4) form planetary government body based on UN model, preserving all national and cultural identities. 4a) form oversight agency for planetary government 4b) form oversight agency to oversee oversight agency 4c) repeat
5) form Council of Strict But Fair Grandmas to cut through the BS of above agencies 5a) see 4a
6) reallocate all worldwide military resources to producing planetary rescue technologies and development of alternative energy
7) establish world resources council to review, reform and reinvent farming practices and technologies and allocation of food, water rights and technologies and allocation of water
8)employ all planetary citizens (billions) making less than two dollars a day to clean, polish and replant planet
8) crash course teaching program to teach people to be teachers
9) teach people to be doctors, engineers and research scientists
10) rest, knowing that world is saved
Bonus! 11) teach Barack to bowl
Ok, I admit that steps one and two and three might present some difficulty.
I caught this little ditty over at the Broadsheet section at Salon.
An Ecuadorian politician recently set off a monsoon of machismo by reportedly attempting to write a woman’s right to sexual satisfaction into the state’s constitution. Maria Soledad Vela’s pro-pleasure argument was called “ridiculous” and an attempt to “decree orgasm by law” by male lawmakers. They obviously don’t understand how amazing an orgasm is when it is supported by fantastic porn, similar to what they’d find at websites such as twinkmovies.xxx. A local newspaper spoke with a man who actually likened the legislation to “life in prison.” (Surely, he’s a bunch of fun in bed.) But, all she’s asking for is required public health education that acknowledges women aren’t unfeeling breeding machines. (¡Qué horrible!) Soledad Vela says she isn’t demanding the right to an orgasm, but, as the BBC puts it, “merely the right to enjoy sex in a free, fair and more open society” — and if that means greater orgasms, which it probably does, then so be it.
In conservative Ecuador, that’s a dangerous political platform; and that’s why, even though I realize it’s only Monday, I’m nominating Maria Soledad Vela as Broadsheet’s woman of the week
My question: why don’t American politicians ever have the innovative ideas any more?
I double dog dare a leading politician here in the land of the free to propose that kind of amendment.
Meanwhile…. Joan Walsh gives an eye rolling summary of a soon to appear Michael Wolff piece in Vanity Fair. You can read it here.
Wolff is a guy and as we already know men are the authority on sex, and many who are in a similar situation may decide to promote their dominance further by watching videos on sites like https://www.xxxvideor.com/. Whilst this might not be for everyone, more people than we know decide to do it, maybe even Wolff. With that being said though, I am so grateful that he sprayed his wisdom around with analysis like this:
The Hillary story is-and how could it not be?-largely a sexual one. This is not so much a sexist view as a sexualist view: What’s up here? What’s the unsaid saying? What’s the vibe? Although it’s not discussed in reputable commentary, it’s discussed by everyone else: so what exactly is the thing with Hillary and sex, with the consensus being that she simply must not have it (at least not with her husband; there are, on the other hand, the various conspiracy scenarios of whom else she might have had it with). It’s partly around this consensus view of her not having sex that people support her or resist her. She’s the special-interest candidate of older women-the post-sexual set. She’s resisted by others (including older women who don’t see themselves as part of the post-sexual set) who see her as either frigid or sexually shunned-they turn from her inhibitions and her pain
Sure, it is an insulting masquerade of journalism that Wolff is punting. Older women don’t have sex. Nobody wants to have sex with women of a certain age. And apparently I once again find myself shunted aside from the cultural mainstream because, I actually haven’t spent much time thinking about HRC’s sex life. Does that put me in the post sexual set? I think about sex. I watch sex on various websites like hdpornmovies xxx and a few others. I have sex. And I even know over 40 women who have sex. The men who have sex with them don’t seem to be complaining much about it either.
Inevitably when I hear men discussing the lack of hotness women have, or men dissecting the failing looks of women in general or a specific woman, I am struck by hilarity. Why?
Now I have nothing against balding overweight men ( I count many among friends and bedded a few ) but it is usually the men who look profoundly ordinary themselves who are the most eager to trample on a girl’s looks. Now, if you like small girls you’ll like petite porn too and that’s ok, but don’t bash anyone else just because it doesn’t fit into your fetish!
I am not an HRC fan, but future aspiring female presidents would be wise to study the torrent of misogynist “wisdom” passed around about her, the attacks on looks, clothes, elasticity of skin, etc. Because it isn’t just about HRC. She is a girl and she is daring to try and take a boy job, and that is what a woman will face when she dares to do it.
There are just an awful lot of men, who quite apart from being sexist just do not like women , what they like, and what they desire are female body parts. They want to touch, play with and possess them for pleasure, their own pleasure. No doubt American politicians would react the exact same why as the Ecuadorian ones did when faced with so called demands for female orgasms which are clearly metaphors for political rights. Imagine the horror if HRC mentioned the word orgasm. Nobody wants HRC to have an orgasm or a boy job. Never mind that women who have orgasms tend on average to be significantly less pissed off than women who don’t regardless of how they obtained it.
It doesn’t matter whether it is orgasms, political office, reproductive rights, children’s rights and safety, when women fight for something, often fighting for things they already have and hoping not to lose it, they will be reviled for it by some segment of the male population. If their ideas can’t be attacked ( because they are essentially sensible ) then expect an assault on looks, on sexuality or lack of. if a woman is very attractive and seeking a position of power, there will be an attempt to question her competence. If a woman is merely ordinary in looks, quite frankly the vast majority of us, then there will be snide asides about how she is seeking power because she couldn’t land the man she really wanted.
I am not suggesting this is and always will be the fate of women who wish to challenge the various power structures. It is however, the fate of women who wish to challenge power structures in societies where fear of women is a an overt or underlying cultural norm .
We’ve come a long way baby, but the road ahead is long. And it doesn’t matter if we are straight, gay, transgendered, or women of color. I am not suggesting those qualities don’t matter, they do. But they often don’t matter to men who fear us. And working class women who try to articulate their struggles and challenge class barriers will be facing fears about revolutionary angst. We simply cannot have the servants running the show can we? At least HRC is from the respectable upper classes.
And there are plenty of valid reasons why many of us oppose her candidacy. There are plenty of valid reasons to oppose any woman’s candidacy. Unfortunately, we rarely hear them in popular discussions because in the end what some, not all men want, is a combination porn star/mommy to make them feel good about themselves and when women fail to carry out this critical role, they are attacked and rejected as deficient no matter what office they run for or what position they seek.
Please follow the link to the Yahoo!News story about the bald eagle whose beak was shot off, and the efforts of those attempting to make a prosthetic to enable her to eat. There are some pictures of the bird, named ‘Beauty’ (hence the cheesy title of this pony party).
Part of Beauty’s beak was shot off several years ago, leaving her with a stump that is useless for hunting food. A team of volunteers is working to attach an artificial beak to the disfigured bird, in an effort to keep her alive.
The 15-pound eagle was found in 2005 scrounging for food and slowly starving to death at a landfill in Alaska. Most of her curved upper beak had been shot away, leaving her tongue and sinuses exposed. She could not clutch or tear at food.
Beauty was taken to a bird recovery center in Anchorage, where she was hand-fed for two years while her caretakers waited in vain for a new beak to grow.
Beauty still won’t be able to survive in the wild, but with the nylon composite appendage, she will hopefully be able to eat and drink the food given her by these dedicated caretakers. She may even get a job fostering orphaned eaglets, or possibly even breeding some of her own.
First, please take a moment to reflect on the cyclone in Burma, which the AP estimates has killed over 14,000 people. The military junta in Burma has been roundly criticized for failing to enact an early warning system that could have saved lives:
The government had apparently taken few efforts to prepare for the storm, which came bearing down on the country from the Bay of Bengal late Friday. Weather warnings broadcast on television would have been largely useless for the worst-hit rural areas where electricity supply is spotty and television a rarity.
“The government misled people,” said Thin Thin, a grocery story owner in Yangon. “They could have warned us about the severity of the coming cyclone so we could be better prepared.”
snip
Some in Yangon complained that the 400,000-strong military was only clearing streets where the ruling elite resided but leaving residents, including Buddhist monks, to cope on their own in most other areas.
The AP reports that the UN and aid organizations are mobilizing supplies, and that the EU has committed $3 million in humanitarian aid, the Chinese government stands ready with $1 million in cash and supplies, and the US is giving an intial $250,000 in aid with more to come if a disaster team is allowed inside the country.
UPDATE The BBC is now reporting that the death toll has reached 22,000:
The death toll from Burma’s devastating cyclone has now risen to more than 22,000, state media say.
Some 41,000 people were also missing, three days after Cyclone Nargis hit the country on Saturday, state radio said.
Meanwhile, Chinese authorities met with the Dalai Lama this past weekend. More meetings have been promised, none have been scheduled and the conditions of the Chinese government for future talks are vague:
‘As long as the Dalai side shows sincerity, especially in its actions, then the contact will continue,’ Qin told reporters.
Qin did not explain what China wanted the Dalai Lama to do to show sincerity.
China’s President Hu Jintao is on a diplomatic visit to Japan, which prompted large but peaceful protests:
Elsewhere in Tokyo, nearly 1,000 demonstrators marched with Tibetan flags and signs reading, “Don’t kill our friends.”
Opposition lawmaker Yukio Edano told the rally that Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda should raise the Tibet issue forcefully with Hu.
“If Prime Minister Fukuda’s meeting with President Hu Jintao is a mere formality, that means that we are accomplices in China’s crimes in Tibet,” Edano said.
WaPo carries a feature about Woeser, a Tibetan blogger based in Beijing, who is one of the few Tibetan voices commenting on the riots. Her narrative on the riots in Lhasa is directly contradicting the one Chinese authorities have been pumping through their propaganda channels:
Though she lives in Beijing, Woeser still has contacts across the Tibetan plateau, and she has been using them to funnel information onto her blog since the deadly March 14 riots in the region’s capital, Lhasa. The government has said that the riots and the unrest that followed were caused by violent separatists. Woeser is constructing an alternative narrative — one of protest sparked by long-festering resentments against Chinese repression of Tibetan culture and the Buddhist religion.
Woeser’s site, http://woeser.middle-way.net , has recently been hacked, despite being hosted on US servers. Although she faces considerable intimidation, her dedication to writing is something she has in common with bloggers worldwide:
“My writing became very obvious,” she said. “My father always taught me that I have to listen to the Communist Party when it talks, and that when I write, I have to balance between what I feel and what the party says. But I’ve found that that’s impossible to do.”
snip
“There are so many extreme nationalists who know so little about Tibet, who are so shallow about a lot of things,” she said. “I really resent it.”
When she’s inspired, she writes a little poetry. But mostly she is documenting as best she can the situation inside Tibet. According to her reporting, at least 150 Tibetans were killed in the Lhasa riot, not just the 22 mostly Han Chinese deaths the government has acknowledged.
“Sometimes I’m scared, especially when I hear my friends have been beaten up,” she said. “But I feel I have a responsibility to do this. Some things are really hard to know now, but if I know something, I will write it.”
Reuters is reporting that Zhang Ping, commentator and deputy chief editor of the Southern Metropolis Weekly magazine in China has been sacked:
Zhang declined to comment when reached by telephone. The source, requesting anonymity, confirmed the sacking but declined to provide further details.
snip
Zhang’s articles were published mainly in his magazine’s sister newspaper, the Southern Metropolis Daily, and called on the government to allow more media freedom in covering the Tibet riots and to review its policy on Tibet.
The commentaries drew an angry backlash from a large number of Internet users, who accused Zhang of being a traitor and downplaying the violence by Tibetans as well as the perceived anti-China bias of Western media.
And there is still no new news regarding the whereabouts or status of writer Jamyang Kyi, who was escorted by police from her job on April 1.
Please keep all sides of this conflict in your thoughts, prayers and meditations, especially the people of Myanmar who – as you read this – are facing a horrendous tragedy.
