Category — social justice

Well said sir.

I found a great NPR interview from Fresh Air with Kayla Williams, a former female Army soldier, who wrote a book: “I love my rifle more than you”. During the interview, Kayla describes the sexualization of the female soldier, abuses she witnessed and her experience in the U.S. military. The interview is from late 2005.

from Democracy Now…

On Tenth Anniversary of V-Day, Vagina Monologues Playwright Eve Ensler Focuses on Violence Against Women in New Orleans and Gulf South, Playwright and activist Eve Ensler discusses the ten-year anniversary of the first benefit performance of her award-winning play, The Vagina Monologues, to spread awareness about violence against women and girls. Every year, “V-Day” has focused on women’s struggles from a different part of the world. This year the focus is on the women of the Gulf South, with a major event planned in New Orleans on April 11th and 12th.

Juan Gonzales with more info…

Sexual violence against women and children has reached epidemic proportions in certain parts of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya, the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, warned on Tuesday. Today is the tenth anniversary of V-Day, a global movement to combat precisely such acts of violence around the world.

more at Democracynow.org.

Need a laugh / something to occupy your thoughts fora few minutes? I do, its been a crazy week. Tomorrow I will mail the last piece of my grad school application. My head hurts!

• Beware the brides of march
• Baby Fight
• Ellen calls Sally Kern
• Merlin Mann at SXSW
• Beautiful baby pics by dawnm (wow- amazing!)
• Animated Manhattan round-up by: Ironic Sans

Democracy Now has a great interview with a former member of the international banking community, topics include globalization, corporate government and greed.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Okay, explain this term, “economic hit man,” e.h.m., as you call it.

JOHN PERKINS: Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring — to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we’ve been very successful. We’ve built the largest empire in the history of the world. It’s been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It’s only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.