a mom against the einsteins enabling slaughter

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SHE ROCKS.

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I don't even want to think about this.

There was ample coverage of the loss of a US F-15 fighter jet over Libya Tuesday, and it always came with reassurances that the crew was safe. Less safe, however, were a group of Libyan civilians who came to the aid of one of the crew.

That’s because the civilians who met the plane’s weapons officer and offered him fruit juice while he waited to be rescued were attacked by US Marines during the brief ground incursion meant to rescue the crew. Some of the reports suggest the Marines arrived in a V-22 Osprey attack helicopter and opened fire on the crowd with it.

Six Libyan civilians were shot in the attack, including a young boy who local hospital officials say may lose his leg because of the attack. The weapons officer had been found in a sheep field and was met by the civilians, who were backers of the anti-Gadhafi rebellion.

The incident is news not just for the tragic outcome, but because despite the explicit UN prohibition on “occupation troops” being spun as a broad prohibition on ground troops, US Marines were indeed on the ground, in Libya, in a field full of sheep.

The pilot was initially picked up by rebel soldiers, who the Marines reported treated him “with dignity and respect” before handing him over to the troops. It does not appear there was any incident with regards to him. The Marines have yet to comment on the shootings in the recovery of the weapons officer.

The F-15 was flying out of Italy at the time of the crash, and officials are blaming a system malfunction. It is the first aircraft reported lost since the US and France started the Libyan War on Saturday. An F-15E Strike Eagle costs approximately $31 million.

I want a BATH in a REAL tub and I want it NOW.

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love, 99
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scahill and imtiaz on the davis blood money and perfidies on perfidies

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Here's for a good effort at getting down to the truth... and the best part is we get to hear a Pakistani perspective.

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love, 99
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potpourri pile-up

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I just had too many windows open with stuff I was thinking about saying about each. I long to just reboot and get a pristine clean slate. Of computer. Of mind. If those are separate entities anymore.

An American CIA contractor who shot and killed two Pakistani men was released from prison Wednesday and left Pakistan after more than $2 million in "blood money" was paid to his victims' families....

It always comes down to this kind of math when the people are in abjection to crushing poverty.

"He is a perfect specimen," said Mr Lu, who runs the Tibetan Mastiff Garden in Laoshan, near the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao. "He has excellent genes and will be a good breeding dog.

I dare you not to do the math....

Candidates will only be referred for a compulsory work placement if a Jobcentre Plus adviser believes they are deliberately avoiding trying to get a job or would benefit from getting into the ‘habits and routines’ of getting up every morning.

Field day for bureaucrats....

Good map....

Look at this as wiring for the pushbuttons....

Preparedness....

Pernicious reportage under a deceptive banner equals mass hypnosis....

Guess who's drilling near a great spot for the next catastrophe....

Earthquakes and Extreme Weather....

All Reactors Are Nuclear Bombs....

I may be adding to this... or I may go off on a completely different set of tangents. Who can ever tell anymore?

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love, 99
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the einsteins at PNAC are at it again

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This has heavily to do with why I'm trying mightily not to obsess on the pushbutton revolutions in full swing right now.

In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage US intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to "immediately" prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and end the violence that is believed to have killed well over a thousand people in the past week.

The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served under President George W. Bush, was organised and released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a two-year-old neo-conservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the more-famous – or infamous – Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Warning that Libya stood "on the threshold of a moral and humanitarian catastrophe", the letter, which was addressed to President Barack Obama, called for specific immediate steps involving military action, in addition to the imposition of a number of diplomatic and economic sanctions to bring "an end to the murderous Libyan regime".

In particular, it called for Washington to press NATO to "develop operational plans to urgently deploy warplanes to prevent the regime from using fighter jets and helicopter gunships against civilians and carry out other missions as required; (and) move naval assets into Libyan waters" to "aid evacuation efforts and prepare for possible contingencies;" as well as "(e)stablish the capability to disable Libyan naval vessels used to attack civilians."

I know the place of their birth and it ain't in the GORGEOUS courage and transcendent love of the people rising and being slaughtered for it. No, no, no it ain't. I'm trying not to talk about it too much because I think I might go postal from more people reporting as though this were a sporting event and more citizens waxing so smugly confused about it all.

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love, 99
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oh, welcome home

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I find this:

Two U.S. citizens with diplomatic status were quietly withdrawn from Pakistan after being involved in a fatal car accident last month while trying to help Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor being held by Pakistani authorities on murder charges.

Two officials familiar with U.S. government activities in Pakistan said the two Americans who left the country worked for the CIA under contract as protective officers. This means they were employed as highly skilled bodyguards, like Davis, for CIA operations officers serving in Pakistan.

The two Americans who left Pakistan have not been otherwise identified by U.S. or Pakistani authorities. The CIA declined to comment.

that goes on to make this all sound perfectly reasonable under bad circumstances, and I'm wondering to myself if this could just be CIA rat bastards getting a karmic shot from left field or if it's just more covering for their filthy rat bastard activities. The ones for which they are being handsomely paid. And then I think it would be well if they were all scooped up and plopped down somewhere with no population for a couple hundred miles in any direction.

This is all next to a headline that reads: Obama breaks silence, condemns Libya crackdown ...pfeh. Would you mind telling me WHY it's of interest WHAT Obama says about Libya? Is it actually that America is looking to its president to say stuff? Do we need a spokesmodel in chief? I mean, have you been avid to hear him on this subject?

Do you think I oughta get back in my car now?

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On the other hand:

ATHENS, Greece — They blockade highway toll booths to give drivers free passage. They cover subway ticket machines with plastic bags so commuters can't pay. Even doctors are joining in, preventing patients from paying fees at state hospitals.

Some call it civil disobedience. Others a freeloading spirit. Either way, Greece's "I Won't Pay" movement has sparked heated debate in a nation reeling from a debt crisis that's forced the government to take drastic austerity measures — including higher taxes, wage and pension cuts, and price spikes in public services.

What started as a small pressure group of residents outside Athens angered by higher highway tolls has grown into a movement affecting ever more sectors of society — one that many say is being hijacked by left-wing parties keen to ride popular discontent.

A rash of political scandals in recent years, including a dubious land swap deal with a rich monastery and alleged bribes in state contracts — has fueled the rebellious mood.

At dawn last Friday, about 100 bleary-eyed activists from a Communist Party-backed labor union covered ticket machines with plastic bags at Athens metro stations, preventing passengers from paying their fares, to protest public transport ticket price hikes.

Other activists have taped up ticket machines on buses and trams. And thousands of people simply don't bother validating their public transport tickets when they take the subway or the bus.

"The people have paid already through their taxes, so they should be able to travel for free," said Konstantinos Thimianos, 36, an activist standing at the metro picket line in central Syntagma Square.

In one of their frequent occupations of the toll booths on the northern outskirts of Athens recently, protesters wore brightly colored vests with "total disobedience" emblazoned across their backs, and chanted: "We won't pay for their crisis!"

The tactic has cropped up in the health sector, with some state hospital doctors staging a blockade in front of pay counters to prevent patients from paying their €5 flat fee for consultations.

Critics deride the protests as yet another example of a freeloading mentality that helped lead the country into its financial mess.

"The course from initial lawlessness to final wanton irresponsibility is like a spreading cancer," Dionysis Gousetis said in a recent column in the respected daily broadsheet Kathimerini.

"Now, with the crisis as an alibi ... the freeloaders don't hide. They appear publicly and proudly and act like heroes of civil disobedience. Something like Rosa Parks or Mahatma Gandhi," Gousetis wrote. "They're not satisfied with not paying themselves. They are forcing others to follow them."

Many accuse left-wing parties and labor unions of usurping a grassroots movement with legitimate grievances for their own political ends.

"You think that lawlessness is something revolutionary, which helps the Greek people," Prime Minister George Papandreou said recently, lashing out in Parliament at Coalition of the Left party head Alexis Tsipras. "It is the lawlessness which we have in our country that the Greek people are paying for today."

But there is something about the "I Won't Pay" movement that speaks to something deeper within Greek society: a propensity to bend the rules, to rebel against authority, particularly that of the state.

It is so ingrained that many Greeks barely notice the myriad small, daily transgressions — the motorcycle driving on the sidewalk, the car running the red light, the blatant disregard of yet another government attempt to ban smoking in restaurants and bars.

Less innocuous is persistent and widespread tax avoidance despite increasingly desperate government measures.

"There is a general culture of lawlessness, starting from the most basic thing, tax evasion or tax avoidance, which is something that Greeks have been exercising since their state was created," said social commentator Nikos Dimou.

But many see the "I Won't Pay" movement as something much simpler: the people's refusal to pay for the mistakes of a series of governments accused of squandering the nation's future through corruption and cronyism.

"I don't think it's part of the Greek character. Greeks, when they see that the law is being applied in general, they will implement it too," said Nikos Louvros, the 55-year-old chain-smoking owner of an Athens bar that openly flouts the smoking ban.

"But when it isn't being applied to some, such as when there are ministers who have been stealing, ... Well, if the laws aren't implemented at the top, others won't implement them."

Maybe I should start smoking in restaurants and bringing produce over the California border from Oregon and, and, and... well, SPEEDING and not paying the fines... and fomenting general obstreperousness all around....

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We should just teach kids basic math and how to read and then let them listen to James Corbett. They'd be ten thousand percent better off. Would they not?

I mean, it occurs to me that most of us know most of what he's saying there already, but we do continually let that litany of facts sink back into the great existential puddle. NO dispositive action is ever taken against it. So we should consider yanking our kids out of school after second grade and smoking in elevators from now on.

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love, 99
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really handy scathing report

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Made short work of Musharraf's big plans to retake Pakistan's presidency.

A United Nations panel looking into Bhutto's assassination concluded that Pakistan's military-led former government failed to adequately protect her and that intelligence agencies hindered the subsequent investigation.

The panel's scathing report in April 2010 said the suicide bombing that killed Bhutto "could have been prevented" and that police deliberately failed to pursue an effective investigation into the killings. But Musharraf's government has said Bhutto had been afforded adequate protection.

Musharraf's legal adviser told CNN that Musharraf has not appeared before the court because the accusations against him are baseless and politically motivated.

Which, of course, was the reason for making the scathing report to begin with.

Not, mind you, that I think Musharraf's any good for Pakistan, like it's any of my business.... It's just that I keep being reminded lately of Bill Clinton saying that:

without term limits, he would have stayed in the job "until I was carried away in a coffin, or defeated in an election."

Truly, every population in every country ought to think hard about proscribing anyone who wants the job from getting it. There should be panels to pick worthy candidates and draft them. No campaigning. Just make every scrap of available information and insight into the candidates' qualifications and character available to the public and then elect them on that basis. If they pout and don't do their jobs once elected, shoot them and start over. When they grow to love the job this much, and won't step down, shoot them and start over.

I'm probably being just a hair too vivid about my impatience with this shit, but, well, that's my cookie crumbling.

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love, 99
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road to wwiii

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Better take note.

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love, 99
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paving the road to wwiii

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Stand up.

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love, 99
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consider carefully the implications of this report

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Not pretty. Not pretty at all.

No really. Stop everything and think about this for a moment.

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love, 99
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no tellin' how mixed up you can get until they try

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Let's just put a lump of history's most dangerous route and a dollop of nice fresh terror-mongering into our evening cuppa OBL and see if we get anywhere close to ayahuasca, shall we?

Ahmadinejad calls for US leaders to be 'buried'
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI (AP) – 15 hours ago

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's president Sunday called for U.S. leaders to be "buried" in response to what he says are American threats of military attack against Tehran's nuclear program.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is known for brash rhetoric in addressing the West, but in a speech Sunday he went a step further using a deeply offensive insult in response to U.S. statements that the military option against Iran is still on the table.

"May the undertaker bury you, your table and your body, which has soiled the world," he said using language in Iran reserved for hated enemies.

Several top U.S. officials including Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff have said in recent months that the military option remains on the table and there is a plan to attack Iran, although a military strike has been described as a bad idea.

The crowd of military men and clerics in the town of Hashtgerd just west of the capital chuckled at the president's insult and applauded.

The speech was broadcast by both state television and the official English-language Press TV, but the latter glossed over the insult in the simultaneous translation.

Ahmadinejad's remarks come in sharp contrast to ones he made to Al-Jazeera Arabic news channel in August in which he offered the U.S. Iran's friendship.

In Sunday's speech, Ahmadinejad also questioned once more who was behind the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. and said they gave Washington a pretext for seeking to dominate the region and plunder its oil wealth.

During his speech in front of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he said a majority of people in the U.S. and around the world believe the American government staged the attacks, drawing a strong rebuke from President Barack Obama.

Ahmadinejad often resorts to provocative statements to lash out enemies. He has already compared the power of Iran's enemies to a "mosquito," saying Iran deals with the West over its nuclear activities from a position of power and he has likened the United States to a "farm animal trapped in a quagmire" in Afghanistan.

Iran also condemned the latest U.S. sanctions slapped on eight Iranian officials Wednesday, saying they show American interference in Tehran's domestic affairs.

Washington this week imposed travel and financial sanctions on the eight Iranians, accusing them of taking part in human rights abuses during the turmoil following Iran's June 2009 presidential election.

"May the undertaker bury you, your table and your body, which has soiled the world," sounds damn reasonable to me.

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love, 99
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brilliant!

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These will be the A1 best covers for when any of our provocateurs get busted. Out of work guys can sell six-trips-to-Pakistan-worth of tools, mystically, to go Rambo OBL, or unemployed Arab-Americans can sign up to be homegrown terrorists joining jihad. Why on earth ever didn't I think of that?

Pakistan court convicts 5 Americans in terror case

SARGODHA, Pakistan — A prosecutor says a Pakistani court has convicted five Americans on terror charges and sentenced each to at least 10 years in prison.

Rana Bakhtiar made the announcement Thursday in the Punjab town of Sargodha. He says the men have the right to appeal.

The five young Muslims from the Washington, D.C. area, were arrested in Pakistan in December after their families reported them missing.

The case is one of several involving alleged "homegrown" American militants linked to Pakistan, but the only one being tried in a Pakistani court.

Brilliant.

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the adventures of genghis yoo

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Yes, I'm afraid I may have settled on a new name for him.

US to expand Pakistan drone strikes
THURSDAY, MAY 06, 2010
16:07 MECCA TIME, 13:07 GMT

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been granted approval by the US government to expand drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal regions in a move to step up military operations against Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, officials have said.

Federal lawyers backed the measures on grounds of self-defence to counter threats the fighters pose to US troops in neighbouring Afghanistan and the United States as a whole, according to authorities.

The US announced on Wednesday that targets will now include low-level combatants, even if their identities are not known.

Barack Obama, the US president, had previously said drone strikes were necessary to "take out high-level terrorist targets".

CONFLICTING FIGURES

"Targets are chosen with extreme care, factoring in concepts like necessity, proportionality, and an absolute obligation to minimise loss of innocent life and property damage," a US counterterrorism official said. [Total bullshit]

But the numbers show that more than 90 per cent of the 500 people killed by drones since mid-2008 are lower-level fighters, raising questions about how much the CIA knows about the targets, experts said.

Only 14 of those killed are considered by experts to have been high ranking members of al-Qaeda, the Taliban or other groups.

"Just because they are not big names it does not mean they do not kill. They do," the counterterrorism official said.

The US tally of combatant and non-combatant casualties is sharply lower than some Pakistani press accounts, which have estimated civilian deaths alone at more than 600.

Analysts have said that accurately estimating the number of civilian deaths was difficult, if not impossible. [Because, let's face it, if you won't count to begin with, estimates really are difficult, if not impossible.]

"It is unclear how you define who is a militant and who is a militant leader," Daniel Byman, a counterterrorism expert at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said. [And would because he is employed for the sole purpose of maximizing Muslim deaths and Middle East / Central Asian chaos.]

Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "It is impossible to assess the accuracy of government figures, unattributed to a named official, without information about what kind of information they are based on, how the government defines 'militants' and how it distinguishes them from civilians."

US MESSAGE

Former intelligence officials acknowledged that in many, if not most cases, the CIA had little information about those killed in the strikes.

Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St Mary's University, said the CIA's goal in targeting was to "demoralise the rank and file". [Not to say demoralize everyone on earth.]

"The message is: 'If you go to these camps, you're going to be killed,'" he added.

Critics say the expanded US strikes raise legal as well as security concerns amid signs that Faisal Shahzad, the suspect behind the attempted car bombing in New York's Times Square on Saturday, had ties to the Pakistani Taliban movement, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. [They're using purported dud car bombs in New York to up drone strikes in Pakistan?]

CIA-operated drones have frequently targeted the group over the past year in Pakistan, and its members have vowed to avenge strikes that have killed several of their leaders and commanders.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, told CBS television channel that the US should not be surprised if anti-government fighters try to carry out more attacks. [Brace yourself.]

"They're not going to just sit and welcome you to eliminate them. They're going to fight back," Qureshi said.

Yes, yes, I really think I have.
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Except, both the New America Foundation and li'l ol' Wikipedia do not seem to have bought-in to this impossible-to-count business....

And, well, nobody could have imagined terrorists would fly planes into buildings either.

The great thing about pumping people with outrageous whoppers is that it completely snows dopes and people who aren't paying much attention; it flabbergasts those who are listening so flabbergastingly that they can do naught but be flabbergasted all over themselves and the rest of us, causing us to tune out and them to detonate; and, finally, it gives all those beleaguered journalists something to parrot where there'd be an embarrassment of facts to insert. This last leads to informed sorts writing interminable essays on the wrongness of the media types, and man's inhumanity to man, and paralyzing everyone with the enormity of it all.

Truth is: Even ONE slaughter by drone attack is unacceptable.
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So it's Genghis Yoo, baby, not only from now on, but also retroactively. Having not only continued Dubya's policy of turning rural innocents into jam, but increased the frequency and ordered a shitload more, conquering hordes more, drones to get 'er done, and having not only continued John Yoo's policy of torturing the Constitution to an unrecognizable pulp, but actually raised this activity to high art, our president shall hereinafter be referred to as "Genghis Yoo".

At the rate he's going, we may have to give him a middle name like maybe "Madoff" or possibly just plain "Ponzi" or something....

Any suggestions?
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hoka hey

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It's a good day to die....

Who can stop wasichu? Seems to me wasichu. Seems to me preferable we stop ourselves than to make, say, China do it. Why do we have to keep sitting in our houses hoping the great sun from the center of the universe covers us with cataclysm in 980 days, 17 hours and 30 minutes? Where are the real people?
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very concerning

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Obviously, this document is not well translated, but gives the general impression that giving an interview to al Jazeera can be extremely hazardous to one's health. It could as easily be a ploy to discredit the Qatari news organization, but I'm bringing it up because I have repeatedly found myself a tad vexed by the suddenly awfully America-friendly and Israel-neutral tone of the place. It is my main general news site and since it became more operative and user-friendly for the United States, it also seems not to be anywhere near so keen on giving things from a Muslim perspective, which I felt was one of its finer attributes. Beside being almost without exception nearer to the truth, it was immense help in balancing the fascistic blather coming out of our media outlets. I'm not so sure anymore.

They are still about the best news outlet we have... though RT is catching up.

Maybe corporate headquarters just decided it's more profitable to aggravate Christians and Jews less. Or maybe we don't even know who in Qatar is in charge anymore. Or maybe too many of their reporters and offices were getting bombed by American troops. Or maybe their operation has become so huge and their employees so diverse that the frickin' ISI/CIA/MI-6/Mossad/anybody axis can get their moles in there to track down whomever. Or not. I don't know, but I'm bothered enough, uneasy enough, to mention this.

As for Abdelmalik Rigi, of Jundullah fame, I barely believe he was a terrorist/drug dealer who was coöpted by the United States. More like he was flat out installed by the United States to start his enterprise. If you hunt around in my Jundullah label, I think there are some whiffs of him being entirely too near JSOC/Blackwater installations recently and I won't be remotely surprised if he somehow manages a fantastic escape from Iranian custody. Even if they keep him and try him and hang him, it will only be because the Iranians are much less corruptible than the Pakistanis. At the rock bottom bare minimum he and his group have been supported by United States taxpayers for at least three, but probably six, years. This has been reported by both ABC and The New Yorker, and so there is NO doubt about that much.

I mean, Brian Ross, alone, reporting it, would mean Fudd wanted to brag to Tehran that he was murdering their people, but SEYMOUR HERSH reporting it means somebody who knows for certain about this stuff isn't at all happy about it and wants it to stop... for all the good THAT does them.

I'd say either Iranian intelligence really got their act together to nab him, or someone in the ISI is bloody furious with the United States and tipped them to get even with us. I don't know if al Jazeera had ANY connection to it, but here we have a convergence of two items that have been bugging me for quite a while. So I bring it up for you to file in your Big Maybes folder....
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obviously

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You gotta ask yourself WHY they don't seem to care about this.

If you can't figure it out, you're SO going to be radically more unhappy.

The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of three soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Feb. 3 in Timagara, Pakistan, from wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device.

Killed were:

Sgt. 1st Class David J. Hartman, 27, of Okinawa, Japan.

He was assigned to the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne), 95th
Civil Affairs Brigade (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C.

Sgt. 1st Class Matthew S. Sluss-Tiller, 35, of Callettsburg, Ky.

He was assigned to the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne), 95th
Civil Affairs Brigade (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C.

Staff Sgt. Mark A. Stets, 39, of El Cajon, Calif.

He was assigned to the 8th Psychological Operations Battalion
(Airborne), 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg,
N.C.

No. Really. Figure it out.
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you should pay peter for your attention stream if you can

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I'm listening to him talk to a couple ex-CIA agents talking about recent events right now, and kinda cringing at the thought of what they might say about the not-a-lap-bomber, but, well, fully 95% of what Peter B does is very worth our time, and I hope to heck he makes a good enough living at this to keep it up....
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Okay, so this one and the one a few days ago about the freedom march were not excellent. They usually are.
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blackwater graymail

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And talking about it with Rachel Maddow....

aheygh?

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Maybe in anticipation of the dethrownment of Crown Prince Bhutto's corrupt papa... a race to the bottom as it were....

fumbling athwart byzantium

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... because the Constitution is radioactive pulp, Jeremy, and we're supposed to be not at war with Pakistan.... A bureaucrat couldn't possibly advise one otherwise in such a situation. They can't even lie plausibly, but at least are not afraid because in our military adventures we don't even think about plausibility anymore.

the hitch

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Do not flinch from studying these images.

The hitch for me is the scene for the women. I went a long time thinking I could bear the agonies of the Afghanistan and Pakistan murderating if it could make the women safer at last, if this travesty could end up defending life instead of pure profit for plutocrats, but I had to take a hard enough look to admit to myself that was just dreaming of decency again, where no decency inheres... only the unstoppable spin of virtuous exceptionalism tumbling out the unstoppable mouths of unspeakably evil people. Just as the "Westernization" of Eastern Europe has worsened things for their population, by dint of capitalism's complete failure to look after the real needs of all its people, so too would/will it leave the women of the Middle East to their public and private hells.

So seeing this has me strangling in my hopes for decency again, another Zen teaching to rise up from it into the pure air of reality, and desperate to make that manifest to you as ever. So do not flinch from watching the video in this Kristof piece either. WILL the people prosecuting these military adventures across the globe see to it that this is stopped for good and ever... or even for a week? You KNOW the answer to that question.

A little while back, Scott Horton had Malalai Joya on Antiwar Radio to tell us to get the hell out of Afghanistan, find ways to help, but not occupy her country, that Afghanistan can work out their own civil liberties if we will just butt out. This, of course, was enough to quell his fears that Code Pink may have been right about the need to save the women, but Malalai Joya is very young, and not very wise, for however brilliant she certainly seems to be. I wonder if she's ever even seen women being treated like this, if she has the first part of a clue about the reality of it. I didn't at her age. It was still abstract to me then. I had to wait until the night I had to go over and save my next door neighbor from her husband to get the picture. In fact, I think entirely too many people, women and men alike, have to have it come that close before it ever dawns on them just how real this is.

So this truth still stares us in the face, like the acid thrown in these women's faces, even if we cannot look, cannot bring ourselves to admit it, even if we cannot shed our delusion enough to agree that we WILL not save these women... short of a miracle, short of enlightenment beaming into the heads of a lot of awful, awful murderating fucks.

Stop. Look. This is not pretty, but it is the truth.