1. Of course this is awful, but it doesn’t in any way justify the US killing Afghan civilians by dropping bombs on them:
“Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands”
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/19785/afghanistan-passes-food-sex-law.html
2. “G.I. Jane Breaks the Combat Barrier
Their success, widely known in the military, remains largely hidden from public view. In part, this is because their most challenging work is often the result of a quiet circumvention of military policy.
Women are barred from joining combat branches like the infantry, armor, Special Forces and most field artillery units and from doing support jobs while living with those smaller units. Women can lead some male troops into combat as officers, but they cannot serve with them in battle.
Yet, over and over, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army commanders have resorted to bureaucratic trickery when they needed more soldiers for crucial jobs, like bomb disposal and intelligence. On paper, for instance, women have been “attached” to a combat unit rather than “assigned.”
This quiet change has not come seamlessly — and it has altered military culture on the battlefield in ways large and small. Women need separate bunks and bathrooms. They face sexual discrimination and rape, and counselors and rape kits are now common in war zones. Commanders also confront a new reality: that soldiers have sex, and some will be evacuated because they are pregnant.
Nonetheless, as soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, women have done nearly as much in battle as their male counterparts: patrolled streets with machine guns, served as gunners on vehicles, disposed of explosives, and driven trucks down bomb-ridden roads. They have proved indispensable in their ability to interact with and search Iraqi and Afghan women for weapons, a job men cannot do for cultural reasons. The Marine Corps has created revolving units — “lionesses” — dedicated to just this task.
A small number of women have even conducted raids, engaging the enemy directly in total disregard of existing policies.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/16women.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
3. “Britain on Friday imposed direct rule on its former colony of Turks and Caicos following corruption claims against the territory’s authorities.
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The British government said it had suspended the government and legislature and put the London-appointed governor in direct charge of the islands about 500 miles (800 kiometers) southeast of Florida.
The islands’ premier blasted the move as a “coup” that put Britain “on the wrong side of history.”
“Our country is being invaded and re-colonized by the United Kingdom, dismantling a duly elected government and legislature and replacing it with a one-man dictatorship,” said Galmo Williams, who became premier after his predecessor, Michael Misick, resigned amid a corruption investigation.”
http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/08/14/britain-imposes-direct-rule-on-turks-and-caicos-2/
4. “Police launch ‘Flying Saucer’ CCTV camera “
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6035077/Police-launch-Flying-Saucer-CCTV-camera.html
5. “German health expert’s swine flu warning. Does virus vaccine increase the risk of cancer?
Lung specialist Wolfgang Wodarg has said that there are many risks associated with the vaccine for the H1N1 virus.
He has grave reservations about the firm Novartis who are developing the vaccine and testing it in Germany. The vaccination is injected “with a very hot needle”, Wodarg said.
The nutrient solution for the vaccine consists of cancerous cells from animals and “we do not know if there could be an allergic reaction”.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14785
6. “As Tim Wise pointed out in his essay, ‘Socialism as the New Black Bogeyman – Red-Baiting and Racism’, Black-Baiting has turned into Red-Baiting (but when was it ever different?). The ‘Left’ are afraid of attacking Obama for fear of being called racists (and hey, what do I know?) and the right are calling him a Commie!
‘This noise is about race. It is about ‘othering’ a President who is seen as a symbol of white dispossession: dispossession of white hegemony, white entitlement, white expectation, and white power, unquestioned and unchallenged from the darker skinned other. This is what animates the every move of the angry masses, individual exceptions notwithstanding. Unless the left begins pushing back, and insisting that yes, the old days are gone, white hegemony is dead, and deserved its demise, and that we will all be better off for it, the chorus of white backlash will only grow louder. So too will it grow more effective at dividing and conquering the working people who would benefit–all of them–from a new direction.’ — ‘Socialism as the New Black Bogeyman – Red-Baiting and Racism’
The problem with Wise’s analysis is that it doesn’t go far enough, ‘white hegemony’ isn’t dead just because a ‘black’ man got elected to be president, that was never the intention. Would Wise say that had ‘Hellfire’ Hillary gotten elected, patriarchy was dead (the gender counterpart to racism)? And in any case, when Wise says that ‘it’s [Obama’s election] seen as a symbol of white dispossesssion’, who is he talking about? The ‘old days’ haven’t gone, they’ve just gotten a sun tan and, like all sun tans, it’s already wearing off.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14788
