McCain Clearly Has No Idea What He is Talking About–Ever

April 10, 2008 · Filed Under Politics ·

If you’ve been caught up in the Hillary/Obama race for the democratic nomination, you may have missed some of McCain’s recent word vomit. Here are my top three picks of classic McCain moments, but for the full top 10 go visit AlterNet.

Funny, this reminds me way too much of Bush’s “Bushisms”. No wonder Bush supports this fool!

“No American argues against our military presence in Korea or Japan or Germany or Kuwait or other places, or Turkey, because America is not receiving casualties.”

Responding to a student who criticized his remark about our staying in Iraq for 100 years

I love the subtle “or other places” he decided to throw into the mix there; as if he simply could not remember just how many other countries America is or has occupied. Of course people are going to start to speak up about our military presence being where it simply was not warranted and based off of pure lies. Republicans seem to be sad about the majority of people not giving in to their brainwashing tactics anymore.

“[I am] very proud to have Pastor John Hagee’s support.”

This is beyond hilarious to me. First of all, oh no we have another Pastor case on our hands! But while millions of people were busy pointing fingers at Obama and declaring him a racist, most don’t know about Pastor John Hagee, who in his latest book, Jerusalem Countdown, he calls Hitler a Catholic who murdered Jews while the Catholic Church did nothing. ‘The sell-out of Catholicism to Hitler began not with the people but with the Vatican itself.’ Real nice.

“It [is] “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”

A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, admiringly gazing at McCain until that moment, stepped up and whispered something in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then blurted out: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

Alzheimer’s, anyone? For being at war for five years you would think a president hopeful would oh I don’t know, know what he’s talking about? Maybe I’m just weird and practical like that.

Tags: 2008 election, Barack Obama, Iraq, Iraq war, John McCain, president Bush

Words From Iraq

April 9, 2008 · Filed Under Politics ·

Iraq war I received an email a few days ago about a conversation had with a 22 year old woman living in Baghdad. The story is absolutely heart-wrenching and the situations in which this woman speak of happen every single day.

“All the stores are closed and we don’t have much food left. We can’t go to get food because the Al-Mahdi Army is killing everyone! They are even killing innocent people in their homes…….familys with children!”

“Mahdi Army is shouting in the streets. “You haven’t seen anything yet. This is just the beginning. We will take the government of Iraq.”

“Our street is a war zone. Our houses have bullets coming in the windows and sometimes even penetrating the walls. We can’t go into our gardens within our walls because the rockets, mortars…and road bombs that the Mahdi Army is filling the streets with are coming into our gardens too.”

Iraq is clearly back at square one in terms of terrorism. There were so many people being killed during Sadam’s terror over the country, which is what Bush had used as collateral for invasion, but now, years later and still at war, Iraq is no safer, no matter which way you spin it.

The saddest part of the story is when the woman says this:

“We’re tired here, I don’t even care if a bullet comes to take my life. This isn’t life here, and it hasn’t been. As a matter-of-fact, I think I would welcome it.”

Tags: Iraq, Iraq war, world domination

The Lives of the People We “Saved”

March 19, 2008 · Filed Under Politics ·

So how, exactly, are those in Iraq living their lives now–after Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003?

I’ve delved into this subject a bit already with how Afghanistan has been transformed by war and specifically how Afghani women are being treated and living their lives now. Now it’s time to take a little look at Iraq and specifically, Iraqi women.

Over 1.2 million people fled Iraq after the Bush invasion. The result of the Iraq war has caused these people to flee from their country and attempt to build new lives for themselves in Syria. While building lives away from the chaos in Iraq, Iraqi women and teenagers, some as young as 13 years old, have been forced into prostitution.

The number of women involved in this prostitution ring, which George Bush is not only aware of, but is tied to because of his invasion and putting the Iraqi people in more danger than they were even before the war, involves as many as 50,000 women and girls. The reason for so many women being forced into this line of work is because if they are lucky, on a given night at a nightclub in hopes of work, they will make $60, which adds up to a week worth of pay in a standard factory. While these people are starving, there is no other work for women there that would make the amount of money to support their families.

Bush’s invasion of Iraq, a country that posed no threat to the United States, is illegal under US and national law. Bush has also been convicted of war crimes which had made headlines not so long ago. With these two instances in mind, driving women and children into prostitution violates human rights agreements, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children.

So how is Iraq doing after the Bush administration’s attack? I’d say pretty horrible, how about you?

Tags: Iraq, Iraq war, president Bush, prostitutes, prostitution, sex trafficking, Syria, war crimes

George Bush Thinks Poverty, Death and Abuse are Blessings of Freedom

March 4, 2008 · Filed Under Violence Against Women ·

Afghani child bride Many people in the United States believe that the war we are currently fighting is for just cause. Many people are also under the false assumption that because of this war, we have given the people of Iraq and Afghanistan the freedom of democracy; that we have bettered their lives. The reason that so many people in the United States believe this is because the citizens of this country are being told that we have a reason to be at war and that we are bettering the lives of millions–And every word that comes from the mouth of our president is a lie.

Of course there are also many people who know all of this and are aware that our troops are dying in vain for nothing more than a pissing contest.

When falling into the topic of the current war when speaking with people, because it does happen quite a bit especially when I am asked “So what do you do?” and I can’t help but mention this website and what it’s about, the first thing that people grab onto it “Oh well we have helped so many people over there and you just don’t understand. They needed help over there and we are helping them redefine their government and they have a democracy now!” But these are the same people who believe each and every word our president says, which should be good enough. We should be able to believe what our commander in chief is telling us and believe that they are doing what is in our best interests as well as in the best interests of other countries that we invade. However, that is simply not the case, especially when George Bush has done nothing but lie to us, especially about how the women in Afghanistan are now living their lives.

George Bush and his administration have made Afghanistan one of the most dangerous places in the world to be female.

On March 12, 2004, during the White House Celebration of International Women’s Day, George Bush said:

“In the last two-and-a-half years, we have seen remarkable and hopeful development in world history. Just think about it: More than 50 million men, women and children have been liberated from two of the most brutal tyrannies on earth—50 million people are free. All these people are now learning the blessings of freedom.”

Now, I have no idea what his term “blessings of freedom” means, but how Afghani women and children are now being forced to live is about the furthest thing from freedom that I can imagine.

The picture in this post is perhaps the most heartbreaking pictures I have seen in quite some time. It is a picture taken by US photographer, Stephanie Sinclair and has won the UNICEF prize. It is of a 40 year old man with his new, 11 year old Afghani wife. This picture captures what young girls in Afghanistan are being put through.

Women in Afghanistan are now able to participate in these “blessings of freedom”:

Grinding poverty and the escalating war is driving an increasing number of Afghan families to sell their daughters into forced marriages.
Girls as young as six are being married into a life of slavery and rape, often by multiple members of their new relatives. Banned from seeing their own parents or siblings, they are also prohibited from going to school. With little recognition of the illegality of the situation or any effective recourse, many of the victims are driven to self-immolation – burning themselves to death – or severe self-harm.
Violent attacks against females, usually domestic, are at epidemic proportions with 87 percent of females complaining of such abuse – half of it sexual. More than 60 percent of marriages are forced.
Despite a new law banning the practice, 57 percent of brides are under the age of 16. The illiteracy rate among women is 88 percent with just 5 percent of girls attending secondary school.
Maternal mortality rates – one in nine women die in childbirth – are the highest in the world alongside Sierra Leone. And 30 years of conflict have left more than one million widows with no enforceable rights, left to beg on the streets alongside an increasing number of orphans.

What George Bush has said in the past years regarding the quality of life of the people we have “helped” has been a lie and what he will say in the coming year as well as after his presidency regarding the war will also be a lie. We have not helped these people, we have not given them freedom or democracy; what we have given them, however, is fear for their lives and fear for their children’s lives. Not to mention, while making these places the worst that they have ever been, we have been outright lied to several times by our president and that is something that more people need to acknowledge and refuse to stand for. The people of America who truly believe that we are fighting this war for a reason are sadly mistaken and the troops that we have lost in the past six years fighting a bullshit war has been for nothing and those lives have been lost in vain.

Thanks, president Bush.

Tags: Afghanistan, burning, child exploitation, forced marriage, International Women's Day, Iraq war, maternal mortality, president Bush, rape, self-immolation, self-mutilation, slavery

Mike Gravel, the Only Candidate I Can Support

January 9, 2008 · Filed Under Politics ·

I have been asked several times about who I support in the upcoming election, and with politics in the news constantly as well as on the majority of blogs out there daily, I thought I would take the opportunity to voice my opinion on who my candidate of choice is.

Contrary to what many believe, especially since they are basing that belief solely on the fact that I’m not only female, but also a very involved and staunch feminist, I am not in total support of Hillary Clinton. I am also not rooting for Obama, so that clears up the “This is going to be a political post covering everything the media says” kind of post.

The candidate I can mostly agree with and support as of right now is former Alaskan Senator, Mike Gravel. Gravel, who is the oldest future president hopeful at 77 years old, oddly enough has the youngest, most rational mindset out of all of the candidates seeking presidency and in my opinion, would make the best damn president we have had in quite some time.

Mike Gravel is a very real, straight-forward, and of course, opinionated person. This country is going to hell in a hand basket and he isn’t afraid to tell you how much faster it will go there if something isn’t done about it. Very few people have actually paid attention to this man and what he has to say and that can mostly be blamed on the media and it’s obsession with Hillary and Obama. However, every time people hear him talk about the issues that we, as a country face, he gets an impressive applause. Perhaps we need to stop listening to what the media tells us to, hmm? If you don’t know much about Gravel, it could probably be because of the media (ahem, MSNBC) and the other politician’s sheer hatred towards him and what he has to say, since he has been excluded from debates left and right lately (Thanks a lot, free speech.) MSNBC has also said that Gravel has dropped out of the running, which is not true. Even when excluded from many debates, instead of just staying at home and chilling out in front of the television, he held an alternative debate of his own; now that shows dedication and the refusal to accept the media’s attempts at silencing him. If you don’t know much about this man, I encourage you to educate yourself on his background and his views on the issues today.

Mike Gravel 2008 presidential election legalize marijuana The Issues:

The War in Iraq: Senator Gravel’s position on Iraq remains clear and consistent: to commence an immediate and orderly withdrawal of all U.S. troops that will have them home within 120 days.

Reproductive Rights: Senator Mike Gravel supports a woman’s right to decide if and when to have children. He also supports a woman’s right to make the difficult decision about abortion without interference by government authorities. Comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education, including accurate information about contraception, can always be provided in order to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions.

LGBT Rights: Senator Gravel supports same-sex marriage and opposes the Defense of Marriage Act. He supports expanding hate-crime legislation and opposes laws that allow discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or one’s gender identity or expression. Senator Gravel strongly opposes the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” legislation on the grounds that it is unconstitutional, as it restricts the rights of gay Americans. He opposes any state or national constitutional amendment that restricts the rights of the gay community.

Global Warming: Senator Gravel believes that global climate change is a matter of national security and survivability of the planet. As President, he will act swiftly to reduce America’s carbon footprint in the world by initiating legislation to tax carbon at the source and cap carbon emissions.

Progressive Taxes: Senator Gravel’s Progressive Fair Tax proposal calls for eliminating the IRS and the income tax and replacing it with a national sales tax on new products and services.

Health Care: Senator Gravel advocates a universal healthcare system that provides equal medical services to all citizens, paid for by a retail sales tax (a portion of the Progressive Fair tax). Citizens would pay nothing for health benefits.

For a more detailed explanation of the issues and his view on them, visit his website!

Tags: 2008 election, environment, free speech, global warming, Iraq war, LGBT, marijuana, Mike Gravel, Reproductive Rights, taxes, universal health care