Archive for October, 2008

This tirade is embarrassment to womankind and a prime example of exactly what prevents us keeps us from being all that we can. It is not men that hold us back – sadly it is other women. Men do not annihilate each other as totally unfit as human beings simply for having the opposite political affiliation.

Ms. Morgan dares to speak of women as if we are objects classed as either acceptable or not and she dares to do so based on her political beliefs. Who in the hell does she think she is speaking about anyone in that manner and trying to pass it off as feminism? That was the lowest cat attack I have seen in years meow.

I do not believe, in my 61 years, I have ever been as offended by a man as I was by this vicious partisan sexist attack masqueraded as feminism. Perhaps Ms. Morgan thinks wrestling other women to the ground with harsh words or mud wrestling them with insults is 21st century feminism but I prefer to think respecting other women and accepting them and their choices is feminism and democracy and fair.

Thus I will allow Ms. Morgan, albeit tasteless as I find it, to make a complete ass of herself if for no other reason than to show others what a complete ass sounds like.

Bettyjean Kling M.S, M.Ed

Founder: Free Us Now -www.Free-Us-Now.com

Blogging: Free Me Now -FreeMeNow.wordpress.

PU

Women’s Media Center should not have let this trash be posted onto their website. Please write a letter to them and let them know. WMC is supposed to be a non-partisan group to speak out against sexism in the media! Please spread the word. Here is my letter:

Carol and Glennda,

I am truly disappointed that you allowed that blog piece written by Robin Morgan onto your website. I thought your group had the focus of speaking out against sexism in the media in a non-partisan fashion?

Glennda – The New Agenda was honored to have you on our initial call and we imagined there were many ways of working together in the future. The MSM is ripe with misogyny and sexism. Working together as partners would allow us to leverage our efforts into something powerful.

Allowing Ms. Morgan to post that slur on other woman is a major step backwards for your efforts. The crime of the women she is attacking – they spoke out against sexism against Governor Palin.

I demand that your organization disavow that article from Robin Morgan – else, I suspect you will lose a lot of support from the women of this country. Myself, being one.

Amy Siskind

The New Agenda

Editor’s note: Please contact Women’s Media Center and remind them that women’s advocates have to be for ALL women.

Sydney Morning Herald
October 31
HEALTH authorities have taken action against a Central Coast nursing home at the centre of serious sex abuse allegations for failing to report an alleged assault, employing nine staff without proper police checks and providing misleading information.

The Department of Health and Ageing has issued a notice of non-compliance to Peninsula Village Retirement Centre, which has two weeks to respond adequately or face penalties.

Police are also investigating two alleged cases of sexual assault against two elderly residents by two male staff, aged 18 and 39, which occurred a few weeks apart during the past two months. Both men have been sacked.

The two complaints are that a staff member lifted the nightie of an elderly resident with dementia and fondled her breasts and another staff member vaginally assaulted another resident.

A new complaint that does not raise any sexual assault issues was lodged by Susanne Matthews against the home in July last year saying her mother, 84, who has dementia, was slapped by a nurse in 2005.

A Department of Health report on the incident involving Ms Matthews’s mother found the home had not breached its duty of care.

The 263-bed nursing home was issued with the formal notice on Wednesday night for “the failure to report an alleged assault, the employment of staff without proper police checks and providing misleading information in regard to police checks”, the Federal Minister for Ageing, Justine Elliot, said yesterday.

The notice followed an unannounced visit by the department’s Complaints Investigation Scheme officers on October 22, which found the home failed to report an assault within the legislated 24-hour time frame.

The Herald understand that one of the alleged sexual assaults is the matter not reported to the department within the correct timeframe. The home previously said it had reported the assaults to police and the health department immediately.

Mrs Elliot said last Friday that the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency identified nine staff with unsupervised access to residents whose police checks had expired. Those staff had been stood down by the nursing home, she said.

Accreditation Agency assessors were at the nursing home at the weekend to ensure that an adequate level of staffing was available until the matter has been resolved, she said.

The Peninsula Village Retirement Centre met inspectors from the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency at 4pm yesterday. “The board will … consider what action to take as a result of the agency’s review,” it said in a statement.

Mrs Elliot has announced plans to require all aged care staff to have police checks from January in the wake of the allegations.

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CNS – October 30,2008
Los Angeles,CA

A California couple accused of violating federal obscenity laws will finally stand trial, nearly five years after their indictment.

A federal grand jury charged Robert Zicari and his wife, Janet Romano, in 2003 with ten counts of obscenity-related crimes. The owners of Extreme Associates, a Los Angeles-based pornography industry, produced films depicting rape and murder. (See related Sept. 2003 article)

However, a judge dismissed the case leading much later to an appeals court decision to reinstate it. Pat Trueman, special counsel to the Alliance Defense Fund, believes there will be a conviction. “And that’s because the material is really, as the title says, quite extreme,” he contends. “And I think people will say, ‘This is beyond the pale. You’ll get a jury to convict.’”

In this case, Trueman says the government is acting in the public’s interest. “What I think is important to remember is that the public has never waivered from its support of obscenity laws,” he adds. “You get the ACLU and some who say, ‘Oh, there shouldn’t be prosecutions’ — yet every time there’s a prosecution, there’s a conviction.”

Trueman is hopeful the case will motivate federal prosecutors to do more. “If the Justice Department would just continue to bring these cases, you could bring down the porn industry,” the attorney points out.

The owners of Extreme Associates are scheduled for a trial next year on March 16. If convicted, Zicari and Romano could serve up to 50 years in prison and be fined $2.5 million, with their company facing a $5 million fine.

October 30,2008
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted on Thursday that the imminent collapse of international “bullies” would be a good opportunity to spread Islam and Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Ahmadinejad did not mention the U.S. by name but said that the “bullying powers” were on the verge of collapse because they are hated by the nations of the world, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported.

SOMALI WOMAN STONED TO DEATH

BBC NEWS-10-28-2008

Aisho Ibraham Dhuhhulow was buried up to her neck and then stoned to death by a group of men in the main square of the city of Kismayo, Somalia.

The execution was mandated by Islamic Sharia law which calls for the death penalty For WOMEN found guilty of adultery.

Islamist insurgents took control of the city in August from government soldiers and instituted Sharia law .

Local official Sheikh Hayakallah stated that Dhuhulow “wanted to be punished * under Sharia law and she deserved it.”

Editor’s note : A variation on “she was asking for it.

Four months ago I watched a ten-year old girl tell a T.V. reporter how excited she was about the upcoming presidential election. She said that with Hillary and Obama running she felt it was possible to be anything she wanted when she grew up.
After watching the treatment dished out to Hillary Clinton by Big media, such as the networks and newspapers of “record” e.g. the New York Times and Los Angeles Times along with the leaders of the Democrats, I am here to tell her in the words of Tony Soprano, “Fa’get about it”, you’re a girl.
It does not matter to the Democrat’s Party Big Whigs that Hillary Clinton is clearly the more qualified of the two by virtue of much more hands-on experience. It does not matter that she has won more of the popular vote. (Oh that’s right we’re not counting Florida and Michigan.).Nor does it matter that she has carried all the big swing states or won states like West Virginia by landslide percentages.
From the beginning they have viewed her as “someone’s wife.” A “someone” they gave unwavering support to despite his own troubles with sexism and harassment charges. He was their “guy” after all – emphasis on guy. And they reluctantly supported her, their lust for power overcoming their latent sexism, until a viable man candidate came along.
Since then Hillary Clinton has been attacked not on her positions but on her clothes, her cleavage, the timbre of her voice and her thighs. Obama, her main opponent has demonstrated the most outrageous condescending attitude with comments such as,
don’t worry Hillary you’re “likeable enough” or giving her permission to stay in the race.
In all of this the men in the party in league with Big media types such as Tim Russert, Keith Oberman and Chris Matthews (who said Obama made his “legs tingle.”), cut off any criticism of Obama by the Hillary campaign, by raising the old canard of racism. Thanks to people like Hillary racism has receded to small pockets of losers and bitter enders in the United States. These male leaders do this while ignoring the most ancient and pernicious form of oppression on the earth – sexism. If men of any race or ethnic group were being targeted for rape, kidnap, slavery, torture and murder the way women are in the United States and especially throughout the world there would be a 24/7 drum beat by Big Media and the power boys that would be deafening. Make no mistake the eyes of the world, as the politicians are constantly pointing out, are on this presidential election in America. What they see so far is that chauvinism trumps all. So those countries where women are habitually mutilated, maimed and muffled may continue those practices comfortable in the knowledge that in America we practice a similar type of sexism albeit more sophisticated and less gruesome. Because if the Bosses have their way the next president of the United States will not look fundamentally different from all the preceding ones.
I will not be helping the party leaders in this effort but like Geraldine Ferraro will be taking a look at the other team’s guy.John McCain. He already has two things going for him – a principled and stalwart Mother and an independent and competent wife who operates a multi-million dollar business not obtained through his political connections.
And finally a word to the little ten year old girl: there will always be clerical jobs available for women in the political process and maybe an elected office or two but not the top job after all she’s just a girl.

Writer’s note: This was originally written a couple of months ago but since then things have gotten worse with Gov. Sarah Palin

HALLOWEEN : TIME TO BURN THE WITCHES

How a harvest festival and new years celebration of the ancient people became a time of either good, make believe fun or dark human expressions of the worst misogyny is beyond me but that’s what has happened.
Being of Celtic descent I’m all for the costumes, trick or treating, apple bobbing and jack o’lanterns. I could do without the women hating part.
Oh you doubt me?
Picture this: a Disney type entrepreneur decides to turn a former slave plantation in to an amusement park complete with noose earrings, drinks named flog martinis etc, well you get the idea.
How long would or should such a place remain open ? An hour, fifteen minutes ?
Now imagine, no you don’t have to imagine this one because it exists. A similar tourist venue featuring the commercial exploitation of women, who have been persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and hung exists. It’s called Salem, Massachusetts.
A visit there is not a somber, sobering process but rather a sort of yuk it up celebration of the ‘spooky witches.’
I am not even going to go into the complete embargo in our history books of the “Burning Times” in Europe where in a time span of 200 years over 100,000 women were burned to death for being witches.
Because despite a myriad of protestations sexism is not only still with us it has retrenched from the gains of thirty years ago. We have only to look at the treatment of the two women candidates in this election cycle – Senator Hillary Clinton, a Democrat and Governor Sarah Palin, a Republican.
Both were not engaged on the issues but rather the way women have been attacked and destroyed for centuries. How they looked; how they spoke; fertility issues; sexual violence and on and on..
The fact that many of these attackers,(Sarah Bernhard : “Sarah Palin should be gang raped by my big black brothers when she goes to Harlem.”) are women cuts no ice. The accusers of the fourteen hung women and five men were also female.
Do you think I am being dramatic in my connection ?
Well today, in the spirit of the season I suppose, I received an e-blast from the Obama campaign, whose list I’m on, that read “Werewolves, WITCHES and Sarah Palin”.
No mention of the head of the ticket, John McCain, no it was the woman that the attack was directed toward.
In West Hollywood a young American male thought it perfectly acceptable to hang a mannequin of Gov. Palin with a noose from his house . His name is Chad Morrisette. This is the same day women are being hung by mobs of men in India and a young Somali women was stoned to death.
A really funny Halloween prank. Yuk, yuk ! No connection to violence against women there.
So let’s celebrate Samhain, All Hallows Eve or Halloween but let’s forego the witch burning this year.
Trick or Treat !

Recently an op/ed I authored, was published by the Philadelphia Inquirer. (see copy on this site)
Within twenty- four hours I had received over one thousand e-mails, yes my actual e-mail address was printed. Two thirds of them wished rather unpleasant things to happen to my person.
Now the point of the essay, which referenced both Senator Clinton and Governor Palin was that the level of hatred directed at those two women candidates had reached alarming proportions. My plea was for respect and a return to civil discussion on the issues rather than personal attacks focused on stereotypical female attributes.
For a few days anyway Hillary and Sarah caught a break because the hatred was aimed at me, having dared to write an essay decrying sexism.
I was called words I hadn’t heard since my last marriage. But these were people who didn’t know me, knew nothing about me. That’s where we are in out country today.
Disrespect and downright hatred of women is rising exponentially.
After all the centuries of work and sacrifice by feminists both female and male – including dying for the rights of women – it is being undone in a single generation.
Many of us who were workers in the field in the 1970s and 80s believed the struggle was over, the victory was won or nearly so. WOW were we wrong !
Once abortion was made legal the culture stopped even attempting to raise women to a level of parity in fact it went the other way. “We’ve handled the consequences now we can completely objectify you with impunity.” (see my essay on abortion)
Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign showed us that the glass ceiling is firmly in place and Governor Palin’s candidacy demonstrates that any woman not from a certain segment of society or sharing the views of the Power Elites will be attacked and destroyed at all costs.
Support for Equality for women in the culture has been shown to be little more than lip service and a sham.
To be Philly about it, “If you’re not our kind of woman FAGEDDABOUTIT!”
No one beats, mutilates, hangs, rapes or abuses the one they respect. Disrespect opens the door for violence. Violence toward women globally is on the increase because disrespect is the order of the day.
It’s time for women and men of all political, philosophical and religious stripes to re-commit themselves to the cause of equality for women and not just in the formal, legal sense but in the cultural sphere as well.
I’ll write more on the specifics later.
HMC

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