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POPS7 Terrible Abuses Suffered By Women Around The World Barbaric - we have no right to call ourselves developed nations of the 21st century until such scourges are removed from the face of this earth forever and those guilty of these heinous crimes are severely punished. I ask what 'honor' do people speak of when they treat women so degradingly?!
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POPSThe ultimate reaping of what one sows: right-wing edition From the article: When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you. If you create a massive and wildly empowered domestic surveillance apparatus, it's going to monitor and investigate domestic political activity. That's its nature. I'd love to know how many of the participants in today's right-wing self-victim orgy uttered a peep of protest about any of this, from 2005:
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POPSAm I a terrorist now?!? Be careful what you read online?!? Damn, I protest this! Sheesh, according to the Patriot Act § 802 and the definitions of domestic terrorism, legitimate protest could be prosecuted as terrorism! I kid you not! Hey, maybe this very clip could put me i Guantanamo! Folks, you'd better not pop this clip or they'll probably accuse you of giving me "material support" and end up in the cage next to mine! Oops, too late, if you've already read this far... Sheesh! Where will it end?!? Oh, well...orange suits me :o( (please send care packages)
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POPSThe Straight Facts on Women in Poverty The best policy solutions to address women’s poverty must combine a range of decent employment opportunities with a network of social services that support healthy families, such as quality health care, child care, and housing support. Policy objectives must also recognize the multiple barriers to economic security women face based on their race, ethnicity, immigration status, sexuality, physical ability, and health status. These approaches must promote the equal social and economic status of all women by expanding their opportunities to balance work and family life.
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POPS"Godless nations look pretty good" In the categories of lowest infant mortality, gross domestic product per capita, economic equality, environmental protection, aid to poor nations, establishment of social justice and quality of life, it is again the most irreligious nations which make up most of the top 20. Not surprisingly, Zuckerman cherry-picked liberally biased categories and conveniently left out vital categories which America dominates like rich bankers per capita and rate of weekly church attendance. Stand your ground against tofu-eating, progressive evidence-based thinkers like Zuckerman. Let the invisible hand of the free-market work. Other than less violence, less poverty, health care for everyone, better public schools, better wages, better benefits, better government and a cleaner environment, you never know what America would look like without religion and unfettered capitalism.
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POPSEvicted for Reporting Domestic Abuse To add insult to injury, this past July Cleaves-Milan received a call from a collection agency seeking nearly $3,800 they claimed she owed for the early termination of her lease. She returned home a day after telling police her boyfriend threatened to kill her to find a 10-day eviction notice taped to her door. She didn't terminate her lease early – she was given no choice in the matter. Luckily Aimco dropped this fee, but only after the Chicago Tribune inquired. This story is horrific and unfortunately not uncommon. While the Violence Against Women Act of 2005 protects domestic abuse victims who live in public or subsidized housing from eviction, the law concerning private landlords is unclear. This lack of protection for women who rent in the private market creates a disincentive for women to report abuse, trapping women, and often their children, in violent relationships with no legal recourse.
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POPSThe "Twilight" Saga: Textbook abusive relationship more: And this movie is the one that made $140 million bucks in one weekend. Bigger than Dark Knight. Maybe it's just that I'm older and (hopefully) wiser than the characters and thus out of this movie's target demographic, or maybe I'm a humorless feminist, but knowing that zillions of girls are seeing this getting the idea that a seriously unhealthy relationship is somehow the equivalent of true love -- that is profoundly disturbing. Far scarier than a werewolf.
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POPSFederal Air Marshals Too Busy Being Criminals to Protect You The Federal Air Marshal Service presents the image of an elite undercover force charged with making split-second decisions that could mean the difference between stopping a terrorist and shooting an innocent passenger. The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general also flagged gaps in the background checks. "We can reassure the public that these dedicated professionals go out there every day and put their lives on the line to make sure that everyone is safe," Bray says. Before 9/11, the Air Marshal Service was a nearly forgotten force of 33 agents with a $4.4 million annual budget. Now housed in the Transportation Security Administration, the agency has a $786 million budget and an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 air marshals, although the official number is classified.
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POPS Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence? Domestic violence is a significant problem in the United States. Between 1989 and 2004, 21,124 women died at the hands of an intimate; 8,997 men died in domestic violence during the same time period. Because the U.S. Department of Justice does not catalogue the victim's or murderer's age, religion, ethnic background, or immigration status, it is not possible to know what proportion of these killings are honor-related.
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POPSRight-wing media and the fringe: A growing history of violence (and denial)
While right-wing media are certainly not legally culpable for any recent attacks, they are responsible for promoting a culture of fear, paranoia, and violence that is anti-government in the extreme -- a culture in which extremists, including von Brunn and Richard Poplawski, who fatally shot three Pittsburgh police officers, were apparently immersed. Poplawski was convinced that the Obama administration was going to take away his guns. Even though no evidence of such a policy exists, right-wing commentators and news organizations made the claim repeatedly before the shooting and have continued to do so since. Predictably, conservative media figures responded to the museum shooting by attempting to shift attention away from themselves and onto political liberals and even President Obama himself. On June 10, the day of the museum shooting, financial analyst and radio host Jim Lacamp said on Fox News that "we have an administration that's really done a lot of class warfare, a lot of cla
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POPSBBC: "Clinton admits US blame on drugs"!!!!! She also acknowledged that US efforts to ban drugs had so far been unsuccessful in stopping the narcotics trade. "Clearly, what we have been doing has not worked and it is unfair for our incapacity... to be creating a situation where people are holding the Mexican government and people responsible," she said. The BBC's Stephen Gibbs in Mexico says these points have been repeatedly made by Mexico, which sometimes sees itself as the setting for an American-financed and -armed war. In a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa in Mexico City, Mrs Clinton stressed the importance of working together to build a "common future". ... BBC
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POPSWomen With the horror of the recent "honor" killing in Georgia as the backdrop, I'm inspired to remind everyone that women die at the hands of male family members every day in the US. In fact, 4 times a day. I'm tired of the Right acting like they really care about women and gender equality. The only mention of women in the 2004 Republican platform is their insistence that if a woman gets pregnant, by law she'll stay that way until delivery. I went to a number of right wing websites and typed the words "violence against women" into their search engines. If any stories were listed at all, they were about honor killings in the Muslim world. The Right wrap their "concern" for women in the cloak of anti-Islamic rhetoric concerning honor killings and are dumb, deaf, and blind to all else. Enough. Islam is not the problem. Patriarchy is.
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POPSSocial change could spark violence
And this week, the FBI said that it is investigating whether anti-government sentiment played a role in the death of a U.S. Census worker who was found hanged from a tree in rural Kentucky, because the body had the word “fed” scrawled on the chest — though authorities say there are too many unanswered questions at this point to rule the case a homicide or a hate crime. There’s a big difference, of course, between a person who shouts at a congressman at a town hall and a person who would do something much more violent. But security experts say that the shouting incidents and other angry moments in recent weeks serve as indicators of an increase in political rage in the culture. That rage comes against a backdrop of enormous changes in American life. The United States suffered a humiliating economic collapse that threatens its long-term position as the world’s most important economy, with a staggering 9.7 percent unemployment rate. President Barack Obama made several controversial
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POPSHigh-Tech Spousal Abuse Getting Worse GPS makes it easy to track victims The latest twist: GPS gadgets that sell for hundreds of dollars that can be secretly installed on a victim’s vehicle. The unit beams coordinates to a Web page that maps the victim's car wherever it goes.
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POPSQuotes "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison "Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented notas a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac." – George Orwell "A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny." – Alexander Solzhenitsyn "War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals." – Charles Evans Hughes "Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead." - Arundhati Roy "Children learn more from what you are than what you teach." - W.E.B. Dubois, 1897 "Nonviolence doesn't always work-but violence never does" - Madge Micheels-Cyrus