Violence

Khaled Hosseini is the author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns", and he has some strong opinions about the use of "Hussein" as a dirty word and a call to violence against Barack Obama :

My email has been bursting with amazing stuff this week. The latest offering is a web ad by WAMP - Women Against McCain-Palin and titled "Rape Victim".

"I was raped. Then I got pregnant. Sarah Palin believes the government should force me to take the pregnancy to term."

And with those words start an incredibly powerful and courageous 35 seconds.

I have to reblog this because last night I saw one of the best quick comments about this bailout travesty : On the eve of a black man coming into the White House, they hustle all the money out of the Treasury. (H/T Ruby and Professor Kim)

Michael Moore sees it more broadly : this is the way the wealthy stage a coup before they're taxed in the coming administration.

The other day, while researching images of the 9/11 devastation, I came across this image of the entrance of the World Financial Center.

All I could think of while looking at this photograph was "this is what they (Bush, Paulson, Bernanke) are doing to us all over again. Only this time they have no terrorists to blame, just sinister market forces.

My other thought was, and is that capitalism is ultimately violent and destructive.

H/T to Craig Newmark via ProgressiveAccountability.com:

• 95 percent of the time McCain voted with George W. Bush in 2007. 
• 100 percent of the time McCain voted with George W. Bush in 2008 so far. 
• 164 lobbyists McCain enlisted to set policy and raise money for his campaign. 
• 100 years - the time John McCain thinks U.S. forces must stay in Iraq. 

Exclusive: Heart's Nancy Wilson responds to McCain campaign's use of 'Barracuda' at Republican convention | Current Affairs, Music, Music Biz | Hollywood Insider | EW.com:

"'Sarah Palin's views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song 'Barracuda' no longer be used to promote her image. The song 'Barracuda' was written in the late 70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The 'barracuda' represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there's irony in Republican strategists' choice to make use of it there.'"

Denying due process to people without US citizenship, residency papers, green cards or a visa is becoming a business racket for private prisons and private security (aka paramilitary) companies.

The more people are thrown into those jails, the more money the concentration camps make.

Welcome to the new American economy.

h/t American Humanity

I just wrote a post about López Lomong for Awearness blog over at Kenneth Cole's. I am waiting for it to be published. It's a bit of a recap of his life as a Lost Boy from Sudán and now, not only an Olympic athlete, but an American citizen and the flag bearer for the US Olympic team in China.

While writing his Cinderella story I couldn't help but think of Hiu Lui Ng's horror story.

Hiu Lui Ng died in the custody of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs' Enforcement agency. Actually, he was documented : He had a job as a computer programmer. He had a wife and children and a home in Queens.

His crime? His visa had expired.

I would have subtitled this video "America's New Civil War".

From the production company :
The New York Times and the Washington Post have recently reported on the "System of Neglect," namely, the state of immigration detention center conditions. As told by her sister June Everett, watch the story of Sandra Kenley, a 52- year-old grandmother, who after living in the U.S. legally for 33 years, was subjected to these very conditions and died in immigration detention.

I was having a short discussion the other day on Twitter about sexism and it seems that Natasha Chart over at MyDD, that bastion of feminism, has taken it out of context to make a point about sexism.

Lovely.

This is the comment I left :

So let me get this straight : You take a comment that was part of a whole conversation about how our culture imposes the tyranny of homogeneity instead of respecting difference and looking at diversity as an asset and you twist it to prove a point about sexism?

that conversation was about how aggressiveness and violence are not necessarily nature. that as a mother of two boys and someone who has taken care of many of my friends girls, i can see how their energies can by nature, be vastly different.

the issue is of holding male energy as the standard of what is good and by assertion, female energy being bad or weak. just as how whiteness is held up as the standard and everything that is not "white" then becomes diminished, poor, disadvantaged, underdeveloped, or plain old not good enough.

but you took that one quote and you built a whole post about how everything about this campaign was sexist attacks that cost Clinton the nomination.

we've had this conversation before online and am going to say it again, it's not the reason why. there's 100 reasons, none having to do with sexism, that cost Hillary Clinton the nomination.

get over it.

and, by the way, this link was sent to me. if you're going to quote me, have the tact next time of emailing me the link.

i take cause with how you present my words here.

there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING wrong not wanting to [be] like men and finding power in that.

I had to use Summize to go back on the twitts of yesterday and find the conversations I was having. I can identify 6 different conversations all revolving around different discussions of sexism.

One of them was with Shannon McKarney of EcoChic, who had this to say :

I wrote that piece last year+believe it more strongly now. Women have to become more "male" to be successful

That's where the whole discussion of homogeneity vs. difference started. That's where I ssaid that I strongly disagree with women needing to be like men to be successful just as I strongly believe this to be one of those sticking points for a lot of feminists of color.

The whole discussion of women vs. men pits oppressed people in many communities of color against each other. Yes, colored men can be sexist and even ruthlessly misogynistic but is that the root of our problems or is it a symptom of a larger structure of violence and exploitation that women and men of color need to unite against?

Last night was a truly historic moment and Hillary Clinton made history for all the wrong reasons. Instead of conceding to Barack Obama, instead of declaring him the rightful winner and instead of turning her followers' attention to him as the legitimate nominee, she chose to turn the moment into a show of force against Obama.

Jeffrey Toobin of CNN described it as a moment of "deranged narcissism" while Carl Bernstein described it as "another Clinton foundling drama".

What's makes the picture of a derange narcissist worse is the arrogance with which many a defender would describe her "non-concession" speech : that she needs to take her time, that she needs space, that she's earned her right not to concede immediately, that Obama needs to watch out and make sure he doesn't hurt her feelings or slight her or say the wrong thing, etc. etc.

And let's not even get into the psychopathic ruse of claiming she's won 18 million votes in the course of this election.

1. Get a former CIA Psy Ops agent to do the dirty work of smearing your opponents wife even with the fear of a taped racist rant that doesn't really exit.

2. Have your husband say on the campaign trail it's his last day of doing anything like this, especially after it was reported it cut into his boinking time with Gina Gershon.

3. Have your campaign manager say the morning after on TV that you'll concede "if the right amount of numbers are in today or tomorrow".

4. Then have your other campaign manager go on the record as saying you are not conceding at all.

Can you believe that after Hillary Clinton's assassination remark, her campaign spinned the comment as an attempt by Barack to make her look bad? Yes, Hillary Clinton and all her boot lickers blamed Barack for the words she herself uttered on her own accord not once, not twice but now four times during the course of the campaign.

They blamed him for blowing the thing out of proportion and yet, as I've told many, many people since this happened HOW DARE YOU TELL US THIS IS NOT A BID DEAL! How dare you tell us that putting the words ASSASSINATION and BARACK on the same page is not cause for concern?

Well, the Huffington Post has an amazing chronicle of one of Michelle Obama's campaign stops. This is what happened :

She called on another supporter, whose voice quivered and broke with barely contained emotion as she explained how important it is to her, personally, that our country change course. She explained that she had just returned from Oregon where she campaigned for Obama and attended the 75,000-person rally by the river. She had noticed, she said, that the Secret Service had increased security dramatically for Barack Obama's rallies since the Phoenix rally in January.

The room collectively gasped and murmured, some aghast that these fears were being spoken aloud directly to Barack Obama's wife. Some nodded, concern and fear on their faces. Others shifted on their feet, displaying a range of emotions -- concern, discomfort with the topic, indignation.

This is not a pundit spewing or a campaign boot licker spinning. This was a common woman, who has volunteered to get the man she believes will bring change to this country. This is not a political expert lost in a moment of bobble-head theatrics but a real woman shaken by Hillary Clinton's words.

And yet, with the poise and class that Hillary nor Bill Clinton have, Michelle Obama told this shaken woman and the rest of the audience this :

Yesterday I wrote the following about Hillary Rodham Clinton :

Shameless.

Despicable.

Unfit to be President of the United States.

My words hit the front pages of both Daily Kos and The Moderate Voice. By evening Keith Olbermann had the following to say about Hillary Clinton's latest "gaffe" :

The most important part of the transcript is after the jump :

That is all.

Today the United States marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of one of it's giants : Martin Luther King, Jr.

The video that I present here is of Robert Kennedy announcing the tragedy to an Indiana crowd that had rallied to support his bid for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

Full text of the speech :

Screenshot from icasualties.org

On Wednesday, March the 19th many of us did not mark the 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq. It was another day in which we did not remember the secrets and lies that got us into Bagdad. We don't even remember the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction nor no Al-Qaeda to be found.

As to the Democratic Party's refusal to advance the impeachments of George Bush and Dick Cheney because it will cost them elections? Well, we already knew that the majority of Democrats aided and abetted the Bush-Cheney duo's dream of imperial power.

As long as the Democrats want to get their hands into the White House, there will always be another day to think about the death and ruin brought to this country by the war.

I cannot lie : I can't understand the whole concept of prostitution.

I can't understand why I woman would want to get paid by 2, 3, 6, 10 guys (or gals) a night to make rent. I can't understand how people can use their bodies as a tool or an instrument in that fashion.

I can't understand either why a guy would want to pay for sex. Yes, I know, I've heard about the whole "it's about having control and power and no string attached" spiel. Yet whereas many people see that as an exploitative act that gives men an unlimited amount of power, I see it more as a sign of weakness and even impotence. A guy that has to pay for it can't get it any other way and paying it for it is just part of the thrill.

Yet just because I don't understand the psychological dynamics of prostitution does it mean that it should be outlawed. On the contrary, just as with most drugs, I believe that we should follow Holland's lead and legalize prostitution.

Banning prostitution is not going to make it go away. On the contrary, the allure of breaking the taboo would be even stronger. If women and men want to turn sex into a transaction then, by all means, make it safe and make it fair.

Prostitution should be taxed and considered labor.

Prostitutes should be certified by the board of health.

Prostitution houses ought to be licensed and provide security services, along with health benefits and other labor benefits, to all their workers.

Go read the amazing homage written in the Wall Street Journal by his father :

When an unarmed journalist is killed, we are reminded of both the freedoms that we treasure in our society, and how vulnerable we all are to forces that threaten those freedoms.

But this still does not explain the attention given to Danny's tragedy. After all, 30 other journalists were killed in 2002, and 118 journalists have been killed in Iraq alone since that war began.

The shocking element in Danny's murder was that he was killed, not for what he wrote or planned to write, but for what he represented -- America, modernity, openness, pluralism, curiosity, dialogue, fairness, objectivity, freedom of inquiry, truth and respect for all people. In short, each and every one of us was targeted in Karachi in January of 2002.

It's not a touchy feely homage, but a reminder that Daniel Pearl's blood is in all our hands, especially the media :

One of the things that saddens me most is that the press and media have had an active, perhaps even major role in fermenting hate and inhumanity. It was not religious fanaticism alone.

This was first brought to my attention by the Pakistani Consul General who came to offer condolences at our home in California. When we spoke about the anti-Semitic element in Danny's murder she said: "What can you expect of these people who never saw a Jew in their lives and who have been exposed, day and night, to televised images of Israeli soldiers targeting and killing Palestinian children."

At the time, it was not clear whether she was trying to exonerate Pakistan from responsibility for Danny's murder, or to pass on the responsibility to European and Arab media for their persistent de-humanization of Jews, Americans and Israelis. The answer was unveiled in 2004, when a friend told me that photos of Muhammad Al Dura were used as background in the video tape of Danny's murder.

[...]

The Pakistani Consul was right. The media cannot be totally exonerated from responsibility for Daniel's murder, as well as for the "tsunami of hate" that has swept the world and continues to rise.

Go read the whole thing.

Opinions, vows, or other declarations made in the graphic above do not in any way reflect an endorsement by Dark Wraith Publishing or its proprietor of a candidate or ways of showing support. In other words, for God's sake, don't blame me for this graphic: it was Minstrel Boy's idea...
[source: Dark Wraith via Pam Spaulding]

Do I need to explain it?

Lower Manhattanite takes the mantle of Steve Gilliard and posts an incredible essay on Obama's Iowa win :

“Hello?”, I ask.

“You watching this?”, my friend “D” asked quietly.

“Yeah.”

“You think he's wearin' a vest?

A long beat from me. “Well...I'm sure he's got Secret Service protection.”

“Is he wearin' a vest to protect himself against those motherfuckers?“

“Well, if he didn't before tonight, he will be by tomorrow”, I replied.

“This is fucking insane.” he added. “He won Iowa. Iowa? Do you know how that's gonna shake certain people up?”

“D” was speaking the gut-wrenching unspoken truth—almost in a whisper. I don't know why.

“Can we just enjoy this for tonight? Just soak it in for a min-”

“I can't enjoy this shit!”, he said cutting me off. “I'm scanning the crowd for grenade-tossers and shit. You saw the Bhutto video. I can't get that shit outta my mind. There's a lotta nuts in this country, and a lotta guns, and—”

“I know, I know! Just...lemme delude myself for a few minutes and watch this thing and think positive thoughts, okay?”

“Okay.”, he said. “But you know he's gonna wake up tomorrow and say 'Ho-leeeee shit...”

Go read the whole damn thing at Pride and Palpitations.

Here are more of Elizabeth Upton's student submissions to 10Questions.com. They are in the CUNY Language Immersion Program at LaGuardia Community College. The previous videos are here.

Maria has a simple question about Iraq:

Magdalena is worried about the internet :

Elizabeth wants to know about how they will handle violence in schools:

[EDITORS' NOTES: Date changed to reflect promotion to front page./liza

For an earlier diary on this issue, and some broader issues, please see this diary. And help out if you can!/mole333]

Herstories on the issue of violence against women

A Cheyenne proverb states, “A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is done, no matter how brave its warriors or how strong its weapons.” Our hearts are not on the ground. Our feet are. And we are moving forward.

A travesty to the true spirit of justice is taking place on the Standing Rock Reservation that covers North and South Dakota. Predominantly white male rapists are sexually assaulting American Indian women and getting away with inadequate consequences or no consequences whatsoever.

Crossposted at Native American Netroots

Show me a rapist of an American Indian woman and I’ll show you an upstanding member of society. That’s what the Major said about a man who plead guilty to raping an American Indian woman. Maybe the thieves and vandals who have caused property damage so severe that Pretty Bird Woman House had to close its doors for now are “upstanding citizens” as well.

A moment of silence.

Smoke streaming from Ground Zero illuminates the night skyline of lower Manhattan in a view looking east from New Jersey. Photo taken the night of Sept. 16, 2001, by USGS field-crew members Todd Hoefen and Gregg Swayze.

Here's the Victims List.

You can read my story, two years after the fact.

It's also updated.

You know you have a September 11 story.

Now it's your turn to share it.

Post it. Link to it.

We want to know.

Death and Desecration of Koran in Nigeria

Leo Igwe

Any one who says that Islam stands for peace should take a critical look at the recent killing of a schoolteacher by muslim pupils in Northern Nigeria
On March 21 Mrs. Oluwatoyin Oluwaseesin was attacked and murdered in cold blood by students of Government Day Secondary School Gandu in Gombe State for allegedly desecrating the Koran.

On this fateful day, Mrs Oluwaseesin was assigned to invigilate students writing an examination on Islamic Religious Studies. But in the course of that, she noticed that one of the students came into the Hall with her school bag. She took it from her and put it away. Some reports said she dumped the bag on the floor. Whatever the case, the teacher’s action was followed by chanting of Allah Akbar-God is Great-by the students who said the bag contained a Koran. They accused her of desecrating it.

First of all they set her car ablaze. And later they seized her, stripped her naked, stabbed her to death and burnt her corpse. They later dumped the remains at the back of her burning car.

The students went on to raze down three classes, the school’s administrative block, library, and the clinic. They also attacked and injured the school principal who tried to shield the woman during the rampage. As often the case whenever there is a religious uprising in Northern Nigeria, the state government has set up a panel of inquiry to look into the matter. And Mrs. Oluwaseesin has since been buried in her hometown- Abeokuta.

from Talk to Action

Many professed shock after last week's attempted bombing of an Austin women's clinic. Others felt shocked by their shock, since the religious right's thinly disguised rhetoric of hatred has so permeated our public discourse as to have become the norm. But for some it is easier to pretend not to see what is before their faces, far easier to remain willfully blind.

In 1998, nurse Emily Lyons lost her left eye, was partially blinded in her right and sustained other permanently disabling injuries when another bomb — similarly packed with nails that flew as deadly shrapnel — was detonated at a Birmingham clinic by Eric Rudolph.

"Many may find the graphic images of my trauma ... to be offensive. I hope so. Violence is ugly. You should be offended by the senseless damage caused by the attack. It isn’t the photographs that are bad; it is the act of hate that created them."

Hers are powerful words. But are Emily's courage [pdf photo link] and Emily's words more powerful than the rhetoric of hate that made them necessary?

I don't think I have said it on this blog although it is something I consistently advice to advocacy organizations whenever I am on the conference trail : If you want to put a dent into mainstream media, you need to start investing into your own new media alternatives.

Here's an AP newsbit that Zuzu over at Feministe has blasted to pieces because, as an AP article, they get to set the tone of this act of agression and terror perpetrated against workers and patients of a reproductive health clinic in Texas :
Feministe » The terrorism that dare not speak its name:

For some reason, terrorism doesn’t count if it’s directed against women and their health care providers. It’s just not news, and the fact that it goes unremarked in the national media — and hell, even in the local media, as in the case of the Austin bomb — contributes to the idea that women are not important and that violence directed at women is not only to be expected, but to be dismissed.

[...]

We saw something similar with the Virginia Tech shooting — the campus police initially dismissed the idea that the gunman would be a danger to anyone else — even though they hadn’t identified or caught him at the time — because they saw a dead woman and just assumed that it was a “domestic incident” and there would be no further violence. Clinic bombings are treated as the equivalent of shrugged-off “domestic incidents” — hey, it’s just violence against women. It’s not like it’s going to affect real people or anything.

To paraphrase Twain, there are lies, damned lies, statistics...and Republican statements, the worst lies of all.

Bush has been claiming that the McCain/Bush/Lieberman escalation has been working, citing a reduction in sectarian violence in Iraq that seems at odds with the headlines of more and more bombings. Well, it seems that Bush's claims are based on statistics that EXCLUDE DEATHS DUE TO BOMBINGS:

U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. "If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory," he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose...

"Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them," said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at London-based Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank.

When I saw this picture of Phil Spector on the cover of today's New York Post, I thought for a moment he was undergoing sex realignment therapy for a possible sex-change operation.

How ironic.

The man who is in court facing charges for the murder of Lana Clarkson and who has been accused of being a misogynist too quick to threaten former lovers with a gun in hand happens to be looking quite womanly these days.

Harsh.

And if you didn't know ... yeah, the man has a wife.

To pick up on a theme I alluded to last time, let's start with an excerpt from Part 2.

But perhaps the trickiest aspect to prove out of all of the aspects listed up there is “reasonable fear.” American legal requirements are fraught with these ideas and concepts of what a “reasonable” person would do and feel. The reasonable person standard has evolved over time from being a reasonable white male standard to being a more inclusive reasonable American citizen standard. Historically, the reasonable man standard excluded all women and males of color for a very long time. It excluded people with mental disabilities and children. As the needs and the values of each of these groups integrated into the American social fabric, the concept of what is reasonable to an American citizen has changed slightly. Plus, it’s a bit fearful for any marginalized group to realize that mainstream society — the society that feels almost at home when it’s excluding or ridiculing someone on the margins of opportunity — considers itself a beacon of reasonable progress.

Before I go any further, allow me to share the source of the series title because its implications bothered me then. They still bother me now.

Remember this clip?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3RjiVcIlhY

In the first few seconds, Richards tells African-American hecklers that 50 years ago, he and others would have them upside down with a f**king fork up their asses. And the audience laughs, howls, and cheers -- the same audience that files out of the club moments later when he starts calling the hecklers niggers.

What May Come: Asian Americans and the Virginia Tech Shootings

Tamara K. Nopper
April 17, 2007

Like many, I was glued to the television news yesterday, keeping updated about the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech University. I was trying to deal with my own disgust and sadness, especially since my professional life as a graduate student and college instructor is tied to universities. And then the other shoe dropped. I found out from a friend that the news channel she was watching had reported the shooter as Asian. It has now been reported, after much confusion, that the shooter is Cho Seung-Hui, a South Korean immigrant and Virginia Tech student.

As an Asian American woman, I am keenly aware that Asians are about to become a popular media topic if not the victims of physical backlash. Rarely have we gotten as much attention in the past ten years, except, perhaps, during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Since then Asians are seldom seen in the media except when one of us wins a golfing match, Woody Allen has sex, or Angelina Jolie adopts a kid.

I am not looking forward to the onslaught of media attention. If history truly does have clues about what will come, there may be several different ways we as Asian Americans will be talked about.

One, we will watch white media pundits and perhaps even sociologists explain what they understand as an “Asian” way of being. They will talk about how Asian males presumably have fragile “egos” and therefore are culturally prone to engage in kamikaze style violence. These statements will be embedded with racist tropes about Japanese military fighters during WWII or the Viet Cong—the crazy, calculating, and hidden Asian man who will fight to the death over presumably nothing.

Yesterday, as I sat in the lobby of the Elizabeth Detention Center waiting to testify at a hearing, I learned about the violent incident that took place in Virginia. A small flat-screen television hangs on a wall in the detention center’s lobby. I sat there for almost six hours, each hour getting more and more agitated at the cell phone and video coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. Normally in these situations, I get up and turn the television off. But I was in a situation where I could not get away from the images bombarded at me. CNN shot the ongoing campus scenes throughout the whole day, reiterating over and over again that this was the biggest shooting ever to take place in American history. At first while I listened to the news reporters, I masked my fears, needing to act like I was in control, that everything was okay, and that I was strong enough to stomach the events they televised.

I distracted myself from the flat-screen television and tried to focus on preparing for my testimony. But as the hours went by, officers at the detention center passed by me, shouting out the latest death toll. First 21, then 22, then 29, then 31, then 32, and finally 33. It was impossible to tune out. I felt my mind and my heart drift back to when I was 16 years-old, when I was also on campus during a college shooting rampage. That was almost 15 years ago.

At various times yesterday, CNN provided history and statistical information of previous school shootings like Columbine and The University of Texas massacres. I waited for them to list my alma mater. But one school they didn't list was a small early undergraduate program called Simon's Rock College, tucked away in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This is where a college campus shooting occurred on December 14, 1992, the first shooting to occur in the United States in the 1990s.

About 31 people were killed with another 28 injured in two separate shooting incidents at Virginia Tech.

The first one ocurred at 7:15am at a dorm where 2 people had been shot. Two hours later the massacre occurred : After killing himself, an unidentified gunman had taken the lives of another 32 people.

The university chose not to dismiss classes or give any alerts over their public announcement system. School officials believe the first shooting was a domestic dispute and did not see any need to alert students after the 7:15am shooting. But by 9:00am there was an email already circulating asking students to stay in their class and doorooms because there was a gunman on campus.

This shooting goes beyond the 1999 shooting at Columbine and the 1966 University of Texas at Austin shootout. The first one left 12 high school kids and a teacher dead. The second left 16 people dead.

Are Americans reaching a breaking point? Online and off violence seems to have been unleashed without impunity.

So I guess you all have heard about the Kathy Sierra situation and the public outcry for ending online abuse because of her case, right? If not, take a look at Sierra's account and the horribly misogynistic threats left by anonymous and psuedonymous commenters and the resulting effects on her ability to blog and on her safety. Read BlogHer's response concerning hate speech and misogyny on the internet. Finally, check out this BBC article about the whole Sierra controversy and some brief remarks at Zuky concerning online abuse. (Hat tips to Carmen (via e-mail) and Kai for the information.)

I'm trying to fight my inclination to spiral all over the place with this entry; there are so many associations running through my mind. My mind enjoys weaving fragile patterns of analysis together, either with rope, with wire, or with webbing. But in doing such connections, sometimes I can lose a point or make too many of them at once. Bear with my mind and its impulsive blossoms of insight, please. This post has ruminated in my head for more than a day now. Though I'm writing in the evening currently, I don't expect to post until I've had a full night's sleep (or more) and time to review my writing.

This is going to be really interesting. It seems like the charges against the three Duke University Lacrosse team members will be dropped.

This also comes from Daily Kos. We are in the middle of what seems to be a successful campaign to convince advertisers that they should not be advertising with Ann Coulter because of her advocacy of terrorism, incitement to violence, and her use of hate speech. Already more than 11 advertisers, including Verizon, AT&T/Cingular and Netbank, are removing their ads from Ann Coulter's website and this has gotten the attention of CNN which reported on the Daily Kos effort.

Remember, Ann Coulter has publicly advocated bombing the NY Times building, poisoning a Supreme Court justice, beating up American citizens she disagrees with (something that may have inspired an actual attack), and has expressed hatred of 9/11 widows. Some advertisers, once made aware of the kind of things she says, quickly pull their ads.

So we are keeping up the pressure and need your help. The Daily Kos Story has an extensive list of advertisers and I strongly urge you to take a look and contact a few. I will highlight a handful here, but this is only a fraction of the targeted advertisers. Go to the Daily Kos Story for a full list.

USA Today: Marketing/Advertising email contact page is here.

The US death toll in Iraq hit 3,000 on December 31. Not a good way to end the year. That number is for three years and ten months at war.
The US death toll in the United States for gang-related homicide was 1,072 in 2003 (Figure extrapolated from data pulled from the following two websites: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/vgm03.pdf http://crime.about.com/od/stats/Crime_Statistics_Data_and_Legal_Resource....

In contrast, we lost fewer than 500 soldiers in Iraq in the ten months of 2003 that we were there.

Tell me, what are we doing about the war right here? What are we doing about the people held hostage in their homes? What are we doing about the innocent bystanders being taken out in gang-related crossfire? Why is it that I had to research for over an hour, and then extrapolate the figure 1,072 using two different sources because the data just isn’t readily available?

Let me make it more personal. In 2006, I lost two former students to gang violence. Both young women were shot because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and not because they were themselves affiliated with gangs. Two current students were shot and survived. Both are affiliated with local gangs. Neither is allowed to live at home any more, because the families are too afraid to have them there.

Right here, in a suburban community of Los Angeles, over 30 miles away from Compton and over 20 miles away from East Los Angeles.

Student shoots self at Philadelphia high school | Top News | Reuters.com or why can't people understand that, to some kids, school = death.

Sixty killed in Baghdad suicide truck bombing - CNN.com, or why there is more reason to listen up when Muhammed Yunus says that poverty is a threat to world peace.

Award augurs well for United 93's Oscar hopes | News | Guardian Unlimited Film, or, OK, now I am going to have to see this movie.

A dangerously nice man | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited, or how Kofi Annan cautiously takes no shit from no WASP hill-billy wannabe, but in the process effed up the United Nations reputation as the leader in world politics.