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News Roundup
From a quick look on CNN:
Aid Workers and Sexual Abuse. The article focuses on the sexual abuse of children, but of course, there's certainly sexual abuse of grown men and women going on, as well. This highlights one of the things that we cringe to acknowledge in our discussion of the sexual abuse of children, though: it's not about pedophilia. Abuse of children, by and large, comes from opportunism, not pathology or fetishization. In any given population of humans who are placed in a position of dominance or monopoly over another population, there will be a certain number who will use this power to exploit those beneath them. A lot of time, the sexual abuse is not even about /sex/; like most forms of sexual assault, it's about power and control. And the people who do it are often not cackling villains who look and act obligingly creepy; they're ordinary people who are given power without adequate supervision, in a culture which encourages or ignores abuses. The way to combat this is not to try and 'weed out' the 'bad apples', because just about anyone can be a bad apple under the right circumstances, but rather to work hard to ensure that the culture is intolerant of any sexual abuses, and that supervision is adequate, clear, and unyielding on the subject.
McCain Doesn't Support GI Bill because he believes that it hurt the effort to recruit/keep noncomissioned officers. This is, quite possibly, one of the more stupid things I've heard this month. Aside from being a way to honor those people who choose to sacrifice a portion of their autonomy to protect our country, the GI Bill has been one of the ways by which we have boosted our country's level of achievement and social mobility, things which are certainly /at least/ as important as having a steady supply of noncoms. If you really want to boost career noncomissioned officers, improve conditions and benefits, try not to get them killed in stupid penis-waving invasions, and support them with more than words and cheap, Chinese stickers.
Are We Executing the Innocent? Answer: almost certainly. The prosecutor here says: "We tried at least 60 capital murder cases, and I think we got the death penalty in 54 of them," he said in a telephone interview. "The only time you get the death penalty is when you have greatly cruel, sadistic-type crime." But he left a little something out, namely that minorities (particularly minority men) are far more likely to get the death penalty, on more dubious evidence, than whites are, for the same crimes. Additionally, that recent DNA evidence tests have found /several/ death row inmates over the years who turn out to be innocent of their crimes; it thus becomes disingenious to suggest that, "Nobody has ever been able to produce irrefutable proof that any innocent man was executed in recent U.S. history..." considering that the definitions of 'irrefutable' and 'recent' are certainly up for grabs. I don't support the death penalty, precisely because of the inequalities inherent in USA's arrest, conviction, and sentencing make me entirely uneasy about how many /actually/ guilty people are being sentenced to death.
Aid Workers and Sexual Abuse. The article focuses on the sexual abuse of children, but of course, there's certainly sexual abuse of grown men and women going on, as well. This highlights one of the things that we cringe to acknowledge in our discussion of the sexual abuse of children, though: it's not about pedophilia. Abuse of children, by and large, comes from opportunism, not pathology or fetishization. In any given population of humans who are placed in a position of dominance or monopoly over another population, there will be a certain number who will use this power to exploit those beneath them. A lot of time, the sexual abuse is not even about /sex/; like most forms of sexual assault, it's about power and control. And the people who do it are often not cackling villains who look and act obligingly creepy; they're ordinary people who are given power without adequate supervision, in a culture which encourages or ignores abuses. The way to combat this is not to try and 'weed out' the 'bad apples', because just about anyone can be a bad apple under the right circumstances, but rather to work hard to ensure that the culture is intolerant of any sexual abuses, and that supervision is adequate, clear, and unyielding on the subject.
McCain Doesn't Support GI Bill because he believes that it hurt the effort to recruit/keep noncomissioned officers. This is, quite possibly, one of the more stupid things I've heard this month. Aside from being a way to honor those people who choose to sacrifice a portion of their autonomy to protect our country, the GI Bill has been one of the ways by which we have boosted our country's level of achievement and social mobility, things which are certainly /at least/ as important as having a steady supply of noncoms. If you really want to boost career noncomissioned officers, improve conditions and benefits, try not to get them killed in stupid penis-waving invasions, and support them with more than words and cheap, Chinese stickers.
Are We Executing the Innocent? Answer: almost certainly. The prosecutor here says: "We tried at least 60 capital murder cases, and I think we got the death penalty in 54 of them," he said in a telephone interview. "The only time you get the death penalty is when you have greatly cruel, sadistic-type crime." But he left a little something out, namely that minorities (particularly minority men) are far more likely to get the death penalty, on more dubious evidence, than whites are, for the same crimes. Additionally, that recent DNA evidence tests have found /several/ death row inmates over the years who turn out to be innocent of their crimes; it thus becomes disingenious to suggest that, "Nobody has ever been able to produce irrefutable proof that any innocent man was executed in recent U.S. history..." considering that the definitions of 'irrefutable' and 'recent' are certainly up for grabs. I don't support the death penalty, precisely because of the inequalities inherent in USA's arrest, conviction, and sentencing make me entirely uneasy about how many /actually/ guilty people are being sentenced to death.
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I have some hope to see the more reasonable members of the Republican party make their support for the GI Bill clear, but the party has woefully good discipline in most situations.
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Senate votes show GOP power vacuum.
I expect Bush to veto it, and then Obama to beat McCain with that veto until November like a great big stick with a nail in it. If he doesn't then he needs better advisors because he can wrest the entire pro-military issue away from McCain with this bill.
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