That the anti-choice movement is anti-contraception is something pro-choicers have known for a long time.  As prominent pro-choice writer Scott Lemieux wrote:

The House vote to end Planned Parenthood funding would make very little sense — in some alternate universe where people who want to criminalize abortion were primarily concerned about protecting fetal life rather than regulating female sexuality.   In our actually existing political universe, it makes perfect sense.

But now it seems that for everyone else who wished to believe anti-choice activists when they yammer about fetuses, the ugly truth---that this is and always was about sex and women’s roles---can no longer be denied.  And especially not when the same conservatives who support a forced birth ideology also wish to destroy any policy that makes it easier for women to have paid employment, explicitly on the grounds that women shouldn’t be financially independent. 

One of the biggest problems that anti-choicers face is that their usual weapon of telling lurid lies doesn’t work so well when it’s applied to an organization as familiar to the average American as Planned Parenthood.  Lies about abortion get a little more traction, because most people don’t talk about abortion, and so knowledge about it is thin and lies can flourish in that vacuum.  But when someone like Lila Rose runs around trying to convince people that Planned Parenthood is colluding with sex traffickers, and kind of implying that Planned Parenthood is a front for prostitution, that lie is going to sound especially silly compared to the actual experiences people have with Planned Parenthood, which is basically going to a health clinic that's clean and professional, and generally more laid-back than most gynecologists.  As I joked to some friends over the weekend, if Planned Parenthood really keeps rape rooms in the back, as Lila Rose slid into implying on Glenn Beck, I figure I would have noticed something in the five years they were my main health care provider. Anti-choicers are so used to having people take their lies seriously, they got bold and started to think they could lie about stuff people actually know something about.  And that’s a little harder to pull off.

So, now there’s been a nationwide revelation that the anti-choice movement that the rest of the conservative movement is beholden to not the Fetus Lovers Club, but really the Anti-Sex League (with a side dose of trying to destroy the middle class by making it harder and harder for women to hold jobs that keep their families afloat).  The real question is, will this revelation go down the memory hole?  Will the mainstream media, now clued into the facts, change the narrative, or will they go right back into telling the same tired story about pro-choice vs “pro-life” in a week?   Will they let these new facts allow them to see that this fight is and always has been about women’s roles and control of female sexuality?  Will they start to see how anti-abortion views generally line up with anti-gay views and adherence to religious ideologies that teach female subservience? 

However, it is the content of her work that differentiates Artemisia Gentileschi from her Caravagist contemporaries. Her work heavily features women as central characters. In fact, 49 of her 57 works feature women protagonists.

And by protagonist, I mean women in roles of agency and power, displaying a level of character often denied them in more… decorative roles. Her subjects were often pulled from Biblical stories of women and many times they were stories colored by power imbalance under patriarchy.

For example, her first major work (at the age of 17), Susanna and the Elders, depicts the Biblical scene of assault for the traumatic event it is– one of the few paintings to treat it so. Gentileschi paints Susanna rejecting the creep old townsmen in fear and disgust, unlike the more common portrayal of a seductive, coy Susanna.

Her most famous work, Judith Slaying Holofernes, is interesting for so many reasons. It’s feminist value is most obvious when we compare it to Caravaggio’s interpretation of the same scene. Caravaggio follows the traditional depiction: Judith is disengaged and delicate, her handmaiden subservient, and (usually, but not in Caravaggio’s case) post-violence. Next to this, Gentileschi’s painting is an utter proclamation of women’s power.

A footballer named Ched Evans has been convicted of raping a young woman who was too drunk to give consent. What has followed is, of course, the foul chorus of rape apologism which ignites in an ugly crescendo every single fucking time. Each time this happens, the same set of tropes are trotted out as a means for somehow excusing the crime.

Victim-blaming

This is the first port of call for the rape apologist, and the prop on which all rape apologism ultimately rests. Here, rape apologists will do whatever they can to imply that the survivor somehow deserved what happened to them.

A little more than a week before the highly anticipated May Day protests, Oakland's power structure gave a clinic on how to get out in front of a story. With the entire Oakland police command staff, Mayor Jean Quan, City Administrator Deanna Santana, and clergy members arrayed behind him, Police Chief Howard Jordan announced an overhaul of OPD's crowd-control policy. "Our overarching goal is to facilitate these marches, these expressions of First Amendment rights," said Jordan, announcing the department's intention to increase use-of-force reporting, train all officers in crowd-control techniques, and use smaller, more mobile squads to arrest alleged troublemakers in large crowds.

But the backdrop to Jordan's announcement were two long-awaited reports on OPD's conduct over the past several months during Occupy Oakland protests — one from the independent monitoring team tasked with overseeing the reforms mandated by Oakland's nine-year-old federal consent decree, and a second report analyzing key incidents involving alleged police brutality — including Scott Olsen, Kayvan Sabehgi, and Scott Campbell.

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OPD wants it both ways? Military snatch and grabs and tanks, tear gas

Police Chief Howard Johnson said that the new tactics -- which include military style "snatch and grab" assaults on demonstrators, wherein small groups of trained officers target particular activists for arrest in crowds -- would replace heavy handed assaults on crowds, perhaps thinking the preemptive arrest tactic would sit better with the public. But the announcement of the sudden shift in policy was met with denunciations from civil liberties groups and activists, prompting the City to appear to back off, claiming that it would not deploy "snatch and grab" at May Day protests today.

But instead, Oakland's ABC affiliate reported Tuesday morning that police did indeed intend to deploy the new tactics:

Police say they are using new crowd control techniques to identify and get troublemakers out of the larger group....The tactics Oakland police are using reflect the changes made and lessons learned from previous Occupy demonstrations. The goal: to identify and remove demonstrators police identify as troublemakers before they incite the larger crowd.

Pre-crime, anyone? Sounds pretty creepy. The CIA, US military and mercenary company Blackwater have been engaged in snatch and grabs in Afghanistan for years. What's good enough for Blackwater in Afghanistan is apparently good enough for the police in Oakland? 

So what happened in the streets? 

OPD brought out both an "overwhelming military-type response" and its "new and improved" pre-crime snatch maneuvers.  

As for snatch and grabs, reports are still coming in, but we know for sure that officers tazed a one person before they arrested him and tackled a woman on a bike before arresting her. At least nine people have been arrested; it remains unclear how many were taken using the Blackwater-beloved, surprise assault mechanism.

The video above shows officers firing flash bangs into the crowd today; tear gas was also deployed...And OPD brought out this tank:

As part of their overall quarterly report on compliance with the Negotiated Settlement Agreement, federal monitors took a hard look at Oakland police actions during the early days of Occupy Oakland and they didn't like what they saw.

The latest update from federal monitors on the progress of the Oakland Police Department to comply in the settlement agreement was released Monday afternoon. Monitors said they were troubled by a number of police actions during the Occupy Oakland events that shut down the Port of Oakland and for a time, brought the downtown area to a standstill.

In an appendix to their quarterly NSA report, monitors indicated that police actions during Occupy Oakland will have a profound affect on whether or not OPD will be taken over by federal monitors.

Monitors or representatives from the monitoring team were in the city during Occupy Oakland activities from October through December 2011 - which included the port shutdown.

In many cases, the monitors said they were, "thoroughly dismayed" by police actions during Occupy Oakland events.

"I cannot overstate our concern that although progress on NSA compliance has been slow, even those advancements may have been put in doubt in the face of these events," the report states.

Specifically, the use of force is just one of several areas that raised a red flag for the monitors. Monitors said police response on Oct. 25, 2011, "The recordings of this incident involved an overwhelming military-type response to Occupy Oakland demonstrators."

In one specific incident, monitors noted that a citizen that was standing far away from officers during a Nov. 3 action, a police officer, "raised a weapon and fired, striking him in the upper thigh with a non-deadly projectile.

"The video shows a flash and a bang is heard; the citizen collapses while yelling," the report continues. "No police warning is audible before the shot is heard. This is a violation of the Department’s use of force and crowd control policies, which require officers to issue a warning before firing beanbags on protesters."

The monitors said in the report that OPD's lack of ability to timely investigate all of the complaints from Occupy Oakland is also troubling development.

"It does not appear that IAD will meet its rapidly approaching investigation deadlines (180 days following a complaint) required by both the NSA and Departmental policy," the report states. "If these internal and external investigations are not completed by the required deadlines, it will threaten OPD’s compliance with Task 2, which relates to investigation timeliness.

The full quarterly report from federal monitors had an overall somber, frustrated tone.

I. The Non-Negotiable Necessity of Autonomous Organizing

II. Institutional Struggles Over the Meaning of Anti-Oppression Politics: Politicians, Police, and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
a. On the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC), Again
b. Politicians and Police Who Are “Just Like Us”
c. Anticapitalism and the Material Reproduction of “Race” and “Gender”
d. The Racialization of Rape and the Erasure of Sexual Violence

III. The Limits of Contemporary Anti-Oppression Theory and Practice: Liberal Multiculturalism, Cultural Essentialism, and Privilege Theory
a. Identity is not Solidarity
b. Protecting Vulnerable Communities of Color and “Our” Women and Children: The Endangered Species Theory of Minority Populations and Patriarchal White Conservationism
c. On Nonprofit Certified “White Allies” and Privilege Theory

IV. Occupy Oakland as Example
a. Occupy Oakland, “Outside Agitators,” and “White Occupy”
b. The Erasure of People of Color From Occupy Oakland

V. Conclusion: Recuperating Decolonization and National Liberation Struggles; or, Revolution is Radically Unsafe

A song inspired by the May Day celebrations at Padstow in Cornwall where an ancient "Obby 'Oss" has for centuries been paraded through town. The words and tune, by contemporary songwriter Dave Webber, have entered the folk tradition.
Performed here by Magpie Lane and produced by Tim Healey.

[Trigger warning for the whole topic.  I'm talking about rape and abuse in the BDSM community. This post specifically contains narratives of rape and abuse. ]

I said in the last section that when the predators manipulate their way into central positions in BDSM communities, they are unstoppable.  We have to talk about this, and this is the uncomfortable part.  Predator Theory, backed by empirical research, tells us that the bad actors, the repeat, deliberate, serial abusers, are less than 10% of the general population (depending on the population; the research is sketchy, but 4% or 8% depending on whether one looks at Lisak’s college sample or McWhorter’s Navy sample).  Four out of a hundred, one out of twenty-five: someone we know.  Someone we’re friends with.  Someone we trust.  Someone who is friends with our friends.

And we do have a problem.  I’ll skip to the end: there’s no shortage of stories that start “I was abused” and end “when I tried to say something the community closed ranks around the abuser and I was frozen out.”  It’s happened to friends of mine.  It’s happened in communities where people insist that the community isn’t like that. 

To learn more about this project, please visit:
http://www.transformca.org/bay-area-transportation/brt/east-bay

BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) is a state of the art affordable transit system that offers the amenities of rail with the flexibility of a bus. Running in dedicated lanes that are free of traffic, and stopping at stations that are about 1/3 of a mile apart allows for fast, frequent and reliable transit service. The platform stations are level with the floor of the buses, eliminating the need for steps or wheelchair ramps and passengers can board through any door, which also speeds up boarding times.

The combined improvements create safer streets for bicyclists, pedestrians and even cars, and can lead to a 30% reduction in travel time for transit passengers, but most importantly, keeps transit running reliably every 5 minutes during peak hours.

The result is fast, frequent, and reliable transit that people can depend on."

1. She believes in evolution.

2. She's non-partisan.

She likes dogs AND cats.
3. She has touched Meryl Streep.

4. And Oprah.

5. She golfs.

(AP / Wilfredo Lee)
6. And bowls.

(AP / Beth A. Keiser)
7. But doesn't do volleyball.

Source: clintonlibrary.gov
8. She looked hot in the '90s.

9. And looks great with a ponytail.

Source: dailyorange.com
10. She WON A FREAKING GRAMMY AWARD.

FOR REAL.
11. She doesn't give a fuck what Bill says.

12. She makes this face when she gets annoying texts.

JUST LIKE YOU.
13. Yo! MTV Raps made a playing card of her.

Pretty cool.
Source: hiphopgov.org
14. She wears frog jewelry... ON HER SHOULDER.

15. She has her own store in Africa.

16. She looks better in blue than Angela Merkel.

17. She looks better in purple than Angela Merkel.

18. She carries a bottle of hot sauce where-ever she goes.

At least that's what this website says.
19. She makes this face sometimes.

And still doesn't give a fuck.
20. And this one too.

(Reuters / Saul Loeb)
21. She's a trendsetter.

Via: hillaryclintonhairsalon
22. This scarf.

23. When her hair blows in the wind she looks really hot and intense.

24. She's hip.

Down with the lingo.
25. She gets drunk on airplanes.

26. She walks like a boss.

27. She drives like a boss.

One hand on the wheel.
28. She might have an alien baby.

29. She makes duck face cool.

30. Sometimes she wears capes.

31. She drinks with elegance and grace.

Source: clintonesque
32. This picture is hot and cool.

33. She likes pizza.

34. And tacos.

35. She talks shit.

36. Amy Poehler took a picture with her before.

37. And so did Louis CK.

38. Someone made this painting of her holding a tiny baby.

39. She's awkward.

40. She drinks beer.

41. Does shots.

42. And if she gets drunk enough, she'll dance!

43. She wore this jacket before.

44. And this ugly Christmas sweater.

45. And last but not least, Ice-T thinks she's a G.

Occupy and its sympathizers have criticized police and Quan for the city's response to the group's protests since October. Protesters have accused officers of using batons and firing beanbag bullets and tear gas without justification and have pointed out that other large-scale protests across the country have not generated a similar response.

Protesters have also accused police of making unlawful mass arrests without ordering people to disperse.

Assaults on police

Police counter that some protesters have assaulted officers with knives, rocks, bottles and Mace.

On Monday, Jordan acknowledged that his department needed to improve the way it plans for large-scale protests and how it investigates individual officers "when they step over the line." An outside investigator is reviewing 38 Occupy-related complaints, and two officers have been moved to internal affairs "just to deal with Occupy complaints," the chief said.

The department will also be more diligent in tracking the movements and use of force by officers from outside agencies that come to Oakland for mutual aid, the chief said.

In January, experts overseeing the Police Department under a $10.5 million civil settlement in the "Riders" police misconduct scandal also said they had "serious concerns" about what they saw officers doing at some Occupy protests and questioned whether the department has made enough progress in bringing about change.

Judge's complaints

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, who is overseeing a consent decree stemming from the Riders case, has also complained about the slow pace of reforms.

"I am disappointed as well as everyone else that it took 10 years," Jordan said.

Jim Chanin, an attorney representing plaintiffs in the civil settlement, said Monday that he was suspicious about Jordan's announcement, given that the next report from the independent monitors is "imminent."

"We'll see in the future whether this means anything," Chanin said. "The time for words has long since passed."

Occupy activist Jaime Omar Yassin agreed, saying, "Of course, I don't believe it. This is a way of ameliorating public dissatisfaction with the fact that they can't get their act together to do the very simple reforms that are outlined in Henderson's judgment."

Henry K. Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Twitter: @henryklee. hlee@sfchronicle.com

As Pancho said, ‘The most effective weapon against a system based on greed and violence is kindness.’”
The night before, Pancho Ramos Stierle heard about growing tensions in the community and thought, “If police are stepping up their violence, we need to go and step up our nonviolence.” So on that Monday morning at 3:30 AM, Pancho and his housemate Adelaja went to the site of the Occupy Oakland raid. With an upright back and half-lotus posture, they started meditating. Many factions of protesters were around, but the presence of strong meditators changed the vibe. Around 6:30 a.m., the police showed up in full force: full-out riot gear, pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas. All media were present, expecting a headline story around this incredibly tense scene. Instead, they found thirty-two people, all peaceful, with Pancho and Adeleja meditating with their eyes closed in the middle of the Plaza. As the police followed their orders of arresting them, people took photos—particularly of two smiling meditators surrounded by police looking like they're ready to go to war. Within a day, that photo would spread to millions around the world, as Occupy Oakland raid ended without any reported violence.

Notable Women in Science: Modern Chemists

Our next installment of notable women in science brings us to chemists. Many of these women were born in the early part of the 20th century and forged their paths in tough times. All are still inspiring others today. Presented in no particular order:

the pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East. There is no sugarcoating it. They don't hate us because of our freedoms, as the tired, post-9/11 American cliché had it. We have no freedoms because they hate us, as this Arab woman so powerfully says.

Yes: They hate us. It must be said. 

Some may ask why I'm bringing this up now, at a time when the region has risen up, fueled not by the usual hatred of America and Israel but by a common demand for freedom. After all, shouldn't everyone get basic rights first, before women demand special treatment?

Two years ago I was raped for a second time. I did not know the man and I was away from home. I had multiple injuries which were documented by my doctor but I still did not feel able to report it for many reasons.

Because when I tried to report a previous rape, the police told me that the court wouldn't believe me because I have mental health problems.
Because people say "she's done it before" if a woman reports two rapes. The assumption is that a previous rape means she has made both of them up and she has some kind of agenda, not that she has been victimised twice.
Because of people like this and this.
Because if he had been found not guilty, or if I had lost my nerve, I might have been convicted and imprisoned myself.
Because the low conviction rates for rape made it feel pointless to even try.
Because my local Rape Crisis centre has an 6 month waiting list.
This isn't abstract speculation, this is my reality. These are the direct causes of a rapist 'getting away with it'. He has got away with it because every message from society tells me (and him) that I was wrong, not him.

When my GP saw my how bad my injuries were, she told me I had to report it to stop him doing it to anyone else.

A young woman sees the invasion of her land and the subjugation of her people and decides to lead an army of resistance against the invading force. She is the daughter of chiefs, a religious shaman in her own right. She is captured by the invaders, given a show trial, attended by the highest politician of the land and she is made to leave her chosen husband and marries one of the invaders. She is sent to the farthest reaches of the controlled territory where she raises a family and her labor is used to help to build a new outpost for the invasion that she fought. When she dies, her remains are buried at that outpost, far from her homeland. Her family continues in the area.

This is an interesting story which becomes more compelling when we learn that the place of her burial, that outpost her labor was used to build, was our Mission San Juan Bautista. Of the numerous stories that has been buried here in San Juan, here is one that has recently come to life. Toypurina was exiled so that her memory would fade and it has but due to the efforts of members of her southern community her story lives to be told.

She has been compared to Joan of Arc, the French heroine. As a young woman, Joan led an army against the invading forces and after being victorious, was betrayed, captured by her enemies, condemned by the church (which later made her a saint), and burned at the stake for her claim to be guided by God.

From what I have been told and gathered, Toypurina was a medicinewoman, born about 1761. It had been documented that her people were one of the tribes living in the area of Southern California bounded by Topanga Canyon on the North to Orange County and Laguna Beach and the Catalina Islands and the San Gabriel Mountains. Their existence has been traced back 8,000 years by archeologists. Their lives changed with the Spanish exploration in the 1500’s and the Mission Era of 1776 to 1834. They were used to build Mission San Gabriel and so their identifying name, Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians.

In 1785, at the age of 24, Toypurina led a revolt in response to the forbidding of the Native dances and the treatment of her people by their Spanish conquerers. Betrayed, she was captured, unarmed. One of the Gabrielenos told me that her trial was of sufficient importance that the Governor General of Alta California, Don Pedro Fages, took 17 days to travel from the Capitol in Monterey to Mission San Gabriel.

If you're one of the millions of people who get emails from MoveOn.org, then you've probably heard of the "99% Spring." Far from another clickable internet petition, it is possibly the largest attempt ever to train people in nonviolent protest techniques. Some Occupy types have criticized the effort as a scheme by Democratic operatives to co-opt their movement. But the reality is probably the opposite: It seems that America's best-known progressive fundraising organization is now taking its cues from Occupy Wall Street.

The Corrections Corporation of America and G4S (formerly Wackenhut), the two largest prison corporations, sell inmate labor at subminimum wages to Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM.

One of the world's largest funders of science is to throw its weight behind a growing campaign to break the stranglehold of academic journals and allow all research papers to be shared online.

Nearly 9,000 researchers have already signed up to a boycott of journals that restrict free sharing as part of a campaign dubbed the "academic spring" by supporters due to its potential for revolutionising the spread of knowledge.

But the intervention of the Wellcome Trust, the largest non-governmental funder of medical research after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is likely to galvanise the movement by forcing academics it funds to publish in open online journals.

When Georgia Republicans passed an anti-immigration law last year, Hispanic farm workers fled the state in droves, leaving farmers with no one left to pick the crops. Republicans said that they were creating new jobs for Americans by clearing out undocumented workers, but as it turns out, the law also scared many legal workers away as well and Americans aren’t crazy about working in the fields all day picking crops for little money. As a result, crops rotted, costing farm owners millions of dollars. Georgia Republicans then had an idea. Replace the field workers with dirt cheap prison labor.

According to 11 Alive News in Georgia, the state “is using transitional prison inmates to work in south Georgia’s Vidalia onion industry this spring. The program is an update of a failed program introduced in 2011, in which the state sent probationers into vegetable fields to help ease a labor shortage that followed the passage of a tough new immigration law. Growers complained that probationers were unreliable and slow compared to migrant workers who have historically worked in vegetable fields.”

Since the law passed in 2011, growers have complained about worker shortages and as a result of that shortage, crops have rotted. Rotting crops have caused strain on the food supply, causing some prices to rise. So while Republicans wage their race war against Hispanics, crucial fruits and vegetables are left to rot in the fields instead of being used to feed families who need them. And their idea to use prison labor is also a bad move. Republicans across the South are considering similar moves to replace union workers so that businesses can use cheap labor to make products and thus steal jobs held by Americans who earn good wages. Prison labor is a way for big business to find cheap labor here in the United States, and since the prison population is disproportionately African-American, it would basically be a return to slavery. And as the demand for cheap prison labor rises, Republicans will be pressured to keep the prison population high. That means more people will be sent to prison unnecessarily. It also means more Americans will lose their jobs. Why pay someone a fair living wage when businesses can pay pennies to a prisoner to do the same work? This is what we can expect if Republicans continue to be elected to office.

The city of Boston is staging its annual marathon. Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to officially run the race 45 years ago, despite stewards trying to physically force the 20-year-old off the road. Here she recalls how a female runner caused such a fuss.

Anything long like 800m, or even longer, God forbid, was considered dangerous, de-sexing and de-feminising for a woman.

[It was thought] that their uterus might fall out and their legs would get big, and maybe they would grow hair on their chests.

Running made me feel free and powerful. It was what I wanted to do, so I did it.

Continue reading the main story
Kathrine Switzer


Has run 35 marathons
Won 1974 New York City Marathon
Campaigned for the women's marathon to be included in the Olympic Games, which happened in 1984
I asked my coach, Arnie Briggs: "Do you think I'll be welcome at Boston? Maybe it's against the rules."

We got out the rule book, but there was nothing about women being forbidden in the marathon.

It was just assumed that no woman in her right mind would want to run a marathon and they wouldn't be capable anyway. So Arnie said: "Fill out the form".

We were milling around together doing our warm up exercises, so all the guys saw that I was a woman. But obviously the officials didn't.

I was nervous and anticipatory going into the race, but I was confident I could do the distance because I had just done a 31 mile (50km) run [in training]. But like any marathoner, you worry about things you can't control - like the weather or getting blisters.

The gun went off and down the street we went. At the start of a marathon you are so relieved. You have done all these months of training, it's like going to Mecca. At last, you're the pilgrim, you're making your voyage, so I felt wonderful.

Continue reading the main story
Find out more

Kathrine Switzer was interviewed on the BBC World Service programme, Sporting Witness

Download a podcast
Browse the archive
Two miles (3km) into the race, a truck came along packed with timers, scorers and officials. Behind that was the press truck which was loaded with photographers - and they went crazy seeing a woman in the race!

Then all of sudden I heard a scraping noise of shoes running faster than mine.

I turned around and I saw the angriest face I had ever seen. It was a race official, Jock Semple. He grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me back, and screamed: "Get the hell out of my race".

He started trying to rip off my bib numbers.

With that Arnie jumped in and said: "Leave her alone. She's OK, I've trained her. You stay out of this."

He [Jock Semple] came back and grabbed me again. He had me by the sweatshirt and I was trying to get away from him.

Continue reading the main story
Boston Marathon


The oldest annual marathon in the world
Began in 1897, one year after the first modern Olympic Games
Like all marathons, it is 26 miles and 385 yards (42km)
Held on the third Monday of April each year - locals refer to it as Marathon Monday
The first woman to unofficially complete the race was Roberta Gibb in 1966. She did not have a race number and hid in the bushes before the start
Women were officially allowed to enter in 1972
The first major marathon to include a wheelchair division in 1975
Source: Boston Athletic Association
He was pulling me back when all of sudden, my boyfriend, Tom Miller, came running full tilt and hit this race official with the most beautiful cross-body block you could ever imagine, and sent him flying through the air.

Arnie's eyes got huge. He said: "Run like hell," and down the street we went.

I was crying, I was so terrified that my boyfriend had hit this official. I was embarrassed and really, really scared.

I realised at that moment that everything had changed. Suddenly it became a contest of proving that women could do it.

The official was trying to throw me out of the race simply because I was a woman. He didn't believe I was serious or that I was entitled to be there.

He had shamed me so much in front of the whole world. And then that turned to anger and I was so determined that nothing was going to stop me.

I thought: "I deserve to be here. If I can do the distance then why not? It's a public road."

[But] I was very afraid because this official had got up off the pavement, got back on the bus, and about half a mile later cursed at us loudly again.

By that point all the guys were on my side, so you can imagine what they said to him.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

I started the Boston Marathon as a young girl, and came out the other end a grown woman”

I just thought he was a man out of control, but he was also a man of his time.

In 1967 women were not supposed to be going out in public and doing these kinds of things.

I grew up during the race. I started the Boston Marathon as a young girl, and came out the other end a grown woman.

About 20 miles (32km) into the race, I came to the conclusion that when I finished, I was going to try to be a better athlete and try to create opportunities for women so they would experience the same sense of power, strength and freedom that I had.

When I crossed the finish line, it wasn't like "Wow! I did it - I did my first marathon". It was like "Wow! I've got a life plan!"

Kathrine Switzer was interviewed on the BBC World Service programme, Sporting Witness. You can download a podcast of the programme or browse the archive.

Chancellor Katehi, on her part, "thought she made it clear" that when police ordered the students to leave, they were (a) not to wear riot gear into the camp, (b) not to carry weapons of any kind into the camp, (c) were not to use force of any kind against the students, and (d) were not to make any arrests. But all that anybody else on that conference call heard her say out loud was "I don't want another situation like they just had at Berkeley," and Chief Spicuzza interpreted that as "no swinging of clubs."

Chief Spicuzza "thought she made it clear" more than once that no riot gear was to be worn and no clubs or pepper sprayers were to be carried. What Lieutenant Pike said back to her, each time, was, "Well, I hear you say that you don't want us to, but we're going to." And they did, including that now-infamous Mk-9 military-grade riot-control pepper sprayer that he used. Oh, funny thing about that particular model of pepper-sprayer? It's illegal for California cops to possess or use. It turns out that the relevant law only permits the use of up to Mk-4 pepper sprayers. The consultants were unable to find out who authorized the purchase and carrying, but every cop they asked said, "So what? It's just like the Mk-4 except that it has a higher capacity." Uh, no. It's also much, much higher pressure, and specifically designed not to be sprayed directly at any one person, only at crowds, and only from at least six feet away. The manufacturer says so. The person in charge of training California police in pepper spray says that as far as he knows, no California cop has ever received training, from his office or from the manufacturer, in how to safely use a Mk-9 sprayer, presumably because it's illegal. But Officer Nameless, when he wrote the action plan for these arrests, included all pepper-spray equipment in the equipment list, both the paint-ball rifle pepper balls and the Mk-9 riot-control sprayers.

Whenever I read a news report about police assaulting a homeless guy or unleashing a stream of pepper spray on peaceful protesters, I always wonder where the good cops are. I mean, we're constantly assured that most police officers are good cops, and that their reputation is being besmirched by a few bad apples. So why aren't those good cops busy tasering their off-base colleagues? Or at least giving them a good thumping?

The answer, it appears is "Regina Tasca." She's a Bogota, New Jersey, police officer who responded to a medical call to transport an emotionally disturbed young man to the hospital. As per protocol, she called for backup. Two officers from Ridgefield arrived on the scene, and proceeded to whomp on Kyle, the guy they were supposedly helping. According to WPIX:

Plenty of cop "beat downs" can be found online, but how often does the officer who stops others from handing out the beating get fired for it? That's exactly what's happening to Officer Regina Tasca in the Bogota Police Department.

Tasca's dashboard camera captured her as she attempted to stop two officers from beating an emotionally disturbed young man. Just days after the incident, she was told she was being suspended with pay. A year later, her trial is about to begin as the Bogota PD seeks to fire her.

It Isn't Civil Disobedience If You're Not Breaking the Law--students had a right to be there, doing what they were doing.
....
Lt. Pike reportedly disobeyed a direct order to deploy that day without riot gear. He carried with him a pepper spray disbursement mechanism bigger and more powerful than what UC Davis police are authorized to carry and use.

Apparently untrained in using that disbursement device, he shot pepper spray at a distance far closer than is recommended in its instructions for safe use. While claiming that he was afraid for his safety due to being encircled by students, Lt. Pike failed to perceive the openings in the circle confirmed by video evidence,

The question, as Balkan noted at the start of the Obama presidency, is not whether we will have a growing surveillance and police state, but what that state will be like. Obama has begun to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he hasn’t begun to roll back the most extreme civil liberties abuses tied to the earliest phases of that war. Liberals expected otherwise from a former constitutional law professor and candidate who campaigned against the excesses of the Bush administration.   

Susan Dorothea White
The First Supper, 1988
acrylic on panel, 120 x 240 cm (48" x 96")
click for detail
I was inspired to paint The First Supper after Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, by the narrative drama and magnificent composition of Leonardo's painting. I wanted to challenge the patriarchal concept of thirteen men on one side of a table that is accepted as a celebrated religious symbol. In place of the men, all with similar features, I painted an international group of women.

The significance of the Australian bicentennial in 1988 influenced my painting. There were conflicting attitudes towards this 200th anniversary of the arrival of the first settlers in Australia. Although many celebrated the bicentennial, Aboriginal people and their supporters saw it as a commemoration of a white invasion.

In place of the central Christ figure is an Aboriginal woman wearing a T-shirt bearing the Aboriginal flag. The other women represent people living in Australia today from different parts of the world. Foods originating from different regions of the world are positioned on the table, in relation to the women. The figure in the position of Leonardo's Judas, is a blonde holding an Aboriginal dilly-bag in place of the money-purse - she has a can of Coca-Cola and a hamburger, while the rest each have a glass of water and a bread roll.

The large rock through the left window is an important sacred site for Aboriginal people, called Uluru; it was returned to them recently as freehold land by the Australian Government.

Susan D White

Both Oakland police Chief Howard Jordan and Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, speaking during a panel discussion sponsored by the California Association of Black Lawyers, said their agencies have taken a measured approach toward the Occupy Oakland movement. But Jordan admitted there were "several instances where I felt our officers did not act appropriately." Jordan refused to detail those instances, but promised his department will not argue against an upcoming report investigating the department's reaction to Occupy Oakland and will heed any recommendations it contains.
The Oakland Police Department has been under scrutiny from civil rights attorneys and Occupy Oakland members for its sometimes-violent reaction toward several demonstrations that began last year after an Occupy encampment at City Hall was torn down by the city. During a protest after the encampment was demolished, Oakland police used tear gas, rubber bullets and other less-than-lethal tools against demonstrators who were attempting to barge through a police line and return to their campsite at Frank H. Ogawa Plaza.
That initial police reaction immediately
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made Occupy Oakland the nation's most watched protest related to the movement and sparked denouncements from across the globe about excessive use of force by police. Similar scenes played out late last year and earlier this year as the movement continued to hold protests.
Jim Chanin, a civil rights attorney who has sued Oakland on several occasions in various police use-of-force cases, said the department's handling of the Occupy Oakland movement was in violation of rules the department must follow during crowd-control situations. The violations, Chanin said, included using tear gas on the group and indiscriminately shooting rubber bullets at the crowd.
"These policies were regularly violated," he said.
Jordan said he learned a lot from the protests but defended his department's reactions, saying his officers constantly struggled with allowing peaceful protests to continue while trying to arrest a small group intent on causing damage.
Since Occupy Oakland began, Jordan said, his officers have interacted with more than 60,000 protesters, but have only arrested a fraction of that number. Those figures prove, he said, that Oakland police are intending only to arrest those acting violently.
O'Malley agreed, saying accusations by Occupy Oakland members that her office is abusing its power by maliciously prosecuting anyone involved with the movement are baseless. O'Malley said her office has charged roughly 65 people with crimes related to the Occupy Oakland movement, compared with the hundreds of protesters who have been arrested. And, she said of those 65 cases, only 14 defendants have had stay-away orders issued against them. "You can see from the number of charges that we have been very careful," she said. "We have focused on those individuals engaged in violent behavior."
But Laleh Behbehanian, a member of Occupy Oakland's Anti-Repression Committee, said Occupy Oakland is being targeted by law enforcement in an attempt to squash the movement. "This is a perversion of the legal system that is being used to repress," she said. "If you throw feces at an officer, yes, you should be held accountable, but the 100 people around you should not be tear-gassed."

If you think being accused of upholding rape culture means any of these things, you are wrong, and it is because you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what rape culture means.  Here is what they are actually saying:
Your words and/or actions are in some way participating in the creation and maintenance of a social climate in which consent is minimized and/or mocked, the bodies of all people who are not men are considered public property/disposable commodities, the boundaries of people who are not men are routinely violated in ways large and small, people who are not men are actively discouraged from having and holding firm on personal boundaries via negative social feedback ("bitch", "frigid", etc), and an ever-shifting and -increasing set of required behaviors are shoveled onto people who are not men in order to prevent themselves from being raped, and if they are raped it is presumed to be because they failed in some way to meet every single one of the required behaviors and therefore they are at fault.
Or, to put it more concisely, your behavior is contributing to a cultural phenomenon that hurts and even kills a lot of people.  This is a Bad Thing.  You don't want to contribute to something that harms people, do you?

When employers are seriously about hiring more people with certain qualifications, they pay them more. Harvard University, where this entire debate occurred, earned $4.5 billion in investment income in 2006. The basic operation of the university, research and teaching, was cashflow-neutral and therefore Harvard could spend this $4.5 billion in any way that it chooses. Typically universities spend their tax-free investment winnings on lavish real estate development, e.g., $200 million buildings by signature architects that Saddam Hussein or a Saudi royal would have been proud to include among his palaces, and thus we may infer that lavish new buildings are a real priority for them.
With control of the budget at a university, one could change the sex ratio in science and math very quickly. Here's how it might look:

female undergraduates majoring in science or math pay no tuition, room, or board fees. If a woman maintains an A average, she gets a stipend of $10,000 per year to spend however she wishes.
female graduate students in science and math earn $70,000 per year, about triple what male graduate students earn.
female assistant professors in science and math earn a starting salary of $300,000 per year, up there with the average medical specialist
female tenured professors in science and math get paid $500,000 per year, comparable to what a high-talent professional might earn in mid-career
What would this cost? The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences employs 700 professors, only a small portion of whom are in science or math. Suppose that our goal is to switch 200 faculty positions from being held by men to being held by women. That would cost approximately $50 million per year in incremental salary by the preceding schedule. Adding in the costs for a (well-paid) mostly-female population of math and science students, it would be difficult to get to a cost of $100 million per year, or only about 1/45th of investment income.
If a woman scientist is worth more to the university and to society than a male scientist, she should be paid more. The fact that she isn't indicates that this issue is lower priority than any of the things that the universities does spend money on, e.g., those palatial new buildings.

The government of Iceland has forgiven the mortgage debt for much of its population. This nation chose a very different way of stopping the crisis from the rest of European countries. It decided to hear the requests of the population and to put politicians and bankers on the bench of the accused three years after their financial excesses would sank one of the most prosperous economies in 2008. teleSUR

aggregates all job postings

how it works.

LOTs of street art--all kinds!

lots of info!

Privly could be a useful tool for activists who want to use social networking tools but don’t want their opponents to be able to see their posts. That its to say, it could provide a new avenue for free speech on the Internet. As noted earlier, we assume cloud-based email and applications to be durable records of communication. That would not longer be the case. And of course, this model runs directly against the standard social network business model of running ads against the specific type of content you’ve posted.
On an even more longer term vein, I asked McGregor how Priv.ly would impact law enforcement using social media at times in criminal investigations. McGregor said it hasn’t been a concern with the project yet but that they would “want to spell out in plain English where data is being stored; what the risks are;  and how we would respond to subpoena requests.”

The training is quite good. Go because it’s great to be on the same page for a moment with eager, enthusiastic 99 percenters who want to make this great land of ours a better one. Drop your defenses (if you have any) and rest assured no one is talking about elections. Let’s focus on the original OWS vision: mass, creative, effective direct action against the banks, Wall Streeters and political forces that drove our economy off a cliff and want to charge us for getting back on the precipice again

So here we are having this discussion, and I'm feeling all cool because it's happening, and then someone asks two women of color to give their perspective on the proceedings at hand.  Dr. Rubidium remarked ironically, graciously, and hilariously about being put on the spot to speak for all black women in science.  Then she said something like this:  that she was always a black woman in science. She couldn't separate the black part and the woman part.  They came together.  That, from a very young age, she grew up hearing so many stupid comments that by the time she got to see them in a different context (i.e., blog comments), she was almost immune.

Damn.  Here I was walking around being a woman, doing my women in science shit. My WHITE women in science shit. CLANG! I hate being asked to speak for all women, but when I'm with my women peeps you know, that never happens!

I was having an appalling out-of-body sort of experience, listening to an ongoing monologue in my head, wondering "who is this sexist asshole and how did she get inside my brain?"

At first I was conscious only of having a very negative reaction to Mayor.  This felt bizarre, since I knew absolutely nothing about her. Long ago a wise woman told me, "when you find something that makes you angry, upset, or disgusted, move toward it instead of away. Try to figure out why you feel that way.  You may learn something about yourself."  So I attended to the incoherent thoughts in my brain, to puzzle out this negative reaction.  Here is the ugliness I unraveled as Mayor spoke.

A (self-admitted) conservative male acquaintance recently asked me what the War on Women means. Herein I will attempt to answer him.

First, let me provide a shortened definition of War: “War is an organized, armed, and often a prolonged conflict that is carried on between states, nations, or other partiestypified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality…” For the past ten years or so, there has been a nationwide assault by Right-wing Conservatives in this nation on women’s reproductive health (birth control, abortion, and access those services, etc.) that could certainly fit the definition of War. The political, social, and moral assaults by all strata of conservatism at the federal, state, and local levels of government across the U.S. have been unrelenting in nature and socially disruptive.

Both the UCPD and the FBI also agreed to:

* Destroy the data they seized as part of the raid; and
* Pay a total of $100,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees caused by the raid.

"We hope that in view of this lawsuit and this favorable settlement, law enforcement will think twice before they raid other radical spaces on flimsy pretenses," said Jesse Palmer, a long-time participant in Long Haul operations. "The raid was an abuse of power. The police refused to show Long Haul representatives a copy of the search warrant, prevented anyone from watching what they were taking during the raid, and preferred to cut locks rather than accept our offer to unlock doors. The raid was a fishing expedition and an attempt to intimidate and harass radicals undertaken by the FBI and UCPD, but as the settlement demonstrates, it was the police who broke the law. We've done nothing wrong."

Genderfork is a supportive community for the expression of identities across the gender spectrum.

It's maintained by a really wonderful team of volunteers.

What is a gender-neutral pronoun? What does English need a new pronoun for, anyway? Many people have expressed the need for a singular gender-neutral third-person pronoun: that is, a pronoun to use when someone’s gender is unknown or when the individual is neither male or female. Such instances occur when addressing transgender and genderqueer people who don’t feel comfortable being addressed with masculine or feminine pronouns, computers or robots with artificial intelligence, sexless fictional creatures, angels, and the God of many monotheistic religions. “He,” “she,” or “it” won’t do, “one” doesn’t work when speaking of a specific person, e.g. “Samus washed one’s dishes,” and in some cases even a singular “they” just won’t work – specifically when a name is used, e.g. “Charlie tied their shoes” or “Sam thought they were late to the party.” (For more information, check out the comprehensive links page.)

120 Song RDNA Druidic Karaoke Homepage

A Reformed Druid Anthology

ARDA is the unofficial, (barely) portable version of the Reform's archives, densely crammed with material from the past 40 years by dozens of authors. It is light-hearted, but usually sincere, and sometimes wise. Many of us get along well without these written texts, but ARDA might be useful for research.
There are 2 editions of ARDA, the 1996 & 2003 versions. ARDA 2 is divided into 3 volume and is 6 times larger than the relatively light ARDA 1 version. ARDA 1 & 2 both come in Adobe's .pdf format, which is used widely for presenting lengthy, intricate page-layouts for a constant clear presentation, and are "search-able". Adobe Acrobat Reader is a FREE download for .pdf format, and it is usually already installed on your computer, but also quickly available at the button to the right. ARDA 2 is also in MS Word's .doc format, if you need the pictures, or to compile your own tailored version.

Larger files may require up to 4 minutes to fully load pictures.

Note: An alternative back-up download site, thanks to Bruce, is at http://saher.cwahi.net/.

Top Rated Street Art - "a woman releasing all of her fears and nightmares.....no words to say"

Yes, as he sees it. Not, of course, that how he sees it bears any relationship to reality. If Jim Watson has even the remotest idea of what the real Rosalind Franklin was actually like, he has never uttered a single word to indicate so.
Does Jim Watson really have nothing better to do with his time than to offer up constant desperate attacks on a dead woman in order to prove that he really, truly did deserve his Nobel and that it really, truly was okay that he stole Franklin's data and didn't give her credit for it? Apparently not. The only thing more pathetic than the sight of this miserable old man maligning a dead woman is the way journalists and scientists fawn over his every slimy word.
Now pardon me while I go off and hork up my lunch. Which, preferably, said horking would occur in the direction of Watson's shoes, but he isn't worth the gas money it would take to drive up to Cold Spring Harbor.

When the level of competition is reduced, the hypothesis might go, high-performing women are increasingly likely to enter the competition. When they then win, it need not be at the cost of a higher-performing man; that man might only have won against a weaker pool.
A second Science article tests this hypothesis. In Affirmative action policies promote women and do not harm efficiency in the laboratory, Loukas Balafoutas and Matthias Sutter run 360 subjects through four different repetitions of an addition task, in which they solve as many math problems as they can in three minutes.
The first time they do it, they are rewarded for each correct calculation. The second time they do it, they are groups of six — three men and three women — and only the two best performers are rewarded. The third time they do it, they can choose if they want to do it individually — and be rewarded for each correct answer — or in a competition — and be rewarded more if they are one of two winners. The fourth time they all do it in a competition again, like in the second round.

For this album, I wanted to write a song in support of the “Gendered Conference Campaign” started by you folks at the feminist philosopher’s blog. You (= the people who run the blog) have done a great job at raising awareness of the importance of making women in the profession more visible through a combination of consciousness raising and naming and shaming. As someone who recently co-organized a large conference in metaphysics, I can testify that having this issue made salient in our minds was motivationally effective. We (= the 21st Century Monads) wanted to help spread the message in some way.
Jender: What are you hoping achieve by releasing this song?
Kris: We hope to provide another venue to get the message out. We have a surprisingly decent-sized audience given who we are and what our music is about. Some of our fans are undergraduates and graduate students at the start of their careers who might not otherwise be thinking about the issues the song raises. (Most undergraduates and newly minted graduate students aren’t organizing conferences or editing anthologies.) It seems to me that it’s a good thing if we can get them involved in the conversation early on. And in general, since we don’t know the extent to which people listening to our music are regular readers of your blog or vice-versa, the song might reach some new people. I think (I hope) the song is catchy, enjoyable to listen to, and funny, and maybe that will help make people receptive to the message.
I’m also hoping that people like yourself and your fellow bloggers – people who’ve been actively transmitting the message – will take some pleasure in the fact that we are saying with this song “message received”.
Jender: Are there any misinterpretations you worry about?
We did have some concerns. First, that some people might be put off by the term “lady”. Second, that the song itself might come across as slightly prurient or salacious. But I thought that this actually works to the advantage of the song though: the first two lines in the song set up expectations that something unsavory is intended (“why does he want to see the ladies??!”), but then the rest of the lyrics defuse the implication, and hence the song is funny without coming across as being excessively preachy. That is my hope anyways. I also was a little concerned that releasing a jokey song about a topic that a lot of people care about might leave the impression that we aren’t taking the issues seriously, when in fact the exact opposite is true.

The Gendered Conference Campaign aims to raise awareness of the prevalence of all-male conferences (and volumes, and summer schools), of the harm that they do. We make no claims whatsoever about the causes of such conferences: our focus is on their existence and effects. We are therefore not in the business of blaming conference organisers, and not interested (here, anyway) in discussions of blameworthiness. Instead, we are interested in drawing attention to this systematic phenomenon. (We also have an awesome theme song. And an interview about the theme song can be found here..
The harms: All-male events and volumes help to perpetuate the stereotyping of philosophy as male. This in turn to contributes to implicit bias against women in philosophy, which very likely leads even those genuinely committed to gender equality to evaluate women’s contributions as less good than men’s. (It may also in some cases be caused by implicit bias, which means that women’s names will leap less easily to mind than men’s, but that is not our topic here.) For a quick discussion, go here. It also perpetuates stereotype threat, which very likely keeps women from performing as well in philosophy as they otherwise would. For some longer discussions, you may want to look at Sally Haslanger’s and Jenny Saul’s papers on the topic. (Jenny’s is a download from the right hand side of her page.) We would like these harms to stop, and we think that a significant step toward achieving that is drawing people’s attention to some of their causes.
See also our FAQ for the quick run-down!

With sources!
As the Occupy Oakland protests continued this winter, so did confrontations between Oakland Police Department officers and protesters. In the most recent incident, which happened on January 28 after Occupy Oakland supporters attempted to take over the Kaiser Convention Center in order to transform it into a social center, over 400 protesters were arrested, many after police encircled marchers and did not allow them a clearly indicated avenue to disperse.

That incident, coupled with recent public forums at which marchers aired allegations of mistreatment by police, has raised questions about whether the OPD was adhering to its crowd control policy, a document last updated in 2005. The Citizen’s Police Review Board is currently organizing another forum to discuss the police response to Occupy Oakland.

The following is a visual exploration of the set of policies–both the OPD’s crowd control policy as well as other city regulations and sections of the California Penal Code–that are supposed to guide how police and protesters interact. Information contained in the Revised Crowd Control Policy for OPD was used as source material for all of the following slides; citations for additional sources is cited after each slide.

AFTER years as a civil rights lawyer, I rarely find myself speechless. But some questions a woman I know posed during a phone conversation one recent evening gave me pause: “What would happen if we organized thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people charged with crimes to refuse to play the game, to refuse to plea out? What if they all insisted on their Sixth Amendment right to trial? Couldn’t we bring the whole system to a halt just like that?”

The woman was Susan Burton, who knows a lot about being processed through the criminal justice system.

As Long As Women Have Been Getting Pregnant…
Posted on April 7, 2012
…they have been getting ‘unpregnant.’ From a recent Frank Bruni op-ed (boldface mine):

He has thought a lot about how customs, laws and religion do and don’t jibe with women’s actions and autonomy.

“In all centuries, through all history, women have ended pregnancies somehow,” he said. “They feel so strongly about this that they will attempt abortion even when it’s illegal, unsafe and often lethal.”

It is time advocates for safe and legal abortion embrace and fully accept a simple reality: the termination of pregnancy is as an essential part of female biology as pregnancy is. We must jetison the typical language of “Well, it’s the least worst option”, but that access to abortion is a moral good, as Reverend Katherine Ragsdale notes:

And when a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion — there is not a tragedy in sight – only blessing. The ability to enjoy God’s good gift of sexuality without compromising one’s education, life’s work, or ability to put to use God’s gifts and call is simply blessing.

Amen selah to that.

<Bible re-translated to equate fetus with human>

The New American Standard Bible translated this passage that same way up until 1977. But something changed between 1977 and 1995 — something that had nothing to do with scholarship, language, accuracy, fidelity or readability.

American politics had changed between 1977 and 1995. It had polarized and radicalized millions of American Protestants, rallying them around a single issue and thus, as intended, rallying them behind a single political party.

In 1977, the sort of American Protestants who purchased most Bibles couldn’t be summed up in a single word. But by 1995, they could be: “abortion.”

And for anti-abortion American evangelicals, Exodus 21:12-27 was unacceptable. It suggested that striking and killing an unborn fetus was in a separate category from striking and killing a “person.” Strike and kill a free person, you get the death penalty. Strike and kill an unborn fetus, you get a fine.

And so in 1995, like those earlier translators who invented and inserted “Junias,” the translators of the NASB reshaped this passage. “She has a miscarriage, yet there is not further injury” would, in consideration of the changes in American politics since 1977, henceforth be transformed into “she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury.”

Politics — specifically, the political desire to control women — shaped the translation of that text. The translators changed the words of the Bible to make it seem like it supported their political agenda. They changed the words of the Bible so that others reading it would not be able to see that its actual words challenged and contradicted their political agenda.

Monday February 27, 2012
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explains how fear contributed to the development of America's space program in the late 1950s, thereby spurring economic growth.

Let me break it down as simply as possible.

1) Blogger writes a post pointing out the inequality in how men and women are treated online. She gives multiple examples of women who receive threats of rape and death, where men receive far less viciousness.

2) Random dude reads this post and immediately feels defensive and attacked as a man.

Why is that, I wonder? Is it because harassing and abusing women is, in your opinion, part of being a man? Is it because you’ve personally done things like this and you dislike being called on it? What is it that makes you read this as a personal attack on your gender?

Because you know what? If you haven’t done these things, then it’s not about you! And if you have, then it’s not about you being a guy; it’s about you being an asshole.

Like I said, it’s not just one commenter. It’s one person after another pulling out this same rhetorical garbage, and it’s tiresome.

At Facebook's core is the social graph; people and the connections they have to everything they care about. The Graph API presents a simple, consistent view of the Facebook social graph, uniformly representing objects in the graph (e.g., people, photos, events, and pages) and the connections between them (e.g., friend relationships, shared content, and photo tags).

Every object in the social graph has a unique ID. You can access the properties of an object by requesting https://graph.facebook.com/ID. For example, the official page for the Facebook Platform has id 19292868552, so you can fetch the object at https://graph.facebook.com/19292868552:

{
"name": "Facebook Platform",
"website": "http://developers.facebook.com",
"username": "platform",
"founded": "May 2007",
"company_overview": "Facebook Platform enables anyone to build...",
"mission": "To make the web more open and social.",
"products": "Facebook Application Programming Interface (API)...",
"likes": 449921,
"id": 19292868552,
"category": "Technology"
}

Occupy Oakland activists accused the county's district attorney on Tuesday of abusing her power through "trumped-up prosecutions" in an effort to squash their movement.
Using a recent robbery and hate crime case charged against three protesters as an example, protesters and their attorneys said Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley is purposely prosecuting Occupy Oakland members for serious felonies even though their cases warrant, at most, misdemeanor charges.
"We would not be here if this wasn't about Occupy," said Joe Rogoway, an attorney representing Randolph Wilkins, 24, against a charge of second-degree robbery with a hate crime enhancement.
Wilkins, along with Michael Davis, 32, and Nneka Crawford, 23, were each charged with second-degree robbery and a hate crime in connection with a February confrontation the trio had with a woman on Piedmont Avenue.
According to the defendants' attorneys, the confrontation began when the woman yelled at the protesters who had gathered in front of an ice-cream store to plan a protest in front of a Wells Fargo Bank branch.
During the argument the protesters called the woman a "dyke" and the woman called the protesters a racial slur, the attorneys said. The woman denies using a racial slur.
When police arrived, the woman said her wallet had been stolen.
Police never recovered the wallet, and the defendants' attorneys said the woman admitted during a preliminary hearing
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last month that she had used a racial slur during the argument and shoved the protesters.
Nevertheless, an Alameda County judge ruled there was enough evidence in the case to move it toward a jury trial, and all three defendants were arraigned Tuesday.

Rule #4: Don’t Share Your Video with Police
If you capture video of police misconduct or brutality, but otherwise avoid being identified yourself, you can anonymously upload it to YouTube. This seems to be the safest legal option. For example, a Massachusetts woman who videotaped a cop beating a motorist with a flashlight posted the video to the Internet. Afterwards, one of the cops caught at the scene filed criminal wiretapping charges against her. (As usual, the charges against her were later dropped.)

On the other hand, an anonymous videographer uploaded footage of an NYPD officer body-slamming a man on a bicycle to YouTube. Although the videographer was never revealed, the video went viral. Consequently, the manufactured assault charges against the bicyclist were dropped, the officer was fired, and the bicyclist eventually sued the city and won a $65,000 settlement.

My knowledge of the Occupy movement is derived primarily from my experience in Oakland.  We have seen counter-insurgent efforts of this type before: when Mayor Quan’s Block-by-Block campaign organization tried to set up a “peace camp” right before the raid of the second Occupy Oakland encampment; when the one singular thing reporters wanted to know from press contacts before the December 12th Port Shutdown was “How can we get the protesters to obey police orders?” or their myopic fixation on the property destruction that they consider “violence;” to Quan’s unheeded call for the “leaders of the Occupy movement” to condemn said “violence” (by which she means people carrying shields who were hit with projectiles and beaten, while groups of children were tear-gassed): or how permits, taken out behind Occupy Oakland’s back, were used to arrest people for possession of blankets in Oscar Grant Plaza – some of whom are facing prison time; to Quan’s use of non-profits as a palatable alternative to a violent, discredited, and costly movement in a press-release and subsequent “volunteer fair.”  All of this counter-insurgent misrepresentation, baiting, discreditation, and divisiveness is wearying and something we need to get better at combating.  It has also only been partially effective.  An Oakland Tribune poll found that 94% of Oaklanders support Occupy Oakland, even after all of the efforts I outlined above.  We shouldn’t find a false complacency in this.  It should be noted that even though most of these were attempts at co-optation, most came from clearly demarcated enemies.

99% Spring is attempting to graft itself to Occupy and hollow it out from the inside out, imposing rigid norms of non-violence and deference to police authority, while watering down our politics and introducing well-funded and trained institutions that are either fully invested in, or dependent upon, the exist power structure – and have the resources, connections and will of self-preservation to navigate the Occupy ship into a doldrums from which it will never emerge.  Despite the undemocratic and self-defeating norm of consensus, we, as an Occupy movement, still have a sense of what we came here to do.  We didn’t come here to sign petitions or to get Obama reelected.  We didn’t come here to “have a voice in the system”; we came here to flip it on its head.  We will not be co-opted.  We should not have our tactics determined by the Democratic Party. 

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They ‘fired’ the top 1% of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1% was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment.

OAKLAND -- Oakland police will miss the deadline to finish investigating complaints stemming from the first Occupy Oakland eviction last Oct. 25, potentially placing the department one step closer to a federal takeover.
"We did not have the capacity to complete these high number of complex complaints within 180 days," City Administrator Deanna Santana said.
Santana and police Chief Howard Jordan have informed a federal monitor overseeing the police department that police won't meet the April 25 deadline but would not disclose if the department might face repercussions.
Under state law, police have a year to complete the internal affairs investigations, but Oakland police are required to complete theirs within 180 days under a 2003 agreement that settled a prior police misconduct lawsuit.
The department has struggled to fully implement reforms spelled out in the agreement, leading a federal judge earlier this year to threaten placing the department under receivership if it didn't make substantial progress in the coming months.
Jim Chanin, an attorney who helped negotiate the 2003 settlement, said the department had no excuse for not completing the investigations on time.
"To miss the deadline on something like this is not acceptable," he said. "The best solution is to have a demonstration with fewer complaints, like the other cities in the United States of America."
Police processed 721 complaints and opened 18
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internal affairs investigations stemming from the Oct. 25 eviction and subsequent protests that were punctuated by former U.S. Marine Scott Olsen sustaining a skull fracture.
Overall, the department has received more than 1,090 complaints related to Occupy Oakland protests -- more than double the total number of complaints filed in 2004, Jordan said. The department also will likely miss the 180-day deadline to complete investigations into complaints related to Occupy protests on Nov. 2, he said.
Police leaders realized in February that the department's 32-member Internal Affairs Division wouldn't be able to meet the deadline for completing investigations into the Oct. 25 complaints, especially given that it is slated to lose seven members because of a new state law that prevents it from rehiring past retirees to staff positions indefinitely.
To add capacity, the department hired Frazier Group, LLC, the same consulting firm that is conducting an independent review of the department's handling of the Occupy protests. When it became clear that more help was needed, Jordan asked the council to increase Frazier's initial $100,000 contract to $350,000. Council members balked at the request during their Tuesday meeting, instructing city officials to provide more information about the scope of the work during a meeting next month.
The department also is facing renewed criticism for its handling of the Oct. 25 protests after a recently published internal report revealed that the officer in charge of the protests that night, Capt. Paul Figueroa, also heads up the Internal Affairs Division, responsible for investigating citizen complaints.
"That guaranteed that if there were complaints, he'd have a conflict of interest," Chanin said. "This was completely foreseeable and totally ill-advised."
Jordan said that Figueroa has not participated in the internal affairs investigations stemming from the complaints associated with those protests and that his absence was not a factor in police missing the deadline.

The attack on Oaksterdam and other dispensaries in Oakland yesterday was not just useless and a waste of government resources, it was anti-democratic since Oaklanders and their representatives support medical marijuana overwhelmingly. It was also a setback for that retail corridor; since that area has been coming back as a result of the marijuana dispensaries which opened cafes and shops in that neighborhood before it was popular.

That said-this was not the most important thing that happened in our city yesterday. Seven people went to classes in the hopes of furthering their careers in the morning and had been slaughtered without mercy before lunchtime.

One way to learn more is by watching or listening to a few (or all) of these great lectures on the OWS movement. Some were given at OWS events and others take a look at the larger issues surrounding the discontent, but all will help you better understand the reasons so many people young and old are passionate about supporting this protest movement.

Need to plan a "decade" food event?
This is a very doable project. Once you figure out what you want to accomplish, the rest will fall in place.
Determine your focus
---1980s formal dinner? 1960s backyard barbecue? 1950s Vegas resort extraganza? 1940s teen party? 1920s Gatsby speakeasy evening? Victorian garden party?
Decide if you want to feature local fare
---1900s Texas chili parlors? 1930s Chicago soup kitchens? 1970s California cuisine? 1990s Seattle cafes?
If you think it's best to stick with "signature" decade foods everyone will recognize, start here:
Fashionable Foods: Seven Decades of Food Fads, Sylvia Lovegren [McMillan:NewYork] 1999
---excellent for social context, commentary, & selected recipes: 1920s-1980s
Century in Food: America's Fads and Favorites, Beverly Bundy [Collector Press:Portland] 2002
---good for popular fads & brands
The Food Chronology, James L. Trager
---new food introductions, restaurant openings, cookbooks, technological advancements & company news
Leite's Culinaria Dining Through the Decades
Houston Chronicle's Century's Best
If you want to identify period recipes, menus, table settings & decorations
This is the fun part! It's also time-consuming and labor-intensive. Y

Here’s a handy list of things that you can do instead of excusing ignorance:

Ask the women what would have made the situation better, and implement their solution.
Explain to the men whose point of view you think you understand well enough to explain to the women how what they are doing is hurting the women. Share your insight with the people who can directly benefit from it. Remove their ignorance.
Call out repeat offenders. Assume that they were capable of understanding your insight and capable of remembering that you had the conversation. Realize that once you’ve had this conversation with people, they have lost the excuse of ignorance.
Say nothing. If you have nothing to offer but excuses, you’ll do more good by not participating in the conversation. There is nothing wrong with sitting out a conversation you cannot or don’t want to contribute constructively to. Nobody will be mad.

Part the First, Subsection A:
Further unscientific surveying of every woman I know, regardless of age, confirms that women really hate it when they’re on the bus with their headphones in and reading a book/magazine/kindle/pda/whatever, and guys interrupt them to hit on them.  Regardless of what the guy looks like.

If you insist on hitting on a woman in those circumstances, unless (and sometimes even if) you’re bringing something spectacular to the table, you’re going down in flames.

I think the hardest thing for a lot of people to recognize is that it isn’t actually ALL ABOUT YOU. It really isn’t. As I said in the last post, sometimes the reason people turn down your advances or don’t want to be advanced upon in the first place have nothing to do with you. In fact, they generally have very little to do with you, period.

But sometimes it does have something to do with you, with an apparent lack of anything in common: i.e. golf shirt guy -v- goth girl. And if you don’t have any readily apparent common interests, then exactly why are you hitting on her anyway?

Stalking is not now, and has never been, a compliment.

In response to the last Crux of Creep post a friend responded to the link in Livejournal that continuing to contact someone after they have made it abundantly clear that they want nothing to do with you, including going to HR and your boss asking them to make you leave them alone, is creepy.

This is beyond creepy.  This is stalking and it is against the law in many states.

Can I just get it all out of my system with a giant “FUCK YOU!” to Stephanie Meyers, John Hughes, and every other author, film-maker or script writer who seems to think that perpetuating the idea “Stalking=Twoo Wuv” to the public at large and teenagers in particular is a good idea.

What I think we need to do is give women a vocabulary to more accurately describe the various and sundry actions that make up “creepy” behavior, and empower them to use that vocabulary. I think we need to take a little advice from Jay Smooth, about talking about racism, and frame the discussion, when one is warranted, in terms of, “That thing you did right there is not ok, fucked up, wrong…” as opposed to “You’re a creep.” And I think we need to convince everyone that once someone says “No,” that’s the end of it.

Why do I say, “when one (a conversation/discussion) is warranted?” Because the majority of what makes up “Creepy” behavior is when guys won’t take “No,” for an answer, or better yet, demand a reason for your “No,” instead of just respecting your boundaries.

I think men become misogynists not because their intense horniness short circuits their brain. It's because they feel entitled to have women in a submissive position to them. They want to live in a world where women are considered automatically dumber, where women are expected to clean up after them, wipe their brows, and kiss their asses, all with a smile on our faces and without asking much more in return but an occasional bit of jewelry and a door-opening, which is just as much about the man feeling more powerful as it is about being nice to the woman. They want to control women sexually, not because they're more horny, but because sexual control is just one more form of control. Misogynists especially dislike women having reproductive control, because if a woman can't control her pregnancies, she's going to be more dependent on a man, and they believe that makes it easier for them. If women are dependent, you don't need to be nice to your wife to get her to stay. She doesn't have a choice, and that's how they like it. They believe in their hearts that women are inferior, and fear that if they're disproved in this contention, their entire sense of self will crumble, because that sense of self is all built on being a "man". They get angry and mock other men they believe are trying to hard to be pleasing to women---genuinely pleasing, not faux "build skyscrapers" pleasing---but men who take care of their looks to be sexually attractive (they get dismissed as "metrosexual") or men who treat women with respect. Those men are seen as undermining the united front to artificially lower women's standards. It's not an accident that the biggest misogynists are the first to flip their shit at the idea of swapping out big greasy burgers for some broccoli on occasion.
I see why the "men are hornier" gambit has appeal, even to men who should know better. For one thing, it allows you to feel superior to women and cling to that just a little bit, while wearing a false humility (gosh, we men are so hard to control!). Also, there's a rough sort of sense to it. Our sexual market is such that men are expected to do most of the pursuing and women are supposed to be more reticient, and this can feel for men who find it frustrating to be rejected like women just want it less. But it's actually just a result of the system. Men only hit on women they find attractive, so they get a skewed perception of how that works. Just because a man hits you up doesn't make him hot, you know. If women hit on men more, maybe men would notice that they don't actually want to fuck every woman they meet, because they mentally just exclude women they don't find attractive from the category "women". 

In 2011, there were 103 reported homicides in Oakland. Most of the victims were young black males who were killed with firearms in East and West Oakland. This is a continuation of a pattern in Oakland that has been the case for years and is closely tied to the economic and social realities of young people living in the city’s poorest areas.

The number of homicides in the city have been in a general decline since a peak of 145 homicides in 2006, with this year seeing a slight increase from that trend. But if there is anything that makes 2011 different than past years, it is that three of those homicide victims were children under the age of 6.
....
homicides continue to be largely concentrated in Oakland’s poorest areas — East and West Oakland — and the victims continue to be mainly the city’s black young men. Of the 103 homicides last year, 74 percent of the victims were black despite making up only 28 percent of the city’s population, according to the 2010 Census. In terms of age, 47 percent of homicide victims were 25 years old or younger.