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Our Distressed Defective Democracy
by Aunt Sam 4/29/2012 - 10:47 am
I think it is past time we admitted the obvious, shucked off our mantles of denial and shame, and own the truth. We can shout it out or sing it in harmony, as we confess the all too obvious…..
It’s our fault that our form of democracy is failing.
Oh, don’t even try to pretend you didn’t know it.
But we can fix it! Really! For sure! Yes, we can! But, will we? How?
I know what I’m about to propose is radical and most likely will create all kinds of outrage, no doubt including accusations complete with cheeky labels like anarchist, commie (channeling Allen West), turncoat, even twit and bloody prat.
Oh, if you are wondering about the usage of British slang, it’s paying homage to Winston Churchill who best stated the motivation for this post when he declared:
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." [Read more]
Oh Come All You UNFaithful – It’s Judgment Day!
by Aunt Sam 4/15/2012 - 2:56 pm
In the movie, ‘Indecent Proposal’, a rich man offers a husband $1,000,000.00 to bed his wife. After initial resistance by the couple, the prompt cashing of his check was all the foreplay required. Although with the dawn came seller’s remorse, what was lost could never truly be regained.
This film created many a conversation, oft rowdy discussions, about various topics focusing on the queries of ‘what would it take for you to ‘(fill in the blank)’. Today, when applied to the political arena, at least in the hypothetical, it seems many would rather pimp out their spouse than vote for a candidate who doesn’t share their base political ideology.
Selling out one’s core paradigms when casting a ballot may not be in the same emotional and moral arena as desecrating our marital vows, but how we choose to vote does employ the same process we use when making any decision. In the end, it always comes down to our own priorities and judgment. [Read more]
Oh, What a Night - Let the Silly Times Rock 'n Roll with Good Vibrations
by Aunt Sam 2/24/2012 - 2:08 pm
The thrill is gone and I’m all shook up, because the mountain (at least for now) seems high enough to keep me away. I’ve been tossin’ and turnin’, and now, this lady is singing the blues, ready to cry me a river from trying to keep up with the chain of fools twisting our rights away, both nationally and locally. Yeah, I know it’s all in the game, but sometimes, girls just wanna have fun. [Read more]
In the News
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Conversations with suicide bombers
By Elizabeth Weingarten, ForeignPolicy.com, May 23, 2012
It was 2009 in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Mossarat Qadeem was sitting on the floor of a house with about a dozen young Pakistani men -- some of whom had nearly become suicide bombers. Qadeem's goal: to undo the destructive brainwashing of the al-Qaeda and Taliban teachers who trained them in extremism, in part by asking the students to narrate their life stories.
"We were handling one of the boys, and he just came, put his head here in my lap, and he started crying and weeping," Qadeem recalls. "I was taken aback. It is very unnatural in my country that a man that tall can just sit at your feet and put his head here. [The other men] were all crying with him, and I was looking at him, and thinking, ‘my God.'"
All in a day's work for Qadeem. She's the national coordinator of Aman-o-Nisa, a coalition of Pakistani women that convened in October 2011 to combat violent extremism in Pakistan at the grassroots level. [....]
Read the article at http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/05/23/conversations_with_suicide_bombers- Add new comment
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For Native American Women, Scourge of Rape, Rare Justice
The issue of sexual assaults on American Indian women has become one of the major sources of discord in the current debate between the White House and the House of Representatives over the latest reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994.
.......
“We should never have a woman come into the office saying, ‘I need to learn more about Plan B for when my daughter gets raped,’ ” said Charon Asetoyer, a women’s health advocate on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, referring to the morning-after pill. “That’s what’s so frightening — that it’s more expected than unexpected. It has become a norm for young women.”
The difficulties facing American Indian women who have been raped are myriad, and include a shortage of sexual assault kits at Indian Health Service hospitals, where there is also a lack of access to birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing. There are also too few nurses trained to perform rape examinations, which are generally necessary to bring cases to trial.
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Doctor Who Helped Find Bin Laden Given Jail Term (for...
By Ismail Kahn, New York Times, May 23/24, 2012
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency pin down Osama bin Laden's location under cover of a vaccination drive was convicted on Wednesday of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a senior official in Pakistan said.
A tribal court here in northwestern Pakistan found the doctor, Shakil Afridi, guilty of acting against the state, said Mutahir Zeb Khan, the administrator for the Khyber tribal region [....]
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Russia lawmakers advance bill on penalties for protesters
By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times, May 23, 2012
MOSCOW — Stiff new penalties aimed at opposition protesters were given preliminary approval Tuesday by Russian lawmakers loyal to President Vladimir Putin, the target of mass rallies and demonstrations before his March election victory.
The bill, which opposition parliament members termed draconian and protested by threatening to file out of a legislative session, calls for fines of up to $50,000 and up to 200 hours of community service for organizers of rallies and demonstrations that grow violent or exceed the approved number of participants.
The sanctions were approved on first reading by parliament's lower house, which is controlled by Putin's United Russia party. They mark a return by the Kremlin to a tough stance against critics after concessions during the recent election campaign [...]
Also see:
Russians back Putin, strong leadership
Washington Post, May 22, 2012A Pew survey of 1,000 Russians found that President Vladimir Putin is well-liked by more than 70 percent of citizens, especially older adults.
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In Cuba, Mystery Shrouds the Fate of an Undersea Internet...
Associated Press, May 21, 2012
HAVANA — It was all sunshine, smiles and celebratory speeches as officials marked the arrival of an undersea fiber-optic cable they promised would end Cuba's Internet isolation and boost web capacity 3,000-fold. Even a retired Fidel Castro had hailed the dawn of a new cyber-age on the island.
More than a year after the February 2011 ceremony on Siboney Beach in eastern Cuba, and 10 months after the system was supposed to have gone online, the government never mentions the cable anymore, and Internet here remains the slowest in the hemisphere. People talk quietly about embezzlement torpedoing the project and the arrest of more than a half-dozen senior telecom officials.
Perhaps most maddening, nobody has explained what happened to the much-ballyhooed $70 million project....
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