Completely Unnecessary

Another day, another story of worldwide respect for women, as demonstrated by their treatment when most vulnerable.

A 15-year-old, 80-lb Brazilian girl was incarcerated for 26 days for petty theft… in a cell with 34 men. No medals for guessing how that went down. She was raped, tortured and had to trade sex for food. Her head was shaved by guards to make her look more like a boy.

Meanwhile, details from a complaint by another former Halliburton employee allege that she was raped by an unknown fellow employee. He got the key to her apartment from the unlocked box where all the keys were kept, as you do.

Jessica at Jezebel sums it up for us:

The Florida woman also maintains it was non-consensual sex, though Halliburton (apparently) internally determined it was consensual, while also protecting the identity of the alleged rapist from her, which is sort of doubly insulting if you think about it; not only are they alleging she consented to sex but they’re alleging she consented to sex with someone she did not know.

Meanwhile, Australia is looking into another case of child rape in Queensland. And - wait for it - some are calling for extension of the Intervention into Queensland! Hurrah. I’m sure those girls will feel better when companies are mining on their traditional lands.

It’s, like, so symbolic.

Plus! Real, live discussion in yesterday’s comments about rape and defense contractors. Is capitalism or misogyny to blame? Also, proof that upwards of three individuals read this blog. Is a slow work week or an ice storm trapping you in the house to blame?

Links:
Rape of Girl, 15, Exposes Abuses in Brazil Prison System [NYT, h/t Jezebel]
Defense Contractors: If It Wasn’t For Diplomatic Immunity-Protected Rape, They’d Never Get Laid [Jezebel]
Step in over rape debacle, Macklin told [the Age]

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You get new breast implants after they rupture during your gang rape by fellow employees!

Jamie Leigh Jones, a former Halliburton/KBR employee, now 22, has filed a complaint against the company alleging that several men, also employees, drugged and violently gang-raped her. She woke up twice during the encounter, covered in blood (Complaint, 8). Ultimately, her breast implants ruptured and her pectoral muscle was torn.

After reporting the rape and her subsequent medical examination, Jones alleges that she was locked in a trailer without a phone, and requests to call her family were denied. She says she was told she could either ‘Stay and “get over it”‘ or ‘return home without the “guarantee” of a job on return’ (Complaint, 22).

Jones likely understood what this meant as she had been transferred to (I can’t believe this) Camp Hope, Iraq after sexual harassment, intimidation and retaliation from a supervisor in Texas.

She eventually convinced someone to let her call her father, who had to enlist the aid of his congressman to get her the hell out of Camp Hope.

As pointed out by Moe at Jezebel, the second paragraph of the complaint opens with ‘For clarification, this case is not about a pinch on the backside, or a few politically incorrect jests at the office’ (Complaint, 2).

That’s like saying, ‘Don’t worry, we know that women sometimes get all uppity about that low-level sexual harassment and abuse. But this is the serious stuff - you know, conspiratorial drugging, violent and repeated rape, and physical and mental damage.’

Maybe if companies like Halliburton/KBR (and, oh I dunno, US culture) took those pesky complaints seriously, they wouldn’t currently be in civil court defending themselves.

Yep, I said civil court. Her contract said any ‘complaints’ had to go to arbitration. No criminal charges have been filed against the men involved.

I’m really over this week’s theme.

Links:
h/t to Jezebel/Wonkette.
Jones, Et Al v. Halliburton Company et al - Complaint
Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR [ABC News]

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Eight Werribee teenagers pleaded guilty today to sex crimes involving a 17-year-old girl. For their plea, the will variously receive ‘rehabilitation’, supervision, and probation. They’re not going to get any jail time because boys will be boys, right?

I mean, all they did was: set her hair on fire three times, urinate on her, throw her clothes into the river, poke her with a stick, drop a lighted cigarette down her pants, and force her to perform oral sex as she pleaded with them. Oh, and also videotape it all and burn it onto DVDs that they then sold for $5 at local schools.

Why should these upstanding young men receive jail time?

Boys point to the girl, calling her “the victim” before laughing mockingly. One boy walks to the lens and declares: “What the f—, she’s the ugliest thing I have ever seen.”

Did I mention she has mild developmental disabilities?

The boys also filmed themselves dropping flares on a homeless man amongst other typical teen behaviors like making chlorine bombs.

Don’t worry, some of their parents knew, and clips were available on YouTube for at least some time.

Sentences get a bit tougher if you’re an adult. A man who kidnapped and raped a woman got a whole eight years for the act, despite his contention that a bite from a funnel-web spider’s what made him do it.

Unfortunately, there are no funnel-webs in Victoria, so the boys couldn’t use that as an excuse.

Good thing they didn’t need one.

Links:
DVD Teens Escape Jail Term [The Age]
Outcry Over Teenage Girl’s Assult Recorded on DVD [The Age]
Spider Bite No Excuse for Rape, Court Says [Yahoo News]

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I generally prefer keeping bigots like Fred Phelps’ Westboro baptist church* off the radar. Any media presence, be it praise, derision, or just insanity, fuels the fire of these kinds of people.

It’s like the KKK - I respect their right to exist, but I’m down with their marginalization. Or like dog training; they’re not totally rational, so the best way to stop their bad behavior is through calm ignoring.

So view this post instead as a shout out to the American justice system, which today ordered Westboro to pay $11 million to the father of a dead soldier. Those familiar with the church will no doubt guess why - they protested the kid’s funeral because we’re all going to hell and Iraq is about gays. Or something.

Anyway, according to the judge, the award “far exceeds the net worth of the defendants,” which sounds like good news to me. Even posterboard and tempra paint can be pricey when you’ve got $11 mil to pay back.

* - I’m not using proper nouns for those two words because I think the church perverts the teachings of Baptists beyond recognition as part of the faith. That’s my own personal opinion, though - others would probably disagree.

Church ordered to pay $10.9 million for funeral protest [CNN]

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At the cafe today there was a guy who, from the side, looked exactly like an ex-boyfriend of mine. I kept doing double takes. I was finally telling the guy, who from the front looks nothing like him, about how much he was creeping me out.

I just keep looking over and thinking, Why aren’t you in Chicago?

Ten minutes later, I’m at the table next to them and a girl asks me if I said I was from Chicago. She says, “I thought you looked familiar.”

Turns out - after the obligatory high school info exchange - that we’d known each other since we were kids. We were both friends with this chick Shannon, who was about my best friend during 1st and 2nd grade. We’d hung out at birthday parties, etc.

Weirdly, I just found a bunch of childhood pics on my hard drive, and Shannon was in one of them. So I went from not thinking about this girl in ages to finding her pic and meeting up with her friend halfway around the world within a couple weeks.

Thanks, creepily profile-doppleganger guy!

Oh, and a car was on fire in the alley last night. Way to defy your gentrification, Carlton.

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The lefty blogs are all up in arms about Rush Limbaugh’s ‘phony soldiers’ comment, just as the right was all a-dither at Moveon’s ‘General Betray-us’ ad. So now there’s a sister Democratic Senate resolution to condemn Limbaugh, just as there was one to criticize Moveon.

Oh my god.

How come the Democratic-controlled Senate can manage 72 votes for an anti-Moveon resolution, but can’t seem to do ANYTHING else? How come, after saying ‘no more money for the war!’, did they pass another $9 billion in a 99-1 vote (with Feingold as the only dissent) just yesterday?

Moveon’s ad was stupid. ‘Betray us’? That’s just dumb, and bad punnery to boot.

Rush Limbaugh is also stupid. He’s paid to be an asshole to the left.

Is there maybe a fois gras ban Congress could pass or something? Because the Chicago City Council is actually starting to look more productive than the Hill.

Not to mention that this tit-for-tat nonsense has a net effect of eroding free speech, as Congress seeks to delineate what we can and cannot say about this person or that group. If Democrats are going to allow the Republicans to play them at this game, it’s not going to be long until we’re not allowed to condemn religious hate mongers like Phelps, anti-abortion groups, etc.

How many more will die in Iraq, Sudan, Myanmar (Burma), Zimbabwe and America (to name a few) while they ‘debate’ this idiotic, retaliatory posturing?

Democrats are scared that they look weak because they can’t get any of the Iraq stuff passed like they said they would. So instead of hammering until they get the votes in place (I still say they should just let the Republicans filibuster the same Iraq bills every single day), they’re going to participate in this utter nonsense, hoping that the cheap thrills of political ‘gotcha’ will appease the base.

It’s just so utterly lame and disappointing that this is what is considered gunslinging in American politics. I’m not above a ‘nail the bastards’ mentality. It’s part - though shouldn’t be all - of what makes politics fun. But, come on, nail them with something real - not Moveon’s bad puns and Limbaugh’s latest dickery.

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Oh, by the way? A chunk (and that’s the scientific term, I believe) of arctic sea ice the size of Florida has melted away in the last six days. That seems bad. We’ve busted all previous records for melting, as well.

“If you had asked me a few years ago about how fast the Arctic would be ice free in summer, I would have said somewhere between about 2070 and the turn of the century,” said scientist Mark Serreze, polar ice expert at the NSIDC. “My view has changed. I think that an ice-free Arctic as early as 2030 is not unreasonable.”

And that means the oceans don’t cool as much, meaning that the Earth gets even warmer - and it kind of spirals down to extreme badness from there.

I should point out that this makes my crisis over whether to do question 1 (about Doreen Massey and universalised globalisation theories) or question 2 (about the role of ethnographic fieldwork in diaspora/transnational communities) seem even more absurd. I’m seriously thinking about seeing if I can just present it in an interpretive dance or something. You should see the number of half-sentences and false starts littering my screen.

Arctic Ice Continues Record Melting [ABC News - US]

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Let’s say that an aide in your administration was convicted of perjury and sent to jail. Let’s say you had your spokeswoman say this on June 5th:

Bush won’t intervene in the case with a pardon at this point, spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters traveling with the president to the Group of Eight leaders’ summit in Heiligendamm, Germany.

“He does feel terrible for them; they’re going through a lot right now,” Perino said. “The president has not intervened so far in this or any other criminal matter and so he is going to decline to do so now as well.”

And again on June 15th:

“Scooter Libby still has the right to appeal, and therefore the president will continue not to intervene in the judicial process,” said White House spokeswoman Dana M. Perino. “The president feels terribly for Scooter, his wife and their young children, and all that they’re going through.

Then, let’s say, that despite all that and within one month of your supposed… restraint, you decide to commute your aide’s sentence so that he never serves a day. As I understand it, and as does Peter Fitzgerald, Scooter still has some appeals left. So, let’s review: You say you’re going to do something, then do the complete opposite. Yep, that seems like lying.

It’s funny because Scooter never even filed a formal request for a pardon or a commutation. But, maybe Bush is just a big ol’ softie. Maybe not. He’s denied 4,000 formal requests for commutations, and left hundreds pending. Oh and this:

As governor of Texas, he was infamous for joking about the impending execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a killer who became a born-again Christian on death row. As president, he has repeatedly put himself and those on his team, especially Mr. Cheney, above the law.

Still, some are impressed by the commutation:

‘That’s fantastic. It’s a great relief,’ said former Ambassador Richard Carlson, who helped raise millions for Libby’s defense fund. ‘Scooter Libby did not deserve to go to prison and I’m glad the president had the courage to do this.’

Richard Carlson and I have very different definitions of the word ‘courage’. Mine includes not being a liar and a panderer. His, apparently, does not.

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I post a lot of dumb crap, but you must find 20 minutes to watch this today.

James Comey just resigned as Deputy Attorney General, where he served under both Ashcroft and Gonzales. He testified before Congress yesterday, and his testimony is absolutlely shocking.

When Ashcroft was sick in intensive care and Comey acting as AG, Gonzales, then White House Counsel, and Andrew Card, White House Chief of Staff, attempted to go around Comey to reauthorize the warrantless wiretap program. Comey testified that he believed this to be an attempt to take advantage of Ashcroft’s ill-heath to achieve their goal.

Highlights include:

• Comey’s frantic attempt to get to the hospital before Gonzales and Card involving sirens and running up the stairs.
• His recollection that the president himself may have authorized the visit by the administration officials against the wishes of Mrs. Ashcroft, who had barred all visitors and telephone calls to her husband.
• FBI director Muller instructing Ashcroft’s security detail that Comey was ‘not to be removed from Ashcroft’s room under any circumstances.’
• The image of Comey, Mrs. Ashcroft and two justice officials standing around Ashcroft to protect him from Gonzales and Card.
• Comey’s insistence at having a witness to a later meeting with Card based on his conduct at the hospital.
• ‘I was very upset. I was angry. I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me.’

This seriously reads and watches like a Hollywood film. If Comey’s testimony is even 90% correct, and given his candor, I don’t know why we wouldn’t assume that it is, it paints a damning portrait of the lengths the administration will go to have its will done.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but poor John Ashcroft. Sounds like it wasn’t all just covering up breasts at the Justice Department. If a man has to literally race to a hospital to prevent White House officials from taking advantage of his sick superior, what chance do the rest of us have?

Please. Watch this.

Transcript of some of the more important/shocking moments below the fold. Thanks to Georgetown Law Faculty Blog for the transcript. H/T to SLOG for posting the video.

(more…)

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Remember when I was excited about something before? Forget about that. The grandchild I stalked emailed his brother and I heard from the brother today who has all kinds of awesome information about Eliza! I am practically peeing myself. If my collar was off and I’d just had a bath, I would totally be running around the house.

Holy crap! Eliza’s parents owned the boarding house where Joseph stayed after he came over from Ireland at 23. Ten years later, he married their daughter (who was only 19 - racy!!!).

Wow, wow, wow! Feel free to laugh, Sam already did. I was bouncing in the kitchen waiting for her to get out of the bathroom so I could share this news.

And he has a picture of the family. Oh man! How cool is history! Why am I doing this stupid journalism stuff?

Confidential to AO - I got your present today, too. You’re awesome.

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