News Roundup

[pyrephox]

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.

Comments

[multiplexer.livejournal.com]

For all their flag-waving, I have come to believe that the GOP are fundamentally anti-military and pro-war. Jim Webb's GI Bill is extremely well researched, well reasoned, and backed up, down and sideways by the actual military.

This reasoning that increasing GI Bill benefits to keep up with current inflation will cause a hemorrhage of the military non-commissioned officers is so many levels of crazytalk I don't even know where to start. I know that sending noncommissioned and mid-level officers to the desert to get shot at for years on end without a break is definitely causing a hemorrhage from the military at a breakneck pace. But the GOP wants the military to be like a pair of shackles -- no where to go but in, and no where to go once out, so trapped in until the end of time so they can go prosecute their pointless endless wars forever and ever.

This whole anti-GI Bill thing just makes me queasy.

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

I don't get WHY McCain thinks what he does, since he's usually one of the few politicians who really seems to give a rat's ass about soldiers as human beings.

It's as if improving the current situation doesn't occur to them as a way to keep officers. Gee, maybe there's a reason we can't keep people in the military?

[cpip.livejournal.com]

Aid Workers: So is there evidence to suggest that there ARE lines that won't be crossed if you make it an allegedly intolerable offense? I have a hard time believing that people, given power and a chance to exploit others, won't do so to some degree. It's basic fundamental human nature: give someone a chance and they'll slowly dance down that garden path and merrily rationalize it all to be A-OK, because none of us, in our hearts-of-hearts, are bad people to ourselves.

GI Bill: I can understand McCain's line of thought -- that increasing the muster-out benefits rather than the stay-in benefits naturally would lead folks to, well, muster out. I'm not sure it's necessarily born-out in actual practice, but I see the "idea" underlying it.

The Death Penalty: Sadly, the death penalty is one of those things I love in principle -- some folks really do need to be put down like rabid dogs -- and can't stand in practice, for all the reasons you put forth concerning the balance of the criminal justice system.

[oyving.livejournal.com]

UN Abuse: There was an interesting report on this on BBC. They discovered there was little willingness in the UN to pursue these cases too much. Often they would see soldiers sent home, but did not make sure the solider would receive further disciplinary action when it arrived at home. They claimed this was the responsibility of the nation that sent the soldier.

And the UN did not want to bring this issue up with the worst offenders, exactly because they were also the largest providers of troops to the UN. So you have exactly what you're talking about; a position where people have a disproportionate amount of power with little oversight and few consequences.

GI Bill: This is the first time I've heard of this issue, but it looks interesting. From the little I have read quickly there seems to have been some disagreement with what other appropriations that has been tacked onto this bill?

Death Penalty: The willingness of a society to do the very thing it should protect from makes me sick and sad.