Interesting things I read today...
Submitted by jes on Fri, 06/06/2008 - 9:53pm.
This forum topic is for posting interesting articles you have come across on the web. Post a link and let us all enjoy it!
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Interesting things I read today...
Submitted by jes on Fri, 06/06/2008 - 9:53pm.
This forum topic is for posting interesting articles you have come across on the web. Post a link and let us all enjoy it! |
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"A Chronic Pain in the Vadge" from Feministing.com
Okay so this article may freak you out a little bit. It is certainly disturbing. What is maybe most disturbing of all is the fact that it details a condition that affects one out of six American women each year--and yet almost no one has ever heard of it. It's called vulvodynia. This article is an anonymous woman's personal account of her struggle to find treatment for this illness.
http://feministing.com/archives/009315.html
German sues for CIA extradition
Don't have the words to comment on this one, just read the following excerpt and follow the link below for the whole article, from BBC:
"A German citizen has gone to court in an attempt to force his government to seek the extradition of 13 suspected CIA agents who allegedly kidnapped him.
Khaled al-Masri says he was abducted in December 2003, flown to a US detention centre in Afghanistan and tortured.
Mr Masri was released in May 2004 after his captors allegedly told him he had been mistaken for someone else.
In September, the justice ministry decided not to pursue arrest warrants issued for the suspected CIA agents.
A spokeswoman, Eva Schmierer, said the ministry had been told by Washington that any extradition would jeopardise "American national interests'."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7444406.stm
Feuding Feminists
There is a gigantic argument going on right now in the feminist community about race. You think I'm talking about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and the politics of the campaign, right? Not quite. The argument has actually been centralized over the past few months in the world of feminist publishing. Some people are arguing that venerable feminist publishers are, at best, not doing enough to recruit black writers, and at worst, are guilty of publishing racist material.
Publisher Seal Press is the one feeling the most heat for the past couple of months.
An April "Broadsheet" post tells the beginning of the story, when Seal Press got into an argument with a black feminist blogger in the comments section of her blog over whether or not they should do more to publish works by black writers. And later that month, images from a new Seal Press book It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments started to hit the feminist blogosphere (see the images on feministe). Bloggers called foul and fights broke out again in the comments sections of blogs.
In the end apologies abounded, and confessional and soul-searching posts like this one were everywhere. At least one good thing came of it, which was that feminists like myself were exposed to new blogs by people of color, new ideas, new criticism. But will any systematic change come as a result? Remains to be seen...
More feuding feminists...
though this one may be more a mother-daughter squabble that has become very public.
Alice Walker's daughter Rebecca has just written an article for the Daily Mail in which she alleges that second wave feminism has destroyed motherhood for an entire generation of women (read it by clicking here).
Some feminist bloggers, such as feministing.com in this post, are saying that the younger Walker is wrong in equating her mother's views of motherhood with an entire feminist movement. Salon.com has a good article on the war between the Walkers.
I'm looking for blogs or articles that support what Rebecca is writing, but haven't found anything so far. Everything I've seen so far seems to support the idea that while Alice may have been a bad mom who used her understanding of feminism as her excuse, it doesn't necessarily say anything about actual second wave feminism. Rebecca writes, "It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery." This could be true without it being the fault of second wave feminism or even indicative of what second wave feminism was all about. But I'd love to read something that argues otherwise.
Maybe it is easier to pretend that your mom would have been a great mom if the feminist revolution hadn't come along and ruined everything, instead of acknowledging that hey, maybe your mom is just a bad mom all on her own. There have been women who aren't good at motherhood since women first started having babies, long before feminism showed up.
What do you guys think?
Walker Family Feud
It's simply not logical to blame feminism for Rebecca's horrible childhood. I am certain there are many wonderful feminist mothers in the world. Feminism did not give birth to her, did not raise her, did not abandon her, Alice Walker did those things.
Rebecca's own writing here is full of contradictions. In one paragraph she states that the rift between her and her mother is for the best, for both herself and her son. In a later paragraph she states that she hope for reconciliation because her son deserves a grandmother. Which is it?
She also comments on how feminism has made it too easy to get a divorce, which in turn hurts children, but she refers to her son's father as her "partner" which leads me to believe that they are not married.
I don't mean to sound so harsh and critical, I actually admire a young woman who thinks of parenthood as being a great priviledge. It is how I have felt about it since holding my first daughter for the first time over 20 years ago.
I agree...
Rebecca should not scapegoat the feminist movement for Alice Walker's failures.
strangest thing i've ever seen in the wall street journal
a judge, his strange online porn, and an obscenity trial!?!
Even more than the story, I
Even more than the story, I love the judge's response to the questions, especially when he defends his collection on the grounds of it all being funny.
Ovulation captured on film!
These are some of the coolest pictures I have ever seen. While performing a partial hysterectomy on a 45-year-old woman, surgeon Jacques Donnez was surprised to see, before his very eyes, ovulation occuring inside his patient's body.
These are the clearest pictures of ovulation ever captured. The pictures are quite amazing. If you are the kind of person who cannot watch Discovery Health channel because the insides of bodies freaks you out, do not click this link to see the pictures!
maryland state police spying - aclu lawsuit
In the long tradition of US government and police organizations spying on peace activists, comes this latest installment from Maryland.
Read about it in this press release from the ACLU.
Another Pat Tillman? Maybe, but seems no one cares.
The chilling story of Pfc. LaVena Johnson.
This is a really really really scary story.
A Milk Jug for a Green Earth
Interesting to see how higher fuel prices are pushing corporations to come up with all sorts of energy-saving innovations. I read this article in the NY Times today about new milk containers popping up at Sam's Club:
Solution, or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth
how stupid...
This silly attempt to deal with this problem is really indicative of how people in general are trying to manage the climate crisis. We keep trying these little design solutions so we don't have to actually change our behavior. When what we really need to do is drink less milk, consume less meat and when we do consume milk and meat consume them from small farms close to home. Drinking less milk and eating less meat would be good for our health. Drinking less milk and eating less meat would be good for our environment. Win/Win!
What do you all think? Can we design our way out of these problems or do we need to make a radical shift? Things like a new milk jug feel, to me, like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
make your own "milk"
here's one person's creative solution:
http://www.theroot.com/id/47095
Teenager killed in PG County Correctional Center
19-year-old Ronnie White was asphyxiated and strangled to death in his cell the day after being arrested and charged with killing Richard Findley, a 39-year-old police officer. White was being held by himself in maximum security, so the big question is, who killed him?
In the Sun today...
Pop quiz, hotshot
The Pew Research Center News Quiz!
http://pewresearch.org/newsiq/quiz/
I got one wrong.
How did you do?
creative protest with superglue
looking for creative protest tactics? here's a good one.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07/23/brown.glue/index.html
Reason 32,959,358,745 not to shop at Wal Mart
from today's Wall Street Journal:
"Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.
In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized."
click here to read the full article
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