mark morford gets it right again:

S. Dakota Slaps Up Its Women
Another state you should never visit passes an appalling abortion ban, because they hate you

Here’s a fascinating aspect: Most women are stunned by this news. Most women not living in one of the few remaining prehistoric red states cannot believe their ears, eyes, souls. I’ve told a number of my youngish female friends of this hideous development and they all respond the same way: stunned silence, then “You can’t be serious,” then this ashen “Oh my God” feeling of utter horror, followed by, “Does anyone else know this? Why isn’t this making bigger headlines? Where the hell is Oprah?” Etc.

See, modern women under 40, they simply don’t accept it. They have no conception of a world in which they don’t have complete control over their flesh, their reproductive rights, their sexuality. For most women of this generation, reproductive choice is simply a fundamental, incontrovertible human right, obvious and ironclad and indisputable, and so to hear that it’s being deeply threatened in this back-ass BushCo world is so foreign, so surreal, it induces an immediate cringing recoil, like watching Tom Cruise stick his tongue in Katie Holmes’ face, like watching flies feed, like seeing Dick Cheney naked. It simply does not compute.

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south dakota, abortion rights, abortion ban

This is how bad it is. This video just confirms everything I’ve always known. Which is that Bush has blood on his hands. Because whether you intended to kill people or not, the fact remains that if you knowingly and negligently fail to act and people die, that’s manslaughter.

I refer you to Merriam Webster’s definition:

Main Entry: involuntary manslaughter
Function: noun
: manslaughter resulting from the failure to perform a legal duty expressly required to safeguard human life, from the commission of an unlawful act not constituting a felony, or from the commission of a lawful act in a negligent or improper manner

I wish I still had the righteous anger and indignation to be enraged, but instead, I am just brutally sickened. That’s bad.

There are those who say that the failure was not just Bush’s alone. and that’s certainly true enough.

Information was available early. Over years, cuts in funding were made which should not have been, given the probability of serious and life-threatening problems. *LOTS* of people dropped the ball in handling the early warnings, because no one knew what to do. Protocol got in the way, and utter ineptitude by people who were supposed to have a handle and have a *PLAN*.

Once the storm hit, the complete lack of adequate preparation at multiple levels meant that the meagre plans went out the window, and desperation set in. Up until this point, I can share the blame around.

But this is where things started to get bad. And here is where I blame Bush. Because at this moment in time, when things started to look really bleak, when catastrophe was everywhere and chaos all around, when all the world was watching horror unfold, when people were drowning on live television and dying like dogs in the street…he could have single-handedly saved people’s lives. *He alone* had the power to do away with all the red tape, all the bureaucracy when it mattered most. And at the very end that’s what he did. He came swooping in with a mighty show of force, mustering all the resources available to the national government… lo and behold, the great messianic saviour. and because he deliberately, willfully failed to do that sooner, in his cloud of obstinant bullheaded denial at the nightmare on the evening news, in his feigned deafness to the plaintive cries for help… because he wanted to maintain his cultivated veil of ignorance, americans died.

There’s plenty of blame to go around. But I will never forgive him for that.

manslaughter. that’s how bad it is.

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Kansas is one of 12 states in which underage sex — under 16 in this case — is a crime even when it involves teenage peers. In 2003, state Attorney General Phill Kline, a bandstanding prolifer, interpreted that law to require doctors, educators, counselors, and healthcare workers to report virtually all sexual activity by those under 16 to the state…

There was also the testimony of Dr. Elizabeth Shadigian, best known as a stalwart of the abortion-gives-you-breast-cancer misinformation campaign. She said that teenage girls are always the victims of sexual activity because ”there’s always a power differential between a boy and a girl.” When girls have sex, they aren’t doing, she said, ”they have been done to.”

…Kline’s real purpose in mandating reports is to scare teens away from birth control and abortion clinics. If Kansas actually believed that all under-16 sex was harmful, why would it allow 13-year-olds to marry?

America is soooo fucked up.

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kansas, underage sex, sexual abuse

as an expat, I’ve never felt further away from where I need to be. I want to take to the streets, and shout and protest. Yet my rage from 3000 miles away makes me feel so alone.

I know a lot of pro-choice women. In fact, the most vehemently pro-choice women I know are mothers. I’ve known a lot of women who’ve had abortions. I have NEVER in my entire life met a single woman who thought an abortion was a Good Idea.

But the minute they tell me I CANNOT control my uterus … that’s a *part of my body*. Whatever you may think about abortion in general, neither you, nor Bush, nor anyone gets to tell me what to do with *MY* body, because it is the only thing in this world i was born with and it is the only thing in this world I will die with, and it is the ONLY thing in this world that makes me ME.

I don’t think anyone can appreciate that until someone tells you what you can and cannot do with your penis, or your mouth, or your hands. The state didn’t give me a right to my body – only God or fate or whatever universal capricious force you believe in, gave me a right to inhabit my body. It is the only thing that I think with, breathe with, exist with.

I understand there are people who believe that unborn fetuses have those same rights.

What I don’t understand is at what point those rights take over *MY* rights, and, most importantly, why it’s not God or fate or whatever universal capricious force you believe in that’s deciding that, but the state. That’s what I don’t get.

I was up late thinking about this. Crying over this.

Men grow up with the given assumption that they have complete primacy over their bodies.

Women grow up with the idea that at some point, they will voluntarily cede control of that primacy to a baby’s needs.

The idea of having to *involuntarily* cede primacy of one’s body is pretty upsetting.

But do you know what happens to women who don’t have abortions? Who can’t/don’t care for the baby? Those children become foster kids.

Adoption? That happens to a small proportion of newborn white babies who are given up by healthy normal mothers.

The rest – the massive numbers of children who don’t get adopted, end up in the system. If they’re lucky, they end up there from birth. If they’re not lucky, they get taken away when they’re older because bad things have happened to them. Know what happens to them? Go visit a childrens home (yes, orphanages still exist in this day and age). Go talk to the 10 year old who’s lived in 12 different foster homes, and has exactly 4 pairs of pants and 3 photos to her name. Go talk to the little girl with cigarette burns on her back, who got raped at 3 years old. Go talk to the brain damaged kid with special needs who was born addicted to crack. Go talk to the child who was abandoned at age 2 by and found alone in the house after 3 days. Go talk to the HIV positive kid who might not live to see their 13th birthday. Go talk to the kid who’s been bounced back and forth 4 times to see if their mother can “get her act together”.

Think I’m exaggerating? I swear to you, I’m not. Go see for yourself. These are the children who are not wanted. If they’re not fucked up before they go into the system, they sure as hell are coming out. there are more than *half a million* children in the system.

What happens to these children? Who makes sure they don’t drop out of school at 16? Who helps them try to get into college? Who teaches them how to get a bank account, get a job, get a apartment? What happens to them at 18?

What happens to the children whom society treats like stray dogs? The ones who’ve never had anyone to love and guide them? Who don’t love themselves?

Unwanted pregnancy is about more than just the mother. It’s about the children.

There are people in this world who should never have had children. And we, as a society, only continue to desperately fail those children again and again. And then they grow up and the cycle begins again – lather, rinse, repeat.

3-4 million dogs and cats are adopted every year. We should feel utter shame at allowing a half million children to go unloved without families.

There are lots of people who try to make a difference, but it’s like sand against the wind. The foster care “system” is a massive, abysmal crime against children.

Until what’s broken can be fixed, I see legal abortion as an option which keeps more innocent kids from becoming part of that torturous, horrific cycle. I know others don’t agree – but that’s why *I* cannot and will not be dispassionate about it.

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abortion, pro-choice, south dakota, reproductive rights

since eloquence eludes me, i’ll let others say it better than myself:

bitch ph.d.: not to put too fine a point on it

Of course, women with money will just leave the state for their abortions. If they’re smart, a lot of them won’t come back… I predict that poor and principled women in South Dakota will start learning how to do at-home d&cs.

feministe: ignorance typified

this law really does call bullshit on any “pro-lifer” who claims that the anti-choice movement cares at all about women…This ban additionally states that “life begins at the time of conception,” which again demonstrates that politicians probably shouldn’t be making laws about medicine when they have no idea what they’re talking about (hello there, “partial-birth” abortion!). “Conception” isn’t a medical term. Fertilization is, but pregnancy doesn’t start at fertilization — it starts at implantation. And if “life” in South Dakota starts at “conception,” they’re going to have a skyrocketing miscarriage rate…

shakespeare’s sister : the anger we all feel

I don’t know if I can accurately convey my feelings about being an adult women, with a good mind and a purpose and a family and a home (all of which is one way of saying I have a life that’s important to me), who stands to have fewer rights and less value under the law than an unwanted fetus. That if I am raped, or my health is under threat, my soundness of mind and body are worth less than an unwanted fetus. That there are people who do not feel my uterus should be under my own control.

It’s insulting. It’s belittling. It’s unfair. It’s infuriating. And none of that matters to the people who would seek to protect a life that doesn’t exist at the expense of mine, which does.

This issue is not just about women who may, at some point, want or need abortions. It’s about all women—and our standing in society, our autonomy. Control over my own body, of which legalized abortion is a significant part, is part of how I define and understand myself and my role in our culture. Taking that away from me is taking away a part of myself, and make no mistake, that’s what this fight is really about.

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south dakota, reproductive rights, abortion

A US state legislature has approved a bill to ban most abortions, in a move aimed to force the US Supreme Court to reconsider its key ruling on the issue… It calls for jail sentences of five years for doctors who perform abortions, even in cases where the woman has been raped, her health is threatened or she became pregnant in an incestuous relationship

can i vomit now? my stomach is churning.

you can say this isn’t a bill meant to be enacted… but it just makes me want to cry. what kind of sick, twisted, women-hating lawmakers would *vote for this bill*??? what kind of world are my nieces growing up in???

I feel so violated as a woman. to think that someone would consign me to having the baby of my rapist if i lived in south dakota. to think that people find it okay to subject me to the mental torture of carrying the seed of some evil fuck within me for nine months, giving birth to it, and being responsible for it, *on top of the trauma of being violently robbed of my body in the first place*.

to be molested by one’s father/brother/uncle, and having to carry their baby as a permanent reminder of that invasion.

this is the kind of shit which will bring back bloody hangers and bleach douches. this is the kind of shit which will drive women to suicide. my lone ineffectual rage cannot stop this.

the thought of all this makes me feel so helpless.

and somehow, i’m sure that’s the point.

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Fucking scary – the supreme court will decide the constitutionality of a late term abortion… without the tie-breaker former justice o’connor, who previously insisted that any restrictions must carry exceptions to protect the health of the mother. this is a *federal* ban, folks. a ban on something very rarely ever carried out except under extreme circumstances anyway. Y’know, I just don’t think anyone can ever, ever, ever tell someone what to do with their body. Ever. I’ve talked about it before, but the minute you start encroaching on the right to preserve that last bastion of self-determination, the last frontier of the most personal boundaries, the most literal definition of who we are as humans, our individual physicality… that’s the minute *none* of us completely own our bodies. Man or woman. If that doesn’t scare you, it should.

in the end, none of the other arguments even matter to me. the fetus may be a potentially viable life – but the actual living breathing existing woman has rights which will supercede those, full stop, and i can’t wrap my brain around any argument to the contrary.

edited to turn off comments – while everyone is entitled to their opinion, i’m not interested in sponsoring a link to some rabid prolifer on my site. and luckily, it’s my blog.

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alito, abortion, scotus, supreme court

i was going to blog this yesterday, but with all the warm fuzzies, from v-day, i just couldn’t work up a proper rage… but it’s a day later andi.d. cards are nearly a done deal

given how I feel about oyster cards, i’m sure you can reliably predict my stance on this. the fact is that ID cards will only make people safer if they actually say “terrorist” on them. if they can reliably identify who terrorists are (*not* who your average law abiding citizen is) then they will be worth their weight in gold.

But they’ll be utterly and completely worthless the minute someone has the time/money/energy to counterfeit them. Which should be… oh, any day now. I would venture a guess that most terrorists find falsifying identification child’s play.

What an invasion of privacy. What a massive waste of taxpayer money. Even if you accept the government’s proclaimed premise, their own pilot schemes failed miserably. and the truth is that this is much more about a backdoor attempt to control money laundering and illegal immigration than anything else, but they’re playing the “security card” in order to force it down the public’s throat with the least resistance. because many people would very likely protest something that was introduced to crack down on the influx of poor minorities from underdeveloped countries (or even workers from new eu member states that xenophobes claim are taking away british jobs), but really, who’s going to oppose a measure which promises to make everyone safer after last summer’s terrorist attacks?

it’s an expensive farce of an intiative that’s doomed to fail before it even begins. but what else do you expect these days?

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id cards, anti-terrorism

valentine’s day has been co-opted by the greeting card companies for schmaltz and profit. so i urge you to celebrate something meaningful this day instead. recognise v-day – until violence against women worldwide is a thing of the past. donate, volunteer, promote. give of your heart.

for all the women you know and love. and for all those you don’t.

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v-day, domestic violence

All these months later after katrina, I still can’t talk about it without intense rage. but I will repeat what I said before:

hundreds, if not thousands, of americans died like stray dogs in the street. babies died from lack of water. people were left to rot nameless and unclothed in gutters of waste.

because of *him*. he had the personal power to save them. he’s finally decided to rescue the last survivors in a great show of bravado. like magic, troops and food and water and boats and helicopters have appeared en masse.

i wonder how i would feel if my survival came down to praying to george w. bush for help?

i hold him personally responsible for every single one of those deaths. every baby that died of dehydration. every man woman and child who died hoping the president would save them.

…those americans died on his doorstep, on his watch, on his say-so

but it turns out my scathing indictment wasn’t so far off, according to the congressional report being released:

“Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare,” the report said.

The House report due to be released Wednesday found that “earlier presidential involvement could have speeded” the government’s response because Bush alone could have cut through all bureaucratic resistance.

(emphasis mine)

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…shit that makes my bloodpressure soar.

The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity….It is the federal government’s latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens’ privacy…Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). ..ADVISE involves data-mining – or “dataveillance,” as some call it…

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advise, government surveillance, data mining

something has been bothering me for a few weeks, and as i was reading the news about the endangered polar bears this morning, it occurred to me that what’s been niggling at the back of my brain is my puzzlement over the seeming about face by the bush administration on america’s oil dependence. george’s recent declaration during the state of the union address, that america is “addicted to oil” was particularly perplexing if you consider his political stake in perpetuating petroleum consumption – common sense says you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and bush has long played patsy to the lobbyists of the industry. not to mention the potential implications if the more controversial allegation that bush was in bed with the saudis, (who were, in turn, supporting bin laden, who then carried out the september 11th attacks over oil negotiations), is true.

i can only presume that since heretofore he’s only encouraged furthering oil consumption through supporting suv tax breaks and drilling in alaska, (and implicitly supported those industries already dependent on petroleum through his refusal to sign up to the kyoto protocol, as well as watering down official climate research results), that the sudden 180 is not inspired by any sort of sudden revelation or change of heart. the thing that confuses me is what the political motivation behind the curtain is.

bush has called for investment in alternative energy sources as a way to break our dependence on the middle east. yet only days later it emerged that the national renewable energy lab faced a $28 million shortfall due to budget cuts. he said we had to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy”. yet only days later has tripled the estimated profits that ANWR drilling would contribute to the gdp. the contradictory signals are coming fast and furious, and none of it makes sense.

none of it makes sense, that is, until you consider that the element which is missing in the equation above is “conservation”. because conservation would require people to use less and recycle more, and that spells bad news for an economy designed to be driven by consumer spending. And conservation is the one thing which bush has continually failed to call for. he’s never suggested we drive smaller cars, or make less plastic. he’s never suggested that our resources are finite, and that the environmental benefit might be a reason to wean ourselves from gas and oil. even the california electricity crisis, (a wakeup call if ever there was one, with the spectre of a country-sized state cast into darkness), was used as a call to find more fuel, not use fewer televisions.

and somehow it all now sickly makes sense. bush has no intention of saving the world – his motivation is to save his ass with those voters who blame him for spiraling energy prices and our inability to flex more muscle in the middle east. it’s another self-serving initiative which will fail spectacularly due to the inability to grasp the global implications of petroleum politics. and the fact is that no matter how many cars switch to ethanol, or houses heat by solar…as long as we continue to consume (and are encouraged to do so) at the current rate, we will always be beholden to whoever holds the most land/oil/water…

when the trickle from the tap is as precious as gold, it will all be too late. the only question is whether bush has any real interest during the rest of his term in helping to head us in the right direction before we arrive at that dead end.

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bush, oil, fuel, anwr, drilling, alaska, economy, state of the union address

this is why the "inciting racial hatred" laws in this country are such bullshit – i’ve been watching a series on chinese immigrants to this country, and this particular episode focuses on three takeaway owners.

their shops are continually vandalised – locks broken, windows smashed.  they have abuse hurled at them day in and day out.  the police do nothing in response to their calls.  a group of youths came into one shop and *shat* on the floor.

and finally, one poor shopkeeper was beaten to death.  his head kicked in by teenage yobs.  

laws like this "racial hatred bill" lull us into a false sense of security – they don’t stop the festering endemic of racism and xenophobia.  this is not about "having regard to all the circumstances, the words, behaviour or material are (or is) likely to be heard or seen by any person in whom they are (or it is) likely to stir up racial or religious hatred."  This is about loathing someone of a different background enough to kill them. 

they didn’t walk around with placards, saying they were going to kill him because he was chinese.  they didn’t write anti-asian slogans on the wall whille they were breaking his shop windows.  they just stomped his brains in because they didn’t like him.

their words didn’t kill him. their boots did.  the "racial hatred" laws would have been powerless to save this mans life.

until there’s a law against murder, they can’t stop this from happening.

oh wait – there already is. 

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racism, uk, chinese, racial hatred laws

i’m nearly sick to death of discussing the muslim cartoon thing, as i feel i’ve been arguing it all day with some other expats, but it seems i have a few other points to make after all.

there’s been a lot of anger over the protesters in london who are holding up signs calling for beheading, execution, etc., and much of the prevailing opinion is that it is “incitement to murder” and the protesters should have been arrested.

to which I say: Holding up a piece of cardboard is incitement to murder? If I thought I could actually get people to do something that crazy on my behalf, I’d be out there holding up a placard that says “The EuroMillions winner must give me all their money!”

I’m exaggerating, of course. But the outraged public give them too much credit. Someone who’s crazy enough they’re actually going to commit murder certainly doesn’t neet a cardboard sign to “incite” them to do anything. They already have bigger mental problems, and i don’t think anyone seriously believes someone would commit violence on the say-so of a stranger with a sign. the real reason they want them arrested is not that they think it effectively incites murder, but because it *does* effectively incite fear.

the other thing which seems absolutely blatantly obvious, is that *none* of this is over cartoons. the cartoon were published in september, for crying out loud. this is about recognition and fear. a small group of crazies out of *a billion* muslims worldwide manage to gain notoriety, and suddenly everyone is shocked and scared of everyone who’s of middle-eastern descent and abuzz once again over the “fundamentalism islamic agenda”.

Violence, while abhorrent, is hardly unique to Muslims, nor is it part of a religion – it is part of *politics*. Whenever you hear about radical WTO protesters who set shops on fire, or guerilla movements in South America that kidnap people, or the IRA executes someone, no one runs around saying “I’m growing suspicious of Catholicism/Protestantism/etc and its followers.”

People have to stop lumping the entirety of a religion in with the radical politics of a few, because that kind of irrational fear only exacerbates the situation. when people stop distinguishing between the individual zealots and the mass faithful, suddenly people who were not invested in a situation which had nothing to do with them, feel the need to take a stand.

irrational fear is just as harmful as irrational belief, and neither is helping anything to calm down.

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protest, fear, london, muslim cartoons

Watching some *bullshit* programme on how feminism is dead, has in fact been detrimental to women, and how they “can’t have it all”. The upshot of the argument is that women have tried to become men, and instead have made themselves less happy, less appealing to men, and less able to have children and care for their families. That they end up undermining the institution of marriage and destabilising society by wanting to have it all.

I can’t even begin to tell you how vehemently I disagree with this hurtful and self-sacrificing load of shite. People bemoan the ladette culture and ask if women are really happy behaving like sexually liberal drunks. They ask if they’re happy earning less and working harder at the same jobs. People ask if women who postpone having children are happy to go through fertility treatments and adoption. People ask if mothers who work outside the home are happy given their general exhaustion and stress levels.

These are all the wrong questions.

What they should be asking is: just how would society change if it was *men* caught in the above scenario? Because if there was true equality in salary, opportunity, expectation, responsibility, and choice in today’s society, none of this would be an issue.

Where is the expectation that men take on half the childrearing? Where is the expectation that men sacrifice their careers for the good of their children? Where are the egalitarian salaries so that families can decide what’s best for them, not what makes the most financial sense? Where is the expectation that men stop acting like drunken sluts? Where is the expectation that men make some of the hard choices about going back to work? Where do we get off lauding ourselves as a progressive society because a few elite women have made it to the top, instead of working diligently to change the fact that the women who do get there only do so at great personal cost?

Women’s roles have changed tremendously over the past 50 years. Yet men’s roles have changed hardly at all. So why, on top of everything else are *women* responsible for changing society? Why the hell aren’t we taking men to task for not doing their part?!? Why the hell should women have to downsize their expectations of society? Certainly no one expects men to self-sacrifice like that.

Instead of asking if women are happy with their modern expectations and responsibilties, we should be saying, “Women aren’t happy with their current expectations and responsibilities – now what the fuck are you gonna do about it?”

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I wasn’t going to weigh in on the anti-muslim cartoon brou-ha-ha, since most people can probably already guess where i stand, but I’ll spell it out anyway.

I believe very strongly in *absolute* freedom of speech. I think the media have a right to say or print whatever they like, and that it *MUST* remain that way if we are ever to preserve a kernel of truth. Once they give in to special interest groups, everything they produce is suspect.

However, that being said, I think that there is plenty of media that *does* pander to the outspoken sector of the Christian public and would never dream of satirising Christ. How is it okay to deliberately poke fun at one religion, when you would *not* poke fun at another? For example, I can quite easily conceive of FOX media satirising Muhammed, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that they would NEVER lampoon Jesus. And while that’s perfectly within their right to do, it doesn’t speak very highly of their ethical stance.

And those papers who won’t reprint the cartoons in question are considered wishy-washy, or too p.c. to show solidarity.

The thing that kills me, is that if it were a cartoon that at was offensive to Christians and they apologised, no one would accuse them of caving to some fundamentalist agenda. Yet it has pout Muslims in an impossible position: if they take offense and speak up to defend their religion, they’re lumped with (potentially terrorist) fundamentalists. And if they don’t say anything, the public continues to think it’s okay to desecrate their beliefs.

(here’s where i go off on a tangent…) The more I think about it, the greater respect I have for the Muslim community I live with. Because in spite of all the terror Christianity has sponsored over the course of history, in spite of all the white-faced crazies like timothy mcveigh and the unabomber and hitler and eta and the ira – in spite of everything horrific anyone white or nominally christian has done, no one has *ever* assumed that because *I* am white and nominally christian, that i might do something terrible. no one has *ever* made me feel like I had to renounce what other white christians have done. yet a small handful of crazy people who happen to be arabic and muslim have caused *all* middle-easterners to be on the defense, all day, every day. they have to continue on with their daily lives constantly playing apologist for muslim terrorists, or face being accused as a sympathiser.

(and this is where i bring it back to the topic at hand…) and on top of all of this, the most sacred symbol of their faith is caricatured, and reprinted in papers around the world, and they’re expected to swallow it and smile. and as the row grows deeper and reactions more extreme (such as the palestinians threatening to kidnap europeans), they risk being tarred with the same brush if they so much as peep in dissent.

it’s no longer about freedom of speech anymore, when a cartoon has become a worldwide symbol of resistance to an extremist islamic regime.

and how ironic then, that that same freedom of speech no longer applies to the people who are the subject of the cartoon itself.

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cartoons, muhammed, islam, freedom of speech

For those of you Stateside who have to suffer through the monologue of lies, here’s a way to make the “state of the union” address fun: the state of the union drinking game.

whereupon every time he:

defends the necessity or legality of the NSA surveillance program – drink while looking over the shoulder of the person next to you

says “border security” or “illegal immigration” – do 1 shot of tequila

mentions “Scooter Libby”; or other reference to “Plamegate” – Poke a hole in your cup and drink from the leak

If you’re really looking to get wild and crazy, arianna huffington has tips and suggestions for throwing your very own S>O>T>U> party, including games such as “guess the guest” and “beat the speaker”.

you can also use this as the perfect excuse to drown you sorrows over the alito confirmation.

whoopdee. fucking. do.

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state of the union address, drinking games, alito

Everyone’s all abuzz over the Hamas win in the palestinian elections. Personally, I think it’s incredibly difficult to predict what might happen. that’s the rub with the democratic process: you might not like who they elect, but it’s nearly impossible to invalidate their choice.

and i think that’s precisely what the palestinians are looking for – validation and acknowledgement. it’s a wake up call, saying, “hey we’re here, and we won’t be ignored any longer. this is the party we think can get stuff done.”

but how do you engage with a group who simultaneously refuse to acknowledge a state, and call for its destruction? (there’s a conundrum!) How do you attempt to change the dialogue without implicitly recognising their position? in that respect, i think it’s very clever – the palestinians finally have the ball in their court, and the power of legitimacy behind it. it’s the strongest position they’ve ever held, and i can understand why they’ve done it.

but have they cut off their nose to spite their face? as slate says, “With Hamas democratically elected into power, a peace process leading to the formation of a Palestinian state is no longer a viable option—unless the organization completely changes its ways.” They’ve either played it brilliantly, or painted themselves into a corner.

in a way, it charges both sides with trying to do things differently. to play ball with the big boys, hamas will have to step up their game. and to support them in reaching that new level, the westernised countries will have to let them in to play. both sides will have to drop some of the rhetoric which makes drawing lines in the sand such an easy option. the real work either starts here, or ends before it’s begun.

the only alternative is bloodshed.

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my apologies for the site fuckups! I’ve been extremely frustrated most of today. I have no idea what’s going on and can’t seem to get through to anyone.

anyway, while i have temporary access to my soapbox… google has decided to censor itself to gain entry to the chinese market. part of me is really disappointed, but the other part of me sees it as a very crafty move. I think in theory it’s horrible. In reality, there are probably many, many ways to get around any internet restrictions. China can continue to try to clamp down, but they’re fighting a losing battle. The horse has left the stable. Hell, people from China have gotten to *my* site! Nothing like putting an obstacle in front of someone to inspire them to find ways around it. The internet is unstoppable.

I guess my thinking is that while they may be conceding by closing a window, they’re really opening a huge giant door. As J said, “Show me the URL of a *unacceptable* site that a government has closed and I’ll show you 3 replacement sites and 20 blogs critisizing the state for oppression. Where theres a will (and a few Yuan) theres a willing ISP to take you there…”

and with that, i’m off to bed, hoping that tomorrow will see no server problems or i will have to hunt someone down and go all aggro new yorker on their ace.

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You know, i haven’t been following the alito hearings because it’s was always a fait accompli, and dwelling on it just makes my gut twist. Is he qualified? Sure. The problem is that no matter how you wrap it, the bulk of judicial decision-making comes down to interpretation coloured by opinion. And I doubt, from what I’ve read so far, that his opinion has very much in common with mine. Unfortunately, his counts for a helluva lot more.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., declared, “If one is pro-choice in this day and age, in this structure, one can’t vote for Judge Alito. It is simply that simple.”

’nuff said.

Read a very interesting article today on “the pornification of america”, about how omnipresent sexual material has become in our society.

…the porn aesthetic has become so pervasive that it now serves as a kind of sensory wallpaper, something that many people don’t even notice anymore. The free-speech-versus-censorship debates that invariably surround actual pornography do not burn as hot when the underlying principles of porn are filtered more subtly into the mainstream.

whatever one might think of the pervasive sexual overtones and what it does to the the social standing of women, I think it is getting to the point where the backlash is building. I know that sounds a bit naive, but as mentioned above, it’s gotten to the point where sex is becoming background noise. Because of this, I theorise there’s going to be a backlash because sex is losing its effectiveness to sell – and the effectiveness which has, to this point been so thoroughly exploited, is dependent on a) the ability to shock and b) the element of taboo. Both of those angles have been stretched to their breaking point. By saturating the market with sexual messages, advertisers and marketeers are shooting themselves in the foot, when it fails to titilate as it once did. There’s only so far one can take the notion of define one’s actions in direct opposition to something (i.e. if the conservative right is decrying the loss of “family values”, you can only go 180 degrees opposite to that before you run out of room). It’s like those adverts that get your attention through silence – when you become so used to tuning out the loud, brash, in-your-face manipulation, the subtle approach works by appearing in stark contrast. as a ploy, that might work for a while… but not forever.

the article also makes the argument that:

…the ”conservative right, in its eagerness to keep sexuality forbidden, is really just stoking the fire of an appetite for porn, for naughtiness, for the whole lust for sexual transgression.” She maintains that if conservative forces were to ”give up their repressive game where sex is concerned,” the mainstream manifestations of porn will lose their appeal to a lot of people.

The example of the UK would seem to support this. Here there is a healthy dose of realism – t & a are definitely for adult consumption, but theres no shying away from it either. turn on any channel five late movie and what you’re watching is something you could easily rent off the back shelf of the video store. Because there’s no pretense of puritanism to rebel against, there’s much less “risque” material floating around. For the most part, things are not sold using sexually explicit imagery or innuendo. Politicians say very little, in fact, about sex and the media, and feel no need to hang their hat on prudishness.

America needs to drop its facade of innocence – it’s not fooling anyone anyway. The pendulum will have to swing back the other way eventually, and though i doubt we’ll ever go back to the days of long petticoats and white gloves, the people who make their living using sex to sell cars/music/blenders will be forced to be < *gasp*> original.

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Good lord. just when i think i’ve run out of things to be simltaneously furious and paranoid about: the federal gov’t tries to subpoena google search records.

what the fuckety fuck fuck??? how on god’s green earth can it be at all legal to randomly accumulate massive amounts of information on perfectly innocent citizens?!

urgh – there are not enough expletives and exclamation marks in the world. scarier still, is that “Google’s main competitors have complied with the White House subpoena, according to the court papers. “

Now I don’t pretend to believe for a second that google has done this out of anything other than pure self interests (namely advertising and marketing dollars). but still, good on them and their “don’t be evil” slogan.

in other sad news, there’s a whale in the thames. had i only looked out my office window at the right time, I might have spotted it. hopefully it will make it’s way back to deep water. but strangely enough, apparently porpoises have been spotted eating fish by vauxhall bridge – as the weather turns warmer, I’ll have to be on the lookout!

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google, subpoena, records, search engines