Get It Together, Britain

Following on the heels of the recent survey, commissioned by Amnesty International, which found that 34% of Britons believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she has behaved in a flirtatious manner, a Swansea rape victim’s case has been dropped, and the jury ordered by the judge, Justice Roderick Evans, to bring in a verdict of not guilty "even if you don't agree,” after the woman admitted under cross-examination that she was too drunk to remember whether or not she had agreed to sex.

Vera Baird QC, Labour MP for Redcar and a leading criminal lawyer, called the prosecution's decision "outrageous". She said the law had been changed to provide that no one can consent to sex except by choice, with "the freedom and capacity to make that choice". The Sexual Offences Act 2003 states that someone who is asleep or otherwise unconscious will not be taken as having consented, and in such cases the onus shifts to the accused to raise evidence of consent.

Part of the impetus of the Sexual Offences Act is the appalling record of successful rape prosecutions:

The most recent Home Office statistics show that in 2003 an estimated 50,000 women were raped in the UK, although just 11,867 went to the police. Of those cases, 1,649 went to trial but only 629 resulted in successful prosecutions. Some were unsuccessful despite the rapist pleading guilty. If you reported a rape in 2003 you had a 5.3% chance of securing a conviction…

Welsh politicians have called for a further tightening of the law in light of the case so that the onus is placed on the accused to prove consent was given.

Plaid Cymru assembly member Leanne Wood, a former chairwoman of Welsh Women's Aid, said: "A woman should be able to get drunk if she wants to without fear of being raped. Men should not be given the impression that it is acceptable to have sex with a woman who is too drunk to consent."

Of course, the Act, even if strengthened, doesn’t do British women a damn bit of good if prosecutors and judges aren’t willing to apply it.

The victim in the aforementioned case was actually passed out when the guard who walked her to her flat had sexual intercourse with her on the floor of the corridor, yet when the prosecution dropped the case, it noted that "drunken consent is still consent.” Charming.

And what, exactly, constitutes content? Simply not saying no? Unfortunately, the “nice guy” who offers to walk an alcohol-impaired girl home and ends up raping her once she’s unconscious is not exactly a rare tale. In my immediate circle of friends, there are two women who have been victimized in exactly that way, waking up to the horrific realization that the man who offered to look after them is having sex with them instead.

[S]ome contributors to website talkboards suggest that women must take responsibility for their actions, including how much they drink. And that to convict a man of rape is wrong when the alleged victim cannot remember whether or not she consented.

Same old story. Here’s one problem with that story: It requires all women to modify a legal behavior to accommodate some men who refuse to modify an illegal one. Saying, “There are always going to be some men who are willing to take advantage of an impaired woman” is not sufficient reason to expect only women to monitor their alcohol intake to protect themselves against crime, particularly when the legal system is currently providing rapists with a 94.7% chance of getting away with it. Those are pretty good odds. How about, before the onus is put exclusively on women, undertaking a comprehensive attempt at drastically deincentivizing rape?

Another, unspoken problem with that story: If a young straight man were raped by another man while being passed out drunk, would anyone question whether he’d given consent? In fact, a straight man’s sexual history would likely be used in his defense—he’s had sex with lots of women before; he wouldn’t have consented to this—whereas a woman’s sexual history can be used against her in the same instance.

Perhaps the biggest problem with that story, however, is that women who are assaulted while under the influence of alcohol will just remain unlikely to come forward. It not only leaves them without justice, but also leaves rapists on the loose—resulting in more victims in the future.

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More on Bush’s “Joke”

The story currently not being touched with a ten-foot pole by the American media—the leaked memo revealing President Bush suggesting a military strike against the Arab television station al-Jazeera and Tony Blair arguing against an attack—is a big story in Britain. Channel 4 has an in-depth report on the subject that I really recommend you watch in whole, but here are some highlights (please note: the transcriptions are mine).

The report starts with the news that the two leakers have been charged under Britain’s Official Secrets Act and will likely be tried in secret. Though Bush’s remarks about bombing al-Jazeera are being framed, particularly in America, as a joke, it has been indicated in Britain that the memo focuses on a dispute over military tactics, which would make more understandable the use of the Official Secrets Act, which is being used to threaten journalists with prosecution for the first time ever. Later in the report, the former editor of The Guardian, Peter Preston, is interviewed, and notes that not only is the invocation of the Official Secrets Act “a direct threat to the press,” but that the wide disparity in contentions—insensitive, tasteless joke versus tactical dispute—creates an urgency for the British press to not play dead.

This is a case where it doesn’t fit, it’s messy, the government looks on the back foot, and the media, I think, ought to feel extraordinarily threatened by all of this, because it’s either, as I say, absurd or it's really rather sinister.

Also interviewed is Clive Stafford-Smith, an attorney representing Sami Muyhideen al-Haj, an al-Jazeera cameraman who has been interned at Gitmo for four years. According to Stafford-Smith, al-Haj has been interrogated by the US approximately 130 times, with the sole focus of 125 of those interrogations being whether al-Jazeera is a front for and/or funded by al-Qaida. al-Haj has flatly denied the veracity of the assertion, and so remains incarcerated.

Finally, the Channel 4 anchor interviewed Wadah Khanfar, the Managing Director of al-Jazeera, who was in Rome. He asked Khanfar if al-Jazeera had taken President Bush’s remark as a joke. Khanfar, who seemed more bemused but frank, rather than angry (as he certainly has a right to be), replied:

Of course we cannot take it as a joke. A joke from President Bush cannot be regarded as an ordinary joke…Why? Because al-Jazeera was attacked twice before. Once in Kabul and again in Baghdad during the war in Iraq, and one of our colleagues was killed.

Khanfar went on to explain why this is such an important issue to resolve:

It is not a matter of al-Jazeera. It is a matter of a new definition of democracy. If that is correct, then we are in front of a story that is redefining freedom of expression. You are speaking about civilian journalists, who have been reporting for nine years, who are on the forefront of reforming democracy in the Arab world…

I would like an official explanation about what has happened. I would like to inform my people, my journalists of al-Jazeera, who have issued a statement tonight, asking for an official investigation. [Tony Blair] should be clear about this matter because it is not only al-Jazeera; it is the Arab world who is waiting for that explanation. It is the world at large; it is every journalist who feels that this is a new rule for the game of journalism.

Hat tip to BradBlog, which also points to a column in The Daily Telegraph by MP Boris Johnson, called "I'll go to jail to print the truth about Bush and al-Jazeera."

[I]f his remarks were just an innocent piece of cretinism, then why in the name of holy thunder has the British state decreed that anyone printing those remarks will be sent to prison?

We all hope and pray that the American President was engaging in nothing more than neo-con Tourette-style babble about blowing things up. We are quite prepared to believe that the Daily Mirror is wrong. We are ready to accept that the two British civil servants who have leaked the account are either malicious or mistaken. But if there is one thing that would seem to confirm the essential accuracy of the story, it is that the Attorney General has announced that he will prosecute anyone printing the exact facts.

What are we supposed to think? The meeting between Bush and Blair took place on April 16, 2004, at the height of the US assault on Fallujah, and there is circumstantial evidence for believing that Bush may indeed have said what he is alleged to have said.

I have to go with the aforementioned Peter Preston on this one. Threatening journalists with the Official Secrets Act is either a ludicrous over-reach designed to help Bush save face over a thoughtless comment, in which case the British press ought to be outraged they are being silenced for such a stupid reason, or it’s a practical application, and Bush wasn’t joking at all. Which is it?

Americans need to be concerned with this story as well. If Bush was serious, we ought to demand accountability on behalf of the killed al-Jazeera journalist as well as those currently being held at Gitmo and in Spain. If he was joking, we ought to demand at minimum that he acknowledge it and apologize for it. A man whose job affords him the protection of having arrested anyone who makes even a joke about hurting him surely ought to understand that not every joke is so easily dismissed.

In either case, refusing to address the issues raised by the leak of these remarks will allow people to believe about them whatever they want to believe—or whatever their experiences predisposes them to believe. What will the Arab world believe?

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Another Dem War Hawk Bites the Dust

Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA):

Dicks now says it was all a mistake — his vote, the invasion, and the way the United States is waging the war.

[…]

Dicks, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, says he's particularly angry about the intelligence that supported going to war.

Without the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), he said, he would "absolutely not" have voted for the war.

The Bush administration has accused some members of Congress of rewriting history by claiming the president misled Americans about the reasons for going to war. Congress, the administration says, saw the same intelligence and agreed Iraq was a threat.

But Dicks says the intelligence was "doctored." And he says the White House didn't plan for and deploy enough troops for the growing insurgency.

"A lot of us relied on [former CIA director] George Tenet. We had many meetings with the White House and CIA, and they did not tell us there was a dispute between the CIA, Commerce or the Pentagon on the WMDs," he said.

He and Murtha tended to give the military, the CIA and the White House the benefit of the doubt, Dicks says. But he now says he and his colleagues should have pressed much harder for answers.

Dicks relied on “briefings” and “information provided by our intelligence agencies to members of Congress” to draw his conclusion that “Saddam Hussein has developed sophisticated chemical and biological weapons, and that he may be close to developing a nuclear weapon,” which he asserted in an October 2002 House debate. By the time Joe Wilson’s piece in the New York Times was published on July 6, 2003, Dicks started to question that about which he had previously been so sure.

There’s a part of me that’s really angry at Democrats like Dicks. There was plenty of information available casting doubt on the administration’s claims leading up to the war. There were plenty of people sounding the alarm that the pretenses were false. When I think about the time leading up to the war, it seems as though there was something in my gut telling me Bush was full of shit, but it really wasn’t my gut—it was reading lots and lots of stuff from credible people who were claiming that the intelligence was being cooked, and noticing that the Bushies had no real interest in undermining the widely-held notion that Saddam and 9/11 were linked, and recognizing all the reasons the Bushies had to go to this particular war.

But at the same time, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a part of the government and have administration officials and intelligence agencies giving you information, which one would reasonably assume is credible, while being under the pressure of being tagged traitorous if you withhold support for the issue being debated. All of Congress was put in a pretty shitty situation, and one might quite reasonably suggest that the Dems shouldn’t have bowed to that pressure, or that the pressure itself maybe should have clued them in that the rationale wasn’t solid, but sitting in judgment from here is all too easy.

Still, there’s something that’s being left unsaid by Democrats who now admit they made a mistake. Irrespective of the reasons for their votes, they voted for a war of preemption, which was unprecedented. They weren’t overtly told that Saddam was behind 9/11, that we were going to war with Iraq in response to having been attacked. They knew it was a preemptive war, and they voted for it anyway. And that’s a mistake for which there is no excuse.

When will they address that collective failure? Or don’t they think it was one?

(Hat tip to Oddjob, who hat tips HuffPo.)

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Friday Blogrollin'

Stop by and say hello to:

Cider Press Hill

The Liquid List

Oh Well

The Panda’s Thumb

The Sappho Manifesto

Vague Nihilism

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Strawfeminists

Just go.

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“First learn stand, then learn fly.”

Pat Morita, the Oscar-nominated actor who most famously played Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid and Matsuo 'Arnold' Takahashi in Happy Days, has died at age 73.

Morita was prolific outside of the "Karate Kid" series as well, appearing in "Honeymoon in Vegas," "Spy Hard," "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and "The Center of the World." He also provided the voice for a character in the Disney movie "Mulan" in 1998.

Born in northern California on June 28, 1932, the son of migrant fruit pickers, Morita spent most of his early years in the hospital with spinal tuberculosis. He later recovered only to be sent to a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during World War II.

"One day I was an invalid," he recalled in a 1989 AP interview. "The next day I was public enemy No. 1 being escorted to an internment camp by an FBI agent wearing a piece."

After the war, Morita's family tried to repair their finances by operating a Sacramento restaurant. It was there that Morita first tried his comedy on patrons.

Because prospects for a Japanese-American standup comic seemed poor, Morita found steady work in computers at Aerojet General. But at age 30 he entered show business full time.

"Only in America could you get away with the kind of comedy I did," he commented. "If I tried it in Japan before the war, it would have been considered blasphemy, and I would have ended in leg irons."

I don’t think I’ve ever known someone of my age cohort who hasn’t used the phrase “Wax on, wax off” at least a billion times—and didn’t feel compelled to try to catch an imaginary fly each time they had a pair of chopsticks in hand. Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi left indelible images in my young mind, as I watched The Karate Kid endlessly, not for Ralph Macchio, but for him. I found his character eternally cool, and because he made me curious about Japan, I read Eleanor Coerr’s Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, the story of a Japanese girl, just a baby when the A-bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, who later develops leukemia as a result of her exposure to the radiation—a book which I can honestly say played no small role in my being a liberal today.

RIP Mr. Morita.

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Gay Balls

The only question is which sick fuck—do I hear Pat Robertson? Jerry Falwell?—is going to be the first to blame the Macy’s Day Parade float accident on the gays? It won’t be Dr. Dobson, whose Focus on the Family has deemed their anti-gay ball tossing a success, even though they were sad that a near-tragedy stole their thunder.

Members of a conservative Christian group handed out "stress balls" promoting a web site that claims homosexuality can be changed through faith at Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. But the publicity stunt was overshadowed by the crash of one of the parade's famous balloons into a light post at Times Square, injuring two people.

Focus on the Family said that it distributed about 5,000 of the balls along the parade route, but hopes that it would be captured by TV cameras were dashed.

A spokesperson for producers of the parade telecast said they do not show controversial or political messages. News cameras covering the parade were diverted to Times Square to cover the accident.

Handlers of the giant M & M balloon somehow lost control and it struck a lamp post, sending the light to the ground in a handicapped seating area on Broadway, between 43rd and 44th Streets. Two people were injured and transported to Bellevue Hospital with unknown injuries.

Despite not getting their "stress ball" promotion telecast coast-to-coast, FOC called it a success.

Reached for comment, the hugely gay Sponge Bob Squarepants said that having 5,000 anti-gay balls thrown at him has not deterred his passionate promotion of the radical gay agenda.


“I’m coming to get you, Dobson!”

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Scientists Discover Singing Iceberg

But does it take requests?

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What Year Is It?

With all the irritating shit I read about every day, perhaps this ought to be low on the list, but it’s really pissing me off. In the span of a month, Jennifer Aniston was named “Man of the Year” for her grace in splitting up with Brad, and now Angelina Jolie is being reduced to a consternating enigma for not immediately becoming his wife. Yeesh.

Angelina’s taking prenatal vitamins—so why is she waiting to marry Brad? Are you fucking kidding me? Assuming for a moment that Angelina Jolie really is trying to get pregnant, and that getting hitched has even been discussed between the two of them, I truly cannot believe that a magazine had the audacity to suggest on its cover that a woman who is a successful, intelligent, self-sufficient single mother to two children (pictured, by the way, taking her son to a museum), not to mention one of the most highly paid people in her field and a UN good will ambassador, who can fly an airplane, has multiple citizenships, and has won top awards in her profession, ought to get married for any reason.

A marriage certificate is no guarantee that people will stay together forever, anyway, nor that married parents automatically make better parents—two points to which anyone with two brain cells knocking together can surely acquiesce. So what bloody reason is there to imply Angelina should get married, aside from the lingering puritanism that likes to pretend only healthy children are raised in “traditional families” and the indelible sexism that still regards an unmarried woman as incomplete, no matter how successful and fulfilled she is?

Perhaps the only thing at which Angelina hasn’t been successful is marriage. So maybe she’s gun-shy; maybe she’s decided marriage isn’t for her; maybe she just doesn’t give a rat’s ass about convention, considering she will likely never have to be concerned with the financial protections marriage provides to most mothers and children; maybe they’re already secretly married. Whatever her reason, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, because none of it has any bearing on her ability to be a good mother, which, by all accounts, she is.

This shit is so tiring. Move on.

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Gobble Gobble!

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Before Your Thanksgiving Nap...

...make sure you stop by this page and vote for our favorite religious liberal, The Green Knight, in the category of Best Religious Blog.

And while you're at it, vote for Duplex Dude for Best Humor blog, too!

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Today's Cosby Moment

"I know you want to laugh - you went like this!"

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Question of the Day

We're not celebrating Thanksgiving until Saturday this year, although Mr. Shakes and I did just have some delicious homemade turkey melt sandwiches, so I'll still be putting up some occasional posts today, for the non-American Shakers or anyone else not celebrating for whatever reason...

What's your favorite meal? Turkey with stuffing? Steak and potatoes? Given an unlimited choice, what would you choose?

One of my favorites (both to make and to eat) is just about any kind of fish baked in a nice sauce, with parmesan risotto and steamed asparagus. Yum.

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OMG! Stop the Fucking Presses!!!

My God, the humanity. First Guy Ritchie "ditches" Kabbalah, now Nick and Jessica ditch each other. Why, God, why???

You mean their reality show has outworn its 15 minutes? You mean Ashlee's album has safely been released already to avoid distraction (and nobody cares anyway)? You mean Jessica's boots really were made for walking? What will Nick do for money now? Someone get him a rich bf - stat!

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Yummy Yummy Litter Mummy

So, you're looking for the perfect Thanksgiving dessert to bring home to your family? Search no more ... The good folks at Kids Kuisine have been kind enough to share the recipe for Kitty Litter Cake! Mmmm, Mom!! Perfect for kids of all ages. Don't forget to include the barf bags!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Image from the always brilliant Mike Tidmus.

Last year, I said:

I'm thankful for Mr. Shakespeare's Sister. (I guess that would make him Shakespeare's Brother-in-Law.) I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful for Mr. Furious and his partner, Mr. Curious, for Ben Grimm, for the Evil Herbivore, for (Fuck-off-I'm) The Queen, for the World's Biggest Alice Cooper Fan, and all my other friends, even the conservative ones.

I'm still thankful for the same people...but this year, I'm also thankful for all the Shakers, too (of which there weren't any last Thanksgiving, except maybe John Howard), and all the other bloggers who have become friends. You all have helped me get through some pretty shit times lately; no matter what, I've had a smile on my face every day. And even more than that, I'm just thankful that every day, this blog is a fun and interesting place to hang out, which, in the end, has very little to do with me.

Happy Thanksgiving, you fantastic lot.

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Thanksgiving

So today is Thanksgiving here in the States. I hope this holiday finds everyone well. I also hope that you have good friends, food, and family to share the day with--Thanksgiving or not.

There are probably thousands of "what I am thankful for" lists posted on the internets today. At the moment, I have DayQuil on my list. And blogs, of course. I was reading Thesaurus Rex's blog a bit ago and he has a "not thankful" list going:

I am NOT thankful for Rush Limbaugh, polyester, and my incredibly shitty credit rating.

And yourself? What are you not thankful for? What could you (or the world) do without? Besides Shrub, that is.

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Important Announcement

Everyone Says I Love You sucks. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

I'm offended that Woody Allen even put that piece of shit in front of his fans for their consumption. Doesn't he know we have taste?

(Okay, maybe not so important, since the film was released nine years ago, but in the interest of preventing anyone else from suffering its unmitigated horror, I thought I'd better issue the warning ASAP.)

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Bullschmidt

Nice try:

Rep. Jean Schmidt says her comments Friday on the floor of the U.S. House have been misinterpreted and that she has been made a scapegoat by a media disappointed that Congress didn't vote to withdraw troops from Iraq.

Utterly nonsensical. She's being criticized and mocked from here to eternity because she acted like a complete moron. It had nothing to do whatsoever with "the media's disappointment," which is, in itself, a completely stupid (and, incidentally, nonexistent) concept.

Doesn't she have any advisers? Someone tell this woman to shut up and quit making it worse for herself. Not that it wasn't funny at first, but now it's getting painful, even for someone like me who hated her rotten to begin with.

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Ride the Lightning

Being a perv is risky business:

Police accidentally hit a naked man in the genitals with a Taser after he was caught breaking windows and asking women to touch him, authorities said.

Jeremy J. Miljour, 26, tried to run away when sheriff's deputies approached so one of them shot their Taser, said Cpl. Matt Chitwood. But one of the gun's prongs accidentally hit Miljour's genitals and got stuck, Chitwood said.

"The Taser is relatively accurate, but when someone is moving like that, it doesn't matter if you have a Taser, or a pistol. (Officers) can't aim," Chitwood said.

I don’t know what the big deal is. They’re lining up in droves in Serbia for a bolt to the bollocks.

In all seriousness, that not only sounds incredibly painful, but like a damn fine penalty for his peeping predilections, too.

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