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The anti-choice contingent descended on Washington, D.C. last Thursday and Friday, and I am confident in saying the average age of those attending was less than my 23. The combination of the sheer fact that these protesters were children – literally, though I’m sure the mental definition extended to some of their chaperons – and the continued opposition by the movement to any “abortion reduction” strategies (as if the “we want abortions banned or we want nothing at all!” strategy that isn’t just shooting yourself in the foot) only further illustrates for me that the people who proclaim themselves “Pro Life” have no concept of the lives they would affect. I don’t expect a child (and we are talking children, the groups I saw were no older than 16, and at times definitely no older than 12) to understand the nuances of the pro-choice movement, the arguments for ownership of one’s body and personal volition and the many complicated, individual situations that can arise involving a woman + pregnancy. So I sure as hell don’t expect these children to understand “pro life” in any more complex terms than “don’t kill babies, it’s wrong,” though the social and political implications of what they’re trying to enforce are vastly more complicated.
That said, today’s article in Newsweek about anti-choice advocates daring to commit the heresy of pushing for abortion reduction (while still, I’m sure, wanting a total ban at the end of the day) is kind of heartening. It is, I hope, something that can bridge the gap between some people on the anti-choice side, and some on the pro-choice. Because, despite the “Stop the Abortion Agenda” stickers that were ever so popular Thurs/Fri, there just isn’t any such thing. No one who is pro-choice wants a woman to have an abortion. We want her to have the option of having a (safe, legal) abortion. And though I doubt “safe, legal and rare” will become the mantra of those on the right pushing for abortion reduction, they might, at least, come around to resembling something that really is “pro-life” – both “pro” for babies, so they are conceived and born into healthy, supportive and loving situations, and for those women who would much prefer not to get pregnant in the first place than have an abortion.
EDIT: Just brought to my attention via Jezebel, the Vatican calls Obama arrogant for the repeal of the gag rule that previously prevented overseas funding for anything that even breathed the word abortion ever. According to Archbishop Rino Fisichella, this particular flavor of arrogance is “the arrogance of someone who believes they are right.” The Archbishop went on, “What is important is to know how to listen, without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death.”
That strikes me as funny, good sir, because I’m pretty sure that’s what the Vatican and all those who subscribe to its ideological visions have been up to since… forever? Only I guess you’re just right, not arrogant because you <i>think</i> you’re right and imposing your worldviews on others to damaging and sometimes fatal consequences. Right? Right.
Pardon my frustration, but I’m always confused with how the woman in these equations, if the religious right ever considered her a person to begin with, suddenly stops being a “life” herself.
China reports the fifth death related to bird flu.
Pardon my skepticism, but when it comes to the Chinese government and providing the rest of the world with possibly reputation-damaging information, I can’t take their word for it – especially when it comes to the deadly combo of disease, high population and low income and sanitation. I predict that more, likely many more, than five people have died from bird flu, and that the government is perfectly aware of it.
Blaaaaaargh.
My most frequent thought while watching the debate: “STOP SAYING MAVERICK.” I’m glad Biden got sick of it, too, and called that shit out.
And that he pointed out Cheney’s sociopathic expansion of VP power, and consequently implied how terrifying it’d be to see Palin follow in his footsteps.
All in all, though, disappointment. This was not, as some crack-smoking commentator said, “so much better” than the presidential debate. People were just expecting both of them to screw it up in their own special ways, and when they were equally mediocre, somehow it was great.
Some day I will become weary of expecting real answers and strong, well-reasoned arguments from politicians. But today is not that day.
The Chinese government has always scared me a little bit. I know I’m not exactly alone in this. “You can take this subway line to get to the mall,” a friend told me when I was visiting her in Hong Kong, “but don’t fall asleep or anything, or you’ll wake up in China.” There were some murmurings when Google agreed to censor search results in China, and, you know, there are those ongoing human rights violations that sort of got swept under the rug during the Olympics. (Not that, with China’s economic force as it is, they had to be swept very far.) Now that the tainted milk scandal that I touched on briefly before has reached new heights, and MSNBC reported today that the Chinese government is trying to do a little damage control.
Lawyers in Beijing said law officials there had nudged them to be “aware of the general picture” and to heed and have trust in the government’s handling of the scandal.
And because this is the Chinese government, I worry about how hard they “nudged” and what the consequences of not heeding the government’s handling are. I worry, too, that China has become too much a juggernaut for the world community to do anything about it if/when/as they cross the line. But, for once, the numbers that give the country its leviathan status may work against the government – there are just too many people and too many sick babies to make everyone hush and go home.
To a time when he was young, and a woman’s place was somewhere under his feet.
This was originally an email to my cousin, who I recently converted from her undecided status to an Obama-supporter, but who, alas, has a wide circle of Republican friends. I thought I was fairly on point despite my obviously strong feelings about the situation, so why not share with the general public:
Please forward this to your undecided friends, your female Republican friends, and any male Republican friends who know/like/are dating/are married to women and should have, you know, some interest in those women’s rights as human beings. Because last I checked, this is the United States. You know, land of the free.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/opinion/26collins.html
The gist: Lilly Ledbetter was paid less than her inferior (rank-wise, people) male coworkers for 20 years while working for Goodyear. She found out shortly before she retired, and sued, and won – until the case got to the Supreme Court, and they decided since she hadn’t filed 180 days since the discrimination started (even though she found out a good 19 years and 6 months AFTER that), she could not seek compensation or back pay. The Lilly Ledbetter Act was introduced to close this loophole, and allow discriminated employees to file a claim 180 days within finding out.
John McCain did not show up to vote on this Bill, which only got 56 of the 60 votes it needed to pass. Not that he would have voted for it. McCain has stated his opposition to the bill because it’s ripe for abuse; plus, this vaguely nonsensical, definitely insulting tidbit below:
“Having delivered his objections to the Ledbetter bill this week, McCain went on to tell reporters that what women really need is “education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else. And it’s hard for them to leave their families when they don’t have somebody to take care of them.”"
I am not sure, good sir, how you gathered Ms. Ledbetter was less educated, not as well trained, nor in any way inferior to her male, less-senior, less-experienced colleagues. I dare say she wouldn’t have been the one woman to stick it out for 20 years in the reportedly female-unfriendly Goodyear if she was quite so pathetic as the picture you paint. But she has a vagina, so of course she’s incompetent in comparison! As are we all. And excellent point, to boot, that some people might take advantage of this legislation – because if a law might be abused, we just shouldn’t pass it. Closing a loophole to allow legitimately discriminated employees to seek compensation is SO not worth the hassle.
This, on top of Sarah Palin opposing abortion even in the case of rape (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/01/palin-on-abortion-id-oppo_n_122924.html), makes things fairly clear for me: If you give a damn about women’s rights, about your rights, about human beings being truly equal and living in a fair and just society that is not just just for the privileged white male, you cannot vote for McCain/Palin.
I’m begging you. For the sake of my rights as a person, and the rights of every other woman in this country, those you know and those you don’t, those who are fortunate enough to never need to exercise these rights, and those who will have to fight to have them acknowledged. Even if you disagree with Obama, if you think Biden is the political equivalent of white toast, even if you think the whole change message is bullshit and it’ll just be the same old same old: I say that is still better than stepping backwards, to a time when women were less, and somehow that was okay.
Though Why Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat didn’t have the same popularity as its French predecessor (and, in fact, doesn’t even show up on a search of ‘why japanese women don’t get fat’ – you’ve got to have the ‘old’ in there first), Japanese women are obviously doing something right. In addition to having one of the lowest obesity rates in the world and the second highest number of McDonald’s, after the US, by the end of September there will be over 30,000 women age 100+ in Japan.
I’m not sure I’ve ever even met somebody over 100, let alone am I able to conceive of 30,000 of them in the same country.
The Japanese can probably thank a few things for bumping so many people to triple digits – traditional diet, a culture of moderate exercise (read: walking a lot), obviously, but also a culture of preventative medicine combined with a National Health Care plan and, depending on the prefecture, some pretty decent, publicly funded senior citizen care.
Though I never saw a doctor while living in Kajigaya, outside Tokyo, I heard anecdotes from foreigners and natives alike. There weren’t any complaints about the burden of the National Health Care system tax-wise, and with obesity rates as low as they are in Japan, it’s probably because it just doesn’t cost as much as it would here in the States. There were, however, some issues with how busy it often was – at doctor’s offices, hospitals, etc – with people going in for every little thing. In some ways that’s actually good, because it means people were going in when a problem started (or when they thought a problem started), getting things checked out while they were still easy (and cheap) to treat. In other ways that’s bad – as my friend in Tokyo, who would really just like to see a therapist but can’t find one with a single open appointment – can attest.
And though it varies by prefecture, as this is a more locally-funded endevour, hats off to Japan for keeping an eye on its elderly population rather than leaving it wholly in the hands of family (who may not have the funds, or may not exist). My dorm manager told me that the local government sent rice cookers and water heaters to every household with someone over a certain age (let’s say 60, for our purposes). Because Japanese people are sort of expected to a) eat rice every day, and b) drink tea every day, those little machines were rigged to alert the local government office if they hadn’t been used in the past 3 days. The office would then dispatch an ambulance to the house, just in case. Gone are the days of old ladies being found half-eaten by their yappy dog pack weeks after dying in their homes.
But I do hope there’s some kind of handy vacation setting on those rice cookers and electric kettles. It would get a bit pricey to send emergency vehicles out every time old folks went out of town.
In this day and age, with “organic” being the specialty item and the regular old pesticide-treated foods being the norm, I have to wonder just how much pesticide has to be on/in/otherwise around something for it to be considered tainted. Probably not the question I was supposed to be asking when the Yomiuri reported on tainted rice produced in China distributed to 119 facilities in Japan, but there we have it. Though the Yomiuri focuses on the role of shipper and sales firm Misaka Foods, the fact that the rice came from China doesn’t really help in conjunction with the baby formula recall in China after about 50 cases of kidney stones and one death as the result of babies drinking tainted formula. The culprit, an excess of melamine in the mix, is reminiscent of the pet food recall last year, and is one in a long line of tainted/dangerous/otherwise bad news products from China.
There isn’t exactly a plus side to infant and pet deaths or products being consumed without warning from a shipping company that might have known they were tainted, but there’s something like a less-depressing side. Because there’s really no way to sweep dead children under the rug (at least not those killed by corporations – female infanticide by families remains, as usual, a different story) China’s Health Ministry has been doing damage control. We can probably expect the hammer to come down on formula producer Sanlu Group Co. as a result, and some stricter (if not necessarily strict) regulations on industries across the board.
Now were is the (ideally death-free) labor scandal to force fair pay and working conditions in China? Though that would jack up the price of our precious disposable fashion. I’m not sure there are enough unregulated third-world countries to fill the gap if China ever got on board with labor laws.
Does anyone know what happened to Kim Jong-Il? There are reports from South Korean intelligence saying he had a stroke. Toshimitsu Shigemura of Waseda University says Kim Jong-Il has been dead for five years and sightings are the result of robotsbody doubles. Am I the only one getting flashes of the third grade class’s pet rat? Mr. Sniffles dies quietly in the night, and is replaced by morning, the students none the wiser. But if North Korea was going to go that far, surely they would have been better off with a plan reminiscent of The Island, and just kept some guys on hand for blood transfusions, organs, and whatever else their ailing leader needs.
This is the man who toured a cheese factory wearing thick safety goggles (but damn if I can find that clip from The Daily Show). He’s obviously ready for anything.
Today was an all-around depressing day to live in Washington, DC. I’m sure New York City had similar issues. My cousin and I went to the new Pentagon Memorial after it opened to the public, and I was duly impressed with the public’s ability to remain stony-faced and vaguely gawking in the face of tragedy. Also, maybe I am a crybaby in certain situations, but my cousin kept trying to talk to me about how the little brochure said the benches/metaphorical graves were laid out in order of age and I was about to lose it.
But anyway, it was very beautiful, particularly at night. Pictures to be uploaded shortly.
If the fact that Japan has gone through two Prime Ministers in the last two years is any indication, it’s not the easiest job. The domination of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since the 50’s and general public disinterest make politics, from this layperson’s standpoint, an even more bureaucratic and thankless job than usual. So even if I’m not a big fan of the LDP (particularly Shinzo Abe, but let’s focus), I’ve got to give props to Yuriko Koike, who’s just thrown her had in the ring for the newly open PM position. If she won, she wouldn’t just be the first woman to hold the position – she’d be the first to try.
As best put by Koike herself, “Hillary used the word ‘glass ceiling’ … but in Japan, it isn’t glass, it’s an iron plate.”
Now I love Japan. I’ve studied the language, I’ve lived in the country, I want to go back. But part of loving a place is taking the good with the bad, and Japan’s big ‘bad’ is the pervasive sexism. It is, from an outsider’s perspective, partly cultural – in English some people might split hairs about ‘woman’ just being ‘man’ with a prefix, but in Japanese ‘husband’ uses the symbol for ‘master’ and ‘wife’ the symbol for ’servant’. If that kind of thing is in your own language, in how you have to communicate with people, it’s a little hard to escape. The other part is that there’s a sort of unspoken acceptance of the way things are. If no one does anything, nothing’s going to happen.
That’s why someone like Koike could make a difference – by her quotes, albeit translated, she seems like one BAMF. And as Dodai on Jezebel discussed this morning, the more women are in charge the less people hate the idea of women in charge. It’s not going to be an easy job for Koike, but I hope it’s one she gets a shot at. Even if her office time isn’t much better than her predecessors, she’ll still have set up the Jaws of Life on that iron plate.
Japan’s new PM will be chosen on September 22.
