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27Mar2011
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27Mar2011
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27Mar2011
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Archive for the 'Human Rights and Equality' Category
In between belting Stevie Wonder, dancing to Beyoncé and delighting in a surprise appearance from Missy Elliott, first lady Michelle Obama brought up a serious message during her appearance on “The Late Late Show with James Corden”: the importance of educating girls around the world.
While participating in a “Carpool Karaoke” segment, Obama told the show’s host that she launched a Snapchat account to document her recent travel to Liberia, Morocco and Spain. The goal of the trip was to highlight her Let Girls Learn initiative, which she launched last year to educate more girls. Globally, more than 62 million girls are currently not in school.
“So much could be corrected in the world if girls were educated and had power over their lives,” Obama said. “My message to kids here is, don’t take your education for granted, because there are girls around the world who would die to get the education that we have. They would do anything. They would move mountains to make it happen. I want our girls and our boys here to be aware of it, I want them to come along on this trip with me, and Snapchat was a good way to hook them in.”
Through the Let Girls Learn, thousands of American Peace Corps members stationed across the globe now get training in gender and girls education. The program works with multiple government agencies and outside organizations to invest in and elevate programs that directly impact girls in at-risk areas.
The first lady wrote about the importance of the initiative in The Wall Street Journal last March.
“The research is unequivocal: Girls who attend secondary school marry and have children later, and they have lower maternal and infant-mortality rates and lower rates of HIV/AIDS,” Obama wrote at the time. “Every additional year of education can increase a girl’s earning power by 10% to 20%; and sending more girls to school can boost an entire country’s economy. National-security experts have even noted that educating women can be a powerful tool to fight extremism, violence and instability.”
🎶♀♡
Readers: I am soo going to miss our first lady. Michelle Obama is just the bestFLOTUS. With over 46 million video views, I’d say she’s going to be missed by all. #LOVEHER.
Let Girls Learn:
Let Girls Learn is a United States government initiative to ensure adolescent girls get the education they deserve. Around the world, girls face complex physical, cultural, and financial barriers in accessing education. As a girl grows older the fight to get an education becomes even harder. Her family must be willing to pay school fees. She may have a long, unsafe walk to school. She may be forced to marry. And she often lacks the support she needs to learn.
Yet, we know that educating girls can transform lives, families, communities, and entire countries. When girls are educated, they lead healthier and more productive lives. They gain the skills, knowledge, and confidence to break the cycle of poverty and help strengthen their societies. It’s time to Let Girls Learn.
Such a wonderful movement. If you want to learn more about Let Girls Learn, click here. If you want to get involved click here. Thank you Michelle Obama for all of your efforts in support of our girls!
Off to go play. I hope you are all doing the same!
Peace& Love.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog.If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
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It was only a week ago that Trump’s immigration plan was the same one Obama is enforcing. I even blogged about it two days ago. Then he gave his immigration speech last night. My how things shift quickly. Did you watch? I’ve had enough of Trump for this week. Be my guest to keep it live if you want, but I’m taking a break and tuning to another station this morning.
This week, the California Assembly unanimously passed a bill that would exempt menstrual products from state sales tax, sending it to Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) desk.
The bill got bipartisan support, with Democrats arguing the tax is an unfair burden on women when things like Rogaine and Viagra are often tax-exempt. Republicans, meanwhile, supported tax relief.
“Fundamentally this is about gender equity and leveling the field,” said Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D), who wrote the bill.
And Assemblywoman Ling-Ling Chang (R) said in supporting the bill, “By scrapping this tax, we’re putting money back in the pockets of California women.”
Brown has not said whether he’ll sign it into law and his office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Repealing the so-called “tampon tax” would cost the state an estimated $20 million in tax revenue.
California is one of a handful of states that have taken notice of the fact that menstrual products are treated like luxury items and subjected to sales tax, while things like prescription drugs and even shampoo are exempt. New York State got rid of its tampon tax in April after a group of women filed a lawsuit claiming it amounted to discrimination. A similar lawsuit was filed earlier this year in Ohio. Bills have been introduced in that state, as well as in Illinois, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
President Obama has even taken notice of the issue, saying he has “no idea why states would tax these as luxury items,” but positing that “it’s because men were making the laws when those taxes were passed.” He also urged women in states where tampon taxes exist “to work to get those taxes removed.”
Yet even with New York and California working to repeal their taxes, just five other states have already done the same. The 40 others with sales tax still treat tampons as taxable luxury items.
The women who have filed lawsuits have come up with estimates of how much the tampon tax costs them. The numbers are huge: $11 million a year in Ohio and $14 million in New York.
*****
Readers: It’s about time. Only a man would call tampons a “luxury item.” How ridiculous is that. Uh…duh…just because it goes into our vaginas doesn’t mean it’s a treat, like I’m getting off on it. Taxing tampons is just plan discriminatory as noted in today’s write.
A recent study by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs surveyed almost 800 products and found in 42% of cases, women paid more for the same items as men.
Sometimes as much as double the price. It’s highway robbery.
Thoughts? Blog me.
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog.If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:
Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129
Every once in awhile I come across a write that is posted in my local newspaper. This one was passed along to me by my mother. Yes, people still do read the newspaper. Thanks, Mom!
In this April 2016 file photo, Pastor Darrell Scott listens at left as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in Trump Tower building in New York.
Donald Trump’s recent remarks to the African American community ring hollow, especially to black parents concerned about their children. “What have you got to lose?” he asks, suggesting that his “Make America Great Again” campaign responds to centuries of injustice.
But was it great in the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries, when African families were stolen from their homes, transported as cargo, separated and sold to white slave-owners in America?
Maybe it was great in 1776, when those rich, white men set about to proclaim “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Except that the only folks who got to enjoy those privileges were rich, white men like themselves. Not women, not slaves, not African American free men, not the Native Americans whose land was stolen.
So we’ll fast-forward, past the Civil War when some blacks were forced into the Confederate Army to fight against their children’s freedom. We’ll breeze past the sharecropping system that swapped slavery for servitude for generations. We’ll skip the lynching and the mobs that served to terrify children and families into submission once their “freedom” was won.
Perhaps we will land on the 1940s when the United States was fresh from its victories in Europe and Asia. But African Americans, who were systematically redlined out of the neighborhoods they wanted for their children, wouldn’t call that a time of greatness. State-sanctioned discrimination in housing, education, employment, welfare benefits or health care are instead the ugly shadows of U.S. history, times that should evoke in all of us a sense of shame — not nostalgia.
Maybe it was the golden decade of the ’50s? Gasoline was only 18 cents a gallon, but how was that great when an African American family had to carry extra gallons of gas, along with food for lunch and a makeshift chamber pot, because gas stations were often unwelcoming to these consumers? Or with the benefits of the G.I. Bill in hand, young adults were gaining access to higher education in unparalleled numbers, but more than 95 percent of African American youth enrolled in college were limited to black-only institutions. They were not welcome in the universities we now open to all.
Surely America was not great in the 1960s when our streets were roiled by rioting and violence. When communities of color, left out of the American dream for too long, and suffering the relentless abuses of strong-arm police tactics, exploded in frustration and demanded that we right our historic wrongs.
In 1980, about 1 in 10 white children were living in poverty; the rate was almost four times greater for African Americans. The disparities persist today. Nearly 2 in 5 black children live in poverty, and those born poor typically remain poor; income mobility in the U.S. is a greater part myth than it is fact.
Today, a black baby is two times more likely to die in the first year of life than a white infant. An African American child is two times more likely to be maltreated than a white child. A black youth is five times more likely to be killed by gun violence than a white youth.
America can be great, but making it so means creating equal opportunities for all children to get a healthy start in life, to live in safe neighborhoods, to access high quality child care, to go to strong schools, and to see their parents working in good-paying jobs.
“What have they got to lose” is hardly the political platform of inspiration. America will be great when children’s life outcomes are determined by their hard work, their determination or perhaps their generosity to others. America will be great when we realize the potential of “justice for all.”
*****
Blog me.
Ralph: Did you ever discover what kind of species they were? Hafa Adai.
Anna/Guam: Never worry about changing the subject. All topics are open. Interesting story. Although, regardless of whether he was under a spell or not, he shouldn’t have punched her in the face and struck her. I HOPE she’s ok. Hafa Adai.
Peace & Love.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog.If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:
Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129
Today, Hillary Clinton delivered a blistering and unprecedented speech, labeling her opponent, Donald Trump, a lifelong racist.
She did not mince words, arguing that his racial bias rendered him unfit to serve.
A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.
If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?
Clinton cited a lot of examples to bolster her point, tracing Trump’s history of racism from the suit the Justice Department brought against him years ago for discriminating against blacks and Latinos seeking to rent apartments, to his embrace of the birther conspiracy to his comments during the campaign about Muslims, Mexicans and others.
Still, Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Branding him a racist is a fundamental threat to the viability of the party now and in the future.
You would expect the leaders and elected officials of the party to rally to his side, blast Clinton’s speech as a smear and demand an apology.
Instead, there has been silence.
Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of The House, has two Twitteraccounts. Collectively the accounts have posted 31 times on Thursday. Five hours later, he’s posted nothing about the speech.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, has threeTwitteraccounts. Five hours later, he’s posted nothing about the speech.
Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican Party, has a very active Twitter account. Five hours later, he’s posted nothing about the speech.
The official twitter account of the Republican Party, the organization supposedly devoted to electing Donald Trump the next President of The United States, has also been silent about the speech.
There is also nothing about the speech on the GOP.com website or blog.
Trump, on the other hand, watched the speech and was quick to respond.
Trump’s campaign press office has also been busy dutifully attacking Hillary’s speech, which a spokesman called a “desperation play.”
But the campaign seems to have trouble finding prominent Republicans to defend Trump. Right now his site features statements criticizing Hillary’s speech from luminaries such as Patricia Bober, Oz Sultanand Alfred Liz.
Some prominent Republicans might not be criticizing Hillary’s speech because they agree with it. Paul Ryan, for example, called Trump’s attack on Hispanic federal judge Gonzalo Curiel the “textbook definition of racism.”
Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse agreed.
Sasse opposes Trump’s candidacy while Ryan has endorsed him.
But today, the most striking thing is not what Republicans are saying. It’s how many of them are staying silent.
*****
Readers: What can they say? Clinton’s right. It’s sickening how the repubs know it but still support him, albeit silently. If anyone believes the repubs are for country first, they need their head examined.
I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Thanks for being here with me. Something to say?
Blog me.
Susie,Ira, Zen Lill: You girls are all correct. It is way more than 12. I didn’t think it was only 12 out of so many on this planet but I certainly didn’t expect to hear 20,000. That is so disheartening.
Owen, Irene: Thank you both for being such loyal readers and for your love of the animals. They certainly need all the support that we can give them.
Dexter: I hear you. Their habitats are so important for their livelihood and for ours. I have always said that the Earth will be fine, it will survive no matter what we do to it. But the inhabitants will parish until another species is born, adapting to whatever our planet has become.
Akram: “Urge” comes from the word “urgent” and that is exactly what we need to be as a society when it comes to taking care of the inhabitants and their habitats. As I read the writes posted, including the one I posted, it seems the common denominator in the demise of these animals is humans and our activities. Bringing them to dangerous extinction levels though hunting and poaching or through destroying their habitats.
#ProtectTheEnvironment
Peace & Love.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog.If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:
Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129
Baheejah, Vida, Fatima, et al: It has been some time since the subject of Islam has been broached on my blog. I look forward to the day when western men will refuse to do business with a country whose men follow not a religion, but a cult that terrorizes, rapes, tortures, and murders their women. Considering how long it took us to elect a female president, I’m not counting on that happening any time soon. But hey, who knows what a female president can do. We haven’t had one yet so I’m not putting any limits on her.
Fatima: I am not sure if this is you (I’m assuming it is), who posted this comment back in 2011. Whether this is you or not, I decided to repost it again because it is an excellent, well articulated write that deserves another round of blog time.
Islam is accepted in the modern world all over the planet because those men who practice it have OIL. That is how allah is truly spelt by westerners. This talk of respecting a “religion” they know is an evil cult designed to keep women as sexual slaves is just a western man’s way of looking the other way at this evil while he does business with the enslavers for their OIL.
This article Michelle as (sic) boldly presented, clearly shows that islam is a cult designed to control females with terror in the name of a religion. For if their god allah says it is alright to beat us, then who has the right to question their god, allah, that is the claim these evil men are making and daring the rest of the world to object to under penalty of a fatwā of violence issued against them.
Of course islamic men will fight and die to keep the right to own women, just as America’s confederate fought and died to keep the right to own slaves. That does not mean it is a religion, just as it does not make any claim America’s southerns make that it was about “independence and self determination” true. Neither does the fact that over a billion people “worship” islam. At least half of those do it without their consent because they are captives of that cult. The other half are the captors.
Of course your pope would accept this abomination as a legitimate religion. It has only been a short time since catholicism has been forced to withdraw their doctrine which allowed their male worshipers to own their women. That doctrine still lingers as men under the pretext of being “devout” continue to attempt to use their “scripture’s” proclamations to control the bodies of western women.
So what does it boil down to? Alycedale, and you Michelle speak the truth when you say “men.” All over the world men use religion to force women into situations they could not do with logic.
So, yes, Zen Lill#7, marriage is but the telling to other men. “I have branded this cattle and it is mine.” If you trespass I have a legal means of suing you. We as females are but cattle to muslim men to be herded on their ranch called “family.” until we are selected out to be sold as sexual pleasures to the buyer.
The rest of the world accepts these “marriages” as binding legal contracts giving the owners the right to do as they see fit with that cattle. American white men are all too familiar with this type of ownership of human beings. They enjoyed the same recognition of the right to own another human being for centuries and continued it after the “emancipation” of those human being for another 2 and a half centuries. Your very election today is mostly the white males in your country refusing to give up their privileged status obtained from their illegal slavery of OTWs, and the use of “religion” to regulate the actions and control the bodies of their females.
We study and learn about the dangers of accepting your SCOTUS as a body independent of cultural and economic influence when it rules. Your 7-2, Dred Scott decision in 1857 which held that a slave did not become free when taken into a free state is not unlike saying a woman does not become free of the slavery of islam when she is taken into America.
Both decisions rest on the incredibly disgusting position that slavery of another human being is not the issue. The only issue was then and is now is whether that enslaved human being could assert his/her freedom in a state/country that did not accept the disgusting position.
So the western world does not consider the incredibly disgusting position that slavery of females is up for discussion by this “religion,” only whether that slave should be beaten when a mufti asserts under islamic law that she can. Incredibly disgusting!
Thank you Michelle for exposing this cult for what it is. Islamic men will declare that you are blaspheming a “religion” of a billion people. Please do not waver. Enslavers declaring a right because they have forced at least half of their constituency to be a part of it under penalty of death if they leave it or speak negatively of it, is without merit.
For certain if the penalty of death was lifted islam would be a cult of only men. It would go the way of your catholicism. Something else would be formed. Today women would be free to accept islam without the constrictions for females. Many of your offshoots of catholicism practice christianity that does not make a female the sexual slave of men.
There is NO redeeming value of islam as long as it is used to be vehicle for the enslavement and control of females under the pretext allah said so. No God would enslave half its people under the other half. That is just BS which benefits the lust of men.
*****
My love to you and all my sisters. May you all be safe. ❤️
While we’re on the subject of Islam, I found this write from Daily Kos:
I have been following the French #burkiniban news on twitter and other stories about women being kicked off of airplanes and it gets more and more alarming for me personally — I often wear a headwrap – and now feel that I am pressured to not wear one when traveling.
A full-body wetsuit garment for Muslim women is at the centre of a controversy in France, and the debate is raising difficult questions about feminism, Islamophobia and the country’s values. At least six towns on the Mediterranean coast have banned the burkini — a swimsuit that covers the torso, limbs and head — and three more are threatening to do the same. The mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, who was the first to forbid the beachwear on the basis that it disrespected “good morals and secularism” and posed a threat to public order, called the burkini “the uniform of extremist Islamism.”
Women who break the law face a fine of €38 (£33; $42) and several Muslim women have already been penalised. France’s secular political establishment was united in backing the measure, but failed short of bringing it to a national level. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in an interview published Wednesday in the La Provence newspaper the burkini reflects a worldview based on “the enslavement of women … That is not compatible with the values of France.” Many Muslim women regard the ban as sexist, Islamophobic and — most of all — counterproductive for the purpose of assimilating Muslims in the country.
“It’s a blatant violation of women’s rights — the right for women to decide what to wear and their freedom of movement,” Rim-Sarah Alouane, a religious freedom expert at the University of Toulouse and a Muslim raised in France, told Mashable. “Women are not even asked for their opinion: They’re dictated to by male officials what they can wear on the beach.”
On Al Jazeera’s “Inside Story – French ‘burkini’ ban: secularism or security?” host Folly Bah Thibault discusses the issue with her guests — Jacques Myard – French Member of Parliament and member of the opposition Republicans party, Yasser Louati – Human Rights and Civil Liberties Activist and former head of International Relations for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, and Anne Giudicelli – Security Analyst, and founder of the security risk consultancy firm, Terrorisc.
I agree with this French feminist – women are damned for what we wear – whether bare or not bare.
The hypocrisy about French secularism is patently obvious. Catholic religious garb is not banned.
Three British Muslim siblings were left traumatised after being escorted off a plane in London and interrogated on the tarmac as armed police kept watch, after fellow passengers accused them of being members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.
Sakina Dharas, 24, her sister Maryam, 19, and their brother Ali, 21, were on board EasyJet flight EZY3249 from London’s Stansted Airport to the Italian city of Naples on August 17.
Sakina told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that as the plane was about to take off, a crew member ordered the siblings off the aircraft and escorted them down the staircase to the tarmac, where they were met by armed police and an MI5 agent who questioned them for one hour.
Earlier, two passengers – also travelling to Naples – had told authorities that the siblings had been looking at a mobile phone screen that showed either Arabic text or the words “praise be to Allah”, Sakina said.
“A passenger on your flight has claimed that you three are members of ISIS,” the MI5 agent said to the siblings, according to Sakina, a clinical pharmacist.
This story in the Guardian about the woman on the beach being forced to take off some of her clothing, by police is distressing.
Photographs have emerged of armed French police confronting a woman on a beach and making her remove some of her clothing as part of a controversial ban on the burkini. Authorities in several French towns have implemented bans on the burkini, which covers the body and head, citing concerns about religious clothing in the wake of recent terrorist killings in the country. The images of police confronting the woman in Nice on Tuesday show at least four police officers standing over a woman who was resting on the shore at the town’s Promenade des Anglais, the scene of last month’s Bastille Day lorry attack.
After they arrive, she appears to remove a blue long-sleeved tunic, although one of the officers appears to take notes or issue an on-the-spot fine.The photographs emerged as a mother of two also told on Tuesday how she had been fined on the beach in nearby Cannes wearing leggings, a tunic and a headscarf.Her ticket, seen by French news agency AFP, read that she was not wearing “an outfit respecting good morals and secularism”.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., I’m looking forward to the Headwrap Expo, which is going to be taking place in September in Dearborn, Michigan, which will include interfaith panel discussions between Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Rastafarians, and other spiritual communities who incorporate some type of covering.
There is an interesting side-note to this issue — as a result of the controversy, global Burkini sales are up. The designer of the burkini says that 40% of her sales go to non-Muslim women.
I believe women should have a right to choose. They should not be forced to wear hijab in certain countries, nor should they be forced to wear bikinis, or other Euro-style swim-wear or street dress in others.
*****
Readers: I know you have something to say here. Flap your lips…It’s Friday.
Blog me.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog.If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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