Animal people looking for good organizations to give your money to, I beseech of you, please ignore PETA, who seems to spend most of their budget getting young women to get naked in public as publicity stunts. If you love both animals and people, look instead to less sexy but much more humane organizations like the Humane Society, who actually have done a bang-up job of using their issue of animal welfare to highlight the problem of domestic violence. From Salon, I see that the effort from organizations like the Humane Society, PAWS, the ASPCA, and the Humane Association (and no doubt many other animal organizations that don’t see the need to parade naked women around to make a point) to improve the public’s understanding of the link between animal abuse and domestic abuse have led to an article in O about the link.

For people who understand how domestic violence really works, this link is not surprising. Abusers use any leverage they can to terrorize their victims and break their will, and will happily resort to abusing and killing pets for that end. There’s also the added incentive of using the pet as leverage to keep your victim from escaping, because she knows that fleeing without or even with the pet might result in the abuser retaliating by killing her pet. In order to make pet safety less of a barrier to women fleeing abusive homes, the Humane Society has put together a list of 170 safe haven programs, where both the victim and her pets are cared for by the shelters, using various methods.

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That’s a damn big household

There’s times when “domestic dispute” fits the bill. There are many times when it doesn’t. It’s especially not a domestic dispute if the killer and murder victim don’t even live together (trigger warning):

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I took this screenshot of the first page I pulled up with the search term “young women facebook” because I think the real moral of this story is going to get lost as right wingers sink their teeth into it and go nuts. (Via.)

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Okay, this is going to be a perilously gushy book review, but I don’t care. I am stoked by Who Hates Whom: Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts, and Various Things Blowing Up A Woefully Incomplete Guide by Bob Harris, who is one of the few people to (partially) make a real name for himself by winning on “Jeopardy!” The book is what it sounds like, a guide to various world conflicts, which sounds initially like it would be in conflict with the skills of a trivia whiz, and then you remember this is a person who knows how to process large and confusing amounts of information for easy recall. That, it turns out, is a major advantage when it comes to writing a quick-and-dirty guidebook to all these bewildering conflicts that you should know about, but because of the bewildering factor, let’s face it, you probably don’t.

Sometimes the pressure to know more about world politics is overwhelming. The U.S. is, after all, the most powerful country in the world and responsible citizens know this means that we have comparatively more responsibility than the rest of the world to actually know about countries and conflicts other than our own. And once you start to research this stuff, you find out that the U.S. has basically acted like a massive bully (of the Mafia sort, not of the childhood bully sort) to the rest of the world, you see that we have a large responsibility indeed to know about the rest of the world, so maybe we can exert influence in stopping our bullying. But despite all this responsibility, Americans have a lot of other conflicting demands on our time, and most of us find it hard to keep up with politics at home, nevermind the rest of the world. This book was written with this dilemma in mind, though of course Harris peppers admonishments to learn more about all these nations and conflicts throughout.

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Using this picture because I dig it.

The best part about being a voracious reader is the juxtapositions. Yesterday, while taking a blow-off day to be very sick, I laid on the couch and read through the most recent edition of Bitch, and I was impressed by an article by Jessica Wakeman called “Slap Happy” describing the practice of domestic discipline, which is something that really seems to have started with Christians who wish to return to an era where women were “managed” by their husbands through regular spankings. (The social acceptance of spanking women is something that seems to have disappeared so rapidly during the feminist era that it’s nearly forgotten that it was socially acceptable to the degree that images of men taking their wives or fiances over their knees and spanking them were on TV and in movies on occasion without too much fanfare up through the 50s.) But Wakeman isn’t interested in the fundamentalist Christians who want to return everyone to a Victorian era of gender roles that are mandated by law. She’s interested in the practice’s spread to couple that aren’t religious really and may even call themselves feminist.*

The article, and the whole issue really, are great and I’m not just saying that because they have the first review out of my book.** Wakeman lets the DD participants speak for themselves, but doesn’t fall into the “I’m okay, you’re okay” trap and lets that speaking-for-themselves make it very clear that these people are fucked the fuck up. DD is not BDSM, which is a sexual game, though some DD couples do also enjoy incorporating BDSM elements into their relationships. No, it seems that domestic discipline is a way of thwarting conflict in your relationship by assuming that every conflict or problem in the heterosexual relationship is the woman’s fault (because she’s childish, scattered, rebellious, whatever) and that it’s up to her man to discipline her. As Wakeman points out, it’s like The Surrendered Wife, except with spankings and time outs in the corner and women having to crawl over to their husbands or boyfriends on their hands and knees to beg forgiveness. There is no equality here; conflict appears to mainly and possibly always be solved by blaming the woman and wielding punishment. I failed to see how it’s much different from domestic violence, except that the women in this situation tend to minimize the conflict through stylizing the violence and submitting to it in a tacit exchange for their partners’ agreeing to have a limit on how much beating and abuse is handed out.

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It feels odd to post a post saying “I have nothing to say”, especially when that basically repeats what Amanda just said, but I just wanted to second the “I have nothing to say” by saying something.

I don’t know whether al Qaeda is responsible for the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto. I certainly have never heard of a suicide bomber first shooting the intended victim, but then I haven’t heard much about most suicide bomb attacks, so I’ll leave real analysis of the whole thing tothe more informed.

Even assuming Musharraf’s people had nothing to do with this murder, it’s an interesting coincidence (in the sense of “coinciding”) that Bhutto’s party was supremely concerned that Musharraf would find a way to delay the election - and that the aforementioned ally of the United States is now considering just that. His final decision, and the US’ reaction to that decision, will be very telling.

One of these quotes is not like the other:

From Ampersand:

Miller’s study is based on interviews with 61 girls from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds with a known history of intimate partner violence living in the poorest neighborhoods in Boston. The analysis included 53 girls between the ages of 15 and 20 who reported being sexually active and involved in relationships that included recurring patterns of physical, sexual or emotional abuse from a male partner. Twenty-six percent of these girls reported that their partners were actively trying to get them pregnant by manipulating condom use, sabotaging birth control use and making explicit statements about wanting them to become pregnant.

“We were floored by what these girls told us,” Miller recalled. “You think of forced sex as an aspect of abusive relationships, but this takes that abuse a step further to reproductive control of a young woman’s body.”

From the transcript of my 3rd podcast, detailing out one of the many, many strikes against basic reproductive rights made by the Bush administration:

The big news this week is that the Democratic-controlled Congress voted to overturn the global gag rule, which was a ban on any U.S. funding going to family planning organizations that offer abortion services or advice on obtaining those services. Contrary to a lot of anti-choice propaganda, the overturn would not mean that the U.S. would be paying for abortions directly, just working with groups that offer abortion as one of their non-U.S.-funded options. Ronald Reagan instituted the gag rule in 1984, but President Clinton overturned it right away when he came to office. And Bush reinstated it right away when he came into office, which put a serious hurt on the health of the entire world population.

The good news is that Congress overturned the global gag rule, but the bad news is that Bush, who’s beholden to extremist anti-choicers, vetoed the legislation pretty much immediately.

From Judith Warner’s Pollyannaish post-feminist-esque blog post about how “Thelma and Louise” doesn’t really speak to women’s larger oppression:

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A woman is beaten in front of her two young daughters. What’s the first line of advice from the peanut gallery? “Call the cops! Press charges! Call 911!”

Yeah. Okay. Maybe not in Georgia.

Emelina Ramirez called police to tell them her roommates were attacking her, punching and kicking her in the stomach. When the police arrived, they handcuffed her, took her to jail and ran her fingerprints through a federal database. She is now in an Alabama cell awaiting deportation.

Getting a beat down while brown is a crime.

Ramirez, 30, was three months’ pregnant in June when, she says, her roommates attacked her. The Carrollton police officer who arrested her did not speak Spanish. He charged her with simple battery and took her to jail.

When jail officials ran her fingerprints through their database, they discovered that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wanted her because she had missed a deportation hearing in Texas.

“The bottom line is: She was in the U.S. illegally,” said Lt. James Perry, the investigating officer in the case. “She was involved in an incident where the system caught up with her. That was that.”

Carrollton police do not target illegal immigrants, Perry said. In the last year, the department has worked with undocumented immigrants who were witnesses or victims of a July 2006 home invasion that resulted in murder at a trailer park. Since then, the Police Department has set up a Spanish-language tip line.

Still, the police report from the Ramirez case raises questions about whether officers do, in fact, target Latinos.

After Ramirez was arrested and her 8-year-old daughter went to the station to give her account of the incident, Perry said, he went back to the house to interview the roommates about the allegations.

Before asking questions, however, Perry asked the inhabitants for identification and observed “both body language and verbal language that led me to believe they might be illegal.” According to the police report, “we then told everyone they would have to go to the jail to be fingerprinted.”

We can thank Carrolton’s finest for showing us just how much of a priority crime fighting is–it’s pretty high, if the crime you’re worried about is an expired visa, or being brown, or having suspicious body language. The assault and battery? Not so much.

Note too, the lack of outrage of a beatdown of a pregnant woman–in this case, a Latina woman. And make no mistake, that’s because there is no concern for her or the fetus. If she was White, you’d see all sorts of outrage over the harm to the fetus. The DA would file charges. If she miscarried as a result, heads would roll. But she’s not White, and she’s not middle class, and her fetus won’t be a bundle of joy but just another brown face that too many people would like to see gone.

Xicanopower also reports that Ramirez was possibly abused by her ex-husband. This is a dirty little secret–abusers will hold the citizenship status of their partners over their heads. Report the abuse, go to jail. Lose your kids. Get deported.

I’m pretty sure some folks will step up and ask why she didn’t just leave. Why not leave her abusive ex? Why not leave this horrible situation with her psychopathic roommates? And the only thing I can say to that is, have you ever been through this? Abusers use everything at their disposal to control their targets–be it money, violence, fear, whatever. You don’t realize going in that someone is just a craptastic abusive jackhole. It happens gradually, and by the time it’s really bad you’re in so deep and you’re so messed up by the abuse that you feel there’s no way out.

Oh, and? If you’re an immigrant, apparently there is no way out, except to jail.

Thanks to Brownfemipowerfor the heads-up post.

Update (from XP, who posted this over at my site):

I finally got a little more information about the whole ex-husband deal. Her friend just left a comment on my site. This is what he just told me.

She did marry a police officer from Carrollton, GA who, instead of obtaining an attorney and getting her legal status straightened out, held her status over her head, and was abusive towards her. He is the father of her youngest US born child. After about a year and a half of abuse, and aid from a woman’s shelter, she obtained a divorce from the abusive cop, and thanks to him, remains “undocumented”.

Karlas’ father has not paid child support in I don’t know how long, nor has he made any attempt to see his daughter.

Is it being “undocumented” that’s the crime here? Or is it being brown and female?

I posted this last night at my pad, but it still has entertainment value today…

Pull out the tiny violin for the Republican Senator from Louisiana and DC Madam customer, who puts his wife before the cameras (and doesn’t take any questions) at the news conference. He firmly denies the Louisiana brothel tales (and ostensibly the diaper fetish rumors, though he didn’t bring that up).

Since then, I’ve gotten up every morning, committed to trying to live up to the important values we believe in. If continuing to believe in and acknowledge those values causes some to attack me because of my past failings, well, so be it.

Unfortunately, my admission has encouraged some long-time political enemies and those hoping to profit from the situation to spread falsehoods too, like those New Orleans stories in recent reporting. Those stories are not true.

Blah, blah, blah — important values like protecting the sanctity of marriage from ho-mo-sexuals…All I know is the woman’s body language speaks for itself:

WENDY VITTER: To those of you who know me, are you surprised that I have something to say? You know, in most any other marriage, this would have been a private issue between a husband and a wife — very private. Obviously, it is not here…Last week, some people very sympathetically said to me, “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes right now.” I stand before you to tell you very proudly, I am proud to be Wendy Vitter.

Feel free to write your own caption.

More after the jump…
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I missed the boat.

Blog for Domestic Workers was on June 5. So here’s a post and a roundup.

First, Saltyfemme posts the announcement, and with her support for a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights.

Domestic workers, such as nannies and housekeepers do not currently have the protection other workers have. However, this may change in New York State.

For years, the more than 200,000 nannies, housekeepers and other domestic workers in New York State have been exempt from many basic labor protections.

But now 55 immigrant groups, labor unions and other organizations are trying to change that by pushing for legislation that would require a minimum wage of $14 an hour for the state’s domestic workers.

The legislation, called the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, would also require that these workers receive paid personal days, paid holidays, paid vacations, at least one day off each week, severance pay and 21 days’ advance notice before termination.

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Will we see these home-grown suspects called potential domestic terrorists? These weren’t just people with grandiose thoughts — these militia crazies were caught with grenades, rocket launchers and a ton of ammo.

Oh wait, they’re not brown people of that “other” faith. Can you imagine the reaction if they were Arab or Muslim? From the Birmingham News, this just goes to show you that we have to worry about the armed and dangerous enemy within. This is f*cking scary:

Simultaneous raids carried out in four Alabama counties Thursday turned up truckloads of explosives and weapons, including 130 grenades, an improvised rocket launcher and 2,500 rounds of ammunition belonging to the small, but mightily armed, Alabama Free Militia.

Six alleged members of the Free Militia also were arrested by federal authorities and are being held without bond.

Investigators said the DeKalb County-based group had not made any specific threats or devised any plots, but was targeted for swift dismantling because of its heavy firepower. The militia, which called itself the Naval Militia at one point, had enough armament to outfit a small army.

… “We classify these groups as violent and anti-government,” said Jim Cavanaugh, who supervises the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operations in portions of the South. “They stockpile things and live off a fear, a paranoia they’re going to need weapons and explosives because some event is going to happen when they will need them.”

…Agents encountered booby traps at one site. They found trip wires and two hand grenades rigged as booby traps at the Collinsville camper home of 46-year-old Raymond Dillard, who holds titles of both militia major and fugitive from justice on an unrelated federal case in Mobile.

“We were prepared,” Cavanaugh said. “We suspect booby traps with these types of groups.”

Arrested and detained in federal custody were Dillard, also known as Jeff Osborne, 46, of Collinsville; Adam Lynn Cunningham, 41, of Collinsville; Bonnell Hughes, 57, of Crossville; Randall Garrett Cole, 22, of Gadsden; James Ray McElroy, 20, of Collinsville; and Michael Wayne Bobo, 30, of Trussville.

At the Hughes home, officials found 100 improvised hand grenades, 70 improvised hand grenades fired from the 37 mm rocket launch, a submachine gun and two silencers.

Here are the all-American faces of potential terrorism: Dillard, McElroy, Cole, Hughes, Cunningham. More photos here.

God Bless America.

God, I thought we were done with the lame excuses, but here’s one more to go on the pile…

Though one can point to Cho’s own psychotic behavior and our graphic slasher media as potential contributors to his deplorable murder spree, we must also hesitate to consider how we as a society are possibly contributing to the growth of these academic killing fields. I believe those who wield the baton of the secular progressive agenda bear significant responsibility for the escalation of school shootings. Even conservatives who refuse to speak when evil flourishes must acknowledge some culpability.

…If we are ever to restore civility in our land and our schools, we must turn back the clocks to a time when such shocking crimes didn’t even exist - when we valued life and respected one another much more then we do today. We must use the Bible (humanity’s blueprint for life and ‘’bluebook'’ for value) to retrain our youth about theirs and others’ value as children of God, made in His image.

And what time can we turn the clock back to when violence of this nature didn’t exist — what about all that violence in the bible, for goodness sake? What is he smoking? Besides, it’s hard not to a laugh at a man who made his living before the cameras pretending to kick asses and blow sh*t up.

Also:
* WND - Chuck Norris for prez 

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Bonus! Loaded Orygun may have a winner here — the tragedy at Virginia Tech is equated with the passage of a DP bill in Oregon. State Rep. Dennis Richardson (HD04):

This past week has been like no other. On Monday the world witnessed the tragedy at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. On Tuesday Oregon witnessed the passage of Domestic Benefits for same-sex couples (HB 2007) and Civil Rights based on sexual orientation.

These flat earthers and bible beaters throw everything (and the kitchen sink) at their arguments to justify their unhinged positions.

Dr. Grady McMurtry, a creation evangelist and head of an outfit named Creation Worldview Ministries says that teaching the theory of evolution in public schools leads to a lack of respect for human life — thus explaining why the shootings at VA Tech occurred. Wait — didn’t Rod Parsley say it was about sin? Which is it?

[P]eople should not be surprised when mass shootings occur, such as the one on the Blacksburg university campus on Monday. “And at Virginia Tech, what do we have?” he asks rhetorically. “We have a person who, unfortunately, thought that humans had no more value than cats and dogs — and unfortunately, I think, probably felt the same way about themselves.”

The creationist continues explaining his premise. “And so what happens? If we are nothing but thinking animals, [and] if you have excess people, then you can just put them in a bag, throw them in the river the way you would too many kittens or too many puppies.”

McMurty explains that when the biblical account of creation is taken out of the public arena, human life has no meaning. In contrast, creation teaches that there is a purpose, he says.

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Bonus points go to wingnut anti-gay, bible-beating Patriot Pastor Rod Parsley, who has his own theories about why the shootings at Virginia Tech took place. It’s not about mental illness despite the ramblings, it’s all about SIN and godlessness. From his Newsweek blog post:

Choosing a world view that excludes God and disregards the value of human life makes the unforgettable scenes from Virginia Tech possible. What we saw Monday morning is nothing less and nothing other than the result of one young man’s sin - his determination to do what he wanted to do, rather than what His Creator would have him do. It’s a choice each of us faces daily. The only difference is that Cho Seung Hui’s choice led to historically tragic consequences and the attention of a horrified world.

Mr. Center for Moral Clarity, incidentally, got a beat-down in the comments that you should read.

H/t, Herb.

John Derbyshire, fighting off mass murderers.

I’m rendered almost speechless by Derbyshire’s ridiculous rant, which basically boils down to: Golly! Don’t these wimps know that it’s just that easy to jump and disarm a guy who’s using a semiautomatic handgun?  He insists that he’d never know what he’d do, but then tells us what the students should have done.  Thank you, oh wise Monday-morning quarterbacking oracle.

As NRO’s designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sake—one of them reportedly a .22.

He also had a Glock, stupid. Glocks are semiautomatic.  And you go on and get all tough and macho when someone’s managed to down half of your class with a spray of bullets.

At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him.

Right.  That’s the first thing you think of when you’re a college student and you’re just starting your engineering, or French, or Math, or German class.  Not, say, hitting the ground.  Oh, and by the way?  Students did defend themselves.  They barricaded the door and held it shut.  Which saved a bunch of lives.

Handguns aren’t very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can’t hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. 

He managed to kill 32 people.  Either he was very good, or you really suck, John. 

And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren’t bad.

See above.  32 people dead.  They must just be imagining it, those whiny little victim-trippers!

Yes, yes, I know it’s easy to say these things: but didn’t the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything?

The passengers of flight 93 had spoken to relatives and friends, and knew what was in store.  These kids didn’t.  And are you really saying that the people on the other planes should have done something–that they deserved to die?

As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It’s true—none of us knows what he’d do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I’d at least take a run at the guy.

I’d hope that if you ended up cowering in a corner, or running for your life, that some self-righteous chickenhawk maggot wouldn’t go telling you that you should have done something because it’s just that easy.

Via Gordo.

There’s no need to post news wires, since this awful story is all over. A chilling article in the Baltimore Sun is definitely worth the click — ‘I don’t think my teacher got out‘.

[Virginia Tech junior Richard] Mallalieu said his professor “held the door shut” while several students darted to the windows. Some climbed up on desks, ledges and a radiator cover to pull the screens down and kick at the metal-framed glass. Three windows easily gave way and swung open on hinges as the gunshots got louder.

Closer.

“It sounded like he was going out into the hallway,” said Mallalieu, a civil engineering major. Once the windows of the second-floor classroom were open, Mallalieu and most of his classmates hung out of them and dropped about 10 to 15 feet to bushes and grass below, he said. Some students ran immediately to a nearby building. Others waited to help students who were injured by the fall, Mallalieu said.

But then the sound of gunfire filled the classroom they had just fled, sending the rest who had escaped running about 30 yards to Patton Hall, he added.

“I don’t think my teacher got out,” Mallalieu said.

There’s already much discussion about gun rights, gun control, the response of the school administration and security to the initial shootings, who’s right, who’s wrong. The bottom line is that there is little that can be done to prevent a tragedy like this from occurring again, mostly because no one will agree on what action to take, given the heated nature about guns and rights. The demand to put adequately trained security and more effective emergency policies in place will be met by some schools and not others.

Eventually, we will have to come to the realization that if someone is determined enough they will find a way around those measures to commit violence on a large scale in places we believe (or are led to believe) are secure or safe.

Look at the terror alert chart or the TSA inspection of your shampoo in quart-sized baggies. Do you feel really safer?

Part of the illusion or fantasy is that we have to believe these tragedies happen elsewhere or else everyone will be in lockdown.

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And this filth is incredible. The Rotting Cryptkeeper and his family are going to show up at the funerals of those killed. No, I’m not linking  (h/t Kelli):

WBC to Preach at Funerals of Virginia Tech Dead

WBC will preach at the funerals of the Virginia Tech students killed on campus during a shooting rampage April 16, 2007. You describe this as monumental horror, but you know nothing of horror — yet. Your bloody tyrant Bush says he is ‘horrified’ by it all. You know nothing of horror — yet. Your true horror is coming.  “They shall also gird themselves with sackloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads” (Eze. 7:18). 

Why did this happen, you ask? It’s simple. Your military chose to shoot at the servants of God today, and all they got for their effort was terror. Then, the LORD your God sent a crazed madman to shoot at your children. Was God asleep while this took place? Was He on vacation? Of course not. He willed this to happen to punish you for assailing His servants.