“ Responding to the allegations in the media that the attack was based on his Muslim faith, Kern told IPS that he did not know of anyone on the base who felt this was the case. “We all wear the same uniform here, it’s all green. I’ve seen the news, but most folks here assume it’s just a soldier that snapped,” Kern explained. “I have not talked to anyone who thinks what he did has anything to do with him being a Muslim. There are thousands of Muslims serving with dignity in the U.S. military, in all four branches.” Fort Hood, located in central Texas, is one of the largest U.S. military bases in the world. It contains up to 50,000 soldiers, and is one of the most heavily deployed to both occupations. Tragically, Fort Hood has also born much of the brunt from its heavy involvement in both occupations. Fort Hood soldiers have accounted for more suicides than any other Army post since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In this year alone, the base is averaging over 10 suicides each month - at least 75 have been recorded through July of this year alone.
November 7, 2009
November 2, 2009
“
If you are an American male, there is coded somewhere in your DNA the desire to be young and onstage with a guitar; to count in the song by clacking the drumsticks; to sullenly pump out the bass line; to hold the mike out to the crowd and hear them roar.
Really?
1. are they this out of touch with youth culture that they think rock-n-roll is what EVERY young guy is into these days
2. are they that sexist?
huh. this is kind of mind-boggling unaware
October 29, 2009
“ From the point of view of women today, America’s friends and America’s enemies in Afghanistan are the same kind of guys.
“ When the Feminist Majority argues that withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan will return the Taliban to power and women to house arrest, I see in my mind’s eye the faces of women I know and care about. Yet an unsentimental look at the record reveals that for all the fine talk of women’s rights since the US invasion, equal rights for Afghan women have been illusory all along, a polite feel-good fiction that helped to sell the American enterprise at home and cloak in respectability the misbegotten government we installed in Kabul. That it is a fiction is borne out by recent developments in Afghanistan—President Karzai’s approving a new family law worthy of the Taliban, and American acquiescence in Karzai’s new law and, initially, his theft of the presidential election—and by the systematic intimidation, murder or exile of one Afghan woman after another who behaves as if her rights were real and worth fighting for.
September 19, 2009
“ The level of consciousness of feminism, let alone political commitment to it amongst most gender privileged men in college was so low that just reading one feminist book and saying “I recognize that sexism exists” meant I was way advanced.
Lost youth: turning young girls into sex symbols | Life and style | The Guardian
But the motivation is also commercial. Cosmetics and fashion designers are finding ways to capture loyal consumers almost from day one. On the flip side, emphasising girlishness as desirable facilitates the multibillion-dollar sales of anti-aging cosmetics, creams and plastic surgery. Finally, there’s the underground economy of little girls’ sexuality: child sex trafficking and prostitution. According to the UN, sex trafficking is the fastest-growing area of organised crime.
1 month ago
“ Is it any wonder that girls and young women, told they are hotter and better than their older counterparts, sometimes fail to identify with women older than them? Or that they sometimes respond to America’s social and sexual ageism by vowing never to get old (I doubt I was the only teen with a beautiful friend who said she was going to commit suicide at 40)? When we fetishize youth, we cut young women off from the older women who could mentor and help them, by implying that these women no longer matter. And we send young women the message that they, too, will soon cease to exist, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
September 7, 2009
September 5, 2009
Unemployment Jumps to 9.7 Percent
The 10.1 percent unemployment rate for adult men equals the prior post-war high.
The unemployment rate hit 9.7 percent in August, up from 9.4 percent in July. According to the establishment survey, the economy shed 216,000 jobs in August. In addition, the job loss numbers for June and July were revised up by 49,000. This puts the average rate of job loss over the last three months at 318,000 per month.
2 months ago
“ The economy is now coming up short by 9.4 million jobs, including 6.9 million positions that employers have eliminated and 2.5 million jobs that were needed to absorb new workers but were never created. And unemployment is on the rise, jumping from 9.4 percent in July to 9.7 percent in August. For several demographic groups, the unemployment rate is already in double digits, including men (10.1 percent), Hispanics (13 percent), African-Americans (15.1 percent) and teenagers (25.5 percent). In all, 14.9 million workers are now jobless, of which fully one-third have been out of work for more than six months, the highest level of long-term unemployment by far in any post World War II recession. There are now nearly six workers available for every job opening, up from 1.7 workers per opening when the recession began in December 2007.
