Do Something Syndrome on Display

This time from Canada:

Panties for Peace:

The Panties for Peace campaign plays on the regime leaders’ superstitious fear that contact with a woman’s underpants will rob them of their power. Women around the world are asked to post their panties to local Burmese embassies in a bid to strip the regime of its power and bring an end to its gross violations of human rights, especially those committed against Burma’s women.

The only group that has ever shown even close to this kind of stupidity is the group "Boobies Not Bombs". The idea that sending panties to the Burmese government will effect any meaningful change is downright moronic...as even the website admits:

A humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions has been playing out in Burma for more than 20 years. Thousands have been killed and many thousands more arrested, forced into slave labour or displaced from their villages by the ruling military regime. Burma’s women have endured rape and other forms of systematic sexual violence employed by the military to enforce its control over the country’s ethnic minorities. On May 3, 2008, Cyclone Nargis brought new and terrible suffering to the people of Burma, suffering made only worse by the military regime’s refusal to promptly accept the international community’s ensuing offers of humanitarian assistance. What began as a natural disaster was soon supplanted by a catastrophe rooted in the pride, paranoia and corruption of Burma’s military rulers.

For decades, this government has endured threats, worldwide mockery, and embargoes, but this...THIS will break the bank. THIS will be the final straw that breaks the camel's back. THIS will be what finally exacts change in a corrupt dictatorship that murders it's people!

And i'm the prince of England!

The idea that doing ANYTHING will bring about results is childish thinking. Certain actions bring about results. Others don't. Even if the regime is afraid of touching women's panties (and I can't find an objective site that backs this up), they'll just throw them away...not touch them. And this seems to be made up out of whole cloth.

Doing SOMETHING...isn't a substitute for doing an action of value. Protestors need to realize this. And stop pretending that every action has an equal consequence.

It's all about the Children...Sometimes.

A little old...but still noteworthy:

UN Sex Scandal

Accusations of sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers and aid workers around the world have increased in recent years and the United Nations is investigating claims against its soldiers in hotspots such as Haiti, Liberia, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This comes on the heels of another sex scandal...

School Sex Scandal

5 Different Sexual Scandals have rocked the LA school district. And the UN has been indicted as well. Major news coverage on either? Nope.

Child sex scandals only matter with a right wing source...like the church. So, if priests are having sex with teenagers...it's big news. If teachers are having sex with teens...meh. If UN workers are having sex with single digit age children...who cares?

So if the source of the child molestation is a right winger...it's big news. If it's a leftist source...like the UN or union teachers, then it never makes TV news.

Children matter. But partisan politics matter more.

Ted Kennedy: Polluter

He'll just buy...oil in the water...offsets. Or something.

Ted Kennedy has called Nantucket Sound near his Massachusetts estate “a national treasure” — but that didn’t stop the senator from having oil dumped from his yacht into its waters.


A local photographer spotted an oil slick coming from Kennedy’s yacht Mya as Kennedy and his guests left the vessel in a launch following a race that ended in Hyannis, the Cape Cod Today newspaper reported.


The lensman was so shocked that he rowed his dinghy out to question the crew member left aboard the yacht.


He asked the crewman, “What the hell are you doing?”


The crewman said that diesel fuel had gotten into the bilge and he was told to dump it.


When the photographer pointed out that the yacht was moored in coastal waters near shellfish beds and people swimming, the crewman replied, “Whatever.”

It's hard to take people seriously who rant and rave about pollution, then are caught doing it themselves. And what's even worse is that the average American sees something like a Ted Kennedy shrugging off polluting the water, or an Al Gore doing the equivalent to the air...and write off pollution as a non-issue. That's always helpful.

No Criticism of Barack Obama Allowed!

As even Democratic commentators are finding out, criticism of Obama gets one branded a filthy racist.


From CNN:

(CNN) -- Geraldine Ferraro defended her controversial comment that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign was successful because he was black, telling an interviewer Tuesday that she was being attacked because she was white.
"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says, 'Let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world,' you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up," she told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, California. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

Her criticism may seem unfair, but it's not like the "Vote for Obama because he's black" crowd doesn't exist. Some of the comments from Black Enterprise:

it is that the majority in this country has brainwashed us. every race gender or creed through out the world would pull together to support their own except us. we try to find every reason not to just to sound intelligent for the other manif there was a native american running there would be no devide among them or asian jewish only us we will countinue to be lower class until we decide we can lead to. and for all those who want to vote for the other man or woman keep on being a slave and tell your kids and grandkids why they are still slaves to the other man

Obama is black. He is christian. He is highly educated and is supported by lots of educated people of USA. He is the most capable to deal with our friends and enemies alike. He is honest, fairand is electable. yes, America is ready for a black president, the problem is not USA not being ready, but some black people not being ready for a black president themselves. AAH. 12/19/07

This is a great time for the African American Community and all Americans I live in the Detroit, Michigan area and would like to work with the, Obama for president Campaign.

And the racial component of his campaign has been recognized by even black critics:

To white people, Obama positions himself as a singular solution to the nuisance of Black people's irksome complaints about ongoing racism. His appeal to Blacks is rooted in a lingering Jim Crow mentality that uncritically celebrates the prospect of Black faces in high places. ... Supposedly, the missing ten percent of Black progress that he says is required to achieve equality will be provided by his own ascension to the presidency. Then, all will be right with the African American world[.]

So the general unspoken Democratic assumption was that Barack Obama's blackness was an asset in the election, and that he was assumed to garner a large portion of the black vote. And even a few black Democrats have criticized him for relying on his race and ignoring policy.


Yet when a white woman brings up what multiple black analysts have said many many times...she's branded decisive, told she has no place in politics. Is Obama prepared to say this about Roland Martin, who told him not to assume a majority of the black vote...just because he was black? How about Debra J. Dickerson who asked whether race or gender would win out? So the idea of Hillary and Obama making it so far because of their minority status has been out in the open for some time. Only now that it's being used as criticism instead of praise or just comment...only now is it taboo.

Though it takes the wind out of his sails when his critic admits shes was only relevant because she was a woman.

The Silent Plight of Muslim Girls

If there is any area on which modern day liberalism is not willing to compromise its beliefs in order to appease the worst excesses of radical Islam, I have yet to find it. The staunchest defenders of human rights are oddly silent about the most eggregious human rights violations facing Muslims, mainly women and children. To the extent that ANY of them speak about barbaric practices such as female genital mutilation...it is usually to defend such practices.


One of the most grissly recent stories to fit this model is the tale of Yasser Abdul Said who murdered his daughters Amina and Sarah for offending his honor. No stories on DailyKos or DemocraticUnderground. And in a search on yahoo, google, and even ask.com, the first 40 stories are all from right wing blogs, usually linking either to JihadWatch and Robert Spencer, or to Phyllis Chesler. This is a case of TRUE theocratic religious zealots murdering their daughters for impure sexuality (real or imagined) and for religious reasons...yet, there is silence.


As Chesler reports:

[B]ased on extensive interviews that I have done with the female relatives of the murdered Texas teenagers, it is clear that:


a) Amina and Sarah were expected to wear headscarves. Their failure to do so, their “hidden” lives as normal American teenagers, doomed them.


b) Amina and Sarah were expected to enter into arranged marriages against their will to much older Egyptian men whom they had never met. Their refusal to do so doomed them.


c) Amina and Sarah were expected to keep quiet about the horrific sexual, physical, and psychological abuse which was heaped upon them by their father, mother, and brother. Their failure to do so doomed them.


d) Amina and Sarah were not supposed to have “boyfriends.” At the very least, their friends, both male and female, were not supposed to be Christians. The fact that they were friendly with Christian male teenagers doomed them.


e) Amina and Sarah were supposed to learn to hate America and to choose Shari’a law. Their failure to do so doomed them.


These are only some of the “rules” that Amina and Sarah were expected to obey. One of my informants has quoted their brother Islam, who often stalked his sisters, as saying: “They knew the rules. They broke them.” Islam is saying that it is their fault that his father had to kill them.


Thus, whenever you see a woman in a face veil, headscarf, or burqa, it is very likely that these rules also apply to her.

Western feminists, who leap to defend the poor and downtrodden female from having to unfairly look at ultrasounds of their unborn fetus, report to their parents that they need to travel across state lines to have an abortion at the age of 12, or have a 15 cent an hour wage difference from their male counterparts...are shockingly silent about the execution of two beautiful young women by their zealot father for not conforming to his expectations of their lives.


The charge of racism to anyone who brings up such issues is not only irresponsible...it is silly. How is it racist to try and defend women and children of color or minority faith? All those who would defend "the Muslim community against such slander" is defend behaviors that lead to the deaths of young women the world over in such "honor killings". It's just a shame that some would rather play victim politics than save lives. That those who would defend western women from the rather minor inconvenience of a wage disparity would not stand up for their sisters who are being executed by a very real patriarchy is a terrible dereliction of duty. And that some would actually defend a patriarchy responsible for such attrocities is disgusting and pathetic.

Supporting the Palestinians...

Becomes a tad more complicated.

Hamas Forces Shoot Own Supporters at Rally; Youth Killed

JERUSALEM, Sept. 1 — Shots from Hamas security forces hit the group’s own supporters in Gaza on Saturday when a rally near the Egyptian border threatened to spiral out of control, witnesses said. One teenager was killed and several other demonstrators were wounded, Palestinian medics said.
Hamas had called for the demonstration, which thousands attended, to protest the closing of the Rafah border crossing. It has been closed since Hamas seized control of Gaza in June.
Members of the Hamas paramilitary police force fired into the air to disperse protesters who were trying to dash into Egypt, the witnesses said. The teenager, identified as Muhammad Qdaih, 17, was hit and died a short while later. A spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza, Ehab al-Ghsein, said officials were trying “to determine where the shot came from.”

We're always hearing about how evil Israel is, but the stories out of Gaza all say the same thing...It's Hamas killing the Palestinian people. And as the article makes QUITE clear, this is far from a one time event.

On Friday, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza defied Hamas to join a Fatah-inspired protest, clashing with Hamas forces. Several protesters were injured and dozens detained, reports from Gaza said. A Fatah spokesman, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, called the protest the start of “a new era in the Palestinian national struggle to cleanse the homeland of Hamas gangs.”

Indeed, there is no shortage of Hamas violence against Palestinians. This is not an abberation.

It makes one wonder however, if Carter's commitment to Palestine is so strong (because of their long term suffering), why is he demanding we give Hamas, the main group oppressing Palestinians, US funding?

It's All About Choice...REALLY

H/T SayAnything

Chinese victims of forced late-term abortion fight back

Yang Zhongchen, a small-town businessman, wined and dined three government officials for permission to become a father.
But the Peking duck and liquor weren't enough. One night, a couple of weeks before her date for giving birth, Yang's wife was dragged from her bed in a north China town and taken to a clinic, where, she says, her baby was killed by injection while still inside her.

Since the entirety of the pro-choice movement is horror stories from poor single women, here's a good one...

"Several people held me down, they ripped my clothes aside and the doctor pushed a large syringe into my stomach," says Jin Yani, a shy, petite woman with a long ponytail. "It was very painful. ... It was all very rough."
Some 30 years after China decreed a general limit of one child per family, resentment still brews over the state's regular and sometimes brutal intrusion into intimate family matters. Not only are many second pregnancies aborted, but even to have one's first child requires a license.
Seven years after the dead baby was pulled from her body with forceps, Jin remains traumatized and, the couple and a doctor say, unable to bear children. Yang and Jin have made the rounds of government offices pleading for restitution — to no avail.
This year, they took the unusual step of suing the family planning agency. The judges ruled against them, saying Yang and Jin conceived out of wedlock. Local family planning officials said Jin consented to the abortion. The couple's appeal to a higher court is pending.

Surely, since the most important thing in the world is for a woman to be able to choose whether or not she keeps her child, we'll start hearing from the pro-choice crowd about this travesty. Any second now...

It's coming I'm sure...