I know Thanksgiving is tomorrow and we’ll all be getting extra-thankful, but today I’d like to list a few people who I’m not thankful for.
AIDS denialists. The South African government could have prevented the deaths of 365,000 people, but President Thabo Mbeki’s bought into AIDS denialists’ claims — another “victory” for ideology over science. I’m at least heartened to see that Mbeki’s successor has taken a more progressive track and is fighting the spread of HIV.
Religious fundamentalists who attack schoolgirls with acid. At least ten of them have been arrested. Women who speak out — or little girls who go to school — are threatened, attacked, maimed, raped and sometimes killed.
Brazilian law enforcement, which is targeting abortion providers and women who terminate pregnancies. Some 150 women have been charged with the crime of abortion; thousands of women had their private medical records publicly released; and some of the accused were forced to undergo invasive medical procedures to gather evidence. I suppose, though, that they’re just doing what the Pope says. The “pro-life” nation of Brazil has one of the highest abortion rates in the world; across Latin America, 5,000 women die every year and more than 80,000 are hospitalized after clandestine abortions. And Brazil has the fifth-highest youth murder rate in the world (with four “pro-life” nations beating it out). Not sayin’ that a country’s abortion policies influence the murder rate (this isn’t Freakonomics); am sayin’ that if they really value life, dealing with an obscene rate of youth murder may be a better place to start than arresting women who terminate pregnancies. Just sayin’.
Dudes who take (and get off on) “up-skirt” shots without the woman’s consent.
Army higher-ups who don’t give a rat’s ass about domestic violence. “Honey, we are not going to bring a soldier back who beat on his wife a couple of times or because you feel things weren’t done correctly. He is over there fighting for his life” is not a good enough response.
[...] Just in time for Thanksgiving, Jill on Feministe writes about who she’s not thankful for, here. [...]
Too bad that Kgalema Motlanthe is Jacob Zuma’s right hand man, though, as his announcements on AIDS have not always been thought through.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Zuma_rape_trial
What astonishes me about the situation in Brazil—apart from the sheer swinishness—is that Brazil has, if anything, a society that’s even more sex-soaked than ours. What sheer hypocrisy. Why do the Brazilians stand for it?
This calls to mind a book I read about 10 years ago called “Inventing the AIDS virus” by Peter Duesberg, arguing that AIDS is caused by drug use and poor nutrition rather than viral infection. His reasoning seemed convincing, at least to my 14 year old mind. Looks like he was wrong!
I’m not sure what story you’re reffering to in your post about the military but it does take domestic abuse very seriousely. They would not take a soldier out of Iraq to handle a domestic violence case, but if it makes you feel any better on that soldiers return he could face two criminal trials and a bad conduct dischage from the military upon his return. If I was going to be mad at the military for something related to domestic abuse it would be the immediate loss of medical and other benefits to the family involved after the soldier or sailor ect. was discharged for commiting the crime. It punishes the family as much or more than the service member and is probably a reason for crimes such as these going unreported in military families. (Just a guess though, I don’t have any numbers to back that up) Would be interesting to find out though.