBC devotes only 27 seconds to a federal court ruling that the Bush administration has been trampling the Constitution, but spends almost eight minutes on JonBenet Ramsey; when The New York Times assigns a couple of reporters to the Bush administration's illegal actions and more than a dozen to Ramsey; and when CNN ignores the Downing Street memo in favor of the Runaway Bride -- should we really be surprised that the public lacks even a basic understanding of the most important issues of our time?

While I heartily agree, I also feel the criticism could go further.

Americans chose not to exert any effort to stay informed. Alternative sources abound on the Internet for both domestic and international news. Moreover, even before the Internet Public Broadcasting, NPR, Pacifica Radio, In These Times, and other print and broadcast media delivered in-depth and alternative news.

American citizens have the responsibility to stay informed. That they do not is both their own faults and the mainstream media's.

Complete story here.

(Photo:David Belisle)

Soldier says no to Bush's illegal war....

US Army Lieutenant Ehren Watada, after serving a tour of duty in South Korea, has refused orders to deploy to Iraq on grounds that to do so would make him culpable of war crimes in an illegal and unjust war.

...In one clip, shot at a recent Veterans for Peace conference in Seattle, Watada is seen explaining what he hopes to accomplish. "Today I speak with you about a radical idea," he says. "The idea is this: that to stop an illegal and unjust war, the soldiers and service members can choose to stop fighting it."[emphasis mine]

Watada is now facing prosecution for one count of missing movement, two counts of contempt toward officials, and three counts of conduct unbecoming an officer—offenses which, if he is convicted, could put him behind bars in a military prison for seven years.

The clip above, however, was used by prosecutors, not the defense, to emphasize how dangerous it would be to military morale and discipline if Watada's example were followed by other soldiers.

If only that danger were imminent! No one seems to be following Watada’s brave example: he is the sole American officer so far to refuse duty in Iraq.

Imagine. Despite President Bush lying about weapons of mass destruction to invade a country which posed no threat; the alleged use of American-made cluster bombs in civilian areas; torture of prisoners by US personnel in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere; and reported rapes and murders by U.S. soldiers, Lieutenant Ehren Watada is the sole officer refusing to serve in Iraq.

What sad testimony to the effectiveness of nationalistic brainwashing.

By refusing to settle out of court, the US military has prompted Watada's defense team to place the war itself on trial, something the US government may come to regret as evidence to the war's illegality mounts.

Good luck and best wishes to Lieutenant Watada.

Complete story here.

The new Ireland...!

I really love living in modern Ireland, despite it's frustratingly inept government, terrible public health system, hidebound civil service, lack of decent public transportation and outrageously high cost of living.

Why? Because it's a country moving forward at the speed of light, as evidenced by stories such as the following.

The junior deputy mayor of Derry wants to have a sex change within five years.

Transgender woman Kerri Anderson, who sits on the young people's Shadow Council, said she feels at home in the city after years of prejudice elsewhere.

This weekend she will also parade in Sligo - where once her life was made a misery - in its first Pride event to celebrate the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

She plans to have surgery in the next five years and hopes her civic role will enable her to help others in her position.

According to Wikipedia, the Derry/Londonderry Shadow Council

is made up from 16-22 year olds elected from geographical areas in the city, as well as interest, political groups and also GLBT community groups. The Shadow Council work in unison with DCC (Derry City Council) to lend a voice to the young generation of Foyle, who make up a large percentage of the population. The Shadow Council elect a Junior Mayor as their representative to the media and public. The current junior mayor is Shadow Councillor Emmet Doyle, with Kerri Anderson as deputy. Derry City Shadow Council is hailed as being a model throughout Northern Ireland with other areas taking up the idea following their example.

Although Derry/Londonderry is in Northern Ireland, technically a separate state from the Republic of Ireland, spiritually, geographically and in other ways the island is one. Belfast is only a little over an hour's drive from Dublin, closer than Galway, Cork Limerick and other cities in the south and west republic.

Complete stories here and here.

See this movie...!

This movie was filmed in my old northside Dublin neighborhood. While it's billed as a conventional drug-gang thriller, it's really much more. The protagonist is a political refugee, in Dublin having fled the horrific and long-running violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (deemed by Wikipedia, "Africa's World War"). Modern Irish politics, economics, prejudice, and his mysterious past undermine his efforts to start anew.

If you want to get a feel for modern Dublin, see this movie!

(Not really suitable for young children due to disturbing, but not gratuitous, violence.)



For more about the film, see here.