World News Korner

Courtesy of Facebook

Caption: waiting for karate to start

You know I think martial arts training is really good for kids. IF they get a good instructor.

Not sure what the dojo situation is like in Arizona.

By the way I thought I might take this opportunity to reveal that a little birdie told me a certain reality show might play an important part in an upcoming court case.

Hmm, I wonder which parts will be of the most interest to the judge?

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Courtesy of Salon:

The small city of Missoula, Montana recently grabbed headlines after the Department of Justice sent a letter to the Missoula County Attorney’s Office, asserting it had “substantial evidence” that the county has completely failed at the job of dealing with sexual assault. A lot of details of the allegations against Missoula officials were disturbing, including a prosecutor who allegedly told the mother of a 5-year-old rape victim that “boys will be boys,” but another thing that jumps out is the role religion played in justifying the minimizing of rape allegations. According to the Justice Department, a deputy county attorney responded to one rape victim by reading her Bible verses “in a way that the victim interpreted to mean that the Deputy County Attorney was judging her negatively for have made the report.”

Sadly, this kind of reaction from Christian conservatives to sexual assault—blame the victim and make it about sex, not violence—is surprisingly common.

Kiera Feldman, writing for the New Republic, captured this problem perfectly in her piece about the sexual assault problem at the hyper-Christian university Patrick Henry. She chronicles one case where the alleged assailant attacked the victim in her sleep, which should be a clear-cut case of non-consent. But, since Patrick Henry is a school focused on preventing and punishing all sexual contact between students, the criminal and abusive aspects appear to have been ignored in favor of seeing this mainly as a sexual transgression. The assailant kept referring to his behavior as “taking liberties,” as if the problem with what he did was that it was sexual, not that it was violent. The dean decided therefore that both the victim and the assailant were to blame, reportedly telling the victim, “You are in part responsible for what happened, because you put yourself in a compromising situation,” and adding, “Actions have consequences.” Both students were given counseling, and the victim reported that her counseling was just more blaming her for the assault through lessons in “modesty.”

This is not just a problem for Patrick Henry College. The other big name in fundamentalist universities, Bob Jones University, reportedly has the same problem. Writing for Al Jazeera America, Claire Gordon reports similar stories coming from rape victims at BJU. One alleged victim reported that the dean asked her, “Is there anything that you did that made him do that?” and also that the content of her counseling sessions, which she thought were private, were shared with the administration. The counselor herself claims that the school then terminated the sessions because they felt she was becoming too sympathetic toward the victim, which suggests that from the get-go, the intention was to get dirt on the victim to discredit her claims. Shortly thereafter, the victim was expelled from the university.

Things only have grown uglier since then, as BJU recently terminated, rather abruptly, a contract with a firm it hired to help improve its responses to sexual abuse on campus. As the New York Times reported, critics of this decision suspect it was because BJU didn’t like the firm’s findings. Victims of abuse told the Times various horror stories about the administration’s response to their reports. “They said not to go to the police because no one will believe you, to defer to authority like your father or especially someone in the church,” said one woman who reported abuse.

“The person who supposedly counseled me told me if I reported a person like that to the police, I was damaging the cause of Christ, and I would be responsible for the abuser going to hell,” another victim reported.

You know I was raised with very little religion in my life, but with a great deal of focus on personal responsibility. Early in my life my mother made me responsible in caring for my younger siblings when she was at work, and hammered home the importance of treating people with respect and not simply as objects.

Of course I was also never raised to think that sex was anything to be ashamed of, or that having it outside of wedlock meant you were a bad person.

Sex was considered a healthy part of relationships, and not something that was given away or used for barter.

However rape was an entirely different matter altogether. If I had been accused of rape my mother would have gladly led the police right to my door, and if I had the audacity to blame what I had done on the victim my mother would have slapped me across the face.

To that point if anybody had been ignorant enough to violate my sister my mother would have insisted that I find that person and punish them severely. Which I would have done gladly.

And as I have said repeatedly on this blog, rape is NOT sex. It is violence.

Blaming a woman for her own rape is the kind of response you might expect from those who believe that everything wrong with the world today can be traced back to Eve's transgression in the Garden of Eden. No rational person would blame a child for their own abuse, nor should they blame a woman for the violence done to them.

In Saudi Arabia a female rape victim was sentenced to 200 lashes for the crime of being unable to fend off her attacker.

One would think that in America we had progressed past this kind of antiquated thinking, but apparently in some areas of the country they would be wrong. And that should shame us all.



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Courtesy of Liberals Unite:

“Dear Arizona,

Congratulations. You are now the first state actually to pass a bill permitting businesses–even those open to the public–to refuse to provide service to LGBT people based on an individual’s “sincerely held religious belief.” This “turn away the gay” bill enshrines discrimination into the law. Your taxi drivers can refuse to carry us. Your hotels can refuse to house us. And your restaurants can refuse to serve us.

Kansas tried to pass a similar law, but had the good sense to not let it come up for a vote. The quashing came only after the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and other traditional conservative groups came out strongly against the bill.

But not you, Arizona. You’re willing to ostracize and marginalize LGBT people to score political points with the extreme right of the Republican Party. You say this bill protects “religious freedom,” but no one is fooled. When I was younger, people used “God’s Will” as a reason to keep the races separate, too. Make no mistake, this is the new segregation, yours is a Jim Crow law, and you are about to make yourself ground zero.

This bill also saddens me deeply. Brad and I have strong ties to Arizona. Brad was born in Phoenix, and we vacation in Show Low. We have close friends and relatives in the state and spend weeks there annually. We even attended the Fourth of July Parade in Show Low in 2012, looking like a pair of Arizona ranchers.

The law is breathtaking in its scope. It gives bigotry against us gays and lesbians a powerful and unprecedented weapon. But your mean-spirited representatives and senators know this. They also know that it is going to be struck down eventually by the courts. But they passed it anyway, just to make their hateful opinion of us crystal clear.

So let me make mine just as clear. If your Governor Jan Brewer signs this repugnant bill into law, make no mistake. We will not come. We will not spend. And we will urge everyone we know–from large corporations to small families on vacation–to boycott. Because you don’t deserve our dollars. Not one red cent.

And maybe you just never learn. In 1989, you voted down recognition of the Martin Luther King holiday, and as a result, conventions and tourists boycotted the state, and the NFL moved the Superbowl to Pasadena. That was a $500 million mistake.

So if our appeals to equality, fairness, and our basic right to live in a civil society without doors being slammed in our face for being who we are don’t move you, I’ll bet a big hit to your pocketbook and state coffers will.

George Takei”

Damn, that's a good letter.

And Takei makes a very powerful point.

If Arizona wants to discriminate against gay people then perhaps all of them, and all people who support them, should avoid Arizona and leave it to the narrow minded folks like Sarah Palin and Jan Brewer.

You know ultimately it really doesn't matter, gay acceptance is coming. And these states that are digging in their heels and threatening to hold their breath until they are allowed to gay bash again, just show themselves to be stubbornly prejudicial.

Remember it was Arizona Senator John McCain who voted AGAINST declaring Martin Luther King Jr's birthday a federal holiday back in 1983, so the state has a long history of being intolerant and behind the times.

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Courtesy of Raw Story:

In an interview that aired on Sunday, ABC’s Martha Raddatz asked the former president if the new initiative helped him cope with the 6,800 service members killed, and 51,000 wounded.

“No question it helps,” Bush stuttered. “I have a duty.”

“I obviously get slightly emotional talking about our vets because I’m in there with them,” he added with a single tear spilling down his right cheek.

“But my spirit is also uplifted when I visit with vets. As I say, there is no self-pity… They don’t say, ‘Woe is me.’ They say, ‘What can I do to continue to serve?’”

There are NO amount of tears this asshole could shed that would ever match the number shed by the families of the soldiers that he sent to their deaths based on a lie.

A lie by the way that I believe he knew about all along.

There were too many people telling him that Saddam Hussein did not have nuclear weapons,and lacked the capability to manufacture them, for Bush to claim he was ignorant of that fact.

He used the terror from 9-11 to wage a war of choice, to get revenge for his daddy, that sent thousands of trusting soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, to their deaths.

No he is a POS and there should be NOBODY who wastes an ounce of their precious sympathy on the likes of him.

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Courtesy of Addicting Info:

Audio of outrageous comments made by Frank Taaffe, on a weekly podcast called ‘Stand Our Ground,’ prove that in spite of denials to the contrary, Taaffe is a full blown white supremacist. Taaffe’s podcast was produced and distributed by ‘The White Voice Network.‘

Here are just a few of Taaffe’s podcast comments:

‘The only time a black life is validated is when a white man kills him.’

“That minority group, they don’t do anything productive for this country, except for the NBA.”

“If it wasn’t for the NBA Joe like I always say, the country would have the tallest garbage men. Thank God for the NBA.”

“I always say if you lie down with dogs, you’re going to get up with fleas – especially if they’re black dogs.”

“Yeah she’s a nigg** (Oprah Winfrey). She keeps spewing out all that bullshit. She Keeps defending her boy Obama, who can do no wrong. You know it’s birds of a feather they flock together and stick together and to me she’s a NIGG**, Oprah Winfrey is a NIGG**.”

Seriously which respectable news outlet would put this guy on their show.

Well apparently quite a few, including Dr. Drew, CNN, and Nancy Grace.

Why? Well as it turns out he is apparently a friend of George Zimmerman.

Taaffe, supposedly a neighbor and close friend of George Zimmerman, became a regular on cable TV stations during the Zimmerman trial. He is best known for his many appearances on CNN and HLN’s ‘Nancy Grace,’ and ‘Dr. Drew.’ As a guest on the Nancy Grace show, Taaffe argued in defense of George Zimmerman, during the Trayvon Martin murder trial.

A "close friend" to George Zimmerman? Now why doesn't that surprise me?

Now you would think, considering what a pig this guy is, that after the Zimmerman trial this guy would be cut lose immediately. But you would be wrong.

Even after the Zimmerman trial ended, however, cable programs continue to give Taaffe air time. During the trial of Michael Dunn, a white man, who, like Zimmerman, shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Taaffe was invited on cable tv shows, to share his views on the Dunn case.

Gee I wonder what a white supremacist believes about a man who shot an unarmed teenager over the issue of loud music?

It is pretty much what you would expect:

Taaffe's task is defending Dunn, who shot 17-year-old Jordan Davis outside of a Jacksonville gas station after arguing with the teen and his friends over loud music. Dunn claims he saw Davis holding what looked like a shotgun and that he fired at the boys in self-defense, but witnesses maintain that Davis was unarmed. On air, Taaffe has argued that the killing was justified, even if Davis wasn't pointing a firearm, because young black men are prone to violence.

Yes of course "everybody" knows that black men are violent, so apparently simply shooting them dead to prevent that violence from occurring makes perfect sense.

Frank Taaffe, was the man that George Zimmerman stayed with while he was waiting to be arrested for the shooting of Trayvon Martin, and he was the one that he asked to go to the media and speak on his behalf.

I think that speaks volumes as to who Gerorge Zimmerman is, and how he views people like Trayvon Martin.

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Courtesy of Alternet:

Atheists want the benefits of a secular society, but too many refuse to do the work. They are more concerned with a dictionary definition of atheism that they forget what is at stake.

Without atheists united in some form of community, the US would be lost overnight to a theocratic right. Ready to overturn whatever secular laws remain in the constitution.

While some atheists are worried about definitions, the right is worried about overturning women's rights, ending marriage equality and enforcing bad economic policies that drive more Americans into poverty. While we are busy infighting claiming, "no one speaks for me", the right is speaking and gathering followers. If we continue to run around unorganized, they will overtake this nation.

So there is, and should be a strong atheist movement, groups like American Atheists, American Humanist Association, Secular Coalition for America, Freedom From Religion, The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and countless others are atheist based organizations all fighting to enforce secular laws in this country and around the world.

These are the groups who put the weight on their shoulders to make sure the theocratic right do not overtake the US and anyone who believes in upholding the secular history of this nation and the further secularization that rebuilds the wall that separates church and state that the right has spent decades taking apart. We should be thanking these groups and individuals in this fight, not chastising them for being "the face" of atheism as many have.

We may not elect atheist leaders, but many people shine through and stand up for all of us. We don't have to claim to agree with what every group does or says all the time either. Just as each atheist is unique in many of their own ways, so are groups.

Just so you know I am the king of the non-joiners.

Sure I can work as a part of a group for short periods of time, but after awhile things like clashing egos, mismatched ambitions, and attempts to define ourselves always force me to reevaluate why I joined and typically I walk away.

I identify as an Atheist simply becasue it is the label that best reflects my view of God, mankind, and the universe.

I have never formally joined any Atheist group and never really planned to in the future.

However there is some sense in what the author of this piece, Dan Arel, is saying.

As a group we are woefully unorganized, and we are often dealing with a group that is not only organized, but also well funded and with vast political connections.

As much as I hate to say it, the time may have come for those of us who want to keep religion from infiltrating our schools, and fight the oppressive laws that are dictating what women can do with their own bodies, as well as whose love is worthy of marriage, to get off our asses and start working together to help shape the world that we want our children to inherit.

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And you know she's right. Just wait for it.

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